Are you going to finish that?

I thought the Double Down was an amazing idea.

I would probably try deep fried butter if given the opportunity.

I believe the happiest place on Earth is actually down the road a little from Disneyland.

I wish Taco Town was a real place.

Oh, and that picture above? That's the present my mom gives me every year on my half-birthday.

Knowing all that, it shouldn't be a big surprise that when the topic of the next Sunday School lesson is "our bodies are temples," I don't have much to say about it. But Paul did. Read all about it here.

Miscellanea

Here are some places my mind wandered as I read this week's Sunday School curriculum:

--A convert named Apollos is introduced in Acts 18:23-28. Any time I see his name, I think of the world-famous Apollo Theater, and how I always tell people to check out Amateur Night when they visit New York but none of them ever do. Seriously, if you're in NYC on a Wednesday you have to go to Amateur Night. You won't regret it.

--The seven sons of Sceva tried to cast out evil spirits but just made them mad, and as a result had to "[flee] out of that house naked and wounded" (Acts 19:16). Reminds me of the time I got pantsed while playing coed basketball at recess in 6th grade (the last time I ever wore sweats to school). It also reminds me of the time I performed at the Apollo.

--The fallout from the failed exorcism included a massive book burning (v.19). I got a little wistful when I realized that four years from now, the next time these chapters cycle through the Sunday School rotation, it may be impossible to have a big book burning. Unless you burn a pile of Nooks and Kindles.

I'm going to miss bookstores. I have fond memories of going on my lunch break from Mrs. Fields (my first job), scarfing down something from Arby's or Sbarro (a place I won't miss), then spending the rest of my time loitering at Walden Book. Bookstores are a great place to waste time when waiting to meet friends at one of the restaurants in the strip mall, and they're even better places to steal wifi. I'm going to miss walking past all of the books to get to the DVD section. I'm going to miss digging through the 75%-off page-a-day calendars in February. Most of all, though, I think I'll miss the repetitive (but always funny) jokes about a bookstore's main function being a bathroom for the homeless.

--Finally, there's the story of Eutychus, the young man bored to death literally bored to death by Paul's long speech, then brought back to life by the apostle (Acts 20:7-12). There are likely more, but right now I can only recall two times when I've embarrassingly lost consciousness.

A few years ago I made my first-ever journey to New Jersey to see the So You Think You Can Dance tour (it was the Joshua-Katee cast, the show's best season ever). I was pretty sick but went anyway. It was really warm on the train back to New York, and as we were approaching Penn Station, I stood up to let others on my row get by and crowd around the door. The next thing I knew, I was lying on the ground with my friends and a few Transit Authority employees hovering above me. Apparently I had fainted, and fallen right on top of my friend Gaby. Good times.

Sickness is a better excuse than boredom, so this other story is more shameful. As a junior in high school, I was asked to a dance by a girl I hardly knew. And she asked me by simply calling me on the phone! And we went to dinner at Wendy's! Now, I think that would be an awesome date, but that kind of behavior is pretty taboo in the Utah high school dance megadate scene.

There were three couples in our group, and I didn't know any of the other people. After some horseback riding (very fun, at least in part because I didn't have to talk to the other people much), dinner and then the dance, we went to the house of one of the girls to watch a movie. Our choices: Jaws and Children of the Corn. Seriously. About half an hour into Jaws, I and one of the other guys fell asleep. (I still haven't seen that movie all the way through.) They woke us up so they could drive us home. It was perhaps the worst date of my life (and yes, I realize that that was largely my fault).

If anyone reading is still awake at this point, feel free to share your embarrassing falling-asleep stories--especially if they take place in a bookstore.

Purple haze

This is what I'm studying for Sunday School this week, and I invite you to join me. There's some great stuff detailing the tireless missionary efforts of Paul and his colleagues.

For now, though, there's one phrase from the scripture block that stands out. Lydia, one of Paul's converts, is described as "a seller of purple." Deep down, I know this means she was either selling purple fabric of some kind, or purple dye--both high end items at that time. But it's way more fun to imagine Lydia just having piles (or vats, or racks, or whatever) of "purple" to sell in the bazaar. It could be a marketing scam along the lines of naming stars, those "Who's Who" publications, or getting people to buy vowels (Os or otherwise).

