Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Peter and Pals in the Park

The Davis County mid-singles' latest extracurricular adventure took place this past Saturday night, when we were treated to a free concert at North Canyon Park. The featured musician was none other than Peter Breinholt, who is also one of the instructors of our Wednesday night Institute class.

Previously, I had seen Bro. Breinholt perform live once before, plus he often sings or shares some sort of music when he teaches, so I was looking forward to this night's shindig. The weather almost didn't cooperate for an outdoor concert, with an overcast sky threatening rain for the early part of the evening. Fortunately, it never did rain on the Big Parade.

We were treated to favorite songs such as "Jerusalem" and "You Wear Flowers," and during the latter song, Peter told us that his lyric "That's when it occurred to me; I like spontaneity" is often misheard as "That's when it occurred to me; I like Frosted Mini-Wheats." Well, that's good to know.
One of the other highlights was the medley of '80s songs, including "Sweet Child o' Mine" and A-ha's "Take On Me" (yes, he did reach the very high notes).

Good times were had by all.

Friday, August 19, 2011

Experiencing "RiffTrax Live!"

On the evening of the 17th, I got to experience something new: "RiffTrax Live!"

For those not "in the know," the "RiffTrax" series is the successor to one of my favorite all-time TV shows, "Mystery Science Theater 3000." Featuring the same cast - Bill Corbett, Kevin Murphy, and Mike Nelson - as the last three seasons of the program, the RiffTrax guys now "riff" on, or make sarcastic and humorous comments, about popular movies of today. The Twilight "Saga is an excellent example of ridiculous films that watching with RiffTrax has made a lot more bearable.

At any rate, on Wednesday night, there was a live "RiffTrax" broadcast - 6 p.m. in our time zone - to movie theaters across the nation, and Bountiful's Gateway Theater was one of the places that participated. A good group of friends and I helped fill the theater for this event, which was every bit as funny as we hoped. The "RiffTrax" guys first tackled a short, "What Is Nothing?", that was correctly described as coming from the writers of "the last two seasons of 'Lost.'" That was followed by a riff of Jack the Giant Killer, a hokey, full-length adventure movie from the '60s cut from the same cloth as the Sinbad movies or Jason and the Argonauts.

Good times were had by all! I hope that they do another one soon.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

I'll Be Papa, Paparazzi

Last night's mid-singles FHE activity was a photo scavenger hunt - suggested by *ahem* yours truly - that sent our mini-groups of four or five each all over Centerville to do embarrassing things.

My group, consisting of Jake, Pyper, Vaughn, and myself, got most of the items crossed off our list, and we managed to have a fun time while doing so.

Among my favorite pictures:

The group stands on top of a manhole:

A shot of the whole group hitchhiking:

The group in Vaughn's car:

The guys make "manly poses in front of a "manly" business (that's the Heisman Trophy pose I'm attempting):

The group makes ninja poses as a stranger joins in on the fun:

The only downside to our enjoyable evening was that only 16 people (out of more than 1,000 who are registered with the group on Facebook) showed up. That's a batting average of . . . carry the one . . . well, it's not that good. The upside to that, however, was that there were five Costco cheesecakes awaiting us upon our return and not that many people with whom to share them.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

"Disconcertingly Choppy"

You may or may not have noticed, but The Epistle has had a bit of a makeover. It's good to shake things up every now and then, right?

I'm no expert in design - my visual design course in college proved that. But I did the best that I could and picked a template that I liked.

Though the Web address is the same, the Epistle will also now be known as Disconcertingly Choppy. The name change was inspired by a co-worker of mine who, a few years back, read through something I had written and referred to it as "disconcertingly choppy." (No, he didn't mean it as a compliment.)

My blog may not be the most entertaining thing on the Net, and whatever you might feel inclined to call my writing, you're certainly welcome to do so. Imperfect as it may be, though, it's mine.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

The Mother of All Snow Cones

Earlier today, I had a little adventure that I can really only compare to a "Mr. Bean" episode, or at least the type of predicament he might get himself into.

It being a warm summer day, I happened to be driving past one of the many snow cone shacks that dot our fair city. On a whim, I stopped to (you guessed it) buy one. As I had not previously been to this particular snow cone shack, and there were no pictures to indicate the size of the snow cones (small, medium, and large) that you could get, I ordered a large cherry snow cone. After all, when I try something for the first time, I most often like to get the maximum value out of it so that I can judge whether I want to try it a second time.

The girl working the snow cone machine said to me, "I'm warning you; the large size is . . . like, really big."

I was pretty thirsty, and I thought I could easily handle a large, and I told her so. However, the monstrous, globe-sized thing she placed into my hands a few minutes later was . . . well, to quote her, it was "like, really big" - I'm talking literally akin to basketball-sized in circumference.

For the next 20 minutes or so, I feverishly tried to eat this snow cone as I melted all over my hands and all over me. Alas, it melted faster than I could eat it, and I left a sticky mess on the picnic table next to the snow cone shack. I grabbed a handful of napkins to try to clean myself and the table up as best as I could, but I'm afraid I still left a bit of a mess. I apologized to the girl working the snow cone machine.

"I warned you, didn't I?" were her final words. Admittedly, she had warned me. With no comeback immediately at my disposal, I left.

I don't know. What do you think Mr. Bean would have done?