Bryce Moore's Blog, page 219

Ukraine, Israel, and the Need for Accurate Information

I came across this article in my feeds today, which details how the Russian media is handling the Malaysian Airlines incident. (Hint: not well.) Like, I assume, most of you, I’ve been following the news of the past week or two with no small amount of consternation. How in the world do we live on a planet where such awful things are possible? Why do people keep doing terrible things to each other, even in this “enlightened” era? Can’t we all just agree what’s acceptable and unacceptable, and then settle conflicts reasonably and peacefully?

Apparently not.

Not when we can’t even get people to agree on what the facts of a tragedy are.

I did study abroad in Jerusalem over the summer of 1999, and I had just a tremendous experience. One of the highlights of my  life, no exaggeration. The BYU Jerusalem Center is on Mount Scopus, overlooking the Mount of Olives. You can walk out the front door and be in the Old City in a few minutes. While I was there, I got to know some of the Palestinian and Jewish storekeepers. These are nice people. Normal people. I saw the way some of the Palestinians were treated, and the way some of the Jews were treated. It’s a train wreck of a situation, and the sad thing is the people themselves seem almost powerless to stop it. They’re good people held hostage to bad blood and worse propaganda and history.

The same thing seems to be happening in Russia these days, if any of that article is true at all. (Of course, when the vehicle you’re using for finding out news is reporting that that same vehicle is unreliable in other places, you reach a strange meta-point where you start to question everything . . .) So many of the decisions and opinions I make and hold are based on the assumption that I can become reliably informed to be able to make those decisions and develop those opinions.

The fact of the matter is that people in power tend to want to stay in power, and one of the best ways of doing that is to ensure the only information the people you govern receive is the information you want them to receive.

Sigh. As soon as I start writing sentences like that, I feel like I need to go looking for my tinfoil hat. But really, stories like this just reemphasize the importance of information literacy–teaching people how to find and evaluate information to make sure it’s valuable and accurate. The best chance a country can have of being on top of things and successful is an informed populace (in my opinion). And one of the best ways of ensuring that happens?

Public, uncensored libraries.

Yes, you can talk about your “freedom of the press” all you’d like. That’s certainly important. But these days, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell which reporters are worth listening to. (Case in point? All the people who think The Onion is real news.) Librarians–trained, actual, experienced librarians–do so much more than just recommend the next Danielle Steel novel. Especially school and academic librarians. (Right at a time when school and academic librarians are a vanishing breed in some areas . . .)

But this is a soap box topic for me, so I’ll sit down and shut up now before I really go off the deep end. Just had that knee jerk reaction to that article, and had to say something.

You may now go about with your normal Monday activities.

Entertainment Costs: How High is Too High?

There’s an interesting, short side conversation happening on my Facebook wall at the moment, focused on the costs of going to the movies. I had said in my How to Train Your Dragon 2 review that $10 for a movie was highway robbery. Other question that accusation, but even after thinking about the matter some more, I still stand by my claim. $10 for a movie ticket just seems too high for me. Granted, I’m a cheapskate, but I’m a cheapskate who’s beginning to branch out into spending money on entertainment when I feel it’s justified.

Case in point: the Utah Olympic Park. I wrote about how I dropped $160 on that experience for my family, and I feel like it was money well spent. Is there a disconnect? How am I willing to spend $40 per ticket for four hours of entertainment but object to $10 per ticket for 2 hours? Granted, I’m not a mathemagician, but even I can figure out that at those rates, movies cost $5/hour to enjoy, and the Olympic Park costs $10/hour (less if you stay longer, granted).

What gives?

Here’s the thing: the Olympic Park is an experience I can only consume in one place. If I could install a 400′ zip line and an alpine slide on the cheap at my house, then you better believe I wouldn’t be giving anyone else money for those kinds of experiences. But I can’t. The same holds true for Mythbusters Live–a show Denisa and I bought tickets for the whole family for (coming this Thanksgiving!) We spent roughly $90/ticket (after taxes and parking and everything else) for what’s supposed to be about a 2 hour show. $45/hour?!? What are we thinking? Well, we’re thinking that TRC adores Mythbusters, and the chance for him to see them live is worth that kind of money. If it was just a showing of a Mythbusters episode on a big screen?

No thanks. We’d pass.

With movies, I can create a pretty close replica to the movie experience at home these days. I’ve got a surround sound system, high definition big screen TV, and a crying baby to interrupt the action now and then. True, it’s not in a huge theater, but for almost all movies, that doesn’t matter. I can consume that entertainment for a fraction of what it would cost if I went to a $10/ticket theater.

