Adieu

Goodbye, cruel world --- at least the cruel and arid West. Hello, nice and balmy Midwest. Actually, I'll be there in about nine hours. I'm pretty excited. This vacation is coming at the perfect time. Well, anytime I get to see Radiohead is a perfect time. I'm excited to go to Madison, Wisconsin to see Janessa, my favorite (and only) sister, for the first time in four months, and I'm also excited to meet her fiance, Brett. I'll be the first family member to meet him. Pretty big responsibility. I hope I can handle it.

I don't think I'm going to even bother blogging for at least a week. I will, however, do my best to take some awesome pictures of the adventures that await me far from Utah. Now that I got a new 4gb memory card for my digital camera, I can take some awesome high quality, high resolution pictures.

Okay, me need sleep...for a few hours anyway. There'll be time to sleep on the plane and on the bus to Madison

Another list or two.

As I'm sitting around packing and getting ready for my trip to Madison, Wisconsin to visit my sister before heading to Chicago and Lollapalooza, my thoughts have, as one would expect, turned to music. Experiencing live music is one of the greatest things I have experienced in life, and the prospect of three days of non-stop music has me giddy with excitement. The fact that I will finally see Radiohead in concert only pushes my excitement and anticipation over the edge.

My friend Justin and I have been having a text conversation for the last two hours or so, mostly about music, and we put together our individual lists about the best concerts we've seen. Hence, I will post my list and share it with the world.

Top 5 Concerts I've Attended (in a very particular order):
5. Sigur Ros (May 2006 in SLC)
4. Mogwai (May 2006 in SLC - not with Sigur Ros)
3. Arcade Fire (April 2007 at the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, CA)
2. The Dismemberment Plan (November 2002 in SLC)
1. The Wrens (December 2005 in Seattle, WA)

This was a fairly easy list to make, but it was also difficult to exclude some very awesome shows that I have seen. One of my next projects, not for this blog or anything, will be to make a list of all the bands that I have seen in concert. I've been keeping a list since 2006, but I saw quite a few shows in the years preceeding that, dating back to the summer of 1999 when I saw Jimmy Eat World in the small basement of Club DV8 in SLC. That was a good show, an appropriate beginning of my love affair with live music.

Top 5 Bands to see at Lollapalooza:
1. RADIOHEAD!!!
2. Rage Against the Machine
3. The National
4. Broken Social Scene
5. The Go! Team

...

O melancholy, sometimes not even a Slurpee overpowereth thee.

I've been tagged...

Okay, so I was technically tagged one week ago by Jessie, but I'm finally getting around to it. Here we go.

10 years ago:
I was still one year away from starting high school. I would have been playing a lot of soccer at the time, practicing with Vernal's traveling team and preparing for the tournaments we would compete in during the summer. I would have been riding my bike all over the place and kicking it with my friends.

5 years ago:
I'd just finished my freshman year of school at BYU and returned to Vernal. I went back to work at Burger King and was frequently closing at night. That meant I wouldn't get home until around 11:30. Being full of energy, I would stay up late watching movies and reading books and wouldn't get to bed typically before 2 a.m. Also, I was preparing to leave on my mission to Ribeirao Preto. Since most of my friends were not in Vernal, I had a lot of time on my hands, and this was the period in which I was most productive in the writing of my novel.

5 months ago:
It was February and I was heavily burnt out with school. Graduation was still 2+ months away and seemed like it would never come. Going to school nonstop since Fall 2005 wasn't necessarily the best idea, in retrospect. It did, however, allow me to graduate with two bachelor's degrees in 4 years.

5 Things on my To-Do List:
1. Figure out accomodations for my trip to Chicago
2. Do laundry
3. Finally watch Ikiru so I can return it to Netflix
4. Actually do some worthwhile writing
5. Get copies of The Book Thief to members of The Book Club

5 Snacks:
1. Pringles
2. Beef jerky
3. Buttery microwave popcorn
4. Ice cream
5. Pistachios

5 Billionaire things:
1. Buy a beach in Brazil and build a simple bungaloo to live in
2. Build a recording studio with top of the line equipment
3. Amass the largest private library in the world
4. Establish and administer a very large scholarship fund
5. Publish aspiring writers' work and produce aspiring musicians' albums

5 Places I have Lived:
1. Vernal, UT
2. Provo, UT
3-5. Various places in Brazil

5 Things You Might Not Know About Me:
1. I was obsessed with baseball as a child and had an encyclopedic memory of stats
2. I absolutely hated cheese (except mozzarella) and would not eat it until my mission
3. I won my school's geography bee in the fifth grade
4. I have Type 1 diabetes
5. There is more to me than my sarcastic/cynical side

5 People I Tag:
I'll go for six: Justin and his wife Jesse, Whitney and his wife Paige, Jeff and his wife Amy

There we have it. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to play some pool ball.

Top 5 Lists

I love Top 5 lists. It's a shame that I haven't posted one yet in the 2+ months since I started this blog. Anyway, my love of Top 5 lists probably started around the time I first saw the film High Fidelity. In that film, John Cusack plays a record store owner who constantly makes lists with his employees. The film's plot, in fact, is centered around one particular Top 5 list. After seeing that film, my friends and I took up the practice. My best friend, Mr. Justin Betts, has a blog and it is an excellent example of the awesomeness of Top 5 lists.

