Book of Musicals

I did not grow up a fan of musical theater. As a kid I was into sports and Star Wars and computer games and TV. But people spontaneously breaking out into song and dance? That wasn't a part of my childhood.

Not a fan

It's taken a lot of time, but thanks to muppets having sex and Mormons singing about clitorises, I've become a fan of Broadway musicals. It's hard to listen to show tunes and be in a bad mood. There's just something about them that makes me so goddamn happy in spite of myself.

I only own two Broadway musicals CDs. The first was Avenue Q, which I bought a few years ago after someone played me a video for the song "The Internet is for Porn" and I knew I just had to hear the whole show. And it's brilliant, like Sesame Street for adults. For many years Avenue Q was the only Broadway musical I knew intimately. I finally got to see it during a trip to New York a few years ago. It was awesome.

The Internet is for posting dorky tourist pics of you in front of the Avenue Q poster. And porn.

Last weekend I doubled my collection of Original Broadway Cast Recordings when I bought The Book of Mormon. I'd been hearing everywhere about how great it was, and since it was written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park fame, I figured I'd try it out. (When I got the CD, I saw that Robert Lopez also co-wrote it. I thought I recognized that name, so I looked on my Avenue Q CD, and sure enough, he co-wrote that too. Good sign.)


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The Book of Mormon had a lot to live up to. Everyone was raving about it. Even people who had their doubts became converts. Dan Savage wrote this about it in his column:

I didn’t think it was possible, but Trey Parker, Robert Lopez, and Matt Stone’s brilliant new musical about well-intentioned Mormons on a mission exceeds the hype. It’s the funniest, dirtiest, smartest thing that this showqueen has ever seen on Broadway.

I have to admit that about halfway through my first listen, there was a small disappointment. I think maybe my expectations were too high. The music wasn't great and much of the lyrics felt like too much South Park shock value. But the story ended so brilliantly that it pulled me back in. And on the second, third, and fourth listen it grew on me even more. I was impressed with how it all fit together.

I haven't even seen the show. I only have the CD and the liner notes to go on. But the music alone is funny and raunchy (even for me it gets too crude in places) and smart in that it brings up lots of issues about religion, belief, oral (hehe) traditions and mythology. And there are lots of wacky misinterpretations.

Of course it makes fun of Mormons. To wit:

Wow! So the Bible is actually a trilogy, and the Book of Mormon is Return of the Jedi?!? I'M interested. ("All-American Prophet")

Imagine that your brain is made of tiny boxes, then find the box that's gay and... CRUSH IT!!... Turn it off, like a light switch. ("Turn It Off")

You're making things up again, Arnold. You're taking the holy word and adding fiction! ("Making Things Up Again")

I can't believe Jesus called me a dick!!!! ("Spooky Mormon Hell Dreams")

And I believe that ancient Jews built boats and sailed to America. I am a Mormon, and a Mormon just believes. ("I Believe.")

I believe that in 1978 God changed his mind about black people!!! You can be a Mormon! A Mormon who just believes. ("I Believe")

Let's be really fucking polite to everyone! ("Joseph Smith American Moses")

But despite all this, there is real affection for the Mormon characters in this story. It is not a hostile critique. As it states in the liner notes (much more eloquently than I could): "...the satirical tone is far closer to bemused tolerance than blasphemous antipathy... Parker, Stone and Lopez can't help but be seduced by the fabulousness of those golden plates."

I'm curious what Mormons themselves, if they've seen the show, think about it. I'm sure a lot of them aren't happy about it, but I could see some more open-minded Mormons enjoying it. A quick Google search confirmed my theory:

Mormons find musical 'Book of Mormon' surprisingly sweet

"I was expecting to be offended," said Anne Christensen, a 22-year-old LDS New Yorker, "but was pleasantly surprised by how incredibly sweet it was."

Her mother, Janet Christensen, added: "It's not G-rated, but they treated us with affection. And they did their homework."

Here's a Mormon who thinks it's offensive, although curiously she doesn't say exactly which parts are a "misrepresentation of my Mormon faith."

Are Mormons Offended by Book of Mormon Musical?