Of course, if I were going strictly by cost per hour basis, then I shouldn’t be going to any of these things. Books from a library are free and provide tons of hours of entertainment. These days, I’ve been buying more and more books instead of using the library. Why? Because my time for reading is sporadic, and it’s more convenient to pay money to own the book. Plus there’s that whole “support authors” thing.

In any case, it got me wondering how everyone else approaches their entertainment. How do you decide if something is worth spending money on or not? How much is too much? How much is so little you don’t sweat it? I imagine that as I continue to get older, the cost for these things will continue to drop in my eyes. Having more money available to you tends to make that happen. Plus, I really liked what my brother in law said about prices when we were talking about the Utah Olympic Park. He explained he felt like he wasn’t just paying money for the physical rides–he was paying money for the memories and shared experiences with his family. An interesting and important insight, I felt.

What do you think about the subject?

Personal Perception vs. Reality

Sigh. Okay. I’m going to try something here, and I hope it doesn’t all blow up on me. As some of you might be aware, back while I was on vacation, the Ordain Women founder was excommunicated. I didn’t write a post about it then because I had no desire whatsoever to police the comments that would likely result from such a post. I still have no real desire to do it–and so I’m just hoping they stay relatively friendly and tranquil this time around. We’ll see if that happens.

That said, this isn’t a post about her. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I don’t know her or her situation, and I try to avoid expressing potentially inflammatory statements about situations where I’m uninformed. (Doesn’t always work, but a guy’s gotta try . . .) That doesn’t mean I don’t have opinions on the topic, but it does mean if you want to pry them out of me, you’d have to ask me in person or in private. (Spoiler: my opinions tend to straddle the fence on this one. So if you’ve got strong ones on either side of the divide, half of me agrees with you and half of me disagrees. Maybe I’ve got a career in politics ahead of me.)

So if I’m not going to wade in with both guns blazing into the war of opinions, what exactly is this post about? Why am I speaking out now?

Well, all this talk and the various blog posts around the subject have helped me organize some thoughts that are tangential to the topic. Let’s see where it takes me. It might very well just lead back to what I’m trying to avoid, but such is life.

It seems to me that as a species, humans are very quick to make blanket statements about “the way things are” based entirely on their little slice of reality. In the topic at hand, you’ll have women who have experienced discrimination or inequality in church, and so they’ll state that the church as a whole is misogynistic and discriminatory. At the same time, you’ll have other women who haven’t experienced this, and so they’re shocked and appalled if anyone else brings those charges against the church. But this goes beyond church politics and policies. Whether it’s discussions about politics, sports teams, racism, sexism, religion–you name it. It’s just too easy to base an entire argument on personal experiences, giving credence to your own and discounting others’.

This isn’t anywhere close to a new or unique idea. I realize that. But for the past few weeks Facebook’s fed me a steady diet of blog posts about this whole Ordain Women brouhaha–on both sides of it–and I’m tired of some of the rhetoric that’s flying around, especially when that rhetoric seems to be used consciously as a tool to promote one side and put down the other. Case in point: there was an op/ed Monday in the New York Times about how the “Mormon Moment” is over. I don’t have a beef with most of the article (although I do question the need for or existence of a singular “Mormon Moment.” Judging from the search patterns for “Mormon” on Google, I see a big bump around Romney’s election run, and then a steady series of blips and dots that don’t add up to much of anything.

 

In contrast, check out the trends for “Mormon Moment.”

If anything, it appears that “Mormon Moment” is a moment a few writers like to keep dredging back for one more moment. Enough already.)

But I digress. What really got my goat–and which continues to irritate me throughout this entire debate–is summed up in this final statement in the op/ed:

The true legacy of the Mormon Moment might just be that the church was given the chance that many religious institutions desperately need to stay relevant in the 21st century: the opportunity to open itself to criticism and inquiry. The church has chosen not to. And it has killed its own moment by doing so.

I bristle whenever people–particularly Mormons themselves–try to reduce the religion to an institution that needs to “stay relevant.” The great thing about Mormonism is that either it’s true or it’s absolutely insane. The claims it makes are pretty far out there. It doesn’t try to dance around the issue: just waltz on over to mormon.org to see a summary of the core beliefs of the faith. While some can certainly critique the church for presenting an oversimplified depiction of some of its tangled history (something it’s trying to fix these days), treating it like the Red Cross or some other social institution isn’t an option in my book–not if you’re a member, at least. (Non-believers and non-members can treat the church any way they choose. That’s the beauty of not buying into the system.)

