Archives

May142014

Happy 70th, Uncle George!

george-lucas_singapore-01-2014I remember a t-shirt I saw once, years ago in the fall of 1980… the fall after The Empire Strikes Back came out, the fall Ronald Reagan was vying against Jimmy Carter for the White House. The shirt was worn by a kid at my middle school, and it read, simply, “George Lucas for President.”

It seemed like a good idea at the time. That was how much we loved the bearded man from Modesto, California, the creative genius (or so we used to think) who’d given Generation X such a bountiful gift, an entire universe in which to let our imaginations roam, and who upended virtually everything about the way movies were made, distributed, marketed, and merchandised. To us, he was like Walt Disney must’ve been for our parents, a benevolent wizard who fulfilled fantasies we hadn’t even known we’d had and changed the world while doing it. We felt like we knew him, and we revered him. He was our hero.

But that was a long time ago… before the Great Disillusionment and the Fanboy Wars. These days, Lucas is routinely dismissed by many, and especially by the most passionate fans of his creation, as a hack… a greedy, no-talent megalomaniac who somehow got tremendously lucky, and whose only interest all along has been in selling the action figures we were all too eager to buy… and that we continue to buy, even as we curse the name of this master mesmerist who’s cast such a powerful spell over us that we can’t stop ourselves from reaching for our wallets.

None of that is true, or fair, in my estimation. As far as I’m concerned, the man still deserves our respect for creating the Star Wars universe (not to mention Indiana Jones), even if we (collectively) don’t especially approve of where he chose to take it.

Look, I’m no apologist. I feel a lot of frustration toward George Lucas, most notably with his obstinate insistence on suppressing the pre-1997 editions of the original trilogy. I’m frankly disappointed by many of the creative decisions he’s made, and many of the things he’s said, over the last 17 years. But at the same time, I cannot condemn him for the sin of being human. For getting older and revealing his limitations. For not taking his creation as seriously as we fans always have. For not loving Star Wars in exactly the same way we do. For feeling bitter at the fans who begged him for more, but then turned on him so viciously when they didn’t get what they expected. I disagree with him on many points, yes, but I also have a lot of sympathy for him. He really is just a guy from Modesto, a guy who created this crazy thing that grew beyond anything he ever could’ve dreamed.

So in the spirit of compassion for a one-time hero who turned out to have feet of clay, but who nevertheless must be given credit where it’s due, I’d like to raise a glass tonight to The Great Flanneled One, the Maker himself, George Lucas, on the occasion of his 70th birthday.

If it were possible for me to speak with him for a moment, I wouldn’t give him shit about Greedo firing first, or about Jar Jar Binks. I wouldn’t even hit him up about getting the real original trilogy on BluRay. Instead, I’d just say, “Thank you, George. Thanks for contributing to my happy childhood, and for providing me with so much pleasure and so much to think and talk about over the years.” Because in the end, no matter where the Star Wars franchise goes in the future, no matter where it is right at this moment, that’s his great achievement, and his legacy. And that’s worth celebrating.

spacer
May142014

And One from Mark Twain…

I’ve already posted this on Facebook and Tumblr, so sorry if you’re getting bored of it, but I really like this quote:

mark-twain_travel-quote

And the photo is pretty cool, too!

spacer
May142014

Three Frightening Quotations from Sylvia Plath

Frightening, that is, in how much they resonate with me…

Why the hell are we conditioned into the smooth strawberry-and-cream Mother-Goose-world, Alice-in-Wonderland fable, only to be broken on the wheel as we grow older and become aware of ourselves as individuals with a dull responsibility in life?

 

…

 

What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.

 

…

 

I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited.

That last one, in particular… yeah. I’ve often said that one of the big appeals, for me, of the movie and television series Highlander is the “what-if?” idea of immortal people being able to live many different lives down through the ages. The idea of having time to be and do many different things. I struggle almost daily with the knowledge that there just isn’t going to be enough time for everything I want to do in this world, all the places I want to go and things I want to accomplish, and that so much of the time I do have gets eaten up with mundane bullshit like household chores and paying the bills and commuting.

