Bryce Moore's Blog, page 133

Heavy Meta #15: Interview with Brad Dearden

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In this episode, Kelly and I meet with Brad Dearden, Associate Professor of Geography at UMF. If you think being a geography professor means you sit around drawing maps with colored pencils all day, you really need to listen to this to find out what they really do. Adventures in Nepal, Guatemala, China, and more. Geography professors are much closer to Indiana Jones than they have any right to be.

These podcasts started as a lark to talk about the library and have a fun time, but I’m learning so much about our faculty here at UMF and the research they’re all up to. I’m so glad we have a chance to highlight it, bit by bit.

Right click to download audio file.

Book Review: On the Road

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Longtime blog readers know I almost never give bad reviews of books. Not in public, at any rate. Part of this is professional courtesy. I don’t want to stomp on another author’s toes, especially not when I might meet her or him at a conference at some point and have to answer for my words. Some of it is because I don’t finish books I don’t like, and I don’t review books I haven’t finished. So I almost never have an opportunity to write a bad review.

Until today, apparently.

Because I’ve now read the American classic On the Road, by Jack Kerouac. My first rule doesn’t apply, because he’s deceased, so it’s not like I have to worry about running into him at a conference. (And if I do, I have much more serious things to be concerned about at that point.) And even if he were alive, I think the book’s done just fine for itself over the years, so it’s not like my opinion will hurt its sales much.

As for not finishing books I don’t like? I finished this one because we selected it as the book for the second half of my library’s On Our Mind reading program this year. The theme was “Live. Travel. Adventure,” and I thought we couldn’t go wrong with an American classic. On the Road. What better way to represent travel and adventures?

Except I had never read it. I just assumed it was a good book, because “American classic.”

You know what happens when you assume, right? You’re forced to finish a book you absolutely loathe.

Can I see how this novel might hold an important place in American literature? Sure. I could also see (theoretically) how studying it could be worth while. But I don’t read books to study them anymore. I read books primarily for enjoyment. And there was nothing for me to enjoy in this book whatsoever. I didn’t like the characters, I didn’t like the voice, and there was no plot to speak of.

It started out fair enough. A guy decides to hitchhike across the country to go see his friends in Denver. He makes some foolish decisions, but whatever. One way or the other, he makes it there. The journey itself is pretty boring, from a narrative perspective. It’s basically a laundry list of events. “I did this, and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened.” Nothing really to connect them except sequence.

Surely, it must improve later on, right?

Wrong.

He gets to Denver and decides that’s a pretty lame place as well, so he keeps traveling. One place after the other. That’s all the book is. Traveling traveling traveling. No real concrete goals other than to be somewhere other than where he is at the time. It’s a rambling narrative that weaves around like an alcoholic at 3am.

There are no hidden witticisms. Nothing redeeming about him or his friends. He sleeps, drinks, and drugs his way from one random occurrence to another. I can’t even call them “events,” because an event at least implies something interesting happened. This is like the world’s lamest Facebook account. In fact, this wouldn’t even be interesting if it were presented in Facebook form. It would just be a series of pictures of people and places, with no real information given about any of them.

I loathed this book. I would have put it down after 50 pages if I could have, but instead I was trapped finishing the thing, because there was no way I was going to lead a book discussion on it if I hadn’t read it in its entirety. Which is a good illustration of why forced reading in school turns avid readers into people who hate reading.

Call it a classic if you must. For me, On the Road is nothing more than the thing that took hours of my life and will never give them back.

View all my reviews

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. I’m looking to get to $10/month to justify the amount of time I spend on this blog. I’m at $13/month so far. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! Read this post for more information. Or click here to go to Patreon and sign up. It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Changing Church Policy vs. Church Culture

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I was very pleased to see the LDS church revise their interview policy so quickly to address the issues the recent sexual abuse story raised. The Deseret News had a good article today outlining the changes. A few highlights:

“When a member of a stake presidency or bishopric or another assigned leader meets with a child, youth, or woman, he or she should ask a parent or another adult to be in an adjoining room, foyer, or hall. If the person being interviewed desires, another adult may be invited to participate in the interview. Leaders should avoid all circumstances that could be misunderstood.”