I've found the best time and place for listmaking is on a roadtrip with your friends. My past roadtrips to Denver, Seattle, Vegas (a couple times), Portland, Colorado Springs, etc. were full of lists. Listmaking keeps the conversation energetic and interesting, and it's a good way to learn things about your friends you might not have known before. Not only that, but making Top 5 lists always keeps me awake. Once while driving at night, I felt myself getting drowsy. I quickly called a Top 5 session into being, and I was wide awake until we reached our destination. Top 5 lists save lives.

The most recent roadtrip Top 5 session came two weeks ago as a group of people from my ward decided to go see the Manti Temple pageant. Two cars full of people made the trip. On the trip back after the pageant, one car suffered a fairly boring trip home. There wasn't much conversation, some folks watched part of a movie, and they began succombing to sleep over time. The other car, however, had a riotous return trip, full of laughter and loud, happy conversation. They were making Top 5 lists. Guess which car I was in? That trip back was pretty much amazing, and it was the perfect end to a very fun trip. I like to think the Top 5 lists had a lot to do with the awesomeness.

I've made a mid-year resolution, not really, to start posting more lists. Justin and I have been texting Top 5 lists back and forth, and reading Justin's blog has inspired me to repent. Anyway, here's a list to kick things off.

Top 5 Weeder Films, a.k.a Films to Separate the Wheat From the Chaff

(By way of explanation, these are films that I have or would consider using to test someone, to see how they react to a work of art that is meaningful and has created significant emotional experiences in my life, and their response to said film would likely influence or alter the way I feel about or towards them. Maybe I'm just superficial, but that's how I am).

In no particular order:
1. New York Doll
2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
3. Children of Men
4. Million Dollar Baby
5. Waiting for Guffman

The Belated Second Half to My Post on WALL-E

After I published the last post on my blog Saturday, promising that I would finish it after seeing WALL-E again that afternoon, I stepped outside my apartment to check the mail. While walking back to my apartment I heard a clacking noise and what sounded like karaoke. I stopped where I was and listened. At first I couldn't make out the song, though it sounded familiar. Then it struck me: it was the Yeah Yeah Yeah's song "Maps." That's not typically a song I hear around my apartment complex, let alone someone singing it karaoke. I had to see what was going on.

I wandered over to the apartment where nearly a fourth of the guys in my ward live - it's the only full guys' apartment in the complex. When I got there, I looked in their open, screenless window and saw three of them playing Rock Band. I went in and sat on their couch and watched. That was my first exposure to Rock Band. After watching for awhile, two of the three guys got tired and decided to stop playing for awhile. That gave me and another person opportunity to jump in.

Rock Band is addictive. It was so much fun; I especially enjoyed drumming. Anyway, we ended up playing for a few hours, and I missed all the matinee showings of WALL-E. It was worth it though.

I finally saw WALL-E again after work Tuesday afternoon. I love that movie, and this is why (don't worry I won't spoil anything for those who haven't seen it): While playing Rock Band I overheard a discussion a few non-rockers were having. They were talking about the movie. One of them said that someone they knew said it wasn't worth paying money to see. This upset me. I turned back, the song we were playing had ended, and I said, "That person has no soul."

Obviously they do, but I worry for that soul. WALL-E is the type of movie that if I were in a relationship with someone and they didn't feel something emotional or at least really enjoy the movie, I would have some serious doubts about the kind of person they are. But that's just the kind of person I am. This film moved me like no other Pixar film. Maybe I'm a sap for robot love stories, I don't know. Maybe it was the fact that a lonely robot, who had been alone for 700 years, finally found companionship, and I want to relate during my own 700 year period. Maybe it just portrays universal themes and feelings in such a way that I can't help but feel. I remember one moment Friday night towards the end of the film, during one of the most dramatic scenes. The musical score cut out and all extraneous sound vanished. The theater was completely silent. No one was talking obnoxiously to the person next to them. No cell phones went off (thank goodness!) like they always seem to do during the worst possible times. No one was restlessly moving in their seat. I heard nothing. It was spectacularly silent. Everyone was invested in WALL-E's story. It was the kind of moment that makes moviegoing worthwhile.

Seriously, WALL-E is easily the best film of the year thus far. Nothing really comes close. With WALL-E, Pixar has created its most memorable character yet. They took a robot, gave it a soul, and let it make its way into our hearts and imaginations with just a few simple utterances and robot noises. (Major props have to go to sound designer Ben Burtt, the man responsible for making R2D2 such a lovable droid. He's probably the best at what he does and has been involved in some remarkable films like the Star Wars trilogy and the Indiana Jones films). When I think of other Pixar films, I remember the plots or the goodnatured humor, but when I think of WALL-E, I immediately think of that little robot. The characterization is so deep and memorable; think of a robotic Charlie Chaplin and you have a good start to a basic understanding of WALL-E's character.

The second viewing was not as powerful as the first, but I didn't really expect it to be. Nothing much will compare to the magic of seeing this film for the first time. It really was an amazing experience. Perhaps my second viewing was more detached; I was paying more attention to the cinematography and the amazingly detailed animation, but nonetheless, the emotional core of the story still touched me.

If you have not seen this movie (and you have a soul), I suggest that you do so. Anyone urging you to see some other film in the stead of WALL-E is not really your friend. Don't let inferior films like Get Smart or Hancock distract you from seeing the current best film of the year.