The Year of Wanderlust

Like many people, I get reflective at the end of the year. This year, however, I did a little reflecting in a way I had never done before: blog-style. I started blogging back on Groundhog Day of 2008 and I've been pretty consistent about it over the year, so I just sat down and read my entire blog from the end back to the beginning and overall I think it captures the overall shape of my 2008.

It was an interesting way to look at my year - to see the things I felt like I just had to put up for the whole world to be able to see. Why, for instance, did I feel like the whole world should see the half-stache? Or that the end of Gilmore Girls left me an emotional wreck? Or that I am a humongous nerd?

There are a few things that I compulsively wrote about this year - my broken foot, Nintendo records, the Jazz, scoring free stuff - and there were some drafts that I never got around to finishing (my first and last Capoeira lesson, my guided tour of the best and worst of Detroit, spending the night in the Campinas bus terminal). But the entry that seems to represent my 2008 more than any other was a little post written on August 5th on the ancient computer in the public library of Cambridge, New York entitled Wanderlust.

When I think back on 2008 (and on this whole period of my life), I will think about think about all the crazy wandering I did and all the amazing places I got to see from Iguaçú Falls and the Amazon River to The Breakers and Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes. I visited four countries, fifteen U.S. states, nine Brazilian states, and some of the worlds great cities: Chicago, Seattle, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, São Paulo, New York City, Detroit (link missing, since I never finished it), Minneapolis.

This picture, taken at the Festa de São João in Salvador, Brazil, is probably my favorite picture from my wanderings this year.

I'm sure the next year will take me wandering to some interesting places, but I don't know if I can top last summer. But it's always more fun to travel with a buddy or two, so if anyone wants to head to the Upper Peninsula or Washington D.C. or New Orleans or anywhere else, lets team up. It's like Kim Novak says in Vertigo: "Only one is a wanderer. Two are always going somewhere."

¡Cumpleaños!

This year I wasn't able to make it back to Utah for Christmas and I didn't want to be family-less in Michigan, so I decided to split the difference and head to my sister Emily's house in Minnesota. One of the advantages of being with Emily around Christmas time is that you get to double up on the festivities since her birthday is on the 22nd (a.k.a. today). We had some grandiose birthday plans (Costco trip, Chuck E. Cheese dinner) that had to be scrapped when my nephew Braden came home sick from school (not fake-sick, it was throwing up-sick - trust me). So instead we just hung around the house all day, which is nice because I only get to see her and her family once every year or two.

When I was growing up, I always did the convenient birthday/Christmas gift cop-out, but this year I decided that I should get her genuine birthday-only present, since she was being nice enough to put me up for Christmas. After a great deal of soul-searching I decided to go with a piñata. You see, when I first mentioned that I might be coming for her birthday/Christmas, I asked if she had any big birthday plans, and she said she was thinking of making herself a paper-mâché piñata (there's a lot of accent marks in two words) because she's made a bunch for her kids and she decided that it's her party and she'll have a piñata if she wants to. But when I spoke with her just before leaving Ann Arbor, she said that she forgot all about it and never got around to it. But this is America and everyone should entitled to a birthday piñata, so there you go.

This couldn't quite make up for a lost trip to Chuck E. Cheese, but it was a reasonable facsimile:

When it broke open (at my own hands, I must admit) it was a pretty clean break, so Emily suggested that maybe we could reload and rechristen it as a Christmas Eve Piñata. ¡I'm down!

Happy birthday, Em! Love ya!

P.S. - Emily is doing this running series of Christmas memories on her blog, and she included this picture:

If you are trying to put a date on this picture, I think the flannel shirts are a pretty good place to start your investigation.

People Take Pictures of the Winter

Last night Ann Arbor got dumped on. By snow. Lots of it. Nevertheless, I still had to head over to school at 10:00 a.m. to take one last test (a placement test to waive my German diction requirement - I passed). I've lived in Ann Arbor for about a year and a half now and it seems to me that no one has ever told the city that if you plow the road, it will be driveable. I'm just sayin'. When I got to the music building the parking lot had not been plowed, and the snow on the ground came up to the bottom of the car door:

Let's just say I'm glad I'm not still in my walking boot (I just returned it to the Student Health Center -hooray!). I've taken other random pictures of winter stuff recently. It's like The Kinks once said: "People take pictures of the summer [or in this case, winter] just in case someone thought they had missed it, and to prove that it really existed." If you liked the picture above, here are some other winter pictures you might enjoy - but you don't have to take my word for it:

This is the pond outside the music building. I've been really fascinated by it this winter I've taken one picture of it each day to chart it's progress as it has frozen over. On this particular day, someone slid a picnic table out onto the ice.

As my friend Mike McMurtrey pointed out, aren't geese supposed to fly south? If you're favorite hangout has frozen over, I think that's a good time to think about migrating.

Sometimes when you've been shut up in the library for a long time and you're a little burned out, it's nice to look out and see a little Norman Rockwell-type scene.

I mentioned the ward mingle on Sunday in a previous post, and this handsome Yule Log cake was definitely the star of the show. It arrived at the mingle via Martha, who had gotten it from Phil, who had gotten it from a friend, who had gotten it from Zingerman's, a famous gourmet bakery in Ann Arbor. A bunch of people went straight for it, and as they started eating it (I won't name any names) they started making faces and noticed that it had a peculiar flavor to it. Long story short, it had a pretty good amount of rum in it. Elizabeth Downie quickly swooped in and took it back into the kitchen so no one would mistakenly (or not mistakenly) eat any more of it. A few days later I was at the institute and popped in the kitchen and it was still on the counter. I promptly threw it in the trash. I just hope Brother Elms hadn't grabbed a piece in the meantime.