Is this foolproof? No. But it’s an important first step. It gives members the option to have someone with the in an interview. A person of their choice, which is an important distinction.

“Members should never be encouraged to remain in a home or situation that is abusive or unsafe.”

While this one seems like a no-brainer, I actually see it as a pretty big step. As the Deseret News article points out, up until now Bishops were never supposed to counsel couples to divorce. While I suppose this still doesn’t necessarily mean a Bishop will suggest a couple divorce, he can now suggest the abused partner get out of that house or situation.

“When adults are teaching children or youth in Church settings, at least two responsible adults should be present. The two adults could be two men, two women, or a married couple. Where it may not be practical to have at least two adults in a classroom, leaders should consider combining classes.”

I could be wrong on this one, but up until now, my understanding had been this only applied to men teaching children in church. With this change, it appears all children and youth classes need to be team taught, though there is a bit of wiggle room left in the wording. (I would imagine that mainly applies to congregations that are so small it’s difficult to combine classes.)

So these are some important changes, and it’s great to see the speed the Church is (finally) taking to address this. Of course, changing church policy is relatively easy. Changing church culture is the trickier task.

Some of that will be addressed as stakes and wards follow the guidance of this document and discuss the changes together in councils. But my experience has been members can be very resistant to changes that go against The Way Things Have Always Been Done. Sometimes this means church leaders might just ignore this directive. Sometimes it means church members might resist having to change. (“We really need two adults in all youth and children classes? Why? Are you saying I’m going to molest them? This doesn’t apply to me.”)

I imagine some of the difficulty will come in actually believing women who come forward. As the MTC President example shows, people can be in important positions in the church and present themselves as fine upstanding men. But even fine upstanding men on the outside can turn out to be creeps on the inside.

So. Rule of thumb. If someone comes to you (whether or not you’re a church leader) and says she or he is in an abusive relationship, don’t tell them they aren’t. If someone describes something that shows they’re in an abusive relationship, don’t tell them they aren’t. As the policy notes:

Often a report of abuse will come to a trusted teacher or adviser. Members of stake and ward councils should help leaders, teachers, and members take proper steps in preventing and responding to abuse, including reporting the abuse to appropriate civil authorities.

Members need to be taught to recognize abuse so they can identify it when they see it happen in Home Teaching or Visiting Teaching visits. Really, the church is set up in a way that should make abuse difficult to hide (though sadly, not impossible). These changes should hopefully help prevent it even more.

But it will take more than a simple meeting to make the changes. They’ll have to be reiterated and checked up on. This isn’t a quick fix, but if it’s implemented consistently across the entire membership, it could be a very good change.

What do you think? See anything I’m overlooking?

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. I’m looking to get to $10/month to justify the amount of time I spend on this blog. I’m at $8/month so far. Read this post for more information. Or click here to go to Patreon and sign up. It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Silverware Days and Dishes Days

[image error]Denisa made a comparison the other day that stuck with me. “This was a silverware day,” she said.

I had no idea what she was talking about, so I asked what she meant. (Always a good call.)

“Some days it ends up looking like you got a ton done,” she said, “even though you did the same amount of work as other days. Some days it’s the other way. It’s like when you’re emptying the dishwasher. When you’re putting away the plates and dishes, you get a whole ton of the dishwasher emptied, really fast. And then you get to the silverware, and it takes much longer to do just a bit of dishwasher space.”

And that’s really true. I’ve heard it expressed as the 80/20 rule (80% of the work can be done with 20% of the effort, and then the remaining 20% of the work takes the other 80% of the effort), but there’s something about the repetitive task of emptying the dishwasher that makes this much easier to understand.

