Some Random October Shots

Saw this downtown and at the time didn't know what it was about.

A Rainbow in my Neighborhood

I'm not promoting Firestone, just loved the shot

KGriff Brings It

Months ago I got tickets for me and a friend to see Kathy Griffin.  As the date was approaching it was the only thing that kept me going.  Turns out the Kathy Griffin fan base in SLC is small but mighty.   The show was on a Friday night and I hadn’t realized until that day that the Church of Latter Day Saints was having their general conference weekend Saturday and Sunday in Salt Lake City.  What is general conference?  From what I’ve read in the newspaper and heard from folks, it’s a time for the church leaders to preach to the masses, focusing on a few topics.  The last general conference was kind of controversial because one of the “prophets” (not my word, theirs) gave what was considered a very anti-gay message.  Now people travel from all over to be HERE for general conference.  In fact the person I went with had family friends staying with her from Australia who had travelled here for the conference.  I wondered as the evening approached, would Kathy know she was in town while the Mormon crowds were gathering?  Of course she did.

As my friend M had told me, if you like her Bravo stand up specials, you’ll love her live because she really dishes and there’s no censorship.  Topics of conversation – Michelle Bachman and her husband (especially his clinic), the LDS church, Cher, Kate Winslet, Paula Abdul, Nancy Grace, her autistic dog, and much much more.   I was a little worried that my friend would be offended by something in the show, but she seemed to enjoy it too. 

See the temple in the background

As we were leaving the hall, it was a little strange to be walking down this beautiful winding staircase with that giant temple in the very close distance.  Which two things don’t belong together?  That building and the contents of the show.

Art and Ice Cream

Brigham Young University has an art museum.  I probably would have never stepped on the campus except I heard about this exhibit and wanted to see it myself.  A colleague of mine and I decided to plan to take a long lunch one Friday and go see it.  He was familiar with the campus.  He didn’t go there but grew up in the area and has a family member who works there.  Besides this book art installation, which is composed of 100,000 books and a sight to see, I was very impressed with the rest of the museum.  They had a Picasso, lots of Georgia O’Keefe, some gorgeous western landscapes and a temporary quilt exhibition from Alabama.  I fully expected to walk in and see nothing but religious-based work. 

After we finished up at the museum, we were looking for a place to eat lunch and my friend suggested the creamery on campus.  Little did I know that BYU also has its own dairy run by the students in the agriculture program so the ice cream they serve at the creamery is made from BYU cows.  We used this as an excuse to have ice cream for lunch.  Our conversation tended to focus on what it’s like to have grown up a member of the LDS faith only to now not be part of it.  There is something about being a member of the church when you’re close to headquarters that seems to change the experience, make it more a competition between the members on who can outwardly prove they are following more strictly than their neighbor. 

A Year Later...

The two most expensive shelter cats seem to have gotten comfortable at our place. 

Oh It's Been Awhile

It’s been awhile so I’ll just make a list of the highlights.

1.       A. turned 16, got her permit and so now every time we leave the house she turns to me with an energetic smile and says, “Can I drive?!”  I can’t believe the progress she’s made since that first drive around the neighborhood that didn’t hit fifteen miles an hour until the very end.

2.       A. went to her first semi-formal dance and had to sew straps on her strapless dress to match the dress code because we all know that two pieces of ribbon it the fine line between modesty and whatever the opposite of modesty is.

3.       I took the summer off from exercise and now I’m paying, big time.  Here I go starting over.

4.       I’ve completed my script outline, and have moved on to writing the first fifteen pages of the script.  The actual dialogue writing is hard!

5.       The fall colors are just amazing!  More on that later.

Adele Finally Arrives

Can we talk for a minute about how ridiculous service charges are for concert tickets? Good God, they can be close to 50% of the ticket price at times. Back in February when I was down by the venue The Depot I noticed they actually have a box office so you can buy tickets for their venue service charge free. I bought a ticket for Adele thinking not many folks probably knew who she was here in the U.S. but I hoped she could get a decent crowd, especially on Memorial Day weekend and it was only $25 free and clear! Little did I know her second record would be released and she’d blow up in America.

