A Quick Note - Don't Let it Distract You From Last Night's Post

I did a guest blog for an old mission buddy's new venture.

Head on over to The Official Guide to Stuff Mormons Like.

I might do some more if I think of other great things that Mormons like. This should also be funny if you're not a Mormon, but live around them.

-Matt

TMI with MRH

Here's something I'll do when I run out of blog ideas and it's been, like, way too long since I last posted. I got this idea from my ipod post a while back. As I flipped through songs, I realized that many had stories linked to them. I've realized that the impetus of this blog was to tell some stories of my past. Many of them are unpleasant. I don't mean unpleasant because they are painful, or traumatic. I mean they make me look really stupid.

Let's see if we get any this time.

First on the list... and we get:

Temptation - Vast

Ok. It was days after I'd come home from my mission. I went to Salt Lake with my friends but I don't remember what we were doing. On the radio the music was good. I was told it was Vast. Back then people had heard of Vast. They had a big hit on the radio, it was "Touched." I liked it. Found out they were playing in Utah soon, so I bought two tickets for me and a girl I liked.

The concert ended up being a lot of fun and I married the girl I took. One thing I remember is that at the show I saw a kid who used to hang out with us. I hesitate to call him a friend, but he was OK. "Hey Chad," I said, when I saw him.

"They call me Kain now."

"Who calls you Kain, Chad?"

"Some people."

I looked at him for a minute. "I'm going to go ahead and call you Chad."

He nodded.

"Okay."

Bunnies - Horse The Band

I think it was my first or second day doing field work out in Vernal. I was talking to a couple of people who, not too much later, I would consider very close friends. We were just getting to know each other, though.

One of the early things everyone does out there, in the field, is compare iPods.

As we talked music, someone remarked that I had a lot of stuff on there they'd never heard of. "I've got music," I said, "that will put you off of music forever."

I was referring to Horse the Band.

Hail to the King - No Use for a Name

OK, this one's a stretch, but I'm running with it. In high school one of my very favorite movies was Army of Darkness. If you're unfamiliar, it's kind of a campy movie where a wisecracking Bruce Campbell gets sent back in time to defend a medieval people from an undead menace that he accidentally brought with him when he botched an attempt to get back home.

Trust me, the movie rocks. One line, at the end of the movie, Bruce is doing a voiceover, where he says, "around here, I am King." Then he turns to a girl who he's holding and says, "Hail to the King, baby."

During these years I worked at a movie theater, and made some really good friends there. I was always talking about how sweet Army of Darkness was and how everyone needed to see it. Finally, the Cinedome, a huge, awesome, luxury theater in Riverdale that's now out of business, showed it as a midnight movie.

I roped some of my coworkers into seeing it, two girls, and afterwards they were just laughing and shaking their heads.

"Did you like it?" I asked, breathless with the anticipation.

"NO!" They both said, "but we enjoyed it because it was SO YOU. That was the movie made for you."

I'm still not sure what to make of that.

And now, a haiku

Seven syllables right here

And then it's just five

Bein' Sweet in the Desert

You've probably heard me talk mess on Vernal, Utah. I spent all last summer out there, and have made a few trips this year looking for ol' Sclerocactus, the endangered darling of the Uinta Basin. I need to emphasize, though, that although I think the town itself is a nasty-A pile of bad service and horrible food, I love the surrounding wild lands. So much.

My first season out we were having kind of a huddy day. Brian, my boss, caught the low morale in our walk and decided it was time for a golden eagle nest check. While on top of that cliff, getting threatened by an angry momma eagle and scaring up a bobcat, we looked out and saw a pretty weird little place.

Filled with interesting red-rock formations, it looked like a final drain for the region's water. Deep cuts in the rock, rocky washes, the works. By itself the terrain looked alien and obscure, and that wasn't even counting the fossils. Mars, as we ended up calling it, is filled with fossils. Turtle shells are everywhere, prompting one of our paleontologists to call it "turtle hell." But there are other ones, too. Teeth, skulls, bones. Rad.

This is a turtle shell, but that should be totally obvious.

The weather this trip out was perfect for photography. Lately my landscapes have been more sky than ground, and this time out the skies were definitely cooperating.






My last night in town I went out to the Ouray Wildlife Refuge. Passed by this little gem on the way in.



I saw some great vistas and wore out the camera battery, then just around the corner we started seeing the porcupines. You'll have to take my word for it, but they were adorable. Then the great-horned owl in the tree. Then the hundreds of Sand Hill Cranes. Then another owl.


Note the moon up in the right hand corner.

It was good for me, though, to see these things without a camera. Makes me appreciate it rather than worrying about getting the shot. If I can't enjoy things in the moment, I need to start leaving the camera at home.


