2010 in Review

Welcome to the third installment of my annual wrap up blog. Bet you thought I wasn’t going to do it since I SUCK at blogging lately! Well, surprise!

Overall, this year will go down as the year that the world screwed me. Life with Lauren was great, but almost every other aspect of my life seemed to fall apart. I’ve been left rethinking my career, rethinking friendships, and regretting way too much.

On the plus side, that means 2011 can ONLY get better, right? That’s how I’m viewing it.

Thank you for your friendship this year. It’s been a really hard one, and I really appreciate it. And if you were the source of any trouble, then when I have some free time in the near future, and I record a cover of a famous song by Cee-Lo Green, consider it dedicated to you!

Favorite Personal Theatrical Experience: Snoopy! the Musical
I taught at Meridian for one year before it suddenly closed the Thursday before the new school year. Out of all the shows and events I worked on there, this one was my favorite. It was with a small class, consisting of ONLY upper school kids who wanted to be there and were willing to work. We threw the whole musical together in roughly 4 weeks, with about 2 hours of rehearsal per school day, and yet the kids really pulled it off. War of the Worlds would have been my favorite, but some fellow cast members who weren’t invested took it down a notch. Same story with Dirty. I loved working with Chris again, but some members of the cast were egotistical and downright rude.

Runners-Up: The War of the Worlds, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Least Favorite Personal Theatrical Experiences: Willy Wonka
I just simply didn’t love doing this show. And I only did it for the money, which makes me a whore. I hated aspects of Fantastic Mr. Fox because of some nasty kids from my middle school class, but in the end, it turned out decent, and there were enough hard-working kids to make me proud.

Runner-Up: Fantastic Mr. Fox

Favorite Local Theatre Productions: 110 in the Shade at Hale Orem
Audra McDonald 4 feet in front of me. Brilliant supporting cast. Enough said.

Runner-Up: I really didn’t see much theatre this year, and NOTHING compared.

Favorite Movies: Inception, Toy Story 3, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
No need to elaborate. I just loved them.

Runners-Up: Paranormal Activity 2, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, Tron: Legacy

Least Favorite Movie: Skyline
I’ve never hated a movie this much. I still can’t believe it exists. And Alice was boring, poorly acted, and the 3D gave me the only 3D-induced headache I’ve ever had.

Runner-Up: Alice in Wonderland

Favorite Movie-Going Experience: None
Nothing really stood out this year. Although, when we went to see Tron: Legacy, Lauren and I were super impressed with the dad who politely shushed his child when he tried to talk. Good for you! Way to start teaching children to not be awful.

Least Favorite Movie-Going Experience: Skyline with Lauren and my sister’s family
The movie itself was bad, but the annoying people who never shut up made it even worse.

Favorite New TV Addiction: Modern Family
I can’t believe I didn’t get into this until after the first season was over. We watched the entire season in three afternoons before season 2 premiered, and the quality has stayed consistent.

Runners-Up: Raising Hope, Ma’s Roadhouse
Honorable Mention: LoneStar

Least Favorite New TV Shows: Hawaii Five-O, No Ordinary Family, Running Wilde, Undercovers
We’ve given up on almost every new show we’ve tried to watch this year. Some of them lasted a month, most lasted a couple episodes. They were just all so lame. Hawaii lasted the longest of these, Family the shortest.

Favorite SNL Sketch: 1920s Party
It was the most quotable, anyway. SNL has really gone downhill this year. I skip through more than I watch anymore.

Favorite Album: Bruno Mars’s “Doo-Wops & Hooligans”
This is the only new album I got this year that I’ve been able to listen to straight-through more than once. It’s not as offensive as a lot of music I’ve heard lately, and it’s just so darn infectious. I will never tire of hearing “Just the Way You Are.”

Least Favorite Album: Mariah Carey’s “Merry Christmas II You”
She’s ruined her voice. And now she’s ruined “Christmas Time Is Here,” which might be my favorite Christmas song. And she made a sex jam about the Baby Jesus. And her mother has AWFUL teeth.

Favorite Trip: Disneyland with Lauren
Good times. Not too busy. Did everything we wanted to do, including many firsts for me (Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, The Blue Bayou, Innoventions, etc.).

Runners-Up: St. George for theatre teacher’s conference, Disneyland with Lauren’s family

Favorite Class: Upper School Drama
After a first trimester with too many kids who wanted easy A’s, I was able to weed it down to just kids that wanted to be there. And it was GREAT. So much fun to teach.

Least Favorite Class: Middle School Drama
Too many kids, and most of them had bad attitudes. I gave multiple F’s, and no kids or parents even tried to fix them when they knew that’s what was coming. That’s messed up.