So when you have a good day, but it looks like at the end of the day you didn’t get a whole lot done, just remember it was a Silverware Day and give yourself a break. And the next day, if you want to feel better about things, why not try getting some of the Dishes done that day instead?

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. I’m looking to get to $10/month to justify the amount of time I spend on this blog. I’m at $8/month so far. Read this post for more information. Or click here to go to Patreon and sign up. It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Sexual Abuse in Church

[image error]I don’t know if people on the East coast are following this as closely as I have to assume folks out in Utah are, but a story came out a few days ago about a woman who accused the president of the Missionary Training Center in Provo of raping her in the mid-80s, when she was a missionary there. (Here’s the Deseret News article, and the article that appeared in the Tribune.)

When I first read about the allegations, I was inclined not to give them any credence whatsoever. The LDS church consists of millions of members, some of them balanced, and some of them very much not. To have someone come out and claim rape, 30 years after the fact, not just by a mission president, but by the MTC mission president? It was just too outlandish, and when I paired that with news that she’d accused 10 other men of assault or sexual harassment, seeking cash settlements, it seemed a cut and dried case.

But then the news came out (linked above) that the former MTC president had admitted in a police interview to having the missionary come back into a side room and, well, I’ll just quote it:

“He did go to his small MTC preparation room in the cafeteria area with (her). Then while talking to her he asked her to show him her breasts, which she did.”

I had to re-read that sentence multiple times to be sure I was understanding it right, because my mind just didn’t want to believe it. Even then, I was trying to come up with some sort of outlandish situation where such a set of events might make sense. What if she was complaining about being physically sick, and there was something wrong with her—

Nope. In no set of circumstances that I could come up with was the right thing to do “ask the missionary to show him her breasts.” And this is what he has freely admitted on the record. Even if you set aside the alleged rape (which you should not), this was very wrong.

For those of you who aren’t members, a Mormon mission president is most definitely a big deal. He has a huge impact on the missionaries he supervises for three years. The president at the MTC would interact with over 100,000 missionaries in the course of his service. I would have thought he’d be under a very close microscope.

I’m still dumbfounded this happened, and it has caused me to reflect on what the church should do differently to ensure this doesn’t happen again. Because if it can happen at the MTC of all places, then it most certainly is happening with Bishops, Branch Presidents, or other church leaders across the globe. Let’s assume it’s very rare. (I would really hope!) Say it only happens in a tenth of a percent of cases where a unit leader abuses authority and sexually harasses someone. Even if you just limit it to Bishops or Branch Presidents, there are 30,439 wards and branches in the church. That would mean 30 leaders are currently abusing people. Multiply that out over the years to see what the total effects would be.

I have no idea what the number is. I just bring those figures up to illustrate my point. When you scale things up to a large number, even fractions of a percent become real situations. Unavoidable truths that (I believe) need to be paid attention to.

In an ideal situation, a mission president, bishop, or branch president is a confidant and counselor to his congregation or mission. He meets with people to discuss their personal struggles and to help them improve their lives. This involves one on one worthiness interviews with men, women, boys and girls. When it comes to the youth program of the church, there has long been a “Two deep leadership” approach, where no leader is allowed to be alone with one of the youth.

Up until now, I suppose the assumption has been that anyone called to be bishop, branch president, or mission president (or higher) wouldn’t abuse their power the same way as just anyone. But a simple Wikipedia article quickly shoots that down. It links to multiple news stories of former LDS bishops convicted of heinous crimes. This isn’t a hypothetical. This is real, and it’s happening, and I’ve mostly been ignoring it up until now. I’d read a report about a bishop, and I’d think it was terrible, but I’d then go and resume my daily activities. We can’t do that. Ignoring it only exacerbates the problem.

So what can be done?

