A true story of devotion

Coming home from work Friday in rather busy traffic, I was stopped at a light, barely missing the left-hand-turn signal at a busy intersection. Sitting there slightly annoyed, I noticed a bird descend directly in front of a stopped car and hopped in front of a tire.

I apologize for not being able to identify the bird's species, but you can picture whatever kind you are familiar with. Imagine a little gray songbird that you might see prospering in the urban sprawl mostly anywhere. It took a hop around what to it was a massive, foreboding truck tire. I noticed that there was another bird there, in way-to-close proximity to the truck that was waiting for the light.

Despite birds getting quite used to traffic, I couldn't believe these were so reckless as to sit immediately in front of this truck. The first bird took a few more hops and then flew up to rest on the horizontal pole holding the traffic signal. After a moment he flew half-way back down the turned and flew back up to a power line.

I realized then that the bird on the ground was completely stationary. It was standing almost immediately in the tire's path and it wasn't eating or hoping or walking or anything. It was hurt, having probably been hit by a car and broken a wing at least.

A few moments later, the truck, oblivious to the little bird, got its green light and drove off. The tire, from my perspective by the smallest of inches, missed the bird and the back tire did the same. I confess I was cheering for the little thing to live even though I knew it was probably unlikely at that point. Not only were all the many cars hazards, but it was hurt already or possibly suicidal or insane.

The companion bird watched with me as the second car also missed the little thing, raising my hopes that perhaps it was out of the most common tire path and he might make it, at least for a little while. The third car not only crushed my hopes but the bird - completely flat. I flinched in my seat, watching the end come quickly. The next car added insult to death as did the next car and the next. It was the first two cars that were off the standard path.

I quit watching the pancake-like corpse and instead looked for the companion bird, now alone. It flew from traffic arm to traffic arm, line to line, perch to perch. Can a bird looked distressed? This one acted that way, at least to me.

After a parade of cars over the flat little body, it was finally my turn to head left and I left the scene of the avian massacre, probably one of only two entities on Earth aware of the short but dramatic ordeal. I watched the living bird fluttering around, making circles around its dead former companion.

It made me sad.

A story that touched and taught me

A friend shared with me a story that both touched my heart and expanded my mind. As a father, but still a new father, I always feel like I have a lot to learn and that there should be a guide on how not to mess up my kids.

Religious people will tell you that the scriptures is exactly that and that teaching the precepts contained in them will produce great young people. I actually believe there is divine truth there, but as far as I understand I should also be treating my children with perfect love, in other words, living the teachings of the scriptures. I already know I fail to do that.

I do believe that parenting should be done mostly with gentle persuasion and long-suffering and I already know how I fall short there sometimes. So while I mull over how to produce confident, happy adults with the ability to thrive in the wide world, I talked to my friend who has more experience and has watched all his children grow beyond childhood.

His son, dubbed Student X for this exercise, was in the resource program in elementary school. That means he wasn’t keeping up with regular classwork and falling behind the pace in the already slow public school system. He was more-or-less failing to keep up or even follow fourth grade. My friend and his wife are loving and kind people with good hearts and while I didn’t know them back when this story took place, I believe they were the same then.

So, loving their son, they visited the school counselor and tried to get some help. She sat down with them, I imagine to feel them out and see who and what she was working with, and upon finding them open to helping their son, their conversation was related to me like this:

Counselor: Can I be honest with you?

Friend & Wife: Yes of course, we want to know how to help Student X!

Counselor: This kid has no self esteem.

Friend & Wife: Oh no! That is terrible.

Counselor: His self esteem is on you. This is your doing.

Friend & Wife: (Silence. Choke back emotion.)

Counselor: I don’t want you to say a word of criticism to this kid for a whole year.

Friend & Wife: Okay, we will do that.

There was more to the conversation I am sure, but that was the meat, the most salient point. Wife went home and bawled of course, as a mother who has just been told that she has destroyed her child’s self esteem will do. Friend promised Wife that he would manage that for a year.

The second part of the prescription to restoring the kid’s view of himself is that he discovered he loved basketball. His family is athletic, his sisters perhaps gifted, but he had not had good sports experiences. So, when basketball happened Friend told him after every game how well he played and they also told Student X that his eligibility for school started right then. His right to participate in the Junior Jazz basketball league was predicated on his work in the classroom.

His teacher, conveniently named Joe Educator, would have the final word about Student X’s right to participate in basketball. Friend and Wife would come home from Parent-Teacher conferences and Student X would ask, “Will Mr. Educator let me play?”

He played.

