My Dinner with Luke

For his upcoming birthday, I took out my soon-to-be-five-year-old nephew Luke to lunch today and got to spend a good deal of the afternoon with him. Since Luke's parents and older sister, Jenna, were attending the BYU vs. Utah football game at the time, he and Kira were up at Mike and Jana's home in Layton, so I picked him up there.

For lunch, Luke selected McDonald's as his restaurant of choice, and we found our way to the nearest one. His Happy Meal included an Optimus Prime toy, with which he was pleased:


After we finished eating, I waited as he burned off those excess calories and some of that extra energy on the playground.

Following lunch, we headed over to Target so he could pick out his own present. Since this was all taking place during the middle of the big football game, we listened to it on the radio as we traveled - me wearing BYU colors, and Luke wearing his U. of U. sweater. (I couldn't help but wonder, in fact, whether the people who saw us, an odd couple under the circumstances, thought I had kidnapped the kid.)

For a five-year-old, Luke certainly knows what's going on in football and knows who plays for his team. When Christopher caught a Ute touchdown in the fourth quarter, in fact, he asked me, "Is that one of our guys?" I told him that it was.

Once we arrived at the store, Luke selected some Power Miners Legoes. I'm not really familiar with this new branch of the Legoes empire, but they're Legoes - need I say more? Luke is amassing quite a large collection of them.


Luke's a great kid, and I enjoyed getting to spend some one-on-one time with my nephew.

Turkey Day 2010

It was another enjoyable Thanksgiving holiday for the Plowman clan today, as my parents, all of my siblings and their families, and I, as well as Adi and a couple of our good friends (namely, Bryan and Ryan, who were away from their own families for one reason or another), gathered together to eat a delicious and plentiful meal.

The candied yams - which I developed an immunity against in Peru - have, in fact, now become one of my favorite dishes. (I may, in fact, have been the only one eating them.) Jana's perfectly prepared dish of yams was very tasty:


For dinner, Grandma and Grandpa sat at one table with most of the grandkids, while the rest of us assembled at the other:



There was also plenty of good NFL football to watch on the TV, and most of the kids went sledding on the hill over at Hannah Holbrook Elementary.




We took advantage of the family gathering opportunity to celebrate Luke’s fifth birthday, which falls on Monday. Several people chipped in and bought him a rather large City of Atlantis Lego set, which kept him fascinated for the remainder of the night. He had a pretty cool-looking cake, too, which featured Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader duking it out on a soccer field:


A group of us capped the evening by playing a special holiday edition of "Celebrity," one of our favorite family games.


I am thankful to have been able to spend the day surrounded by most, if not all, of the people and things I am most grateful for.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

Movie Review: Bare-y Bottom and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1

Last night/early this morning, Biz once again marshaled the forces - her own, personal Order of the Phoenix, of sorts - and organized a large group of family and friends, including yours truly, for the latest Harry Potter movie premiere at midnight.

Much ado had been made about this film, at least from local sources, due to a supposedly scandalous scene in which Daniel Radcliffe was to allegedly show his bare bottom to the camera - or so some of us were told. Fortunately, no such scene appeared in the movie, and our freakin' eyes have been saved for another day.

As one who is really not as much into Harry Potter as the rest of my siblings, I will say that, if anything, my only possible complaint about the film, like the others, is that it is too long. And there is a laugh-out-loud unintentionally funny scene in which Harry and Hermione begin to dance, for no apparent reason.


Once again, Dumbledore's Army, or the nerd patrol - or whatever you call these non-Muggles - came out in full force to support the cause of their favorite fantasy franchise, and several of them dressed up as their favorite characters from the series. They kinda put the Star Wars fans to shame with their enthusiasm - some of them.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1, was surprisingly good and, I must say, the best film in the franchise, to date, that I have seen.

Revenge of the Peanut Gallery

Earlier tonight, the Improvables were invited to perform an abbreviated version (time wise and cast wise) of our regular show, for a 27-to-40-year-old singles group in Centerville. Guy, Kim, Parker, Steve, and I represented the gang for this event.

This performance was notable, in my mind, mainly for the fact that, as the evening's M.C., I faced my first-ever real-life heckler. Throughout the course of the performance, some lady seated in the front row made several snide comments about our show, and she wasn't afraid to let everyone around her hear them.


This was nowhere near as fun as playing the "Hecklers" Improv game. (For those not in the know, we actually do heckle each other on purpose when we play that.)

My reaction to this was to humor her as much as I could and to ignore her the rest of the time. Upon further reflection, part of me thinks I need to work more on developing a thick skin for this kind of thing, and another part is amazed that it's actually taken this long for me to encounter a bona fide, real-life heckler, considering all of the Improv performances I've been involved in over the years.


My point - and I do have one - is that you shouldn't say anything at all if you can't say anything nice. I'm just sayin'.

"Accusation"

Here's another great, brand-new piece of animation by my cousin Eden:

"Epic Donut Dangers"

Here's a link to my cousin Eden's newest film:

Tricks and Treats

It's Halloween in Utah on a Sunday, and that means, of course, that all of the real holiday related festivities were celebrated here Friday and Saturday. But who's complaining?

Friday night, I took part with Biz, Bryan, Ian, Jana, Scott, and Steve, with Grant and Parker on music, in putting on the Improvables' second annual Halloween show. For these festivities, we extended our usual hour-long time slot to a 90-minute performance. A large and enthusiastic crowd attended, and many of them dressed up in costumes. This night featured our debut of "Mousetraps," for which Biz, Ian, and I were fitted with blindfolds and had to walk around the stage in our socks. (The mousetraps didn't actually hurt as much as I had feared they would, though I wouldn't let the audience know that.) In addition, we featured other seldom-played games, such as "Oxygen Deprivation" and "Nightmare."

