Time Flies When You're Traveling at Light Speed

"Return of the Jedi" was not the first Star Wars film I ever saw. But it is the first Star Wars film I remember seeing. I have a vague memory of my mother coming into my bedroom as a child to summon me for a screening of "The Empire Strikes Back," and according to my parents, I was terrified of the Jawas in "A New Hope" as an infant. But I have very clear memories of "Return of the Jedi." Memories that are now thirty years old.

Ugh...

The memory that keeps coming back over and over to my mind is standing in a ticket line that wound through the parking lot outside the Century Theater with my dad and Steve Jones, my best friend. In those pre-internet days there was little more than vague rumor to prepare me for what I was about to see, but thanks to a quick glance at a novelization my mother had picked up at the grocery store--complete with a half dozen glossy photos from the movie tucked halfway through its pages--I knew two things about the third chapter of the trilogy:

1. The rebels were going to win.
2. Princess Leia was going to wear an iron bikini.

What I didn't know was whether George Lucas and co. were going to stick with this silly idea of having Darth Vader be Luke Skywalker's father. As a six-year-old who was wise beyond his years, I was still unconvinced of Empire's famous plot twist.

"Why do you believe what he said?" I would ask anyone who would listen. "It's DARTH VADER. HE'S A LIAR."

Of course, 45 minutes into the film, Yoda confirmed the relationship, then Ben went him one further and told Luke that Leia was his sister. I was totally fine with this, because as a Han Solo guy*, I wanted him to get the girl in the iron bikini.

The thing I was too young to notice was the Ewok controversy. They were far from my favorite Star Wars characters, but I didn't have any problem with them helping to overthrow the Empire. I think I would have been more disappointed if I'd known Lucas was originally planning for the planet to be inhabited by Wookiees. Live and learn, eh George?

This was also before I grew in my appreciation for Boba Fett, so I wasn't crestfallen when I saw the most notorious bounty hunter in the universe Abbott and Costello his way into the gaping maw of a sunbathing Sarlaac. Strangely, the pattern of not questioning a film in the moment is something that has followed me through to adulthood, though my current employment is forcing a more critical hand.

Even though I attended the opening day screening with my dad, it was my mother who took me the majority of the 19 times I watched "Jedi" over the course of that summer**. I'm sure half of the time it was me nagging my parents to go, but there were just as many times that the motivation came from my parents' own interest. Another lasting image from that summer is my dad swinging our brand-new 1983 Honda Accord up to the sidewalk in front of the old Center Theater on the corner of State Street and Broadway in downtown Salt Lake. Before I knew what was happening, my mom was pulling me out of the car and hustling me through the red velvet ensconced lobby on our way to a spontaneous afternoon screening***. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about when I refer to my mother's influence on my appreciation for popular culture.

But the best family memory of Jedi has to be the time we dragged my one-year-old sister to a screening and wound up on the front row. She sat on my dad's lap and stared bug-eyed at the screen for two full hours.

Man, I really miss the Center Theater. It's an office building and a multiplex right now.

Years later, even though Empire has become my favorite of the three movies, Jedi maintains the closest ties to my childhood memories. One afternoon as a teenager I was riding shotgun with my Priest's Quorum Advisor on the way to a temple activity when I related the story of my dad and Steve and I at the Century.

"I'll never forget it," I said. "May 25th, 1983."

"Wow, that's impressive," my advisor said. "When were you baptized?"

I thought about it for a moment.

"Sometime when I was eight."

Happy Anniversary, "Return of the Jedi." Jacking up my spiritual priorities for more than three decades now.

---

*See my blog banner for evidence.

**Yes, I kept track.

***Inside the theater they'd hung a huge banner advertising a film called "The Big Chill." Though I didn't relate to the story of a half dozen ex-hippies reflecting on the aftermath of the '60s in the wake of a friend's suicide, the film's soundtrack pretty much laid the childhood foundation for my musical appreciation, including this song.

A Spoiler-Filled Analysis of Star Trek's Inevitable New Debate

Whenever a director gets involved in an established franchise, whether it's Peter Jackson adapting beloved Tolkien novels, Joss Whedon bringing Marvel comics to life, or even George Lucas returning to a galaxy far, far away fifteen years after his original trilogy, a unique challenge is issued: do you focus on keeping the fans happy? Or do you risk the wrath of the fanboy and make a film that will appeal to a universal audience?

It isn't always an either-or proposition, and most filmmakers (especially those noted above) have tried to satisfy both sides of the equation. Over the last few years, JJ Abrams has been staring down one of the most daunting fanboy franchises of all, and with "Star Trek: Into Darkness," he brings that debate to the forefront.

In 2009's "Star Trek," Abrams laid down the gauntlet with a timeline twist that told Trekkies they should consider his films a unique interpretation of the Trek universe instead of a regimented set of prequels to the original series. By transporting a villain from Trek's canonical future into its ambiguous past, then allowing him to alter that past, Abrams shook off the fanboy tether and got to work telling his own story. One that had Spock hooking up with Uhura and the Planet Vulcan biting the big one long before Captain Kirk could ever climb the steps of Mount Seleyah.