I’m not sure. It’s certainly above my pay grade to make decisions for the church as a whole. But I can brainstorm a few ideas:

Change the way “worthiness interviews” are run. This would protect both the bishops and the members. I understand that worthiness comes into play a lot in the church. It’s ascertained before you can be baptized, before you can go to the temple, before you can hold a calling. There are plenty of worthiness interviews. Could the ones for women be performed by women? Could Relief Society Presidents be charged with that, perhaps? I know a lot of this is deeply embedded in church culture, but I think sometimes things everyone takes for granted as unchangeable are actually very easily changed. It’s already awkward enough talking about worthiness with someone of my own gender. I would imagine it would be much, much more difficult talking about it with a woman, and for a woman to have to talk about it with a man who might or might not have the tact necessary to deal with all situations well? There’s a real dynamic of power there that’s way too easy to be abused. Changing it to women interviewing women takes much of that power imbalance away. For a mission president, what if his wife were to conduct worthiness interviews of Sisters?
Could all interviews at least be conducted in a room with a window? How about if the door has to be ajar, and someone else has to be present, out of earshot, but within a reasonable distance? (Though that only takes away the chance sexual assault to happen right then. It does nothing for grooming people for later abuse, which seems the much more likely outcome at the moment.)
Having interviews involve two men instead of just one takes away the potential for grooming, but makes the power imbalance in genders even worse. Yuck.

Hopefully there are even more ideas I’m just not thinking of at the moment. I would really like to see changes happen. Am I going to campaign for it? Not actively, beyond blog posts like this. I realize that’s not how the church works. But I do believe change happens, and I do believe God sometimes has to wait for us to get with the program enough to let that change occur. That’s kind of the basis for the entire story of the restoration.

Sitting back and assuming God will fix it all or prevent anything bad from happening is antithetical to the whole foundation of this religion. I would love to see church leaders take an active role in making it harder for predators to function within the church. Simply making speeches about how evil harassment and abuse are doesn’t really cut it. At least, it hasn’t cut it yet.

So what else can be done?

A Reasonable School Budget

It’s time to start gearing up for another round of school budget votes. (Hopefully only one this year!) And it’s more important than ever to make sure accurate facts are out there right from the get go. The latest article in our local online paper, The Daily Bulldog, does an excellent job reporting the ins and outs of the new budget proposal. If you read it in its entirety, it’s clear there are many different factors going into this budget. But if you scan through it and look for a “bottom line” figure, it’s easy to latch on to that 5% increase over last year’s budget.

And sure enough, the budget hawks are already rattling their sabers. “5% is too much!”” The school board is out of touch!” They’re trying all sorts of measures to get their way*, but each effort simply distracts from the central message. When you look at the actual figures**, our school board has kept things remarkably level for the past 5 years. Check it out:

Year
Local Assessment
Change
Total Budget
Change
Enrollment
Change


2014-2015
$12.18 million
n/a
$31.04 million
n/a
2,338
n/a


2015-2016
$13.12 million
+7.8%
$32.04 million
+3.2%
2,337
0%


2016-2017
$12.81 million
-2.4%
$32.75 million
+2.2%
2,288
-2.1%


2017-2018
$12.54 million
-2.1%
$33.63 million
+2.7%
2,354
+2.9%


2018-2019
$13 million
+3.7%
$35.32 million
+5.0%
2,429
+3.2%


Five Year Difference
$0.82 million
+6.7%
$4.28 million
+13.8%
91
+3.9%

It’s true that if you just look at the total budget, it’s gone up $4.28 million over the last five years, an increase of 13.8% (spread out over five years, mind you.) But when you start to drill down, you see that the local assessment (the amount we actually have to pay in our property taxes) has hovered around $13 million the whole time. Yes, it’s up 6.7% over the five years, but our school size is up 3.9% in that same time. It costs more to teach more students. And inflation comes into play as well.

To me, it seems like the school board had one extreme year (2015-2016). There was a huge sticker shock associated from that 7.8% increase in a single year, and that galvanized a group of people who felt the school budget was going up too fast. Except it has stopped that steep increase. (An increase, by the way, due to a last minute change that year to the way the State funds school districts.) There’s no argument to be had that it’s going up too fast, because in the two years since that steep increase, it actually went down for us. The school board did what we asked them to: they found ways to both give our students an excellent education AND keep costs down for local taxpayers.

