Update: Now It's Snowing

All you global warming alarmists can bite me.

To think I was in Hawaii yesterday...

Soccer in the Rain

Four out of five of my children play soccer every Saturday, which means we attend three different games, depending on the schedules. (The twins play on the same team, so that's why the math doesn't quite add up.)

Today, it's raining. Hard. It was even hailing at times.

Yet two of the games went on as scheduled until the kids revolted in a mass mutiny at halftime.

Why did this have to happen? Why? I cry plaintively into the night, but there is no answer.

Getting Home

While in Oahu, waiting for my next leg of my journey home, I got a call from Hawaiian Airlines telling me that the next leg of my flight had been postponed from 9:25 last night until 6:15 this morning. I told them that was unacceptable, and to mollify me, they offered me 300 more frequent flier miles.

I went to the counter, waited in line for 45 minutes, and haggled with the clerk, who managed to get me on a United flight that left in 30 minutes. So, to make the flight, I had to run down the length of Honolulu Airport to get to the United Airlines terminal, which was as far away from the Hawaiian terminal as it is possible to be and still be in the same airport. I had two laptop computers and a camera as part of my carry-on luggage, so I had to use about six plastic bins to accommodate all my stuff going through the X-ray machine. After getting through, I was tagged for “further screening,” which means I almost missed the flight because they insisted on frisking me down and rummaging through my souvenir bags to see if the plastic Volkswagen Beetles with surfboards on them that I ghad bought for my three boys were hiding explosives.

I finally got to the boarding area, and they almost refused to let me on the plane, because even though the flight was still there, the flight had been “closed.” I raised a sufficient stink that they finally let me on, but not without telling me what an inconvenience it was for them. I was seated in a middle seat between a sweaty guy and an old lady. I took four Tylenol PMs and did my best to sleep through the whole dang thing, but I could never extend my legs, and they came and barked at me before take-off for having my seat partially reclined, because all seats must be in an upright position for takeoff and about ten minutes after take-off. Why? Don’t ask why. On an airplane, you’re cattle. Shut up and moo.

We arrived at LAX at 4:45 this morning, and my leg from LAX to Salt Lake City didn’t leave for another three hours. I found a corner of the terminal and slept with my feet draped over my carry-ons. I had a fairly decent seat on this flight, and I slept peacefully on the way home, only to discover that my checked luggage hadn’t made the transfer to United, and nobody was quite sure where it was.

Doesn’t matter. I’m home now. The end. Must sleep more.

What I Learned on Kauai

I'm going home today, a little older, a little wiser, and somewhat fatter.

Here are some tidbits I discovered whilst slaving away on Hawaii's Garden isle:

1) I dig Ni'ihau.

Kauai’s next-door neighbor is the island of Ni’ihau, but think twice if you want to invite them over for a family barbecue. You can’t visit. Locals insist that you’ll be shot on sight if you try, although I find that hard to believe. Still, the truth is pretty strange on its own.

The island of Ni’ihau is privately owned by a family of billionaires. The whole stinking island!

They bought it in the 1870s for ten grand. The handful of locals who still live there speak Hawaiian as their primary language – it’s the only place on earth where that still happens. They have a few electrical generators, but mostly they live a fairly Gilliganic existence, only without the help of the Professor.

In 2004, 40 votes were cast from Ni’ihau, all but one for George W. Bush. It’s called the Forbidden Isle, and you would think all the people there would be hardcore, Ted Kaczynski-type lefties, but other than the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, it’s the most Republican place on earth.

The owners continue to subsidize the place, and it’s costing them gazillions, mainly in property taxes, which run in the millions per year. Most Kauaians want Ni’ihau to continue as a sort of nature preserve for native Hawaiian culture, but the owners want to lease some of the land to the government to help create a missile defense system, much like the missile defense systems they had back under King Kamehameha.

2) Visit Kauai by plane, not by boat.

Kauai is also the place where the new Superferry will no longer go, because surfers and boaters repeatedly kept the ferry from docking. Apparently, big boats disrupt the ecosystem. So ferry service to Kauai is postponed indefinitely, while massive cruise ships that are about three times larger than the ferries make port several times a day.

3) The north shore rocks.

The north shore of Kauai is 73% more fun than the south shore.

4) If you take enough drugs, mountains can look like dragons.

Puff the Magic Dragon can still be found in a land called Hanalei, although, unlike in the song, the town is pronounced Hanalay, not Hanalee. The song was written looking out from Hanalei Bay, where a big mountain supposedly looks like a sleeping dragon at sunset, when you can’t see all the trees.

I think it looks like a bunch of rocks, but I'm not high, either.

5) Come to Kauai with your family.

Swimming in the ocean all by yourself gets boring in 10.3 minutes.

6) I need a haircut.

But I'm going to wait until I'm back in the mainland before I get it.

What I Want To Be When I Grow Up

As a little kid, I wanted to be a brain surgeon. I heard they make lots of money, and you had to be really smart to do it.

Then I met a brain surgeon. He was old and crusty looking. I didn't want to be old and crusty looking, so I decided I needed to be something else.

I wanted to be a rock star. So I sent in my application, and I have yet to hear back.

I also wanted to be an actor, until I discovered that I don't like actors. I like acting, sort of, but I don't "appreciate the craft." Actors tend to be very self-important, narcissistic people, and I can no longer imagine a life where my entire existence is validated by the amount if applause I get.

So what's left?

I'm pushing 40, and I still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. I'm not really complaining; I've been able to make a living, which is a good thing, since I now have five children who only eat if I have a job, yet I have yet to discover a career. I'd still be happy to be a rock star, though. When Mick Jagger retires, I'm going to fill his position.

It's not like I'm nobody. I'm a husband and a father, and both of those roles are very satisfying. It's just that I'm not content just to make money. I want to accomplish something. I want to achieve something. I feel like as time goes by, I'm running out of options.

Should I be a dentist?

Ahmadinejad: Universal Spy?

Driving around Kauai all day yesterday taking pretty pictures, I had plenty of time to listen to a bunch of conservative radio hosts lament Iranian nutjob Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech to Columbia University. Rush Limbaugh noted how much the guy sounded like a traditional Democrat in his Bush bashing. Michael Medved applauded the fact that at least the university president insulted him thoroughly before he gave his speech. Laura Ingraham just seethed with overall disgust.

I think Hugh Hewitt got it right, though. He pointed out that all the Iranian people will ever see is footage of their loony leader being treated with dignity and respect. They’ll never hear the president of Columbia University say mean things about him or the harried, frustrated questioners getting increasingly irate as Ahmadinejad refused to give them a straight answer. No matter how foolish we thought he looked – and he looked foolish, indeed – the Iranian propoganda machine has plenty of material to make their guy look great.

As for me, I have a slightly different take, although I agree with most of what these hosts said. I think it’s pathetic that Columbia gave a forum to someone who is actively engaged in killing American soldiers. I think those who hide behind the idea that this is just “free speech” are deluding themselves. Where does the Constitution guarantee the right to speak at Columbia University? The hosts touched on all this, and more, and I was right there with them.

What they failed to mention, however, was how much the guy sounded like Languatron.

It’s eerie, really. Both Ahmadinejad and Languatron refuse to answer straight questions or accept simple logic. They ignore facts they don’t like. They attack their accusers, and they carry on spouting nonsense, regardless of how stupid they look. The only time Ahmadinejad gave a straight answer was when he dismissed the fact that homosexuals exist in Iran. It was straight out of the Languatron playbook, which assures us that everyone on the Internet works for Universal Studios. Both of these guys live in a fantasy world, and they’re very comfortable there. Nothing real people say can jostle them into coherence. The difference, of course, is that Ahmadinejad is developing nukes. And lunatics with nukes makes for a bad scene.

That’s why I think the U.N. should preemptively sanction Languatron, purely as a precautionary measure, before he gets his hands on any plutonium. You never know when one of these wackos will start to get real traction.

And I hear Languatron's scheduled to speak at NYU on Thursday.

Being Alone and Writing a Book

Sunday was better than Saturday.

I’ve figured out a workaround for the video shoot – I’m just not going to shoot in HD. That bugs me, but it’s probably irrelevant anyway, since all of this footage is only going to be used on the web. So I spent the day filming pretty things and even got in the water once in awhile.

I miss my family.

I’m surprised at what a homebody I’ve become. But even being in a beautiful place like Kauai gets intensely lonely after a few days. Swimming in the ocean, even the very warm ocean around Kauai, is no big deal if you’re doing it all by yourself.

As soon as the sun goes down, I’m back at the condo, and I’m using the nighttime hours to rewrite my book.

I wrote a book years ago, and it sucked. It was written in the first person, and it was essentially my autobiography if I had superpowers. It reads like a bad stand-up comedy routine – all jokes, no plot, and tediously self-indulgent. When I returned to it not too long ago, I came up with an actual idea to flesh out the story, and I added a villain, who I’m finding more interesting than the main character. And it’s all written in the third person now. I figure if Twilight can get published and sell millions, then so can this thing. That’s my motivation as I press forward.