But instead of declare total creative independence, Abrams' Trek films have continued to forge ties to their original source material, offering frequent echoes that suggest certain events in history are rooted, regardless of your particular timeline. (Longtime Abrams fan will note the previous exploration of this theme in "Lost"). This idea is played out to unexpected degrees in "Star Trek: Into Darkness," primarily through its familiar villain.

For months, speculation has swirled around the identity of actor Benedict Cumberbatch's baddie. As the second film of the new franchise, many expected/hoped for the second coming of Khan Noonien Singh, the legendary baddie Ricardo Montalban portrayed in the second film of the first franchise. Others noted parallels to Gary Mitchell, a Federation officer featured in the original TV series back in the late 1960s. It was telling that a completely unique character never seemed to be an option, and even more telling that Abrams chose to give fans a brand-new interpretation of that eugenics superman gone bad.

By choosing Khan as his heavy, Abrams has offered thrills to Trek's longtime fans, but stifled the immortality of his own franchise at the same time. "Into Darkness" is an awesome film that boosts the Star Trek resurgence, and Cumberbatch is an impressive Khan. To rookie Trek fans and casual observers, it's a great movie, and to seasoned veterans, it's even better. But the film's explicit nods to "Wrath of Khan" (right down to Zachary Quinto's echo of William Shatner's most infamous acting moment) that propel it to new heights of meaning also force it to take a backseat to the Montalban film.

Once Cumberbatch revealed his identity halfway through the new film, I couldn't help but fall into a "which is better?" internal debate between the two Khans and their respective films. In the face of superior special effects and imposing marketing, I almost felt defensive on behalf of Montalban and "Wrath of Khan," which I see as "my" film. I guess that is what happens when you write a 15-page paper on Chicano Nationalism through the lens of a 20-year-old sci-fi flick. Or when you retain childhood memories of turning away from the screen when those bugs get dropped in Chekov's ear.

It's amusing that I/we feel compelled to do this whenever confronted with options in popular culture, or anything else for that matter. If it isn't Benedict Cumberbatch vs. Ricardo Montalban, it's Coke vs. Pepsi, or (for my fellow photographers) Canon vs. Nikon. Heck, one of the implicit purposes of the new Trek franchise is to give it more street cred in the Star Trek vs. Star Wars debate. For decades Star Wars movies have been cultural events while Trek releases were attended by a narrow sliver of sci-fi fandom. While this may not mean anything in terms of film quality, profits are what allow our favorite franchises to keep turning out product. Abrams has sought to address that gap, and I think he has made great strides in generating a more inclusive fan base for Gene Roddenberry's baby. (Of course, now that Abrams is helming Star Wars as well, things are about to get very interesting.)

But as far as the Battle of the Khans is concerned, my verdict is this: Cumberbatch is awesome, more than up to the task, and will earn his spot on Star Trek's Mount Rushmore of All-Time Best Bad Guys. But since that particular Rushmore only features two faces, and since the other one is the original version of Cumberbatch's character, the New Khan can only go so far. "Star Trek: Into Darkness" is a film that can stand on its own feet and be enjoyed even if you aren't familiar with Trek history. But if you are familiar with Trek history, "Into Darkness" becomes even more impressive, but also more derivative and dependent as a consequence.

When Cumberbatch glares at Chris Pine with hollow eyes and declares, "MY NAME IS KHAN," it is a powerful moment only to those who already know who Khan is. When Zachary Quinto prods Leonard Nimoy into his Doc Brown Moment later on, the original Spock's reaction is weighted because we too remember what Khan did the first time around. Without the source material, these dramatic moments ring empty.

Of course, rational people will understand that this debate is as pointless as arguing whether LeBron James would beat Michael Jordan in a game of one-on-one. It gives you great fodder for sports talk radio, but it doesn't really mean anything. There's no reason you can't enjoy and appreciate both Khans. But when you enter the waters of such an established franchise, these kinds of debates come with the territory.

For years I've been trying to get my English students to understand the difference between text and context, especially how context can hold so much sway over a text's full meaning. "Star Trek: Into Darkness" may have just become Exhibit A in that lecture.

My Mother the Superhero

I've often thought of my mother as the primary influence behind my appreciation of popular culture. Whether it was the stacks of vinyl records in our basement, the regular visits to the Redwood Drive-In on summer weekends, or the simple fact that my parents were watching SNL when my mom went into labor with me, it's an easy connection to make.

But the influence of my mother has been far more profound than to just give me an appreciation of Motown or the great American tradition that is the drive-in movie theater. In fact, I'm not sure she even remembers one of the most important lessons she ever taught me: that she has super-powers.

I must have been four or five years old when I found myself next to my mom at the checkout counter of the B. Dalton Bookseller in Layton Hills Mall. While she was making her purchase (probably a new Star Trek novel, because this would have been in the pre-Martha Stewart era), I was browsing through the containers of writing utensils and other impulse-buy knickknacks at my eye-level when I became fixated on a set of brightly colored pencils topped with large, multi-colored erasers. The erasers were cut in a variety of shapes, like huge diamonds or stars, and their blue, pink, and purple patterns cascaded down onto the shafts of their pencils. As I sorted through the bin, I noticed that one of the erasers had broken off its pencil, so without a thought, I kept it.