So if you want to say you think the religion is flat out false, I can respect that. (Do it too loudly, and I begin to wonder why you’re hollering so much, however. Though if the church’s positions are actively making life difficult for you, I can certainly understand getting upset about it. A topic for a different blog post.) And if you believe it’s true, that’s a-okay with me, too. But taking the middle road–the one where you say the church is true but it should be updating itself for the modern day or needs to “get with the times” . . . then you’ve lost me.

It reminds me of a quote by CS Lewis in Mere Christianity:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. … Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.

I’m not a member because the church does nice things, though it does plenty of them. I’m not a member because 15 million other people are members. How fast the church grows or shrinks doesn’t matter to me, from a testimony perspective. I’m a member because I believe it’s true, warts and all. (Truth is like that. It has things that don’t line up with what I’ve experienced or what I’m predisposed to believe. It does things that don’t always make sense.)

I can certainly understand being upset or frustrated with some of the ways the church is run. I believe the church continues to grow and change as it has always grown and changed, “line upon line, precept upon precept.” That change comes as we become ready for it. Sometimes, it mirrors social changes–or comes long after those changes. Sometimes, it doesn’t mirror those changes at all. But through it all, it remains true in my book. The religion, not the people. I believe God works through people in order to help those people grow.

Deep breath.

I’m going to step away from this now. All I really wanted to say can be summed up in a few bullet points:

Always remember that your personal experiences are not invalidated the moment someone else has a personal experience that contrasts with yours.
Try to be understanding of other people’s perspectives. When they say they haven’t seen something you’ve seen, it isn’t always an attack. You can both be right. The more important question is what do those different experiences add up to? What can we do differently to help people be happier?
The “Mormon Moment” might be “ended” for you personally, if you believed it ever existed. But it might be in full swing for someone else. Off here in my neck of the woods in Maine, all of this debate has passed the church by for the most part. No one really talks or cares about it in church–it’s people in Utah or elsewhere who have really gotten into it that I know about.
The gospel might be right, and it might be wrong, but please don’t try to treat it like just one other societal construct if you’re speaking from within the bounds of its membership. I don’t think you have a leg to stand on.

There’s much much more I could say about this topic. A masochistic part of me really wants to write up a big old post about the excommunications. But the sane part of me is hitting the brakes on that post hard.

So that’s it for now.

Fun with Tornado Warnings

The big event of yesterday was supposed to be the installation of our window AC units. I’d dredged them up from the basement and had them all set to go–just taking a breather to get some editing done before I put them in, because editing. And then my phone buzzed. The National Weather Service had issued a tornado warning for my town. I raised my eyebrows. Tornados and Maine aren’t two concepts that go together too often. This isn’t Kansas, folks. I clicked through for more information.

Sure enough, a strong storm was headed right at us at 50 miles per hour. I checked the radar to see where exactly, then decided that this really wasn’t a joke. It took a bit to remember what I was supposed to do in a tornado, but “go to the basement” was at the top of my mental checklist, so I went through the house, gathered the fam together, and down we went to our spider infested basement.

TRC and DC were both surprised and worried about the possibility of a tornado ripping through our house. Luckily, I had brought my iPhone with me, and so we could follow the path of the storm on radar. After the first ten minutes or so, I was quite confident that the storm would miss us by a mile or two–you could see the direction of the biggest spot of the storm, and it wasn’t aimed at my house. (So great to be able to see that kind of information so specifically so easily these days.) So I had the kids follow along, and they were somewhat relieved.

MC, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with this “hide in the basement” thing after five minutes of it. She needed to be changed, she was hungry, and she was not happy at all. The kids took turns looking after her. (Keep in mind that my basement is about 5 feet high, with a few bare light bulbs for light. It’s the basement horror movies are made from. I don’t blame MC for being upset at all.

We ended up being down there for about 45 minutes, at which point the tornado warning ended and we all went back upstairs to assess the damage: nothing had happened. Still, judging from some of the damage posted online around us, I definitely feel lucky to have gotten out of that unscathed. Tornado warnings are not my friend, I’ve decided. Kansas can keep ‘em. Plus, I never got my AC units put in.

Summer is bad people. Very bad. I don’t know what’s the matter with all you non-snow people. Give me a blizzard any day of the week compared to heat, humidity, bugs, and now tornadoes . . .