Another muddy day in the desert.

What Happens in Vernal...

How about I start with the raddest story from Vernal first, and go from there?

Right on.

Anyway, when I arrived, I immediately declared "Howie Week." As everyone knows, Howie Week is when I hit a town with a list of things I demand to do with the people there. Sometimes Howie Week is just a weekend in Ogden where I decide I need to go bouldering, longboarding, and snowboarding, all in two days. Vernal's Howie Week really just consisted of bowling and some good Mexican food. Bowling was set for Wednesday.

When the big day rolled around, we all headed out to Dinah Bowl. Upon arrival, we were informed that leagues were in session and that we'd need to come back in an hour. "No problem," we said. "We'll be back."

Everyone went to their ATMs and stuff and reconvened at the alley a half-hour later. A different girl with the kind of face that only years of scowling at out-of-towners can create told us that no, there would be no bowling after leagues, because they "had school tomorrow."

I was peeved, but the evening was not ruined. Instead, we decided to go to the brand-new recreation center for some pinging, and, if lucky, ponging. In spite of the unfortunate circumstance that nobody could drink beer while playing, everyone came along. I had a standing rivalry with one Reid that needed taking care of, and I quickly dispatched him during the first match (by quickly I mean an never ending volley at the end of what was easily a 30-point game) before taking out another. I then lost, and went to play some pool.

Upon returning I found that one of our party had struck up a bit of a volley with an honest-to-goodness asian player from the table over. These guys were taking the game pretty seriously, as it is meant to be taken, and sported the authentically Chinese pen grip. As I walked up, I took up the paddle and faced off against a decidedly non-english-speaking opponent. Our styles matched up well, the game progressed at a furious pace, and I emerged victorious.

Then, American flag draped over my shoulders, I was paraded around the track for a victory lap. Our nation's dominance over Red China was again asserted, just like it was in virtually every non-judged Olympic event.

First of all, that last part may not have happened. Second of all: Oh Snap, I went there.

I then proceeded to lose a string of games, including two in a row to Reid (he always always gets the last win), and went home all razzed up.

And that, my friends (ha ha McCain lost), is my first Vernal story.

Discuss it amongst yourselves while I compose the next one.

First Gen iPod: I Totally Had One

Last year during the summer, while doing cactus surveys in the Uinta Basin, my boss brought out some mini speakers. We plugged his iPod in and started surveying. Everyone was totally into it, saying how awesome an idea it was, and how it was going to revolutionize cactus surveys forever. A couple of hours later, someone said "put in Howard's iPod."

So we did.

An hour or so in, many songs and genres later, my boss said, "Is that Frank Sinatra?"
"Yes," I said.
"I'm about to throw that iPod."

While I was contentedly listening to songs that have, over the years, enhanced my life and made the world a better place for me, my coworkers were, at least some of the time, miserable.

Here's the thing about my 'pod. It may not have something you like on it, but it is sure as heck going to have something that you'll hate. This is, I think, the way it should be. Music is just about as personal as it can get, I think, and if you're into it, your playlist should match no one else's in the world.

As far as I can think back, I've had at least a few bands and songs in my collection that have earned the absolute derision of my closest friends. For every Soundgarden and Pearl Jam during the 90's, there was Violent Femmes and Oingo Boingo.

We were all elitists back then, so I'm not going to make myself out to be any sweeter than those losers, but there was a list of acceptable music. If you had something that wasn't on it or something that you should have wasn't, it was, to use the vernacular of the time, "whack." I missed out on some good bands at the time because they were "trendy." I didn't touch The Offspring, for example. Who I think at the time I would have loved. Missed opportunities.

Things aren't much different now. I have several of the requisite indie bands, the hip-hop classics that we white people love now, and a few ironic throwbacks, but a perusal of my iPod rarely receives a full approval. Guilty pleasures like My Chemical Romance and AFI boast absurdly high plays, for example, while The Arcade Fire rarely gets a spin. There is even, and I shudder to think of what my 17 year old self would think of this, some classic country on there.

So next time you're in the desert, and someone asks you to put on your 'pod, and everyone at the end of the day tells you how rad it was? You're doing it wrong. We're all our own people, and our bookshelf, movie collection, playlist, and Pokemans should reflect this.

Anyway, the first 10 songs that came up on random:
Lost in Space - Aimee Man
I Still Miss Someone - Johnny Cash
This Time - RX Bandits
(Untitled) - Pretty Girls Make Graves
Static - Kool Keith
Jettison - Neko Case and Her Boyfriends
I Feel You - Depeche Mode
Symphony No. 40 - Allegro Molto - Mozart
Walk Among Us - Misfits
Without Me - Eminem

Cold night, sound travels

Just higher air density

Adios mystique