About an hour later I was crouched on the orange shag of my toy room in the basement, slowly turning over the eraser in my tiny fingers, examining it with my curious little green eyes, when my mom walked in the room.

"What is that?" she asked.

"It's an eraser," I said. Duh.

"Where did you get it?" she asked with a tone of suspicion that should have signaled trouble.

"I got it at the bookstore," I explained. "It was broken off a pencil."

Within thirty seconds I was sitting next to my mom in the car on our way back to the mall. A few minutes after that, I was standing quietly at the B. Dalton checkout counter as my mom ordered me to hand the stolen property over to the bewildered clerk. I had assumed that a damaged product was fair game. My mother was instructing me otherwise.

That night I learned that, along with her great taste in music and sci-fi TV shows, my mother had been endowed with some kind of sixth-sense radar that allowed her to recognize a stolen eraser among the Legos, GI Joe action figures, and thousands of other toys and trinkets I regularly scattered across the floor of our toy room. I wish I could say it was the only time my naive youthful logic proved no match against her maternal wisdom.

Philosophers and sociologists have debated for decades whether our behavior is a product of genetics or our environment. I have no idea if that bookstore encounter prevented me from a life of petty theft or grand larceny, but either way, I'm grateful that my mom's super-power prevented me from finding out.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom. Here's a musical thank-you from me and Mr. T:

Working Like a Man

When I finished grad school in the spring of 2004, I took a job on a framing crew for the summer. My first reason was practical: the teaching job I’d applied for didn’t start until fall, and I needed money. My second reason was psychological: I needed to prove to myself that I could handle a construction job.

As far back as I could remember I’d held a grudging respect for the world of hard labor. My childhood was dotted with images of men who seemed to have an essential gene I missed, whether it was my dad working on the family car, my uncle building us a shed in our backyard, or the thousand stories I heard about my pioneer ancestors who built up the Salt Lake Valley with their bare hands. Their long hours and difficult feats were badges of honor, and felt like the epitome of manliness. I’d dabble in these tasks here and there—on Christmas morning in the 8^th grade I proudly presented my parents with a set of cast iron hot dog cookers I welded in metal shop—but ultimately I’d bury my inferiority complex in academic success.

So as my last semester wound to a close, I felt like I had something to prove. I got in touch with a friend of a friend, and two days after receiving an MS in American Studies, I was standing next to a concrete-lined hole in the ground above the Eaglewood Golf Course in North Salt Lake City, Utah. For the next three months I would help frame a 1.2 million dollar mansion at the bargain-basement rate of $8 an hour.

In two days I had traded a group of colleagues who prided themselves for their vast vocabularies for a crew who had reduced their vocabularies to variations of the same three words. Mike was tall and lanky with long, stringy blonde hair and baggy jeans that were always being pulled down by his tool bags. Robbie was shorter with dark hair, usually wore shorts, and acted as the crew’s unofficial conspiracy theorist and partier. Arash was the closest I came to a kindred spirit, if only because he was also a rookie. He’d moved to Utah to go to school after paying a man to smuggle him into Turkey from his home country of Iran.

“Iran, not Iraq,” he said the morning we met.

Our foreman was Dave, taller, lankier, and older than Mike, but with less hair. When I first met him I made the mistake of assuming his thin frame translated into an easygoing work ethic. My error was corrected quickly. Every day a lumber truck would dump a load of 12-foot 2X4s in a pile in front of the construction site, and Arash and I were tasked with hauling them up to a more accessible spot. To make the task more manageable, I started grabbing two 2X4s at a time and walking them over to the foundation. But Dave would have none of that. Without a word he stomped over to the pile, wrapped his wiry arms around a stack of eight or nine of the same 2X4s, and hauled them up the hill.

Message received. Framing wasn’t about making the job manageable. It was about getting the job done.

Inspired by that blunt lesson, I took to my new responsibilities quickly, and before long we settled into a routine: as carpenters, Dave, Mike and Robbie did most of the actual framing, while Arash and I carried stuff around and tried to cut boards to size without chopping our fingers off. Then every couple of weeks we would drive out to some work site in Salt Lake where we would meet up with several other crews to get our paychecks, eat free pizza, and hear a lecture on safety standards.

The new routine was tough, but doable, and it quickly forced me into some good habits. Being dressed and on site at 7am was a challenge for a career night owl. And I’d never been a breakfast guy, but the physical nature of the job demanded I eat something before work. It also saved me money, forcing me to pack lunches instead of meet up with a friend for an hour at some restaurant downtown.

