Cafe Confessions

The first time someone ever suggested I eat at a Hard Rock Cafe I wanted to punch them. I was packed into a tour bus with sixty of my classmates on a high school science tour of southern California, and we had just completed our 12-hour+ journey from Bountiful, Utah to San Diego. Two girls tried to convince our teacher to let us grab lunch at the Hard Rock, presumably so they could buy one of the souvenir T-shirts that had infested our school hallways since we were in Kindergarten. At that point, any suggestion that didn't include the words "go to our hotel so we can get out of this (expletive) bus and sleep in a normal bed for three hours" would have inspired the same violent reaction.

Yet over the last ten years, eating at the Hard Rock Cafe has actually become one of my two regular traditions for a visit to any of our nation's major cities. (The first is buying the single most obnoxious fridge magnet for that city I can find). But I no longer seek out the Hard Rock Cafe because I want to stare in wonder at an autographed guitar that used to be owned by an obscure guitarist for The Romantics back in 1985.

I go to the Hard Rock Cafe because I like the food.

For a guy who has become a acknowledged snob in several important cultural areas, this seems like a significant confession, like admitting that I had a poster of Paula Abdul on my wall in the eighth grade, or that I own "Pearl Harbor" on DVD. For pop culture museum-restaurants like the Hard Rock Cafe and Planet Hollywood*, actual food quality is an afterthought, and endorsing it feels like Michael Scott's proud tradition of grabbing a "New York Slice" at Sbarro on his corporate trips to Manhattan. But the truth is that I have developed a taste for Hard Rock Cafe chicken fingers, and the spicy-yet-tangy reddish-brown dipping sauce they come with. I order the chicken fingers every single time I go, along with an order of fries, because the chicken fingers are considered an appetizer. At around $20, it's my most shameful meal, just ahead of Taco Tuesdays at Del Taco.

It's possible this tradition would not exist if Salt Lake City hadn't lost its Hard Rock Cafe several years ago. I don't know if it was because of its obscure non-tourist-friendly location in Trolley Square or just that there really aren't a lot of people who want to look at displays of old Osmond brothers stage outfits, but losing Hard Rock became another sad piece of evidence to suggest that Salt Lake City most definitely does not rock.

The hard-rocking Cafe image did always feel like an odd fit in pioneer-settled Salt Lake City. For years I half jokingly kept track of the number of Hard Rock Cafes where I had dined, assuming that as long as the number was equal to or less than the number of LDS temples I had attended, my net righteousness would be safely in the black**. This dynamic was never more vivid than the day my sister and I followed up a visit to the Las Vegas temple with a late lunch at the Hard Rock off the Vegas strip. Up until that point our strangest one-two punch was the time we visited the Pro Football Hall of Fame and Amish Country on the same afternoon during a family trip to Ohio in the summer of 1998.

The Hard Rock has consistently provided some of my strangest travel memories. Aside from the Vegas two-step, there was the time in Niagra Falls where I inadvertently insulted my waitress during a discussion on Canadian currency***. Then there was the time in Chicago where I tried (and failed) to ask out a cute waitress named Paige because I was feeling adventurous and lonely. But the topper has to be the time I was seated by the front window at the Seattle Hard Rock and looked up from my chicken fingers just in time to see the two-dozen buck-nude participants in Seattle's annual Naked Bike Ride pedal down the street. I hadn't seen that many tiny pee-pees in one place since my junior high gym class.

Altogether, I've dined at Hard Rocks everywhere from San Francisco to Times Square, and yet in all these years, I've never dined at the San Diego location. Maybe I'm afraid I'll run into a tour bus full of high school biology students. Maybe finally taking my classmates' advice will confirm the fact that I'm not as sophisticated as I'd like to think I am. But as long as they still have that chicken finger sauce, I'm sure I'll make it there eventually. And I'm hoping that a Paula Abdul video will be playing on a monitor nearby.

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*Does Planet Hollywood even exist anymore? Does it matter?

**Current count: 10 to 10. Hmm.

***Seriously, do you base your tip on Canadian currency rates or American? I'm never going to leave the lower 48 again.

Deleted Scenes

We're barely over two months into 2013, and I've already posted more columns to this blog than in all of last year. Part of this is because of my unofficial goal to get out one post a week. But a bigger reason is because over the course of 2011 and 2012, I left a lot of half-finished posts unpublished.

The problem is that publishing columns to a blog hardly anyone reads is a low priority next to...well, next to just about everything else I do. It's good to keep in practice, but since I am writing for other outlets, as well as teaching and taking pictures and doing whatever else I can to make money under the mighty banner of Wounded Mosquito Productions, blogging is only slightly more important than keeping up my basketball skills. And anyone who has seen me on the court in the last two months knows that isn't saying much.

Thing is, I've started numerous posts over the last couple of years that I just never got around to finishing, either because I never felt good about them or because they were way too time-sensitive for me to post a week or two after the event they were referencing. So I've got this massive archive in my Blogger portal of never-before-seen-and-probably-for-good-reasons material.

Some of the posts were interesting enough that I still wonder if I should finish them:

• A post about the end of the Hostess company.

• A post about Jeremy Lin and Tim Tebow, and whether God cares about sports.

• A post about my last night as a Utah Jazz season ticket holder.

• A post about running my first 5K.

• A post about Deron Williams' return to Utah after his trade to New Jersey.

• Multiple posts where I rant about blind dating.

• A post where I try to justify skipping the Paul McCartney concert during the same stretch where I attended shows from KISS, Public Enemy, and Bon Jovi.

• A post where I try to respond to the accusation of being "Baby Crazy" after posting numerous pictures of my now two-year-old niece to Facebook.

• A post about my aforementioned declining basketball skills, which I tried to combine with a commentary about Jerry Sloan's sudden retirement, then tried to combine with a commentary about Deron Williams' trade to New Jersey, then finally abandoned.

I guess I try to write about the Jazz a lot. See what I mean about timeliness, though?

As I look back even farther, I find more curious examples:

• A post from September 2006 about working in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building Bakery.

• A post from 2009 about the new Star Trek movie.

• A post from January 2010 about my inability to lie (and consequently, pull effective pranks).

• A May 2010 post where I outlined different points of advice I'd offer myself if I could go back in time ten years.

• A laundry list of important things I have learned over my many years of dating.

Looking over this list, there are some obvious reasons many of these posts never saw the light of the Interwebs. There were others I didn't post because they turned out to be far more personal than I feel comfortable sharing. But it is a curious archive if nothing else, and my guess is that much of the worthwhile content will find life in a different post or project down the road.

The single strangest thing I can take from this exercise is that once again I find myself fighting this idea that if something isn't posted on my blog or uploaded to Facebook, it didn't really happen. It's a completely bizarre and ludicrous idea, and I'd feel a lot more comfortable thinking it had more to do with closure, or just finishing what I start. Because why would I care whether random net surfers in Singapore know about my feelings about Jerry Sloan's retirement two years ago?

