Broadway Theatre in Salt Lake County

Rather than reinvent the wheel, I share with you the op-ed piece I wrote for the Deseret Morning News that ran in this morning's paper. You can read the original, along with sundry comments, here. 

____________

Where should the new Broadway-style theater in Salt Lake County be built? That was the implicit question posed in Erica Hansen's front-page article in last Sunday's paper. According to her, the answer is clear: "Those asked by the Deseret Morning News, except for Sandy's Mayor Tom Dolan and the project developer, almost universally agreed — downtown is the place."

I respectfully note that she certainly didn't ask me. Nor did she ask any of the members of the growing South Valley Arts Alliance, a community group consisting of residents from all over Salt Lake County who fervently support the Sandy city theater project.

In any case, I believe that the Deseret Morning News is, in fact, asking the wrong question. Unfortunately, it's the question that has driven most of the media coverage about this project, and both of Salt Lake's major papers have had no shortage of harsh words for both Sandy city and her mayor. The driving narrative has been that Sandy is essentially stealing something that rightfully belongs to Salt Lake City.

But this isn't a city project. This theater is being built with private funds.

Contrast this with the Sandy soccer stadium, which required a significant outlay of taxpayer money from both the county and the state. In that instance, elected officials from both bodies had a legitimate voice in how public resources should be used.

But this time around, county and state officials aren't being asked for a dime. So it's presumptuous of either the county or the state — or the Deseret Morning News, for that matter — to suggest that Sandy city needs their permission to move forward.
It's worth noting that nobody is making any attempt to prevent Salt Lake City from building any theater of any kind, either downtown or anywhere else. Sandy is not standing in the way. The stark reality is that the resources to make a downtown theater happen just aren't there.

Studies have been conducted, and all of them have concluded that a theater downtown would be wildly expensive — and that taxpayers would be forced to foot the bill.

Once again the Utah Theater is being considered as a possible location, but that would require tens of millions of taxpayer dollars just to bring that building up to code, without additional enhancements. Throw in parking considerations and other logistical challenges, and Salt Lake City is back at square one, regardless of what Sandy city does or does not do.

But why focus on the negative? With this theater in Sandy, Salt Lake County is being presented with an extraordinary gift — a valuable public resource that will not be built at public expense. Considering the explosive growth we've seen in the south end of the valley over the past decade, it's not surprising that a developer would find Sandy city a more appealing location than downtown.

Reviewing the project objectively, it's clear that all county residents will benefit from this magnificent addition to the community. This theater, and the surrounding development, will have countywide, statewide and even regional appeal.

So it's a bit silly to continue to ask where this theater ought to be. That train has already left the station. The real question is whether Salt Lake City or County should be able to kill a private development when they can offer no viable alternative.

Why should they be able to do that? And, given the tremendous opportunity to enrich the lives of all county residents, why would they want to?

On Racism: Benihana and Brazil Nuts

So my twin boys, Corbin and Cornelius, turned seven this week. We took them to Benihana for their birthday last night, and Corbin announced that he wants to be a Benihana chef when he grows up. I considered that a worthy goal, although the thought of my son flinging sharp knives all around the room is more than a little disconcerting.

My brother-in-law was sitting next to me, and I asked him whether you had to be Asian to work there. He corrected me.

“Not just Asian,” he said. “You have to be Japanese.”

“Japanese? Really?” I said. “You can’t be Korean or something?”

“Nope.”

“What, you really think they check?”

He thought for just a moment and said, “Nope, you can’t be Czech either.”

Rimshot.

Now, of course, Benihana has no racial hiring requirements at all. Yet there was only one non-Asian chef working the tables, and that got me thinking about race. That’s always a dangerous thing to do, because any discussion about race opens you up to the charge of being a racist, which, as we learned during the OJ trial, is far worse than hacking your wife’s head off with a butcher’s knife. I hesitate to even bring my goofy Benihana exchange, because to many on the Left, even acknowledging the slightest racial differences is tantamount to genocide. Everyone is so ready and eager to take offense. If race is the topic of discussion, it becomes a game of elimination where the first person to say something even marginally insensitive loses.

I really think we’d all be better off if we just got over it.

Easier said than done, sure, but we ought to let more things slide than we do. In my own admittedly white-bread experience, I’ve found genuine racial animus to be relatively rare. Boneheaded racial mistakes are far more common, and I don’t think they reveal much more than just provincial or cultural ignorance. I remember an incident on my mission in Scotland, where we had just baptized a great family that, all the same, were pretty hardcore leftists, and the husband was wont to wear a “Free Nelson Mandela” button on his lapel on a daily basis.

After the family was baptized, they were taught the New Member Lessons by a kindhearted elderly missionary couple from Bountiful, Utah, that I will rechristen Elder and Sister Kimball. They didn’t mean any harm to anyone, but the husband, particularly, was a pretty odd duck, and he had no idea who Nelson Mandela was, and he seemed utterly befuddled when this new member tried to explain why apartheid was not such a great idea.

It was his unassuming wife, however, who committed the racial faux pas that I will never forget.

I don’t remember the occasion, but it was some kind of church social function, and this new member family had brought some Brazil nuts as part of the potluck spread.

And as soon as Sister Kimball saw them, her eyes flew open wife and she said “Oooh! How wonderful! N—ger toes!”

“Really? her husband said. “I love n—ger toes!”

It was if someone had instantly sucked all the air out of the room.

Everyone was aghast. Especially me. If I could have dropped dead on the spot, I would have.

Things eventually went back to normal, so I pulled Sister Kimball aside, and she could tell I was upset about something, but she couldn’t imagine what.

“Why did you call these nuts ‘n—ger toes?’ I asked. “

She didn’t understand the question. “What do you mean?”

“That’s really offensive,” I told her.

“Why?” she asked. “That’s what they’re called.”

Turns out that she’s right, although somewhat outdated. “N—ger toe” was a common colloquialism for Brazil nuts through most of the 20th Century, and I’m willing to bet Sister Kimball probably hadn’t ever used the word to describe a human being. Yet I was terrified that the new members would be offended and would lose their faith over this.

I needn’t have worried. The new member mother cracked a Barzil nut and handed it to her two-year old daughter and whispered, with a smile in my direction, “Here, sweetheart. Have a n—ger toe.” Then she laughed, I laughed, and everything was cool.

Sure, we probably ought not be calling Brazil nuts “n—ger toes.” But should we ostracize an elderly woman for not knowing any better? Or should we all have a good laugh and get on with our lives?

I’m not trying to minimize the corrosiveness of real racism. In fact, I think that’s exactly what we do when we equate a stupid provincial mistake with being a closet Hitler.

I don’t really like Brazil nuts that much anyway.

Whither the Ozone Layer?

Remember the Ozone Layer?

Remember how doomed we were all going to be? The layer would disappear, which would mean no protection from the sun’s ultraviolet rays anymore. We’re going to be burned to a crisp! Sizzled! And why? Because we were all using too much hairspray. And air conditioners. And once that layer was gone, boy, it was gone. The end. We were all going to fry like a frog on a hot skillet.

That is, like, sooooo ten years ago.

See, in the meantime, it turns out that the ozone layer is repairing itself, because it fluctuates naturally. Solar activity produces ozone. We couldn’t get rid of the layer if we tried, even if we all used a gallon of hairspray per day on six billion Donald Trump-style combovers.

Guys, these doomsayer environmentalists have NEVER BEEN RIGHT. About ANYTHING.

So when my daughter Cleta comes home with her book order and thinks it might be fun to get a book about how we can all be greener, or even considers buying An Inconvenient Truth: School Edition, I want to absolutely throw up. These people are peddling sludge. Lies. Garbage. I’d rather eat a bowlful of DDT than allow Al Gore to poison my daughter’s mind. (And, by the way, studies conclusively prove that eating a bowlful of DDT wouldn’t hurt me in the least – another instance where green sensibilities have cost lives. Banning DDT has resulted in the deaths of millions upon millions of Africans who needlessly suffer from malaria. Thanks, enviros!)