My parents mailed me this fantastic Utah Jazz Santa hat a few weeks ago and I've been wearing it steadily ever since. However, tonight it will make it's most important appearance of all: at the Palace of Auburn Hills as the Jazz face the Detroit Pistons. The Jazz play in Detroit but once a year and believe me, I've had this date circled on my calendar since the day they first posted the NBA season schedule. I need to show my Jazz pride, but at the same time I need to be judicious about it, since I am going to the site of the worst brawl in the history of professional sports. Thankfully, Ron Artest isn't playing tonight and we're way up in the nosebleed section ($9 tickets, baby!) so if a riot breaks out I'll probably not be in the fray.

GO JAZZ!!!!!

Sabali

One of my favorite web sites is Metacritic.com. It's similar to Rottentomatoes.com, another site I refer to a lot, but in addition to movie reviews, Metacritic also gathers and compiles television, video game, and music reviews. Over the last few years I have found some of my favorite music by looking at the albums that get outstanding overall scores from music reviewers.

I just discovered a song yesterday via Metacritic that I've listened to it several dozen times already. It's called "Sabali" by Amadou & Mariam, a blind husband-wife duo from Mali. What piqued my interest was produced/co-written by the ever-fascinating Damon Albarn, whose diverse pedigree includes Blur, Gorillaz, and The Good, The Bad, and the Queen.

I always like to pass along a recommendation, so check out "Sabali":



Also, if you're looking for some off-beat Christmas music, check out "Christmas at the Zoo" by The Flaming Lips:



Have a nice day. If you're like me, your day will include several more playings of "Sabali."

P.S. - I've also been introduced to a lot of great music by the playlist on Jessica Allen's blog. Check it out.

Day of Rest

Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest, but it seems like recently it's become one of the most exhausting days of the week. For example, yesterday I:

• Woke up at 7:00 a.m. to get to the Methodist church in downtown Ann Arbor for an 8:15 rehearsal. They were performing the first part of Handel's Messiah and they hired me to beef up the otherwise paltry tenor section. We did two services, at 9:30 and 11:15.

• Sprinted to my car and zoomed to my ward out in Ypsilanti, arriving five minutes before the meeting started at 1:00. It was the ward Christmas program, which got dropped in my lap even though I'm not the ward choir director, so I had to conduct two choir pieces for the first time, plus sing a solo number that I hadn't looked at until the day before (I guess I can't blame the Sunday time crunch for that little detail). For all its thrown-togetherness, the program came off quite well.

• Ran home at 4:30 to prepare foodstuffs for the ward mingle. The monthly mingle is under my committee's jurisdiction, so I arrived a little before 6:00 to help set up. The mingle started at 6:30 and I had my first meal of the day. The clean-up after the mingle lingered on until about 8:45.

At some point during the mingle, my foot was like, "Hey Brian, remember how I'm still broken? I've decided that I am done for the day." When I got home at the end of the day I just collapsed and needed to relax. One of the things that helps me relax the most is Mario 2, so I popped in the game and hit record on the VCR. Despite my fatigue, I (wait for it.... this is pretty much the whole reason why I wrote this post...) finally beat Mario 2 in UNDER 30 MINUTES! The 30 minute mark has been my white whale, and I finally harpooned it (sorry, lame metaphor). My previous world record time was 31:40, but I have now slashed it down to 29:54.

Speaking of world records, in November I mailed in another DVD with world record attempts for two other games, Maniac Mansion and A Boy and His Blob, to be evaluated by the game referee. Last week I got this email reply from him:

Brian,
I unfortunately have bad news. While your awesome Inaugural WR run for Maniac Mansion was fine [slight retweak in time but no biggie, my fault for poor wording] and I might add, quite awesome! [Never seen that twist with the film before] Unfortunately your Boy & His Blob runs started with the title screen and showed no bootup of the console or any dead air. As a result, they can regretfully not be verified, and to this, I apologize.

Sigh. This isn't the first time I've had problems with my record verification. However, it was nice to hear him gush about my Maniac Mansion run. I guess I'll have to re-record a few of the records, which is a pity because I don't know if I have another 8:00 minute complete run of A Boy and His Blob in me. But for now if you go to the video game world record site and search for my name, you'll get the following list:


You probably started reading this post thinking that there would be some kind of lesson or moral to it all. I'm sorry if that is the case - I got nothin'. If you can think of a moral to the story (besides the obvious one: Brian is a big nerd), feel free to comment below.

Merry moralizing to all, and to all a good night.

Free at Last

This picture was taken just after I put a shoe on my right foot for the first time since October 13th. Hallelujah, I'm out of the boot!

I went for one last round of x-rays on Friday and the fracture had healed so well that the doctor told me that staying in the boot was no longer necessary and would even be detrimental, since it limits the range of motion of my foot as it continues to heal. I was soooooo ready to get out of that boot for so many reasons. It's designers obviously didn't have a Michigan winter in mind when they crafted that open-toe look, and despite a wool sock, fleece booty, and plastic bag wrapped around it, my foot was still getting soaked everyday. And my foot was still aching at the end of the day, but it seemed like it more due to the boot that the fracture.

My unbooted foot made its debut at Maggie's flute recital on Friday night. It felt so strange and small to have a shoe on my right foot, and I had no feel for walking on it at all. You see, the boot has a rounded heel and to walk in it you step on the heel and it rolls forward to the toe. So at the recital I was stepping onto the heel and trying to roll my foot forward with marginally successful results. Plus the boot made my right leg an inch or so taller than my other leg, so I had gotten used to keeping my knee slightly bent at an odd angle and it took me a while to get used to straightening out my leg in stride. Needless to say I was getting plenty of weird looks from strangers and laughs from my (so-called) friends (it's okay, I'm over it now). It looked something like this:



But I've been out of the boot for three full days now and I'm walking normally again, and more importantly, pain-free. Even though I'm not in the boot, I've still got a fracture in my metatarsal, so I've got to take it easy for several weeks.