But all the good habits in the world couldn’t disguise the moonlighting college professor who lathered up in sun block every morning to protect his pasty skin while his co-workers were draped in deep tans that testified to long years in the sun. I never really knew if my crew resented me for leaving the white collar world to sweat it out on a construction site for a few months. If they did they didn’t show it. One afternoon in July I was sitting around on a break with the other guys when I mentioned something about grad school. Mike shook his head and asked:

“What are you doing here, man?”

I thought about everything I could say in response. That I needed to prove I was man enough to work long hours with my hands in the summer sun, that I was more than a schoolteacher with a red pen. That I remembered working at a grocery store as a teenager when former classmates would come in to cash construction paychecks that were three or four times the totals I was pulling down, and that even though I knew they’d sacrificed their futures by dropping out of school to take their jobs, that somehow standing there in their grime and their grease, they intimidated me.

“I just wanted to learn something new,” I finally said.

Bit by bit, the million-dollar house took shape over the summer weeks, and along the way I scored a 50-cent raise. The cement hole became a framed basement, then a really big rambler, then a crane came by and a sweeping roof capped off the structure. As the pieces fell into place I realized that even if I’d only been cutting 2X4s, I could look at that obnoxious house and know I’d helped to bring it up out of the ground. My sweat was in that thing, and after jabbing my hand on a nail one afternoon, so was my DNA. Maybe the future owner wouldn’t let me in the door, and maybe it was insulting to be making $8.50 an hour with two college degrees, but as long as that house stood, I knew I owned a piece of it.

At the same time, I wasn’t working any harder on the house than I did when I lingered on campus long into the night researching my paper on Chicano Nationalism, or when I graded all my students’ freshman argument papers, or when I sacrificed my Spring Break to marathon my way through five days of sunrise-to-sunset work on my Master’s Thesis. Grad school never gave me a sunburn, but hard work was hard work.

As July neared August, plumbers and electricians started to come by and take measurements as they prepared the house for its next phase of construction. Soon it would be time for the framers to move on to a new project.

One afternoon Dave took me aside to give me the news. “Our next project is going to be down in Payson,” he said. Payson was about 100 miles away. 200 miles of daily commute at $8.50 an hour didn’t carry much appeal, and Dave knew it.

“I could probably bump you up to $9.00, but that’s the best I could do until we trained you as a carpenter,” he continued. “But that’s not going happen anytime soon.”

I don’t think he meant it as an insult, but the last comment still stung. Even if I didn’t want the promotion, I wanted to think I was good enough to do it. Sometimes you don’t want to go to the party, but you still want to be invited.

About three weeks earlier the teaching job I was counting on had fallen through. Quitting framing would leave me with no income and no prospects, since it was too late in the year to go back to school and get into a PhD program. But I knew the Payson job wasn’t an option. I also knew that I didn’t have anything left to prove.

I called the boss two or three times, figuring I owed him a verbal resignation, but eventually I just had to leave a voice mail. A month later I picked up a part-time job teaching for the local community college. It took another year and a half before the house in Eaglewood sold. I’ll still drive by it once in a while, but I’ve never stopped to meet the owner, and I’ll still see pickups hauling tool trailers on the freeway from time to time, but I’ve never second-guessed my decision to leave the crew.

Two weeks after I quit I went to my 10-year high school reunion. I was single, unemployed, and living with my parents. But it didn’t bother me. I knew something about myself that I didn’t know before. Plus I knew that when you go after a stack of 2X4s, you grab eight, not two.

His Name is Mud

"Mud" offers a simple premise: two boys in rural Arkansas stumble onto a fugitive murder suspect hiding out in a swamp. But "Mud" is anything but a simple movie, and it has anything but a simple message. It is a brooding drama that is dark and funny and sweet at the same time, which is maybe just another way of saying it feels like real life.

It reminded me of Rob Reiner's 1986 coming-of-age tale "Stand By Me," partially because one of the boys (Neckbone, played by Jacob Lofland) is a buzz-headed hick who channels River Phoenix. The other (Ellis, played by Ty Sheridan) is the hopeless romantic I remember being at 14 and the tough-nosed punk I wish I had been at 14. Often the best characters remind you of who you are and who you wish you were.

The first plot point was a surprise. Maybe I've seen too many episodes of "24" or too many spy movies that use the old hostage cliche, but I assumed that the fugitive (named Mud and played by Matthew McConaughey) would feel threatened by the boys' discovery of his hideout and immediately threaten them with harm. Ellis and Neckbone seem to anticipate this during their first meeting. Instead, Mud recruits them to contact his girlfriend (Reese Witherspoon) and help with his escape plan, and the film becomes a study of the nature of trust, love, and role models.

The film is built of echoes:

• The boys look up to Mud, who they see as a fount of world-weary seasoned wisdom. But later we meet Tom Blankenship (Sam Shepherd), the "old assassin" fount of genuine wisdom who makes Mud seem like a 14-year-old boy. 

• Mud recruits Ellis to manage his communication (and thereby the relationship) with his girlfriend. In the meantime, Ellis' parents' marriage is coming apart. And in the meantime meantime, Ellis scores his own girlfriend and gets a nasty lesson in love of his own. 