The total budget number is covered by a variety of other sources. Independent donations. State subsidies. The local assessment is the number we need to keep an eye on. And when you take into account how many new students have come into the area (yay!), that 6.7% increase seems even more reasonable.

So don’t listen to the nay-sayers. This is already a reasonable budget proposal that’s doing its best to maintain a balance. We have a good school board who does a good job. Come out to the budget meetings, support this budget, and vote for it when it comes time. Here are some important dates to write down:

March 26th–Vote in Farmington for your school board to select your school board representatives.
May 1st–Vote in the school board meeting to approve the budget.
May 15th–Vote in town to officially pass the budget.

*This time around, they’re now trying a new approach: change the makeup of the school board itself. Our school district consists of 10 different towns. Some of those towns are very small. Some of those towns are comparatively large. In the current system, each town’s school board member receives a weighted vote, according to how big or small that town is. So a bigger town like Farmington has a bigger portion of the vote. We currently have 16 school board members: 1 each from Weld, New Vineyard, New Sharon, Starks, Industry, Vienna, Chesterville, and Temple, 3 from Wilton, and 5 from Farmington.

Under the new system they’re proposing, this would change to 10 members (one from each town). Each member’s vote would count the same. So Weld (population 419) would have a vote equal to Farmington (population 7,760). On the surface, that’s preposterous. To make it legal, they’d have to also switch the way school board members are elected. Currently, each town votes for only their ow representatives. Under the new system, the whole district would vote for each representative. So Weld would have some nominees, and then all voters in all towns would vote for which nominee they prefer.

This doesn’t really “fix” anything, if the argument is that Farmington has too big of a vote. All it does is make it so now Farmington gets to select who the representative from Weld will be. I personally would think the small towns would prefer to keep selecting their own representatives. It would be like California voting for Rhode Island’s Senators. The current system works just fine and has for years. Why go through all these hoops to try and change it?

**All figures drawn from here, here, and here.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. I’m looking to get to $10/month to justify the amount of time I spend on this blog. I’m at $8/month so far. Read this post for more information. Or click here to go to Patreon and sign up. It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Separating Your Job from Your Religion

[image error]Over the past few years, there have been a number of noteworthy occasions where people refuse to do things at their job because of their religion. Whether it’s baking wedding cakes for gay marriages or performing abortions, there’s been a fair bit of discussion and debate over whether a religious belief should be a valid reason to refuse to do something in the course of your line of work.

Each time it’s come up, I’m left scratching my head. As a librarian, I have the opportunity to help people find information on any number of topics quite regularly. And it has never once occurred to me to decline a request because of my personal beliefs or opinions. I’m sure some of you immediately dismiss the idea. “Totally different,” you might say. “All you’re doing is helping people look stuff up. That’s nothing compared to a doctor who might have to perform an abortion, even though he or she believes such an act is against God’s will.”

I can see that there’s a difference, yes, but I don’t think it’s quite as stark as some might think at first glance. For example, someone might come to the library desk asking for information on where to go to get an abortion, or how to have a sex change, or how best to grow marijuana. What I mean is that almost everything someone might want to do that could be considered immoral or “wrong” is something they typically have to find out how to do first. And for that, information resources often play a role.

But I’ve long held the belief that just because I think something’s “wrong” doesn’t mean I won’t help someone find out how to do it, professionally speaking. (Note that there’s a big difference between “wrong” and “illegal.” Though even for illegal things, I would likely still help the patron in question find the information he or she was looking for, as long as searching for that information in and of itself wasn’t illegal. Does that make sense? I wouldn’t help someone find child porn, for example. But there are many research projects out there that entail researching things that would be illegal to actually do. Speaking as an author, if I were accountable for all the research I’ve done into ways to poison, maim, injure, and do other terrible things to people, then I’d be serving multiple life sentences.)