And the official statement from the LDS Church is short and "media savvy", as this writer says:

LDS Church Responds to South Park Mormon Musical

+++++


Josh Gad, a correspondent for The Daily Show, plays the lead, a simple and confused young man going on his Mormon mission. He confuses the Book of Mormon with Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. Sometimes he comes across as too "special" and that kind of distracts from his performance, but otherwise he's brilliant. I've never been much impressed with him on the Daily Show, but raunchy musical theater is really his calling.

In particular, Gad's duet with the female lead in "Baptize Me" is the sexiest song about baptism I've ever heard.

Him:

I just baptized her!
She got doused by the Heavenly Father!
I just baptized her good!

...I performed like a champ!

Her:

You baptized me...

I'm wet with salvation!

There's a lot more to love about this musical, but I'll just leave you with this:

Tomorrow's a doper, phatter latter day!

Poop Scoop Solution

For years and years I always used the gray clay-based clumping cat litter. But lately it was annoying me because it would always leave this dusty, perfumy, chemically smell around my house that I didn't like. It also seemed that the brand I used kept changing the formula so that it was getting more dusty.


Since I've been going more and more green over the past few years, I decided I would investigate greener litter options. So a few months ago I Googled "natural cat litter" and found something called Swheat Scoop. It's a clumping cat litter made from wheat instead of clay. According to the website, this miracle cat litter naturally eliminates odors, clumps firmly, has less dust and tracking than clay litters, is safe for kittens, and is found at a location near you.

They also have a picture of a blue-eyed cat on their bag whose gaze pierces your soul

After checking a few different pet stores, it was indeed found at a location near me. So I bought a big-ass bag of it and hauled it home. I switched out the clay stuff with the wheat stuff and waited for the swheat, swheat smell of all-natural cat waste to surround my house.

After a few weeks of vacuuming and sweeping, pretty much all traces of the old gray dusty clay litter was gone from my house. That gross perfumy chemically smell was replaced by a scent that reminded me of the hay lofts in the barn where my cousins grew up. Ah, nature!

Not my cousin

But nature also comes with compromises. It turns out their promise that there would be less dust and tracking was an outright lie. If anything, there is more dust kicked up by the wheat litter. My litter box, litter mats, and utility-room floor is covered in a light tan film. Sometimes I even see it on my black cat.

Not my cat

Okay, so they lied about that, but that's a small price to pay for the other advantages, not the least being this is better for the environment.

Then the smells came.

+++++

I know that every cat owner has their own technique, and mine has always been to empty the clumping litter into a small wastebasket I keep near the litter box.

Very similar to my actual litter trash can

I do this once a day. I know some people who scoop out their litter box after every, uh, incident the cat has. They practically follow the cat around with a pooper scooper. And I know some people who go days and days without emptying it.


I do it once a day, and at the end of the week I empty the litter wastebasket into my larger trash can, which I then take to the curb.

I once had a girlfriend who thought it was disgusting that I "saved" my cats' poop in a receptacle, as if I was collecting truffles in the wild. I would always explain to her, "I'm not SAVING it, this is TRASH." But it still grossed her out.

But once the Swheat Scoop collected in the wastebasket, I started to notice a smell coming from my utility room. Although it no longer reeked of dusty chemically clay litter, now it smelled like straight-up cat pee.

I have no idea why an image of this beautiful woman came up when I googled "cat pee smell." But, wow, isn't she amazing? Now back to cat pee...

On their website, the Swheat Scoop people say "[our] litter has the deodorizing strength it takes to keep your house smelling fresh and clean." Um, no. That, too, is a lie. When I walk through my utility room, I smell cat pee.

But I wasn't ready to give up on this green alternative to the traditional clay litter. In the meantime I even discovered that my local food co-op sells Swheat Scoop, so I could buy it there when I do my weekly shopping. So I thought I'd keep trying different things to see if I could make it work.

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I sat down to write this post this afternoon, and right before I started I checked my blog reader to catch up on some other blogs. By an interesting coincidence a blogfriend posted something about catwatching for a friend of a friend and having to scoop up turds. She mentioned how the micro-managing cat owners wanted her to drag the litter boxes across two rooms to the bathroom so she could dump the waste there.

And then I remembered, Swheat Scoop is biodegradable! I can flush it down the toilet! Why am I saving it in a little trash can and letting it stink up my house when I can just flush it once a day? Now when I "save" my kitty waste in my little trash can, I can just take it directly to the toilet.

