Precious indeed

About ten months ago I saw a film at the Sundance Film Festival that was, to me, powerful and amazing. I blogged about it on Jan. 29 of this year and on Monday night I saw the film again.

The first time I saw it with 1,200 people quite enthused to see the winner of the Audience Award at Sundance. The film received tremendous applause and even tears and cheers and some of those involved in making it talked to the audience after the screening and were moved to tears by the response a film about a black girl in Harlem received from mostly rich, mostly white people in Park City.

Monday I saw it with my wife and two dozen people (at most) in Salt Lake City in its last week of release. By Thursday it will leave the only theater in Utah that is showing it and probably be gone forever. It might make a return when it gets an Oscar nomination for "Best Supporting Actress" (absolute shoe in) and perhaps for "Best Picture". But reportedly it hasn't done well locally and I wonder if more people saw it in one night in Park City than have seen it in its entire run in SLC.

Oddly, Utahns turn out for Sundance in great numbers but have given this Sundance film a pass in its regular run. According to BoxOfficeMojo.com it made $36 million and played in as many at 664 theaters, so those numbers are great. It turned a healthy profit.

This post isn't about the film's finances however but about the film's power.

It is terrible to watch because the protagonist, the titular Precious, has a horrible life. It deals with rape, incest, physical abuse, mental abuse and the difficulties that are living in the inner-city. It hurts to watch.

I know a lot of LDS people (Mormons) who will not view R-rated films. This film is definitely R-rated but it seems more wrong to me for my fellow man - including my fellow Mormons - not to see with powerful realism, the circumstances that some people live in. It seems wrong to remain blissfully ignorant of how hard life is for others.

This very day I received an e-mail telling the morality tale of the grasshopper and the ant and then bemoaning the fact that now the grasshopper is lazy and takes from the ant and those that work hard have every advantage taken away.

I challenge anybody who has that notion, to go see "Precious". One character in the film is exactly that grasshopper but others in the film grow up with disadvantages beyond any hope of control and with a ridiculously remote chance of overcoming obstacles. I know first hand, face-to-face, that this movie paints a realistic portrait not only of characters but of an overwhelmed support system.

I champion the cause of this film because as I said in January, it needs to be seen. It must be seen and not because it creates sentiment or sympathy but because it educates and informs. It pulls back the cover we, as a society, like to keep over our ugliest corners. The film will make viewers uncomfortable and it should. Nobody wants to go to the cinema and see this film because it is hard.


It is so much easier to go see "The Blind Side," and see the also-true story where one privileged family helps one big-hearted, unloved minority kid who "makes it". We all love to feel good and we love to feel good about "the haves" helping "the have nots". Good for Sandra Bullock and good for NFL players and good for feel-good stories. One cannot say enough good about the real people involved in that real story and I applaud the makers of that movie for telling an uplifting story. I am a big fan of all of those things but for the Precious Joneses of the world, there is no Sandra Bullock offering to adopt and nurture and help somebody who has it unimaginably hard.
"The Blind Side" has pulled in $130,309,730 and counting.

Precious Jones certainly fantasizes that there is somebody to save her but is told again and again by circumstances that there is not. Nobody helps her when she is being abused and raped in her own home and nobody is there to help her in math class where it is difficult to hear a word from the teacher when she genuinely wants to learn. If one watches the film carefully, there are a dozen characters in the film with really hard circumstances that we don't see with real depth while we experience everything through Precious' eyes. And there are heroes here too: nurses, teachers, social workers and those trying their hardest to make it day-to-day.

So Mormons and other sensitive souls will avoid the film because they think they are remaining more "pure" by not seeing the ugliness of the world. I think that is a great rule for life but an incorrect notion in this case. I think the film enlarges our love for our fellow-beings and increases our love for those who are different from us by circumstance and race and environment and education. I am convinced the greatest divide in society isn't by race but by financial standing and this is an unflinching look into the dank basement of society. I know it is real because I saw it myself. I knew a dozen Precious stories. It is easy to love the minority athlete who achieves excellence but it is difficult to love the obese 17-year-old girl who can barely read, was raised on welfare and who might triumph in her life by passing the GED.

I challenge readers to go to the cinema and be really uncomfortable for two hours and learn. You will hear vile language and see ugly souls and despicable actions and some of them will stick with you. They should, because those things are said and done to real people in real places and you can be sure they stick with them too. I challenge readers to ponder in this Christmas season who in society Christ would minister to and I challenge readers to watch "Precious" and not weep inside with love for those who suffer.