By the 8th Grade, Student X brought home a report card with nothing but ‘A’ in the grade column. For those of you completely unfamiliar, it would look something like this:

Name: Student X

Grade: A
Grade: A
Grade: A
Grade: A
Grade: A
Grade: A
Grade: A

Friend & Wife took that piece of paper to share the joy with the elementary school counselor who had the guts to eviscerate two parents to save the child. She celebrated by making a copy of the results by framing them and sticking them on her wall.

“I have never seen a child so low, rise so high,” she said.

She has used it time and again to point out to students, or more likely parents, that children, few so low as Student X, are not irredeemable.

“If Student X can do it, so can you,” she has said over and over.

Amazing what a little self-esteem can do.

The seemingly never-ending saga with TORn

If you haven't read the first and second and third parts of my personal saga with TheOneRing.net, I suggest it before you dig into this part. In short, those three were about how I came to know TORn folks and this one is a wrap up.

Trying to record my experiences with TheOneRing.net has turned me into a horrible blogger. Instead of smallish daily things I can blog about, I feel like I have the weight of this saga. As a result, nothing at all gets blogged about, so, this will be the end of the tale that I tell here, although far from the genuine end.

In short, I had made contact with a few TORn staffers, organized a successful and sizable line party in Salt Lake City, attended the now legendary "One Party," as a member of the media and there interviewed TORn co-founder Chris. Somehow the two of us kept in touch or he knew me well enough to return an e-mail. One way or another, I drafted a tutorial on how to host a line party and to my shock and surprise, not only did he run the thing in its whole, he gussied it up and designed it to be easy to read. I had my first taste of his excellent design skills. I am a bit embarrassed now, but this is what I wrote and what he did with it.

Before long, as a result of this, he asked me on the phone to be a staff member at the site. I was genuinely shocked but also honored. I admired, and this feeling would only grow, that the staffers at TORn did what they did not for money but for love and passion. I found their efforts inspiring. I was also forced to choose a "handle" for the site and I really couldn't think of anything at that moment except the original Online name I ever invented for myself in the stone age of public internet when I picked "MrCere" for my first AOL subscription. Ouch. That name came from a cartoon aardvark "Cerebus" and I am pretty much stuck with it now. I find other potential Tolkien-themed message board names I like all the time. Rick Cottontree makes me laugh as does Barrow Wong and SandWitch King but alas, I might as well have a MrCere tat. Early "Cerebus" is brilliant commentary and satire but late in the game it grew to be less than it was.

I had discovered in the process of line parties, that I was a big fan of fans. I loved that people would spend hours pouring their hearts into something like the books of J.R.R. Tolkien. Harry Potter was on the rise and Star Wars was enjoying its prequel trilogy and there were other temporary cults growing up around popular culture and the Tolkien fandom was in the middle of all that.

I had only just discovered that celebrations of popular culture, such at Comic Con, were full of people that shared common interests with me. I always felt that playing Dungeons & Dragons or loving goofy fantasy movies or enjoying Japanese cartoons (Battle of the Planets) somehow isolated me or made me unusual. I discovered instead that I was not alone in these passions and for the most part, the people who shared these passions were pretty great. Calisuri, Tookish, Quickbeam and all the other folks behind these odd names at TheOneRing were more than alright and so were the rest of the people I met. In fact, they were also exceptionally cool.

So, being invited to be part of the energy of TORn was astounding. I knew I was a lot like the staffers I had met in some ways, but it seemed like a closed club that I would not be joining. A great number of the staff all knew each other from the live chat room at TORn which still functions. I felt a lot more comfortable on a message board than I do in a chat room, but I did venture over there a little, but somehow it wasn't completely comfortable for me. I was pleased to make a contribution with the line party efforts and there was a lot of satisfaction in putting Salt Lake City on the Website map and in having great experience with locals.

I still didn't understand the way TORn worked so I asked Chris if he really had the authority to make me a staffer. He laughed and explained that yes, it was his website, and he could make me part of the team. He also invited me to Comic-Con to help TORn out. In short, he adopted me for no reason I can quite understand, even still, except that he knew my motives were pure. I wasn't involved to meet stars or get free stuff but to build the community.

The other question I had for him concerned what a staffer did exactly for TORn. He explained that there wasn't a charter or rules or defined roles but that I should make it what I wanted to make it with the understanding that I didn't ever represent myself as speaking for TORn and that I work toward the greater good.