The day of the gig came. We were in the middle of moving house and I actually thought about not going but then thought it might be just what I needed. So I park in one of the parking decks downtown and start walking to the venue. I’m half-way there and I see tour buses parked outside and a crowd milling about. A homeless guy comes out of nowhere and says, “Are you going to that concert (pause waiting for a response) It’s cancelled!!!” He said that last bit with pure delight. I get up there and sure enough there are signs saying that they have cancelled the gig. We learned from her later that she was in the middle of her sound check and it was obvious that she couldn’t go on. She burst into tears and cancelled the rest of her North American dates. I called A and said, “The gig’s been cancelled. You want to go see Bridesmaids?” So the night was not a total bust.

The next week at work I overhear a work colleague that I know very casually sharing with someone else about the gig being cancelled and I couldn’t help myself, I had to go talk to her about it. This was like finding an oasis among all the people that look at me sideways at work when I mention going to a concert. We agreed when the dates got rescheduled, she (E) and I and our other co-worker who also had a ticket (M) would all go together.

So getting back to the service charges…they announce new dates and much to my disappointment, a different larger outdoor venue. I don’t mind outdoor venues but I think an Adele show is better suited to an indoors small club, but heck I’ve got a ticket and I didn’t pay the now $45 plus service charges at the new venue. As we were talking to others while waiting in the crowd, no one seemed to pay less than $70 for their ticket.

We got there super early and sweat in the sun until the gates opened. When they did M got in first. I got stuck at security behind the woman trying to bring a picnic into the venue. He was about three deep to the front of the stage. The venue kinda sucked. The layout was weird and the stage was really low which puts someone’s height into question and how well they can see the stage. M is 6’6”. Now if I were that tall would I go stand in the front of the stage, probably not, but Adele is his favorite and he was undoubtedly the most excited of us three to see the show. I was standing slightly behind him but had a good view of the stage. Then the three harpies came and stood next to me directly behind them. These were three probably college-age very short girls who were pounding the beers and talking about being so drunk when they went to see Britney Spears that they didn’t even remember the show. Okay, immediately my judgemental flag comes up, not because of the drinking but because they think Britney Spears is truly a good night out not understanding the irony of seeing a “concert” of someone who doesn’t even pretend to sing anymore . They are really loud, really obnoxious and start talking about how they’ll probably puke before the night is up. After knocking into me several times and me just ignoring it they start complaining about M and how he is ruining everything because he’s so tall. He needs to move and it gets much worse than that. He can’t hear any of this probably because of the huge distance between his ears and their filthy mouths. Finally right before the opener (Wanda Jackson), they start tapping him to tell him to move. I can’t take it anymore and explain to them that he paid for a ticket just like they did and if they can’t see they need to move somewhere else. This caused a huge argument and in my mind I was thinking of the headline, “Local Woman, 41 Takes out Rage of Past Bad Concertgoers on Three Short Students”. I calmed down, turned to the side and prepared to enjoy Wanda.

If you don’t know who Wanda Jackson is, she’s a contemporary of Elvis Presley, and Jack White recently produced a record for her. She is a living legend, and all I could think was wow, I’d skip Adele if I could go back and just listen to Wanda’s stories. She had a great rockabilly band backing her and she sounded fab. Well, of course the three harpies didn’t appreciate seeing an old woman on the stage and was openly mocking her as well as calling me a “tall bitch”. What’s funny about that is these girls didn’t realize they were secretly delighting me, I mean to focus in on the one physical quality I enjoy in myself, ha! I had the last laugh. But nevertheless, their constant shrill chatter was getting the best of me so I decided to relocate which was kind of a bummer because we had a great spot near Adele’s gay contingent who had great signs and provided a celebratory vibe, unlike “the three”.

