Today on the way in to work I had a flashback. The year December 1994. I was at Ricks College and Cathi was working full time at Pizza Hut in Rexberg. I was the head lifeguard at the Hart Building Pool. We were only married for a few months and still in the newlywed stage of life.
Sometimes I'd call and she would answer at pizza hut and the conversation would sometimes go like this:
Cathi: "Pizza Hut, can I take your order?" Gords (with a deeper voice trying to sound like somebody else): "Yeah, I'd like two mediums with Sausage, Onions, Olives, Pepperoni and uh..... uh... YOU! on my pizza" Cathi: "Oh my! Sir? Did I hear you right? You want ME? On your pizza?" Gords (Trying not to laugh): "Uh Yea, can that be arranged?" Cathi: "I don't think so sir, only my husband is able to have me on his pizza." Gords: "Well, this is him. Hey baby! How about it?" Cathi: "Well then, I'll be right over!"
And the goofy conversation would end. Many years later, every once in a while I'll tell Cathi "I'd like you on my pizza" and that gets a few laughs. Cathi was a great waitress. She is so hard working and great with people. I still would like her on my pizza. I'm still in amazement that I scored such a sweet lady. Here is a link to me doing my favorite thing in the whole world!
Yesterday Cathi told me it would cost $65 to replace Austin's lost mouthpiece to his rented trombone. I was so mad. We already looked all over for it, but couldn't find it. We finished FHE and asked Lucy to say the closing prayer and especially ask for help finding the mouthpiece. After the prayer Jacob lifted up the cushions on the sofa and looked deep in the cracks and said, "Here it is!". It was literally about 8 seconds and it was found after the prayer.
It was a big testimony builder to me and we talked about how Heavenly Father answers prayers if we ask with faith and really do our part. What a miracle.
We then took all the kids out for a small ice cream cone as a reward for looking which we promised they'd get if we found it.
Yesterday evening I attended a fireside with Austin. The speaker was Brother Ralph Degn. He started by introducing a song which was written by Frederic Chopin which he said was inspiring to the Polish folks at the time the Nazis were invading and motivated them to fight back.
Brother Degn said that music definitely has physical characteristics (tempo, melody, harmony, rhythm, etc) as well as spiritual characteristics. I totally agree with that. Music can inspire us to do good, and bad. That I too agree with. Then he gave a story of once when some whales up in the arctic were doomed when the surface was freezing over with the whales still underneath. He said that many ice breaking ships were sent up to create a path of safety for the whales to move south. Problem was they weren't able to lure the whales. The ships were confusing their communication system with their noise so they thought of playing music under the water to lure the whales.
Brother Degn said that Heavy Metal caused the whales to fight each other. Interesting. I'm not surprised. Metal music inspires me, not to fight others but while working out to push past the pain.
My argument is that a particular music genre is not necessarily bad, or even a particular song. Humans are not whales. We have a higher intelligence (well at least some of us). In support of Brother Degn's argument, the teens who massacred their fellow students at Columbine were Rammstein fans and were influenced by their music. (Reference). Granted Rammstein does have a few songs definitely don't inspire me. But in general there are times and seasons. I wouldn't listen to hymns to push through the pain in a good workout. I wouldn't listen to Three Days Grace on the way to the temple.
My wife Cathi would not appreciate 70% of my music collection. I strongly disagree that my music is bad in the sense that it inspires me to do bad things, have bad thoughts, or feel badly. If there is a song in my collection that uses profanity, has sexual connotations, is demeaning of deity I will delete it. I believe lyrics in music are important and if they're obviously intended to communicate bad things I will delete them. But metal music in itself isn't bad in my opinion. It is aggressive, but so was Brother Degn's polish song he played. And he played it in the chapel.
In conclusion, good judgement should be used in which music to listen to and just like Brother Degn said, "If it inspires bad thoughts or actions, get rid of it". I would also have to disagree with Jack Black, that "[Metal] comes from hell". That too is a generalization. I appreciate the metal that doesn't come from hell and simply brings out the aggressive dude in me, keeps me young and fit. I've never listened to music that has inspired me to do bad things. Even though I've found the lyrics ins some songs to have very poor taste and deleted it.
I am passionate about music. I love it. I make a point to share my love every day in my Song Of The Day blog.
PS - I heard the Mick Jagger story before. All I have to say about that, is that Mick Jagger is a total moron. I don't read much more into it than that. He's a simple minded man with a big head.
Last week I was listening to NPR and heard an interview regarding stem cells and the ability to attack tumors using stem cells and a reprogrammed herpes virus. This immediately caught my attention and made me wonder. I heard something like that before....The first couple minutes of "I Am Legend".
I'm all in favor of science and new discoveries, but I sure hope appropriate steps are taken to test things out without causing a major catastrophe such as in my favorite horror movie. Here are some links to related articles: Link 1 Link 2 I'm no doctor, and don't understand the details, but the similarities kind of freak me out. "If anybody is out there..." (who is a geneticist, virologist, stem cell researcher) would you please calm my nerves a little regarding the use of virus' to deliver DNA to stem cells and how the introduction of these stem cells in humans affect or potentially could affect the person taking these stem cells, in layman's terms please?
This year Austin, Jacob and myself went up to Evanston with some of my coworkers from Tomax: David To and Cameron Meyer.
Austin and I were doubles partners as usual. However this year we didn't play so well together. We did beat a couple teams, but didn't get very far.
In singles, Austin was in the A and Jr. Divisions. Jacob was in the B and Jr. Divisions. I was in the Open. I had to beat Bruce Majors (who is over 100 rating points higher than me) to get into the open. I won 3 games and lost zero. I was in the zone. The games were close and I was playing well and had several net and edge shots.
There were over 45 people at the tournament so the divisions were double elimination. I played Meg Tsedenbal (who came back with us from Vegas when we were in Nationals). All the games were pretty close and I beat her once, but she got three games on me and gave me my first loss. I then played Bruce again, who I beat earlier in the day. But the outcome was not the same. He easily handed me my second loss and I was out of the tournament. Playing in Open usually means I need to really step it up. I'm playing the best players in the state and the need to focus mentally is key.
Austin did pretty well in the A's, but didn't end up placing in that division. In the Jr. Division he lost to Slobodan's son Daniel, which was a surprise. Daniel usually goes with his Dad to the club but doesn't play. This was the first time I've seen Daniel play and he did quite well. Austin was getting frustrated and ended up beating himself in poor shot selection. Austin took a while to recover from that loss. He then refocused, ended up going undefeated after that, beating Daniel again, as well as Skyler and Jason in two matches. He took first place in the Jr. Division. We didn't get out of Evanston until 8pm. Sure made for a long day. We all had fun and will definitely do it again.