Then, last night, it was the annual Millstream Ward Trunk-or-Treat up at the stake center. While this is usually one of the highlights of the year for our motley crew, it was a bit disappointing this time around; it was a rather cold and rainy night, plus someone in the ward hosted a murder mystery dinner at the same time, and a large group of people attended that instead. As a result, only six people (myself included) showed up to pass out candy to the kids. Still, those of us who came made the best of things, and we enjoyed ourselves for most of the 90 minutes.

I once again dressed up as Samwise Gamgee - why not?


Pepe was a hit with his glow-in-the-dark man costume:


Melanie, Marty, Nadine, and Heidi were among the others who supported the cause:




Later on in the evening, Parker and I carpooled down to Draper at the invitation of Caleb Parry, owner and manager of the Off the Wall Improv troupe, to perform with them at their Halloween show, held at the Draper Historic Theater. (It kind of reminded me of the old Queen Theater, which no longer stands, in Bountiful.) It was quite an interesting experience, to say the least, getting to perform on stage with another troupe, and at times I felt a bit like an Improv beginner, but nevertheless it was a lot of fun, too, and another large and enthusiastic crowd turned up to see our show. Cameron, Gwen, Rick, and Taylor rounded out the evening's cast:


That's all the damage I can do for one weekend. Happy Halloween, folks!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot like Halloween

Halloween is now less than a week away, and we celebrated that fact tonight with a ward Halloween party for our FHE activity.

I am always looking for excuses to dress up in silly costumes, and that's one of the many reasons why I love Halloween. I took advantage of the opportunity to come in costume as Samwise Gamgee (or my best version of him) from The Lord of the Rings movies:


Yeah, I know; save your compliments. Mordor never looked so hot!

Among my favorite costumes of the evening were our fearless elders quorum president, Steve, as a nerd (seen alongside Ashley, as a character from one of the Japanese anime movies I've never heard of); Eric, as the Shredder; Adrianne and Jen, as Thing 1 and Thing 2 (which is basically what I'd expect from them, since they are joined at the hip and all); and Bishop and Sis. Lake, as a couple of pigs:





And then there were those whose costumes I can classify only as "miscellaneous":



Cecily, Kristy, Andrew, Naomi, and MaryAnne were among the handful who carved pumpkins and contributed something constructive to the evening:


Good times were had by all.

Shoebox and Old Lace

For those of you who may have missed the bulletin, I belong to a somewhat theatrical family. Most of us participate in theater in one form or another, be it singing, dancing, playing instruments, musicals, or Improv.

My family of thespians extends to my cousins. Earlier tonight, one of my cousins, Scott "Shoebox" Sanders, made his theatrical debut as one of the policemen in Arsenic and Old Lace, presented by the Lehi Arts Council in (you guessed it) Lehi.

My parents, Ben, Adi, Steve, Biz, Jeff, and I joined Claudia (Scott's wife); Madison (their youngest daughter); Claudia's aunt, uncle, and cousins (visitng from Argentina); and a handful of other friends of theirs in cheering him on. Together, we managed to take up nearly all of the seats on the left wing of what turned out to be a rather small theater and stage arrangement – but an altogether cozy and nice atmosphere for theater. (I’m thinking also of the Hale Center Theater in Orem here.)


I had seen Arsenic and Old Lace only once before, and it was good to see it played out on stage again - perfect for the October/Halloween time of year.

My dad, I think, accurately pointed out that Scott was basically "playing Scott" in his role and that he did just fine. We enjoyed the show quite a bit.

Taking a Stand

At the conclusion of yesterday's post, I mentioned how much I enjoyed last weekend's general conference of the Church.

Today, I became aware of the fact that there is a group of people, some of whom I know, who didn't particularly enjoy general conference - in particular, Pres. Boyd K. Packer's Sunday afternoon talk, titled "Cleansing the Inner Vessel." In fact, they downright hated it.

This talk, in fact, can now be viewed online here:



From what I gather, the part of the talk that did not go over too well with these people is when he preaches against those in our country who are trying to legalize gay marriage. The complaints I've been reading, mostly on Facebook, have been calling Pres. Packer "hate-filled," "harsh," and an "out-of-touch old man" and have been comparing his rhetoric to Adolph Hitler's - yes, really.

As I watched and listened to Pres. Packer's talk again today, I found nothing hateful or harsh about it - that is, I suppose, unless you're of the point-of-view of one who is upset "because the Lord would not always suffer them to take happiness in sin" (Mormon 2:13). Rather, I found it to be full of love and concern. But that's just me. For some people, sadly, tolerance is not a two-way street, and emphasizing an already established Church doctrine or, at the very least, expressing an opinion is tantamount to being "hateful" and/or "homophobic."

The fact that there were some people who disagreed with what was said at general conference is nothing new; if you've attended general conference in person, then you've seen these nutcases outside the Conference Center, holding their signs and shouting their slogans and trying to tear down everyone and everything around them. What is disappointing, to me, is when people criticizing a Church leader like Pres. Packer are people I thought were active members of the Church, who should know or act better than that.

Whatever becomes of this brouhaha, I’m grateful for inspired leaders who are courageous enough to stand up for and teach true principles, even in spite of the ever-changing ideas and attitudes of the world. God bless you, President Packer.