That year at Comic-Con, Sideshow Collectibes and Weta Workshop were together under the "Sideshow-Weta," business banner. Sideshow had a massive space and it let TORn set up a TheOneRing tent which was all part of a grouping of many Lord of the Rings booths, including New Line Cinema. Fan-film "Ringers: Lord of the Fans," was part of the booth and they had a Tolkien confessional where folks stepped inside the booth to be filmed to give the team lots of footage for their film, which was as yet a great idea but not formed into its final state. I was on hand to help with the booth in any capacity and although I didn't know people well, I had a great time being on the floor of the giant convention talking with passionate people about LOTR.

I attended a staff dinner, had some other fun around the convention, met folks at Sideshow and had a generally wonderful time. Chris also pulled me aside and invited me to go to DragonCon later in the year and promised a completely different convention experience. I would be there to help with a very small table that functioned to sell t-shirts and in general just help. And so it was that I began a string of trips to Atlanta for a completely different and completely fun convention experience where I met a whole different slew of fans and, wouldn't you know it, made more good friends.

One of those friends was another co-founder of TORn, Corvar or Bill, a giant Irishman of good humor and more than any of the staffers or founders of TORn, a man who avoids the limelight. He keeps the website online and solves the occasional major server issues (like the one that suddenly prompted an emergency redesign) and gets almost no credit. Later when Chris and Amy were married Bill was his best man and I was extremely honored to be part of the wedding party. Shannon and I traveled east to be present at the wedding and it remains a fond memory.

To make a long story less long, I was more-or-less integrated into TheOneRing.net staff and became an event specialist, news reporter and photographer. I attended three Oscar parites, got a side gig with Sideshow Collectibles, hosted events with actors and celebrities called "ORC" and "ELF," distributed t-shirts, got to know other staffers that I see rarely but am fond of and generally had amazing experiences. I also helped bring the message boards at TORn to the founders' attention so that in the current version, the once heavily chat-centric site now warmly embraces another part of its core. Good friend Pat (Altaira) reinvented the whole message board after moderators worked hard on the site's behalf for a long time with very little recognition and she and I were both asked to join the "senior staff" which means we on rare occasions we talk over matters concerning the site with the founders. I am sure I am more fond of many of the staffers than they are of me, but I don't mind.

I have enjoyed very much representing the site at press events, book release parties, game junkets, and movie premieres (viewing the screening of King Kong with stellar company, remains one of the elite entertainment experiences of my life). I am a regular presenter at DragonCon and while none of this has paid off financially, it has been immensely rewarding in so many ways but especially with well-loved friends. The truth is, sometimes involvement has required financial sacrifice but I count the dollars spent as well worth it. I am rich with amazing relationships and the whole immersion into this fandom has changed my life forever.

Dear Shannon has been pretty patient while all this happens and probably rightly wishes I had put some of this energy and passion into things that would pay handsomely. My sons will be just old enough to enjoy the Hobbit events and I hope to create for them what I have from all of this - great memories.

Chris and Bill are both counted as close friends now and while visiting Wellington last year, and visiting with Erica, I can definitely include Tehanu as somebody I both respect and am very fond of. A lot of the original staffers are busy and not so active now, but new blood helps carry the site forward toward "The Hobbit." People would be surprised though how few people still keep things going. I don't know that it will return to the elite status among all websites in existence it once enjoyed, but I can see the bump in popularity already happening and it will be the salad days again.

Beyond that, TORn may have used up its lifespan. Perhaps not. Either way, it has left its mark on the history of internet and movie and Tolkien fandom and I have felt privileged to be a part.

TORn saga book 3

If you haven't read the first and second parts of my personal sage with TheOneRing.net, I suggest it before you dig into this part.

Eight months after the first moment Shannon and I declared, on about our first anniversary, that we would now see if we could get pregnant, she was four weeks away from having Dresden. It was also time for the Oscars and "my" dark horse in the race was "Fellowship Of The Ring," which was nominated for nine Academy Awards. The good folks at TheOneRing.net, especially those on the message boards and those in California, planned to hold an Oscar Party. I was pretty convinced that Ian McKellen's Gandalf performance was subtle and great and probably deserving of a 'Best Actor' win, but I doubted very much an actor in a fantasy film would win such an award.

Still, all movies are about pretending and fantasy, and it seems that pretending somebody less familiar (like immortal wizards) is harder than portraying somebody more obvious and mundane. (Although good movie characters are never mundane, but hopefully you get the point.) Anyhow, I held out some hope for McKellen back then and was quite excited by the prospect of him winning. I felt a win would set the table for the two future movies. I am wiser now, and know the all-powerful Academy will never reward actors in fantasy films.