Yes, I remember sitting in Mrs. O’Brien’s third-grade class and reading about the coming ice age. Now it’s the rising sea, because suddenly we’re warming, not cooling. Nobody bothers to note that the screeching alarmists who wrote my third grade textbook were dead wrong, just as nobody’s willing to announce that we don’t have to get the SPF 5000 sunscreen advertised in the movie RoboCop. We just move on to the next panic, one that always somehow requires us to cede more of our resources and our freedom to a centralized, paternalistic government.

I wish this were a conspiracy, but it isn’t. Conspiracies happen in secret. This is sheer, total idiocy put on display for all the world to see and embrace. And now both parties are embracing it. John McCain is in Utah today, mending fences, appearing with Mitt Romney, telling us all to go back to being good Republicans and vote the party line. And as soon as the coot is elected, he’ll push a multi-trillion tax to deal with a non-existent problem that only the bloated, clunky, ossified Federal Government can solve.

Today’s a good day for a global warming alarmist kook like McCain to show up in Utah. See, it’s almost April. And it snowed this morning.

And I'm somewhat miffed...

...that Dell Schanze hasn't shown up to rumble. Whatsamatter, SUPERDELL? Chicken?

Funniest Languatron Story in Years

I know not everyone has an interest in the lunacy that is Languatron, but this story is just too funny. 

It seems that Languatron has a bulletin board - "Langy's Fun Fortress." He created it over three years ago after being banned from several respectable and semi-respectable bulletin boards. In order to prevent such a thing happening again, and also to avoid actual criticism or debate, he disabled his board's registration. 

He therefore has a bulletin board at which he is the only one allowed to make any posts. 

Now that's stupid enough in and of itself. Except that he then took it another step further. He checked his IP logs on a regular basis and started banning repeat visitors from even viewing his board. Why? Because if they were interested in what Lang was writing, then, clearly, they were Universal Studios spies. So anyone who read the board regularly was summarily banned from reading it. 

But wait. It gets even dumber. 

Wittingly or not, Lang modified the board so that only registered users could read it. Remember, his board has only one registered user - himself. For the past two or three years, the board where only he could post has been a board that only he can read. People keep bringing this to his attention, but he ignores them, insisting anyone can read it, and the fact that you can't is a sign of your affiliation with the pure evil that is Universal Studios. 

Check it out for yourself. Then come back here for the rest of the story. If it were possible, it gets even sillier. 

See, over at frakheads.com, the only board where people can actually interact with the Lang, he has been boasting for months now about all the IP addresses of mine that he's confiscated. I've ignored his unreadable board entirely, yet he insists that I'm using "fake IPs" to keep trying to "crash" it. But Lang is on the job - he grabs each and every IP that comes along. He refers to them as "confiscated" or "captured," and has said I'll "never be able to use them again" and that I'm "running out of them." It's like he has his own IP address cattle ranch, and he's poaching all of my livestock. 

Anyway, he recently posted the entire list of the IPs that are in the Languatron stockade, and it's a formidable list, indeed. I asked him, therefore, how he knew that all of those were mine. 

Here's his answer, verbatim:

"[My stats software can] tell if there is more than one visitor a day and by golly, no matter how many IP addresses the board gets per day, it's only registering one visitor. Fake IP addresses can't fool the software, the software knows it's the same idiot."

I read that and almost soiled myself laughing. See, there's a difference between hits and visits. His software is telling him what we've been trying to tell him for years now - as the only registered member, only he can visit the actual board.  Yet all these hits continue come in, whether they're Google spiders or whatever, and since the board only logs one visitor, he assumes they're all me. 

What he also doesn't understand is that, even if I am every IP address under the sun, he's admitted that his board only gets one visitor per day. He's just too stupid to realize it's him. 

That's all. You may now return to your regularly scheduled life. 

What are you wasting your time here for?

The new Moist Board awaits...

Over the Weekend

Moist Board restoration continues apace, the current problem being that I can't get a decent backup of the existing database. Any attempt to back it up craps out after about 17 megs, and the database is at least 5 times larger than that. Still working on it. 

Moist Board backup wasn't all I did this weekend, though. Easter was fun, complete with Easter egg hunting and family coming over for a barbecue. Very pleasant, indeed, except for the amount of time I spent trying to put together a basketball standard that my boys got for Christmas. Mechanical things and me just do not mix. Mrs. Cornell's brother helped out for a bit, but the standard is still only partially constructed and scattered all over the front lawn. 

I watched Citizen Kane over the weekend, too. I didn't mean to, because we had The Office Season 3 Discs 3 and 4, which were going to be the entertainment portion of the weekend, but Disc 4 was broken. I was ticked off. So, with nothing else to watch while I loaded plastic Easter eggs with candy, I had to abandon Steve Carell and Co. and settle for watching what many consider to be the best movie of all time. 

I liked it more than Casablanca. And I can understand why it merits such high praise - it's technically extraodinary, especially for a 60-year-old film. Other than the black-and-white photography, it has the look and feel of a modern film. 

I don't think I'll ever watch it again, though. 

In the first place, I knew the big Rosebud twist. So there was no mystery to the thing. Consequently, I had to get interested in the characters, and, frankly, they weren't all that interesting. It was novel to see Orson Welles as a young, skinny man as opposed to the bloated, ZZ Top wannabe hawking no wine before its time. But there was something off-putting about him. You always saw his wheels turning -  the whole movie felt like "Look what I can do!" You never lost yourself in the story, because there wasn't much of a story. It lurched from one event to another with little logical connection. Driving it all was the mystery of Rosebud, which was ruined for me by the song "The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun." 

SPOILER OF A 60-YEAR OLD MOVIE: 

"Answer me, Debbie, who's Johnny? Oh G-- this is like that movie Citizen Kane you know where you later find out Rosebud was a sled? But we'll never know who Johnny was because like she's dead."

END SPOILER OF A MOVIE THAT YOU PROBABLY ALREADY KNOW 

By the way, Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father. 

Bottom line: congrats, Orson. Well done. But if it's all the same to you, I'll watch the Simpsons parody next time instead. 

"Lobo! Lobo! Bring back Sheriff Lobo!"

I also read the comics this weekend and, just for fun, read Rex Morgan M.D. It wasn't fun, so I don't know why I read it for the express purpose of having fun. It made me wonder if there's anyone out there who reads Rex Morgan M.D. on a daily basis. Or Mary Worth. Or any of the serialized soap opera comics. Are any of you on pins and needles to see what happens next week in Prince Valiant? Anyone?

My family started a March Madness basketball bracket. I'm losing. Badly. I picked all the teams at random, and I had Georgia going all the way, and I think they lost in the first round. 

SuperDell Schanze is running for Utah Governor on the Libertarian ticket. If you don't know who he is, consider yourself fortunate. He started a computer company in Utah called "Totally Awesome Computers," and he distinguished himself by running the most obnoxious radio commercials known to man, all of which featured Dell himself with his nasal, whining smirk. I remember some where he told you to pray and ask God which computer you should buy, and others where he talked about a tribe of Native Americans called the Shiffer Indians, and they were really stupid, so if you don't buy a computer from Totally Awesome Computers, you have "Shiffer brains." (Get it? Sorry.) 

He's decided not to accept any campaign contributions for his gubernatorial run, but since he's now the spokesman for MoneyTrain, a title lending company, he's going to insert political crap into his new, perhaps even more obnoxious radio ads. That should be good for a laugh - if you don't mind having your eardrums scraped out with a paring knife. 

He, Richard Dutcher-style, no doubt Googles himself on a regular basis - his company's defunct and he doesn't have much better to do - so I wouldn't be surprised if he commented on this. So SuperDell, know that I don't know you and have no personal beef with you, and I have no interest in being labelled one of the "angels of Satan" that you dub anyone who criticizes you in public. I just think your ads are aural torture, and you're now the only reason I won't be voting a straight Libertarian ticket in November. 