A Few Thoughts on Family Reunions

I’m not a huge fan of family reunions, traditionally. They were those events I typically got dragged to, where I met a bunch of people I likely wouldn’t meet again, shook a lot of hands, and forgot a lot of names. (Actually, that sounds a lot like many of the fantasy conventions I go to willingly these days . . . ) Of course, this is because most of the “family reunions” I went to as a kid were more “extended family reunions,” where you expect to see fourth cousins five times removed.

Every year, I’d get together with my actual cousins for a week at a family cabin. This was a week of awesome, and it had nothing whatsoever to do with family reunions in my mind. It was just getting together with friends for a week. We’d watch movies, play games, eat junk food, go swimming–be kids. Loads of happy memories.

So when I started lobbying for a family reunion of all my brothers and sisters on one side of my family. I wasn’t sure what I would be getting myself into. I’ve got two families–divorced parents who married other people and had more children. The last time all my siblings on one side had gotten together was about 9 years ago. On the other side, it was 22 years. That’s a lot of years, and it was the the one I was working to coordinate a get together with. Sibling ages on that side range from the 40s to the 20s, spread across the country from California to Maine. 37 people altogether, some with very strong personalities.

I wasn’t sure we’d make it out of the reunion in one piece, but I thought it was important to get together.

Planning the thing was about as convoluted as I thought it would be, with changes being made right up to the week of the reunion. I’d been saying all along that all I really wanted was for everyone to show up for at least a picture–photographic evidence that we’d gotten together. Pulling it off wouldn’t be easy. Many of the families had to spend thousands of dollars to be able to make it there. Job schedules had to be tweaked and altered. And even after we had all of that ironed out, there were surprises that came at the last minute. Floods in basements. Premature births. I’m not making this up.

In the end, it all came together. For a few hours on the 4th of July, that entire side of the family was present and accounted for, with no one missing at all–my grandfather was even able to come. Talk about small miracles.

 

I’ll admit it was more than a little surreal having everyone in the same spot at once. I know some families do this all the time, but not this one.

Not everyone was able to stay for the whole 4 day event (premature babies will do that to a reunion), but the whole thing went amazingly well. No one shouted. No blood feuds erupted. No knife fights that I’m aware of. Everyone got together and actually just had a good time.

Of course, I spent a good amount of the time downstairs hiding. Because Bryces don’t like crowds–even crowds of siblings that those Bryces spent a lot of time getting together in the first place. I don’t know why I’m that way. I just am, and I’m getting to the point where I don’t really let it worry me.

What was even more important to me was seeing my kids have such a blast with all of their cousins. There were about 20 kids running around the reunion house the whole time. A group of boys discovered they were all Minecraft fanatics and started an impromptu “Minecon,” with all of them playing on a shared world together. Some of the girls went down and worked on building pillow forts. TRC and DC had an amazing time, and they both keep asking when we’re going to have another family reunion.

37 is a lot of people. I don’t know if we’ll ever all get together again, honestly. It’s just too hard to coordinate. But I’ll do my best to at least get some of them together more often. If I can.

After that was done, I made sure to bring my kids to a Moore reunion with a bunch of second cousins and people they have no idea who they are, just to make sure my kids realized all reunions aren’t created equally. (At the same time, I discovered those extended reunions actually are fun when you know all the extensions except the kids. Go figure.)

Anyway. Very pleased with how it all ended up. Looking back at the experience, here are a few reunion thoughts I have, in case anyone else is ever in a similar situation:

Get a house. If the whole family is spread across the country, you’ll need a “reunion window” to make it likely that everyone can come for at least some of the time. A house lets you have a place to gather and chat and eat together. We’d debated just doing this at a hotel, but I’m very glad we got a house. It was a lot of money, but I think it was worth it.
Pick a few activities. Not many. Each of the days we were there, we had one big activity slated. Timpanogos Cave. Utah Olympic Park. Family pictures and a barbecue. A rodeo. Having those in place lets everyone have an outlet to go and get away and mix things up, which make the opportunities for impromptu fun at the house more exciting and less likely to end in tears and hurt feelings. I’d thought about having no activities and just have the whole thing at the house the whole time. Glad I didn’t.
Allow autonomy as much as you can. For food, we just let everyone buy and bring their own, except for dinners. For activities, we’d announce what was happening where and when, and then it was up to everyone to get there if they wanted to go. If we’d just hung around trying to wait for everyone to go as a big group, I think I would have gone batty.
Manage expectations. Make sure your kids know going into it that they won’t get everything they want the whole weekend. Don’t expect anything from anyone. Just be accepting and roll with any obstacles that pop up.
No guilt trips. If people don’t want to come or do something, that’s totally fine. You’re there to have fun, not to ensure everyone shows up to everything.

