Tradition!

Easter weekend traditions we’re celebrating this year at the David B and family home:

• Having an Easter feast with, as its centerpiece, a pork shoulder brined overnight in a cola beverage (in order of preference, Dr. Pepper, Coca-Cola, or—the one we have to use this year—Pepsi, whichever we can most easily get in a made-with-real-sugar variety)
• Listening to a recording of David Sedaris’s reading of his own essay, “Jesus Shaves”
• Watching Jesus Christ Superstar

In other news, it’s fun occasionally making our fellow Mormons’ heads explode.

Was it real?

Whatever happened to the 1990(?) church-made movie What Is Real? I remember when it came out, and thinking that it was about time that the church made a film that had even remotely good production values. (Remember, this was back in the day when the only available church movies were things like the kitsch of Johnny Lingo and the stiltedness of Together Forever, and, perhaps worst of all, Pioneers in Petticoats.)*

Most all of the church’s movies (even the horror of Johnny Lingo!) are still available, but i can’t find What Is Real? anywhere—there are no DVDs of it on the church’s web store as far as i can tell, and it doesn’t even have an Internet Movie Database entry. (I mean, On the Way Home can be found both places, and i seem to recall not liking that one nearly as much.) I didn’t just imagine it, did i? Was there some sort of horrific doctrinal error that’s led the church to pretend it never existed?

* Actually, Man’s Search for Happiness was pretty good, but it wasn’t (and isn’t, as far as i can tell) really very widely available for viewing.

Watching movies

So this past weekend my family sat down and watched the movie The Singles Ward. (Jeanne and i had seen it before, but it was the first time any of our kids had seen it.) If you haven’t seen it before, it’s not world-shatteringly great but it’s also not a bad little movie, and you should watch it if for no other reasons than (a) it has a really fun soundtrack that would drive some of our more, um, intensely artistically conservative church members absolutely insane* and (b) the rest of this post assumes you’ve seen the movie and at least somewhat remember it.

Anyway, as i watched this movie for the first time in several years, i was struck by two things. One is that the Discman shown at the beginning and end of the movie certainly dates it, even though it’s only just over a decade old. The other is more substantial: The big important turning point of the movie involves the female lead becoming severely angry and hurt because the male lead makes jokes about Mormons in his stand-up routine.

This reminded me of what i thought was the really, really major flaw of the movie:** Was the female lead character really worth chasing after? I mean, anyone who would be offended by such mild jokes, well, i don’t think such a person is worth it, you know?† But no, she gets held up as this amazing ideal, and we’re supposed to feel empathy for her. Sorry, folks, but if someone can’t watch others poke fun (mildly, even!) at a group they’re a part of, they really need to grow a thicker skin before they’re such the ideal.††

* Seriously—find Rooster’s version of “Popcorn Popping” from the movie’s soundtrack and download it now. You will be happy.

** Also, in the same sequence, a minor flaw: The evil female character’s use of the verb “to play” in a way that i’m still trying to figure out—it almost but not quite matches any of the (slang) meanings i’ve ever heard, or that i can find even on Urban Dictionary.

† There’s an irony of sorts, too, in that one of the stock characters that the movie uses to make fun of singles ward folks is a woman who is offended by patently non-offensive things.

†† I think i’m going to use the rare “Mormon-oriented literature” tag on this one, just to annoy the kind of people who don’t think literature departments should teach courses in film.

What we’re ashamed of

This is normally a text-only blog, but the following recently came across on GraphJam, and i just had to post it here:

Yeah, that seems about right.

What other people think

Heard in a sacrament meeting address: “You shouldn’t go to any movies that don’t follow church standards, because non-members might see you there and think less of the church because of you.”

Now, beyond the fact that i strongly doubt that non-Mormons care at all about what movies Mormons watch, it brings to mind something i saw in an email forward once, which was a list of lines headed by “You know you’re a victim of bad timing if…” One of them was “…you don’t have an umbrella, so you take shelter in the only place available, the awning of a local movie theatre—but it’s an X-rated theatre, and that’s the moment your minister decides to take a walk around the neighborhood.”

Voices, an epilogue

The title of my last post reminded me that the song “Voices” from Saturday’s Warrior was the only halfway-decent song in the entire movie/play.