Happy Easter - the Moist Board is back!

That's not a huge cause for celebration, as it's not on the new server yet. So it's still achingly, mind-numbingly slow. But at least it's there. 

Turns out I had changed the password for the database. I changed it back, and voila! Slow board returns. iPower continues to suck. 

I've been a neglectful landlord over there for far too long, but the thought of that board just vanishing forever scared the bejeebers out of me. There's too much stupidity concentrated in one place to just let it die. 

Languatron, over at frakheads.com, was prematurely celebrating Moist's demise. Lang loses again. Now THAT'S cause for celebration. 

So after sitting on hold for 45 minutes...

..I talk to a woman at iPower who listens while I tell her the story of the Moist Board's troubles, and then she says, "I'll write up a technical support ticket for you and have technical support take a look at it." 

Yet she supposedly works for technical support, so I'm not sure why I wasted the 45 minutes in the first place. 

I really, really loathe iPower. 

The bottom line is that I have a 47 meg DMP file written for MySQL 5.0, and I'm trying to restore it to a new MySQL 4.0 database as the Moist Board languishes in limbo.

Any thoughts? Suggestions? Cyanide brownie recipes?

Yes, I Know the Moist Board is Down

I'm sitting on hold with the doofuses - doofi? - at iPower, because the Moist Board is down. I downloaded the whole database as a DMP file, and I think iPower converted the online database to the same thing, which is something unreadable by the old board. 

Whereas the new board has an earlier MySQL version, so we're having major compatibility issues. 

This blog still works, I guess. But for how long?

Migration Update

I tried to get everything done last night, but hit some technical snafus. I went skiing today with the fam, so I've been incommunicado. The kids and their mother are all at a play - Amelia Bedilia or something - so I'm getting it all straightened out even as we speak.

All the files have been transferred, but it's now a question of getting the new Moist Board in sync with the database.

More info as it all develops...

Stallioncornell.com is migrating to a new server

Some of you who read this blog may not be regulars at Stallion Cornell's Moist Board, but if you click on the link provided, it may take you six months to actually see the long-running Internet home for malcontents and troublemakers. So I'm announcing that my brother-in-law is generously providing server space to accommodate the deathly slow Moist Board, along with this blog and various other effluvia. The transfer will begin tonight, and hopefully be concluded fairly quickly.

Just so you know. I thought I'd mention it here because it doesn't take nearly as long to load blog pages.

Is There a New Generation to Talk About?

My wife and I went to a Who concert a little over a year ago, It was loud. Very loud. Very loud indeed, with an exceeding loudness. Mrs. Cornell would try screaming at me to say something during the show, and I couldn't hear a blessed word she said.

But loud is good.

Half of The Who is dead. Drummer Keith Moon died in '79, I think. (Their new drummer is Zak Starkey, Ringo Starr's son.) Bassist John Entwistle died just a few years ago. So now it's just singer Roger Daltrey and Guitarist/Singer/Songwriter Pete Townshend. Daltrey looked a bit like he’d been reconstructed, but he sounded great. Pete Townshend was just amazing. No guitar smashing, though. Would have liked to have seen some guitar smashing.

My biggest disappointment was that they didn't play a single track from Quadrophenia, which is my favorite Who album. Not one. Not even "Love Reign O'er Me." I would have liked to hear "Real Me" and "5:15," too. Alas, it was not to be. I also kept screaming "Squeeze Box! SQUEEEEEZE BOX!" but they paid no heed. No boxes were squeezed.

Their entire encore was a Tommy medley, though. The visuals were amazing. They had five moving screens behind them. During "Pinball Wizard," a large pinball floated through all the major landmarks of the world.

They also played a bunch of new stuff. I've got the new CD, so I was appreciative, but I was in the distinct minority. You could feel the energy in the room just collapse when they'd launch into something unfamiliar. They played "My Generation," and the place exploded, but then they segued from "My Generation" into a new track, and everyone sat down. (How they can still sing "I hope I die before I get old" with a straight face is beyond me.)

We had really cheap seats. We watched the opening act - The Pretenders, who sucked - from the upper bowl of the Delta Center, and right before The Who came on, we decided to go find better seats. We zipped past an old lady usher and found the only unsold block of seats near the floor. I kept expecting someone to show up and take our seats from us, but no one ever did. I felt like a rebel. A cheap rebel, but a rebel, nonetheless.

To sum up: a fun, loud show. (And I still want to be a rock star. I've sent in my application, but I have yet to hear back.)

I bring all this to your attention because my nephew left on an LDS mission to Buenos Aires last month. Before he left, we had a long, involved conversation about music.

He’s twenty years younger than me. And we like all the same bands. The Who, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Springsteen, Zeppelin, Queen, and Genesis were at the top of his list. I’ve never much liked Zeppelin and, while I respect Queen and Genesis, I’ve never really gotten into them.

But the fact remains – his bands are my bands. And there aren’t any new bands.

There really haven’t been any new bands for a very long time.

Maybe Coldplay, but I’m not convinced that Coldplay is still going to have fans in twenty years when my nephew’s nephew goes on his mission. People still talk about U2, but U2 is an 80s band that has survived. Where are the 21st Century bands? Are there are any worth mentioning?

Part of the problem, too, is that I’m old and I wouldn’t care about a new band even if there were any. I’ve got tickets to go see The Police when they come to Utah, but I’m excited by the fact that they’re going to play nothing but retro crap. If a hot new band appeared on the horizon, I’d savagely ignore them.

The Internet and music distribution channels have fragmented music to the point where it’s next to impossible for a new band to get noticed. It’s very hard to tell what’s a hit nowadays anyway. Top 40 radio doesn’t really exist, and all the rap/hip hop/pop-tart Britneyesque crap out there is just interchangeable noise.

Maybe I’ve just become my parents. Except they loathed popular music back in the day. Dad’s the right age to be an Elvis fan, and Mom’s the perfect Beatles demographic. But Dad hates Elvis. And Mom wouldn’t know a Beatles record if it goo goo ga joobed right there in her living room. They bristled at every attempt by my siblings and me to “educate” them about the latest pop fads of the day.

But my 11-year-old daughter has made no such attempts. She likes The Beatles. And show tunes. And none of her friends have tried to introduce her to any new stuff. It makes me think there really isn’t any new stuff. I haven’t been able to say “Turn that crap down,” because my daughter listens to the same crap I did.

My generation, baby.

Dreams, Idols, and Beatles

Did you know that Ann Coulter and Al Pacino are brothers?

I didn’t know it until my wife told me. She’d read it in a magazine on an airplane. So I Googled it and saw that everyone essentially already knew this, and nobody bothered to mention it overtly. I couldn’t understand why.

Then I woke up.

Turns out Ann Coulter and Al Pacino are not related at all, and since Ann Coulter is, in fact, a woman, she’s not anyone’s brother. But somehow, in my dream, all of this made perfect sense.

That’s what’s so nifty about dreams. It’s not the strange things that happen; it’s the fact that nothing seems strange at the time. Individual dreams only last a maximum of about thirty seconds, so there’s no time for exposition. You can be driving down a road made of orange peels and have a dandelion growing out of your nose, but the thing that catches your attention is that someone stole the Diet Coke from your cupholder. Then you wake up and it takes a few minutes to sort it all out.

I only remember the dreams that get interrupted, like last night’s Coulter/Pacino incident. On occasion, I have fleeting memories of other dreams, but they dissolve if I try to bring them into focus. On my mission in Scotland, one of my companions kept a dream journal where he’d write down what he’d been dreaming immediately upon waking up. Then, before we’d begun our scripture study, we’d have a five-minute dream report. I’d try to remember something, but usually it was just broad strokes, like “I was flying” or something.

His were always much more specific, with funky details.

I’ll never forget the morning when he described how he’d walked into the loo only to find Bill Cosby smoking a cigar in his bathtub. When my companion told him to get out, he grumbled a bit and then stood up and left, leaving a tub filled with wet dog chow.