If Lydia is selling pure purple, here are some ideas of what the actual product might be, in ascending order of likeliness:

--These are given away for free, so it's unlikely anyone would be selling them

--A purple pastry maker

--A purple telephone?

--An engrossing visual and sonic experience

--There are many shades of purple, of course, from dark to light (the first video looks like an SNL sketch but is all too real; the latter is probably one of the top 5 SNL sketches of all time)

--Purple is a fruit

--And since it's a fruit, it stands to reason there would be a fake fruit version as well. I could go for some purple stuff right now

All of those items would've likely been hot sellers back in the 1st century AD, but if you're looking for straight-up purple, it doesn't get any better than my man Grimace.

I'm convinced this is it...after all, just a few verses after Lydia and her purple are mentioned, the scriptures say "the magistrates...laid many stripes upon them [and] cast them into prison." Of course, "billions served" meant something very different to Paul than it does to Ronald.

Food for thought

Today is the first Sunday of the month, which means it's "fast Sunday" for Mormons. That means we binge on the first Saturday of the month, so we won't get super hungry while we fast. It's probably not the best way to follow the principle of fasting, but it's what we do ("we" meaning me and probably at least one other person).

So yesterday, at the recommendation of my friend (and faithful blog-reader!) Billy, I got my pre-fast meal from Grove Market. I had a huge pastrami sandwich, and it was pretty good--certainly better than the other big deli sandwich I had this week.

Last Sunday, my dad gave me the leftovers of a big sandwich he had apparently been working on for several days, a "souvenir" from an extended family get-together. It reminded me of this great Simpsons moment, although he had at least been keeping it in the fridge, so the mayonnaise was not yet rancid. (The video is in Spanish; to read the original sandwich-related dialogue, go here then here then here.)



Speaking of fasting and eating "unclean" things...this week's Sunday School lesson covers the vision of the apostle Peter, where he saw a bunch of animals that were considered ceremonially unclean by the Jews (hence the video at the top of the post). God tells Peter that he has cleansed the animals, and this vision helps Peter to understand that the gospel is to be spread to the Gentiles as well as the Jews. Here's the link for this week's study guide material.

Since I'm getting this posted too late for you to read much scripture before class, instead I'll give you one more classic "dirty food" video.

What's the weirdest/grossest thing you've ever eaten?

The Doublemint Twins would've made a great tag team

[This Friday I will attend a WWE live event in West Valley, and I'll be taking a date. It will be the first time I've taken a lady to see wrestling since 1997. To mark the occasion, I'm rerunning a post from my old blog (with some updated links) that describes that memorable outing. This blog post--one of my favorites I've ever written--was first published on July 16, 2008.]

It was bad enough that I missed last Saturday's free Bon Jovi concert in Central Park. (Why couldn't you wait until August, Jon? Why?) But I was also denied an opportunity to see a nearly-as-awesome concert the night before.

Journey, Heart and Cheap Trick were playing USANA in West Valley, and my friends Rhiannon, Adrienne and I decided semi-last minute to go, hoping to get a good deal from scalpers. The concert started at 7:00, but thanks to unforeseen traffic delays, come 7:45 we were still eight blocks away from the venue entrance in a barely-moving line of cars. Figuring we wouldn't get in until at least 8:30, and since we hadn't actually bought tickets yet, we glumly gave up on our quest (could've used journey there, but that pun is too weak even for me).

Still wanting to hang out with white trash, we headed for the local drive-in. I was unaware that we still had drive-in theaters in Utah. I think the last movie I saw at a drive-in was Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

But if you really want to see a lot of mullets and guys in sleeveless shirts, there's one event that tops even a Journey concert or a movie you watch from a lawn chair in the back of a pickup truck, and that's pro wrestling.

In about six months, I will reach the 20th anniversary of the first time I watched the WWF. I'll probably run a week's worth of wrestling blog posts or something to commemorate the occasion.

Last month, the WWE (the new name since losing a lawsuit against the World Wildlife Fund in 2002) came to the E Center, and my younger brother Derek and I were there. I'm surprised I've waited this long to write about it.