The perfect tree

I love the fall season. I enjoy the crisp-aired evenings, football, the colder nights, dusting off leather jackets and I especially love the wardrobe change that trees and other foliage puts on and then takes off for us.

Each weekday morning I drive my kids to school and after navigate the great loop that allows me to drop them off and then exit the school grounds to head home, I pass by the perfect tree. It is located on the corner spot of a corner house as I wind down neighborhood streets to get back home. It is only about six feet tall and slender, yet full. It had clearly been well watered all summer.

Each morning of October and part of November, after enjoying the idea of sending my kids off to learn and experience, I would marvel at this tree. Its leaves were of many colors, changing from week-to-week, including some deep purples edging to dark blue, bright racing-car reds, blazing oranges and sunny yellows. I enjoyed the tree in all its subtle shades every day for a month or longer. Most days I thought that on the following day I would bring my camera, stop the car and get out and wait for some perfect light for this perfect tree.

I never did, but now when I drive by it with its naked, frozen twigs and branches, I still can recall the brilliance of that little tree. (Next year, maybe even this spring, I will spend 30 minutes to get the right image.)

I genuinely believe in a loving God and also genuinely believe that he engineered creation as a teaching tool for his most beloved creation: his children. Fall is an obvious reminder of our own mortality. We watch our own cycle of life play out before us multiple times before our own leaves fall and before our own sap stops circulating.

My mother has cancer that will eventually, hopefully after many cherished years, take her life. She has taken the news in stride and my poor, dear father has diminished mental capacity and cannot support her as one would hope. He lives in a fog and is scared and even angry a lot of the time.

I know my parents well enough to be well aware of their flaws. Like most people, they are complex and secretly vulnerable but when looking on their lives they too have showcased some spectacular leaves of various shades and colors. My dear mother currently is beautifully noble as she copes with fear and loneliness and mortality. She knows, though it may be yet distant, that winter is coming. Her foliage brought on by adversity, less sun and some deep cold snaps, is brilliant.

Holidays are interesting to me because of how people perceive them and how they connect us to the past, even when we aren’t aware of it. We celebrate in ways that are similar to how people hundreds or thousands of years ago celebrated or acted on similar days.


I am deeply touched by the Christian celebration of Christmas and seemingly it actually changes how people behave and interact. For me it is celebrated quietly and it is privately deeply religious and it is also the single most special time for my family. Having said that, I am not a big fan of Santa Claus, earning me criticism from anybody that has this fact brought to his or her attention (almost never by me).

But, outside of that holy time, I enjoy Halloween more than any other named and celebrated day. It is a holy day for pagans and an excuse to gather kit-kats for children and some Christian groups label it evil while in some cities it is called “The Devil’s Day.”

I pretty much ignore all of that and just call it fun and give it my own meaning, which if I am forced to define it, has something to do with being able to play with monsters – which I loved dearly as a kid (and still do).



I try to make Halloween creative and fun for my offspring and they may grow up to claim great memories of it or they may grow up and curse me for it. I thought it appropriate to share it.

The creation of the Glen Canyon Dam eight miles south of the Utah / Arizona boarder, backed up the waters of the Colorado and San Juan rivers and created Lake Powell. It is a spectacular lake with 1,960 miles of shoreline. It put some historic and religious sites under hundreds of feet of water and changed wildlife in the area permanently.

I went recently with friends to this spectacular place on a house boat and took a few pictures. These are the images of the trip that I liked best. I hope somebody enjoys them. I included some Google Earth geography lessons to help give the early October photos a place.

Rocktober

I am feeling "older" for the first time ever and I am badly out of shape. This is the craps. I am vacationing at Lake Powell (borrowed photo below) where I will find some think time. I want to use my time better every day for a month and see what I can accomplish.



Plus, my house has a leak in the roof. This sucks.

We are heading to Rocktober! On the plus side, DeseretNews.com, including me helping sports, had over 20 million page views in September. That is a big number. Horray!

I think we are dead

I am an irresponsible blogger but this is worth sharing:

Music - A top 10 of sorts

There is one and only one forum I view regularly on the internet. Music has been a topic lately and a poster requested that we name 10 songs that meant a lot to us. Once I worked on it a bit, I knew it was worth a blog post. This is what I wrote:

It was a matter of time here on Off Topic before this came up and I admit to finding it much more helpful personally than the "getting to know you" threads. That isn't a criticism of those threads but I feel like this is more a window into a soul for me. That may not be true but it feels true. I have been to Bucharest, Wellington and Mykonos, but does that tell you as much as my passionate connection with lyrics and arrangements and the skills of Rush or Dream Theater?