And that middle quotation… I struggle with that too. The sense that the potential I was always told I possessed is unfulfilled and my powers and chances are fading…

I think maybe it’s time to go for a walk in the sunshine…

Source.

spacer
May132014

She Moves in Mysterious Ways

I was driving to the train station on my way to work this morning, driving into the blinding sunlight of a new day as it poured over the Wasatch Range that borders the valley on the east.The air outside was a bit on the crisp side, following a downright chilly night, but I could tell from the quality of the sky that we’d have pleasant springtime temperatures by afternoon. “Mysterious Ways” by U2 had just started to thrum from the speakers, and I was feeling good… if not yet fully awake. Mornings have never been my best time.

Traffic was moderate as my Mustang dropped into the broad gully known to locals as “the river bottoms.” Until just a few years ago, this was a strip of undeveloped wetlands that formed a natural boundary between the east side of the valley and the west, but subdivisions and office towers are sprouting even here now, and the modest two-lane roads that used to cut through the bottoms with an almost apologetic air have swelled into four- and, in some places, six-lane highways. The posted speed limit is 50, but nobody pays much attention to that; my speedometer needle was edging toward 60 as the downward slope leveled off and my car started to blast across the flat center of this valley within the valley

And then I saw the deer standing on the far side of the road. It wasn’t a huge specimen, probably a doe or a young male, but I knew it was still big enough to cause a lot of damage if it were to have a close encounter with a car traveling at 60 mph. I let off the gas pedal and kept my eyes locked on the animal, feeling, as always, a spark of adrenaline and wonder at encountering a wild creature in a place that feels more and more tamed with every passing year. I found myself thinking of the time when my friend Jeremy clipped a deer in his Grand Am, and ended up needing to replace his entire front fender, and the wheel on that side as well.

Maybe I detected some flicker of increased muscular tension or a certain twitch of the ear. Maybe it was some inscrutable vestige of a sixth sense, some holdover from our distant ancestors’ hunter-gatherer days. Whatever it was that tipped me off, I knew, somehow I just knew, that the deer was about to make its move. And then it was in motion, bounding across the westbound lanes at incredible speed for a mere animal, the SUV coming in my direction braking hard enough to drop its nose toward the pavement. The deer made it to the center island and I tried to telepathically tell it to just stay put… but my Spidey-sense was still jangled, and I knew it was going to stand there only a fraction of a second before continuing on its way across the eastbound lanes… into my lane…

I saw, very clearly, that the animal’s speed was perfectly matched to intersect with my own course. I knew I couldn’t stop in time, and the image of Jeremy’s ruined fender was replaced in my mind with a picture of the deer impacting my beloved Mustang dead-center, rolling up across my hood, crushing in my windshield, falling into the cab with me…

My instincts took over. I was still thinking about what it would look like, what it would feel like, to have Bambi come crashing through my windshield, even as my foot mashed the accelerator to the floor. My Mustang boomed forward, closing the distance to the interception point. My fingers tightened on the steering wheel and turned it to the right, swerving the car into the emergency lane, trying to give the deer a little more space to have to cover before it hit me. My laggard imagination now pictured the animal’s broad chest plowing into my driver’s-side door….

And then I was clear, drifting back into the lane where I was supposed to be. I saw the deer in my rear-view mirror finish his (or her) run across the road with a final bounce that carried it over an embankment and down to the marshy riverbank below the level of the road, safely out of the human machine-traffic and back in its own realm. I kept my eyes peeled for another one as my car climbed the opposite side of the gully, but I saw no more.

The road carried me forward, past car washes and fast-food franchises and restaurants and grocery stores and strip malls. I got lucky and coasted through green lights the whole way. I turned into the park-and-ride lot and locked up my trusty ragtop and walked across a field of asphalt to board a gleaming white train. The same gleaming white train I ride every weekday morning into a downtown of concrete and skyscrapers and hemmed-in civilization. More and more tamed every year… but not entirely tamed just yet.

That thought makes me smile.