Nevertheless, I can't believe how well this whole broken bone experience has gone. When I first heard the doctor say the word "broken" I thought that my life would be completely upended and I would be out of commission for quite a while. Yet here I am less than two months later and I'm pretty much back to normal again. That's a tremendous blessing.

P.S. - I think it is no mere coincidence that Deron Williams looked like his old, pre-foot injury self on Friday night as the Jazz completely destroyed the Raptors on ESPN. Our foot injuries have somehow been cosmically linked, and I knew that D-Will would have a monster game on the day that I finally got my boot off. I hope that I don't have to suffer/recover from a quad injury so that we can finally get Boozer back.

Soirée Serenade

I performed a little number at my ward's Christmas dinner/party/dance (aka The Hill Street Soirée) this weekend. Feeling the Christmas Spirit, I thought that I would post it here. (Sorry the video is so dark, but it was really dark in person, too.)



This is the first Christmas, aside from my mission, for which I will not be home (I'm visiting my sister Emily in Minnesota), so I paid tribute to my Utah roots by wearing my new Utah Jazz Santa hat, courtesy of my mom and dad.

The real highlight of the entire evening, however, came later on. Elizabeth Downie bought one of our Nintendos, so Seth brought it to the Soirée to give it to her there. We took it into the church's media library just to make sure that it would work, and all of a sudden a Dr. Mario party broke out. This was great because (a) I don't like dancing (although I was already covered by the broken foot excuse) and (b) it gave me yet another chance to rematch Elizabeth. Head-to-head play consists of a best of five series, and in our first match I crushed her in the first two games, but then I suffered the worse collapse since the Yankees/Red Sox series in 2004 and Elizabeth won the next three. However, later on we played again and in front of a roomful of witnesses, including the bishop, I beat her 3-1. I probably got a little bit too excited/trash-talky about it, but I don't beat her very often so I gotta flaunt it when I got it.

Priceless

Check out this priceless clip from last night's Pushing Daisies. Let me set it up a little bit:

Ned and Olive have just won first place in a "Comfort Food" contest with one of their pies from their restaurant, The Pie Hole. Olive is in love with Ned, but he is oblivious because he is in love with a girl named Chuck. However, Olive still hold out hope that one day Ned will finally fall for her.



How can you not love a show with moments like that? Maybe if we all start become super-hardcore about watching the show and tell all of our friends, ABC will un-cancel it. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

You can watch all of the episodes that have aired so far from the second season for free at abc.com (click on "Full Episodes" and then "Pushing Daisies").

AN APOLOGY!!!!!... I mean, "an apology"

This morning I gave a presentation in one of my classes and it went really well. However, as I was leaving the classroom, the teacher asked me to stay for a moment to talk to her. No, I wasn't in trouble. What she told me went something like this:

"You have an incredibly loud speaking voice. It's really intense to deal with in a 15-minute presentation, and it will be even more so when you are teaching a full-length class. Has anyone ever told you that your voice is really loud?"

Yes, they have. Lots of times. I'm not very self-conscious by nature, but when people bring up my crazy loud voice, I feel really bad. I don't know what the deal with my voice is. I'm not trying to speak super-loud or project really well - it's just the natural volume of my voice (as Paris Geller always has to tell everyone). And you might expect that I would have a mega-huge singing voice to go along with it, but not really.

My voice hasn't always been this loud. I went to Seattle earlier this year and saw my aunt and uncle there for the first time in a few years, and my aunt asked me, "So what happened to your voice? It didn't used to be so big!"

I can't pinpoint an exact time when I suddenly started talking louder, but I think it has definitely been a gradual process since I returned home from my mission six years ago. In fact, I think my voice has gotten louder as my personality has gotten louder. I wasn't always the mega-spaz with whirlwind energy that I am now. I used to be pretty mellow and relatively subdued. But I think the turning point was when I befriended a young man named Anthony T. Buck. As anyone who knows Mr. Buck can attest, to say that he is "high energy" would be a gross understatement. I daresay he is quite boisterous, and is absolutely unashamed of how quirky (read: weird) he can be. I really admire how he always seems to be 100% himself, his personality undiluted by inhibition. As we started hanging out more and more, I felt like my personality was becoming less muted and more Technicolor-bright. At times it felt like the two of us had some kind of Persona-style personality meld going on, with lots of wondering, "Did I get that quirk from Anthony or did I give it to him?" And somewhere along the line, my speaking voice got wicked loud.

SO YES, I KNOW THAT I HAVE A REALLY LOUD... Sorry, let me try again. So yes, I know I have a really loud voice and I'm trying to keep it under control. I apologize to all those who have been assaulted by my excessive decibel levels over the years. At least there's a silver lining: my teacher did point out that "at least your audience won't fall asleep!"

(My roommate Seth just gave me a good idea - I could get a trumpet mute and put in over my mouth. Not only would that make me quieter, but it would make me sound like Charlie Brown's teacher. It's a win-win.)

Update: This morning I made a phone call in the lounge of the music building and when I said "Hi," this guy a few feet away from me jumped just a little bit. Guess I have more work to do than I thought.