Next time, I think what I’ll do is tell my siblings ahead of time where and when I’ll be on vacation, and see if any of them want to come with. I’m sure my kids would love to get together with their cousins again soon, and I hope it happens.

And the very fact that I wrote that last sentence is all the proof I need to show this reunion was a success.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 Review

When you’ve got a movie title like How to Train Your Dragon 2, you’ve automatically lowered everyone’s expectations. Not that I didn’t like the first one, but simple “add a number at the end of the title” sequels aren’t exactly known for their finesse and light touch. Typically, that number translates into “the first one made us a bunch of money, so here’s another. More please?” Real sequels get their own name. The Dark Knight. The Empire Strikes Back. The Godfather Part II. (Oh. Wait . . . ) So when I read the good reviews of the film, I kept my expectations squarely in the “review of a sequel” range. Still, I’d had a good time at the first one, and we had a day left of vacation, so why not try the second? ($27 for Denisa, me, and the two kids to go to the theater? That’s one reason right there. Sheesh!)

Anyway. I sat down, not sure of what to expect.

I was very surprised by what I got. No–I’ll go so far as to say “blown away.” This isn’t just a good animated movie–it’s a good movie.

The first hint that something’s different at work than a simple Shrek 57? Hiccup (the main character) is now in his late teens/early twenties. Something like 6 years have gone by since the first movie. So the characters aren’t just the same ones from the first–they’re older. They’ve changed some. (Not drastically in most cases, but still–a marked difference from a typical sequel approach.) Society has changed with them. Dragons are fully integrated into life in the village. So this isn’t just a riff on the first one. They’ve set up an entirely different conflict that draws on the setting and world building in the first, but goes somewhere else.

I don’t want to give away too much of the movie, since there were some actual surprises in store over the course of the movie, but I will say I was continually impressed with where the story was willing to go and how it treated the material. It wasn’t quite on a Pixar level, but it wasn’t trying to be, either. It was its own thing, and I respected that. Still plenty of humor and some silliness, but a solid outing across the board. (Realized after the fact that this director started with Lilo & Stitch, which makes this all start to make more sense. I get used to looking at animation houses for an imprint on a movie as opposed to directors. Maybe I need to stop that.)

So in the end, I’d give this one a 7 or 8 out of 10. Let’s call it a 7.5. A fun movie that’s more than I expected it to be. Solid story, great animation, nice soundtrack. Was it worth $27 in the theaters? No. But nothing is worth that much in the theaters. $10 a ticket for a movie? I have no idea how you all stand it. $4 matinees for me and mine, thank you very much. You all can keep your big city high fallutin’ ways.

Seen the movie? Let me know what you thought. Spoilers allowed in the comments, so be warned!

The Utah Olympic Park: With Pictures!

Back when we were still in the planning stages of the family reunion I went to in Utah last week, my sister brought up the idea of going to the Utah Olympic Park as one of the activities we could do. I’d never even heard of it before, but after going to the website and poking around for a bit, I knew it would be a great activity. For one thing, TRC has wanted to go on a zip line for years, so this would bring that dream to fruition.

My initial plan had been to get us each one or two rides and just be done at that. But then when we got there, I realized that going on one or two rides just wouldn’t take that long, and there wasn’t too much of a difference between paying for that for all of us, and just getting the kids and me day passes. (Denisa took one for the team and stayed with MC through most of the day, with the exception of one zip line ride she went on.) It cost us $160 for the day–much more than I’d anticipated, but I really feel like it ended up being more than worth it. (If I’d paid individually for all the rides I went on, it would have been that much for just me.) And after I looked over all the of the offerings they had, I felt like I was up for any of them. Except the 65 foot drop, because bungie isn’t my thing. Period. Ever.

The complex they have out there by Park City is pretty amazing. There’s a pool you can ski jump into doing all sorts of tricks, and both of the ski jumps operate year round–we got to watch the Canadian national team practice. Some people are simply insane, is all I have to say about that.

First up? One of the zip lines, which began a theme that carried through most of the day for me: the power of kid peer pressure to get me to do things I might not normally do. DC really wanted to go on the zip line when we were at the bottom. I rode up with her, and when we got to the top, I was surprised at how far down it all looked.

