FSS Sin Numero

Today at the Big Digital we're breaking out the old FSS tag. This last weekend was fairly eventful. Thursday night I already discussed (see previous post) and the excitement that was Utah's comeback victory over TCU. Friday night I went to the Jazz game with a large group (~38) from my ward. I had a good time driving to and from the game with some girls from my ward. Apparently the Oklahoma City Thunder were not a hot ticket. We got ours for $7 each and they weren't even the very back row or even in the corner. We were behind the basket, but up very high. The Jazz won without really being tested and it was Jerry Sloan's 1000th victory as head coach of the Jazz.

After the game some of us ended up at one of the guys' house and watched "The Man Who Knew Too Little". I fought off falling asleep until just minutes before the end of the movie.

Saturday I slept in a bit, and then worked on a few things (paying bills, preparing a Priesthood lesson). The evening wasn't as eventful as Friday, but I did end up stopping by a friend's birthday party for the pizza and cake portion, skipping the bowling portion that concluded the festivities, and opting instead to meet up with some other friends and check out an indoor soccer game, which was not all that exciting, but did conclude with an exciting last second penalty kick finish.

Sunday I taught EQ, had a home teaching visit, went to a dinner group, and finally to ward prayer, after which I headed home because I wasn't feeling so hot, and also had an early dentist appointment this morning -- got a post put into the root canal to support the permanent filling that went on top of it. So far I'm cautiously optimistic about my dental future.

Watch This Wednesday #47: Back from Hiatus

I know I've been blogging quite a bit less lately, but maybe now that I've successfully defended my dissertation I might be able to get back into a more regular cycle of posting. Anyway, the big news in online video this week is MTV making a huge archive of music videos available (20,000+) at www.mtvmusic.com. Hard to just choose one of those videos for today, but for now I'll give you this classic video from Oasis, which will always be one of my favorite songs, and maybe the only Oasis song that I really even like: Wonderwall.

Oasis |MTV Music

Watch This Wednesday #46: Band Montage!

This week's video is all the rage in Internet land, so you may have already seen it. Its "Take On Me" by Ah-ha, but with words describing what's going on in the video. There is a tad of mild cursing (very minor tad), so if you're bothered by that, feel free to skip it.

Watch This Wednesday #45: Bears, Beets, Battlestar Galactica

The Office is back for Season 5, starting tomorrow. I'm interested to see how this season shakes out. So far I've thought that Season 2 has been the best, and since then the episodes have suffered from plots that were a little too ridiculous (Michael driving his car into the lake on the advice of the navigation system) or were too much about relationship drama.

I've always felt like the strongest aspect of the show is Jim's interplay with Dwight. When Jim moved to the Hartford branch, this aspect suffered to the point that they started having Jim interact with Dwight over the phone or via fax. From Dwight. From the future. Anyway, someone put together a nice compilation of Jim and Dwight interactions that I'm sharing today. Far from a complete compendium, its definitely a good start, featuring the Conflict Resolution scene with a large list of pranks, and culminating with Jim dressing as Dwight.

Watch This Wednesday #44: I got a hot date tonight. A date. Dinner with friends...

Some more Simpsons goodness courtesy of Hulu:



Perhaps the most humorous use of a lie detector ever. And yes, I've seen Meet the Parents. Not even close.

FSS: Fun & Stress Edition

This past weekend was pretty full. Friday night started out slow, but did include a viewing of Hellboy and a moment where someone yelled "Psst" at me, but I thought it was the surround sound, which then resulted in that someone climbing in through the window.

Saturday I went boating with my ward up at Jordanelle and had fun riding a tube. Then I came back to Salt Lake and went to the Utah-UNLV football game. It was kind of stressful for a half, and then Utah came out in the 2nd half and put things out of reach early.

Also on Saturday, I found out that my newest roommate is going to be moving out at the end of the month, leading to some stressing about what's going to happen next, given that at one point our apartment manager had said that if that happened, we'd either have to move out or just pay the full rent with less than a full house. I talked with her about things today and she was much more positive about our chances of being allowed to find someone to move in to replace him. Guess we'll see what the big boss has to say when he gets back on Thursday.