So here is a simple lesson in solutions. First of all, often times if you give it some time, the solution to a problem appears to you from unexpected places.


And sometimes the solution is ridiculously obvious, but you couldn't think of it because to do so would have challenged the inertia of how you've always done it.

Death and Mowing

My next door neighbor died last month. I hardly knew him. In fact, I think the only interaction I had with him was when I was out buying shoes and he recognized me. He said, "I'm your neighbor. The one with the crazy wife."

I had more interactions with the "crazy wife." She's always doing yard work. Even at night, in the dark. When I first moved in two years ago, she said that she and her husband were separating and she had a place in the country. I never could quite figure out what the deal was with that, because she was still around all the time, doing yard work. I sometimes got the impression she desperately wanted to work on my yard, since I'm so lax about weeds & stuff. I let things grow. I think that drove her crazy, and one time I suspect she poured bleach over my stone bed to kill weeds growing out of it.

Not my neighbor

Anyway, a few months ago she mentioned to me in passing that her husband was really sick. I said I was sorry to hear that, and the conversation ended there, like many of our awkward conversations. Then last month there was a notice for a funeral showing left in my mailbox. I didn't recognize the name and there was no postage on it. The showing was already past, so I walked over to my neighbor, who was out in her yard and asked if this was her husband. She said yes and started crying. He had just lost his job a few months before, and soon after was diagnosed with cancer, and died a matter of weeks after that. It was all very sudden and she was terribly shaken. She asked me for a hug.


I felt terrible and I said I was really really sorry and to let me know if there was anything I could do.

But other than giving her that hug, I didn't know what I could do.

The only thing I could think to say was, "I could mow your lawn."

Not me

+++++

My neighbor has a really big beautiful lawn.

Not my neigbhor's lawn

It borders a part of the street that curves, so the lawn makes a big curving arc along the street, like Trivial Pursuit piece. It's a fun lawn to mow. And mowing the lawn, like doing laundry or vacuuming, is one of those easy chores I enjoy doing. I like walking outside, getting exercise, making these neat tidy geometric lines, the smell of cut grass. So mowing her lawn was an easy way I could contribute.


The next time I mowed my lawn, about a week later, I went over to her house to see if this was a good time to mow hers. Before I knocked on her door, I heard wailing from inside the house. Like actual literal wailing. Someone moaning "oohhhhh!" in a heartbroken, distraught voice. I wasn't sure what to do, but I knocked anyway. She came to the door and said, "Sorry, you caught me at a bad time." I said it was okay and asked if I could mow her lawn. She said yes and thank you.

I don't know what kind of relationship she had with her husband. If they were separated, reconciling, working on it, or what. But clearly his death had shaken her. And other than mowing her lawn, I didn't know what I could do. I didn't think I could be there for her emotionally. I hardly know her. And, frankly, I'm not the kind of guy who can provide that kind of support to someone I don't know.

So I mowed her lawn. It was the least I could do.

+++++

Last week I mowed my lawn again and saw that her lawn could use it, too. But I didn't see her around her yard, and I was apprehensive about mowing her lawn without asking her first. It was 10:00 in the morning, and no one answered the doorbell when I rang.

I'm not one of those people who does people favors before I have their permission (or know for a fact it's something they would like.) Sometimes a "favor" can do more harm than good. For example, I used to work in a library where the circulation clerk would automatically renew my materials for me. I know she meant well, but I like knowing when my stuff is due. It reminds me of the things I have out, and nudges me to return stuff I'm not going to finish. So I thanked her for renewing my items, but asked if she could let me do it from now on.

Another example: Whenever I see a car in a parking lot with its lights left on, I'm reluctant to go and turn the lights off myself. I know there are people who would do this, and I wish I were that brave. But I worry about approaching a car that's not mine. I worry someone might think I'm breaking into it. I worry that maybe it's automatic lights that will turn off in a minute, or maybe the person intentionally left them on for some reason.


In short, I don't like to make assumptions.