 

spacer
May132014

Best Anniversary Present… EVER

And this ad is pretty fun, too…

Written and directed by Bruce Branit, a visual-effects artist whose credits include the TV series Lost, Breaking Bad, Revolution, and Fringe. He was also one of the cats behind that incredible short film 405 that went viral a few years back. And get this: According to Gizmodo, this ad was done as a spec for his portfolio. On his own time, essentially for the hell of it, in other words…

We live in astounding times, when you think about it. We’re able to realize our fantasies (visually anyhow) to a level of realism we could only dream of only a couple decades ago… and it’s so economical that people are doing it on spec and just for fun.

spacer
May092014

Friday Evening Videos: “Love Somebody”

rick-springfield_walk-of-famePhoto: Courtesy of Mercury News

Turning now to cheerier topics, my main man Rick Springfield is having quite a week. On Sunday, May the Fourth (a.k.a. “Star Wars Day”), he appeared in a College Humor video as “Rick Forcefield” (little-known trivia fact: Rick is a sci-fi fanboy who owns an extensive collection of Star Wars action figures… “One of us! One of us!”). His first novel, Magnificent Vibration, was released Tuesday and has been garnering some good reviews (my copy is already waiting on the “to read” stack). And just this morning, he was honored with his very own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His fellow ’80s pop artist Richard Marx probably said it best during the ceremony today: “He’s arguably writing the best songs he’s even written in his life right now, plus now he’s an accomplished author, he’s still acting up a storm all over TV, and he’s still that good-looking… which, if I didn’t like him, would be really freakin’ annoying.”

In light of all that, I think it’s all entirely fitting to end the work week with a selection from the man of the hour. His signature song “Jessie’s Girl” is of course the obvious choice for a Friday Evening Video… which is exactly why I’ve chosen to go with something else. Because I’m contrary that way.

“Love Somebody” was a top-five hit from the soundtrack of Rick’s 1984 feature-film debut Hard to Hold, a mediocre flick that’s mostly remembered these days by middle-aged women who were teeny-bopper fans at the time, and who fondly recall those unfamiliar tingling sensations they experienced following a brief glimpse of Rick’s bare butt midway through the movie. (Rick mentions this moment in every single concert performance just before launching into this song.) The video is typical peak-period MTV: a quasi-narrative that mixes footage from the movie with live concert clips and an out-of-left-field fantasy sequence that includes a hot chick with big hair, a wind machine, fog, and breaking glass. It doesn’t make a lick of sense… but I love it. And I love this song, which I’d probably rank second only to “Jessie’s Girl” in my personal all-time Rick canon, thanks to its catchy melody and chorus, and that really mean-sounding guitar-thing at the bridge…

And with that, I bid you all a good Friday…

spacer
May092014

Points of Clarification

My previous entry inspired a few remarks over on Facebook, suggesting — gently, of course — that it’s disingenuous of me to complain about people bitching about the Star Wars prequels considering how much bitching I do myself on various other topics (like, say, people bitching about the prequels!), and also that I’m griping about people prejudging Episode VII while doing the same thing myself through my comments regarding JJ Abrams. I’d like to quickly address these points.

First, on the subject of Abrams, it’s true: I don’t care for the man’s work to date and I’ve been pretty outspoken about it. And I am genuinely concerned about what he’s got in mind for my beloved Star Wars franchise. But I hope I haven’t given the impression that I’m already condemning Episode VII before I see it, simply because his name is going to be on the one-sheet. I really am hoping for the best outcome here. I’d like nothing better than to see a brilliant, wildly successful Star Wars movie that’s true to its roots, respectful of the huge legacy that comes with the title, moves the saga forward in some interesting and relevant way, and causes me to rethink my whole opinion of the film’s director. I’m not holding my breath on any of that… but I am trying to remain open-minded while also being honest about my misgivings.

The commentary I was reading last week, on the other hand, did condemn the movie sight unseen (at least that’s how I interpreted it), based entirely on one narrowly defined parameter and the scant data provided by the cast list. And that rubbed me the wrong way, so I felt compelled to rub back. If, by so doing, I contributed to the general sense of outrage that seems to permeate fandom these days — the very thing with which I am so fed up — then I sincerely apologize, because that’s the last thing I have any desire to do.