The connection people make with music is largely emotional and that makes it intensely personal as others have noted. While there is an element of appreciation where you find it remarkable or impressive that a bit of music switches time signatures or uses an innovative approach to incorporating the percussion into the texture of the melody, it seems more common that people like what or how music makes them feel.

As horrifying as it is to me, there will come a day when those teens and pre-teens who fell hard for B. Spears will grow up and love her and her music for reasons of nostalgia. That adults will react emotionally to such a vapid and talentless collection of music (sorry fans) is yucky to me. But, I am not much different. Often what we connect to first stays with us, as if we are imprinted.

For example in my list, should you read it, you will find a couple of tunes by Scorpions. They will be taken seriously by few or none, but I recall clearly when I was 14 and the emotional connection they made with me. I love them still, recorded or live or otherwise. I feel like the universe and all of humanity just fails to "get them" while I do.

No order here, but 10 important songs to me, and I will write a lot about how they feel:

Rush - La Villa Strangiato This is an instrumental by a band that I continue to marvel at. I tend to "rediscover" songs or albums by them from time to time but this song never leaves me. It is technically excellent on guitar, bass and drum (a 3-man band for those who don't know) to the point that you can pick one of the three and follow only it and love what is done. Better by far, to me, is that its an instrumental with mood changes and a feeling that just gets me, even if that comes from me more than from Rush. I don't listen to it casually. It Alex Liefson's best (not most difficult) solo work anywhere.



Tool - 10,000 Days (Wings Part 2) - Another long epic here at 11 minutes. I often like a band's early work but this is Tool's latest album and IMHO, its best. This song carries a feeling unlike any other song I listen to. I carefully make sure NOT to decipher the lyrics' meaning because I don't quite want to know what its about. I like individual lyrical phrases and the overall tone. Pretty palatable for first time listeners.



Metallica - Master of Puppets This is a band that I was determined not to like. Then I listened carefully. To me, this is their best angry song clocking in at 13 minutes with appropriate outrage and venom but also intelligence. Add in some fast, technical and powerful instrumentation and its the band's all-time masterpiece. Some here might call it noise but do so at your own peril of missing something raw and emotional. (I posted the link with some warm fuzzies. Here is one without. It is live including a few mistakes but I liked the crowd but beware band language, and if you click feel obligated to make it until the slower spots at least if its your first time hearing it.)





Coheed & Cambria - Always & Never A band I appreciate more than I love, but this two minute 12-string arrangement is delicate and achingly beautiful. It ends on a sinister note but it captures the feelings of the love for a child. Part of a big giant (convoluted) story, but take this bit isolated and love it.



Scorpions - Coast To Coast Another instrumental and really, I just love it and don't expect anybody else to really get it. All the YouTube recordings I could find sound horrible. Its old German guys being rock stars!

Can't embed this one . . .

Led Zepplin - Babe I am Gonna Leave You - I suspect everybody knows this tune and forgets how beautiful it is and how it captures the sadness and regret of love lost.



Dream Theater - Voices / Silent Man - These two different songs blend together on one album and I can't help but think of them as a package. Beautiful, skillful, emotional, all over the place both musically and in tone, its dear to my heart. Better vocal performance on the album, but he sings his guts out here. Incidentally, I photographed them live in 2008, linked here in case anybody wants to see the album. Some suck, some do not, but photographers only have 3 songs, so its shoot fast.



William Clayton - Come Come Ye Saints - A hymn that is part of my family heritage but also a part of my own life experience. Below is the expected version and another version. Written in 1846 by Mormon poet William Clayton when, while away from his family, he received word that his wife had given birth to a son and wrote "All Is Well."





Scorpions - Eye II Eye The Scorpions song you never heard. Written about losing a father, I find it incredibly applicable to missing people I love, dead and alive. I also think Klaus Meine has a unique and incredibly appealing voice. This is a mostly great album that was almost completely ignored.



Extreme - Midnight Express The most talented people are not always the most famous. Holy cow. This guy plays like a monster/god and remains unknown. Masterpiece. Here is a case where just being technically brilliant is enough for me to deeply love the tune. He not only plays it, he composed it. Known mostly for one ballad this band was so much more and one of the best live shows I have ever seen, twice. What the heck, watch him play below as well.





I am surprised to find only one Dream Theater song and one Rush song on this list. Interesting.