DC started to get scared very quickly. Truth be told, I wasn’t feeling too calm myself. But I was in full Dad form, and so I told her it would be okay, and on we went. They put you in all these harnesses before you zip line down, and the whole time the only thing between you and that fall is a steel door you have to put your knees against. But then the door swings wide, and you’re sailing down the zip line and it’s all fun and games until you realize that zip line has a brake based on weight, and you’re really too heavy for it to allow you to go very fast, and your six year old daughter is just zooming down while you’ve reached a slow crawl.

Maybe it’s time for me to go on a diet again.

In any case, after that first exhilarating rush, it was smooth sailing. DC and TRC went on just about anything. The alpine slide (where DC took the “you might flip if you go too fast” a little too literally–I was behind her, and she was riding that brake pretty hard) came next.

After that, the kids wanted to go on the ropes course. I’d never done one, but we picked the easiest, and it didn’t look too bad. There was a weight limit that I barely squeaked under (seriously people, I need to go on a diet again.), and so I decided to go with them. Very glad I did. TRC zipped off through the course without a care in the world. I found out later he just started treating each obstacle as its own little zip line, and he’d launch himself across on his pulley. DC and I went with the “pretend we have no pulley” approach.

When you do it that way, it becomes quite a bit more difficult. Not for me necessarily, but certainly for a certain six year old. I was so impressed by how she’d attack each obstacle slowly and deliberately and without fear, only needing me to coax her on now and then. Denisa was following down below, offering words of encouragement as well. If I’d known how tricky some of those obstacles were going to be, I don’t think I would have let DC go.

She was doing great until we came to this one:

You have to crawl sidewise from plank to plank, and they’re quite far apart for someone her size. A few times she decided she wanted to give up and go back, but with parental support, she made it through the whole thing. Very proud papa moment, and a good reminder that sometimes the things we think our kids aren’t up to are things they can actually overcome.

It was blazing hot and sunny that day, and we were all slowly morphing into baked potatoes, so Denisa took the kids home after lunch. I stayed on with my brother in law and three nieces because zip lines. I mean . . . family unity! What did they want to do first? The 65 foot drop. It was my ten year old niece CL who suggested it with such a sunny smile and eager twinkle in her eyes. Everyone else was all over the idea. So what did I do?

I said let’s go check it out, despite my misgivings.

We got over there, and 65 feet didn’t seem so bad. And it wasn’t bungie–it was some device that slowed you down through gremlins or magic or friction or something. And everyone else was going to jump, so I just lemminged along with them. Ten year old peer pressure: it still gets me every time.

You hike up to a spot where you zip line across to the platform. I insisted on going first to show how unafraid I was. And when I got to the platform, I discovered that 65 feet from the bottom looks much shorter than 65 feet from the top.

That was when I came up with a very simple solution: don’t think about where you’re jumping or what you’re about to do. Don’t think about the dangers or the height.

Just jump.

Which is what I did. I can’t recommend it as an approach to all life’s problems, but I will say it comes in very handy in certain situations. The trick is knowing when to trot it out. The ordeal was much less traumatic than I thought it would be, and I’m glad I did it.

All in all, a very fun day at the park. Families hanging out, kids getting to know each other, and me doing my best to pretend I wasn’t scared of anything. Sort of like me at most writing conferences, actually. In fact, I think I’d take the 65 foot drop over most late night parties at conventions. I don’t do talking with strangers. And yet I do the same thing with that–I just go out and force myself to do it.

Maybe it’s an approach that applies to more situations than I initially gave it credit for. Food for thought.

Any of you been to the Park? Any questions for me? I’d love to answer them . . .

When Reviews Go Wrong: The Lone Ranger and Elysium

Back in Maine again. Sorry for the absence the last few days. Travel and finally getting sick were a bad combination for me. But I’m somewhat upright, and so I’m here to give you some blog fodder for the day.

I had the chance to watch two films on the plane back from Utah, and together they illustrate something I’ve long thought about the review process: how expectations can drastically affect a film’s final review.

First I watched Elysium. It’s the follow up film to District 9 from Neill Blomkamp–not a sequel, but rather the next movie he made. And now we’ve got Matt Damon and Jodie Foster instead of complete no names, and we’ve got better effects and a bigger budget. I loved District 9. It was a fresh take on sci-fi, and it was very well done. So I was eager to see what Blomkamp did next. It’s got a 6.7 on IMDB and a 47 on Metacritic, so I wasn’t expecting the moon and the stars, but I thought it might be decent.