I've Been Hacked

Imagine my surprise when I logged into my blog account about an hour ago and saw an unpublished draft I had apparently written just before I suffered a bout of amnesia. However, the shallow comments about hair and Owen Wilson soon helped me realize that it must have been written by one Jessica Allen. Since I had caught her in the act before she managed to post it, I started to edit it but she must have been editing/posting it at the same time because all of a sudden I got a big red ERROR message at the top of my screen. I then refreshed the screen, and it was too late - she had already published it. She had even added a picture of me on the floor in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil trying to select a roll of cookies (I recall going for a chocolate sandwich cookie with a coconut filling). But the question is, where did she get the picture? Facebook? Picassa? She's got me all confused. And I just looked at it again and in the last few minutes she gotten three of my friends to comment on it. Well played, Allen. Although I do find it ironic that someone who is so reluctant to update her own blog would be so eager to update someone else's.

I guess I brought this on myself. I went over to Jess's house, where a movie party was about to start, wanted to show Jess something from on my blog, so I logged in on her laptop. The mistake was not logging out afterwards. I never intended to stay around for the movie because I was planning on going home to watch the Jazz game on my roommate's laptop. I explained that I hadn't been able to watch the Jazz in weeks and I wanted to see Deron Williams playing again, but I guess they didn't find that sufficient cause to ditch a party. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the game feed to work, so I ended up just watching the continuously updated box score on ESPN.com. It was pretty lame, except for the part about the Jazz winning by 26. And as I'm typing this the Lakers are down by 13 to the weak Dallas Mavericks.

And that's why you always log out of your blog account.

P.S. - The reason I logged into my account was so we could watch this clip:

The Jazz Suck

The Jazz suck, I've had a sudden epiphany that the team for me is the Lakers. I also think the Owen Wilson deserves an academy award for his performance in Zoolander as Hansel and my favorite movie is Twilight. I am secretly in love with Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana. Finally, Jessica Allen has the most fabulous hair in the world and I owe her my life.

Unfinished Business

When it comes to Brazil, it feels like I always have unfinished business. Back on July 7th I started a blog entry about the Amazon. This was the opening paragraph:

Greetings from "O Norte," the North. I had never been to northern Brazil before last Thursday, but I had always heard a lot about it - about how it´s killer hot, it feels like a totally different country from the rest of Brazil, and it´s dirty and less organized than the South. Guess what - all those things are true!

But then we went down to southern Brazil and I never finished that post. On July 12 I wrote the following: "When I am settled back at home I´m planning on posting more pictures and recapping other parts of the trip including: The Amazon! Iguaçú Falls! Other stuff! Stay tuned..." I guess four months should qualify as enough time to get settled back at home, so I'll make good on my promise. Apologies to all that have been in suspense for all that time.

Since a picture's worth a thousand words, I'll let my pictures from my trip to Brazil do the talking:



If a picture's worth a thousand words, a video must be worth, like, a gajillion. Here's a video from down inside the Garganta do Diabo at Iguaçú Falls:



I still feel like I have some last words to say about my return to Brazil, but for now that too will remain unfinished business.

Life's Great Mysteries

Can someone please tell me how my apartment ended up with four Nintendos?

(The one on the right is Conrad, the triple-decker stack belongs to Seth, and of course the Buffy DVDs are mine. Not pictured: our two non-functioning Nintendo 64s our one functional Sega Genesis.)

X-Ray Vision

Here is a detail my first x-ray, taken on October 17:

If you look at the base of the last metatarsal on the right, you can see a pretty messy crack going all the way across it. If you have one of those, it means your foot is broken.

Last Friday (November 14th) I went back for another round of x-rays:

This picture is not as good (I took it up against the light in my kitchen - you can see the circle), but you can see that the crack looks a lot cleaner and the fracture only goes about half-way across the bone now.

My doctor said that I should be able to ditch the walking boot in about 3 more weeks. I got a second opinion on Sunday confirming that diagnosis from my friend Stephanie Rhodes' dad, a podiatrist who coincidentally works at the same clinic as my mom in Salt Lake. When I first broke it, my Mom went down to the podiatry department to ask them some questions about the type of break I had incurred, and neither one knew at the time that Stephanie and I knew each other. Their conversation went something like this:

My Mom: My son broke his foot.
Stephanie's Dad: That's too bad.
My Mom: He's in Michigan.
Stephanie's' Dad: So is my daughter.
My Mom: He studies music.
Stephanie's' Dad: So does my daughter.
(Light bulbs appear above both of their heads)

I obviously missed my calling as a playwright. After that, Dr. Rhodes told me that he would be out here in Michigan for Stephanie's recital, and he coincidentally arrived here the day I got my new x-rays. So he spent some time with me looking over my x-rays and answering my questions, which was really awesome of him. He told me that the break was not a Jones Fracture as the doctor had previously told me, which usually requires surgery and a 6 months or so to heal, but that it was something a lot less severe. If I had to break my foot, he said, I pretty much picked the most desirable place to break it.

So hooray for getting out of the boot in three-ish weeks. I don't feel any pain in my foot any more and my boot-less morning routine (walking from the bed to the bathroom, taking a shower, walking back to the bed to put my boot on) is getting easier and less limpy. I'm really glad that I won't be in the boot for Christmas. You might even say it's a Christmas Miracle! (Cue heavenly choir)

Now if Deron Williams' foot can just heal...

P.S. - A special shout-out to Sister Connett, my bishop's wife, for sewing me up a fleece booty to go over my sock. It was starting to get really cold with my toes all exposed like that.

Brian Presents: Sherlock Jr./The Gold Rush

Warning: The following contains a really lame boxing extended metaphor. Please proceed with caution.

Saturday night was a first in the history of Brian Presents: a double feature. It was a classic throwdown between two heavyweights who have been endlessly compared for the last 80+ years.