On the one hand, Ellis looks to Mud and gets a tortured mix of hopeless romance undermined by self-sabotaging dishonesty. On the other, Ellis sees Gaylen, Neckbone's uncle (played by Michael Shannon), who spends most of his day in an ill-fitting wet suit, uses the Beach Boys' "Help Me, Rhonda" as both his "doin' it" song and his philosophy for life, and offers Ellis the most critical message of the film via a river garbage metaphor. His comic relief is the highlight of several strong supporting performances, and it saves "Mud" from sinking into the bayou under the weight of its own melancholy.

"Mud" is an interesting foil for "Beasts of the Southern Wild," another film set in the swamp that looks at its world with the wide-eyed wonder of child, and struggles to maintain its innocence when harsh reality gives its protagonist a swift kick in the Private Idahoes. It's the kind of movie that stifles your impulse to crack jokes about Matthew McConaughey going shirtless or Reese Witherspoon's (in?)conveniently timed arrest record. You want to point out that it feels a little long, but then you have to acknowledge that its deliberate pacing and mood is critical to its effect, and that you are probably just too used to movies that offer quick editing and a fast pace because they have nothing important to say. "Mud" isn't the kind of movie you watch with a group of friends on a Saturday night. It's the kind of movie you watch on your own in the middle of the week when you want a film to give you something to think about. It's beautiful and profound and well-worth a watch on the big screen, but you can see it on DVD and be just fine. In fact, the best endorsement I can offer is that two-thirds of the way through the movie I started to consider whether I would buy a copy of the film for my permanent collection.

"Mud" is rated PG-13 for consistent profanity, some vulgar dialogue, scattered violence, and the sight of Michael Shannon in a wet suit.

The Mailman's McDonald's

There is an abandoned McDonald's on Highway 89 in Bountiful. Six months ago the Golden Arches opened up a new building around the corner, and so far no one has moved into the old location.

Normally I'm not all that bummed at the prospect of a vacated McDonald's, but I actually had a history with this place. Years ago, before it was remodeled with a two-story enclosed Playland, the Highway 89 location had an outdoor patio ringed with an iron gate. Among its impressive features was a 10-foot plastic Grimace mounted on industrial strength springs and a Mayor McCheese tower you could climb around inside. I probably visited this fast food wonderland dozens of times as a kid, but none was so memorable as the time I dropped in to meet a brand new Utah Jazz rookie named Karl Malone.

The image is as vivid as any from my childhood. It was a bright Saturday afternoon, and the Playland was completely empty save for a 6'9" black man sitting alone at a table in the far corner, about 10 feet from Mayor McCheese. He was equipped with a sharpie marker and a stack of glossy 8X10s that featured an enlarged action shot from a recent game, and there wasn't a PR rep or security person in sight.

My dad and I approached Karl, and five minutes later we walked away with personalized 8X10s for all four members of my family. Each one was personally addressed and signed with the following:

"To: Josh, Karl 'The Mailman' Malone, #32, Utah Jazz."

The memory makes me smile for a multitude of reasons, but it also makes me sad, because it reminds me of how much I miss Karl Malone.

After the Jazz were eliminated from playoff contention last week, I was reminded of a feeling I have often encountered as a teacher. It's the feeling of frustration and heartbreak that occurs as you watch a student do just enough work to not pass your class. You never feel all that bad for the students who go up in flames, but when someone attends regularly, turns in most of their assignments, and still comes up short...well, it's just a waste.

That feeling perfectly describes my last two months as a Jazz fan.

As I've watched the 2012-13 squad stumble and fight all year, only to fall short of playoff qualification, I've started to wonder if I was holding them to unreasonable expectations. Maybe I took the Stockton-to-Malone years for granted. Maybe having two top-50 all-time players on my team for more than 15 years and a 50+ win contender on the court every year was more out of the ordinary than I realized.

Every once in a while something will jog my memory of the glory days. Karl Malone will call in as a guest on a sports radio talk show. I'll stumble on an old YouTube clip that takes me back. Or I'll just drive by an old abandoned McDonald's. It's easy to look at the past and point an accusing finger at the present, but we also need to realize that we were pointing fingers back then, too. Maybe bad decisions have been made, and maybe potential is not being realized, but I think we're a lot better off taking stock of the fun times than fretting about the frustrating ones.

I've been a basketball fan since the 5th grade, but I'm not dumb enough to think that I know whether the Jazz should fire Ty Corbin or play Derrick Favors. I can barely keep track of my own crap from day to day, and ultimately the Jazz need to take care of their business just like my students do. That's not to say that I haven't let a loss get to me, especially when that loss gives the NBA's entry in the Pro Sports Axis of Evil a ticket to the playoffs. I'm just saying that I should know better. Unless your financial livelihood depends on the success of the Utah Jazz or whatever team is causing you stress, being a sports fan should be fun. If you're not having fun, you're doing something wrong.

Even Mayor McCheese could tell you that.

Dating and Driving, No. III

When asked to share my most embarrassing moment, I have a variety of options to choose from. There was the time I stalled a brand-new Mazda Miata five times in front of a half-dozen used car salesmen, and there was another time when John Stockton asked me if I was a girl.