If an image or an article isn't published online, does it truly exist?

In the meantime, I'll keep trying to give the blog enough of a priority to get out one column a week. Maybe once I get my rhythm going, I can start worrying about how to get more than a dozen people to read them.

The Instant I Became a Photographer

I've had an artistic impulse ever since the moment I started drawing Star Wars characters with my crayons and markers when I was four years old. In fact, this impulse was so defining that if you browse through my junior high school yearbooks, about half the hand-written entries say something like, "you are so good at drawing!" or "you are the best artist!", because most of my peers didn't know what else to write about me.

But my interest in photography didn't come until much later in life. I took a basic photo class at the University of Utah, but my fumblings in the developing room and my mediocrity in the darkroom ensured that any professional aspirations remain safely subdued.

It wasn't until summer of 2006 that my passions hit a significant milestone. I had returned to Chicago for the first time in seven years to show my father around the areas I served as a missionary. For a week we toured the better part of northern Illinois, from Freeport to Kankakee, and spent several days downtown in the Loop, where we enjoyed Giordano's pizza and live blues at the Blue Chicago.

Over the course of that week we also found out that half a dozen of my old friends and contacts from the mission days had died, none more colorful than Dan Giles, a retired 6'2" CTA driver from Chicago's south side who was a spot-on doppleganger for James Earl Jones. News of his and others' passing wove a sad subplot through an otherwise great trip, which was mirrored by a rainstorm downtown one afternoon as my dad and I were staying at the Allegro Hotel in the Theater District.

It wasn't a heavy rainstorm, but it was enough to discourage us from setting out on any major tourist efforts. Still, I was determined to go stretch my legs, so I grabbed my dad's 3.2 megapixel Olympus point-and-shoot and went for a stroll. The storm had calmed, but the rain was still coming in intermittent bursts, so I was able to catch a number of simple shots that were accented perfectly by faint streaks of water.

Here are two of my favorites, where the rain complements the dingy, dreary age of Chicago's L-Train system:

As I came to one street corner, I noticed the Chicago Theater District logo stamped in the concrete. But as I got down at a nice angle and took the picture, an oblivious pedestrian walked through my shot.

At first I was annoyed, because I wanted a clear picture of the sidewalk. But as I looked at the result, I couldn't help but be impressed. The pedestrian had created a motion blur with his outstretched leg that was perfectly composed to the right of the sidewalk logo. The picture looked far more "artistic" than anything I'd ever shot before. In some ways, you could argue that it was the first time, even if by dumb luck, I had taken a real photograph.

In the months that followed, I eventually picked up a point-and-shoot camera of my own, and continued to take shots that had a lot more to do with documenting my surroundings than they had to do with creating art. I wouldn't pick up my first SLR for a couple of years, and it wasn't until many months after that that I finally learned how to use it. Even now, more than a decade after that misfire of a photo class, I still feel like I'm weak in some of the fundamentals that my peers grasp so easily.

But it's still fun to retrace my steps and land on that downtown Chicago sidewalk, and realize that I can pinpoint the moment I became a photographer. Even if it was just by dumb luck.

The Deadhead

It was the spring of 1995, and I was sitting on the grass in front of the Student Union at the University of Utah talking to my friend Mike. I can't remember if he was talking or if I was talking, but either way, our conversation paused when a cute girl wandered by on the sidewalk. After a second, we regrouped and smiled as we realized we'd both been distracted by the same girl. It was a great moment, and the reason I remember it so well is because Mike was my writing professor at the time.

Spring Quarter 1995 still stands as one of my favorite academic experiences ever. I was in my first year of college, basically killing time before leaving on my LDS mission, and my lack of academic motivation was threatening to disqualify me from my scholarship before I could even get a dozen classes on my transcript. Winter Quarter had been miserable, so when it came time to register for spring, I decided I was going to have some fun. I signed up for an acting class, a basic sociology class, a weight lifting class, and a creative writing class. Plus I think I took "Preparing for Celestial Marriage" over at the Institute.

The first day of class, I was in a stale second floor classroom in Orson Spencer Hall when this shaggy-haired kid came walking in and sat down at the front of the room. He was wearing a multi-colored tie-dyed T-shirt, bermuda shorts, and flip flops. His long, unkept hair dropped down to about his shoulders, and even though it was thinning a little on top, it was clear he was in his mid-to-late twenties.

This was Mike, my creative writing professor.

This was also way back before I knew anything about what qualifies a person to teach a college course, or that graduate students would often teach introductory courses as part of their programs. All I knew was that Mike was a very cool guy who told us right off the top that we could never find him in his office.

"I think my chair is still sitting on top of my desk," he mused. "If you want to get together and talk writing, let me know and we'll go talk outside or something."

Mike was a grad student in the university's creative writing program and a seven-year Deadhead. This was music to my ears, as I was around the peak of my pre-mission pseudo-hippie period*, but this little factoid became even more significant in retrospect, since the Grateful Dead actually made a weekend stop in Salt Lake that season on their final tour before Jerry Garcia died later that summer. It was almost like the Dead had swung through town and given me Mike as a parting gift before driving off into the sunset in one of those cool VW hippie buses.

I say "gift" because if you can't tell already, Mike was one of my favorite teachers. Aside from the obvious out-of-the-ordinariness, his daily writing exercises spurred a creative flurry in me I hadn't experienced from any other instructor. One day he told us to freewrite about a smell, and I turned the stench of burned rubber into a short story about a car chase between two street gangs fighting over a vat of Tang. Another day Mike told us to write about anything we wanted as long as every other sentence had the word "sprinkler" in it, so I conjured the dramatic tale of a middle-aged suburbanite who went out to his yard one morning only to have his sprinkler system come to life and try to kill him. For all I knew, it was total crap, but I felt like I had made a connection with Mike.

That connection was solidified a couple of weeks later when the same girl stopped both of us in our verbal tracks out on campus. Mike was less of an authority figure than he was a mentor and a kindred spirit, and maybe even a friend. I've built my teaching style from a variety of the teachers I've encountered over the years, but without that experience with Mike, I doubt I ever would have played in a band with Brett, who was one of my first English 1010 students, or gone to see Allen Stone perform in Seattle with Scott, who was in the last English 2010 class I taught before leaving Logan. Whenever I think of a long-term friendship that started in one of my English classes, I see roots that trace back to the spring of '95.

When I got back from my mission, I looked Mike up in the campus directory. It's been so long I can't remember if I called him or emailed him, but I remembered him saying/writing this:

"Yeah, you were one of the few bright spots that quarter."

That was probably one of the coolest compliments anyone has ever given me.

I think he was still in the grad program at that point, but we lost touch again, and I haven't contacted him in several years. Every once in a while I'll punch his name into the Facebook search bar, but my lack of results gives me the feeling his opinion of social media is roughly the same as his opinion of offices.

