I don’t typically read LDS Fiction. A lot of it just doesn’t appeal much to me. Those few books that do draw my attention are often either, in my estimation, much too preachy, superficial, and emotionally manipulative on the one hand or on the other veer off into apostasy in order to be edgy, artistic, intellectual, and morally nuanced. Blech.
However, contrary to my usual interests, last month I picked up a newly released book by David J. West entitled Heroes of the Fallen. I had run across West’s blog a few months earlier, and I had been following his posts. I knew that he was an aspiring LDS author, but I hadn’t followed his blog closely enough to realize that he had a book about to be published. When he announced it’s release, I was intrigued by what I had already gathered from his blog. So I headed over to the local bookstore where he was doing a book signing and purchased an author-signed copy. I finished Heroes of the Fallen in about a week.
The book is set in the ancient America of the Book of Mormon, around 320 or so years A.D. This setting is both a benefit and a challenge for the author. West benefits from a pre-existing setting, complete with unusual names and places, a history, language, political system, and religious beliefs. My favorite fantasy writers, like J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Lloyd Alexander, drew upon the histories, myths, and legends of the ancient civilizations with which they were familiar, borrowing names, plots, archetypes, and themes in order to lend weight and coherence to their works. In some ways, Heroes of the Fallen benefits similarly from the Book of Mormon. By adapting and extrapolating from the Book of Mormon, West is able to concentrate on filling in the details and bringing to life a fully-realized, exotic, ancient civilization without having to invent it whole-cloth.
I hope those of you who might be a little offended by the title of this video, will watch it anyway. Not only does it represent an amazing accomplishment, but I love the way it brings so many cultures and so many of God’s children together in a silly, but surprisingly touching display of cross-cultural connectedness.
I believe that dance is part of our human soul and represents a fundamental part of what it means to be human and a child of God.
Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.
Hat tip: North Temple
I came across this brilliant video on YouTube over the weekend.
Q: What if the Beatles covered the classic Led Zeppelin song “Stairway to Heaven”?
A: The Beatnix
Just wanted to remind you all about tonight’s Skook Reunion Concert and Fund raiser for LDS Humanitarian Services. Get on your dancing shoes and bring your kids.
Click her for Concert details.
And just to get you in the mood, here is a video mashup of Skook’s song “Popularity” with the incomparable Jerry Lewis dancing from a scene of the 1963 version of The Nutty Professor:
See you there!
A while ago I wrote about my fascination with Vaudeville and the talent of that era.
This video of some fellows dancing the Charleston in the 1920s’ mashed up with the electronic dance music of Daft Punk is too cool not to share:
Those of you who have known me in person for any significant amount of time know that I love to dance, though it wasn’t always so. Dancing is an important part of our family culture. I’m not talking about competitive ballroom dance or anything intense like that, though many of us have taken ballroom dance classes casually, and some have even competed on a novice level. When I was growing up it wasn’t uncommon for my parents to put on some music and dance, just for the fun of it. Now that we are all grown, when we get together we often dance—and it is blast.
Now that I have my own children, I love to watch them dance. They are so expressive and full of life, and they are surprisingly responsive to the music; changing their motions to match the rhythm and tempo of the songs. I dread the day when they may become too inhibited and embarrassed by what others might think of their dancing.
Dance is a great blessing and I am so thankful for a family and a church that celebrate our bodies, created in the image of God, through wholesome dance and music. When some day I pass on and I reach the afterlife, I hope that as I am reunited with my deceased loved ones and ancestors dance will be a part of the celebration.
What: A Variety of Family-Friendly Live Music
When: Friday July 6th 5:30pm – 9:30pm
Where: Tahitian Noni Auditorium 333 River Park Dr, Provo, Utah, Utah 84604 (map)
If you live in Utah or will be visiting during the week of Independence Day, bring your family over to the Tahitian Noni Auditorium in north Provo, near Provo Canyon, on July 6th for an evening of family-friendly music and dancing with the former members of the local Ska Band Skook. The concert is free, but they will be accepting voluntary donations for LDS Humanitarian Services.
Brothers Ben and Joe Wilson formed Skook about 10 years ago in Cache Valley as a ska-influenced punk trio. Soon thereafter they moved to Utah Valley where they added some excellent horn players and their sound evolved into their own flavor of ska. From the beginning Skook was decidedly anti-popularity, and the theme is reflected in their lyrics. From the sarcasm of “I wanna be a suave mac-daddy man” to the still popular anthem “I shop at D. I.,” Skook was cool because they rejected what was “cool.”
Listen to a 5 minute sample mp3 of excerpts from nine Skook songs
Over time I run into links that I would like to blog about but don’t find the time. So here is a random list of timewasters and interesting links that I would have blogged about had I had the time:
1. Wordy
Wordy is a fascinating and addictive online macromedia flash game that combines the classic word-finding game Bloggle with the falling tile action of Tetris. The only thing that is annoying about it is that it doesn’t recognize a some words that I know are valid. I guess they need to expand the game’s dictionary. Check it out.
2. Javascript Visual Wordnet
This website is interesting on two levels. If you are interested in language, it generates an animated, visual relationship cloud for any word for which you search. Yo can click on any word in the cloud to generate its cloud. From a Javascript programming standpoint it is also fascinating.