The biggest problem with the book initially, I think, was the lack of a compelling villain. I thought I was being avant-garde and parodying superhero conventions by showing that if someone in the real world were actually to acquire the ability to flow and move mountains, there wouldn’t have to be someone else with equal or greater powers to fight back.

I wanted to show the absurdity of the genre’s conventions and Make A Statement. That was my first, biggest mistake. It reminds me of my first season in Jackson Hole running a theatre, when I thought it would be a good idea to educate the audience to accept high quality, highbrow musicals rather than "pander" to them. So we produced The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which musical theatre junkies love and audiences generally avoid. When we finally wised up and produced things like Annie Get Your Gun, people showed up to fill the seats.

People watch the things they like, not the things you think they should. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

“Educating your audience” is code for “alienating your audience.” If you’re going to be elitist and condescending, then people aren’t going to bother listening to you. That’s a lesson, incidentally, that Hollywood refuses to learn.

So now I’m focused on writing an entertaining, readable story. No vampire lovin’, either.

I’m almost to 20,000 words. I hope to break 100,000 by the time I’m through.

The Agony and the Ecstasy

Yesterday was a study in contrasts.

It began with my first attempt at scuba diving, which was surprisingly easy and delightful. It was also part of my job description. It seems the company I'm working for is thinking of purchasing a piece of a scuba diving business, so it was my job to check it out and see if everything was A-OK. In short, I was being paid to scuba dive. It doesn't get much cooler than that.

I saw giant sleeping sea turtles. I got within inches of a dragon moray eel. I was 40 feet beneath the waves, feeling strangely Aquamanish. I can't remember when I'd had so much fun.

That was the ecstasy. The agony came immediately afterward and filled up the rest of the day.

The main reason I'm in Kauai is to film a bunch of stuff for our websites, kauai.com and luxurykauai.com. The problem is that I'm using a Panasonic HVX200, which is an entirely digital camera, and neither the camera or Final Cut Pro is interested in working properly. I began by interviewing a native Kauaian on the beach, and the wind pretty much ruined the sound, and I couldn't get my laptop to capture the video. I ended up using these tedious digital cards that only take four minutes of film each, so we kept having to stop and download all the stuff off the card after every eight minutes. Except the laptop I use to capture the video doesn't have a PCMA slot, so I had to use another laptop to get the video, and that one wasn't charged. So I had to go sit in the bathroom for ten minutes, because the bathroom had the only electrical outlet on the beach. I was forced to endure the stares of everyone coming in to use the urinal as I sat on the floor of the men's room like an idiot.

In the end, all of this was for naught, because Final Cut Pro kept spitting an error message at me about codecs and refused to import the video anyway. By the time I got to that point, I couldn't get anyone on the phone to give me technical support, since it was after 3:00 Hawaiian time, which is after 6:00 PM Pacific time, when Apple tevhnical support closes. And, since I don't have the Final Cut software here, I sincerely doubt there's anything they can do for me anyway.

It's now 2:38 AM Hawaiian time, and I've woken up to call technical support, which opened at 6:00 AM Pacific.

Wish me luck. All things considered, I'd rather be scuba diving.

Twilight: Dudes Beware!

I’ve never read a traditional romance novel, which, as I understand it, is essentially porn for women. The thinking is that men get turned on by looking at dirty pictures, whereas women prefer to read about mysterious, handsome strangers that sweep into town, listen nonjudgmentally, and help with the housework. They also like to shop, pick out drapes, and cry during "Terms of Endearment," all of them unlikely heterosexuals who prefer to cuddle. These he/she-men rescue the ladies from their humdrum lives and carry them off into the sunset, all the while looking exactly like Fabio.

Not my cup of tea.

It’s no surprise, then, that I didn’t much care for Twilight, the first of a popular new romance series that every woman I know seems to be reading. (Spoilers are ahead – not massive ones, but if you want to read the book with absolutely no preconceptions, go back to being bored by my Mitt Romney speech.) My wife warned me that I wouldn’t like it, but I read it anyway, because I needed an easy book to read for the airplane ride to Kauai, and this one takes place along the Olympic Peninsula, which is where my wife grew up. (And, thankfully, Fabio ddid not model for the cover.)

Unfortunately, the author spent absolutely no time in Washington before writing the book. She just needed a locale with lots of clouds to keep the sun off of her vampires, and she decided that Forks, Washington, fit the bill. Consequently, there’s no real geographic specificity in Twilight – this takes place in a generic high school in a generic small town where it rains a lot. Where she does get into specifics, she gets it laughably wrong. At one point, the characters head over to nearby Port Angeles to buy fancy dresses for an upcoming dance. Having spent a great deal of time in Port Angeles, I know that there are no such stores. Real life Port Angelinos would likely have to head down closer to Seattle to get gussied up or else buy the finest threads that Wal-Mart has to offer.

The author mentions Port Angeles’ “charming boardwalk” filled with quaint stores, when, in reality, no such boardwalk exists. According to my wife, it may have existed 30 years ago, but today, downtown P.A. is pretty dumpy. Nearby Sequim is getting all the growth, but nobody visits Sequim in Twilight. I’m not sure it would really matter if they did.

Because nothing happens in this book.

Now, that’s not entirely true – there’s a busy, climactic scene that feels tacked on for effect, and there’s also plenty of lovey-dovey mooning. The plot, in a nutshell, is that a cute girl arrives in a new town and falls in love with a vampire, who, in turn, falls in love with her.

The end.

To fill the space, the author finds as many ways as she can to describe just how beautiful this vampire is – he’s an Adonis, a Greek god, he’s perfect, he’s intoxicating, he’s stunning, he’s dazzling, he’s exhilarating, he’s magnificent, he’s smooth, silky, sexy, well-groomed, punctual, and intensely, intensely boring. Take away the blood fetish, and he's just a pale Fabio with a haircut.

The vampire is torn, because he wants to love this girl, too, for reasons that are unfathomable to us dudes, an he also wants to suck her blood, which I could better understand. The author gives him plenty of opportunity to tell her how dangerous he is. Except he’s the exact opposite of danger. He’s caring, attentive, and doting to the point of imbecility. He remembers names she mentions in casual conversation weeks earlier, which proves he’s a better guy than I am. He is, however, a bit of a stalker, as he stares at the girl all night while she sleeps. I found that unnerving, but the girl finds it charming.

To each their own, I guess.

I can’t say, really, that Twilight is a bad book per se. The author writes clearly and simply, which makes the book a fast, breezy read, but it’s a book for an audience that doesn’t include me. I can live with that. I’m just going to have to find a different, more manly book for the plane ride home.

Maybe I ought to spend some time looking at dirty pictures. Or maybe I should just take a nap.

Finding Something to Complain About

You’ve heard all the stand-up jokes about airline travel. The food sucks. The person you sit next to won’t shut up. The person you sit next to is fat. There’s no room, leg or otherwise. They lose your luggage. They frisk you naked. Lines. Announcements. Delays. And always twirling, twirling…

I added the twirling part.

The thing I can’t stand, which I’ve never heard anybody mention, is the airplane air. The stale, compressed, recycled air. Just the scent of it makes me feel like part of a cattle herd. It’s impossible to feel comfortable anywhere near an airplane or an airport. Falling asleep on an airplane is next to impossible, especially when your knees are in your face.

And they lost my luggage, too. Bungholes.

But the good news is they found my luggage. And now, because of the miracle of airline travel, I’m in Kauai. And there’s nothing to complain about in Kauai.

Except the chickens.

There are six bazillion chickens in Kauai. Nobody’s sure how they got here, but everyone agrees that they’re not going anywhere soon. A local here calls them “Kauai’s feathered rats.” Except that, unlike rats, the roosters crow all hours of the day and night. It’s not unusual to hear a “cock-a-doodle-doo” at 4:00 AM in complete and utter darkness. I don’t really mind so much, though, because 4:00 AM Hawaii time is 8:00 AM my time. But hearing a rooster crow at 2:00 in the afternoon while you’re sitting on the beach is a bit much.

Since Kauai has no natural chicken killers, there’s nothing to kill the chickens. And these chickens desperately need to be killed. And someone needs to kill them.

Let me be the first to volunteer.

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about them:

1992's Hurricane Iniki may have caused an indirect change in Kauaʻi's ecosystem. Some say a chicken farm was destroyed, causing all of the chickens to roam free that one may see today. Others say that sugarcane plantation laborers in the late 1800s and early 1900s brought and raised chickens (for eating and cockfighting) and many got loose over the years and multiplied. Whatever their original source, Kauai is now home to thousands of wild roosters and hens, roaming the island with few natural predators. Wild roosters have been known to disturb evening quiet time at odd hours with their crowing. Currently, the Humane Society is investigating the death of large numbers of Kauai chickens. The deaths are most likely due to bacterial infections caused by over-population.