Sunday was a typical full slate of meetings, but also I got a new 2nd counselor to replace the one who is getting married this coming Saturday. I'm excited about the new guy, and will definitely miss the old one.

Watch This Wednesday #42: Never ever jam today

Today's video clip is pretty random. Its from a live-action tv version of Alice in Wonderland that I remember watching when I was a kid. For some reason this song about jam has been stuck in my head all those years.

Watch This Wednesday #41: I Got Soul, but I'm not a Soldier

Been watching a fair amount of the Olympics, and happen to love this Nike commercial featuring my all-time favorite Killers song (All These Things That I've Done) thats been playing occasionally.

Watch This Wednesday #40: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Brainchild of Joss Whedon, "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" is a web-only three-act musical production thats currently available on Hulu.com. It features Neil Patrick Harris as "Dr. Horrible" who is trying to earn his way into the Evil League of Evil, led by super-villain "Bad Horse", and Nathan Fillion (from "Firefox") as "Captain Hammer", a self-centered hero. Obviously its got some comedic elements.

The show features some great counterpoint songs, and I've embedded the beginning of act two that has one of these songs. The girl singing is "Penny", a girl that Dr. Horrible has a crush on, that Captain Hammer has just started dating and helping with a project to help the homeless.

Also, if you mouse of the bottom of the video panel you'll see a pop-up menu that include a button marked "CC". Go there and you can turn on closed captioning, allowing you to "Sing-Along".



The full feature is available on Hulu, and I recommend it with the caveat that there are a few lines of PG-13 rated dialogue.

Watch This Wednesday #39: I'm seeing double here! Four Krusties!

I realize that I've kind of been on a Simpsons/Seinfeld kick lately, but there are just so many great moments. This week's clip comes as Homer and Krusty have to perform a two-man tiny bicycle loop in order to appease the mob.

FSS 12: Late again!

This makes two weeks in a row that I've been late in getting this out. Maybe its the fact that all day long I stare at my computer and try to figure out what to write in my last paper, and it makes me not want to write recreationally so much.

Anyway, I'll keep this brief, but suffice it to say that this last week I did plenty of bowling. Two games on Friday, and three on Saturday. My lowest score was a 92, and my high was 146. The highlight of Friday was filming myself bowling a strike (while holding the camera in my other hand). Kind of like the Blair Witch of bowling. Its on Facebook, but since it wasn't on my camera I haven't been able to get it anywhere bloggable.

Also Friday night, I had a great time playing a game called "Buzz Word" with some friends. I think the fun of it just comes from the group and the different personalities involved. Lets just say some people were crying because they were laughing so hard.

Aside from bowling on Saturday, I didn't do all that much, aside from trying to find some sandals to replace the ones I have now, one of which has a have a hole in the bottom. I was, sadly, unsuccessful in my quest. Instead I bought a pair of basketball shorts, and some new swim trunks. Maybe I'll just have to make it through the end of the summer with my old sandals.

FSS 11: A Day Late and a Dollar Short

Sorry I didn't get around to this yesterday, what with being all manly and all.

This last weekend was a pretty fun one. Friday night I met up with some friends in anticipation of our 11:00 showing of The Dark Knight. Prior to heading to the theater, we got take out from Italian Village, and then played Mario Kart on the Wii. Good times.

The movie itself definitely lived up to the "Dark" in the title, and was a very impressive film. Heath Ledger was great as the Joker, as were pretty much all of the actors in the main roles. Definitely not for kids, but otherwise worth checking out.

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Saturday, having been out pretty late watching the movie the night before, I managed to sleep in until 11:00. After that I was fairly lazy, but did manage to clean up my room a bit, wash some dishes, and sew a button on a pair of shorts that I'd been meaning to get around to for a couple weeks.

Saturday night I headed to a birthday party for a good friend who I don't see quite so much these days. I had a good time catching up with some people I hadn't seen in a while, and also enjoyed rocking out with some good old Rock Band.

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Sunday morning, I had to get up early for a 7:30 training meeting, and that happened to be the moment that my battery decided it was dead (leading to yesterday's post). Luckily, I was able to get a hold of another guy who was going and he was kind enough to stop by and pick me up. The rest of the day consisted of me bumming rides to whatever was going on (church, home teaching, ward prayer, movie night).