You can’t make that stuff up. At least, not consciously.

_____________________

The Cornells are not American Idol freaks, but we’re watching it off and on, particularly to cheer on the Utah folks. David Archuleta was back on his game last night, and it’s going to take an awfully big upset to keep him from winning this thing.

What’s interesting to me these past two weeks is how Beatles songs don’t really lend themselves to a singing competition. None of the Beatles would have won American Idol in their heydey, because while they were unique and distinctive, none of them were particularly showy vocalists. (Maybe Paul could have won it, but John? I doubt it. And certainly not George. Ringo? Ha.) Watching Idol wannabes sing “Yesterday” and “Blackbird” underscored just how understated Paul’s original vocals were.

It’s the songs themselves that are the stars, not the singers. Or maybe it’s that the singers are inseparably intertwined with the songs, making it impossible for anyone else to do them justice.

Michael Whatsisname’s butchering of “A Day In The Life” is the perfect example. That song is indelibly Lennon with a smattering of McCartney in the bridge. Vocally, the melody is deceptively simple, and the original arrangement throughout the majority of it is pedestrian. It’s the weird Beatlesy edges and unexpected transitions that make it unique, and none of them work in a cookie cutter, straight rock rendition thereof. It just comes across as scattered when it’s ripped out of its context.

In addition, the songs that do fit the kind of singalong meme that Idol embodies are the early Beatles moptop tunes, which, to be honest, are thoroughly mediocre as standalone songs. So we had Ramiele singing “I Should Have Known Better,” and she was eviscerated by the judges for a dippy arrangement that they failed to notice was lifted note-for-note from the original recording. Chikizie’s weird ballad/hoedown version of “I’ve Just Seen a Face” had a variation on the same problem – he was trying to gussy up a tune that wasn’t very interesting to begin with.

It’s also worthy of note that almost all the songs chosen on both Beatles nights were McCartney tunes, with just a couple of Lennons and a single Harrison – although, admittedly, “Here Comes the Sun” is one of the best Beatles melodies written by any of the Fab Four. Pop culture hails John as the supreme talent of the Beatles, but I think that has a lot to do with the strength of his personality and the fact that he died a tragic rock star’s death. When you stack up the actual songs, you discover that most of the really great ones are McCartney’s.

You can try to argue this, but if you search your feelings, you know it to be true.

That’s not to denigrate John, who’s “Strawberry Fields Forever” transformed the Beatles from a really fun boy band to the indelible icons they have become. But notice that none of the Idols chose to sing “Strawberry Fields Forever.” As a song, it’s unwieldy and difficult and strange. Whereas “Yesterday” has been covered more often than any other song on the face of the earth.

That’s why David Archuleta could take a song like “The Long and Winding Road” and make it something magnificent, but no one tried to do anything with “I Am the Walrus.” I guess it’s too harsh to say one song is better than the other, but clearly, one stands on its own as a song, independent of its singer, and the other is forever locked in time with John Lennon and the Magical Mystery Tour. They’re just two very different things. And only the McCartney things work for a show like American Idol.

Reviews of Two Ancient Movies

I saw Casablanca for the first time last night.

It’s one of those movies that, as a theatre guy, I’m supposed to have already seen. But I’ve never really wanted to see it, and now that I no longer pretend to be artsy, I’ve felt no obligation to watch it. I’ve also never seen Citizen Kane. It’s supposedly the best movie ever made, yet I don’t know anyone personally who loves it. I think it’s one of those things that highbrow people are compelled to appreciate, so no one wants to admit that they’ve either not seen it or have seen it and didn’t care much about it.

Casablanca, though, is different. People love Casablanca. Even my wife, who maes no attempt to appear artsy, had good things to say about it. So last night, while we folded the laundry, we cranked up Bogart’s classic and watched it after the kids went to sleep.

Did I like it?

Well, it was interesting in the same sense that going to a fine museum is interesting, but I can’t say that the flick really did anything for me.

In the first place, it’s very hard to overlook that everyone is smoking all the time. That’s consistent with most films of the ‘40s, but all I could think about was how Humphrey Bogart must have reeked. Even in the love scenes, Humphrey is chugging away like a wood-burning stove. It’s distracting and unpleasant. Bogart is undeniably charismatic, but he also looks 327 years old, especially in the flashback scenes where he’s supposed to be young and in love.

And Bergman? I just don’t get it. First off, she’s not that pretty. She’s not ugly, certainly, but everyone in the film is so gaga over a fairly plain-looking woman that I just didn’t understand the appeal. And why would you fall head over heels for a chick who cries a lot and not much else? There’s a sort of distinguished elegance to her, but the stilted formality of her line delivery became tedious very quickly.

And what to make of the plot? It’s actually quite thrilling to think that this movie was made during World War II, several years before anyone was sure whether the Allies or the Axis were going to win. Now, in hindsight, it feels creaky and labored. It’s indisputably a fine example of filmmaking of its time, but the whole thing feels frozen in amber. There’s no immediacy to it, no life.

Sam was good, though. Although it’s jarring, in our politically correct culture, to hear Ingrid Bergman refer to him as a “boy,” despite the fact that he’s probably twenty years older than she is. Racist anachronisms abound in old movies.

Compare Casablanca to another old classic I saw recently – Arsenic and Old Lace. I had seen the play done well at the Utah Shakespearean Festival years ago, and I’d always wanted to see the Cary Grant version.

I was startled by how dark the film was.

The premise is black comedy to begin with – two unassuming old ladies who murder unsuspecting travelers and bury them in their basement - but I assumed they’d have brightened the thing up to make it an appropriate 1940s feel good comedy about happy people with happy problems.

They didn’t.

At one point, Cary Grant’s character is tied up and shown the instruments that are going to be used to torture him in the most gruesome way possible. And while the torture never actually happens, it’s remarkable that they let the character be so violently descriptive.

There is some softening from the stage version. Cary Grant rejoices about being the “son of a sea cook” instead of a “bastard,” which his character announces in the play – and the old ladies are dragged off to the sanitarium before they can kill one final time like they do in the play. (Which yields one of the play’s best exchanges: The victim says “I can’t remember my last glass of elderberry wine,” to which one of the old ladies says “Here it is!”)

Unlike Casablanca, this movie feels almost contemporary. Certainly Cary Grant has more life to him than Bogart does, and nobody on earth wears clothes better than Cary Grant. It’s just not the frothy romantic comedy that one would usually associate with Cary Grant. Maybe that’s why I liked it so much.

I still haven’t seen Citizen Kane, though.

St. Patrick's Day, Obama's Pastor, Heather Mills

A St. Patrick’s Day tidbit you may not know:

I don’t know if it’s the case anymore, but for quite some time, David Letterman’s personal assistant was a Latter-day Saint. And right around every St. Patrick’s Day, word would go out around the congregations in Manhattan that Letterman tickets were available for the March 17th taping. It seems that Dave prefers an all-Mormon audience on St. Patrick’s Day to ensure that nobody in the house is drunk.

________________


Barack Obama’s pastor is starting to generate mainstream media attention, and what’s startling is that his incendiary statements have been ignored until now. He’s essentially a Christian Farrakhan who, on the Sunday after 9/11, preached a sermon calling for God to damn America instead of bless it. He has repeatedly claimed that the government created the AIDS virus, pushed crack cocaine to destroy the black community, and essentially engages in surreptitious genocide against African-Americans.

Obama’s response has been tepid.

While he does repudiate the specific statements that are brought to his attention, he insists he was nor present when any of them were made. He calls the pastor “a crazy uncle” and tries to pretend that he’s peripheral to his life. And until the Rush Limbaughs of the world beat the drums on this, most of the media was more than willing to give him a pass.

Folks, after the spiritual evisceration of Mitt Romney, this just isn’t going to fly with me.

Romney, as you recall, was forced to answer for any kind of lunacy that any Mormon in history might have perpetuated. He had to essentially apologize for polygamy and the Church’s history on race repeatedly, and his magnificent “Faith in America” speech was dissected from every possible angle to ensure that Mitt’s faith was palatable enough for mainstream Americans.