Best Concert: Paul McCartney
Dream come true. A Beatle in person. And he performed for almost three hours straight. BRILLIANT. Loved every minute. And sharing it with Lauren, Teri & Bristol was great.

Worst Concert: Stadium of Fire with Carrie Underwood
Have I ever mentioned how much I dislike Carrie Underwood? Well, it’s a whole lot. And when the fireworks show afterward sucked, it made it so it was even less worth sitting through.

Here’s to an amazing 2011!

Productivity Gets Its Trash Kicked

fI had THE MOST PRODUCTIVE weekend. Scratch that, WE had the most productive weekend. Lauren did as much as me, if not more.

Yesterday, we cleaned the crap out of our apartment. I also did a lot of reorganizing, gathering trash, etc. AND! My project of getting the pictures all hung on the wall? DONE.

After working our tails off all day, we sat down to watch Lost with our nephews.

Today, we had our first week of early church. BLECH. Have I mentioned lately how much I dislike my ward? Well, it’s not any better 4 hours earlier. It was a pretty rotten block today.

But when we came home…we cooked a great Italian dinner to break the fast, played the snot out of Lego Indiana Jones, completely overhauled my iTunes files and settings, spent a lot of time with more nephews and a niece… And Lauren finally saw the movie Clue for the first time (and she squeezed a nap in, too).

I feel like tomorrow, we should take a break from our labors (heh) and just relax. In actuality, we’ll probably just play more Lego games (I also introduced Lauren to Lego Star Wars tonight), and clean/reorganize our craft and office supply drawers.

Tuesday, I go back to recording and trying to actually do “real” work. But dang, this weekend felt good.

Sidenote: I don’t like the direction my blog is taking lately. I need to figure out how to change it.

Unemployment Update

Technically, I’m not unemployed. I’m self-employed. I’ve been doing recording projects and such since I lost my job. But I get to work on my own time and schedule. From my list last week, here are the things I’ve accomplished.

• I’ve been working on the house husband thing. So far, I’ve done everything but laundry. I’m not against laundry, and it’s not like I don’t know how to do it. I just haven’t needed to do it because Lauren has been keeping up on it. I’ve found that inviting people over gives extra motivation to clean, though. If you’ve never been over for dinner, let me know. We’ll have to get you over here as soon as the apartment needs cleaning again. Sidenote on the house husband thing: I haven’t resorted to soap operas. Yet. I have, however, watched Fight Club edited on Bravo (with commercials for modeling, housewife, cooking, and gay shows!), old horror movies, new horror movies, a documentary about John Hughes, and more. (Does anybody remember that awesomely bad movie Madhouse with Kirstie Alley and John Larroquette?) All this while cleaning/organizing!
• I lied about my first apartment project. The pictures are still sitting here. Well, they’re sitting in a new spot across the room. My first big project was to make cases for all the stacks of DVDs I have around. I’ve had DVD recorders for years, so I record a lot of movies and shows. I had to go through TONS of stacks one morning and figure out what was on each disc to create labels for them. I can only work on it for a little while here and there, so it’s only halfway done. But it’s getting cleaner by the minute in here!
• I haven’t written anything yet. This blog is the first thing. HOWEVER. I did take steps toward writing a couple plays. It could very well happen soon.
• I auditioned for a play, and I’m 100% sure that I’m going to be cast. I should find out tomorrow.
• I haven’t had time to read anything yet, but I started to read some plays. They were in a different language, so I should get bonus points for that.
• Been doing the recording thing, plan to start doing a LOT more in a week or so.
• I haven’t visited the Dancehall Divas yet. I need to remember to do it early in the morning, because if I do it when Lauren’s home in the afternoons/evenings.
• I haven’t played the piano yet. Fail there.

So, you can see, lack of a steady job has been good for me. I’ve also had lots of time to do fun things like see people. Did you know I had friends?! I had started to forget, too. Tonight, Stephanie came over and we ate yummy homemade burritos, watched World of Color, and visited. The other night, we got to see Heather & David and Wendy & Dave. We also got to learn about natural childbirth methods in the middle of the Cheesecake Factory! We got to spend time with my OTHER friend Dave. And we’ve been resting and relaxing in the evenings. We got to see Inception again. We’ve been able to keep our blu-rays from Blockbuster in a steady rotation.

I should be really worried right now, but instead…I’m savoring this opportunity to breathe.

Oh, and one other thing from my list – I haven’t started writing my Friday the 13th musical yet, but we DID watch the part of Friday the 13th Part 3-D tonight where Jason squeezes a guy’s head until his eye pops out. IN 3-D!!! It’s brilliant. Especially because you can see the wire pulling the eyeball out – IN 3-D!!!