Watch This Wednesday #37: Steamed Hams

Following on the heels of last week's Simpson's clip, today I bring you a great exchange between Principal Skinner and Superintendent Chalmers. Inspired by a conversation I had today with the Chip Chief.

FSS 10: Rolling on a River

Happy Monday to all you loyal FSS readers who've been patiently refreshing to see what this last weekend brought me.

Friday night we had a stake-wide luau activity. For the past month or so they've been sending our ward activities representatives to hype it up with the following three items: 1) catered food, 2) hula lessons, and 3) fire dancers. 1) The catered food consisted of a single half-cup scoop of rice, a half-cup scoop of pork, and a half-cup scoop of canned pineapple chunks, which I declined. 2) The Hula lessons were I think dispensed to a high counselor and his wife. 3) Thankfully the fire dancing actually happened was pretty cool. Anyway, mostly at those activities I just end up shooting the breeze with people I know who are now in other wards. I did find a little time for some grass volleyball as well.

After the luau, I stopped by a park where some friends were playing ultimate frisbee, and watched for ten minutes or so until they were finished. The plan from there was to watch a movie at the apartment of some of the girls who were there, and eventually I made it there (after stopping at a Wendy's to get some food to supplement the luau), but most of the those who were supposedly coming ended up trying to help a girl get into her truck where she'd unfortunately locked her keys.

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Saturday I slept in a bit and then got up and got ready to head down to Provo Canyon to go tubing on the Provo river. Its become pretty much an annual tradition, and for $10, its always been a fun couple of hours in a cold river on a hot day. This time was no different, and with Kirsten's help we managed to round up a group of about 15 people, 10 who met in Salt Lake to car pool down. I managed to avoid falling in at all, and only got real wet at the very end when I had to disembark in water over my waist to make it to the exit point.

After getting out of the river, we stopped for late lunch at an In-n-Out ripoff in American Fork called Chadders. Its a decent imitation, but not sure I care enough to make a specific trip for that purpose.

I made it home in time to get a brief nap in before my evening events started. At seven, I was meeting up with a few friends to go to a pool party out in Draper. It was at the house of a guy I know from a weekly volleyball night (which may not be on hiatus). It was in a gated community out in Draper at what looked to be a potentially fancy home. And my unofficial policy on such things is "When rich people invite me to their house for a party, I should go check it out, because I might see something I would never see otherwise." This house was no exception. Nice pool out back along with a lot of grass and a basketball court. Also, it was right down off the north end of point of the mountain, so there was a great view of a large number of paragliders and hanggliders cruising around above us while we swam.

Eventually, after I'd had my fill of swimming and feeling like Father Time, we made our exit and stopped by the house of another friend to finish out the night. We'd talked about watching a movie, but ended up playing a game called "Buzz Word" that I enjoyed, perhaps because I was really good at it. The host told me he wasn't going to invite me next time they played, unless I promised to be on his team.

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Sunday morning, we had our monthly ward "Fellowshipping" breakfast, which is always a welcome way for me to eat breakfast on a Sunday. Sometimes I have to get creative depending on whats available in my cupboard. After that I had a presidency meeting, and we made it through church without any major incidents. I napped in the early evening and then made it to ward prayer which was well attended and then went to movie night after that, watching the first half of Newsies and the second half of The Incredibles.

Watch This Wednesday #36: Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius!

I'm not back from DC yet, but I recently figured out how to write posts in advance and schedule them to publish at a later date, so I set this up before I left.

More from Hulu.com. Its Troy McClure's award-winning performance as the human in "Stop the Planet of the Apes, I Want to Get Off!" Its the role he was born to play, baby!

Watch This Wednesday #35: You'll block it every time

In honor of the 4th of July, I bring you Rex Kwan Do's star-spangled pants:


"You think anybody wants a roundhouse kick to the face while I'm wearing these bad boys?"