So when my neighbor was not around at 10:00 on a Friday morning, I wasn't sure if I should go ahead and mow her lawn or not. Since I'd already done it once and she seemed thankful, I decided to go for it. I mowed the lawn. When I saw her later in the day, I found out that she'd been sleeping. Oops. She was very appreciative, and didn't say that I'd woken her up, but I still wondered if I should have gone ahead and done it without checking with her first.

+++++

I'm not sure what the point of this post is, other than to illustrate my philosophy of contribution. (And my compulsory liberal/Catholic guilt.) We all have different talents, abilities, and comfort zones. I feel like the best way I can help my grieving neighbor is to mow her lawn, a chore that's not much of a burden for me.

It's like how I am the Friend Who Helps People Move. I love the process of moving and experiencing that with other people, so whenever a friend or acquaintance puts out a call for moving help, I'm all over it. It's a tiny way I can contribute to the world.

I'm not looking for a medal or karmic rewards or even a pat on the back. I'm just trying to figure out what's the right thing to do in awkward neighborly situations.

Portal to Hell No More

When I bought my house two years ago, there was this big, weird rectangular indentation in the back yard.


Along the edges of it were stone walls, and at one end it opened up where a door would be, and there were metal pipes nearby that the lawnmower would hit, which made a horrible awful sound.

No one-- the seller, the neighbors, the seller's realtor, my realtor-- knew what it was. Theories included an old greenhouse, barn, garden, bomb shelter. I thought it might be an alien landing pad, or an Indian burial ground, but then I decided it was just a generic Portal to Hell.


Whatever it was, it had been filled in, and then settled, so that now there was a big old indention in my back yard. For two years it sat on my list of house projects to fill it in.

Last week I made it happen.

First I needed a shit-ton of dirt. My landscape consultant, Peter, priced around and told me to order "8 yards" of it from our dirt guy.

A big dump truck dropped off 8 yards of pulverized processed topsoil, which looks like this:

AKA, a shit-ton. On the receipt it says "Sterling Dump." I don't know what this refers to-- the place it came from, the type of dump truck, the method by which the dirt was created-- but I really like that phrase.

I never realized when I bought my house that I'd be concerned with the price of dirt, but this mound of premium fertile Midwestern soil cost me $191.20. And I was excited about it-- another thing I never thought I'd be capable of before I owned a home.

Here's what the Portal to Hell looked like just before the project:


The plan was to remove the grass sod, lay it aside, fill in the hole, then cover it back up with the sod. About three hours into the project, we'd removed a lot of the sod:

And laid it aside on tarp:

It took us about four hours to get all the sod up.

We unearthed many artifacts (click on photo for larger view.)

Pieces of cinder, glass bottles, clay pipes, light bulbs, a blue plastic knife, plastic bags, a rubber O-ring, big stone slates. No human bones, though. The demons must have already feasted on those.

Now the fun part started. Moving the dirt from the big mound on my driveway back to the Portal. This was my favorite part of the project. I really wish I'd counted how many wheelbarrow loads it took. My guess is about 50. Here's the pile when we were about halfway done:

Two wheelbarrows: one red and one green. To make it festive.

We dumped the dirt into the hole.

The last load:

Swells of dirt, like a mountain chain:

Then we smoothed it out:

The last step was the most boring, difficult, and tedious. We had to take all the sod pieces...

and put them back over the dirt. It was like putting together a huge, filthy puzzle. Under a hot sun.


I took a picture of our progress once an hour:


The shadow from the house moved across the yard, making pics difficult. But as these time-lapse photos attest, it took at least four hours to finish this part. All that was left at this point was the very back edge:

There was some dirt left over from the sod pieces, so I dumped it in the corner and created Mount Tim. I will use this dirt to fill in any holes as they appear.

It looks bigger live

The last step is to drench the Portal so that the grass transplant takes.


We were lucky that it didn't rain at all during the three days we worked on this project. Moving wet dirt (aka mud) would have made it a real mess, and more difficult.

However, since I've finished this project, we haven't gotten any rain. One of the few times in my life when I would WELCOME rain-- where it wouldn't just ruin tennis plans or outdoor fun-- and it won't come. I've been watering the Portal day and night all week. I can't imagine what my water bill is going to be this month. (Yes, I know: First World Problem.)

I love the idea of all the grass and mud pieces fusing back together into one teeming mass of roots, soil, and life. I'm really eager to see what it will look like in 2 or 3 months. Will there be any evidence that the Portal was ever there?