The contenders:

Buster Keaton

VS.

Charlie Chaplin

We first watched Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr., immediately followed by Chaplin's The Gold Rush. The 20+ people present (it was the largest Brian Presents: crowd ever) reached a pretty unanimous consensus moments after the movies were over: they liked Buster Keaton better.

I was both surprised and delighted that everyone liked Buster Keaton so much. In the past I have found that of the two, Keaton is the harder sell. Chaplin's Tramp character is instantly lovable, but Keaton's characters are so stoic and dispassionate that they don't seem to care if you if you love them or not. Maybe that's why Keaton seems to have aged better - he fits in better with our more ironic, less sentimental modern world. As Roger Ebert has said, "He's like a modern visitor to the world of silent clowns."

I wonder how much everyone's opinion was influenced by the fact that we watched the 1942 reissue of The Gold Rush in which Chaplin composed a musical score and replaced the written title cards with ridiculously overwritten voice-over narration. I did this in the interest of running time - it makes the film 30 minutes shorter - so that I could comfortably pair it with another movie and not have the evening get too long. Everyone ended up staying so long afterwards that I might as well have shown the original, cheesy-narration-free 1925 version.

But the night wasn't about which one was better - I was overjoyed that many participants finally got a chance to experience Keaton and Chaplin. It's a great testament to their genius that these films, over eighty years old and made with primitive techniques by today's standards, managed to elicit a non-stop stream of laughs, sighs, gasps, and "how did they do that?"s. And that's what Brian Presents: is all about (unlike the Hokey Pokey).

The evening also involved another battle of heavyweights: B. Tanner VS. E. Downie in Dr. Mario. A lot of people played Dr. Mario that night, but I feel that I can objectively say that Elizabeth and I are in a completely different weight class (wow, this boxing analogy keeps getting worse) than all the others, and, I must admit, Elizabeth is better (heavier, to follow the analogy? - sorry Elizabeth!) than me.

We played three matches. I won the first match by close margins in each game (she claimed that her controller was bad - whatever). In the second match, Elizabeth absolutely blasted me off the face of the earth. Not even close. But in the third match, after almost everyone had left, Elizabeth and I were tied at 2 games a piece and I had a solid lead in the final game. Unfortunately, Elizabeth, cunning little vixen that she is, got started on telling this big long story during the game. At one point I quickly turned my head to look over at Micah, the subject of my story, and in that split second my pill got lodged on top of this big pile and all of a sudden I lost. So thanks to her mind games, Elizabeth pulled out the victory.

But I played much better than at the previous Brian Presents:, so I feel confident about our inevitable rematch. En garde, Elizabeth! Oops, that's fencing. Time to KO this post (yuk yuk). No, seriously.

A Different World

We all woke up this morning and the world had changed. Nothing would ever quite be the same again, and we wondered what our lives would be like from now on.

I refer, of course, to the expiration of the free trial period of NBA League Pass. NBA League Pass is a (pricey) cable package that allows you to watch every NBA game of the entire season. This is a most valuable commodity to a Utah Jazz fan who is stranded in the Detroit area, since the only time I can see the Jazz is when their games are nationally televised, which is only 10 times this whole season (compared to 24 times for the Lakers and 25 for the Celtics), and the first nationally televised game isn't until December 5th! December 5th?!? I can't wait that long to watch them play!

But thanks to the free League Pass trial I got to see the Jazz's first three games, and so far I have been very pleased by what I have seen. Even with team leader/best player/heart and soul Deron Williams out with a foot injury (I feel your pain, D-Will!), the offense has looked remarkably efficient. New backup point guard Brevin Knight looks like he was a real steal and Ronnie Price is getting better all the time at the point too. In the second game of the season the Jazz only had 5 turnovers for the whole game (new franchise record), compared to about 15 a game last year. Andrei Kirilenko seems to be thriving off the bench - he looks like the AK-47 that wreaked havoc with opposing team's offenses and made the All-Star team in 2004.

So even though I can't watch all 82 games this season as I'd like, from the small taste I've gotten of this team I feel very confident going forward. Plus I'll get to see them in action in person on December 19th when they come to the Palace of Auburn Hills to play the Pistons. If you are going to be in Michigan that day and are interested in going to the game, let me know and we'll make an excursion out of it. And if some benefactor out there would like pay for League Pass for me, I would be okay with that.

P.S. - Whenever I write Jazz-related posts the number of comments I accrue goes way down (except for comments from my friend Aaron). If you are trying to send me the message that I should stop writing about the Jazz, nice try but you'll never stop me!

Election Flashback

The presidential election election on Tuesday, November 4th marks the fourth anniversary of another important event, my senior recital. It was my very first full-length vocal recital, given in order to graduate with my bachelor's degree. Since the it was around the time of the previous presidential election, I decided that I wanted to promote the recital with a mock political poster campaign.

My sister Amy is a graduate of BYU in graphic design and she designed a brilliant series of posters for all of my recitals and all of the Zero Budget Production shows that I directed and/or produced while at the University of Utah. For this poster, I told her a couple of elements that I wanted: red, white, and blue color palette with lots of stars and stripes, generic political catchphrases, and an Uncle Sam-style photo of yours truly. I was thrilled with what she came up with:

Amy's political soundbites sound especially prescient of this year's election - "It's Time for a Change" and talk of building bridges (Bridge to Nowhere, anyone?). I have to claim the credit for the line "An Evening of Non-Partisan Music" - that just killed me when I thought of it.