So I found myself wandering a bit for a good spot. Adele took the stage with just a piano to sing “Hometown Glory” and the crowd went wild. This venue fit about four times the amount of people as the original venue and also had a several floor parking deck that was full of people looking for a free show. She gave a shout out to the “car park” a few times during the show.

When someone sings a break up song and you’re no near a break up but you feel like she just summed up the way you feel, that’s the real deal. She sounded amazing. My favorite point came towards the end of the show after the sun had gone down and she sang a cover of Bob Dylan’s To Make You Feel My Love, which is on her first record. It was difficult to find a good spot without a lot of chatter, a by-product of the outside venue I think, but during that song, I was by myself in a quiet place and I was moved to tears. When it was time for an encore she let the audience know she was supposed to go off the stage and act like she was done and then come back but she didn’t like encores so she was just going to step off for a moment, kick off her shoes, have a drink and be right back and she was. During the encore she played her most popular singles which the crowd was obviously waiting for. My pal E, having a huge grudge against the “johnny come lately” fans talked through the whole thing saying stuff like, “If she would have played this first I bet half the venue would have cleared out. These people aren’t really fans”. I get the point but again, the chatter was ruining the moment. Can’t that wait for the drive home?

All in all I’m glad I saw her but really wished it would have been back in May in that club setting.

Her Month with J Ends

The part of this trip that A has been on that gave me most worry was A flying home alone. The reason was because she would be dropped off not in Singapore, but in Phuket, Thailand because J’s family were continuing to sail for a few weeks. This meant A would have to take a one-way flight alone on an Asian budget airline to Singapore which got her to the airport at 1am and then her flight from Singapore would leave at 6am. That flight from Singapore by the way was a funny one. It stopped in Tokyo, then on to Atlanta. Then after a lengthy layover she’d have to fly five hours west home. I was worried about her getting her bags in Singapore, being in the airport alone for that length of time, etc. I contacted my work colleagues in Australia and New Zealand who fly through Singapore a lot. They assured me they’d done the same themselves and that the Singapore airport is very populated in the middle of the night and also a very nice airport. One of my colleagues even called me, asked for A’s plans and then emailed me back her cousin’s personal cell phone and work details because he was a senior engineer at the Singapore airport and said if anything came up, he’d be happy to make sure she got where she needed to be. My friends J and M in Atlanta said if she had any troubles with her flight home, they’d be happy to pick her up for the evening. I was so touched but not surprised at all by their generosity.


So it’s 3am in Singapore which means her first flight is over and A calls me over Skype (thank goodness for Skype!). She’s sniffling so I immediately get worried and ask her what’s wrong, is she having trouble getting checked in for Delta? She quickly dismisses all that and says she’s in for the next flight but that she’s tired and she misses me and doesn’t want to get on a plane for 20 hours. Unfortunately she’s inherited our inability to sleep on planes. She calmed down and started telling me about the trip. I was at work so I told her to call her dad and they talked for a good hour, and then she was ready to go.

The flight tracker on the airline websites now is awesome! We were able to keep up with her the whole way. She called from Atlanta in a much better mood having eaten some Krystal burgers. I told her she sounded much better than she did in Singapore and she said that it was because she wasn’t on the verge of an emotional breakdown, lol. She proceeded to tell me about all the fun Japanese candy she bought in the Tokyo Airport and how on the flight she was able to watch her all-time favorite movie from their movie library, Singing in the Rain.

After we picked her up last night we plugged her camera into the television and looked at her pictures, heard stories about gangs of monkeys, Universal Studios in Singapore, jetskiing, cats sitting in drink refrigerators on Thai islands, bartering in the markets, and the amazing food. Most of all we heard about all the laughs she and J had. They were emotional to part when the time came. I’m so glad they remain such close friends. She thanked us for the trip and then I was off to bed as she and H continued to talk. She’s had an amazing summer.