But I'm not too concerned. If I learned anything from Jurassic Park, it's that life will find a way.

Eventually, something will grow there.

Password Protracted

It used to be that paying my bills meant sitting down once or twice a month and writing out a bunch of checks.

Not my checks

But as more and more of my monthly bills go online, I'm finding I have fewer checks to write. I now pay my mortgage, credit card, Vonage, Netflix, and cell phone bills all online. Most of them just deduct the amount automatically from my account.

So with this trend in mind, I noticed on my latest water bill that I could "manage [my] residential account online." That could be one less check I have to write every month. So I went online full of hope and wonder that the internets could lighten my bill-paying load.

I went online and filled out their form to register for an online account. I filled in my account number, name, email address, and created a username and password.


When I clicked "Submit" (Does anyone else think of an evil villain shouting "You will SUBMIT to me!!" whenever they click that button? Especially when it says "Submit Now!" I think of someone shouting it in a German accent), an error message came back:

"LoginId is required and between 8 and 12 characters."

Oh, bother. The standard username I use for these types of transactions is only 7 characters long.

So I expand it to my full email address, which a lot of sites use for your login.

The same error message comes back. Now it's too long. Sonofabitch! (I guess I should have read the words "between 8 and 12 characters" closer.) Now I have to use some stupid hybrid that is unique only for this one website.

I change it and submit again. Then I get the following error:

"Password is required and between 8 and 12 characters with at least 1 capital letter, 1 lower case letter, and 1 number."

Oh, for fuck's sake!

Here's the thing that frustrates me. I have dozens of online accounts. When I wrote about this issue three years ago, back then I counted 33 separate logins in my life. And I've added a lot more since then. Obviously, I'm not going to create a separate username and password for each one of them. I would go insane. So I have a standard username and password that I use for most of them. (On those kinds of sites where they test the strength of your password, mine always comes out as "very strong.")


But my standard login is not good enough for the water company. They want me to create a brand-new, unique username and password that consists of capital letters, Greek symbols, puns, and retina scans.

Jesus, water people, get over yourselves. It's an account for my water bill, which I probably won't log into once a month. It's not a security clearance to enter Fort Knox. Even if someone did hack into my account, what are they going to do? Pay my water bill for me?

Until the water company gets a more realistic attitude about their place of importance among my online accounts, I'll continue to write them checks.

Idea Books

I like books and movies that ask me to imagine a different world or reality. I call these "idea books/movies." I've recently encountered two idea books.

Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives by David Eagleman is a small thing, a short read that I could probably finish off in one sitting if I were so inspired. It's a fascinating idea: 40 different theories on what happens to you when you die.

Unfortunately, the idea is more interesting than the content. It does have some fascinating, mind-blowing ideas, but on the whole the book is mostly disappointing. Maybe that's what the afterlife is really like: you get all excited about the idea of it, but then it's anticlimactic.

The title passage, "Sum", posits that in death we re-live all the moments of our life, but they are bunched together by activity. Therefore, we sleep for 30 years and spend six days clipping our nails. Seven months of non-stop sex. One year reading books. Twenty-seven intense hours of pain: broken bones, accidents, cuts, etc. Three weeks realizing you're wrong. You get the picture. Everything is clumped together.

Although the statistics would be interesting, it's kind of a stupid idea. As I was reading it, I protested, "But you can't just take all of these moments out of context like that." Relaxing on the couch after a long strenuous day is different from sitting on it for months at a time. But that is his point. He ends this story with the moral that we are fortunate that life is broken up into "tiny swallowable pieces." Like so many other theories in the book, it seems to point more to life than to death.

Almost every theory in the book points to one conclusion: when you die, you find out what the true nature of life and the universe is. (Which happens to be what I always hoped the afterlife would be like.) It's only that true nature that changes from story to story. There's also a very heavy Western bias in all the theories. They're mostly all about the Judeo-Christian God-- some anthropomorphized deity-- living in heaven. I had kind of hoped that the theories would be a little more out there.