That’s right, Humane Society. “Bacterial infections.” Except they’re caused by the squealing tires of my car.

Maybe the airplanes could kill the chickens by checking them all as luggage and then losing them somewhere.

I’m here all week. I actually have to work, but I plan to enjoy myself while doing it. If I can find something else to complain about, I’ll let you know.

Mitt's Mormon Speech: The Conclusion

This was such a big hit yesterday that I thought I'd provide the conclusion. (Actually, I'm travelling to Kauai all day today, so I don't have time to write anything else.)

Mitt's speech, continued:
______________

With that said, let me share the Twelfth Article of Faith with you.

We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.

This is a principle of far-reaching significance. When my father ran for president, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had fewer than three million members in total. Today, there are more than twelve million members all across the world, and, in the past decade, the Church reached a significant milestone: the majority of Latter-day Saints now live outside of the United States. As the Church expands, it finds itself in the enviable position of having to deal with the challenges associated with its phenomenal growth. That means adapting to whole host of different cultures, governments, and societal mores. In every instance, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints encourages its members to be good citizens and work within the boundaries of the law.

As the church has grown here in the United States, more and more people find themselves with friends, neighbors, business associates, or acquaintances that are Mormons. No matter what they may or may not know about specific church doctrines, they do know that Mormons, on the whole, are decent, law-abiding patriots who love their country. This isn’t a coincidence. From a very early age, members of my faith are taught to respect and uphold the law of the land.

I should also note that the Church maintains a strict policy of political neutrality. Church leaders do not endorse political candidates, and church buildings are not permitted to be used for any political purpose. However, the Church does encourage its members to be involved in the political process and elect people who best represent their ideas of good government. What those ideas are can vary widely from Mormon to Mormon.

If you doubt that, you need only look to the current reality in Washington DC. Arguably the most powerful elected Mormon official currently in office is Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader. He is an active, committed Latter-day Saint. We are members of the same church. Yet we are not members of the same political party, and we most assuredly do not have the same ideas of what constitutes good government. Senator Reid is a living example of the fact that Latter-day Saints do not adhere to a single political ideology.

The Thirteenth Article of Faith of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is fairly lengthy when compared to the previous twelve, but it summarizes the practical aspects of my faith in relatively few words. It says:

We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.

Whatever your religious doctrines may be, I think the Thirteenth Article of Faith encompasses the efforts of all people of goodwill. The United States of America respects those who are honest and benevolent. This is a country that believes in doing good to all of its citizens, and in seeking after that which is virtuous, lovely, of good report, or praiseworthy. If you look to find what aspects of my faith will influence how I will govern, you need look no further than the 13th Article of Faith.

There may be some within the sound of my voice who remain skeptical. After all, there is still much about the Mormons you don’t know, and there may be something about the Mormons that you do know that makes you skittish about casting your vote for me to serve as your president.

If that describes you, I would submit that you are not unlike the early Latter-day Saints, who were so distrustful of those outside of their faith that they wouldn’t be willing to vote for anyone but one of their own. After what those early Mormons suffered, I cannot say that their distrust was unjustified. Joseph Smith’s presidential candidacy allowed them to have a voice in the process. Yet both the candidate and his supporters recognized that defeat was inevitable.

Well, that was over 150 years ago. Both the church and the country as a whole have a come a long way since then. And even as our population has grown exponentially, the country has gotten smaller in practical terms. We now recognize how foolish it is to live in isolation from those who may look or think differently than we do. I’m not running for president to represent my church. I’m running to represent my country, and if my faith has done anything, it has reinforced the idea that what we have in common is far more powerful than those matters where we may disagree.

There’s something else my faith has taught me. After Joseph Smith died, many assumed that his church would die with him. A prominent newspaper led with the headline “Thus Endeth Mormonism.” Well, it hasn’t ended. But it might have, if Latter-day Saints had decided to give in to despair.

I began this speech with stories of atrocities committed against the early Mormons. There are far more of them that I could cite, and some early Latter-day Saints weren’t willing to let go of them. Smith’s assassination brought the Church to a crossroads. There were cries for revenge and retribution. Some wanted open war. I believe that all of them wanted justice.

Smith’s successor was a very practical man by the name of Brigham Young. And Brigham Young made a decision that essentially ensured that the headline of that newspaper would never come true. He decided to look forward instead of backward. He led his people West, and he left the vengeance to God. As the early Mormon pioneers set out to find a new land where they could rebuild and renew their faith, they penned a hymn that is still sung in Latter-day Saint churches today.

“Come, come, ye saints, no toil nor labor fear;

But with joy, wend your way.

Though hard to you this journey may appear,

Grace shall be as your day.
’

Tis better far for us to strive

Our useless cares from us to drive;

Do this, and joy your hearts will swell

All is well! All is well!”

They had every reason to mourn. So they rejoiced. They should have had heavy hearts. So their hearts were glad. They looked to the future, and not to the past. And the prospects for the future were eternally bright.

I believe that same spirit can help to renew our country as we go forward together. We face tremendous challenges, but like the pioneers before us, we can wend our way with joy. No matter what your faith, I invite you to join me on this journey. Thank you.

Mitt's Mormon Speech

I think Mitt Romney needs me.

In an attempt to get hired by the Romney campaign, I drafted my own version of the big "Mormon speech" that everyone expects Mitt to eventually give. Many recall JFK's speech to the Baptists where he allayed fears about a Catholic, in the White House, and most pundits assume that Mitt needs to follow suit with a speech of his own.

Well, two things have happened since I wrote this. First, Mitt is saying that he probably isn't going to give a big Mormon speech after all. And secondly, it's increasingly unlikely that Mitt's going to hire me. Which means my lengthy speech will languish on the shelf unless I do something about it.

So, without further ado, I give you Part One of The Mormon Speech Mitt Should Give, as interpreted by yours truly. Imagine the following being spoken by someone much wealthier than I am.

___________

Many people have mistakenly labeled me as the first Mormon to ever run for president. That honor does not belong to me. It does not even belong to my father, who was a candidate for president in 1968. No, the first Mormon to run for president was the Church’s founder, Joseph Smith, Jr., who was a candidate in the presidential election of 1844.

Back then, membership in my church was not the colossal political asset that it is today. Mormons were feared, hated, and vilified, due in large measure to their formidable force as a political voting bloc. At the time of his candidacy, Joseph Smith was the mayor of the second largest city in the state of Illinois. We’ll never know how successful a politician he could have been, as he was brutally murdered by a bloodthirsty mob just months before the presidential election.

Those who have studied the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have viewed Joseph Smith’s candidacy for president as something of a cultural oddity. He had no real chance of winning, and he was under no illusions that his candidacy would be anything but a futile one. Why, then, did he bother to run?

The answer to that question may lie in Smith’s visit to the White House several years earlier, when he took a group of church members to visit then-President Martin van Buren. He had hoped to receive redress for the persecutions that the Latter-day Saints had suffered in the state of Missouri. They had had their property confiscated and their homes burned to the ground, solely because of their religious beliefs. Many had seen their wives raped and their children murdered before their eyes. Things were so bad that Lilliburn Boggs, the Governor of Missouri, issued an infamous Extermination Order, which read, in part, that “the Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary for the public peace.” This Order was the law of the land until it was repealed - in 1976.

With that as history, Joseph Smith traveled to Washington and pleaded with the government to take action. Martin van Buren responded with a political calculation. “Your cause is just,” he said, “but I can do nothing for you.” Helping the Mormons was political suicide, and any candidate willing to stand with the Mormons faced certain defeat at the polls.

I believe that Joseph Smith ran for President because the political climate at the time ensured that Mormons wouldn’t have felt comfortable voting for anyone but him.

And today, I’m running for president at a time when my faith means that some people would be comfortable voting for anyone but me.

Now, that’s not particularly surprising. Many people associate my faith with some fairly bizarre ideas, notably the practice of polygamy, which has been grounds for excommunication from my church for the past century. Believe me, no one in this race finds polygamy more abhorrent than I do. And, as president, no one will defend traditional marriage with more ferocity than I will.

I’m well aware that there is much about my faith that seems to breed misunderstanding and suspicion. In my political career, I’ve been asked to defend my church’s stand on just about every controversial issue of the day. I believe I’m also the first candidate since Bill Clinton’s “boxers or briefs” moment to be asked about my underwear. Still, most of the queries are well-intended, and the vast majority of them boil down to one simple question at the root of it all:

Can I really trust a Mormon to be President of the United States?

The answer is yes. And here’s why.

Voters are not going to be electing a Pastor-in-Chief next November. Hopefully, they’re going to be electing a President who shares their values and their vision of the future. I can’t speak for every Mormon or even most Mormons, but I can speak for Mitt Romney. It’s my name that’s going to be on the ballot, not the name of my church. And I will be the one who will be making decisions on the governance of this country, not my church.