Maybe I'll just have to find a grassy stretch on campus some time and take a walk, see if I run into him.

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*Meaning I wore tie-dyed shirts and had multiple Jimi Hendrix posters, but the closest I came to experimenting with drugs was buying Pink Floyd's first album and actually listening to the whole thing.

Dating and Driving, No. II

The other day I was online trying to find out how long it takes a speeding ticket to get dropped from a Utah driving record. I'm about three years removed from an incident that took place on the 400 South overpass by I-15, and was wondering if it was about to expire.

Of course, any traffic incident inevitably takes me back to my first ticket experience, which took place the night of my Senior Prom. It was a surreal event to cap off a surreal time in my life. Aside from the usual craziness that surrounds high school graduation, my comic supporting role in the school play had been getting big laughs, and for some reason Cheetahman--the junior class president at the time--decided that it would be a good time to nominate me for prom royalty. In a rare fit of social confidence, I called up the captain of the drill team--a girl I'd exchanged maybe a dozen words with in three years--and asked her to go to the dance with me. Inexplicably, she said yes.

And that's how we wound up sitting in my parents' Honda on a gravel parking lot at the west end of Smoot Park round about 11:30pm the night of the dance. The early stages of the evening were pretty standard: our group had gathered in downtown Salt Lake at Benihana for dinner, then migrated over to the State Fairgrounds for the dance itself. After getting pictures and doing a few obligatory dances, we drove back up north to a home in Centerville we'd designated as a way-station to get out of our formal clothes before meeting at the park to hang out for a couple of hours.

But even though we were the last couple to leave the changing house, when we got to the park no one was there. What I didn't understand was that Smoot Park was an elongated strip of property that stretched from west to east, and I was only familiar with the west end, where I'd meet friends to play football. The east end had a traditional paved parking lot and a jungle gym for little kids, and that's where everyone else went.

If we had cell phones back then, it would have been easy to address the problem. But we didn't, and in my teenage zeal, I came to the conclusion that everyone else must have driven their cars into the park to form some kind of automotive drum circle. No really, I actually thought this.

"Maybe they all pulled up on the grass," I said.

My date didn't have any better ideas, so I flipped on my brights, stepped on the gas pedal, and began driving through Smoot Park, searching for my friends. I was very careful to go slow over the foot bridge that crossed the creek that ran through the park--after all, I was in my parents' car--and after a while, I saw some lights up ahead.

The drum circle, obviously.

But when I got a little closer, my lights illuminated the words "Centerville City Police Department" on the side of a large white squad car. The police had already arrived to break up the party, which was taking place in the normal parking lot next to the jungle gym, about five minutes before I pulled up on the grass.

After a brief awkward exchange with the officer, I handed over my license and my parents' registration before he walked back to his squad car, leaving my date and I to wonder if I was going to be arrested. My friend Dustin came over to check on us and see if I wanted to give him my last will and testament, or just give my date a ride home. But then the cop came back and stopped at my window.

I didn't feel like scanning in  my Prom photos, so instead
 I'll let this image act as a metaphor for my evening.

"Would you step out of the car, please?" he asked.

Quietly I got out and followed the officer over to his squad vehicle.

"Get in," he said, pointing to the passenger seat.

I opened the door and got in next to the officer, who ignored me for ten full minutes while running my name through the system and filling out some paperwork. The distorted robotic voice of the dispatcher--which mentioned my name a time or two--was the only sound in the car amid all the blinking lights and the flashes of static. I kept waiting for the officer to start reading me my rights, but eventually he just got my signature and gave me a court date before kicking me out of his car and driving off into the night, presumably to break up another of Viewmont's wild prom parties.

A couple weeks later I found myself in the Centerville City Courthouse with my dad, waiting to visit with Judge Jensen about my citation. The room was more of an office than a courtroom, smallish and packed to the hilt with offenders, all of us waiting on the judge who sat against the wall in front of a window behind a massive wooden table in his vast black robe. For an hour or so we sat quietly while the city's finest felons filed up to the table to address their various DUIs and other violations. At one point a county inmate in an orange jumpsuit and shackles was led into the room to discuss some kind of heinous crime I've since blocked out, though I think it had something to do with armed robbery or murdering seventeen people or maybe just using an Arby's for illicit purposes, and I got the feeling that I was just a little bit out of my element.

But then Judge Jensen called me up to his table. He sat there for a moment looking over my citation, looming in the tall frame that had fathered some of the area's most successful basketball prospects, then sighed and asked me this question:

"Josh, are you familiar with city statute 347Z-211B?"

I squinted my eyes and concentrated for a second, as if there was a chance I actually had encountered that statue in my travels.

"No," I replied.

"It pretty much says you can't drive through public parks."

Five minutes later, the verdict was official: $40 fine and nothing on my permanent record, since it wasn't a moving violation.

It wasn't a moving violation because I wasn't driving on a paved surface.

And so I walked out of the courthouse a free man, my father by my side, tasting the pure spring air. Now it was time to dial back in and finish up my high school career, maybe work a couple of extra hours at the grocery store to make up for the citation money, and look forward to a bright, criminal record-free future. To be honest, my biggest surprise during the whole ordeal was how easily my parents had taken the news of their son's socially deviant activity.

They let me borrow the car again, but I never did get another date with the drill team captain.

Ladies (Don't) Love Zeppelin

"Now this is most important, Rat. When it comes down to making out, whenever possible, put on side one of Led Zeppelin IV..."

-Mike Damone, "Fast Times at Ridgemont High"

Every time I hear a song off Led Zeppelin's fourth album, I am transported to my junior year of high school, the year I started dating, driving, and depending on your definition of employment, working. That winter was one of the heaviest in recent Utah history, and many of my junior year memories are connected to me trying to navigate my parents' 1983 Honda Accord across the frozen tundra of the Viewmont High School parking lot, all while my uncle's copy of Led Zeppelin IV rambled out of my tape deck.

As I've swapped stories with friends over the years, I've come to believe that becoming a Zeppelin fan is a teenage rite of passage for every red-blooded American male. For whatever reason, Led Zeppelin is the ideal band for the impotent adolescent rage of the teen years. When I first heard the opening growl of "Whole Lotta Love" while crouched on the orange shag carpet of my parents' music room, I had finally found the music to match the image my cousin's KISS album covers had conjured years earlier. KISS's music turned out to be as dark and dangerous as a vigorous game of whiffle-ball, but Zeppelin burned and strutted. I wouldn't exactly call it rebellious--after all, I found "Whole Lotta Love" on one of my mom's compilation albums--but soon after my basement epiphany I borrowed my uncle's cassette tape, and before long picked up the four-disc CD set with the crop formations on the cover. My initiation was complete.

