Canceling Cable

So we've decided to live without cable television. No, this photo isn't my TV. (It's "HLJ's" from flickr.com which is a cool website but not the focus of this blog today.)

The Denver Nuggets almost convinced me to keep cable today by trading Allen Iverson for Chauncey Billups, but the decision to cancel was finalized before the trade was. And for me at least, the Phillies ended my baseball season by winning the World Series. Too bad they didn't run into the Rockies again this year. So I really have nothing to watch until April rolls around. Ash is gonna miss the new episodes of Law and Order Special Victims, and I'm gonna miss mind-numbing sessions of Family Guy that I've seen a dozen times each, but it was a choice that had to be made.

It all came down to the discretionary dollar, $400 in fact that we'd rather spend on other things for the next six months. Comcast had us, and we weren't even thinking twice about it, but then they had to go and wake us up by increasing the bill to almost double what we'd been paying with the introductory offer.

25 Years Later...I Meet The Murph

Dad thought it was so funny every time baseball came up to remind me of that time when I was seven years old and I skipped church. That day Brother Connors, the organist in our ward and at the Astrodome, brought Dale Murphy who was in town for the Braves/Astros games.

Dad liked to point out that all my friends got autographs and met the best Mormon baseball player ever, and he liked to think that it somehow affected my future attendance of church meetings.

Too bad Dad's not around anymore because he would have loved me telling the story of how Brother Murphy sat down in front of us a few weeks ago at the American Fork/Lehi High School football game. I've seen him at a couple of games since, but nothing beats that first night when it took me half the game to figure out what I'd say to my childhood hero in the flesh. I was so nervous.

By the way, I finally found a use for all of John Poor's taunting and jokes. My friend from Denver was relentless about how he hated baseball and ended up in the Boston mission with President Murphy, and I loved baseball my whole life and ended up in soccer-crazed Ecuador. By the way, John, he says "hi" and remembers your middle name.

I wonder if meeting The Murph will affect my future attendance of high school football games.

And P.S. At 5'11" I was standing on the bleacher above him. He hasn't shrunk that much since his playing days.

Someone is KIDding me!

My dear wife Ashley peed on a stick, and sure enough, we will be blessed with kid(s).

So now we're talking about names, freaking out about how to pay the bills, searching for a quality doctor near American Fork, touching her belly a little more, puking and gagging together, joking about having twins, wishing Denver were closer, and counting our blessings.

So I guess I'll be growing up afterall.

Are you kidding me?

The price of gas in the land-locked, Rocky Mountain state of Colorado is under $3 and falling. This picture was taken in Greenwood Village near Denver on October 20, 2008. Meanwhile, we live in Utah and pay $3.34 per gallon for the cheap stuff.

Even Grand Junction right along the interstate was cheaper than Utah! We paid $3.11 there.

Does anyone know why gas is cheaper in Colorado and California than it is in Utah where incomes are lower, rent is lower, and voters are supposed to be more conservative?

Skyline Football-A Storied History and Storybook Poor Sportsmanship

As the man on the loudspeaker with the endearing phonemic disorder touted the past 40 years of Skyline High School football during the homecoming half-time celebration, we sat in the visiting stands reveling. 40 years and 20 state championship games, 14 state championships, local celebrities contributing to the sportsworld, etc...It all was drowned out by my thinking. Every other year since its inception, this school competes for the crown in football. Surely, I thought, this team, this school, is a champion.

And then they lost. And to American Fork High School nonetheless! Maybe there were bad calls by the refs, but bad calls didn't make the punter fumble in the first half resulting in a short field and an AF touchdown. Refs didn't make the kid hit the quarterback after the ball was away or even pile on the runner who already was down on the sideline late in the game. The ref didn't miss the extra point, and the subjective pass interference call mentioned in the paper this morning doesn't change the fact that Skyline coaches abandoned a gameplan to run on first and second downs to throw more in the second half. Quite frankly, the calls were equally devastating by the refs against both teams, and champions don't let officials decide games.

As a relative newcomer to the area, I don't know the history of AF sports drama or reputation. I went to the game last night because Skyline is supposed to be good, and my friends were going in support of their daughter who is a cheerleader, and because I usually love the emotion in high school sports. However, the post-game emotion of this one was a mixed bag.

American Fork won. The kids celebrated. The coaches for AF walked toward the Skyline side of the field for well-wishing and were left standing there with hands on hips. The AF players followed their coaches over for the ceremonial handshakes with the same result. The paper today says that the Skyline coaches rushed the team off the field to avoid a confrontation after an AF player took a swing at a Skyline player. I was there. I didn't see it. Frankly, winners don't usually start the post-game fights, and this statement in the paper sounds like a poor excuse from a poor loser, definitely not from a champion.