What a train wreck. The story is simple: in the future, the wealthy build a place off world to go and live the high life while everyone else on Earth is doomed to a life of drudgery and crappery. Matt Damon, car thief with a heart of gold, dreams of going to Elysium. But those nasty rich people shoot down anyone who tries. Damon gets himself in a position where he’s got five days left to live, so he’s desperate: he’ll do anything to get to Elysium, where with a wave of a sci-fi wand he’ll be cured. Action follows.

And the whole movie stinks from start to finish. The writing was horrendous, the acting was lame, the action sequences choppy. I can’t really think of anything about the film that I liked. Some of the special effects were okay, I suppose. A 6.7 is wildly overrated, and a 47 is far too generous. Worse yet (SPOILERS HERE), the movie reveals at the end that all the people on Elysium had the technology and ability to cure everyone on earth, but they didn’t. Why? Because they didn’t feel like it.

I’m sorry, but I don’t buy it. Not all rich people are awful. It would have cost the wealthy nothing to help out the poor in this world. And they didn’t because they’re all just awful human beings with no conscience whatsoever? Please.

This is a garbage movie from start to finish. 2/10. Complete waste of time.

Next up? The Lone Ranger. This was a movie I’d been very excited to see, and then I heard the reviews. It got a ton of negative buzz, and so I became less and less excited to see it. In the end, it settled down at a 6.6 on IMDB and a 45 on Metacritic. Virtually the same scores as Elysium. But I started the movie prepared to not like it at all. Still, it had to be better than Elysium, right?

For the first while, I was ambivalent. Johnny Depp is playing another strange character–a Comanche, no less. The plot seemed stilted and tone deaf at times. The movie was just . . . strange. I couldn’t place my finger on what exactly was off with it. But there was some humor, and the action scenes were fun, and I was enjoying myself for the most part.

But then I hit the climax of the movie, and suddenly, it all snapped into place. It was like one of those 3D pictures where you have to cross your eyes and at first all you see is static, and then there’s a dolphin jumping out of the picture at you.

In The Lone Ranger, there’s a very specific spot where it all came together. (Slight spoilers here): all is going wrong for the good guys. The bad guys have already mowed down the entire Comanche war party that might have stopped them. And now they’ve got another machine gun set up to do the same thing to Tonto and whoever else might foil their plans. The machine gun’s blazing, Tonto’s taken cover, and all seems lost. And then it happens. You hear the tell-tale horse whinny, and the William Tell Overture starts with a bang. The Lone Ranger appears, lashes his whip around the machine gun, and turns it on the bad guys, instead.

That’s when it hit me. This wasn’t a modern movie. This was a throwback to the old Lone Ranger from way back when. It wasn’t trying to put a new spin on anything–it was a straight up adventure movie, the kind of flick the inner-ten year old in me just loves. From that point on, the movie was a complete blast. The entire climax is eye-popping action, excellent enough that as soon as the movie was over, I went back and watched it from that horse whinny on again. I’d like to watch the whole movie again soon with that in mind. I think I’d enjoy it even more.

7/10 for now, though it might go up a bit after I rewatch it. It’s a really fun movie and deserves to be seen. (Side note: While the inner ten-year old loved it, the current Bryce couldn’t help but notice the movie isn’t particularly friendly toward the Comanches in the film. Tonto is crazy, and the rest of them are powerless, unable to do together what a single white man with mask can do all on his lonesome. The women in the movie are also powerless. This could well sink the whole film for some of you. For me, as soon as I started noticing it, that inner ten-year-old yelled at me to shut up and enjoy the movie, which I was clearly able to do. But it’s still worth noting that some tropes that were just fine back in the old adventure movies don’t quite work with today’s sensibilities.)

So what’s the difference between these two films? I think a lot of it has to do with the critics. They were willing to give Blompkamp more of a pass than Verbinski. And so they artificially raised Blomkamp’s score because of pleasant memories of District 9, and they artificially lowered Verbinksi’s because of problems in the film’s production and the feeling that “we’ve been here with Depp and Verbinski before.”

But maybe I’m off. Maybe watching it sick and on a plane skewed my feelings of the films. Any of you out there seen them? Care to chime in? I’d love to hear some other opinions.