Recently I decided to test out my "rite of passage" theory by posting a simple inquiry to all my male Facebook friends: are you a Zeppelin fan, and if so, when did you join the club? In no time I had eight passionate endorsements for a band that had rocked into their lives sometime during adolescence, and stayed for good. Here are my favorites:

"My dad used to have me listen to Led Zeppelin as long as I can remember. Alongside ZZ Top, it was the soundtrack of my in-car-childhood."

"I borrowed Led Zeppelin (4) from my friend when I was in 9th grade and I listened to it non-stop for about a year. My other friend then got a copy of the four disk box set and I listened to it for another 5 years..."

"Rooting around through some of brother's stuff in the attic over our garage (I know. I shouldn't have been going through his stuff.) I found a tape with funny symbols on the front followed by a number 4. I put it in the Walkman that I also found in the attic and turned it up. 'If it keeps on raining, levee's going to break' was the first thing I heard. I was an instant convert..."

And of course this one just warmed my heart:

"Although I liked Zeppelin before I think they reached the status of one of my favorite bands in high school hanging out with none other than Josh Terry..."

Eight responses off a status post is far from scientific evidence, especially when you consider that my Facebook friends number in the hundreds. But after considering the mysterious algorithm Facebook uses to determine who actually sees my posts, and wondering which of my friends have unsubscribed from my posts after getting sick of me pimping my photography business, I still thought my theory had some weight. So I decided to survey a more captive audience: my English 2010 students.

18 of the 31 guys who participated said they were Zeppelin fans, and most of them were very emphatic about it. Many shared anecdotes about how their fathers or a friend got them into the group, and one elaborated on a pack of "weird lookin'" cigarettes he discovered hidden behind a Zeppelin album that led to an experience I probably shouldn't repeat here. Many who didn't identify as fans at least demonstrated an awareness of the band's music, only a couple specifically said they didn't like it, and a couple of my foreign students had never heard of the band before. Then there was my student who responded that "I wouldn't call myself a fan but a supporter."

Maybe he was just worried about his grade.

Overall, my theory seems to have traction, but not enough to call it doctrine. Zeppelin has surely been a rite of passage for many American males, just not every male. But in the process of exploring one theory, I have formed another that seems to hold a lot more potential:

Ladies don't love Led Zeppelin.

A few days after my Facebook post, I decided to poll my female friends on their Zeppelin fandom, and I got exactly one response. This felt significant, given that my guy-to-girl Facebook friend ratio is about five to four. When I surveyed my 2010 students, only two of my nine female students identified themselves as Zeppelin fans, and neither was very emphatic about it. So I can't say with any certainty that all guys get into Zeppelin in high school, but I do think I can say that most girls don't care much for Jimmy Page and the boys.

Realize here that the emphasis is on the word "most." Obviously Zeppelin has plenty of female fans; I'm talking percentages here. And any fool knows that Led Zeppelin was more than happy to take advantage of their rock-god statuses. A quick glance at any live concert photo reveals costumes clearly designed to create sex appeal, even if it's a creepy skinny-hairy-guys-in-tight-jumpsuits kind of sex appeal. Rock stars are rock stars, warts and STDs and all. I also realize that there is a whole host of other mitigating factors that could be impacting my research, such as the fact that as a Mormon male in Utah, chances are my female friends are considerably less likely to embrace blues rock and considerably more likely to embrace Tim McGraw and songs about skydiving. Ever since that horrible moment years ago when Z-93 dropped its classic rock format and became KBUL-93, I have known that when it comes to music taste, I am a Utah minority.

But I do think that in general, Led Zeppelin's music doesn't crossing the gender gap, and if you asked me why, the first thing I'd do is cite the band's lyrics. My sister has a simple theory about lyrics: girls listen to them, guys don't. And if you listen to Led Zeppelin's lyrics, you notice a couple of things:

• Zeppelin doesn't sing about love all that much.
• They do like to sing about JRR Tolkein characters.

Now to me, that doesn't sound like a recipe for female fans. At least on a massive cultural scale. The simple answer is that Led Zeppelin's music doesn't appeal to female fans because unlike Bon Jovi's, it wasn't designed to. And maybe that's why the quote that leads this article is so funny.**

So what does this all mean? Besides the fact that I was willing to survey my English students and tabulate the gender ratio of my Facebook friends for the sake of a blog post on Led Zeppelin? It could just mean that I need to get a life, or should at least stop over-thinking things like when people get into particular 70s classic rock bands. Or maybe there really is something to be said about how popular culture influences our identity, and this is only making a tiny, tiny scratch on the surface of a much larger beast.

But mostly I think I just enjoy the idea of flagging a shared experience. As much as I hated dealing with all the snow in the parking lot and all the uncertain awkwardness of my high school experience, when I think back on those days rolling around in my old Honda, listening to "When the Levee Breaks" and "Black Dog" and "Rock and Roll," I smile. They really were good times. And I think I'm not alone in saying that.

What is the point of a blog if it isn't to bring together people with similar experiences?

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*It just dawned on me that my male students outnumber my female students three to one this semester. Interesting.

**Though to be fair, I have never actually tried this. Maybe it works like a charm?

"Warm Bodies" Keeps the Zombie Genre's Heart Beating...For Now

It's been six and a half years since a small group of my like-minded friends gathered in an unfinished basement in Woods Cross for the first official Zombie Fest. As much fun as the yearly tradition has been, over the years I've started to wonder how long it would be before our zombie passion would burn out. Every once in a while a fresh face like "Evil Dead II" would breathe some life into our routine of old standards like "28 Days Later" or "Night of the Living Dead," but in spite of our efforts, the Zombie Fest Apocalypse may still be at hand.

2012's event felt like the last bullet to the undead-brain: after the first feature, a screening of the so-so "Quarantine," most of the fest attendees decided to call it a night. Only my friend and fellow head-shaver Spencer and I stuck around to watch "Dead Snow," a Norwegian film about a group of skiers who encounter a raging band of Nazi Zombies on the frozen tundra.

"Dead Snow" was either the greatest camp zombie movie I have ever seen, or a desperate effort to squeeze original blood from the zombie stone. It had all the craziness and creativeness that make zombie movies fun (plus a POV shot that might cure you of zombie flicks on its own), but while watching it, I couldn't help but think to myself, "where do we go from here?"

Now I know: zombie romantic comedies. This weekend I took a spin over to the Centerville Megaplex with some friends to see "Warm Bodies," which boasts one of the most unique zombie breakthroughs since Danny Boyle asked, "what if zombies could run fast?" For the first time, we see the film from the zombie's point of view.

Specifically, we see it through "R's" point of view. Played by Nicholas Hoult (the kid from "About a Boy," if you can believe it), R spends his days wandering around an abandoned airport, scavenging for brains and having periodic grunt conversations with his only friend (played by Rob Corddry). It's been about eight years since the outbreak, but he can't remember what caused it, being undead and all.

