Book of Mormon

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Sara and I recently found some time to go see The Book of Mormon.

I love musicals, but it’s much harder to get to them now that we have kids. I realized the last time we saw a show was The Addams Family, which was almost exactly 3 years ago. I liked Book of Mormon much more than Addams Family.

I would recommend it to anybody who doesn’t mind a little profanity. It starts slow, but by the 4th song or so (Specifically “Hasa Diga Eebowai”), there’s no question this is a show by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the guys from South Park (actually, this made me think more of Team America: World Police). Blasphemy is probably too light of a word for it. Considering musicals are generally thought to be family friendly, just be prepared for it and you’ll have a good time.

I don’t think Stone and Parker ever get enough credit for being clever. Yes, they try to intentionally shock you, but that’s not all they are. If it was, South Park wouldn’t be going into its 15th season. Book of Mormon is exactly the same way: there are cheap laughs because they are shocking (AIDS jokes, baby rape jokes, frog rape jokes, dysentery jokes, etc.), but there’s also a larger picture behind it all (tolerance, learning to be yourself, hard work pays off, religion can be silly but we love it anyway, etc.). That’s the part that makes this all work. In fact, if you take away a few small parts, Book of Mormon works surprisingly well as a traditional musical.

Knowing who made this show, I was wondering how badly Mormons would take this show. So I was pretty surprised to find 3 full page ads in the program for the LDS Church. And actually, having seen it, I have to say it’s a lot harsher on Ugandans than it is on Mormons. Sure they tweak their nose a little bit over some of the stranger beliefs, but at the end of the day the Mormons come out looking pretty good. Quite frankly, if you look very hard into any religion, you can pull out all kinds of weird stuff and make it sound ridiculous. I hear worse about Catholicism every day. If the worse you can say about a religion is, “They’re overly nice people who help the world, but have you seen their silly underwear? And, come on, they can’t drink coffee??” then I guess that’s not so bad. (Note: Uh, yeah, there’s worse things they say about the religion, especially in relationship to repressing gays and people of color, but I’m making a point here.)

In summary, the show was really good. It was blatantly offensive at times, witty at others, laugh-out-loud funny, and had catchy songs. What more could you ask for from a musical? (Okay, I guess you could ask it to be a little more politically correct, but if you’re asking that, then this is probably not for you.)

Quote Monday has strong emotions

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Oliver, sighing: “I want to fall in love.”

Evie: “It was fun going through red lights for Grandma’s funeral. But it was sad too. I guess you can be happy and sad at the same time.”

Ollie: “Mama, where are you? Are you downstairs? Mama?”
Ollie: “Daddy, Mama’s dead.”

Ollie, sternly: “This picture is for Mommy, Daddy, so don’t take it.”
Ollie: “But you can say, ‘Wow!'”

I guess we’re not getting a Death Star after all

/ Shane / 1 Comment

In order to better “connect with the people”, the White House set up an area on whitehouse.gov where the common man can enter petitions, or suggestions to be implemented by the President. Realizing that this was the Internet, and all sorts of dumb things would likely get entered in there, they made a minimum number of signatures required before the White House would actually examine a petition and respond to it. Not realizing this was the Internet, they set the threshold at 25,000 signatures in 30 days, something that is almost laughably easy to achieve (note that they’ve since raised the bar to 100,000).

Logically, this new petition system quickly lead to a brilliant suggestion: the government should begin construction on a Star Wars-style Death Star.

The petition makes some good points, and is appealing to many different segments of the community:

By focusing our defense resources into a space-superiority platform and weapon system such as a Death Star, the government can spur job creation in the fields of construction, engineering, space exploration, and more, and strengthen our national defense.

What’s not to like?

Not surprisingly, this petition quickly reached the required number of signatures, triggering an official response from the White House (and changes to the way the petition system works).

Although I support the creation of the Death Star (and signed the petition), in the government’s defense, they make some pretty good points as well:

Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?

The response is great, and filled with Star Wars references, however, I think that you have to read between the lines a little bit. My takeaway is that the government IS ALREADY working on a Death Star, though they can’t come right out and say it. They reference the “giant, football field-sized International Space Station in orbit around the Earth” and the laser-wielding Mars rover. Message received Mr. Shawcross. ::wink wink:: Message received.

Finally, some words of wisdom from the White House:

Remember, the Death Star’s power to destroy a planet, or even a whole star system, is insignificant next to the power of the Force.

Indeed.

King Me

/ Shane / 1 Comment

For Christmas we received a beautiful, handmade checkerboard from my step-father Ron. It was sort of the right gift at the right time, because it’s a game that Evie was really ready for; not too difficult, but more difficult than the kids games she had been playing before.

We’ve had our ups and downs with checkers, but overall she really enjoys it. The problem is that she doesn’t really have anybody else at her skill level to play with, so playing checkers is usually just a series of humiliating defeats. I’m actually pretty impressed; I’m not sure if I would still want to play after being crushed 10 times in a row. Sometimes she needs a little break, but soon enough she’s right back at it.

Finally, the other day, she had her first win. Suddenly it was my turn to suffer a crushing defeat.

2013_01_11_9577

 

 

Although I had a momentary lapse in concentration which caused everything to go downhill very fast, this was a legitimate win. She beat me fair and square, and not for lack of effort on my part. Oh boy was she excited:

2013_01_11_9580

For someone who has experienced the agony of defeat, she sure doesn’t hold back on the gloating if she feels she’s doing a good job. A little prematurely, usually.

She hasn’t nabbed another win since that game, although she almost had Sara the other day. But she has certainly been improving, no question. She has a couple of strong tendencies that hurt her a little bit (well I’m not going to tell you what they are, I want her to get some wins), but she’s certainly mastered the main concepts.

How long should we wait before we introduce chess? 🙂

Photographers

/ Shane / 2 Comments

For Christmas, Anna gave each of the kids a disposable camera to take pictures with. This was a great present, and the kids loved them. Of course, these “old fashioned” cameras do not allow you to see a preview of your pictures, so after watching the kids take their pictures, I was anxiously awaiting the results.

Side note, do you know how hard it is to find a place that actually develops film these days? We couldn’t find anywhere that could do it without sending the film out for a week.

Anyway, we got the pictures back and I have to say, they’re not as bad as I thought they would be!

Sure, Evie had a few head-choppers:

4_0005

and extreme closeups:

12_0013

but there were also a decent number of surprisingly good pictures:

26_0027

and:

5_0006

And even a few more artistic shots, like:

11_0012

Is it just me, or do these kind of look Instagramed? I guess we’ve come full circle.

Oliver’s were not as good as Evie’s perhaps, but still not too shabby. Maybe sometimes he gives equal frame space to me and the toilet:

5_0006 (2)

but he’s got some good ones too:

10_0011

It’s sort of interesting to see the world through Oliver’s eyes. For starters, his viewpoint is very, very low to the ground:

17_0018

Also, it was interesting to see what he was interested in taking pictures of, such as this picture of the stove he insisted on taking: (the apparently filthy, filthy stove)

18_0019

Of course, this was Ollie, so you know he had to take a picture of his taco:

20_0021