Contrast that with Obama, who has made Reverend Jeremiah Wright the center of his spiritual life for over twenty years. Mitt, you recall, had to apologize for statements made by people in the 19th Century. Obama’s relationship with this guy is personal; it’s voluntary, and it’s extensive. For him to say he didn’t know the extent of his America hatred means he’s either disingenuous or stupid. Neither is an attractive trait in a president. My love affair with Obama is coming to an end.

I still can’t vote for McCain, though. Perhaps it’s time to flush my vote down the turlet and give it to the Libertarians.


________________


The divorce is final, and Heather Mills just carved about $50 million dollars out of Paul McCartney’s flesh. Yet she’s whining on the steps of the courthouse that it’s not enough. Paul is worth over a billion dollars, after all, and what’s going to become of their poor little girl, with only $70,000 a month on which to survive?

Gross.

Rich old dudes need to remember that they’re still old dudes, and young fillies wouldn’t love them if they were broke. As Paul consoles himself with his hundreds of millions, he should find somebody his own age – and make her sign a prenuptial agreement.

As for me, I think I’ll stay married, thank you very much.

Mr. Felgewater Doesn't Go to Washington

Reading some comments about Myron Felgewater’s reign of terror brought a smile to my face, even as I recalled some of the more rancid moments of my tenure under his boot. I’ve heard it said that comedy is just tragedy plus time, and that’s exactly how I feel about the Felgewater years.

There’s one other moment, though, that deserves special consideration, especially during this wacky political season.

It was when Myron Felgewater ran for mayor.

As background, you need to understand that Myron Felgewater would ask questions to which he already knew the answer, or at least he thought he knew the answer. The purpose of his requests for advice was to seek reinforcement for what he had already decided. If you gave that reinforcement, you were a genius. If you in any way disagreed, you were an imbecile. This was especially true if you were a competent professional in Felgewater’s industry, an industry Felgewater prided himself on knowing nothing about.

I spent a good deal of time cringing as Felgewater would brazenly unveil his incompetence in meetings with competent professionals. He’d do this in every setting imaginable. Favorite phrases were “It’s not rocket science,” or “It’s a no-brainer.” (With Myron, everything was, by definition, a no-brainer.) For example, he hated doctors, because, according to Myron, none of them knew anything. To him, the only thing that was rocket science was, well, rocket science, and even there, he thought he probably understood it better than those egghead science geeks did.

So at some point, Myron decides that it’s time for him to spread his wings and inflict himself on the community at large, and he files for office to run for mayor of the small, bedroom community in which he lived. So, knowing I have a political background, he, for some unfathomable reason, comes into my office to seek my advice.

Here’s how it all unfolded.

“I’m running for mayor!” he said breathlessly.

“Congratulations,” I said. “I hope you win.” I meant it, too. If he had won, we might finally have been rid of him.

“So what do I do?” he asked.

I paused for a moment before asking, “What do you mean?”

“I mean what am I supposed to do to run for mayor?”

I blinked a few times and said “Well, get out and meet the voters!”

“What?” he asked. “Like, door-to-door?”

“Sure,” I said. “It’s a small enough town that you could probably shake every voter’s hand before Election Day.”

“People hate that in this town,” he insisted. He started to get very hot under the collar very quickly. “Nobody wants to be bothered in their home. In fact, they’d appreciate a candidate who was considerate enough to leave them alone.”

“Well, Solomon Burke is knocking doors,” I countered. “He’s out there running hard.”

“Yeah, and he’s turning everyone off. I’m not going to do it.”

“Uhhhh, okay,” I said. He’d made up his mind, so I didn’t press it.

“What about lawn signs?” he asked.

“What about them?” I said.

“Solomon Burke has, like, a million of them out there.”

“Yes, he does,” I said. “You’re going to have to work pretty hard to catch up.”

“But I’m not going to do lawn signs,” he said. “They’re ugly. They clutter up everything. And they cost too much money, which my wife won’t allow me to spend.”

“You’re not going to do any?” I asked incredulously.

“Nope. I’ve put up some flyers at Albertsons instead.”

And that he had. On the community billboard. Cheap, Xeroxed copies of a self-made “Myron Felgewater for Mayor” logo. Right next to the ads for one free guitar lesson and the “Have you seen this dog?” flyers.

“So,” I summarized, “you’re not going to knock doors, and you’re not doing lawn signs.”

“That’s right.”

“Well,” I said, gathering up the courage to ask a transparently obvious question, “how do you intend to let people know you’re running for mayor?”

“Public forums,” he said, looking at me like I was too dumb to see the genius of his non-campaign. “I do great at the public forums. But the ones we’ve had so far have been so podunk and stupid. They’re a real waste of time. At the last one, all the guy wanted to know was ‘why are you running for mayor?’ He kept asking that over and over.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“I didn’t have an answer for him,” he said. “It’s just a stupid question.”

“It is?”

“Of course it is!” he snapped. “This is a tiny, backwater, stupid little town! Why would anyone want to be mayor?!”

“Ummm,” I said, buying time to, once again, cite the bone-chillingly obvious without mocking him overtly. Then I said, “You and I probably agree there.”

“Thank you,” he said, feeling reinforced.

“The difference, of course…” - and those of you with brains can see where I was going with this – “…is that you are, in fact, running for mayor, and I’m not.”

“So?”

Seriously. He still didn’t get it. I had to actually ask the question.

“So, if you think this is a stupid town and that the mayor’s office is worthless, why ARE you running for mayor?”

It took awhile for me to convince him, at least for the sake of argument, that it was a question worth answering. As we talked in circles, it came out that the reason he was running was he was being charitable, and that the yokels who infested this beknighted town might benefit from the majesty of a Felgewater’s wisdom. He fully expected to coast to victory on the basis of his name alone.

Eventually, he put about five or six real lawn signs, moaning about how expensive they were and belittling Solomon Burke for being foolish enough to think they mattered.

In the end, they didn’t matter. There were three candidates in the race. The top two would face each other in a primary, and Myron consoled himself with an unwavering assurance that he could at least beat the other, non-Solomon Burke guy, because “nobody knew who he was.” Turns out about 24% of the town knew he was, because that’s who voted for him. Whereas Solomon Burke won handily, with well over 70% of the vote. The number two guy opted out of a primary and backed Burke.

And Myron?

Admittedly, he did better than I thought he would. He polled 137 total votes, which, coincidentally, was about the number of Felgewaters who lived in the town. (There were probably more, but I doubt Myron even won a majority of his immediate circle of friends.)

In his post-mortems, he insisted that he’d only run so that Burke wouldn’t be “coronated,” because “everyone knew he was going to win, anyway.” This despite the fact that Burke had relentlessly annoyed the town’s citizens by knocking on their doors and putting up lawn sign clutter. He also complained about the conspiracies that kept him from learning about the “good” public forums to which he wasn’t invited. (The newspaper was in on that one.) Actually, I think he probably wasn’t invited to several events, but that was because he and I were the only two people,other than his stingy wife, who knew he was running for mayor.

I shouldn’t gloat. I ran for office about five years later and lost. But I came in third out of five, and I lost by a 6-vote margin and gathered more votes than the bottom two candidates combined. (That sounds impressive, but there were only about 200 total votes cast, as I lost in a political convention among county delegates. So I lost by about 3%.) But throughout the whole campaign, I kept thinking about Myron Felgewater. I could survive losing, but not Felgewaterian humiliation.

In the end, I shouldn’t have worried. Nobody who runs for office will ever have to be that badly embarrassed, as long as they do two things:

1) Have a reason for running, and
2) Actually campaign.

The Office in Real Life

So Mrs. Cornell and I are watching The Office on DVD every night, and I realize that one of the reasons I like the show so much is that it seems to defy plausibility, but it doesn’t. It is, in many ways, frighteningly accurate. I’ve had a boss that’s every bit as awful as Michael Scott, if not more so, and I’m willing to bet that quite a lot of you out there have, too.