The more than half-dozen capable police and law enforcement officers didn't react to any post-game altercations because there weren't any. The losers last night were Skyline's players who were deprived of an opportunity to suck it up and learn that sports are as much about how to lose as they are how to win. Here's to hoping that they get plenty more opportunities to learn that lesson the rest of this season and that their coaches show more class as they do.

To the coward who threw the half-full, 2-liter bottle of Mountain Dew up and over the visiting bleachers and then ran off after the game, sleep well knowing that you hit somebody's grandma in the neck and that your bottle will always be half-empty.

And to the fans, players, and especially the coaches of the Skyline High School football program, you were not worthy of being called champions last night. Do better next time.

The Avon Walk for Breast Cancer

At the end of June this year, the Perry's, my in-laws, went on a weekend getaway. Juli, Ashley's mom, has survived breast cancer, and found out shortly before the getaway, that she's surviving again. Always a giver, Juli refused to cancel the plans. She and her 4 daughters would raise over $2000 each for cancer research and local breast cancer programs, walk a grueling 26 miles at about 9000 feet in altitude on blisters and sore feet, and show the family just how tough they all are.

Meanwhile, the men in the family, accustomed to receiving all this love and kindness, were honored to play supportive roles: changing diapers, entertaining toddlers, supplying Diet Cokes to our trailblazers, and walking portions of the path at different intervals. It was one of the most gratifying weekends I've ever lived, and all I did was take a few pictures, shed a few tears, sweat, and bask in the love of a forever family.

Uniting in a cause greater than any of us, Juli brought the family together that weekend to serve each other and our community and taught us by her example too many lessons to be written on a blog. Especially with the news of her cancer coming back, we could have backed out and been pampered at a mountain resort for a weekend instead of bleeding and crying and walking for hours.

So if you're reading this, and you're thinking about a worthwhile vacation for your family that will bring you all closer, don't focus on your family and force proximity. Turn the family focus to serving a cause bigger than any of you and really rally around that. Mix in a little suffering and tears, and the blessings of the experience will give you all something to believe in.

You can comment on my experience, but I'd much rather hear about yours.

Welcome First Timers to my Blog

I'm really sheepish about publishing my own opinions despite how much I may like to talk about them and how correct they all may be. It just strikes me that this may be a good way to post stories or events or announcements or anything that we'd like to post in order to keep in touch. I looked into websites and myspace and facebook. Facebook was okay, but this is sooooooo much cheaper and/or easier than all of those options and I don't feel so much like a teenager when I post something. I feel 24 or 25 at least! Anyway, welcome. Feel free to respond to this blog or others so that you can see how easy it is too.

The pictures here are of me as an old man when I learn to play the guitar and sing for loose change and then when they shrink my head and put me in an Ecuadorian museum. They're pics from our trip to Ecuador.

The Baseball Debate

This is a picture of Ashley, my loving, understanding, enabling, beautiful wife. I married very well to say the least. I am also in the picture with my Rockies beenie and Rockies jacket. Ashley didn't know that Boston wears red and showed up to last year's World Series game 4 (as pictured) wearing her lovely, red turtle neck sweater. It was a cold day to say the least, but I've forgiven her for making the Rockies lose the game and series.

Here's the grind: This was my seventh season working for the Rockies. We talked about bucket lists on the last blog. Attending the World Series was ALWAYS on mine until last year, when God sent the World Series to me. I hope he's not helping me cross out the list because he knows something I don't. Anyway, we spent about $400 for tickets, a hundred or so for food and souvenirs, we go on a road trip with the team every year for a vacation, it's a little more than a passion--we're talking borderline obsession that I may need professional help to overcome.

The Rockies are about to present National League Championship rings which could go anywhere from $50 to thousands. Should I, or better put, how should I go about this proposition to my extraordinary, patient, longsuffering wife?

Did I mention how much I love her???

http://64.235.35.226/rings/

10 Things on my Bucket List

I had a Bucket List long before the movie came out. Mine is mostly about places I want to go, and it's not in any order.

1. Yankee Stadium (This July)
2. Wrigley Field (Next Year before it's called something else)
3. Float the Amazon River (December)
4. See China--Float the Yellow River, Terra Cotta Warriors, the Wall--and then get outta there!
5. Float the Nile River without getting eaten by a hippo or crocodile or mosquitoes.
6. Float the Mississippi River without getting eaten by a 9' catfish or mosquitoes or rednecks.
7. Pan for gold and fish in Alaska when it's warm.
8. Own a beachhouse in a less commercial part of the country.
9. Learn to fly.
10. Take the kids on a church history driving tour. (That one's tricky because I'm gonna have to have kids first)

Real Cloverfield Revealed

Recently a movie was dismissed as being the illegitimate offspring of Godzilla and The Blair Witch. Wimps who forgot Dramamine or sat too close to the screen got sick while others couldn't get past the childish "monster movie" label. My advice to all: Read this and rent it on Red Box. If you haven't seen the movie, I don't suggest reading past the next two paragraphs.