R is a special kind of zombie. He's dead, but there's still a personality flickering around in his own brain, enough to give us some voice-over narration throughout the film. He's more or less staked out an abandoned passenger jet as his new home, filled with odds and ends he's picked up in his slow, lethargic travels. He's even got a working record player and an impressive vinyl collection. Rrr is basically an EMO zombie hipster.

One day, on a search for brains with some of his undead friends, Rrr stumbles onto a band of humans in search of medical supplies, led by Julie (Teresa Palmer) and her PTSD-suffering boyfriend Perry. The angelic vision of Julie brandishing a shotgun while her blond locks flow in slow-motion triggers something in R, so after beating her boyfriend to death and eating his brains, he whisks her off to the safety of his passenger jet, and the romance begins.

Now, I don't mean to discard the whole "beating and brain eating" thing too casually. One of the more interesting aspects of "Warm Bodies" is how it tries to negotiate its lighthearted zombie-in-love premise with its more macabre realities. "Shaun of the Dead" was able to keep its entire satiric narrative on an even tone, but "Warm Bodies" tries to offer a philosophical metaphor to the idea of eating a person's brains. I guess you have to do that when you're trying to make a sympathetic protagonist out of a corpse that sustains himself on the living, but it's a stretch, if nothing else.

Still, when you get right down to it, "Warm Bodies" is more a metaphor for the awkwardness of love than it is a zombie movie, and that's what makes it so relatable, and so fun. I doubt there is a guy out there who hasn't felt like a staggering, creepy, tongue-tied oaf when trying to have a conversation with a girl he was attracted to. And I'm guessing the film is pretty relatable from the female side of the equation as well. Though I can't say for sure, being undead and all.

The film has its faults, but if you have felt a little burned out by the zombie genre and were debating whether to say goodbye (or if you just need something to tide you over until "Walking Dead" starts up again), this one would be worth checking out before you go.

Memories of My First Sundance

Some quick fun facts about me:

1. I have never paid money for bottled water.
2. Despite living minutes away from some of the most popular ski resorts in the country, I have been skiing exactly once.
3. Despite living minutes away from the site of one of the five biggest film festivals in the world, I had never been to a Sundance screening until earlier this week.

My reasoning for never having attended a Sundance screening is a topic worthy of its own post, so for now I'll just share some of my random thoughts and memories from spending my Martin Luther King Holiday covering a film festival in Park City:

• 8:30am: Crouching at the back of my Honda Accord in sub-zero weather at Slim Olson's in Bountiful, trying to decide whether the air hose attached to my back tire was inflating it or deflating it, wondering whether I really wanted to drive up to Park City and spend the next 15+ hours covering the reputed mayhem that is the Sundance Film Festival.
• 9:15am: Driving blindly through the parking lot at the Park City Marriott as sunlight glares through my windshield, lucking into a free parking space on the street right outside, then strolling into Festival Headquarters and picking up my media pass at the press credential desk, where I once again got that strange feeling that someone was giving my opinions credibility.
• 9:25am: Walking through the lobby and making eye contact with a cute girl with green eyes, then stopping outside and debating whether I should go back in and try to talk to her, even though she was wearing snow pants and was obviously about to head out on the slopes and wouldn't be interested in going to a screening of a random movie based on a Jack Kerouac book, though you never know until you try, and she did have a lanyard on, so she could be press herself, and so I went back inside the lobby, where instead I was approached by a random red-haired woman who thought she had met me at a party the night before.
• 9:45am: Kicking myself for not getting out the door fifteen minutes earlier so I could both get my press credential early and still have time to catch a warm-up screening before "Big Sur" instead of lingering around the Yarrow Hotel lobby killing time reading over each Sundance entry synopsis seventeen times in the press guide.

• 11:30am: Filing into my first screening of the day at the Yarrow Theater, finding a seat, then being approached by a guy named Jack who also thought he had met me somewhere before. (He actually looked up a picture of the person he was thinking of on his phone and showed it to me so I wouldn't think he was crazy.)
• 12:30pm: Watching actor Jean-Marc Barr (playing Jack Kerouac in "Big Sur") chain-smoke his way through virtually every second he spent in the incredible natural wonder that is Big Sur National Park, then remembering my own brief experience in Big Sur: trying to sleep on a picnic table in one of the park's campgrounds halfway through my road trip up the Pacific Coastal Highway in the summer of 2009.
• 1:15pm: Wondering if the copy of Entertainment Weekly that I had impulsively grabbed from a stack in the press tent was complimentary or if I was supposed to have paid for it, then sheepishly double-checking with the amused festival volunteer on my way out of the theater. 
• 1:30pm: Intentionally sitting in the sun at my booth at Taco Maker because it was so much nicer than the crappy cold and inversion I'd been dealing with in Salt Lake, noting that Taco Maker chooses to call its Tator Tots "Potato Gems" instead of Tator Tots (or Mexi Fries like Taco Time), then debating whether I should feel dumb for eating at Taco Maker during my one day in Park City.
• 2:15pm: Being herded into the press tent outside the Holiday Theaters, feeling a little like I was about to become some kind of human entry in a State Fair-style livestock display, then talking to Duncan, a lawyer from LA who has been attending Sundance for two decades and looks a little like a younger Robert Redford (though I'm sure every red-haired guy looks a little like Redford during Sundance) while waiting in line for the press screening of "Manhunt," a documentary about the search for Osama bin Laden.
• 3:30pm: Nodding off in the mid-afternoon screening of "Manhunt," then hearing the gasp in the audience when someone indicated that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in one month, even though another someone indicated that 183 was the number of dunks, not the number of actual sessions, whatever that means. 
• 4:45pm: Weighing whether to try to squeeze in an extra screening--in this case, "Blackfish," a documentary about a killer whale in captivity that has either killed some of its handlers or killed some of the people watching it perform, I can't recall--even though the film was already spoken for by one of my D-News colleagues, then deciding to use the break to take a crowded bus downtown then stroll up and down Historic Main Street and take some pictures of "the Sundance scene."

• 6:30pm: Taking a few shots of a couple of girls who had been stopped by a crew from the Sundance Channel for an interview while a car drove by and a passenger called out the window, "CELEBRITEEEEES! CELEBRITEEEES!"
• 7:00pm: Sitting by myself at a four-person booth in The Bandit Grill, eating what was listed as a half-pound hickory burger but only seemed to be 1/4-1/3 pounds of angus beef, wondering if the guy at the table next to me is really the supporting character actor I think he is, or if I am just assuming that everyone in Park City is famous, and secretly regretting the fact that I didn't do any research to figure out the best places to eat in town before I drove up.
• 9:15pm: Standing in the press tent waiting for the 10pm "Sound City" screening, weighing the prospects of driving home through Parley's Canyon at 12:30am,  and wondering if I should just bail and tell my editor that I would write a review of "Manhunt" instead, since I really don't know if Deseret News readers are all that psyched to learn about the studio in LA where Nirvana's "Nevermind" and Fleetwood Mac's "Rumors" were recorded, even though I kind of am.
• 9:55pm: Deciding to stick it out with "Sound City," then changing seats multiple times before the movie began when the middle-aged woman in the white fur coat on the row behind me starts coughing like crazy and sniffing like she was inhaling either cocaine or boogers or both and either way I didn't want to get sick for the third time in a month or take the chance of her husband/partner/parole officer kicking my chair for the fourth time while I was just trying to enjoy a documentary about a nice little recording studio in Los Angeles.