This is a deeply held belief shared by almost all librarians. It’s stated very plainly in the “Library Bill of Rights” posted by the American Library Association:

The American Library Association affirms that all libraries are forums for information and ideas, and that the following basic policies should guide their services.

I. Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation.

II. Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.

III. Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.

IV. Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas.

V. A person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.

VI. Libraries which make exhibit spaces and meeting rooms available to the public they serve should make such facilities available on an equitable basis, regardless of the beliefs or affiliations of individuals or groups requesting their use.

So the thought of someone declining to bake a cake for another person because they don’t like the party where that cake will be served seems . . . quite ridiculous to me. I could see someone coming in and saying, “I’d like to buy a poisoned cake. Will you make me one? One that will kill about 20 people, ideally,” and declining that request, because murder is bad and illegal. But when I go to a bakery and order a loaf of bread, I don’t remember the last time someone asked me “Where are you going to eat it?”

Yes, that’s oversimplifying the issue a bit, perhaps. What if a baker were asked to bake a cake and include a cake topper like the one I linked to at the top of this post? And actually performing an abortion is a far cry from reading about it. But I still stand by the concept that my own personal views should not impact the people I perform services for as part of my professional career. To me, this would be an area where “if I don’t want to do _______, but it’s part of the job, then I shouldn’t go into that job in the first place.”

Does this tread on the freedom of religion? I don’t think so. I’m still allowed to believe whatever I want to believe, and I’m not getting punished for it. It’s just that I’m not allowed to inflict that same belief on someone else.

And yet this continues to be a controversial topic, so I recognize perhaps I’m missing something here. I’m open to some polite, well-informed exchange of views on the topic, and I’ll try to remain open minded. Anyone have anything to say?

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. I’m looking to get to $10/month to justify the amount of time I spend on this blog. I’m at $8/month so far. Read this post for more information. Or click here to go to Patreon and sign up. It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Movie Review: Newsies the Musical

[image error]As a counterpoint to yesterday’s review of La La Land, I thought I’d write up my experience watching the Broadway version of Newsies, filmed and available now on Netflix. I watched the movie a long long time ago in the theater, and I remember making fun of it a fair bit back then, but also kind of liking it. (I was 14. Cut me some slack. And hey–it starred Christian Bale! When I mentioned that to Tomas, he thought it was very strange that Batman was in a movie musical when he was eighteen. That’s actually a movie I’d like to see.)

I’ve been a bit leery about all the Broadway adaptations of movies coming down the pike, and the ones I’ve watched or listened to have been . . . mixed. I enjoyed the music for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and liked the Shrek musical that’s on Netflix now, but each time I watched one, I couldn’t help wishing I was watching something more original. Mean Girls is now starting on Broadway. Mean Girls? And there was School of Rock, and Kinky Boots, and any number of other movies. From what I’ve read, most of them are a fair bit of fun, so why do I have this hangup of wanting to see them? I get that musicals have to make money, and it’s much easier to market an adaptation of a familiar movie than it is to market a new musical no one’s heard of, but still . . .

I’d rather have fresh material than Legally Blonde. Because I have a hard time believing these Broadway adaptations are anything other than cash grabs. It’s not like someone watched the movie and said, “I could do so many awesome things with that, if it were just on Broadway.” In some cases, I’m sure that’s the case, but in most, it’s all about the money.

All that aside, let’s talk about Newsies, which at least was a musical to begin with, so it feels (somehow) less gimmicky to me. I like movie musicals for one thing, and Broadway musicals for another. There’s just so much energy involved in a live production that can’t be captures in a movie adaptation. The movie can be much more refined and convey emotion with a lighter touch, but it’s bound to be a different beast.