In retrospect, this was an important recital for me. Aside from the opening Bach cantata (which was way beyond me at that point and probably still is) I felt like I sang very well and chose really interesting repertoire that you don't get to hear that often: Milhaud's Trois Chansons de Troubadour (in French), Villa-Lobo's Modinhas e Canções (Brazilian songs in Portuguese), and Menotti's Five Songs (in English). I ended the evening with a fully-staged performance of "The Most Lamentable Tragedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisby," a short mini-opera within the opera A Midsummer Night's Dream by Benjamin Britten. I sang the part of Thisby, but I also directed the show, and it was the first time that I had directed anything. It was a smashing success, and it went so well at my recital that we were invited to give a repeat performance at the opera workshop's scenes concert, where it completely stole the show. And I had a great time coming up with the name for the group that performed it The Royal Shakespearean Opera Society of the Wasatch Front - I wanted something that sounded ridiculously pretentious and hopelessly amateur at the same time, just like the Tragedy of Pyramus and Thisby itself.

So mad props to my sister Amy again for a great poster, and in case you haven't heard, there is a presidential election on Tuesday, so go out and build those proverbial bridges to a better future.

P.S. - As the authority on getting free stuff I feel compelled to tell you that selected Ben & Jerry's locations are giving away free scoops of ice cream on election day from 5:00 - 8:00 p.m. Isn't America a great country?

A Very Buffy Halloween

Tips to those who want to dress up as Spike for future Halloweens: if you are at the costume store and you are faced with the choice of yellow hair spray or white, go with the yellow. Spike has Billy Idol-style bleach blond hair (Spike claims that Billy Idol stole that look from him) and I thought that white might approximate that color a little bit better, but instead it just made me look old. And I couldn't say I was Spike as an old man because vampires don't age - Spike himself is pushing 150 years old.

Other than that, I felt like my costume was a success and I had fun in my costume. I even had about a dozen people correctly identify me without any help. That showed me that maybe there is hope for America after all.

I had made it known that I was going to dress as Spike a few weeks in advance, and a few friends expressed interest in forming a Buffy group with me, namely Kristen Bates (as Buffy) and Brian Starr (as Angel):

I think Kristen has a nice season 1 Buffy vibe going (Buffy was a brunette early on before making the switch to her iconic blond hair), and Brian Starr is always drawing Angel comparisons in real life, but he really nailed the Angel brooding face for this picture.

P.S. - If you look closely, you can see that I even replicated the scar on Spike's left eyebrow, incurred while he battled a Chinese slayer during the Boxer Rebellion (as seen in "Fool For Love," season 5, episode 7). Yes, I am that nerdy when it comes to Buffy.

Halloween Through the Ages

I love Halloween. I love that there is a day in the year when you will go to the grocery store and see people walking around as witches and ghosts and Harry Potters. It's like the world gives itself permission to have fun and be crazy for a day. I love it all - the costumes, the decorations, the pumpkins, the Halloween-themed T.V. episodes (especially Buffy), the candy, the parties, and the trick-or-treating. If it were not totally weird and creepy, I would probably still go trick-or-treating (plus the walking boot would slow me down). I feel bad for today's kids who don't get to experience real trick-or-treating. My friends and I were die-hard trick-or-treaters, and we would kit several entire neighborhoods in a single night, planning out routes beforehand to cover the most ground and then practically sprinting around to hit the most houses. We always came home with at least one pillowcase full of candy, and then the next day we had big candy trading parties. Trunk-or-treating in a strip mall parking lot just isn't the same.

Earlier this week I was thinking about Halloween costumes past, so I emailed my mom and asked her to send me some pictures from a few specific years. She ended up sending me a bunch more than I asked for and it was fun to see some of the costumes I had completely forgotten about. The one picture she didn't send me was the costume that got me reminiscing in the first place, but that's probably a good thing. The costume in question was from 3rd grade, around the time of Operation Desert Storm. For some reason my dad had come into possession of a real gas mask, and so I wore the gas mask, a towel tied around my head, a robe, and a fake gun and went as an Iraqi soldier. If I were to publish that picture here, I probably would never be able to run for public office (like that would ever happen) and I might just get an unexpected visit from homeland security. Besides, now I have a better idea what Iraqi soldiers actually look like, thanks to Lost's Sayid.

So let me take you on a personal tour of Halloweens past:

I had completely forgotten about this costume. I guess I'll be coming full circle this Halloween when I'm planning to dress up as Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I love it when people pass off a poodle skirt as a costume. What are you dressing as - a poodle skirt? I guess the answer could be a "50's teen girl." And Amy might just be wearing an old ballet recital costume.

This may not have been Halloween - I used to wear that karate outfit full-time when I was in my Karate Kid phase. The poodle skirt lives on another year. Emily should have collected her candy in a bindle, but that probably would have been problematic. These two photos beg the question: Where is my sister Julie? Maybe she was two old/cool for us back then.

Forgot about this one too - perhaps it's fate that my greatest life accomplishment is Mario-related, although I never play as Mario on Mario 2. My outfit reflects the color scheme of Mario 1, before Mario permanently switched to blue overalls and a red shirt. What can I say - I've always been a purist.

I can't tell you what I had in mind with this costume. The wig, nose-glasses, and tie all say "Big pile of wacky stuff!" but then I've got that incongruous army jacket on. I still have that tie, by the way, but it's back in Utah. I might just have to dig that out next time I'm back home. I had a piano recital that night and my teacher told me that all of her students who were playing in the recital were going to be wearing Halloween costumes. Nope. Just me. At first I felt really stupid, but then I felt cool because everyone else was boring and afraid to be different.