• 10:10pm: Watching the album montage at the beginning of "Sound City" and thinking that pretty much every album released between 1974 and 1994 was recorded there, then laughing when interview segments with rock gods like Neil Young and Tom Petty and Mick Fleetwood were suddenly followed by an interview segment with Barry Manilow.
• 10:45pm: Noting that director Dave Grohl just spent fifteen minutes on the technical details of the Sound City mixing board, and thinking that only diehard music fans will embrace the "Sound City" documentary in its entirety, but that the fans would have to be OK with R-rated language, because after keeping a mental tab on the number of F-bombs in "Sound City" so I could determine what rating estimate to use in my review, I had to give up after about two dozen.
• 12:15am: Driving home through Parley's Canyon after 15 hours in Park City, safely and happily, glad I stuck around for "Sound City," but also glad that my long first ever day at Sundance was over.

Dating and Driving, No. I

I recently discovered a curious flaw in my driving habits. When I want to change lanes in moderate traffic, I don't flip on my turn signal and wait for my fellow drivers to create an opening for me. Instead, I wait for the natural ebb and flow of traffic to create an opening, then I flip on my turn signal and move over.

As you can imagine, this leads to a lot of agitation when my fellow drivers fail to ebb and flow the way I want them to. At this point, I have to speed up, slow down, utter a few choice words, and finally flip on my signal and force my way over, all the time cursing the oblivious driver who was happy to pass the day away sitting comfortably in my blind spot.

It occurs to me that I behave the same way socially. If I see a girl at a party that I want to meet, I don't "flip on my turn signal" and go meet her. Instead I wait for the ebb and flow of the party to create a natural opening, which rarely if ever happens. Usually the girl leaves the party, or I wind up forcing some kind of hasty introduction which goes badly.

Clearly the lesson has something to do with being assertive in life, and one of these days I'll get around to learning it. In the meantime I can take solace in the fact that I'm not the first person to connect my driving life to my dating life.

Several years ago when I was in grad school, I came back to Salt Lake one weekend to pick up a pair of glasses I had ordered. Since I was in town for a couple of days, I decided to attend church at my old university ward on the University of Utah campus. As I made my way up 400 south Sunday morning, I seemed to hit every possible red light, often at the last second, and it became clear that without a break or two I would be late for sacrament meeting.

I really hate walking in late for sacrament meeting. So whenever the light would change to green, I would stomp on the gas and try to squeeze past the next light. This never happened, and after an extremely agitating run, I finally made it to the Institute building and just barely slipped into the meeting on time. It was a fast and testimony meeting, so surrounded by a number of familiar faces, I settled back into my bench to enjoy what my old friend Nathan used to refer to as, "Open Mic at the U32."

About two or three testimonies in, a girl I had never seen before got up at the pulpit and began to weave a tale of frustration and fury worthy of the most scorned of women. Apparently on her way up to campus that morning she had encountered the most prideful and arrogant driver she could possibly imagine. This pompous fool was so determined to show off for his fellow commuters that he insisted on peeling out at every green light, just to show everyone how great he was.

Imagine the nerve.

Try as she might, after a couple of intersections this poor victim couldn't resist temptation any longer, and she began trying to race this highway menace and put him in his place. But her gallant effort failed as her bitter adversary continued to beat her to each red light.

"I didn't get a good look at him," she said with a weak laugh, "for all I know he's sitting in the chapel right now."

But here is where the story got good. To the bemusement of the congregation, this girl's testimony made the impressive leap from driving angst to dating angst, and she described in vivid, near-hysteric detail how her road rage triggered a host of pent-up emotions that had been boiling under the surface. Near tears, the girl poured her heart out into the microphone about how the whole experience stirred up her frustrations of being single, and ultimately served as a reminder that God still loved her in spite of all her imperfections.

Finally at the end of all this she blurted out, "I'm really not a man hater...I promise."

Good to know. For once in my life, I guess I was the oblivious driver.

I was tempted to get up next and tell the innocent story of how my desire to get to church on time served as a heartwarming reminder of why God still loved me. But I didn't. I may come up with mean ideas, but I rarely if ever follow through on them.

Besides, even back then I understood how dumb things like a morning commute could make me stress out about my dating life.

I agree. I'm also pretty sure He and the apostles would use the HOV lane instead of blocking the fast lane.

Living a Hands-On Life

The more time I spend writing film reviews on my iMac desktop or polishing pixels from my latest digital photo shoot, the more I appreciate building things with my own two hands.

Example #1: Back in the 8th Grade I took a metalshop class as a follow-up to the woodshop class we were required to take the previous year. My woodshop efforts were weak at best, but in metalshop, we got to use welding torches, which gave us motivation. I don't know that I've ever been as proud of a gift as I was of the six cast-iron hot dog cookers I gave my mother that Christmas. Of course, I can't think of a more misdirected gift, either.

Example #2: Six months ago I moved into a loft apartment in Bountiful. It's been my first experience without roommates, and a quick lesson in all the day-to-day items I'd been taking for granted. I mean, I was happy to contribute the Velvet Elvi, but I always just assumed that someone else would bring the microwave. Furniture was another of those items, and so I fled to that great panacea of affordable furniture to fill in the gaps: IKEA.

I can't describe the odd sense of satisfaction I derived from following a set of painfully simple instructions to assemble a basic easy chair and shelf unit. They can't have required more than a second grade education to build, but the process of tightening bolts and screwing together pre-fab sections of wood-like furniture parts made me feel productive in the same way that knocking doors made me feel productive in the mission field. It may not have been the most challenging or effective of tasks, but it FELT good.

Then last week I ramped up the stakes and ordered a new computer desk from Office Max. No more simple Swedish furniture for me! It was time to play with the big boys. Of course, my first task was finding a way to drag the box of unassembled parts up two flights of stairs into my apartment. (I guess doorstep delivery is a relative term at FedEx.)

From there, the next item of business was to open the box, scatter its contents around my living room, and decide whether to make lunch instead. I shrugged and told myself that I would at least start the process, then take a break to eat. But at some point "start the process" became "build the whole thing," and a few hours and a skipped meal later, I had scored a few more points on my man card.

I guess this manly impulse to build things is the same thing that convinced me to join a framing crew the summer after I finished grad school, or that made me feel so good about helping my uncle install a new water heater over the holidays. As incredible as technology can be, I think it can remove us from experience as much as it can expand it.