The filmed version of Newsies shows this very well. As far as productions go, it was fantastic. The set design is well executed, and the dance numbers were spectacular. The songs are what they are. If you liked them in the movie, you’ll still like them here. Really, my main complaint about the production was the camerawork. They kept going for tight shots, and that came at the expense of showing the stage as a whole. Some closeups are fine, but I kept wanting them to pan out so I could see more of what was going on.

Of course, I was watching it on a 100 inch screen, so perhaps that has something to do with it . . .

In any case, I found it genuinely moving, and I highly recommend watching it. Fun for the whole family. Even Tomas enjoyed it, for the most part, and that’s saying something. I gave it a 9/10 for entirely different reasons that La La Land got the same score. Newsies was held back because it wasn’t the live version. The cameras hurt it.

So where does this leave me? Should I just get over my hangup with Broadway adaptations of films? What say you? And are there any other solid musicals on Netflix I should check out?

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. I’m looking to get to $10/month to justify the amount of time I spend on this blog. I’m at $8/month so far. Read this post for more information. Or click here to go to Patreon and sign up. It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Movie Review: La La Land

[image error]It took me an awfully long time to get around to La La Land, mainly because I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when watching it. Nothing I’d heard about the movie particularly piqued my interest. I knew it was a musical, but I also knew it was up for a bunch of Oscars. One of the reasons for the noms was (from what I’d heard) it was kind of a tribute to Hollywood itself. I knew it was a movie I’d get around to eventually, but I was in no hurry, expecting it to be mainly a fluff piece.

Yesterday was Denisa’s birthday, however, and she wanted to watch a movie she’d enjoy. This seemed like the perfect time to pop La La Land in.

Having now watched it, I’m still not sure what I think. On the one hand, it didn’t quite work as a musical for me. It takes the classic boy meets girl trope, and it kind of meanders around for a while, leaving me wondering what in the world it’s going to do with itself. Halfway through the movie, it could easily just be done, since the boy has met the girl, and they’ve gotten together successfully. In fact, I even paused the movie then to double check it was only half done.

The second half is much lighter on songs, and it takes that classic boy meets girl trope and then stomps all over it in a manner that’s not very fun for those of us who like the trope. On the one hand, I’m all for breaking out of well worn paths, but on the other, I feel like people generally turn to genres for a certain experience, and when you don’t just deliver that experience, but spit in its face, then you’ve broken an important contract.

This wouldn’t be as big of a deal if I’d had a real sense of what La La Land was actually doing and trying to accomplish. I kept trying to figure it out. It’s a classic movie musical done for the modern day! It’s a deconstruction  of the boy meets girl musical! It’s . . . I have no clue.

It was well acted, and I enjoyed the musical numbers and the songs themselves. I really loved a lot about the movie, but I felt like I couldn’t really embrace it. Like it was holding me at arm’s length.

So going into the final section of the movie, I was still really up in the air about the film. And somehow, that final section made it all come together. Spoilers follow with an explanation, but if you want to stop here, know that I gave the movie a 9/10. The ambivalence couldn’t quite be overcome by how much I loved the last section, but it was such a good last section . . .

Basically, I felt like that coda encapsulated an experience I’ve had a few times in my life. Seeing a person or a place years after I’d last seen it or them, and suddenly been whisked away on a journey of “what if.” Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling drifted apart. Took different paths. And then they see each other accidentally, just for a few minutes. And in one great sequence, we see what their lives might have been like if they’d stayed together. It’s touching and sad and thought provoking enough that Denisa and I stayed up way too late talking about the concept and our own experiences with it. (What if we’d taken different classes in Fall 2000 and hadn’t ended up in the same German Phonetics class? What if we’d just sat in different seats in that class? You can quickly come up with a thousand reasons why it would have been so easy for things not to work out with you and your spouse/friend/etc.)

Granted, I realize this has been depicted in movies before. Sliding Doors comes to mind. But that wasn’t nearly as impactful for me, likely because the entire first 4/5 of La La Land is devoted to making that final 1/5 pack as big of a punch as possible.