Now, as to the prequels, it was further suggested that I’m tired of hearing them criticized only because I happen to like them. Well, yes, I do like them, at least more than most people seem to. But what I was trying to say in that previous entry really has nothing to do with whether or not I personally enjoy those three movies. I’ve just gotten tired of the fact that it’s impossible these days to even raise the subject of Star Wars — any aspect of the franchise in general — without kicking off this whole big thing. I’m tired of the franchise being such a contentious subject. I want to talk about it, I just don’t want to risk another tiresome overheated dialog about it, and I fear that every time I open my mouth or set my fingers to the keyboard, that’s inevitably where it’s going to end up. Maybe I am adding fuel to the fire by even mentioning it… if so, that really pains me. Because I just want Star Wars to be fun again. More precisely, I want it to be fun to be a fan of Star Wars again.

Maybe that’s not possible. Maybe what I’m missing is actually the innocence of childhood, or at least of young adulthood. Nevertheless, that’s what I want…

spacer
May092014

And So It Begins… Again…

star-wars-ep-7_castIn case you missed it — as if anyone with an Internet connection could! — DisneyLucas officially announced the cast of Star Wars Episode VII last week. To no one’s great surprise, all of our heroes from the original trilogy are returning, with the notable and lamentable exception of Billy Dee Williams. I think I understand his absence, though, having just met the man at the Salt Lake Comic Con FanXperience a couple weeks ago. He’s had two hip replacements in the years since Lando Calrissian took down the second Death Star, and he’s moving very slowly and gingerly these days, as anyone who caught his recent appearance on Dancing with the Stars can attest. I doubt he could physically endure any kind of action-hero stuff like he did back in Empire, although it would’ve been cool to at least see him playing cards with Han Solo or something.

Among the new cast members are Andy Serkis of Lord of the Rings fame — no word yet on whether he’ll be playing a computer-generated character like his signature role of Gollum, or appearing in his own face — and the great Max von Sydow, a distinguished actor with a lengthy resume, but who is probably best known to my tribe of Gen-X nerds as Ming the Merciless in the 1980 film Flash Gordon. I imagine he’s there to continue the Star Wars-ian tradition of classy older actors appearing in secondary roles (see also Guinness, Alec; Cushing, Peter; and Lee, Christopher). I’ll also bet a Republic credit he’s playing a villain, possibly even a Sith Lord come to make trouble for whatever form the Jedi have taken under Master Luke Skywalker’s guidance.

In addition, the cast includes a bunch of younger actors, none of whom I recognize from anything.

Based on the make-up of this group, I strongly suspect we’re looking at a “passing the torch to the next generation” type of story, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the original-trilogy cast members have relatively small parts, if not mere cameos. Possibly Luke will be more central to the plot; since Mark Hamill is about the same age Alec Guinness was when they filmed the original Star Wars, it’s logical to assume Luke will now become the wizened mentor figure for one of the younger characters. But really, until we get some idea of the movie’s plot, or at least a title or logline, it’s pointless to speculate. And that’s basically all I have to say about Episode VII at this time.

If I sound uncharacteristically aloof about a major new Star Wars project, well… I suppose it’s because I am, for a couple of reasons. First, I am very concerned that JJ Abrams is at the helm of this project. I utterly loathe what he did to my other personal touchstone, my beloved Star Trek, with his flashy-but-empty-headed reboot films, and I fear that he’ll have no better understanding of what a good Star Wars movie ought to be. I dread the possibility of an Episode VII filled with obnoxious lens flares and a storyline that seems to be constantly moving but never really takes you anywhere. At least Abrams jettisoned his usual writing partners for this one and is working with Lawrence Kasdan, who cowrote The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. With Kasdan on board, we might get a screenplay that at least feels like Star Wars, and maybe even has some character development too. We’ll see, I guess.

The other issue that’s keeping me from getting too enthused about more Star Wars  is, frankly, my fellow fans. It only took an hour or so after last week’s news surfaced before I saw the first round of complaints… in this case, that there are only two women on the cast list and how is it possible that the Star Wars universe can still be so sexist after 40 years? Never mind that we know nothing yet about the plot of this new movie, or how much screentime the two women cast members will be getting compared to the males, or who the protagonist of the movie might actually be. Hey, here’s a crazy possibility for you: maybe the new Campbellian hero about to take their great journey is Leia’s daughter and the movie focuses on the two of them, with all the menfolk relegated to supporting roles! Probably not, I’ll admit, but my point is, we don’t know anything yet, so how can we already be complaining?