A Few Thoughts on Rodeos

I mentioned on Facebook the other day that I was heading to a rodeo as a piece of the family reunion going on at the time. (Pretty busy the last few days, so I’ll be playing catchup with some of these posts over the next few days–plenty of blog fodder, and I didn’t have enough time to post about them.) I’d been to rodeos growing up, but it had probably been fifteen years or so since the last time I’d went. A few thoughts sprang to mind as I was watching it.

First up, I was surprised by the song they played before the national anthem. I’m not a country music listener–I try to avoid it at all costs. Just too twangy for my tastes, but I never really thought it would be disturbing. However, this song . . . taught me otherwise. I can’t remember all of the lyrics, but the sentiment was very clear: America is awesome, and if anyone ever tries to attack us, we’ll kill them all. More or less.

I lived in Germany for two years, and Germans are very cautious about patriotism. Don’t get me wrong–I’m a fan of loving your country, but at the same time, I think there are some reasonable limits that should be placed on that love. Nazism was all about love of country over everything else. Switch all the mention of America in that song with Germany, and you’d have a song Hitler would swoon for. Again, I’m not saying it’s bad to love your country. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be willing to defend your freedom as a country. But a lot of the patriotism I saw at the rodeo was in danger of going beyond that. When your love of country makes you start belittling other countries or giving yourself a massive superiority complex, you’re heading for trouble. It’s one of the reasons a lot of the rhetoric the Republican party uses these days leaves me uneasy.

So there’s that. First thought of the evening.

Second thought was about the rodeo itself. I know a lot of people object to rodeos on principle–worries about animal cruelty primarily. I think they certainly have a point. Those horses and bulls didn’t particularly seem to be enjoying what was happening to them. At the same time, however, I think our modern conveniences have enabled us to ignore or forget about where those red steaks wrapped in plastic come from before they arrive in the grocery store MEAT aisle. The skills rodeos focus on are the traditional skills used to manage all those animals. I think it’s veering toward hypocrisy to object to rodeos but happily munch on steaks that have been raised who-knows-where under who-knows-what conditions. I eat and enjoy said steaks, and I watched and enjoyed the rodeo.

But in the end, most of my evening was just spent enjoying time with family and watching my kids have a blast with their cousins. There’s only so much meta-thinking I’m capable of on a gorgeous evening out. Sometimes we can be so focused on analyzing things that we forget to actually have a good time.

Anyway–that’s what I’ve got for you today. I’m off to swim somewhere. Utah is way, way, *way* too hot. How do you people live here?

Split Decisions: Too Much Time and So Little To Do (Strike That–Reverse It)

(Bonus cool points to you if you recognize the movie pic)

The Utah trip soldiers forward. All the fam is still healthy and relatively happy, which is great. While there are a lot of things about Utah that I don’t love, I certainly have a lot of family and friends out here, which leads me to today’s topic. Even being here for 16 days, I’m not able to see everyone I wish I could see, let alone spend the amount of time with everyone that I wish I could spend. Even today, I’ve got two competing family reunions at the same time. No way to do both, so I have to pick one and stick with it.

I’m not a huge fan of casual acquaintances. The friends that I have are people I like to spend time with–lots of time. Board game time. Movie time. Eating time. I really don’t like the feeling of dropping by for a brief visit and then zooming off to the next appointment–it feels too much like business, if that makes sense. And yet because I have a finite amount of time while I’m out here, that’s what a lot of my visits feel like they turn into.

I’ve thought about switching things up–doing something where I tell people where I am, and if they want to come see me, they can. But then again, that’s pretty much what happened at my sister’s wedding reception the other night. I saw tons and tons of people I love and would love to talk to and spend time with, and I didn’t spend more than 15 minutes with any of them.

Not cool.

I know there are worse problems to have, and I didn’t intend this post to be a “Woe is me–I’m so popular!” sort of thing. But this blog is where I go to express some of my frustrations now and then, so you get the chance to read all about it.

Anyway. In about an hour I’m off to the next family reunion. First time I’ll have been with all my siblings on this side of the family in 22 years. High time, and a year in the planning. Hopefully it goes well. We’ll be going to the Oakley Rodeo tonight, and then various sites around the mountains and Provo over the next few days. I already took TRC and DC up to Timpanogos Cave with one sister and her fam this morning. Had a smashing time.

I suppose in the end what I need to do is just enjoy the time I have with the people I can squeeze in, and do my best not to worry about all the missed opportunities I had to pass up. Glass is half full vs half empty, and all that inspirational stuff. Either which way, if I didn’t get to see you yet–or didn’t get to see enough of you–know that I’m sorry my time isn’t more plentiful.

And you can always visit me in Maine.