First of all, Godzilla was a movie set in Japan. A fire breathing monster drops into a major city consuming men, women, children, houses, buildings, etc eating some, burning many, stomping them disrespectfully. The most vivid shots I remember from seeing this movie all those years ago are of the people's images getting burned into the wall behind them as they were reduced to ashes or terrified people looking up toward the heavens, mouths wide open, hands pressing cheeks, eyes bulging as they were stomped. Such destruction in Japan is rivaled only by the reality of atomic war. For the Japanese, Godzilla embodies the monstrosity of war that every person suffered passionately, nuclear war in particular, and the images from that movie drag each viewer painstakingly through the scenes they witnessed in reality or via media sources.

Cloverfield is about terrorism and each viewer's personal connection to the events of 9/11 and the war we still fight. As in reality, the setting is New York, and nothing is sacred. This blog is about symbolism. Please feel free to ask questions, add perspectives, identify other parts of the movie that I haven't investigated.

This is the part where you stop reading if you haven't seen the flick unless you want to lose the element of surprise.

• I don't think it was an accident that the first sign of a problem was an oil tanker overturned in New York Harbor. Oil, wealth, and Western ideals of freedom are at the base of our ongoing struggle with our enemies in the Middle East.
• Beheading the Statue of Liberty, read what you want into that.
• Footage of the Empire State Building collapse might as well have been straight from the Twin Towers' newsreel.
• The first targets and victims were civilians.
• The misunderstanding of what was going on and the repeated question of "why?"...any of this sound familiar? I know I asked that a few times on that morning of the 11th of September.
• Cutting the Brooklyn Bridge in half. There's no easy escape for us from this battle. There's no easy escape from the war we're in either.
• Plus it led directly to that cell phone conversation where our boy had to tell his parents that his brother/their son was dead. I choked up, but I'm a sensitive man.

The movie is scary because I rode that roller coaster in 75 minutes that I've been on for the last 7 years. At some point it became less about the on-screen presentation and more about how the movie was going to manipulate my gut reactions and memories.

• Not one frame is wasted in this short film.
• It is the latest in technological advancement for computer animation.
• The sound is impeccable; did you find it eerie when the credits rolled without a soundtrack?
• The lighting at 360 degrees as the handheld camera rotated and traveled from room to room: seamless!
• The best shot of the movie was when the camera slid to a rest as they lifted Beth off the rod that impaled her and all you saw was their feet. It could have been a bloodbath for the whole movie, but it wasn't.
• The gore that was there when Hudd's girl exploded was not as graphic as it could have been. Still I had a hard time with that much at the time. It was such a shock because it seemed out of place, all of the sudden, and unnecessary. At first I thought it was a compromise like they were obligated to make a chick explode in a monster flick, but then I remembered the last time I had that exact reaction: Remember when the Taliban beheaded those soldiers and civilians on the internet? Didn't that seem out of place and a little too gory and personal even for war?
• How about when there was no definite ending: did we win or did the monster? Is it destroyed or did it just go back to where if came from?

I've never been so happy to be manipulated by a movie; how refreshing that it's not a chick flick pushing the same old sappy love button over and over; Cloverfield is a pioneering success by all those involved. That's how I feel. Am I right or wrong? Join the blog...

Is blogging just grad school for myspace flunkies?

I'm new to blogging, and it may be something I outgrow in a week or two, but I admit being ADDHDTV or whatever. Fact is, last week I never would have seen myself blogging at all. It's so 21-29, and I'm so 31 (years old). Not that I'm against it. If it weren't for narcissism, nothing would get done at all, ever! I've been working at a high school in Aurora, Colorado, and when I resigned last month, all the kids tried to persuade me to make a myspace page so that they could keep in contact with me. I went to myspace for the first time, posted a picture, and immediately got bored. Then last week, out of the blue, a good friend of mine in her twenties pressured me to be one of her blogging buddies. (You can see her blogs at http://deebucket.blogspot.com/ for amusing wit, cute pictures of kids, and what not to do when interior designing.)

So the dilemma and the topic for this blog is:
Is creating a blog what you do when you're too good for myspace?

My marketing professor thinks blogging is a fad that becomes obsolete when you turn 29.

I have a healthy self-esteem. Just ask me, but I doubt that anyone wants to know my opinion on subjects ranging from the East coast bias in sports to the cultural bias in standardized testing. I may study those things, but what good does blogging do for those issues I care about?

Will you blog when you're 31?