Don’t misunderstand, I’m not dismissing or belittling concerns about sexism. It’s a valid criticism: Female characters really don’t fare very well in the genre films that dominate popular culture these days, and Star Wars, which looms above everything else in the zeitgeist, is in a position to take the lead and set trends for years to come. A new entry in the series really ought to reflect the changes we’ve seen in our society since 1977. And chances are, it’ll fail in that regard. But we don’t know yet that it will. And I’m troubled that people who supposedly love this franchise are already bitching before we see even one frame of film. But really that’s just par for the course these days, isn’t it?

I remember another time, before the prequels, before the Special Editions, when the original trilogy was beloved by pretty much everyone of my generation. It was the closest thing to a lingua franca we had. Stuck for something to make small talk about? There was always Star Wars. When I met my best friend 21 years ago on the streets of Cambridge, England, two young guys from different parts of the U.S. who didn’t immediately seem to have much in common, we bonded by sharing our memories and thoughts of Star Wars over pints of Guinness. It was something special, something we both treasured. Something we all treasured.

Then came the Disillusionment of 1999, and the long period of darkness I think of as The Great Fanboy Wars, when everybody had an opinion and was determined to make damn sure everyone else knew what it was. And suddenly, this wonderful, cherished thing became a source of never-ending contention and argument, something you really didn’t want to bring up anymore. Whatever else you may say about it, pro or con, the prequel trilogy sucked all the fun out of being a Star Wars fan.

Long-time readers may recall an entry I wrote shortly after Revenge of the Sith, in which I declared that I was tired of the rancor and hostility that now surrounded something I just wanted to love, tired of feeling like I had to defend my opinions all the time, or at least listen to everyone else’s. That was nearly 10 years ago… and nothing has changed. You still can’t mention the prequels in mixed company without someone going off on a spittle-flecked rant about Jar Jar Binks, or what a hack George Lucas is. Worse yet, all that animus has started to spill over to the original trilogy, as well; a lot of people now believe it really wasn’t that good either, which is a worse piece of revisionism than all the CG dinosaurs Uncle George ever dreamed of inserting into Mos Eisley. It’s no wonder George finally just wanted to wash his hands of the whole damn thing.

When Episode VII was first announced, I briefly hoped that it might somehow heal the rift that was torn open by The Great Fanboy Wars, that people might come to love Star Wars without reservation again. But the moment I found myself sourly thinking I couldn’t enjoy the casting news for even a full hour before somebody started bitching about something, I knew. Ep VII is going to be more of the same. Even if it’s the greatest entry in the entire series, the fans will whine and moan more than they’ll praise and enjoy. And I just can’t allow myself to get too swept up in all of that. I don’t need the rage, I just don’t. There’s too much of it out there these days, directed at and coming from too many things…

spacer
May012014

So That’s Why I Quit Going…

From a Mormon satire site called “The Bunyion“:

beards_mormon-humor

Bottom line, according to the same source: “Those with beards are 67% less righteous than their clean-shaven counterparts, according to a recent study by BYU.”

Remember, kids: NOT. EVEN. ONCE.

(An aside: Even though this is obviously meant to be humor, as a bearded man living in Mormon Utah, I’ve definitely encountered this attitude, up to and including ladies refusing to go out with me in my younger days because of my facial fuzz, and a well-meaning neighbor lecturing my dad on his beard until Dad very memorably reminded him that Jesus himself had one, and that many of the church’s early leaders looked like members of ZZ Top.)