So back to the matter at hand, I badly wanted to go to California and attend this party. This wasn't a popular desire at home due to the rounded belly-full-of-baby Shannon was lugging around. In fact, there was a remote possibility that Shannon could go into labor while I was away so I think both sets of parents were biting their tongues except for my mother who wasn't biting hers at all and was speaking her mind. I made arrangements to fly in the day of the event and to fly home very early the next morning, meaning that my total time away was less than 18 hours.

Still, I am sure the possibility exists that I will get roasted even still for my decision to go and the at-home tension that it caused. I likely can't explain to anybody's satisfaction but I was 100% certain that Dresden wouldn't be born until I returned. To be on the safe side, we checked with a doctor who didn't think birth was quite upon us. A lot of LOTR Fan Club members were attending the party and staying together. I was a part of the group and yet not a part because I came in last minute and missed out on a lot but felt a lot of gratitude at having an automatic friend or two, even if they barely knew who I was. I was very kindly picked up at the airport.

Ian Smith, who was one of the first people I knew living on the digital-photography frontier with his camera and who is great at recording his experiences with images and words, was on hand as well. I refer you to his account of the event to really catch the flavor. There is even a photo of me in my shiny metallic shirt on his site, which was a way to try not to wear a traditional tux but still be in formal clothes. It may be the only such picture in existence and I didn't have the jacket on for the shot.

I was there as press which gave me permission to mostly walk unmolested and take a lot of photos, including of people I wouldn't know personally for a few years. I have a photo of TORn founder Bill / Corvar leading Peter Jackson into the party as he arrived which I just learned he had never seen and didn't possess. I took a lot of photos of fans and guests and V.I.P.s which later turned out to be McKellen, Jackson, Howard Shore, Richard Taylor, Phillipa Boyens and Fran Walsh.

Remarkably, a woman (Carlene) who was handling press, kept trying to get me to talk to one Chris Pirrotta. I informed her a few times that I was fine. I saw Xoanon's name on TORn all the time and I assumed it was a one-man show with some help from Tehanu the spy in New Zealand. Little did I understand that there were many, many hands behind both the party and the site. Carlene persisted and I kept declining the chance to talk to these TORn folk. Finally, a hand fell on my shoulder and this broad and genuinely friendly guy started talking to me. He was representing TORn and so we had the interview I had turned down probably three times.

Chris was impressive but I didn't understand who he was. He told me he was the "webmaster" but I was slow to comprehend so finally I asked him something like, "What do you have to do with the Website?"

"I own it," he laughed in his friendly way while still delivering the message that I didn't quite get what was going on. Knowing Chris now I find this remembered exchange a fond and funny memory. I did write a newspaper article on the whole affair for the Deseret News. I have a floating, unattributed quote near the end of the story but it reads like classic Richard Taylor, although it could be Jackson as well.

Reading the story now, I see that Chris did get his name in the paper and I wish I had elaborated on the sheer numbers TheOneRing was doing back then. It seems unlikely to be repeated, even with "The Hobbit," films because of the extensive competition in the form of big-time entertainment sites that will be throwing their weight around. This in no way diminishes the accomplishments of TORn at the time. Along with AintItCoolNews and a few other sites, it completely changed the way fans and moviemakers interact. This changed further with offshoot KongIsKing.net which I had some involvement with from the ground up.

The second worst reek of my life

In my life I have smelled some foul smells, as anybody has.

Human feces comes to mind, having changed many a diaper from my two boys. My wife thought it was funny that I would dry heave and gag and maybe at first she thought it was an act. It wasn't, but after time I managed not to be quite so repulsed and make it through a whole diaper without almost losing it.

There was a clear-cut worst smell in my history but today I experienced the second worst. I wore a drywall mask and rubber gloves while I cleaned out a fridge, my fridge, that was broken and no longer kept anything cold. That would have been okay if I cleaned it out the day it went down but I didn't. In fact, I had no idea it was broken and Shannon and I figured tha the freezer was left open and that we had ruined some food.

By the time we figured it out, our food had gone south and the contents were toxic. Included was a full gallon of milk, some recently collected chicken eggs, remaining dyed easter eggs, vegitables that liquified, butter, mayo, leftover chili, some curry dish (that I really mourn not eating) and sundry items.

Shannon and I moved the unit out of our house and into the garage but missed garbage day by one day, so it sat in there for a week. A couple of times before the move somebody in the family, by force of habbit, would open the door to get some milk or water or something and the smell would overwhelm the entire kitchen if not the whole floor of the house. Horrible.

Today I masked up, masked up 5-year-old Logan, put on the rubber gloves and dug in to put everything in the garbage.