That’s why I have no intention of discussing theological issues on the campaign trail. If you want to discuss lower taxes or a secure border or the life-and-death challenge we face from international jihadists, I’m ready and willing to join the battle. If you want to know about Mormon concepts of baptism or family home evenings, I’m not the guy you want. A presidential campaign is not the place to hash out doctrinal differences. If you’re truly anxious to learn more about my church, I’m sure you’ll be able to find two nicely dressed young men on bicycles who will be happy to visit you to have those discussions.

Still, some may still be uneasy because they are unsure about how my faith will color how I will govern. It is to them that I wish to address the remainder of my remarks.

Joseph Smith, near the end of his life, was asked by newspaper editor John Wentworth to condense the beliefs of the church into a single document that could be understood by the average reader. He did so in what is now known as the Wentworth Letter, which recounts the early history and many of the central tenets of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The letter concludes with thirteen short statements that my church has adopted as its official Articles of Faith. Young children are taught to memorize these statements in Sunday School; they give as concise and simple recitation of my faith as can be found anywhere. The first ten are theological in nature and are not germane to this campaign. However, I would like to share the final three of them with you.

The Eleventh Article of Faith reads as follows:

We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.

This will be the lodestar of a Romney Administration with regard to religion in the United States. At no time will anyone’s religious faith call into question their ability to serve their country. And at no time will a Romney Administration make any attempt to alter, dismiss, or belittle any American’s religious faith.

I have had the opportunity to visit with good people of faith throughout the country. I want them, and the rest of America, to know, that I will fight to defend your ability to practice your faith, no matter how different it may be from my own. The freedom to worship according to the dictates of your own conscience is enshrined in the United States Constitution. I believe it is one of the unalienable rights with which we have been endowed by our Creator. It is also one of the central tenets of my faith.

Many who disagree with me theologically recognize that my political positions are entirely in harmony with their own values. David French, an evangelical Christian and one of the contributors to the website EvangelicalsforMitt.com, said the following about what a Mormon president might mean:

“From a policy perspective, I think we should view the Governor's religion not as something to be concerned about but, actually, as an asset. When the Governor speaks about the culture of life or about the traditional family or about any of the social issues we care about, he is not pandering but instead speaking from his own personal, moral convictions…If you look at the Governor's record, you will see that he has never used his public prominence to boost the Mormon church...he simply does his job, and does it well.”

Now, perhaps not everyone would agree with Mr. French’s glowing assessment of my job performance, but even my most vocal critics would be forced to acknowledge that I have never compromised the public trust by using my position to proselytize. Many said that a Mormon was unelectable in a state that was predominantly Catholic, yet my religion did not prevent me in Massachusetts from working with people of good will, regardless of their faith.

To be continued...

Preserving a Teacher's Right to Suck

The Utah Education Association has already spent more than 1.5 million dollars to fight a ballot initiative authorizing school vouchers.

That’s reason enough to vote for it.

Despite the breathless TV and radio ads warning of public education’s impending collapse, the actual voucher proposal itself is pretty tame. Utah parents who decide to send their kids to private schools will get a voucher of between $500 and $3000 to help defray tuition costs. That amount will be determined by family income, which means that only the poorest families will get the full amount. Since $500 is barely enough money to pay for school uniforms at a swanky private school, the voucher initiative’s actual impact on public education will be negligible at best.

In other words, school vouchers on such a small scale won’t do a dang thing. Which, again, is a great reason to vote for it.

Why? Because the teacher’s unions fight any changes to the current system, no matter how small. Merit pay? Never! Charter schools? Perish the thought? Vouchers? The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

No, it isn’t. And once the public sees that, it will be harder for the UEA to cry wolf the next time and have anyone believe them. I’m somewhat disgusted that anyone believes them now.

The proposal actually improves the bottom line of public schools. Since Utah currently spends about $7500 per pupil, even the most generous voucher leaves $4500 in the current system, all the while lowering the class sizes. So what’s the problem?

The problem is control.

The thing that terrifies the teacher’s unions is the idea that their members might actually be held accountable for their teaching performance. Currently, teachers are completely insulated from the market pressures of the real world. Lousy teachers with tenure are impossible to fire. This has nothing to do with the quality of the education your children are getting. It has everything to do with preserving the right of teachers to remain mediocre.

This tepid voucher proposal isn’t going to change that. But it’s just one more chink in the union’s armor. If things continue down that road, crappy teachers may end up having to find another line of work.

The thing in their ads that I find most laughable is their breathless assertion that private schools will have “no accountability” because teachers “will be uncredentialed!” Heaven forbid! Except studies have demonstrated that a teaching credential has absolutely no bearing on the quality of the teacher. It’s little more than a bureaucratic barrier to entry set up to prevent quality professionals from entering the classroom. Bill Gates can never teach a computer course. Stephen Hawking can’t teach high school physics. Michael Jordan can’t teach high school P.E.

Credentials don’t correlate with excellence; they’re just one more hurdle the teachers unions have put in place to keep a lot of good people from teaching. I ran into this firsthand when I tried to find a job teaching high school theatre. I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and years of real-world experience as a teacher, a director, and performer. What I didn’t have was two and a half years worth of vapid education classes, so I was out of luck.

If the idea of uncredentialed teachers actually frightens you, then call the union’s bluff. Create a credential system based on teacher testing, where teachers have to actually demonstrate their abilities in the classroon. That way, qualified professionals who want to make a difference in their local schools could get into the mix. Teachers unions will fight that kind of reform with everything they have. Just like merit pay. And charter schools. And school vouchers.

The union, which is always complaining about the lack of funding for its programs, is now spending money like water. 1.5 million dollars could pay for a lot of new teachers. It could improve a lot of classrooms. It could raise a lot of salaries. It could even help produce a better education for our kids.

Or it could be squandered on scare tactics designed to preserve a teacher’s right to suck.

So what does the Utah Education Association really want? Follow the money.

Four Signs and Seven Years Ago

Quelquefois, il neige dans la sale de bain.

That’s one of the few phrases I remember from my high school French class. It means “Sometimes, it snows in the bathroom.” I’ve never had occasion to use the phrase in an actual conversation, but it’s nice to have it in the arsenal in case I ever need it. I’ve also got “Je voudrais batissent un grenouille rouge,” which translates as “I’d like to build a red frog,” and “je mange beacoup d’oeuf,” or, in other words, “I eat a lot of eggs.” I don’t really eat a lot of eggs, but if I did, I could tell a Frenchman without any assistance.

Another French phrase my cousin taught me is “Puis-je cracher dans ton visage?” That translates into English as “May I spit in your face?” Apparently, it’s a very, very polite way of asking the question. That may soften the blow when you get to the heart of the matter.

I know several very useful Spanish phrases as well. “La vaca da leche.” The cow gives milk. “El trein esta en la iglesia.” The train is in the church. “Es ese tu pulpo?” Is this your octopus?

And then there’s my favorite: “Soy el hombre mas gordo del mundo.” I am the fattest man in the world.

I learned how to say this phrase in several different languages. Ami prethibir sobchey mota loc. That’s the fattest man in the world in Hindi. Na neun se sangh e suh kajhang tung tung han salaam imnida. That’s the Korean fat guy. I’m sure my spelling is atrocious, as I can just barely spell in English. Give me break. I am the fattest man in the world, after all.

Fortunately, the Internet has made all of my translation skills obsolete. AltaVista’s Babel Fish provides instant conversion from English to any number of languages. I do question just how accurate the translation is. Witness the following paragraph, which is Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address translated into Italian and then re-translated back into English. I haven’t altered a word.

Four signs and seven years ago our fathers caused on this continent, one new nation, conceived in the freedom and dedicate you to the proposal that all the men equal are generated. Hour we are couples to you in great a civil war, difficult if that nation, or any nation so as to conceived and therefore dedicated, he can long resist to we have come to contact of on a great battlefield of that war.

We have come to dedicate a part of that field, like space of final pause for those who has given their screw here that that nation could living. Altogether he is adapted and adapted that we would have to make this. But, in a greater sense, we cannot dedicate them -- we cannot consecrate -- we cannot hallow -- this earth. The men, the good life and breakdowns, that they have fought here, consecrated it, far away over our poor feeding to add or detrarre give.

The will of the world little famous one, neither long is remembered of that what we say here, but can not be forgotten never that what Is for we the life here, rather, to be dedicated here to the job not ended that that they have fought here up to now they have advanced therefore noble. It is more rather affinchè we is dedicated to the great operation remaining before we -- than from these dead men honored we take to increased devozione to that cause for which they have given the last complete measure of devozione -- that one here highly we resolve here that these dead men will not be died in useless -- that this nation, under the God, will have one new birth of the freedom -- and that the government of people, from people, for people, will not perish from the earth.

It doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, does it? Still, it’s a fun exercise. And when you do this with anything Languatron writes, it actually makes more sense than the original.

The Order of the Arrow

As a Latter-day Saint, I’ve been taught all my life that you don’t refuse an opportunity to serve. Consequently, I’ve held many teaching and leadership positions in the Church throughout my life, and I anticipate several more before I’m through. Some of them have been more fun than others, and some of highlighted my strengths, while others have demonstrated just how much I have to learn.

Yet there’s only one assignment that would cause me to run screaming into the night:

Scoutmaster.

Yikes. I shudder just thinking about it.

Quite frankly, I loathe Scouting. Every traumatic experience of my childhood can somehow be traced back to the Boy Scouts of America. And since Scouting is the official boy’s youth program for the LDS Church, all three of my sons will likely be wearing those tacky khaki shirts and learning the Scout Law. And, sooner or later, someone’s going to ask me to get involved in their “Be Prepared” preparation. At which point I will vomit.

From whence cometh my Scoutaphobia? It wasn’t just the kid who put a dead fish in my tent at scout camp, which invited a colony of ants to take up residence in my sleeping bag. Or the time I was sent from campsite to campsite in search of bear repellent, which doesn’t exist. Or the Patrol Leader who enforced discipline by clocking me in the jaw. All of these helped, certainly, but I think it was the Order of the Arrow that put me over the top.

The Order of the Arrow is a secret society within Scouting, one with secrets so secret that I can never reveal them, mainly because I can’t remember any of them. What I do remember is the three-day nightmare induction ceremony which was called, appropriately, The Ordeal.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

The Ordeal begins at a Scouting Camporee, at the “tap-out.” That’s where some scrawny kid with a loincloth and a faux Indian headdress hit me on the shoulder with a tomahawk while I was sitting around a campfire. At that point, I became a “candidate” for the Order of the Arrow, and I was under a vow of silence until I performed an act of service for my parents the next day. So, the next morning, I dutifully, silently emptied the dishwasher. After that, the vow was lifted, and I could talk freely about how much the previous night sucked.

So a few weeks after the “tap-out,” I headed off to Camp Whitsett, a scout camp up in the hinterlands of nowhere, where I was put back under a vow of silence and told to go sleep in the woods, alone. No tent. No foam cushion. No pillow. Just me, a sleeping bag, and plenty of rocks. In the middle of the night, my ears began to freeze, and I buried my head inside the sleeping bag, which was covered with ice the next morning when I awoke.

That’s when the party began.

For breakfast, I was given a plastic Dixie cup, a raw egg, and a match. I think I succeeded in boiling the egg somehow, but I can’t remember being too happy about it. Lunch was half a slice of white bread with half a piece of baloney. Dinner was a carrot and a gumdrop. The intervening hours were spent in slave labor clearing brush and digging ditches, all in complete silence, because of the stupid silence vow, which I broke repeatedly. Our only respite came in the form of a one-hour pseudo-therapy session where the vow was temporarily lifted and we could confess our sins to grown men in Scout uniforms, and they proceeded to break beads on our little Order of the Arrow badges for each of our transgressions. I only got one of my beads broken, I think. Perhaps I should have broken more. Maybe I would have felt better. I certainly was in the perfect mood for breaking things.

After we’d finished our carrots and our gumdrops, we were led around by ropes in total darkness, still under the vow of silence, only now, we were being forced to keep our eyes closed. Scout Nazi enforcement squads walked up and down the line and whacked you in the back of the head if you tried to peek. After what seemed like an hour, I was allowed to open my eyes to see some weird, creepy Indian ceremony in front of a campfire, which would last a couple of minutes or so, and then you were led to the next station, where you did the same thing. It’s here that I think the Order’s deepest secrets were revealed. I’m sure they were very important. I had to go the bathroom.

I realize I’m being somewhat negative here, and that’s unfortunate. There were the good times, too. It was in Scouting where I learned how to ignite my farts with a Bic lighter without singeing my anus. I also learned the value of teamwork when my fellow Scouts and I would urinate together on campfires to put them out. I learned the meaning of the word “smegma.”

What a wonderful Scoutmaster I will make.

Bourne Free

Saw The Bourne Ultimatum last night with the missus. The movie’s gotten stellar reviews across the board, and its easy to see why. It was always engaging, and you really didn’t know what was going to happen next. This is in contrast with, say Live Free or Die Hard, which was always engaging, partially because you always knew what was going to happen next. Die Hard has become a cartoon; Bourne has become something far more substantial. Both are fun in their own way, but I have to give the tip of the hat to what the Bourneians have accomplished.

Much of the movie’s success has to be laid at Matt Damon’s feet. He manages to remain vulnerable and likeable, even though he has about five lines and he spends all of his time kicking the living crap out of everybody. He’s invincible and insecure at the same time. How many other actors can pull that off?

The supporting cast was just as good. Joan Allen and David Straitharn are two of the most underrated character actors in the biz, and it was fun to see Scott Glenn back in action, although he looks 500 years older than he did the last time I saw him. When was the last time I saw him? What has he done since Silence of the Lambs? I could check imdb, but I’m too lazy.

Of course, none of this would matter if the movie hadn’t been so tightly plotted. The movie always felt plausible, even though its central premise of a Manchurtain-style assasin with amnesia really doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Kudos all around – with the following caveats.

Caveat #1: Is it possible to make a thriller where the bad guys aren’t U.S. government operatives? I know I’m a broken record on this, but I get tired of the America bashing. It wasn’t nearly as overt in this flick as it is in most Hollywood crap, and Joan Allen’s character served as a check on most of the excesses, yet I can’t be the only one who finds this tedious. The plot didn’t try to bash Bush overtly or presume that everyone who works for the government was a melodramatic, mustachio-twirling evil Republican, so it didn’t make we want to throw up. But it did make me wistful for a movie where maybe someone outside the U.S. had nefarious plans for once.

Caveat #2: What did make me want to throw up was the omnipresent hand-held camera shots. I understand the rationale here – the whole thing has a “gritty, you-are-there” feel to it, but would heavens to Betsy, would it kill you to use a tripod once in awhile? During the major set pieces, it’s hard to follow the action without getting a little nauseous. The only consolation was that they learned a few things from The Bourne Supremacy, which is all but unwatchable because of super shaky cam stuff.

Overall, though, I can’t really complain. I wish I could, though. It’s much more fun to write a review of a bad movie than a good one.

Wilson on Political Women

Last year, I ran for the Utah State Senate. I worked as hard as I knew how, and I thought I acquitted myself well. And at the Salt Lake County Convention, I came up short.

I lost by six votes.

Believe me, that’s no fun. For the next 24 hours or so, I wanted to crawl into a hole. I kept coming up with all the “coulda woulda shouldas” that would have gotten me those extra six votes. Then my wife and I left the kids with a sitter, took off to Park City for a night, and came back with a fresh perspective. My campaign was a great experience, and I learned things I could not have learned any other way than by putting my name on a ballot. But in the end, I lost. And life goes on. That’s just the way it is.

I thought about that my own experience today as I picked up the Deseret Morning News and read the front page headline:

“Loss bodes ill for women in politics, Wilson says.”

That makes it look like Jenny Wilson, who for a very long time was the front runner to replace the reprehensible Rocky Anderson as Salt Lake City’s mayor, blames sexism for her defeat at the polls three days ago. That’s certainly what I thought when I read the headline. So I was prepared to write a lengthy rant about how blaming sexism/racism/ any-ism for your defeat is increasing the whole victimization culture, and how great Margaret Thatcher was, and how Wilson lost fair and square, and while that sucks for her, she should stop whining and take it like a man, so to speak.

Except the article is more complicated than that. And Wilson actually raises an interesting point.

Some background: Rocky Anderson, who is, in my mind, the foulest elected official in the state of Utah, wrote an op-ed about how Wilson would have a hard time serving as mayor because she has small children at home, which would demand too much of her time and attention. Here’s what Wilson had to say about that:

"Rocky's charges and all of the discussions out there, I think, if anything, are going to suppress women from having an interest in running for office," Wilson said. "Now I feel like there will be some sense of, 'Oh great, I've got kids. Look what happened to Jenny.' And that's too bad."

Wilson, I think, has stumbled over an important idea while arriving at the wrong conclusion. In the first place, Rocky was trying to take down Wilson in order to secure a victory for his hand-picked successor, Keith Christensen, who came in a distant fourth behind Wilson, garnering roughly a third of Wilson’s vote total. So to say that Rocky’s op-ed shifted public opinion in any significant way is self-delusional on Wilson’s part.

Yet the question remains – could Rocky Anderson be right for the first time in his life?

Should we not consider the family commitments of a candidate running for office? Politics is a jealous mistress, no matter what your gender. When young children have to compete with the public for their parents’ attention, then something’s has to give. If it’s the public, then the elected official probably may not be giving the office the attention if it deserves. If it’s the child, then that says something about the public official’s character that could make her – or him – less attractive as a candidate.