Via the fabulously bearded Andrew Sullivan…

spacer
Apr302014

What I Did on My Summer (and Fall and Winter) Vacation

When my webmaster Jack first shut off my back-end access to this blog last summer in a last-ditch effort to keep the old server running just a little longer (details here, if you don’t know what I’m talking about), I underwent an emotional process not unlike the Kubler-Ross stages of grieving. At first, being unable to post was a major frustration. I’d see an article or something I wanted to share, or I’d have an experience or otherwise think of something I wanted to blog about, but I couldn’t. I was suffering from bloggus interruptus… blue blogs… I’d been blog-blocked. You get the idea. (I know, I know, I could have written the entries in Word or something and posted them later, but for various reasons, I didn’t. And anyhow, I’m trying to develop an idea here, people!) But after a couple weeks of bloglessness, the irritation started to fade. In fact, I began to feel… relieved. As if I were on vacation. I noticed parts of my brain and body relaxing that I hadn’t even realized were tense as it gradually sank in that I was free. Free of the nagging sense of obligation that comes with running a blog, the feeling that there’s this gaping, grasping, begging, mewling, insatiable maw out there, eternally hungry for fresh content and single-mindedly focused on the now, and that I, as the sole proprietor, have to constantly produce in order to feed that thing. I’ve struggled a lot with that feeling in recent years as I’ve gotten busier and had less time for blogging. I hate to say it, but what was supposed to be an outlet for my writing urge and a harmless little hobby — what was supposed to be fun — eventually became a huge source of stress and anxiety for me. But then, I should’ve expected that. The same thing happened, more or less, with the offline, paper-based journals I used to keep back in my pre-blog days. I dug myself into quite a hole with those; at one point, I was literally months behind but obsessively unable to just skip to the present and forget all the stuff I hadn’t gotten around to writing about yet. I had to catch up… and circumstances were making that more and more impossible with every passing day. The anxiety of constantly feeling like I couldn’t catch up — like I couldn’t keep up — became so bad I finally had to abandon journaling altogether; I just couldn’t go on feeling like such a miserably inadequate human being any longer. And to be brutally honest, I had begun to feel that way about this blog, too, before the crash… like it would be better to just walk away rather than keep tormenting myself about my inability to stay timely.

So, yeah… the break was nice. Nice enough, in fact, that I’ve been having trouble getting back into the swing of regular blogging. You may have noticed.

It’s not that I don’t want to do write in this space, or that I can’t find anything to write about. (That’s never been a problem, believe me!) But the urgency I used to feel seems to have dissipated, and I don’t know if it’s going to come back. I used to feel compelled to stay up ’til the wee hours hammering out the entries; lately, though, I find myself thinking it can wait one more day. Thinking I’d rather go fire up the BluRay player, or work on one of my many other long-neglected projects, or just get the damn dishes done so I can enjoy a clean kitchen for a few minutes. It doesn’t help that I really wonder these days if there’s any point anymore, now that the heyday of blogging seems to have come and gone.

Mental vacation and navel-gazing meta discussions aside, though, there is a downside to being out of the saddle for so long, and it’s this: there is a significant chunk of time for which I don’t have much of a record, and some pretty major things happened during the blackout period that I’d like to remember. This blog was never intended to function as a diary, but it has often ended up serving that purpose; without it, all I’ve really got of 2013 is some cryptic notes on an outdated wall calendar I’m ready to recycle. (I did talk about some of this stuff on Facebook, but given the lack of a decent search feature for old posts on that platform, as well as its notorious tendency to change for no good reason other than the need to justify the programmers’ salaries, I don’t think that place counts as any sort of documentation.) So, if you’ll bear with me, I’d like to note the highlights of  2013, as copied from my calendar (I’m including items from the entire year here, as there were things even before the blackout that I didn’t blog about):

1/22/2013: Shatner’s World: We Just Live In It
 William Shatner’s one-man stage show is a hugely entertaining journey through the Shat’s life and career, narrated with nearly equal amounts of pathos and self-deprecating humor. Shatner has a reputation for being an egotistical ass, and he certainly can be, but he strikes me as far more complicated than merely that. This show seems to get closer to the truth of the man than any of the other autobiographical works he’s written (he’s done several), and that truth is often very sad, frankly. Honestly, I don’t know that I actually like William Shatner, even though I’m a huge fan of his work. But I do find him an immensely sympathetic figure… even a tragic one, in some sense. This show was recently presented in movie theaters across the country in a one-night-only event; I’m hoping that event might lead to a DVD/BluRay release…

2/22/2013: Birthday party for the Wade twins
Over 21 years have passed since I quit my job at the multiplex movie theater where I worked during my highly impressionable college-student years, but I remain inordinately fond of the people I knew there, as well as deeply nostalgic for that whole period of my life. So naturally I was deeply pleased to get an invitation to a surprise 40th birthday party for the Wade sisters, who were among my favorite candy girls back in the day. The event was a bit awkward, since I didn’t really know anyone there other than the twins’ older sister and one of my fellow “Dudes” who came with me, but the expressions on their faces when they recognized a couple of theater people made it all worthwhile. I’m only sorry I had to miss a similar party earlier this month for another of the concession-stand crew, the lovely Krickett, who I wrote about last year.

