The Jackson Show

There's never a dull moment on "The Jackson Show."

Sophomore Slump?

I can't help but shake the feeling lately that the Epistle has been going through a sort of sophomore slump.

Sophomore slump, for those who are not familiar with it, is a sports term for a rough patch many athletes experience early on in their careers.

So, what does that have to do with the Epistle? It's not necessarily a case of writer's block, although that has been a bit of a difficulty for me lately; it's just that I don't want to be blogging for the sake of blogging but to share things that people actually might want to read.

Does that makes sense?



So, I open the matter to you, my loyal readers (all four of you!): What would you like to see more of on the Epistle of Jon? What would you like to see less of? Do you not care one way or the other?

Inquiring minds want to know.

It's Beginning to Sound a Lot like Christmas

Here it is, mid-November, Thanksgiving is still two weeks away, and Christmas music is being played on many of Utah's radio stations - some on a 24/7 basis.

I love Christmas music, and I'm honestly ready to listen to it once the dust from Halloween clears. What I often don't love, however, is the song selection employed by many of these radio stations. It is often, well, boring - for lack of a better word. Every other song seems to be sung by either Céline Dion, Gloria Estefan, or Mariah Carey. As far as putting me to sleep goes, many of these songs work faster than, say, tuning in to C-SPAN or the Home Shopping Network.

I would love to be a radio D.J. for a day and shake up any one of these Christmas song lineups significantly. We all can dream, right?

Because I have nothing better to do today, and due to a discussion I recently had with some friends about the worst or most boring Christmas songs out there, I now present my Top 10 list of the worst Christmas songs:

#10. "All I Want for Christmas Is You," by Mariah Carey It's a Mariah Carey song - need I say more?

#9. "Redneck 12 Days of Christmas," by Jeff Foxworthy This song only serves to give me yet another reason to dislike country music.

#8. "The Little Drummer Boy" I don't doubt the Little Drummer Boy's heart nor his good intentions, but I think a drum is about the last thing a mother would want her newborn baby to hear.

#7. "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town," by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band As a children's song this is harmless, but when Bruce Springsteen tries to make it sound funky, it just comes across as annoying.

#6. "Do They Know It's Christmas," by Band Aid In the mid-'80s, a group of pop and rock singers, including Bono and Phil Collins, got together and formed Band Aid with the intention of raising money for the poor in Africa. However noble that effort was, the result was this song, which at times sounds like a rejected Superman theme.

#5. "Mary, Did You Know?" by Kenny Rogers Everytime I hear this song, I want to scream, Yes, Kenny. She knew! She knew before anybody else!

#4. "O Little Town of Bethlehem," by Bob Dylan "O Little Town of Bethlehem" was one of my favorite Christmas songs until I recently heard Bob Dylan butcher it like no one else could. This one really has to be heard to be believed - it's that bad.

#3. "Feliz Navidad," by Céline Dion If you thought José Feliciano's original version of "Feliz Navidad" was bad, well, Céline Dion's is 100 times worse because of - well, Céline Dion.

#2. "Christmas Shoes," by NewSong Pretty much everyone I've talked to lately is of the consensus that this is a terribly annoying song in spite of its intention of spreading Christmas cheer and goodwill. I don't think anything further needs to be said!

#1. Santa Baby No matter who sings it, be it Madonna or Miss Piggy, this is a dirty, filthy song that sounds like nails on the chalkboard to me and is easily my least-favorite Christmas song ever recorded.

Weapons of Mass Distraction

Not that anyone was keeping track of the time or anything (ahem), but the closing prayer at my ward's sacrament meeting today went on for six full minutes. That's the same as 360 seconds, or what feels like a couple of hours when you're trying to sit reverently and be good for that long.

It may be the ADD-riddled side of me that is saying this, but that's what it felt like.

How did I know that it lasted for six minutes? The answer: I began to time my fellow ward member, a notoriously long-winded speaker, just before he opened his mouth, and I looked at my watch again when he concluded. (This is the same person who, just minutes prior to his prayer, had given the last testimony of the meeting and had already pushed our meeting to five minutes past closing time.)

The longer he spoke, the less attention I found myself paying to what he was saying and the more attention I paid to how long it was taking him to say it. I started to notice the breathing of people next to me on the bench and thought for a moment that I could actually hear the hair growing on their heads and faces. Soon, the voice speaking turned into that of Charlie Brown's schoolteacher.


Do any you ever feel distracted like this in church? Do you ever feel like, depsite your best efforts and intentions, it's hard to concentrate in church the way that you would like to? Further, did we set some kind of record for the length of a prayer in an LDS meeting? I'm convinced that it at least made the top 10.

We sure don't need to look for things to keep us distracted, because they seem to abound - at least, they do in my ward. Of late, the ward program has included both crossword and Sudoku puzzles. I have seen others laboring on all-out pieces of artwork or scrapbooking on their benches. And then there are those who simply cannot keep their hands off of their significant others and spend the entire meeting displaying physical affection that would make their grandmothers blush.

Perhaps it is the Primary student in all of us, still looking for that bag of Cheerios or coloring book to get us to the end of the meeting.

Borrrrring!

Sometimes, I wonder whether people in general are just too darn polite to tell me that I am boring. Earlier this week, a co-worker of mine certainly was not too shy to let me know that some of my writing was coming across as being the b-word.

Granted, she later explained to me in person that her comment meant only that she wanted to make sure we try our best to keep our readers' attention spans on the topic at hand, which admittedly has been a little harder to do with some of the historical figures topics I have been tackling lately. Helping to make Joan of Arc, Nelson Mandela, and Simón Bolívar come alive for people who are just learning to read has been somewhat of a challenge.

The larger problem, I suppose, is that I tend to be rather hard on myself and don't always deal well with what may be perceived as negative feedback. It's something that I guess we all struggle with to one degree or another.

Most of you know that I belong to and perform with two different Improv groups. Whenver I get done with a show, the first thing I usually end up doing is kicking myself for the things I could have said or done better/differently. I wonder about the things I did right, if any, and the laughs that may have been courtesy laughs.

In the dating arena, I have seriously tinkered with the concept of issuing "Get Out of Jail Free" cards to my dates when I pick them up at the start of the evening. The idea behind this would be that she could hand it back to me if she, at any point, became bored or wished to go home. I would then comply and take her home, with no questions asked.

Again, I have just toyed with this idea in my head and haven't actually tried it - yet.

Then again, maybe this is all in my head, and I'm just making a mountain out of a molehill. So, what do you think? Uhh . . . is anyone still there?