Unlike Wilson, I don’t think this is just a female problem. Fred Thompson is running for president, and he has two very young children at home. They’re not going to be seeing very much of their father, both during the campaign and if he wins the presidency. Now Wilson would say that’s between Fred and his family, and its unfair to judge him based on something that personal. Except politics is inherently unfair. And voters make judgments on the whole person, and some would likely be turned off to learn that Thompson is more interested in being president than being a devoted father.

There’s some hypocrisy here on my part, too. When I ran for office, I had – and still have – five young children, with one still in diapers. I was confident that, had I won, I would have been able to juggle my time appropriately and still be a devoted father. Certainly Wilson believes she could have been both mayor and mother and done well on both counts. And maybe she could have. In her mind, the voters should have left that decision to her. But, in politics, the voters always have the last word.

I really don’t know how many votes she lost because folks thought she ought to be home with her kids instead of running city government. I think it’s fewer than she thinks. I also think that Rocky, who is single and has no young children at home and could therefore devote 100% of his time to screwing up Salt Lake City, is hardly the poster child for Excellence in Mayoralism.

Yet I think that a candidate’s family life will always be a factor in the voters’ minds. And, unlike Wilson, I don’t necessarily think it “bodes ill” for anything. It is what it is. And it’s certainly worth thinking about.

You still lost, though, Jenny. I know. It sucks. Take it like a man.

Spamalot

The touring company of Spamalot is now in Salt Lake City, and, last night, my wife and I went to see it as part of a night out on the town.

She loved it. I’m far more ambivalent.

I certainly had a good time, and there were plenty of laughs to be had. It was also fun to take in some live theatre. I don’t think I’ve seen an actual musical since I left Tuacahn in 2004. And I was a theatre major! How pathetic is that?

Still, I can’t get over the feeling that the show, in my considered opinion, just doesn’t work.

Part of the problem was that the actor playing King Arthur was awful. Simply awful. He mumbled and smirked his way through the whole thing like some kind of warped Medieval Elvis, and you could only understand about every third word. Thankfully, I’ve seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail over three billion times, so I already knew most of his lines.

Which, of course, was another part of the problem.

Huge chunks of this show are transplanted directly from the original movie, and these actors just can’t hold a candle to Cleese, Palin, Jones, Idle, and even Gilliam. But the actor who you miss most of all is Graham Chapman – and not just because he’s dead.

For the first time, I realized that the primary reason the Holy Grail movie is so funny is that Graham Chapman is such a perfect straight man. He takes his role as Arthur absolutely seriously. He’s regal; he’s commanding; he’s always in complete earnest. Playing Arthur that way is a completely thankless task, because everyone else gets all the funny lines. But without him, the movie falls apart. The French Taunter is hysterical, yes, but only because he’s such a perfect contrast to Arthur and his fellow stuffed shirts. Same with the communist peasant and the Black Knight and the Knights Who Say Ni. (Especially the Knights Who Say Ni. In the movie, they’re bizarre and strange, but only because Arthur provides a touchstone for normalcy. In the stage adaptation, they’re just stupid – and not the good, funny kind of stupid. They’re truly painful to watch.)

Spamalot’s Arthur is just as jokey and silly as his antagonists, so all of the comic tension that made the movie so delightful is entirely absent. A better actor playing Arthur might have helped, but the whole tone of the musical is the antithesis of the original film. The movie takes place in a stark, cold, forbidding world infested with an inexplicable lunacy. The musical is none of those things. It’s a Vegas lounge act. It has replaced stark with smarmy.

And smarmy just isn’t funny.

Much of the difference is necessitated by the practical limitations of the stage vs. the freedom of film. When, in the movie, the French Taunter is standing on a castle a hundred feet above King Arthur, you know he’s in a real castle. On stage, when the same taunter is about five feet above the knights on a wall on wheels, it’s much harder to suspend disbelief, especially since it’s clear that none of the actors believe in it, either. Worse, they seem to be satirizing their already silly source material, which just broadens the humor to the point of irrelevance.

Spamalot is at its best, then, when it leaves the movie behind and satirizes the conventions of musical theatre. The two best songs in the show are “The Song That Goes Like This,” which mocks obligatory Andrew Lloyd Webber-style power ballads, and “You Won’t Succeed On Broadway If You Don’t Have Any Jews,” whose satirical target is self-explanatory. Neither of these songs has any connection to the film, but both produced belly laughs, and they were, ironically, the elements of the show most reflective of the original Python sensibility. I also quite enjoyed “I’m All Alone,” where Arthur laments his solitude while standing next to his increasingly frustrated servant, who resents being ignored.

The show, to its credit, does a fairly decent job of cobbling together a plot from the disjointed set pieces of the film. The primary device they use to do this is the addition of a new character – the Lady of the Lake. Unfortunately, in this production, the actress playing the Lady was a flat-footed comedienne. She had a beautiful, legit soprano voice, but she didn’t have the chops for all the soulful comic asides she was supposed to execute. Her silly number in the second act should have brought down the house – instead, it just brought the momentum of the show to a screeching halt. She would have made a great straight woman, though – a pity her part didn’t call for that.

I’m not really complaining. On the whole, I enjoyed myself. And my wife loved it. But next time I want to revisit Monty Python’s Knights of the Round Table, I’ll watch the movie instead.

My Brushes with Greatness

Milton Berle flipped me off once.


I was singing with a children’s choir outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and our group was getting our picture taken. Milton Berle thought it would be funny to flip us off. Maybe it was to get us to smile. Maybe it was because he was a deeply disturbed, strange man.

Maybe it was a little from Column A, a little from Column B.

______________


I had my picture taken with Conrad Bain.


I don’t remember why or where. I just remember he was short, and he called me the “basketball player.” Except I don’t play basketball.

So he couldn’t have been more wrong.
______________

I had lunch with Gordon Jump a couple of times.



Once it was at a Souplantation in Pasadena, and once it was at a restaurant in the Beverly Center. I tried to hire him to come to Jackson Hole, except he wanted too much money.

Which wasn’t hard to do, because I didn’t have much money.

______________

I bumped into Harrison Ford at the Jackson Hole Airport.


Literally. And it was his fault. He said "Excuse me." I'm not sure what I said.

He was shorter than I imagined, but more physically fit.

______________

I danced with Kim Fields – Tootie from The Facts of Life.



She came to see a show I was in, and I spoke to her backstage, and then I grabbed her arm and twirled her around. (It was OK - it wasn't violent or anything. She laughed.) That was a "thing" I did. Sometimes I polka'd with people unexpectedly. I think we may have polka'd, but I can't be sure.

I didn’t know who she was – I just thought she was cute.

______________

The lead singer of Shivaree, Ambrosia Parsley, used to live with a girl I was dating.


She always hung out with us, which made smooching sessions awkward. I never smooched Ambrosia, though. Probably should have.

She went by "Amber" in those days. Maybe that was the problem.

______________

Ricky Schroeder, as I said before, went to high school with me.



I doubt he would know who I am today - he was two grades younger than me, although we were in the same theatre class. All I remember was that he had zits – which clearly have left him a bunch of acne scars.

Re-watch Season 6 of 24 if you don’t believe me.

______________

I met Christopher Reeve three weeks before his paralyzing accident.



I was responsible for taking him to another office in the U.S. Capitol. A friend of mine who had met Reeve told me that his two pet peeves were being called Christopher Reeves, with an S, and being remembered solely as Superman. I told the rest of the office this, and within two minutes of his arrival, someone called him Mr. Reeves, and Mr. Reeve promptly corrected him. Then, as we were walking in the hallway, someone yelled out "Hey, Superman!" And Mr. Reeve rolled his eyes. So it proves my friend was right.

I was taller than Superman Reeves, too.

______________

I took a six-week acting class from Maximillian Schell.


He told me to call him Max, which I did. I got him to say “Wazoo city, babe!” I also made him admit that he had starred in the movie The Black Hole. He said it was the worst film he’d ever made. At the time, it was the only one of his movies I’d ever seen. I’ve since seen Deep Impact.

I liked The Black Hole better.

______________

I had lunch with Jason Hervey on the Sunset Strip – by accident.



We were randomly seated at the bar next to each other. He was very friendly, and he wore a Rolex. I thought I knew him and that his name was Fred, and he thought that was funny. I didn’t even connect it to the whole Wonder Years thing.

He looked familiar, and that's why I struck up a conversation with him, but I didn’t realize he was a big star until afterwards.

______________

As a kid, I was in a carpool with Jerry Sharrell, the star of Kids Incorporated.



He thought I was kind of a nerd. He was right. My Esteemed Colleague who used to help me crank call joined me in mocking him mercilessly.

He always had good hair, though.

______________

John Travolta likes my work.