The writing isn't that great, and a lot of the examples or conclusions he comes to don't make sense to me. He might have an interesting idea, but the implementation feels all wrong. For example, there's a theory about how you are represented in the afterlife by yourself at every age, so that your 5-year-old self might hang out with your 34-year-old self and your 67-year-old self. Neat idea, but then he goes on to say that many of your different selves realize they have hardly anything in common other than a name. Huh? Surely sharing the same life history and experiences counts for a strong bond, even if it's a teenager and an elderly version of yourself?

Still, as an idea book, it gets the job done. Some of his ideas are very similar to ideas I've had, and some are completely new to me. Those new and old ideas mingled and brought up new theories.

For example, as I was reading the book, I had this revelation that maybe I have already died dozens of times, but the superior being who is playing the "Game of Tim" keeps going back to an earlier saved version of the game and reviving me. I do this when I play computer games if I make a stupid fatal mistake. I go back and try again. Maybe that's what my life is like. That could explain why I'm convinced that things will work out in the end. Any fatal mistakes can be fixed by going back to an earlier saved version.

The book is a short read that can get your creative juices flowing, so I recommend it.

+++++

The other idea book I'm reading right now is The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.

I really like this book. Besides the fact that its main character is a librarian who lives in Chicago, it brings up fascinating ideas that branch off in all different directions.

Henry has Chrono Displacement, a genetic condition where he travels through time with no control over when and where. He is married to Clare. At their first first meeting, she is 6 and he is in his 30's. At their second first meeting, she is 20 and he is 28. She has known him her whole childhood, but he has no idea who she is. But his future self has visited her throughout her childhood. Encounters between them happen at different ages, so that when a 32-year-old Henry visits a 14-year-old Clare, he doesn't yet have a memory of when his 40-year-old self visited her when she was 9.

It brings up a lot of weird issues, like: would it be wrong to sleep with your wife when she's 16 and begging for it, when you're a 35-year-old guy and married to her older self? (He doesn't.) Would you tell your friends and family their future? Would you "get intimate" with a younger version of yourself? (He does.)

The circular determinism brings up all sorts of questions about free will. Henry visits Clare when she's a child because they're married, but the only reason she falls for him as an adult is that he was such a huge part of her childhood. It turns into quite a mindfuck if you think too hard on it.

But it's a fun mindfuck.

+++++

Like most of my book reviews, I'm only halfway through The Time Traveler's Wife, so if you're like Henry and you know my future, don't tell me what happens. I guess there's a movie, too, and I'd like to see that when I'm done with the book.

Indecision

Sometimes, when you hem and haw over a decision, it gets made for you.

I'm about to get more personal than I usually get on this blog, but since I think hardly anyone reads it, I don't think it matters all that much.

I've been uneasy about the "Why I'm An Ally" essay I wrote, which I first posted on this blog and then submitted a revised version to the local online magazine, Smile Politely.

I'm not uneasy about "coming out" publicly as an advocate for gay rights. That's easy. What worried me was that some people might doubt my sincerity at claiming to be a straight advocate for gay rights.

For reasons that are too personal to go into here, some people might argue that I am bisexual. I have good reason to believe I'm not (like wondering if I'm gay, I've wondered if I'm bi, but always come to the same conclusion: I overwhelmingly prefer women) so I don't identify as such, but if someone believed it, it would certainly weaken the points I make in the essay. For this reason, I felt that the article was not entirely honest, and I was hesitant to post it to my Facebook page, where I have many gay and bisexual friends who might think I'm just a closet-case in denial.

Meanwhile, this week I got into an argument on Facebook with some bisexuals over this article: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/bisexuals/Content?oid=8743322, so I'm feeling even more sensitive about this whole issue. (The disagreement was that bisexuals think Dan Savage sucks, and I think he is awesome, even though he is snarky and disrespectful.)

So then, this morning, Joel Derfner himself, the author who I quote in my article, leaves a comment: "Tim, thank you for writing this—and thank you for reading (and, I hope, enjoying) my book!" Wow! Someone famous noticed me! This is thrilling news. The kind of thing I would love to share on Facebook, but, to do so would expose all my friends to this article I'm ambivalent about. What to do?

As I was agonizing over this, a friend of a friend who found the article on Smile Politely posted it to her Facebook page, and then tagged me in it. This means that, without me doing anything, the article has been published on my Facebook page.

Okay, I guess the decision has been made for me. So, that's that.