I've been to live wrestling events probably at least a dozen times. This one was televised, so everyone sat down during the commercial breaks, then we'd all stand back up when the show resumed. I kept feeling like I was sticking to my seat, but whenever I examined it or my pants I couldn't find any sticky substances.

It turns out I wasn't looking far enough down the leg of my jeans. As I got out of my bro's car at the end of the night, I saw that I had in fact sat in gum. Fortunately, lots of picking and scrubbing, an application of WD-40, more scrubbing, and two trips through the washing machine later, my pants are none the worse for wear.

I've never been much of a gum-chewer myself. The few kinds of gum I've actually enjoyed eating have been attractive more for their novelty value than their taste: a wad of Big League Chew added some legitimacy to my backyard baseball games against my older brother, Bazooka Joe provided comics and fortunes along with the gum, Bubble Tape allowed me to measure how many feet of gum I could cram into my mouth at once, and the gum that came in packs of Topps stained one of my new cards and helped me know what it would taste like to eat cardboard. And yes, when I was a kid, I was a gum swallower.

Big Red is the only gum name that would also make a good name for a WWE superstar. Most of the new gum brands would make good American Gladiator names, though. Eclipse. Orbit. Stride. Ice Breaker. Five. Well, not so much that last one...but it would fit in on my new game show, "Gladiator, Gum or Boy Band?"

Now that I'm done trying out my new stand-up material, I can tell you about a much happier gum-related wrestling experience (I'll wait until the next post to put up a photo essay of last month's event).

Back in the summer of '97, my best friend Jerrett and I (we actually became best friends through our WWF fandom) decided to bring dates to a wrestling event at the Delta Center. The practice of elaborate, creative but absentee date-asking made it difficult for me to just pick up the phone, call a girl and ask her out (I actually still have problems with that). I knew several weeks in advance who I wanted to invite, but I waited, and ultimately sent Jenny Erickson a postcard from Missouri, where my family was vacationing. Amazingly, she agreed to go, and thanks to e-mail, when I'm too afraid to call a girl I've never had to use the postal service to get a date again.

We had second row floor seats, the closest I've ever been to a wrestling ring. Our dates didn't know what to think; overall, I think they had a good time, and I'm pretty sure they've never been to a wrestling match on a date, before or since, but they definitely didn't like the Godwinns, because they thought some of the hog farmers' spittle might land on us.

They actually weren't too far off: during the Mankind-Triple H match, the action spilled outside the ring. Mankind gained the advantage, and with HHH prone against the guardrail, the masked superstar punched him in the face. Hunter Hearst-Helmsley's head snapped back, and his gum flew out of his mouth. It slid underneath the front row and settled on top of the "It's Hoover Time!" poster I had made (a reference to the wrestler Vader, replacing his name with my high school nickname, which I may explain the origins of in this space someday [Editor's note: I finally did--just last week!]--and yes, I brought a poster with me on a date).

Jerrett had purchased a pair of Bret "Hitman" Hart's signature wraparound sunglasses earlier in the evening, and he quickly scooped up the gum in the plastic wrapper they came in, and he had himself an unexpected souvenir.

Which is the bigger surprise: that I never went out with Jenny again, that Jerrett did go out with Anjuli again, or that Jerrett's mom threw the gum away while he was at Ricks College? Oh, if only we knew about eBay back then.

Hoffmann of the Month: August

This year's X Games (yes, that is still a thing) just ended, so I figured it would be appropriate to name BMX legend Mat Hoffman the Hoffmann of the Month for August.

When the X Games debuted in 1995, Mat had already been a bike bigwig for almost a decade. He broke onto the scene at 15(!) and just kept catching bigger and bigger air. There's a whole bunch of killer pictures and videos of his cool tricks on his website. There's way more aggro there than anybody would know what to do with (psst...somebody tell me what aggro means).

Some of my favorite Mat Hoffman tidbits:

--He was in one of the most ridiculous movies of all time, Triple X.

--Once, when a trick went bad, he tore his spleen! That's probably the most painful thing I can conceive of.

--According to his official bio, "only Hoffman knows what the future holds." So if you want to know who September's Hoffmann of the Month will be...you'd better ask Mat.