3/6/2013: Jen Larsen’s book launch party at The King’s English
My friend Jen wrote a memoir. She launched it at a local bookstore called The King’s English, and Anne and I were there. Jen seemed happy to see us, and the book was a big success. She’s now working on a Y/A novel, I believe…

3/23/2013: Mummies of the World exhibit at The Leonardo
At one point, it seems like Anne and I were going to “event exhibitions” at our local art museums every other month… exhibitions about the Etruscans and Masada and the bronzes of Rodin and the art of the Muslim world… I loved those things, because they appealed to my Indiana Jones fantasies and made me feel like a sophisticated man-about-town. But that whole scene eventually proved to be a sort of fad, and inevitably it petered out. Mummies of the World was a throwback to those heady days, and a pretty fascinating one too, the takeaway of which is that there are great many more types of mummies, both natural and otherwise, than just Egyptian ones. If you don’t know about it, The Leonardo is the former Salt Lake City Public Library, now reborn as a science and technology museum.

4/10/2013 ON3 at Liquid Joe’s
Anne’s former coworker Gary plays guitar in a rock band called ON3. They landed a gig at a local nightclub, and we went to check them out and provide a little moral support. They’re pretty good… and even though I was never a big clubber back in the day and haven’t set foot in one in years, it was cool to go out to one again, at least for one evening…

4/13/2013: dinner with Travis and Ellen
Old friendships are curious things. You go for months, even years, without seeing someone, then suddenly something will remind you of how long it’s been and you get together and have a wonderful time… and then another year passes.

4/20/2013: SLC Nerd w/Ted Raimi
My friend Ben Fuller helped launch SLC Nerd — a small, one-day sci-fi/fantasy/comic-book convention — several years ago, but in spite of his annual invitations, I never managed to go before last year. I should’ve made more of an effort, as it turned out to be a fun use of an afternoon, and I got to meet B-movie actor Ted Raimi, probably best known for playing Joxer the Mighty on television’s Xena: Warrior Princess, as well as the brother of director Sam Raimi. (For what it’s worth, he seemed like a really nice guy.) It’ll be interesting to see how (or whether) SLC Nerd goes forward now that a two-ton gorilla named Salt Lake Comic Con has arrived on the scene; my sense is that last year was a sort of watershed for Nerd, which finally broke through and garnered some attention, only to have SLCC show up in the fall and suck all the air out of the room. I hope I’m wrong about that…

4/25/2013 – 4/29/2013: San Diego vacation
Great little weekend getaway for Anne and me, during which we visited our friend Jeremy and celebrated 20 years as a couple. If you find yourself looking for dining options in San Diego, I recommend Vigilucci’s on Coronado, which really made a nice fuss over our anniversary and was delicious to boot.

5/18/2013: Laura’s skating show
Our friend Laura ice-skates. We watched her show her stuff.

5/22/2013: Alleigh’s graduation
Anne’s niece Alleigh, whom Anne thinks of as her “mini-me,” graduated high school, thus making Anne and me officially old. Thanks, Alleigh.

7/5/2013: Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo concert
With all the ’80s bands touring on the nostalgia circuit in recent years, I’ve been able to catch pretty much all of the acts I wanted to see back in the day but never did, with only a small handful of exceptions (I’m still kicking myself for deciding Tina Turner’s farewell tour was too expensive when it passed through SLC a few years ago!). Pat Benatar was the last artist on my “A list,” i.e., the “must-sees,” so when I heard she was going to play the Cache Valley Cruise-In — an annual weekend-long car show my parents always attend, and which Anne and I often go to as well — it was a no-brainer. I’m pleased to report that not only did I get to cross the last name off my list, but the show turned out to be absolutely fantastic, easily one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen. Pat and Neil — her longtime guitarist and husband — are personable, funny, and highly entertaining, and those famous pipes of hers haven’t lost one iota of their power. I really should write a complete entry about this show, actually; I liked it that much.