But the winner took place inside a maroon 1983 Honda Accord back when I was still in high school. I was on a date with a girl I had known for a little over a year. We'd been out a handful of times, including a couple of school dances, and I'd decided it was time to "make a move." This decision stemmed from the fact that one of my best friends had just taken her to Prom, and another best friend had just spent a week kissing her on stage in the school play.

We were parked at the Redwood Drive-In out in West Valley, because if seventeen years of pop culture had taught me anything at that point, it was that drive-ins were built for romance. I had pre-determined that at the most romantic point of the film, I would put my arm around my date, thus communicating my "hey baby, I'm yo man" intentions. This seemed like an airtight plan, save for two problems:

1. We were watching "Grumpy Old Men."
2. My car had headrests.

I was able to overcome problem #1 by waiting until the fish and tackle shop owner played by Ozzie Smith died. It was as sensitive a moment as I was going to get, so I took it. I casually stretched out my right arm and tried to drop it behind my date's head. But she was leaning back against the headrest, so instead my arm wound up jammed in the gap between the top of her head and the top of the headrest. It was like my arm was one of those striped tollbooth arms and she was a car that tried to pull out of the parking lot without paying.

Slowly, with my arm still propped up on top of her golden-haired head, she turned and stared at me with a look of confusion that justified any fear I ever had about making a move on someone of the opposite sex.

I tried to address the situation with a non-verbal gesture, meaning I started pushing down with my right arm to try to force it behind her head. Another half-second of confused awkwardness followed, then when my date finally realized what on earth I was trying to do and leaned forward a bit, my arm fell over her shoulders. Then we sat there silently for another forty minutes while Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau worked out their differences--I can't remember which of them wound up with Ann-Margaret--and I took her home. Or maybe we stopped at Village Inn. The other details are a little hazy.

While we remained friends, we never went on another date. After I returned from Chicago a few years later, a mutual friend told me she married a guy she'd met on a blind date*. I don't know if she ever told anyone about my mishap at the drive-in. My guess is no, since compared to the horror stories I usually hear from my female friends whenever we get around to comparing dating notes**, my little mishap comes across as utterly harmless.

I do remember seeing her at our 10-year-reunion, but I can't remember if I talked to her or just kept an awkward distance. Once a girl I've dated gets married, even if we are on good terms, I don't go out of my way to stay in touch. I'm pretty much content to fade into their personal history as one of those "other" guys they met along the way.

The day after that date I took the headrests off my car, and they stayed off for eighteen months until I left on my mission. Never let it be said that I don't learn from my mistakes.

----

*Reason #34 I hate blind dates.

**Reason #18 I am grateful to be a man.

Remembering Roger

In about a year's time, I was able to shake hands with two of my most important creative influences. My encounters with Ray Bradbury and George Lucas in 2007 and 2008 only lasted a few seconds, but meeting them in person added a human element to relationships that would never have felt as genuine otherwise. You spend enough time reading a person's books or watching their movies, you start to feel like you know them. Bradbury and Lucas still wouldn't know me from Adam, but meeting them at least partially validated those relationships.

As of Thursday, I'm never going to have that opportunity with Roger Ebert. After a long bout with cancer that robbed him of his jaw and his ability to speak and eat for the last several years, Ebert finally passed away at the age of 70.

Of those three influences, Ebert is the only one I might be able to consider a colleague. He wrote film reviews for the Chicago Sun-Times for nearly 50 years, though like most people, I first got to know him as the the tubby Costello to Gene Siskel's Abbott on TV back in the '80s. Sometime between the year I spent as the film critic for my student newspaper in grad school and when I started writing reviews for the Deseret News in the fall of 2010, I discovered his website and have checked in with him regularly ever since.

Often I've clicked over to his site only seconds after submitting a review of my own, curious to know what he thought of a film, wondering if I had completely missed the boat. Which is funny, because I disagree with Ebert's reviews as often as I concur. The deeper truth is that whether I agree with him or not, I admire Roger Ebert primarily as a writer. Most film reviews (including many of my own, unfortunately) come across as formulaic and distant, cold analysis of inanimate celluloid. But Ebert put his heart into his reviews, composing efforts that felt more like personal essays. Instead of write about an obligatory checklist of things that make movies good or bad, he wrote about the experience he had watching a film, and in that sense, he could never be wrong.

In doing so, he tapped into the joy of watching great movies. And more famously, he tapped into the comic rage that can come from being victimized by an unholy pile of garbage. When we cover reviews and evaluations in my English courses, I often have my students read Ebert's review of "Transformers 2," and assure them that it's a lot easier to write a review of a movie you hate than of one you love.

Ebert also had a knack for modern media. Robbed of his speaking voice, and in spite of being in his '60s, Ebert was more than happy to jump headfirst into modern social media outlets like Twitter, and his exploits often landed him in the middle of mini-controversies. I disagree with him on matters of politics even more than I do on films, but I never felt like I had to abandon his writing for it.