(And yes, “In Our Humble Way” is listenable for the humor value, but being funny doesn’t make it any good. Sorry.)

Movie-going discomfort

Heard in a sacrament meeting address: “You shouldn’t go to a movie you’re uncomfortable with.” So does that mean that if you’re someone like me who has a very, very high threshold for feeling uncomfortable with stuff, then anything goes? The logic works for me!

I can’t help but ask these questions

Was it evil of us to have our family home evening this week on the subject of how to properly MST3k overly earnest church videos?

Movie theatres aren’t my thing, anyway

Heard in a sacrament meeting address: “There are few movies that Latter-day Saints can go to these days without being embarrassed by the language used.”

Well, i don’t know if that’s true, but apparently there are few movies that Latter-day Saints can go to these days without being embarrassed by being seen by all the other Latter-day Saints there!

Disney fathers: Not diminished

Another thought on this sacrament meeting meme that the role of the father in the family has been diminishing in recent years:

If this is going on in society as a whole, could someone explain to me how the role of the father in Bambi was completely natural for its time, and the role of the father in the Lion King was completely natural for its time, and yet fathers have less of a role nowadays?

The most snarkworthy bit of Mormon-ness ever

I haven’t mentioned it on this blog before, and that must be corrected:

Johnny Lingo.

If you’ve seen it, there’s no need to say more. If you haven’t seen it, see it—you’ll never be so simultaneously amused and horrified in your entire life.

Brownies with a meaningless difference

So i got a really, horribly, stupidly silly email forward a bit ago. It’s one i’ve seen before (several years ago—nearly a decade, if i recall correctly), and i’ve even heard this story related in some form or another a couple times in church, but it’s worth reprinting here so that i can point out the fatal flaw in the object lesson. My response follows the story.

(Oh—and it seems that the stupid-email-forward fairies are getting stricter with age. When i first saw this, it was about a movie with an R rating. Now PG–13 is apparently out. Go figure.)

Brownies With a Difference

Many parents are hard pressed to explain to their youth why some music, movies, books, and magazines are not acceptable material for them to bring into the home or to listen to or see.

One parent came up with an original idea that is hard to refute. The father listened to all the reasons his children gave for wanting to see a particular PG–13 movie. It had their favorite actors. Everyone else was seeing it. Even church members said it was great. It was only rated PG–13 because of the suggestion of sex—they never really showed it. The language was pretty good—the Lord's name was only used in vain three times in the whole movie.

The teens did admit there was a scene where a building and a bunch of people were blown up, but the violence was just the normal stuff. It wasn’t too bad. And, even if there were a few minor things, the special effects were fabulous and the plot was action packed.

However, even with all the justifications the teens made for the PG–13 rating, the father still wouldn't give in. He didn’t even give his children a satisfactory explanation for saying, “No.” He just said, “No!”

A little later on that evening the father asked his teens if they would like some brownies he had baked. He explained that he’d taken the family's favorite recipe and added a little something new. The children asked what it was.

The father calmly replied that he had added dog poop. However, he quickly assured them, it was only a little bit. All the other ingredients were gourmet quality and he had taken great care to bake the brownies at the precise temperature for the exact time. He was sure the brownies would be superb.

Even with their father’s promise that the brownies were of almost perfect quality, the teens would not take any. The father acted surprised. After all, it was only one small part that was causing them to be so stubborn. He was certain they would hardly notice it. Still the teens held firm and would not try the brownies.

The father then told his children how the movie they wanted to see was just like the brownies. Our minds are us into believing that just a little bit of evil won’t matter. But, the truth is even a little bit of poop makes the difference between a great treat and something disgusting and totally unacceptable.

The father went on to explain that even though the movie industry would have us believe that most of today’s movies are acceptable fare for adults and youth, they are not.

Now, when this father's children want to see something that is of questionable material, the father merely asks them if they would like some of his special brownies. That closes the subject.

The flaw? When presented with something like this, i’d probably be evil/​stubborn/​brazen (pick your favorite word) enough to have eaten the brownies. After all, the heat of baking would have killed any of the bacteria present, and it’d be like me to point out the flaws in such a hideously stupid object lesson…