I alluded to this in a previous post about my Bob Dylan years. This was from my sophomore year of high school, the same year that I played "John Wesley Harding" in the talent assembly. Thanks to my mom for curling my hair for me and thanks to D.I. for that awesome shirt (I think that shirt is also still around back in Utah). The inspiration for this ensemble was the album cover of the classic Dylan album, Blonde on Blonde:

On with the tour:
This was my senior year of high school, and I remember that I had rehearsal that day for The Wizard of Oz and once again, I was the only one there in a Halloween costume. Later that day I got stopped on the street by some random person who said, "How dare you! Do you think it's funny to dress up like Hitler?" Fair enough I guess - even Chaplin exploited the Hitler 'stache comparisons in The Great Dictator. The yearbook ran a photo of me in this costume walking with a group of non-costumed people, accompanied by a quote where I said something like, "I don't really care about how I dress." I was really proud of that.

I hope you enjoyed the tour and I would encourage each of you to call your moms and ask them for your old Halloween pictures. And dress up this year and wear the costume all day - trust me, you'll have a great time and the world will be better for it.

Happy Halloween!

Save the Pumpkins!

When I was a missionary in Brazil, I learned that if you wanted to have blockbuster attendance at a church activity, all you had to do was label the activity as "American." There are so many things we do in America that they find fascinating down in Brazil. For instance, in Brazil they have gigantic chocolate eggs full of toys and candy inside for Easter, but they don't dye Easter eggs. I had my mom send me an Easter egg dying kit and the activity was a sensation. The Brazilians were both delighted and puzzled when I explained what they were supposed with the eggs. "What, with chicken eggs?" "What are you supposed to do with them afterwards?" When they were all dyed we had an Easter egg hunt and the kids went crazy for it.

Brazilians know about Halloween from American movies, but they don't really know about the finer points of trick-or-treating or pumpkin carving. In Brazil they have various squash varieties but they don't have real pumpkins. So for Halloween I put together an activity in which we carved squash and watermelons. It was another sensation.

Last night I was in charge of the Family Home Evening activity for the ward, and so I took that Halloween activity even farther. Entitled Save the Pumpkins!, the activity consisted of carving surrogate pumpkins such as cantaloupes, pineapples, pomegranates, apples, eggplants, coconuts, bell peppers, pears, kiwis, etc. I love being in a situation where I can watch people being creative and last night was filled with some really imaginative work, such as:

My personal favorite of the evening, Jessica Allen's coconut. Seth and I picked out the coconut as a joke because we thought that there was no way that anyone could carve a coconut. I love the primitive aesthetic and the play of textures from all parts of the coconut.

I was stunned to see this macabre piece come from sweet little Sister Kurabayashi. It is an apple with a knife through its head and pomegranate brains coming out. It appropriately won the prize as the scariest work. But it was fun to watch the Kurabayashis cackle with delight as they made one twisted decision after another.

This video showcases some of the finished pieces, including Jody and Evelyn's prize-winning Jonah and the Whale Eggplant (Most Original; Jody was on a roll yesterday - she gave a great talk in stake conference, she was baptized, and then she created a prize-winning eggplant carving) and Abe Gong's Elephant banana (Best Use of the Materials You Were Stuck With; it appropriately collapsed soon after judging).

A Push for Pushing Daisies

The great German director Werner Herzog has said that we live in an era starved of new images. In our entertainment we keep getting different versions of the same old images - car chases, explosions, etc. Furthermore, he states that if we keep seeing these recycled images, our imaginations will become deadened.

Don't get me wrong - I love me a good car chase/explosion. But I am always most excited by artists who can show me places and things that I have never seen before, things I would never even think or dream of on my own. That is one reason why I am so drawn to the films of Hayao Miyazaki. In his films he creates an entire world that I have never seen before that is so pure that it seems to have poured straight out of his imagination onto the screen. His worldview is so colorful, whimsical, and full of childlike wonder that I get irresistibly sucked in. The first time I saw Spirited Away I had a serious goosebump overload because every inch of the screen for every second of the running time was full of delightful new surprises and wonders. For weeks I told every single person I saw that they needed to go see it and I returned to the theater four more times to take new friends to experience it.

This past week I discovered a show that has captured my imagination and ignited my desire to proselytize in the same way: Pushing Daisies.

Every single episode is like a perfect little miracle - full of sights and sounds that no one has ever shown me before. Everything about it works perfectly. The color palate is bright, vivid and beautiful - like a gorgeously illustrated story-book come to life and with the most elaborately designed and terrifically imaginative sets and costumes. The writing is absolutely top notch, the performances are all fantastic (especially the bubbly and hysterically funny Kristen Chenoweth).

But what is most special about it is the tone. If you have heard any synopses of the plot, you might expect the show to play like a forensics drama with an odd supernatural twist. While the plots do revolve around forensic investigations, the show is like a forensics fairy tale. The show is sweet, romantic, quirky, whimsical, and funny. It provides me with sights and situations I have never seen before. Consider this scene:



Be honest - have you ever seen a scene where a pie shop waitress, two former synchronized swimming stars, and a resurrected dog follow a carrier pigeon that has a parrot's wing grafted onto one side, all while harmonizing to a They Might Be Giants song? This show consistently delivers wholly unexpected and delightful scenes like this that make my heart happy.

Now I know what you're thinking: "Brian, please tell me where I can watch this fabulous show!" It is currently in its second season on ABC, where it airs on Wednesday nights. I would recommend starting from the beginning - the pilot episode is the finest pilot that I have ever seen. The first season is on DVD, so you can buy it, check it out from the library, or find a friend who will lend it to you (no, I don't own it yet, but I hope to rectify that soon). You can watch all of the episodes that have aired so far from the second season for free at abc.com (click on "Full Episodes" and then "Pushing Daisies").