Wow, did it reek! The eggs were leaking brown ooze, the milk (skim) was completely separated and the humidity had grown a nice black mold around the fringes of the condiments, leftovers and tuperware. The muffin tin that held the Easter eggs, one per muffin cup, became a casualty of the unfortunate mechanical failure. I am sure I could have washed it off and it would have been sanitary but the association of that smell would have never gone away for me. Never. The ice trays were a casualty as well but nobody will mourn those.

I also hooked up a hard spraying hose and tried to wash all that moist mold from the vegie drawer, meat drawer and nooks and crannies of the soon-to-be landfill fridge.

Thing in a jar revisited

A while back I made a thing in a jar and brought it to work and left it without any explanation.

I never heard a single word about it directly but I was told a few times that people were talking about it.

Somebody with a desk near the jar proved the social experiment a complete success when they wrote this on their facebook page:

What is in this creepy pickle jar that continues to sit on the desk occupied by the Web people? The guesses just keep rolling in: a freaky 10-year-old pickle, a sugar beet, a hobit embryo, a squid. The Web people claim it belongs to Larry and that he will soon have an unveiling. But I haven't seen Larry around for a while. Which makes me wonder if what is in the pickle jar is actually... LARRY! :0 :0 :)

Apparently, there has been much discussion when I am not around. I may need to make another one and darken the mixture slightly. Revealingly, 'the Hobbit' comment shows what I am associated with even though I very rarely speak about any such thing at work.

Good tunes, good times

There isn't a MySpace profile in the world that doesn't say something about how much the person trying to summarize their life in a few paragraphs loves music. The teen set thinks they are 'so into it' when more likely they haven't learned how to balance their interests yet and its pretty easy to fixate on unapproachable demi-gods of modern culture. (On some level what is being a teen if not loving a popular-culture icon to help you gain your own identity?)

But keeping your ear buds in instead of listening to your family communicate with you isn't actually being more into music than the next person, its simply being more into yourself. The point is, we humans with our technologies and portable file storage, like music. We have it nearly everywhere we go.

On a recent night, I went with some friends (Shannon, Steve, Deidra, Jason) to see Chris Cornell sing to us at Salt Lake's The Depot. Somebody once dubbed Kurt Cobain my generation's spokesman, which really annoys me still. His lyrics never spoke to me, much less for me, although I don't mind some Nirvana songs, I found the whole tone a little bit depressed for my taste.

Since he committed suicide he is immortal along with James Dean and Marilyn Monroe while all his grunge contemporaries who lived were allowed to pass out of being the latest fad. I am not the first to note the fact that suicide is the best career move an artist can make.

From the era, I always much preferred Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam, and especially Soundgarden. None were ever my spokesman. Cornell and Soundgarden parted ways somehow without me ever seeing them in concert during an era when due to working security, editing the college newspaper and being a young cub at the Deseret News, I saw almost everybody in concert. I will make a list sometime.

Cornell then formed Audioslave, which produced two albums I love, but I managed to miss any live shows for that band as well. I dig the man's voice and I know if I could have been born sounding like that, I too could have been a rock star, despite the lack of musical talent infused in my genes.

Feeling like I better not miss hearing the dude sing live, Shannon and I paid the $35 each and went to the show and were glad to have the company of good friends. His latest album is a solo effort produced with the supremely talented but predictable producer Timbaland. (Think "Promiscuous" by Nelly Furtado or "Cry Me A River," from Justin Timberlake.) I was very skeptical about the new material but figured I would suffer through it to hear some Audioslave and Soundgarden tunes.

In short, the show was top-notch; Cornell sings like an angel and screams like a demon and fronts the stage like a mellow, comfortable performer who realizes he has it good and appreciates the fans without losing his 'rock star' persona. I was pretty impressed and when he sang tunes like, "Rusty Cage," and "Fell On Black Days," there was some serious energy in the room and I couldn't help but mourn missing that band at its peak and Audioslave as well.

But the revelation of the night was how well his "dance album" stuff translated to a great live show. Two songs in particular, "Part Of Me," (featuring a slander word I don't want in my kids' vocabulary) and "Scream," ("I said 'Heeeey' Why you keep scraming at the top of your head?") were instantly pleasing despite being the first time I heard them. Talking up the show to my music-critic friend landed me a loaned solo CD of "Scream" and I must say that it is supremely good. The eclectic mix of pop styles with latin roots, anchored by Cornell's distinctive, mature voice and some new age sensibilities have managed to mix with the end result being an album I can't get enough of. I ration it when I listen to music so I don't overdose, but it is always calling to me. Critics apparently don't like it, I definitely don't care.