7/23/2013: Huey Lewis and the News concert
Anne and I saw Huey and the boys out in Wendover a few years ago; sadly, we weren’t too impressed on that occasion. Huey’s voice was weak, and they were too focused on new, unfamiliar material, so I was hesitant to see them again. But they were my buddy Jack’s favorite band, and this tour was built around performing the entire contents of their breakthrough album Sports, which was commemorating its 30th anniversary last year, so we agreed to take another chance. Huey still struggles with the higher notes these days, but whether it was being in the company of friends or the playlist, we had a much better time.

7/26/2013 – 7/28/2013:  Wells Fun Run
Another summer, another weekend out in boondocks of Nevada, watching my dad show off.

8/24/2013: Dave and Amber’s wedding
And here we get to one of the main events of 2013, the marriage of two of “The Usual Suspects,” the circle of people who have become Anne’s and my primary friends over the past decade. Getting married at Tuscany, a fancy Italian restaurant tucked into a secluded corner of the valley, was unconventional yet very classy and beautiful… just like the bride and groom. Anne and I were honored to be such a large part of the proceedings.

8/29/2013: Chris Isaak concert
Chris Isaak performs somewhere in the Salt Lake area nearly every year, and Anne and I have been trying to catch his show for years, but somehow something always gets in the way, or the shows sell out too quickly, or something. Finally, though, we and our friends Geoff and Anastasia managed to see him… and it was worth the wait. A great show. He actually reminded me quite a bit of my Main Man, Rick Springfield, in the way he interacted with the audience, made self-deprecating jokes, and generally appeared to enjoy playing as much as we enjoyed watching. I’d definitely see him again… assuming I can get tickets!

9/5/2013 – 9/7/2013: Salt Lake Comic Con
Anne and I have heard tales of the legendary San Diego Comic Con for years, but we didn’t have a lot of confidence that Salt Lake’s first one would amount to much. We went to it out of curiosity as much as anything, figuring we’d better enjoy it because it would likely be the last. Boy, did we misread that one! Turns out, there are lots of nerds along the Wasatch Front. SLCC was the biggest-ever first-time Comic Con, the fourth largest one nationwide (they hold them in many cities besides San Diego, if you don’t know), and the largest convention of any kind to ever hit Salt Lake City. It was successful enough that the organizer, Dan Farr, is trying to hit the jackpot twice this year, with the just completed SLCC FanXperience (FanX, for short) and the second regular Comic Con coming up in September. I remain dubious about whether this market can support two of these things a year — Anne and I decided to attend FanX, but likely won’t go to Comic Con in the fall, because of the expense — but we’ll see…

9/21/2013: Steph and Mike’s wedding reception
Two more old friends tie the knot… 2013 seemed to have a definite theme…

10/4/2013: Rick Springfield concert
The annual overnighter to the Nevada/Utah border to see my Main Man with our friends Jack and Natalie…

12/5/2013 – 12/9/2013 Thunderhill
Now here was something different: a road trip with my friend Mike Gillilan to photograph (him) and write about (me) an endurance race called 25 Hours of Thunderhill. We drove from Salt Lake to Willows, California, in a crappy little rental car, shared a hotel room, ate too many In n Out burgers, slept way too little, and generally had ourselves the sort of adventure middle-aged farts like us rarely do.  My coverage of the race for The Daily Derbi blog can be found here, here, and here, and a gallery of Mike’s photos from the race is here. My own snapshots from the event can be viewed on Flickr.

12/28/2013: Dudes Reunion dinner
Continuing a tradition of nearly a decade, I got together over my holiday break from work with some of “The Dudes,” the guys I used to work with at that multiplex I mentioned earlier. It was only four of us this year, but it’s always good to see the old gang… even if there are a lot of topics we really should avoid these days!

And finally, there was… this:

Wedding-79_edit

Yes, that’s exactly what it appears to be, a pic of me dressed like Sonny Crockett, officiating at the wedding of my good friends, the aforementioned Geoff and Anastasia (this happened on 9/14/2013, just for the record). Like several of the other items above, this is something that really deserves its own complete entry, because performing a wedding is frankly one of the last things I ever expected to do in my life, and how I came to do it is something of a tale… but at least I’ve got this much of it down for the record now…

And that is that. If anyone is still reading, I apologize for the length of this, but honestly this has been one of those entries that’s more for my own benefit than anybody else’s anyhow…

spacer