Late in January of this year, I started making weekly appearances on the "KJZZ Movie Show" as part of an opening segment roundtable with host Melanie Nelson and Steve Salles, who writes for the Ogden Standard Examiner. It's a long way from "At the Movies" or "Sneak Previews," but it has been a great experience. One I'm sure I never could have had if it wasn't for Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert.

With that in mind, I think it would be fair to give him the last word. So here's a quote that perfectly describes the moviegoing experience, taken, appropriately enough, from his review of "Star Wars:"

"Every once in a while I have what I think of as an out-of-the-body experience at a movie. When the ESP people use a phrase like that, they're referring to the sensation of the mind actually leaving the body and spiriting itself off to China or Peoria or a galaxy far, far away. When I use the phrase, I simply mean that my imagination has forgotten it is actually present in a movie theater and thinks it's up there on the screen. In a curious sense, the events in the movie seem real, and I seem to be a part of them."

The 10 Most Embarrassing CDs in my Music Collection

Earlier this year I put together a list of my most embarrassing DVDs. As a film critic and self-avowed movie snob, I think this was a good exercise to keep me humble. But my effort to do the same thing for my CD collection has been more complicated, because a) I no longer own a lot of the humiliating CDs I ordered from the BMG music club back in the '90s, an b) thanks to iTunes, I can download all the goofball songs I want for a buck under the guise of ironic appreciation. There's a big difference between downloading "Ice Ice Baby" as a joke for 99 cents and throwing $15 at an entire album's worth of Robert Van Winkle's early '90s mayonnaise raps.

So I am left with a choice: construct the list as a retrospective of inept musical appreciation, or make it a warts-and-all confession of albums I still own and cherish (or just forgot to run down to the Tom-Tom Music exchange back in 1998). After careful consideration, I think it might be more revealing to know what I still own on CD today...

1. Right Said Fred, "Up"

I bought this CD during my first year of grad school in order to use "I'm Too Sexy" for an English 1010 writing activity. iTunes hadn't happened yet, so I had no choice but to pick up the entire album for seven bucks out of the used bin of a local Hastings. On the plus side, this demonstrates the great lengths I will go to serve my students. On the downside, I have listened to "Don't Talk, Just Kiss" more than once.

2. Avril Levigne, "Let Go"

I don't know if I should even try to excuse this one. Avril Levigne's first album is guitar and drum-driven, which kind of helps--I do think it would be fun to play the drums to "Sk8ter Boi," and I seem to recall that being the primary impetus for the purchase--but beyond that, I think my defense runs out of gas.

3. Dolly Parton, "White Limozeen"

No need for a summary here. I've already given this little gem its own post. And yes, the ball is back in my court.

4. Milli Vanilli, "Girl You Know It's True"

The one CD from that fateful first round of BMG acquisitions that has survived to this day. I traded in Paula Abdul and Janet Jackson, but something told me that Milli Vanilli was worth holding on to. And let's be honest, "Blame it On the Rain" is a pretty great song.

5. Roxette, "Look Sharp!"

Whenever I think about bands that would have sounded awesome if they weren't dragged down by dated production techniques, Roxette usually springs to mind. I think it was my friend Mark who pointed out that hits like "Dangerous" and "Paint" would work fine today if you stripped away the '80s-ness of the recordings. But even with the kitsch intact, "Look Sharp" has enough high points to stay on my shelf.

6. Pras, "Ghetto Supastar"

If it was available on iTunes, I would have bought the title track for a buck. But Pras didn't want his one hit available for a ninety-nine cent download. So how else was I supposed to get a hold of the song that reminded me of my favorite Aggie-ette? Sometimes sacrifices must be made for the greater good.

7. Bread, "Anthology of Bread"

I genuinely like Bread. "If" in particular is a fantastic song. I think I just struggle with the idea of owning a CD by a band with such a sissified name. If it were a joke, I'd be OK with it. But Bread is a legit name. You can tell because the music sounds like bread. White bread, specifically. Probably Wonder Bread. And that doesn't help my argument at all.

8. Various Artists, "Serendipity" Soundtrack

Originally I had listed my 3-CD Burt Bacharach boxed set here, but as I think about it, it's much more difficult for me to explain my ownership of the "Serendipity" soundtrack, so I decided to man up and make the switch. To be fair, no one should ever have to strain to justify a soundtrack that includes music from Nick Drake and Louis Armstrong. But judging from the reaction to my DVD list, I should probably come clean on my total "Serendipity"-related purchase history.

9. The Carpenters, "The Singles: 1969-73"

There's a semi-famous* scene in "Tommy Boy" where David Spade and Chris Farley begrudgingly acknowledge their love of the song "Superstar." And hey, it's a pretty great song (I happen to favor the original artist's version from the "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" soundtrack**). But I would be lying if I didn't admit that there were plenty of other Carpenters' songs I liked.

10. Various Artists, "Pretty Woman" Soundtrack

I'm trying to remember why I picked this up used for five bucks a few years ago. It may have been because I wanted a copy of the Roxette song. I don't think it was for the Christopher Otcasek song (which was also featured in "Crocodile Dundee II," by the way). The funny thing is that I don't think I've ever seen the entire movie.