Hopefully many of you have already discovered this little treasure on your own. I just love it so much that I couldn't help myself from using my blog to gush about it, so I hope at least a few of you out there will decide to check it out. Trust me - you'll love it.

Jonesin'

Thanks to my concerned blog readers for intervening and encouraging me to head to the doctor for x-rays on my foot. I was thinking that it would just get better on its own since my foot has been feeling much better and I was even able to ditch the crutches on Friday morning. But the comments on my blog coupled with a phone call from my mom convinced me that I should have it looked at, so I went to the Student Health Center Friday afternoon. I was wishing that I had taken my camera with me, but the x-ray result looked something like this:

It's a fracture near the top of the 5th metatarsal, frequently referred to as a Jones Fracture. I found a really straightforward site that describes the Jones Fracture, a portion of which I quote here:

What are the symptoms of a Jones fracture?
Patients who sustain a Jones fracture have pain over this middle/outside area of their foot, swelling, and difficulty walking. Most often a Jones fracture is caused without significant injury or impact.

Wikipedia chimes in that "it may not be an obvious fracture to the patient, and could be mistaken for a sprain." They both got me pegged. I found another site that lists the causes of stress fractures, including "Increased levels of activity, especially without proper conditioning." That would seem to be true in my case. I decided in the last couple weeks that I wanted to become more active, since I'm usually one of the most sedentary people I know. So I started doing things like going to Sports Night every week, training for a 5K in Detroit on Thanksgiving (I guess that is out), playing tennis, and even attending a capoeira class. Serves me right for trying to be more active - guess I should just stick to Mario 2.

This is a fracture that doesn't heal very easily because it lies in an area where there is very little blood flow, so they hooked me up with a walking boot and told me to come back in 4 weeks for a follow-up. It's hard to predict how long it will take to heal, but the typical figures run from 2-8 months in the boot.

Check out my sexy new footwear:

It's just perfect for the coming winter months - I've sure I'll love to walk through snow and ice in that thing. But hey, I can walk again, so that's definitely a good thing, and I'm so glad I'm not on crutches - they were starting to hurt worse than my foot was.

I've been on the boot for two days now and I've got to say that it's not that bad - I can do almost everything that I'm used to being able to do. This is my first broken bone and it could have been a whole lot worse - I think of my nephew Dallin in a full body cast for several months and I'm grateful that that is not me.

Injuries Afoot

If there is one thing in which I have really excelled in the second half of 2008 it's got to be in the art of hurting my feet. When I was in Campinas, Brazil, I stepped in a hole in the sidewalk and twisted my ankle. It was actually a pretty bad twist - I could feel it for months afterward, especially when I was just waking up - but I soldiered through and continued to limp around an insane amount every day powered by sheer "I'm in Brazil and nothing is going to slow me down, dangit!"-ism.

The next foot malady happened during a basketball game at our ward's Sports Night. It was just a few plays into the game and I went for a loose ball and I landed on top of someone's foot. I walked off the court limping and continued to limp for another day or so before that twisted ankle went gentle into that good night.

Flash forward to Monday night. I thought I was going to have to miss Sports Night because of a recital that I had to attend, but it only lasted a half hour, so I hopped in my car and drove out to Ypsi to catch the last half hour of basketball. Just like the previous time, three or four plays into the game I went after a loose ball and landed on somebody's foot. I limped off the floor and went home. I put some ice on it expected the pain to die down, but it kept getting worse, and when I finally took my shoe off to have a look at my foot, it had a big fat old lump on it that was starting to turn purple.

I couldn't sleep at all that night because every time I moved even slightly my foot was not at all happy about it. I was supposed to get up and teach my class at 9:00, but I couldn't put any weight on my foot and it was hurting a lot. I had sent an email out to my class the night before saying that class was canceled, and I called the office at the theater building in the morning and told them to put a note on the door just in case people didn't get the email. I then proceeded to spend the first few hours of Tuesday with ice on my elevated foot watching T.V. before Seth took me down to the re-use center and I got me some $5 crutches.
So that's me on crutches. I decided it would be nice to have some Michigan fall foliage in the picture, but the goofy grin was a result of me realizing how ridiculous this picture is - it looks like I'm about to traipse off on a nature hike on my crutches. My eyes are closed in the picture, but I was not about to hop all over the place to set the timer for another shot.

I've quickly gained an appreciation for people who spend an extended amount of time on crutches. I've only been on them for two days and my arms and especially my armpits are already sore. Hallways seem endless and and parking lots seem gigantic and forbidding. Everyday tasks become an ordeal, like the two flights of stairs to get up to my apartment. I've tried hopping up on one foot, walking up on my knees, going up backwards on my butt, but regardless of the approach it is still an ordeal. Yesterday one of my classes met down on Central Campus rather than our usual North Campus spot and going from the music building (which is not very ADA-friendly, by the way) to the Hatcher Graduate Library and back felt like Odysseus's 20-year voyage (fortunately I managed to avoid those pesky Sirens and Cyclopses).

I just finished teaching my class this morning, so now I can just go home and spend the rest of the day on the couch, which I am really looking forward to. Seth just got a used Sega Genesis and I'm planning on getting season one of Pushing Daisies from Amy Jeppsen, so let the convalescing begin.


P.S. - When I finally get around to inventing that time machine, going back to Monday, October 13th and stopping myself from going to Sports Night will be near the top of my 'to-do' list. But the universe might just do a course correction and I would sprain my ankle in a different way. In that case, I would keep going back in time over and over again until I had sprained my ankle in the coolest way possible - like by sky-diving or having a supermodel trip on my foot. Seth and I actually had this conversation - shows you how nerdy we are.