FSS 8: Stuff White People Really Like

This last weekend felt like a tribute to the red states. Which I feel good about, being that I am from one of those red states, myself. :)

Saturday morning we had an Elders Quorum activity in the which we drove out to the desert and shot lots of guns at stuff, so my Friday night was taken up mainly in making sure that everything was ready to go for Saturday morning. After driving about an hour west of Salt Lake, we pulled off the highway drove a short distance out into the hills to do some shooting. We started off with some trap shooting, shooting shotguns at clay pigeons.

After exhausting our supply of pigeons, we moved down to a different spot and tried out shooting rifles, handguns, and assault rifles. The assortment of weaponry on display was kind of amazing. Not being a gun owner myself, they really aren't on my radar. So I was a bit taken aback to see guys that I know pulling out handguns, AK-47s, and AR-15s. It was certainly an interesting experience to shoot all the different types of guns, although it might have been slightly more entertaining had we done a better job with targets. We brought some cheap soda cans to shoot at, but those were gone pretty quick and then it was kind of difficult to pick things to shoot at.

















After the shooting activity, I headed back to Salt Lake, making a brief stop by the Tripp ancestral mansion to say hello. In addition to including several hours of shooting, the day also featured a cheap Saturday night rodeo experience. The Riverton rodeo was only $6, so I headed out there with some friends. I was semi-surprised to find that Jerry Hurst, who taught at my high school was the rodeo clown for the evening. I remember being in Elementary School and him coming and doing some magic, so I knew that he was a rodeo clown, but I'd never actually seen him in action, since I never went to a rodeo until after leaving Grantsville behind.

Anyhow the rodeo was fun, albeit the talent level was maybe a tad low and at times the announcer didn't do a very good job of keeping on top of the action. Sometimes riders would come out of the shoots on horses while he was still talking about something else. Also there was no audible timer for the 8 second rides, at least not one that the audience could hear. But given the cost of admission it was tolerable.

With a full Saturday, Friday night and Sunday seemed fairly nondescript. Or maybe I just don't feel like typing anything more today. :)

Watch This Wednesday #34: 30 Rock RPG

Sit back and enjoy as Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) does impersonations of Tracy Jordan's (Tracy Morgan) family, in attempt to help him work through some dog-fighting urges. If you haven't seen 30 Rock, I definitely recommend it. I think the entire 2nd season is still available on Hulu.com.

FSS 7: Bumper Cars

This past weekend started a tad bit early, with me taking off a little bit early on Friday to meet up with a girl who invited me to come to Lagoon with her (and two other guys) for her work Lagoon day. I'm not a huge Lagoon fan, but it was free and with fun people, so it was hard to pass up. Its been a couple summers since I last visited Lagoon, so there were a couple new rides for me to try out -- The Bat (such a waste of potential) and Wicked (Very fun, but super short). Given that I didn't have to pay anything to get in, I really didn't feel any pressure to ride a million rides and I felt like I had a pretty good time. One sad moment: finding out the old light-gun shooting gallery is gone. That was one of my favorite memories.

Saturday, I got up early to go do some early morning baptisms at the Salt Lake temple, and after our ward outing was over, I went back to bed until the afternoon. After running a few errands, I got down to the big business of the evening -- a demolition derby in Bluffdale. I've been to several derbies over the last couple years, usually in Tooele, but I figured I'd invite some friends to come to this one that was located within the valley. Turns out there was a lot of unmet demand for demolition derbies among my friends. We ended up with over 20 people who went with us. The derby itself was probably the least well-run of the ones I've been to, but still entertaining. The derby area was very small and lots of cars were getting stuck in the loose dirt. Despite that, we still had lots of fun, and there were even fireworks afterward. We finished off the night with some late night grub from the Cheesecake Factory. I can only stand to go there late at night when there aren't a million people waiting around for a table.















Sunday was its usual business with meetings in the morning and then church. After church I made a jaunt out to my parents' house to celebrate a belated Fathers Day and an early birthday for my dad as well. It was a short stay, but still nice to catch up and get some home-cooked dinner. I finished the night off with ward prayer and then a movie (X3: How is this movie so awful?) followed by a nice long chat with E. Harris.

More photos from the demolition derby here.

Watch This Wednesday #33: How Not to Make Bread

Words cannot describe. Enjoy.