I want to give details, but I also don’t want him to sue me. (I think he’s too stupid to Google himself the way Richard Dutcher did, but someone else may bring this post to his attention, and he’s vengeful enough that he’d likely go out of his way to make my life miserable.) So I will change his name to Myron Felgewater, and I will try to be as oblique as possible.

Myron became the CEO of a multimillion-dollar company just prior to his 30th birthday, despite having no academic or professional background of any significance. (Directly prior to being a CEO, Myron was a collection agent for a credit card company.) The fact that the Felgewater family owns the company, I think, somehow figured into the equation, although one can never be sure.

Like Michael Scott, Myron is completely oblivious to how he is perceived by those who work for him, many of whom refer to him as “Lettuce” or “Hair.” (As in “He’s as dumb as a sack of lettuce,” or, “He’s about as bright as a box of hair.”) He would cheerfully wander the halls whistling like a bozo, and everyone wondered what, exactly, it was that he did all day. I didn’t, though – I knew his primary purpose was to make sure that everyone was at their desks at 8:00 AM and stayed until at least 5:00 PM. One salesman who worked for the company and spent most of his time out on sales calls was fired because, in Myron’s words, “he was never at his desk.”

Given that mindset, it wasn’t startling that the company lost hundreds of thousands of dollars on an annual basis.

He got irritable if I lingered in the office past five, because he always wanted to be the last person to leave so he could look important. But since he had nothing to do, he would twiddle his thumbs and make cheerful moaning noises in the office down the hall, just to let me know he was still there and wasn’t happy about it. I would often leave to let him drive his company car about five blocks to his house, and then I’d come back to work late, so I wouldn’t have to worry about him barging into my office to announce his latest paranoid conspiracy theory, most of which involved invasions by the Chinese as a precursor to the Second Coming. (Seriously.)

Everyone was out to get him. The press; the government, and, especially, the gays. Homosexuals terrified Myron, and at one point, he asked me what we could do to avoid hiring them. I reminded him, as gently as possible, that it would be illegal to do that.

“We wouldn’t have to tell them that was why we didn’t hire them,” he replied.

Brilliant.

I asked him what he intended to do about the homosexuals who already worked for him. He looked like I had hit him in the head with a two-by-four. “There aren’t any homosexuals who work here,” he insisted, much the same way Mahmoud Ahmidinijad promised that Iran is a gay-free zone.

 I wisely neglected to mention that Herb, one of our most effective managers, was openly gay, and, later I gave Herb a heads-up about the clandestine gay-bashing meeting. Herb just chuckled and said, “That sack of lettuce couldn’t spot a gay man if he had bells on.”

Myron didn’t like women much, either. He fired every female executive within six months of their hiring date, usually because “they’re too focused on home, not work,” or, my favorite, “I can’t give her any criticism without having her start crying on me.” I think he kept hiring women to see if he could be open-minded, and then he’d can them when reality set back in.

Myron loved staff meetings, all of which would spiral wildly out of control and accomplish nothing. So the topic of most of our meetings became “What can we do to make our staff meetings more productive?” I suggested that we don’t have them. Maybe that’s why Myron tried to fire me twice. (He was overruled by older and wiser Felgewaters, who usually stepped in when Myron actually tried to do anything significant.)

We used to love the holiday season even more than most, because for two months, Myron spent all of his time outdoors, hanging Christmas lights on the office building and in the parking lot. On more than one occasion, several of my co-workers noted that most people who hang lights don’t earn a six-figure income for doing it. Still, no one really complained, because it kept Myron out of the office.

Perhaps the one defining moment that gives you a sense of who this guy is: he wanted to do a corporate event and hire the Broadway touring cast of The Lion King to entertain. When that proved to be impossible, he suggested we do our own version. I told him Disney probably wouldn’t allow that. “No, you don’t understand!” he said. “We could do something different, something special!”

“Like what?” I asked.

“We could do The Lion King with real lions!”

It took some time to explain that real lions have a tendency to eat people more often than cartoon lions do.

Enough time has passed since my Felgewater days that The Office just makes me laugh. If I’d been watching it while I was working for Myron, I don’t think I could have stopped crying. (And then he probably would have fired me, because that would have been proof that I was gay.)

Poopy Politics

Yeah, Eliot Spitzer resigned. So what? I don’t live in New York, and while all reports are that this guy is an insufferable, self-righteous prig, he has had no impact on my life whatsoever. His resignation will likely mean little or no change in how New York is governed, so what’s the big deal?

Well, the big deal is What It All Means.

Blech. What it means is that the media is uncomfortable reporting on sex scandals that involve Democrats. Sure, they’ll do it, but they’ll wring their hands the whole time and neglect to put a little D by the name of the offender. Contrast that to how they excoriated Larry Craig (R-Idaho) for his foot-tapping, and you see the latest example of a double standard. But who was looking for more evidence? How can anyone possibly argue that the mainstream media doesn’t tilt hard to the left? It’s just part of the landscape, and it’s hardly worth mentioning.

The only thing interesting in all of this is discovering how much this guy paid per hour for his hookers. Over five grand?! No wonder I’m faithful to my wife. I can’t afford not to be.

Other than that, this story just adds to the political noise.

Similarly, Obama and Hillary’s travails stopped being interesting a long time ago. But does anyone else notice that all the grunge is coming from one direction? Hillary’s people shamelessly denigrate Obama based on his race, and he shrugs his shoulders and moves on. Yet one of Barack’s lackeys has the temerity to call her a “monster” and instantly the lackey gets the sack. So many papers insist on talking about the Democratic infighting as if it’s a two-way street. How can anyone ignore the obvious – that Hillary Clinton is a shameless, corrupt, Machiavellian banshee? Say what you want about their politics, but Barack is manifestly more decent than the scheming Clintons. I just don’t see where there’s room for argument on this.

The only political story of any interest is the idea of Mitt Romney being considered as McCain’s running mate. I don’t know if it’s a good move for Mitt, since McCain’s going to lose, and Mitt runs the risk of turning himself into Jack Kemp or John Edwards. But if Mitt were on the ticket, I’d be forced to vote for McCain. So it would be a good move for the GOP, certainly. But I doubt it will happen, because McCain is a grudge-holding jerk.

Who gives a crap?

Actually, the crap section of yesterday’s post is much more interesting to me than anything in the political world these days. Not so my family. In private messages, my sisters have made it very clear that they do not find defecation in the open air to be a mystical act. My wife also expressed her extreme displeasure in my interest in the subject.

To them, I say – pshaw. Pooping costs lests than $5,000 an hour, but I refuse to do it outside, because then I’d have to clean it up.

Daylight Savings, Dumps, and Oil Demand

Daylight Savings is an idea that has outlived its usefulness.

It certainly wasn’t invented by anyone who had young children. Because young children don’t adjust to daylight savings for weeks. You keep having to put them to bed long before they’re tired and then wake them up an hour before they’re ready. It’s even worse with little babies, who get up whenever they feel like it and whenever you don’t feel like it.

I suppose it’s better in the Fall than in the Spring, when you lose an hour, but the baby will still scream according to their internal clock, which stays constant year round.

_____________________________

Is there anything more satisfying than taking a dump?

My Esteemed Colleague, who has joined me on many a crank call, has written a startlingly insightful essay about defecation. You can read the whole thing here, but I quote just a few excerpts to further discussion:

• "Naturally, defecation should be a primal pleasure, releasing endorphins and flushing the entire body with waves of tinglies and satisfaction. When one defecates upon the earth, in the open air, a special connection between the body and the earth is confirmed. It is truly a gift of self, a returning of what has been eaten from the earth to the earth. It is a mystical act."
  

And:

• "Defecation so practiced brings a euphoria similar to and often superior to that of orgasm. This is one of the gifts that nature gives to a body in balance, in the circle. This euphoria can last for up to an hour after defecation."
  