BONUS: Hulk Hogan and the Wrestling Boot Band, "Hulk Rules"

I can't include this on the main list for two reasons. The first is I can't find it, so I can't confirm that I still own it (trust me, I searched). The second is that I'm not sure it really qualifies for this list since, unlike the other entries, I wouldn't be all that embarrassed if anyone came across it while browsing through my collection***. In fact, I think I would go out of my way to point it out to guests during dinner parties. The fact that I picked it up (for free, as I recall...it may have been a white elephant gift) already knowing how awful it would be probably disqualifies it.

---

*Semi-famous because apparently it isn't on YouTube.

**Also not on YouTube. But worth looking up...trust me.

***This feels like an oblivious thing to say in a voluntary blog post that publishes my musical sins to the entire planet, but somehow taking the initiative feels much more empowering than merely waiting for disaster to strike on its own.

One Shining Moment...

I never played college basketball. Never knew what it felt like to stand at the free throw line during March Madness as thousands of co-eds and die-hard college basketball fans screamed at me. But in the first basketball tournament I ever entered, in the first game I ever played, I did something at the age of eleven that no one ever did in the tournament of 64. Not Walton, not Magic, not even Jordan.

I scored every single one of my team's points for an entire game.

Granted, we lost that game 72-4, but I'll take whatever credit I can get. My shining moment came on the first night of the Bountiful North Stake's Deacon's Basketball Tournament, a two day ecclesiastical bonanza that would match up the 12 and 13-year-olds of six wards in a pre-pubescent bloodbath. It was my baptism by fire into the cultural curiosity that is LDS church basketball. Thanks to a massive age gap that left my ward with only two deacon-aged boys, I was recruited along with another half-dozen of my eleven-year-old peers to fill out the roster. Just enough for the 19th ward to field a team of 6th graders against five teams stacked with kids on the opposite end of their junior high growth spurts.

I can't remember who we played in that first game. It might have been the 13th ward, or maybe the 10th. They were all older than I was, so I didn't know any of them anyway. What I did know was that from the opening tip, my team's challenge was not to score points. It was to get the ball across the half-court line. We'd barely inbound the basketball before a merciless full-court press would pressure us into turnover after turnover, easily converted to quick layups by kids who may as well have been 7-feet tall from our perspective.

I don't know that any of us had serious aspirations going into that tournament, but any hopes we had were quickly hammered into the hardwood. It was the first of many games I would play at the A-frame church up on the hill that overlooked the radish and bean fields of Bangerter's farm (where I would earn my first professional wages two summers later). The lighting inside that tiny basketball court was bad even for church gym standards, and the whole place had a distinctive orange tone that was a far cry from the bright Celestial glory of our spacious home court down the road. Not that any of that would have made any difference.

At some point late in the first half, we still hadn't put a single point on the board, so I followed in the time-honored tradition of many NBA professionals and decided that playing defense was pointless. As our opponent picked up another steal and made their way down to another easy basket, I lingered back. Our point guard Phil Johnson took the inbounds pass and spied my 4'9", 75-pound frame all alone and uncovered at the other end of the court. He lofted a cross-court pass that I grabbed just past the opposite foul line, and in a single motion I turned and tossed up a 10-foot jumper before anyone could get back and slap it into the next week. In my mind, it looked just like this play.

When the shot went in, the crowd erupted like we had just won the national title. Shutout averted.

At halftime, my coach pleaded with the other squad to let us at least get the ball past mid court, but there must have been some kind of BCS-ranking applied to the tournament standings, because when the second half started, the carnage continued. I do seem to remember our team getting a few shots off, either because we were playing better or because the other team was getting bored. But we didn't convert another field goal for the rest of the game.

As the clock finally wound down on our sad debacle, somehow we got the ball past mid court, and I took a pass near the top of the key. Again I turned to throw up a prayer, but this time the defender clipped my arm, and I was sent to the foul line.

The cheer that came after I made the first free throw was almost as loud as the cheer that came with my first-half jumper. The cheer that came after I hit the second was definitely louder.

A few seconds later, the buzzer sounded, the slaughter finally ended, and I walked away from my first church basketball game feeling conflicted. The defeat was excruciating, total and humiliating, yet it offered just enough hope to make me think I could hold my own with real competition. We fared better over the course of our next four games, though I don't remember winning any of them. By the next year, we were all on our way through puberty, and just another group of awkward pre-teens. A few years after that we were offering beat downs of our own, though I don't remember any of them being as lopsided as 72-4.

I never went on to play college ball. Heck, I never even went on to play for my junior high team. Like most wanna-be jocks, my basketball "career" was spent in rec leagues and pick-up games. But I had a pretty good time. And I'd put my highlight reel up against anybody's.

The world may have spent the last thirty years wishing they could try on Michael Jordan's shoes, but just about everybody has taken a stroll in mine.

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.

----

*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.

-----

*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?

-----

*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?