That's also why I think no matter how convenient it is to load thousands of books onto a digital tablet, or how how easy it is to load news onto a website in real time and bypass the printing process, there will always be a place for books and newspapers in some form. Not because of the sense of satisfaction that binders and printers enjoy; rather, because living too much of our lives through LED screens can deny us of one of our five senses. Now, your guess is as good as mine what they will look like, or if they'll be nothing more than a nostalgia item like the sports almanac in "Back to the Future II." But one way or another, the physical experience will endure.

Not that I'll have a problem buying pre-assembled furniture in the future. Or letting someone in coveralls haul it up my stairs.

The 10 Most Embarrassing Movies in My DVD Collection

In a world pushing to consolidate our belongings onto digital devices as small as humanly possible, I'm still kind of old fashioned when it comes to my media library. When I go to a friend's house, I still like to see a row of books to browse, or a line of CDs to judge maliciously. But such judgments have to be at least a bit reserved, because as I look at the rows of DVDs next to my TV, I realize that in my heart I am as human and flawed as the next guy.

Here are the 10 most embarrassing movies in my DVD collection, presented in the order I felt like writing about them, along with my token attempt to justify their purchases:

1. Arthur 2: On the Rocks

"Arthur" is a classic early-80s comedy about a spoiled rich-boy drunkard that was made before it occurred to anyone that making alcoholism funny might not be the best idea. "Arthur 2" is one of those movies that is only watchable at about 2AM on cable when you absolutely refuse to go to bed. It also happened to come in a "Comedy Double Feature" DVD set I picked up for $10 a while back in order to get the original. Verdict: Sort of justified.

2. Romeo + Juliet

You wouldn't think a guy who had taught English classes for 10 years would be embarrassed to have a copy of "Romeo + Juliet" on his movie shelf, even if it is the Baz Luhrmann version. But as a red-blooded American male, I do wonder what kind of impression it will make. I got it from my sister when we divided up her Baz Luhrmann boxed set. She kept "Strictly Ballroom" and the special features DVD, and I got "Romeo + Juliet" and "Moulin Rouge." Verdict: Kind of, sort of justified.

3. Mars Attacks

There's no reason to be apologetic about being a Tim Burton fan. I even kind of enjoyed "Dark Shadows." Still, even longtime Burton fans would probably admit that "Mars Attacks" wasn't his best effort. But there I was in Logan one cold night in grad school, determined to expand my DVD collection, and "Mars Attacks" was only $9. I don't know; maybe I should have kept browsing. Verdict: Not justified.

4. Dune

Prime example of why sometimes seeing the movie before the book ain't always a bad idea. Most fans of Frank Herbert's sci-fi novel despise what David Lynch did to the source material. But I just remembered a cheesy Toto soundtrack, a laughable blue space-speedo for Sting, and lots of outer space surfer-dudes riding on the backs of giant sand worms. So I bought it. On blu-ray. About five months ago. Verdict: Probably not justified, but I really don't care.

5. Serendipity

Just about the time I hit puberty, "Innerspace" left me with a deep appreciation of the music of Sam Cooke and an even deeper crush on Meg Ryan. Ten-odd years later, "Serendipity" left me with a deep appreciation of the music of Nick Drake and a crush on Kate Beckinsale. It helped that the male lead was John Cusack, who my subconscious has seen as a big brother figure ever since his supporting role in "Stand By Me." Add it all up and tack on some dating drama of my own from that stretch, and "Serendipity" landed on my shelf permanently. Verdict: Justified. No really, justified!

6. Elizabethtown

"Elizabethtown" is widely viewed as one of Cameron Crowe's lesser films, and it offers Kirsten Dunst haters plenty of ammunition. But in spite of the romantic comedy elements, "Elizabethtown" is more a story of a young man learning about where he came from, and about the father he wishes he'd known better. And it finishes off with a fantastic road trip sequence, scored by some great Crowe selections. "My Father's Gun" may not do for "Elizabethtown" quite what "Tiny Dancer" did for "Almost Famous," but it did enough to get it on my shelf. Verdict: I don't care what you think. Justified!

7. Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace

It's true that I own the entire Star Wars prequel trilogy (two times over, if you count my new blu-ray set). It's also true that I recently wrote an article for the Deseret News explaining why I felt the prequels fell far short of the originals. As much as the critic in me would like to tell you that the first time I saw "Phantom Menace" I was terribly insulted and never returned, the truth is I probably saw that movie in all its Jar-Jar-infested glory about a dozen times in the summer of 1999. If it helps, I can't actually remember watching the DVD since I bought it. Verdict: I am a sad, conflicted human being.

8. Spider-Man 3

I think I was more exciting about getting a new release DVD for five bucks than I was excited about getting a copy of "Spider-Man 3." Honestly, I liked the first two better, and I don't own either of them. But in its defense, SM3 wasn't quite as bad as some would have you believe. I actually enjoyed the James Brown sequence.

(OK...fine. I just re-watched the clip. That was pretty bad.) Verdict: Not justified.

9. Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End

Another example of me owning a sequel but not an original. I liked the first Pirates movie, had no desire to see the second (I think I caught it on cable), and was only interested in seeing the third because I heard that Keith Richards would make a cameo as Jack Sparrow's dad. So when my buddy Bob offered me his copy because he couldn't see his kids having any interest in the film, I accepted his gracious gift. And haven't watched it since. Verdict: Kind of, sort of justified.

10. Pearl Harbor

If you're only going to own one Michael Bay film...this probably isn't the best choice. From the ridiculous love story tacked loosely onto an American tragedy to the sweeping adult-contemporary flagship single from Faith Hill, "Pearl Harbor" was one of the most obvious attempts to cash in on the "Titanic" formula. When I picked it up used I told myself it was just for the action scenes, and when backed into a corner I would hide behind the Beckinsale crush again. But I have to be honest here: I paid money for a bad movie. It wasn't the first time, and it probably won't be the last. Verdict: Not justified, running in slow motion away from an explosion at a low angle.

The Official 2012 Post-Christmas Letter/Photo Essay

Dear people,

Many of you know that even though I am not a reliable blogger, I am a reliable journal-keeper. I was recently re-reading a stretch from late 2008 where I lost my job, my ward, and one of my grandfathers. I determined that with a handful of exceptions (my sister's marriage, for example), 2008 kind of sucked.

When I started thinking about 2012, my knee-jerk reaction was to say it wasn't a great year. I set a ton of goals in 2011, and achieving them gave the year a deep sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. By comparison, I entered 2012 with good intentions, but little in terms of a concrete plan, and the results reflect that. However, the more I thought about it, the more I remembered some of the great things that happened in 2012. It may not have been a perfect year (I gained back 10 of the 20+ pounds I lost in 2011), but it was absolutely a good one.