The key to having a primo defecation experience, according to this writer, is to do so outdoors, complete with “groans and howls of delight.”

It looks as if I’m quoting him to mock him, but I am not. I have to concede that his central premise has merit. I thoroughly enjoy the process he describes, much to the disgust of Mrs. Cornell. Yet I haven’t done it outdoors since my Boy Scout days, so I may lack the necessary experience to offer a considered opinion.

_____________________________

You cannot repeal the law of supply and demand.

Demand for oil is way up, yet environmentalists insist that the United States not respond by creating the commensurate supply. Then they’re aghast that gasoline will soon be approaching $4 a gallon.

Conventional oil production in the United States peaked in the 1970s, which, coincidentally, was the last time we built an oil refinery. Even if we upped production significantly, we’d probably not see prices fall, because we’d have to ship the excess oil overseas to be refined.

There’s more oil in shale in the Four Corners area than in all of Saudi Arabia. It could make us entirely energy independent and fuel our nation for hundreds of years. It would cost about $40 a barrel to recover. So why don’t we recover it? Because environmentalists want this area left entirely pristine, despite the fact that it’s primarily scrub and juniper bushes and not much else. 

As soon as I can strap a windmill on top of my car and go 75 miles per hour, I’ll stop worrying about oil. Until then, it’s about time the enviros gave us a break.

What, Me Worry?

Around Christmas of 2002, I broke my arm. I told everyone I did it while I was wrastling a bear, but, in actuality, I slipped and fell on the icy steps of my front porch. Had there been a bear on my front porch that particular morning, though, I would have wrastled him but good.

Anyway, they prescribed Vicodin for me to help with the pain. I dutifully took my prescription according to the doctor’s recommendations, until three or four weeks after my fall, I asked Mrs. Cornell:

“How long should I keep taking these?”

“You need to keep taking them for as long as you have pain,” she said.

“I haven’t had any pain for a long time,” I answered. “I just like how these make me feel.”

She made me stop taking them after that. Dang it.

I’m a big fan of drugs. With my hacking cough/cold, I’ve been a Nyquil and Dayquil junkie these past few days, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it. It’s a good thing I’m a Mormon, because otherwise I’d probably be a lush.

That’s why the recent article about depression in Utah didn’t surprise me much. In case you missed it, it seems Utah leads the antion in terms of diagnosed cases of depression, most notably Utah women. The article concludes that Mormon women are far more depressed because A) they’re expected to be perfect, and B) their education system is underfunded. (Don’t worry, fellow Utahns – Explanation B didn’t make sense to me, either, and I have a California public education, which was overfunded.)

In my non-professional opinion, I think Utah women are diagnosed with depression more often than the national average because A) non-Mormons self-medicate with alcohol, and B) Utah women are smart enough to get a doctor’s help to treat depression. The only way a good Mormon takes drugs of any kind is if a doctor tells them it’s OK. But a cold beer is available to most folks without benefit of a prescription.

That’s not to say that the Mormon peer pressure isn’t extensive. But given the tone of the article, it’s clearly an attempt to slam the church under color of objectivity. The article refers to the “Mother of Zion syndrome,” as if it’s actually some kind of recognized psychological disorder. I think the author was suffering from “Mitt Romney withdrawal syndrome.” We all respond to the syndrome in different ways. I become a political hermit, whereas this reporter finds some other excuse for bashing Mormons.

With Mitt Romney on the sidelines for the next four years, we can reasonably expect the number of anti-Mormon media slams to subside. But only if the media continues to take its medication.

I'm sick.

I don't like being sick. And I don't have time to be sick. But sick I am. Hacking cough, raw throat, chills, and a basso profundo voice. 

Everyone likes to hear about other people's illnesses. 

And my John Adams review...

... is now posted over at Aint It Cool News.

World Premiere of John Adams

So for reasons I cannot explain, I managed to wrangle an invite to the premier of HBO’s John Adams series, held tonight in the US Capitol building. Star Paul Giamatti, Producer Tom Hanks, and original biography author David McCullough were all on hand for a reception held in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall, hosted by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and teeming with politicos like Ted Kennedy and Patrick Leahy and politico wannabes like Chris Matthews. Also lobbyists.

After eating lots of finger food – I liked the chicken and artichokes, not so much the beef gristle on a stick – we all trekked down the stairs over to the Cannon House Office Building, where we sat in unbelievably uncomfortable banquet chairs that seemed almost to be stacked on top of one another. We then listened to some blowhard congressman from Adams’ hometown of Quincy, Massachusetts – he pronounced it “Quinzy” – and he proceeded to waste our time as he introduced his faithful colleagues, none of whom you’re ever heard of. But then he introduced Tom Hanks, who I'm sure you have heard of, and he apologized for the uncomfortable chairs and told us that this wasn’t how they did it in Hollywood, and said “That’s what you get for living here. What can I say? Move.”

He won us over instantly. But my picture of him (left) is pretty bad.

He told the story of how John Adams successfully defended the British soldiers who instigated the Boston massacre, thereby demonstrating that our nation was ruled by law, not men. Then he introduced Adams biographer David McCullough, who was gracious and elegant as he excoriated the rising generation for being historically illiterate.

Then the screening began.

What we saw was the second episode, which covers the time frame surrounding the Declaration of Independence. It lasted an hour and a half and is presumably the second of six such episodes for HBO, based on McCullough’s book. What’s ironic about this is my family recently watched 1776, the musical version of these events starring a tone deaf William Daniels as John Adams and White Shadow Ken Howard as Thomas Jefferson. The HBO series could not be further removed from the singing KITT version.

In the first place, nobody sings. Indeed, you wonder if any of them have ever even heard music in their lives. There’s nothing pretty about these people – they’re muddy, sweaty farmers with grit under their fingernails, scraggly wigs, and bad teeth. You can almost smell them from off of the screen. The only exception was Laura Linney, who was a strong, steely presence as Abigail Adams but still looked, even without makeup, like she was regularly getting her eyebrows waxed.

Giamatti, on the other hand, somehow managed to be dumpy, short, and commanding all at the same time. He was a revelation as John Adams, as was Tom Wilkinson as an unlikely Ben Franklin. As soon as I saw Wilkinson, I had no idea who he was playing. Then he was addressed as Dr. Franklin, which stunned me. He hadn’t done much to mask his British accent, and I thought I would end up being distracted by having such an iconic actor playing such an iconic historical figure. It didn’t take long to lose him in the role, and the dialect actually helped the process along.

That’s because each of these characters had a unique dialect that demonstrated the transition from British English to American English. It was really quite an accomplishment, as I doubt I would have noticed had I not been so keenly attuned to Wilkinson’s natural manner of speech. Every effort was made to keep this thing authentic, which could have turned this into just another museum piece, but instead made it vibrant and immediate. It’s terrifying to watch as Abigail Adams is awakened at night by canons being fired from the ships gathered in Boston Harbor. You’re aghast when you see the foul circumstances that confronted the original Continental Army. (Although I could have done without the gruesome smallpox inoculations. Authentic pus doesn’t earn anybody credit in my book.)

Everyone rises to the occasion for this. Stephen Dillane is a perfect Thomas Jefferson – laconic, detached, and more than a little bit strange. And the guy who played John Dickinson – Cesar Woljnak, or something – he’s not listed in imdb, although I’ve seen him in a bunch of stuff – he was perfect. Absolutely perfect. His final speech where he pleads for Congress to reject independence almost had me rooting for the Redcoats. Some folks with me thought David Morse was too soft as George Washington, but I thought he was entirely adequate.

The performances take a back seat to the expert writing, which catches the flavor of McCullough’s heady book without drowning you in detail. They manage to include almost all the language of the entire Declaration in the final frames, but it feels dramatically relevant, not like a recitation. The show is always engaging, It’s heartening to see Tom Hanks putting something like this together. When a guy can do anything he wants in Hollywood and he chooses to do something like this, you know there’s hope for the world.

Also, smallpox is gross.