I don’t have that kind of sequence happen in a movie too often, so when I do encounter one, I take note. To me, it was more like poetry than movie making. The whole film became a vehicle for delivering that final sequence. I’m sure there are other people who didn’t really care for it that much, but for me, it made the whole movie.

Was it all a Hollywood fluff piece? I can see the argument. I can see how it catered to Hollywood and actors. But I felt like in the end, it was much more than that. Because it didn’t really prepare me for what it was doing, I don’t think it was a perfect movie by any stretch. But it’s one I’ll remember for a long time, just for that sequence.

How about you? What did you think of the movie, back when you saw it? I’d love to hear some more opinions.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. I’m looking to get to $10/month to justify the amount of time I spend on this blog. I’m at $8/month so far. Read this post for more information. Or click here to go to Patreon and sign up. It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

The Difference Between a Bad, Fine, and Great Day

[image error]The longer I’m around, the more I’m convinced that most days are just about the same, quality wise. I mean, typically the same thing happens most days. (This is, of course, discounting huge life events like births, deaths, marriages, graduations, etc.) What I mean is that I can have three Saturdays and compare them to each other. One could be bad, one could be just okay, and one could be great. But when I take a step back to see what really set apart each day from the others, I discover that for the most part, all three are identical.

In other words, it doesn’t take much to turn a bad day into a great day, and vice versa.

This is something I really began noticing as a parent. My kids will, from time to time, complain about how bad their day is going, or talk about how they’re having the best day ever. And I look at what’s going on with them, and I’ve seen a lot of what makes the difference is just a matter of perception.

On bad days, a few things go wrong, or one thing goes really wrong, and it becomes difficult to get your balance. From then on, everything you do is viewed through a negative lens, and it’s easy to start looking for the bad over the course of the day. On good days, it’s the opposite. Some things go right, and then you feel like everything is great.

The strange thing (to me) is that often bad days will have good things about them, and good days will have bad. It’s just my ability to accurately see those events for what they are that gets me messed up.

I can be a fairly moody person. I’m good at putting on a show when I’m out in public, but all you have to do is ask Denisa, and she’ll tell you how I can get in funky moods from time to time. Not constantly, but certainly enough to be annoying. I’ll feel like nothing’s going right at all, and I can be pretty negative about things for the space of a few hours or an entire day, until something happens to kick me out of it. I don’t think it’s full blown depression, but it’s probably depression lite. When I’m in one of those moods, nothing can really cheer me up. Good things can happen, but I’m so set on seeing the bad, it’s like I’ve become immune to the good.

It would be great if I could just take a step back and talk myself out of the bad days. Focus only on the good things that are happening to me. I can mentally think it. When I’m having one of those bad days, I know it’s just emotions, and I know things are okay, but it’s impossible to pep talk myself up and into the sunshine again.

This is actually one of the reasons I make lists. I’ve found that one of the big culprits for me to get depressed about a day is for me to feel like I got nothing accomplished. Like I just wasted my day away. This is true for a work day (when I should be getting work done) and a day off (when I want to be having a good time). So I will literally make lists of fun things I want to do on a day, to make sure I do those fun things. That sounds pretty lame as I write it, but it’s true, and it generally works.

I’ll do this in a less structured way with my kids sometimes. At the beginning of a vacation or snow day, I’ll sit people down over breakfast and say, “Okay. Tomorrow, when we’re looking back at how awesome today was, what are some things we’ll list off for why today was so much fun?” And then we do those things. But in the end, that generally doesn’t take a whole ton of time. It amounts to playing a board game together for an hour. Or drawing together. Or watching a movie with popcorn. But it’s consciously looking at the positive, and that helps.

An hour or two can make the difference for an entire 24 hours, one way or the other.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. I’m looking to get to $10/month to justify the amount of time I spend on this blog. I’m at $8/month so far. Read this post for more information. Or click here to go to Patreon and sign up. It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.