3. Same Language Subtitling
Dr. Brij Kothari has an interesting idea for improving literacy through same-language subtitling for T.V. and Movies. I’m curious about the effectiveness of this approach.
4. Zelda Classic
If you loved the original classic video game The Legend of Zelda, this free reproduction for the PC is wonderful. Download it and enjoy!
5. Finding Mudbugs in Utah
An article about how to catch crayfish in Utah (something I wish I had known when I was a kid!).
6. Scientists Say They’ve Found a Code Beyond Genetics in DNA
Check out this article from the NY Times on a possible additional code superimposed on the already familiar DNA code.
7. Death and Taxes
A visual guide to where your federal tax dollars go. It is both captivating and repulsive at the same time!
8. Online Collections at BYU
Too many great resources to describe. Just check it out.
Well, I’ve been on vacation all week…sort of. We had planned to go up to Yellowstone National Park, but we canceled at the last minute because of a sciatic nerve problem that would have made the drive miserable for my wife. So I’ve been vacationing at home instead.
It is far too easy to putter away a vacation at home without actually doing anything substantial. You watch videos, surf the web, eat, neglect the laundry, sleep in, and before you know it you have wasted away the entire vacation.
While we have certainly done a deal of that, we decided to use this home vacation to do some fun things that we don’t usually have time for. The weather this week has been perfect so we have been out and about.
In preparation for our upcoming puppet performance at the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival, I was shuffling through some scripts and skit ideas from several years ago and found this little gem that we used to do before we got into puppetry. I had forgotten all about it. With all of the things I need to get done this week, this thought was really sobering and helped put things into perspective for me:
Good Idea/Bad Idea
Good Idea: Whistling while you work.
Some of you know that I have a fascination with Vaudeville and the roots of modern entertainment. We often forget that many of those who first established the conventions of movies, television, and popular music performance were first vaudevillians. I am also a big fan of swing music, both early and the neo-swing revival of the 90s. I have sometimes daydreamed about opening a modern vaudeville theatre.
The artists of that era were truly amazing performers and their energy and talent is often missing from our modern entertainment industry.
Watch the amazing video above, from the film “Stormy Weather.” It showcases the extraordinary talents of some of my favorite performers from that bygone time: the fantastic Cab Calloway and the stupendous Nicholas Brothers . Fred Astaire said this sequence was the finest piece of tap dancing ever filmed.
My uncle, Brent Brown, who owns several car dealerships throughout Utah, is an amazing guitarist. I always enjoyed gawking at his guitar signed by Van Halen when we would visit him as kids. Every once in a while he would pull out his own guitar and play a song or two, but I never remember getting the chance to hear him play with a full band.
So I was pleasantly surprised when I went to check out a news story on Governor Huntsman playing rock music in the basement of the governor’s mansion and found my uncle Brent wailing on his guitar and singing with the governor accompanying on piano.
Before I get into this subject, I readily recognize that I make grammar mistakes all the time. In fact I am notorious for bad spelling. Grammar mistakes in common conversation or blog posts or blog comments don’t bother me much. And even though I did major in English in college, I have never approved of those who feel the constant need to correct the grammar of others, especially when the meaning of their words is perfectly clear even with the incorrect grammar.
However, I am annoyed under certain circumstances by obvious grammar mistakes. Three recent bad grammar sightings that annoyed me:
Some of you may have seen independent film New York Doll1 , about Arthur “Killer” Kane2 who was the bassist for the short lived but influential 70s glam-rock, proto-punk band The New York Dolls3 . Kane eventually joined the LDS Church. I enjoyed the film quite a lot. If you haven’t seen it, go check it out on video.
Well, The New York Dolls, without Kane who passed away in 2004, have released a new song and music video: Dance Like a Monkey.
As a child I really loved the “Garfield” comics by Jim Davis. I owned a few Garfield books that were read so frequently that they fell apart. A few quotes from the televised Garfield holiday specials, which we watched over, and over, and over again, even made it into our family idiom. Among the most lasting were quotes from Garfield in the Rough (1984) that found wide application to our daily lives:
“Oh joy! Oh rapture! I’m so excited I could just barf!”
”…I think I’d rather stay home and pluck my nose hairs.”
However, over the years the Garfield comic has become tired (ironic isn’t it). I stopped reading Garfield a long time ago because, frankly, it isn’t all that funny anymore. Perhaps it has become a little too predictable and formulaic.
Today I ran across an interesting game that suddenly makes Garfield funny for me again. The game goes like this: You go through the online archive of Garfield comics to find strips involving only dialogue between Garfield and John. Then remove (mentally or using a paint program) all of the dialogue from Garfield so that only John is talking. Suddenly, the Garfield comic becomes a comic about a lonely, pathetic, eccentric named John who talks to his cat. Garfield becomes a mime…a fat, feline Mr. Bean whose reactions to John are deftly expressed without saying a word.
Here are a couple that made me laugh while playing this game:
Garfield 10/07/2005
Garfield 03/07/2005
Garfield 08/18/04
I first encountered the idea here
Perhaps I am just easily amused…
As if having a blog with a lab notebook grid-paper background wasn’t geeky enough…
Growing up, I always loved home experiment/science trick books like Bet You Can and Bet You Can’t . So when I ran across a web page on how to create a miniature Plasma cloud at home using a microwave, some old fax paper, paper towels, and a grape, I just had to link to it .