DC Memories

I have lived seven of my thirty-nine years in or near our nation’s capitol. Of course, six of those years were the first six, as I was born in the District of Columbia at the long-forgotten Columbia Hospital for Women. That was always a source of embarrassment for me, as being born in a woman’s hospital made me feel unmanly. I have since come to terms with it, though. Really, it’s cool. It’s still awkward on public forms when I have to fill in the city and state in which I was born, since I wasn’t born in a state. Now I know how babies born in leap year feel. (I don’t know what that means.)

We moved to California shortly after my sixth birthday, and I didn’t return to DC until a family vacation in 1993. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I was able to remember – about the landscape, about the people, about everything. I had a very clear memory of walking home from church and having my father explain to me that people sweat in the wintertime, too. I refer to this as the pivotal “Sweat Discourse.” I could probably reproduce it if I wanted to, but I don’t want to, and neither do you.

After I got married in ’94, I lived in DC with my new bride for nine months before heading back to Jackson Hole to launch the second season of the Grand Teton Mainstage Theatre. I spent several months as an intern for Senator Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming, who taught me two very important life lessons:

1. Hatred corrodes the container it’s carried in.

And, more importantly:

2. Never kick a fresh turd on a hot day.

I returned to Washington in 1999 when I accepted a position as a Senior Associate at Burson-Marsteller, an international public relations firm. What I didn’t realize was that the client I had been hired to represent – Iridium Satellite Phones – had gone bankrupt a few days before I arrived. So I had a cushy little cubicle on K Street and, literally, nothing to do. It was then that I started surfing the Internet to kill time and sought out information on a nascent Battlestar Galactica revival. If it weren’t for Burson-Marsteller, Languatron and I would never have met. That sounds gross. I should take it back, but the truth stands, despite my best attempts to, you know, not let it stand.

Anyway, I got a job offer back in Utah that matched my salary, so I left after three months. So I can say that I’ve worked in DC for a full year, separated by more than half a decade.

I love DC. I love the monuments, especially all lit up at night. The cherry blossoms in the spring around the Jefferson Memorial are something everyone needs to see before they die. I love reading the Washington Post and, when nobody’s looking, the Washington Times. I love the public transportation system, which is clean and efficient and actually gets you to useful places. I’ve toured the White House and the Capitol – I was actually a semi-official Capitol Tour Guide when I worked in Sen. Simpson’s office – and I could wander through the Smithsonian all day long – and have. As much as I get disgusted with the current political scene, I see the Washington Monument or that big old Lincoln dude and I realize the country’s probably going to pull through.

That’s reassuring, because our next president is really going to suck.

Hanging Out in DC

I don’t care who you are, the Washington Monument is inspiring.

I’m in DC until Thursday on a business trip, and I had to schlep a camera and a tripod with me. Since Delta only allows two checked bags, I had to put everything in one big honking suitcase, and it weighed over fifty pounds. So I had to take out a pair of Levis and two pairs of shoes to save eighty bucks extra in weight overage fees. So I’m lugging around a camera case, and a pair of jeans and four separate shoes, and then the line through security was backed out to the parking garage.

Rage was building. Pure, Languatronic rage.

Early in the day, this was going to be the sum total of my post – how much I hate to travel, how airline security blows, etc. etc. But I’ve already done plenty of that on this blog, and, much to my surprise, the flight was actually pleasant.

Why, you ask? Three words: personal video monitors.

I fly Delta more often than not, but this was the first time I’d been on a Delta flight with JetBlue-style monitors. It was heaven! I bought a movie and three HBO shows for $11 total, and it was more than worth it. No commercials, no airline favorite recipes/waterparks/wine tasting festivals videos, and, best of all, I could watch good stuff the whole flight.

And it was good stuff indeed – for the most part.

Is there a better, more reliable, more versatile comedic actor working today than Steve Carell? My wife and I are well into the third season of Netflixed DVDs of The Office, which never fails to have us laughing out loud. Yet the first movie I watched on the plane was Dan In Real Life, and Carell’s character couldn’t have been more different from the smarmy office boss he plays on TV. He’s made a career out of playing smarm – and playing it well, I might add – so it’s surprising when you see how disarmingly genuine he can be. He’s perfect in this role as a struggling single father facing an awkward romantic dilemma, and I tried to imagine what the film would have been like with Jim Carrey or Will Ferrell in the lead. Actually, Ferrell can do sweet – he was great in Stranger Than Fiction – but Carell has him beat by a mile. He’s not just a comic trying to act – he’s an actor. Who would have thought?

I then watched two episodes of the Ali G Show, with appearances by Borat and the fashion guy that Sacha Baron Cohen does so well. As a budding documentarian myself, I’m stunned how this guy gets away with ambushing his guests – luring prominent Christian conservatives like Pat Buchanan on to ask them ridiculous questions about why incest is really all that bad or why everyone with pubic hair shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

The segment where Ali G is interviewing a veterinarian and keeps confusing veterinarian with veteran was pretty funny, too. You can only take so much of this, though, as Cohen delights in mocking his “guests,” and it eventually becomes more cruel than funny. The poor veterinarian didn’t deserve the aggravation.

The best, though, was the fashion Nazi character, who was interviewing two vapid fashion magazine editors and showing them pictures of celebrities to get their comments. After they rip someone to pieces – Paris Hilton, say – Cohen would, supposedly off-camera, tell them he needed to suck up to Paris, and could they please do it again with positive comments. Which they did, without batting an eye. Suddenly Paris was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Fashion magazine editors don’t get my sympathy.

The last thing I watched was an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, a show I’d heard great things about and which, frankly, I didn’t like very much. Larry David is the real life George Costanza, and the fictional one wears better.

I got off at Reagan National Airport and hopped right on the Metro to my hotel. I don’t have anything going here until tomorrow, so I went running.

I got off the Metro at the Smithsonian station, and then I ran to the Capitol and back to the Washington Monument, and then past the World War II Memorial and the Reflecting Pool to the base of the Lincoln Memorial, on past the Korean War Memorial, across the street to the Tidal Basin and then through the FDR Memorial to the Jefferson Memorial, and then back to the Smithsonian Metro. Over 5 miles. I’m a man.

And now I’m eating pizza and blogging. Overall, a pretty dang good day.

Bad Children's Television

So a Facebook friend asked me to name:

1. The ugliest car on the road
2. The worst television show in history
3. The most annoying children's show on air today.

My answers were:

1. Not into cars so I can't name brands. My old minivan qualifies, though. 130,000 miles, a huge dent on the side, and a weird spoiler on top to make the whole thing look "sporty." We traded it in two weeks ago and got 1500 bucks for it.
2. Galactica 1980, where they find earth. Kids with flying motorcycles and Wolfman Jack. Blech.
3. It begins and ends with Barney.

I thought those were fine answers, but he corrected me with the following:

The correct answers:
1. The Aztec. Unparalleled ugliness. The Edsel is beautiful by comparison.
2. Small Wonder.
3. Caillou. Barney is freakin Citizen Kane. You must find it and try to watch for more than 30 seconds. Mu-ah-hah-hah

Now I have no idea what an Aztec looks like, and I have no idea what Small Wonder is. But I have to concede that’s he on to something when it comes to Caillou.

Caillou is creepy.

The woman who voices the four-year-old kid sounds like a schoolmarm doing an infant impersonation. And the whole thing is narrated by puppets that sound like they’re being voiced by octogenarians. The frames of the show are unfinished, as if they're part of some watercolor masterpiece. I don’t really understand why. The whole thing feels like it was created by an academic committee in the Canadian Department of Education. Which, I think, it was.

But I still think Barney is worse. Barney makes people violent. Including me.

One thing about Caillou that I thought was cool was taken away from me. I remember when I first heard the theme song, I thought, instead of singing "Growing up is not so tough/'Cept when I've had enough," they were singing "Growing up is not so tough/SUCKS when I've had enough." I thought that was pretty cool, but no.

Now I’m thinking about bad children’s television. I can’t be blamed for what I might do.