I just read that Roger Von Bergendorf, the man who is believed to have poisoned himself with the toxic substance ricin in a Vegas hotel room, has regained consciousness. The authorities claim there is no sign of contamination anywhere or any evidence that Von Bergendorf was connected to terrorism, but they also have no idea what he was doing with the stuff; also, they’re still not saying what, if anything, they found in that house they searched in my hometown. I hope we don’t have to wait too much longer to find out what the hell was going on. ..

I don’t have the sense that the “ricin-in-a-Vegas-hotel-room” story has captivated the nation — to be honest, I completely missed the initial headlines myself — but my ears certainly pricked up over the weekend when I heard that investigators in the case were searching a house in my hometown of Riverton, Utah.

If you haven’t been following this one, here are the details as I understand them:

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Interesting… it appears I was somewhat misinformed on that whole CleanFlicks story. According to a follow-up in today’s Tribune, Daniel Thompson, the movie bowdlerizer who was arrested for having sex with underage girls and making porn in the back room of his video shop, was not the founder of the original CleanFlicks business. In addition to all his other problems, he’s now being sued by the real CleanFlicks for trademark infringements. My cynical guess is that the non-Thompson CleanFlicks didn’t care so much about their trademark until Thompson got busted, and now the original is frantically trying to distance itself from him before the “family values” crowd abandons what’s left of its business.

It’s funny how there always seem to be wheels within within wheels when these stories come out…

Today’s amusing item from behind the Zion Curtain takes a bit of set-up, but the payoff is utterly delicious. Bear with me on this.

The first thing you need to know is that many observant LDS people have a general policy of avoiding R-rated films. Their religion counsels them to eschew profanity and depictions of sex and violence on moral grounds, and since R-rated movies usually tend to have copious amounts of these things, such movies automatically go on the “do not see” list. While I can respect the moral stand taken by these anti-R Mormons, I personally think they miss out on a lot of good movies — good both in the sense of entertaining, but also frequently in the sense of good art. (I think it’s very difficult to intelligently explore many areas of the human condition without including profanity and sex, because life is just like that. I do find, however, that the constant use of the F-word in some flicks gets pretty tiresome. I’ve always said that I don’t mind profanity in my dialogue, but I hate it when it is the dialogue.) Still, it’s their choice to make, and I support their right to make it. And anyway, I much prefer that people who are offended by certain content simply not watch that content, rather than attempting to enforce any form of censorship that would prevent me from watching it.

A few years ago, a Utah entrepeneur named Daniel Thompson apparently thought anti-R Mormons were missing out on a lot of good movies, too, so he came up with a novel idea: he started a video sales-and-rental business called CleanFlicks, which offered popular R-rated movies with the offensive bits cut out so as to suit the sensibilities of the niche market he was targeting. A good idea, on the face of it. There was only one problem: Thompson and his staff were the ones doing the editing. They didn’t have permission from the Hollywood studios that owned the films, and they didn’t have any kind of input from the writers and directors who created those movies.

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By now, all my local readers have probably heard about the big news from last night, a four-alarm fire that gutted the building that used to house the old Club DV8. I never went to DV8 myself — dance clubs were never my scene, and those that played so-called “alternative” music even less so — but the place was an institution here in these parts for a very long time, and I’m sure there are a lot of folks along the Wasatch tonight mourning its loss. (The club has actually been closed and the building vacant for several years, but all the signage was still in place, and I understand there was hope that it might reopen eventually.)

My office is only a couple of blocks from the site of the fire; there was a thick pall of smoke hanging in the air when I stepped off the train this morning, as well as a rank odor like a freshly doused campfire. Just what we needed, I thought, as if the air quality isn’t lousy enough this time of year. I expected the smell would go away as the day wore on, but when it was seemed to intensify this afternoon around 2 PM, I got curious. It took only a few minutes to walk to the scene, where it turned out the building was still on fire, or it had flared up again, and a plume of brown gunk was boiling up into the sky. It was actually a pretty fascinating spectacle: the building’s roof had fallen in, so in between gusts of smoke I could see blue sky through the windows, and the lower floor was encased in dollops of dirty gray ice built up from the firemen’s sprays the night before. A demolition crew stood ready nearby with a backhoe and a wrecking ball as a pumper truck moved into position and trained its water cannon on the stubborn fire, while, across the street, the sidewalk in front of the Salt Palace Convention Center was packed with TV-news cameramen and gawkers like me. I wish I’d thought to take my camera to work with me today. I could’ve gotten some cool documentary shots.

The smoke was drifting southeast, directly back to the block where I work. I can still smell it in my clothes as I type this. The working theory is that the fire was started by a transient or a squatter in the building who was trying to keep warm, but we’ll never know for sure; the building was declared unsafe and the remnants of it knocked down late this afternoon, with no substantial investigation beforehand. If it was a transient, I hope the poor bastard got out.

As I said, I have no sentiment about Club DV8, but I do regret the loss of another of Salt Lake’s antique buildings. I don’t know when this one was constructed, but judging from the brick facings and the ornamental work up near the eaves, I’d guess sometime in the early 1900s. There are precious few buildings of that vintage left in the downtown area, and seeing the burnt-out husk easily toppled by the wrecking ball on TV tonight brought a lump to my throat. I imagine some developer will probably jump at the chance to fill in the empty lot with a soulless glass box…

You know, I love Utah, I really do. I grew up here, my family roots stretch back to the very first wave of Mormon pioneers in 1847, and, for my money, you’re never going to see anything as jaw-droppingly beautiful as the Wasatch Mountains on the first clear day after a snow storm. This is my home, and while I can imagine living in other places, I highly doubt I ever will.
But as comfortable as I generally am here, it drives me absolutely batshit insane when the busybody prudes of this state decide it’s time to dust off their torches and pitchforks and launch yet another crusade against their latest perceived threat to the moral well-being of the community.

Case in point: the kerfuffle over the Blue Boutique.

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For the record, I am one of those rare mutant individuals who couldn’t possibly care less about sports.
I know it plants me in a very small minority to admit this, but I honestly don’t like any sports. Not professional, collegiate, amateur, major league, minor league, varsity, JV, Little League, or pick-up in the alleyway behind the office. Not ball-centered sports, not motorsports, and certainly not — ugh — extreme sports.

So what’s my problem? Why don’t I care about the games that probably the majority of everybody else out there find so endlessly rewarding? Well, let’s see… the so-called “action” of team sports bores me. The roar of the crowd sets my nerves on edge. The physical outbursts — like throwing stuff at the TV — that often accompany wins and losses strike me as distasteful. And the obsessive knowledge of obscure statistics that is commanded by many fans simply baffles me. (I’m fully aware of the self-inflicted irony there, and that somebody who spouts sports trivia is fundamentally no different from me knowing everything I know about Star Wars. But the way I see it, Star Wars is cool, and sports are, well, just sports.)
Hell, I don’t even like board games.

That said, however, I always look forward to the annual football rivalry between Utah’s largest institutions of higher learning, the University of Utah and Brigham Young University. Not because I care about the football, you understand. The game itself is of no more interest to me than any other sporting event. No, it’s the culture of the rivalry that I find interesting.
Or perhaps I should say the clash of cultures that surround the rivalry, which is known in these parts as “The Holy War.”

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