I was in the musical Annie playing Rooster opposite John Travolta’s niece, who played Lily. I can’t remember her real name. John Travolta came to the show, shook my hand, and said – and I quote – “good show.”

That was about it.

______________

Michael Jackson used to go to the Kingdom Hall for Jehovah’s Witnesses on Ventura Boulevard, only a few miles from my house.


I never saw him, though, so this one doesn’t count. A friend of mine swears that he came to his door with another Jehovah's Witness, and that Michael was wearing a beard as a disguise. This friend of mine also had the nickname "Pus-wad."

You be the judge.

______________

I’ve met just about every Osmond there is to meet, as well as Steve Young and every other famous Mormon.



But it’s a small world, Mormonly speaking. They all eventually come to Salt Lake City to go to General Conference. I’ve also worked in D.C. and met a bunch of politicos, but politicos don’t count. I do, however, have a picture of myself with both George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole. I thought Bob Dole was going to be president.

I’m an idiot.

______________

I was part of a singing group that sang “Bless The Beasts and the Children” alongside The Fifth Dimension at the Coconut Grove.


It was at a benefit for abused children, and because we were the last act on a very long bill that played late into the night. We had all fallen asleep, and they woke us up to go onstage. We were tired, and our hair was all messed up. So everyone thought we were a children’s choir of abused children.

We got a standing ovation.

______________

I was Arthur Kane’s home teacher.



Being a home teacher is a Mormon thing where you go and visit someone once a month to minister to them and make sure everything was OK. Arthur Kane was the bass player for the New York Dolls and, at the time, a newly baptized Mormon. They made a great movie about him called New York Doll that won a bunch of awards at Sundance last year.

He thought I was just some dumb, naïve kid, and he was probably right.

______________

I wrote to Ron Pallillo as a kid.



He sent me autographed picture that said “Oh! Oh! Ron Palillo.” He played Arnold Horshack, you know. On Welcome Back, Kotter. He said that Horshack is a very honorable name. It means “the cattle are dying.”

I've never forgotten that.

The Healing Field: Connecting the Dots

On September 11, 2002, I was the Communications Director for the city of Sandy, Utah. A few days earlier, I had gotten a phone call from a guy named Paul Swenson, who ran a business called Colonial Flag, which had its offices only a few blocks away from Sandy City Hall. He had, what seemed to me, a really nutty idea – he wanted to put up over 3,000 flags right outside of City Hall, one for each victim of the previous year’s terrorist attacks.

Being the visionary that I am, I told him that time was too short, and I didn’t think we’d be able to do it.

Then I told Mayor Tom Dolan about the idea, and he wisely overruled me.

That led to the first Healing Field, a beautiful and solemn presentation of American flags in rows on a plot of ground that is almost identical to the size of the site of the World Trade Center. I can’t imagine a more graceful and beautiful tribute to the lives lost on that fateful day, as well as a finer expression of unity and purpose. It allows us to honor the dead and also look forward to the national challenges ahead.



The field attracted extensive local attention, and hordes of visitors tramped up to the Mayor’s office to get a bird’s-eye view of the field from the office windows. Then CNN did a story on it. Two days later, I received a phone call from someone in Governor Jeb Bush’s office, asking how they could duplicate the Healing Field in Florida. It has become an annual tradition in Sandy, and a number of other locations across the country have adopted the idea. According to the HealingField.org website, a new Healing Field is now up on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

It’s hard to know how to mark the occasion of September 11. It shouldn’t be a day of celebration – too many lives were lost. But should it be a day of mourning? Yes, but that’s not enough. It should be a day of new resolve and determination. We should honor those who died by doing all we can to ensure our enemies never catch us off guard again.

As we get farther and farther away from that horrible day, we lose the resolve we all shared in the aftermath of the attacks. Our success in prosecuting the War on Terror has produced what was, on September 11, an unthinkable result – we’ve had no major new terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. Consequently, our success proves to a mixed blessing – it has produced security, yes, but also complacency. As 9/11 fades into memory, it becomes harder and harder for many people to understand what all the fuss is about.

So John Edwards can call the War on Terror a “bumper sticker slogan” and Michael Moore can snidely assert that “there is no terrorist threat.” If the Bush Administration had only been a little less vigilant on the terrorist front, he might, ironically, be more popular in the eyes of those who see radical Islam as a conservative shibboleth, a figment of a fevered Neocon imagination.

It’s especially ironic that this year’s 9/11 anniversary comes on the heels of General Petraeus’ report to Congress on the progress of the troop surge in the Iraq War. Democrats are already calling him a liar, just as they call Bush a liar for initiating the Iraqi conflict. Whenever anyone tries to make any connection to this war and 9/11, critics shriek “Saddam didn’t attack us on 9/11! How dare you presume there’s a connection?”

Well, if I may be so bold, here’s how I dare. If you’re one of those naysayers who insists that everything Bush does is a lie, please read slowly and carefully, because you’re probably too busy seething with rage to follow my logic.

Immediately after 9/11, the same critics who berate Bush now were lambasting Bush then for not “connecting the dots.” The signs were all there, they insisted. We had the information; we just didn’t put it together and act fast enough. If only Bush had connected the dots, 9/11 could have been avoided.

Maybe so. Hindsight is 20/20, and there’s plenty of blame to go around. But Bush wasn’t interested in blame. Being unable to go back in time, he couldn’t reconnect those dots.

But he could connect the dots he had.

The new dots said that Iraq was a belligerent nation who had already proven its willingness to wage wars of aggression with its neighbors and to deploy weapons of mass destruction, which it had already used - against its own people, no less. After the Gulf War of ’91, Iraq had agreed to disarm completely and verify its disarmament to the United Nations. Everyone – the U.S., the U.N., even France – agreed that Iraq was not in compliance with the terms of its surrender in 1991.

Bush-haters, look closely, because here’s the connection to 9/11: Bush didn’t connect the dots before September 11. But he did connect the dots prior to the Iraq War. In a post 9/11 world, he knew the United States did not have the luxury of letting a madman with weapons of mass destruction hold the world hostage.

Keep in mind that no one is saying that Saddam had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks. Certainly George Bush never said that. Those who scream that he lied about this connection have yet to produce an actual statement of his to back up their slander. On the contrary, both Bush and even Darth Vader Cheney himself have both repeatedly said Saddam did not attack us on September 11, 2001. So the critics are left sputtering about “insinuations” and “misleading” and blah blah blah, all the while unable to come up with concrete facts.

I remember calling Tom Barberi, a failed Utah radio talk-show host, not long after someone in the administration admitted that Iraq did not pose an “imminent” threat to us at the time we invaded. Barberi was brimming with righteous indignation as he accused Bush of lying to the American people. I reminded him that Bush had never said the Iraqi threat was imminent. In fact, in his 2003 State of the Union speech, he said exactly the opposite.

I quote:

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.

We didn’t react on 9/11 until after the threat was imminent, and we all see the horrific consequences. 9/11 taught us we need to connect the dots. That’s why Congress, in an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote that included the support of both Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, voted to authorize the war. That’s why the United Nations Security Council unanimously voted for Resolution 1446, which warned Hussein of “serious consequences” if he didn’t disarm immediately.

Then, when things got difficult, everyone went wobbly. Everyone, that is, except George W. Bush.

The old saying is that success has a million fathers, but failure is an orphan. People who see failure in Iraq want to pretend that it’s all Bush’s fault; that he lied all along, and that Iraq is a distraction from the “real War on Terror.” They couldn’t be more wrong.

(As for the “no-weapons-of-mass-destruction” issue, I always ask Bush-haters why Bush didn’t plant the weapons once he got there. Surely if he were dishonest enough to willingly deceive America into believing in imaginary weapons, he’d be slimy enough to fabricate the evidence, or get Cheney’s Halliburton buddies to do it for him.)

The fact is that the War in Iraq is critical to the future security of our nation. If we pull out, al Qaeda has a safe haven from which to plot new and more brutal attacks on America. The Islamists who hate us because of who we are become emboldened. America, which has never been beloved by Islamic nations, would now no longer be feared by them, either.

And then what happens next? Connect the dots.

Holiday Euphemisms

Happy Holidays!

What? You think I’m jumping the gun by just a few months? Then, obviously, you’re not looking at a calendar. Rosh Hashanah begins on September 12th at sundown, and both Yom Kippur and Ramadan start on September 21st. And, apparently, Japan celebrates Respect for the Aged Day on September 17th.

Yet “Happy Holidays” is an unnecessary euphemism in September, because if you want to wish someone a Happy Respect for the Aged Day, you don’t have to do it in code words. You can actually mention the holiday in your greeting without fear of reprisal. Same with “Happy Halloween” or “Happy Thanksgiving” or “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

Can you see where I’m going with this?