The Salvation of Januarys:

I always felt bad for my dad because his birthday fell in January, amid the fallout of the holiday season and the bleakness of the true beginning of winter. Then my niece came along, and ever since January has taken on a different tone. Here's a shot from her first birthday party:

The Salvation of the Business Trip:

Prior to 2012, my only business trip experience was an overnighter to South San Francisco (not the south end of San Francisco...the city of SOUTH San Francisco) to see a client that wasn't expecting us and had me back in my hotel room for the night by 8PM. But last February, after managing the Facebook page for the Mormon Battalion Historic Site for two months, the Missionary Department sent me down to San Diego to take some pictures of the sister missionaries and the visitors in-person. While I was there some of my friends from Illinois took me surfing for the first time. Now THAT's a business trip.

The Salvation of Valentine's Day:

For better or for worse, my favorite Valentine's Day memories are associated with concerts. My most vivid memory was during my first year in grad school when I celebrated the holiday by playing drums for a Neil Diamond cover band at USU's Valentine's Dance. This year I joined a few friends for dinner at Chili's (insert your own joke here), then drove down to In the Venue to catch a great band named Mutemath. As I've gotten into photographing concerts over the last few years, it's become important to take the time to attend them without my gear and enjoy the music as a fan. The Mutemath show filled that need nicely, as did The Killers at the UCCU Center, The Hives at The Vic in Chicago, and The Aquabats at The Depot (which had to be one of the most unique concerts I've ever attended, if only due to the onstage battle royal between Darth Vader, Bigfoot, and a Kung-Fu Master Steve from Farmington).

As for the bands I photographed, here are a few highlights:

Metric at The End Zone:

Foster the People at Saltair:

The Soulistics at The Utah Arts Festival:

The Tony Scheer Trio at The Living Room in Manhattan:

The Shirley Johnson Blues Band at the Blue Chicago (yes, in Chicago):

...and one of the bands that started this whole concert-shooting thing, the Vibrant Sound, playing at Club Sound:

The Celebration of Youth, Part 1:

One of the highlights of 2011 was shooting my first Holi Festival of Colors down in Spanish Fork, Utah. Thousands of (mostly) college kids celebrating the arrival of spring by throwing chalk at each other and dancing to Hare Krishna bands playing classic rock songs with re-worded lyrics. Good times, indeed. This last spring I made my triumphant return, more seasoned and prepared to get better results:

A month later I took a different angle when I shot the partner event up in Salt Lake:

The Celebration of Youth, Part II:

Photographing bands and attending concerts is great, but neither experience is as fun as putting on a show myself. 2011 was a busy year that saw me put on shows with three different bands. In 2012, I only performed with one. But 2012's Thunderlips shows were some of my all-time favorite. In June we played our third yearly concert at the Legacy Prep Academy in North Salt Lake as part of the kids' year-end assembly. A few months later, we did a pair of shows around Halloween, first at the Pinson family Halloween party, then a week later for the students of the Hartvigsen School in Salt Lake City. It has been a challenge to articulate the experience of playing for kids, but this video edited together by our lead guitarist Jeff does a pretty good job:


The Thunderlips - Forever Young (Alphaville cover) from ToolBox on Vimeo.

Going Solo:

My single biggest news story for 2012 happened in June, when I broke from years of tradition and moved into a place on my own for the first time. It wasn't the first time I'd signed a lease, and it certainly wasn't the first time I'd managed utilities, but it was the first time I decided to leave the roommates behind. My decision has awakened me to the sheer number of "things" I'd never previously had to buy (like a microwave and measuring spoons), but it has been an awesome experience so far.

After making my move, I decided to make another move, transferring my membership records from the Bountiful 7th Ward (where I had attended for three and a half years) to the Bountiful 30th Ward. Running into old friends like Justin Farr and Aaron Johnson offered a quick confirmation that I was in good hands. True to form, I was quickly called to be an Elder's Quorum instructor in my new ward. I haven't had a non-teaching calling since early 2004.

Summer Shooting:

Not long after my move, my old high school employer, Dick's Market, decided to follow my example. One night I decided to document the remains:

The highlight of this year's Bountiful Days of '47 Parade was the re-creation of the Stripling Warriors March. By sweet-talking one of the PA announcers, I was able to get into position for this shot:

New York State of Mind:

I already mentioned my trip to San Diego, which had at least as much "pleasure" as it had "business." But later in the year I enjoyed some other trips as well. In June the Cheetahman and I used the aforementioned Hives concert in Chicago to justify a spontaneous trip to The Loop for a few days. Then in August I made my yearly pilgrimage to Island Park to spend some time at our family place outside Yellowstone. In September, Cheetahman and I used a small vendor conference to justify a less-spontaneous trip to Manhattan (the first for either of us),  which I really should have blogged about, because there was just too much to cover.

Here are a few of my favorite NYC shots:

Top of the Rock, Rockefeller Center:

Subway performer:

A girl who clearly doesn't understand the purpose of the 9/11 memorial:

...and a photo that more or less defines my Times Square experience (I think Elmo did it):

Bringing Home the Bacon:

For the first half of the year, when I wasn't doing freelance work for the Missionary Department I was teaching English 1010 for SLCC and working consistent hours at Allen Communication on a variety of instructional design projects. But as the year went on, I shifted from English 1010 to English 2010, spent less time Allen, and did more and more freelance photography, finally launching my portrait site in the process. I also started doing more film reviews for the Deseret News, which is what I remind myself of whenever I feel bad for a lack of blog posting.

Here are a couple favorites from my Joshua Terry Photography sessions:

Of course, my favorite model is still my niece:

Photo Publicity:

2011 was the first year I entered any of my photography into a contest, and I was rewarded with a Judge's Choice Award at the Utah State Fair. My efforts in 2012 didn't yield anything quite so "decorated,"but coverage of my friend Travis Kawabata's rather public marriage proposal landed my work on KSL's "Studio 5" one morning back in October.

Two months later I was on hand to photograph Travis and Aubrie's reception at the Utah Opera building in Salt Lake. It was the second time this year I was able to get hired to do a "candids-only" shoot at a wedding reception. All the good parts of event photography, none of the lame, "everyone smile at the camera" bits.

Pushing the Envelope:

Of course, my yearly obligation is to go down to Temple Square and figure out a new way to photograph the Christmas lights. This year, I brought along my friend Dennis Livingston of Harry Cleigh Photography, who brought his favorite Christmas present: a remote flash unit. Through a little experimentation, and thanks to a timely post-Christmas snowfall, we landed a few shots like these:

With all that considered, it's hard to think of 2012 as anything less than a great year. It had its bumps and bruises, but when I look at the good times I was able to enjoy, plus the good times I was able to witness, gratitude is pretty much the only logical outcome. Gratitude for family, gratitude for friends, and gratitude to God. Here's hoping 2012 offered some of the same for you, and that 2013 will keep the ball rolling.

Josh