The reason I really hate the expression “Happy Holidays” is that it turns “Merry Christmas” into a political statement. “Merry Christmas” no longer just means “I hope your Christmas is a merry one.” It now also means “SCREW the P.C. police! I’ll wish you a Merry Christmas if I damn well want to! The A.C.L.U. can’t tell me what to do!!”

Christmas shouldn’t be a time to pick a fight. It should be Christmastime – not “winter break” or “the holiday season.” And “Merry Christmas” should mean just what it says. I’m not sure how we can get back to that.

“Happy Holidays” defenders insist that they’re more tolerant and kind, because their greeting is more inclusive. Except that it isn’t. Polls show that over 95% of Americans celebrate Christmas. You’d be hard-pressed to say the same thing about, say, Halloween or Valentine’s Day, yet no one has to vaguely acknowledge a “holiday” in order to avoid giving offense to the fundamentalists who think October 31 is the day children dress up to unwittingly worship Satan.

Ah, say the H.H. Defenders, but there are more holidays being celebrated than Christmas in December! What about Hanukkah? Or Kwanzaa? Huh? HUH?!!

What about them? If you want to wish me a Happy Hanukkah, do it! I would certainly appreciate the sentiment. And, believe it or not, I’ve been wished Happy Hanukkah a number of times in my life, because I grew up in a Southern California neighborhood that was predominantly Jewish. We used to get Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah off from school. It was great – we usually went to Disneyland on Yom Kippur. And I was always jealous of my friends who got to eat their peanut butter sandwiches on Motzah during Passover. (Not sure why, though. Motzah tastes like cardboard.)

We sang Hanukkah songs in my fifth grade chorus. And not just namby-pamby songs about dreidels and such. I still remember one song with a haunting, strange Hebrew melody:

May your days and nights
Be a feast of lights
The eternal flame, may it glow in you
And the Holy One, may He know in you
Only love

The song started with talk of “mama lighting the Menorah” and “Papa reading from the Torah.” And I, a good little Mormon boy, sang along cheerfully without even considering a lawsuit! I even had a solo during the song “Eight Bright Candles of Hanukkah.” How cool was that? I’m very grateful that I was raised to appreciate a religious culture different from my own.

And, by the way, Hanukkah is a relatively minor Jewish holiday – essentially the celebration of a military victory. The real holidays – the High Holy Days - take place this month, and nobody makes any ballyhoo over them in the culture at large. Hanukkah’s secular importance has exploded in order to compete with Christmas, and many of my Jewish friends celebrated both, so as not to miss out on Santa’s loot.

Once upon a time, when you said “Merry Christmas” to a Jew, they took it as a message saying “I hope your December 25th is a merry day,” not “convert to Christianity or burn in hell, heathen!” Actually, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a Jew – or anyone of any other religion – who would take offense at being wished a Merry Christmas. Except Jehovah’s Witnesses, but they hate everything holidayish.

And then there’s the Kwanzaa people.

Kwanzaa sucks. I have no patience for Kwanzaa. It has no religious significance or history. It was created forty years ago by someone trying to stick it to Christmas - a Bizarro Christmas for Atheists. Why should I have an ounce of respect for a holiday that was created in anger to stir up the kind of P.C. resentment to even the mere mention of Christmas that we see today?

Yet here’s the rub: if you wish me a Happy Kwanzaa, I’ll take it in stride! It will make me smile! Because at least Happy Kwanzaa doesn’t devalue the very existence of Christmas the way “Happy Holidays” does.

Some see my attitude as unnecessarily belligerent. As columnist Anna Quindlen wrote last year:

It is surprising to discover that some believe the enduring power of the story of the child born in Bethlehem to be so shaky that it must be shored up by plastic creches in town squares and middle-school concerts. Apparently, conservative critics are also exercised by the fact that various discount stores have failed to pay homage to the baby in the manger, in their advertisements, their labeling and even their in-store greetings.

She gets it exactly wrong. It’s not that my faith depends on seeing the baby Jesus in Wal-Mart ads. It's that she's so skittish about Christian intolerance that she won't even allow us to mention Christmas by name. Is it too much to ask for some direct reference to the holiday I’m supposed to be happy about? I’m tired of having to pretend that Christmas doesn’t matter as much as it so clearly does. I am disgusted with Christmas TV ads filled with Santa Claus and Christmas trees that end with “Happy Holidays” because mentioning the word “Christmas” might offend Anna Quindlen.

When people say “Happy Holidays,” they’re not being inclusive. They’re running scared. They mean “Merry Christmas,” but they’re afraid of looking intolerant by actually saying it.

So where does that leave me?

Grumpy? Intolerant? Embittered? Not really. I still love Christmas and everything about it. when someone wishes me Happy Holidays, I smile, wish them a Merry Christmas, and hope the politics don’t get in the way.

In the meantime, Happy Respect for the Aged Day.

Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity

So, according to Ain't It Cool News, the new G.I. Joe movie is going to feature an international fighting force rather than a “real American hero.” In addition, G.I. Joe will now be an acronym for "Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity" to make all the multilateralists giddy with excitement.

Why?

Well, according to a Fox News report, “The word is that in the current political climate, they're afraid that a heroic U.S. soldier won't fly.”

Now this is deeply stupid on a number of levels, and, ordinarily, I’d like to take the time to rant about this. But his time I won’t. OK, perhaps I will, but just for a moment.

Who’s going to watch a movie like this? People who want to see G.I. Joe wouldn’t be remotely interested in the Global Integrated Johnkerry whatever. And the John Kerrys of the world wouldn’t be interested in G.I. Joe, so why cater to them? Are you really that embarrassed by your country, Hollywood, that you can’t bring yourself to put a patriotic hero on the screen?

End rant.

Because this news report exposed something even more terrifying: a bunch of people who commented on this article are total liberal weenies who loathe America. And if there really are millions of people who think like them, this nation is doomed.

Think I exaggerate?

I quote from the article’s “talkback” section:

This Liberal is really sick of the s--- you conservative a-- monkeys have done to this great country. Just because you're all closeted self haters who have to think of the President to make love to your wives doesn't mean you can continue to blame us for your f---ing up the country. You're hyper nationalism belongs somewhere else comrade.

I’m not sure what’s more appalling here – the ideology, the vocabulary, or the grammar.

The idea that America represents all that is good, righteous, and freedomtastic is OVER. Its been over for awhile (actually, if it ever was true), but now? After Bush and his Oil Baron cronies effectively turned the US into a Theocratic Imperial Power? After the human rights disaster of the Iraquagmire? Please. In the eyes of the world, and in at least 50% of the US itself, we are no longer even remotely aligned with anything good, righteous, or freedomtastic. We are the bad guys. Period.

Yikes. We’re a theocratic, imperial power? I wonder how this guy would do under Sharia law.

…to the neocon mind, "fair and balanced" = you agree with whatever Bush says regardless of the fact that everything he has said has proven to have been either:

1) a bald-faced lie resulting in the deaths of untold thousands of innocent women and children both at home and abroad or

2) So far off from the real world as to represent a kind of Bizarroworld Drydrunk Narnia like affair for retardo theocratic redneck f---tards who just want to kill as many non-white, non-christians as possible regardless of the utter lack of justifable pretext.

And that doesn't even take into account the Bush regime's monsterous incompetance. Worst ‘president’ EVAR. Seriously, how many people still support the man? Like 10% of the country? Please. Just stop it.

Take note. Hatred is not a coherent argument. And learn to spell. Dumbest post EVAR.

Does this frighten anyone but me?

These are probably the most egregious whiners over there, but many more bellyache about how rotten America is because the whole world hates us.

And when, exactly, did the world love us? When Clinton was president? When Carter was president? Golly, the world sure despised us when Reagan was the guy at the top, and then a funny thing happened.

The Soviet Union went away.

That wouldn’t have been the case if we’d all taken Jimmy Carter’s advice and gotten over our “inordinate fear of communism.” Hey, Jimmah! We didn’t get over our inordinate fear of communism. We got over communism instead! And guess what? The world – or at least the world Carter cares about - loathed us for it.

The Eastern Bloc countries didn’t, though. It’s been said that, even today, Poland is the most pro-American country in the world – including America. They recognize that America isn’t an “imperial” nation or a “theocracy.” If it were, Iraq would be a whole lot more stable, because we wouldn’t be wasting time trying to avoid slaughtering civilians or trying to get the Iraqi government on its own two feet. We’d have our warlords in power demanding tribute and killing those who didn’t comply.

And, no, that’s not what we’re doing now. If you think that’s what we’re doing, you’re probably a regular at Ain't It Cool News.

Which do you prefer – adoration or freedom/security? Because you can’t have both. Bush is making the hard choices that require something liberals don’t have – the strength to endure hatred in order to be right.

Fact is, I don’t give a crap if the world hates us. The world respects us. The world fears us. We’re in charge. And the guy in charge doesn’t usually get to be loved. Deal with it.

And if you can’t make a good G.I. Joe movie, don’t make one at all.