On a Happier Note…

I should have posted that last post on my secret blog. Oops. Oh, well. Everyone needs some self-righteous, preachy person to remind them that lying is bad, right?

I realized that I haven’t really blogged about much lately. Since my blog is the only way I can keep track of life events (I can’t do journals, because writing takes too long and frustrates me that I’m wasting time), I should probably remind myself of important things that have happened since the last time I really blogged.

• I realized that I shouldn’t ever do a show just for the money. And then I made the mistake of doing ANOTHER show just for the money.
• Lauren and I got our apartment all put together. Okay, that’s a lie. There’s still random junk piles all over, but we deal with it. (It’s mostly just things that don’t have a home anywhere.)
• I’ve learned that some regular recipes can be cooked pretty well in a Crock Pot.
• I finished my first full year as a teacher, and by the end of the school year, I had a much more healthy outlook at my job.
• I did a couple of amazing shows.
• I worked on three shows at school. 1 was miserable, 1 was really fun, 1 was somewhere in between.
• I was invited to participate in a summer youth theatre camp, which I’ve loved every minute of, so far.
• I lost lots of blog traffic because I stopped posting.
• I’ve seen 3, yes, 3 movies in the theater this year: Alice in Wonderland, The A-Team, and Toy Story 3. I loved the 2 latter, hated the first. Never had such a splitting headache from 3d.
• I spent several months on a sourdough kick, and was making it at least once a week.
• I’ve had a younger family member go on a mission for the first time.
• I’ve proven that I CAN be even worse at writing a missionary than I was with Heather.
• I’ve gained a new-found love for sound editing.
• After almost a solid year of not playing Rock Band/Guitar Hero, I found my way back to them and started sharing them with my wife.
• I almost cried at the end of Lost, as well as the end of Toy Story 3.
• I learned that I can’t go into Costco just to pick up bottled water and a gift for Lauren. I end up buying Muppet Show and NewsRadio dvds.
• I learned that I’ve always looked the brilliance of Hamlet just because it’s too common.
• I’m coming close to making a decision about whether or not I want to pursue an MFA.
• I’ve learned that my writing skills are deteriorating the less I blog (not that they were good before, just worse now).
• I’ve realized that I’m too dang old to vent on blogs late at night when I have to get up early to go teach a vocal class.

Hang Them on a Telephone Wire

In this day and age, it’s still unethical to lie, right?

If you’re Judeo/Christian, you believe in the 10 commandments, which mean you don’t bear false witness, right?

If you’re Muslim and believe in the Qur’an, you believe that liars will be punished in the judgment, right?

It’s still pretty much a universally-accepted moral that it’s bad to lie, right?

THEN WHY AM I SURROUNDED BY SO MUCH DISHONESTY IN MY LIFE?!

I feel like I’m living in a soap opera, where everybody’s lives are shaped by the lies they tell and the lack of consequences for doing so.

I’m fed up with it - especially in my local religious culture, where so many people pride themselves on being so honest and morally upright. I’m not angry at my church, but I’m sick of the hypocrisy with some of its members when it comes to being honest. It seems as though telling half-truths completely pass as honesty now. It seems like several people I know believe that it’s okay to lie through their teeth as long as it covers their butts if they’ve been caught doing/saying something bad.

And I’ve had it.

I was having a conversation with someone today, and the topic of dishonesty came up. There are a couple of people I’ve been having to deal with over the last few years who have proven to be pathological liars. I started distancing myself from them, and one told a mutual acquaintance that he/she was shocked that I wasn’t such a close friend anymore because we had sat down and worked things out. This never happened, and it became the final lie to which I’ll subject myself with said person. I explained that while I can forgive someone for lying, I only have 4 cheeks to turn, and I’m not putting myself into a situation where I can be lied to again.

I’ve been lied to by so many people recently that I’m starting to just assume that most people are lying to me at any given time.

One of my favorite things that has been happening within the last year is people telling my wife one thing and me another. I don’t know what kind of messed up relationships others have with their significant other, but we happen to share everything. Do people really think that if they lie to one/both of us, we won’t compare stories? It has happened with other family members recently, too. FYI – if your family relationships are functional, then they they probably have open lines of communication. Don’t test this in a negative way.

I hate it. I feel like I’m regressing to when I was a skeptical, untrusting teenager. Throughout my 20s, I’ve been gaining a better view of the world. I’ve been embracing all kinds of people, I’ve been trying to get lots of different life experiences, I’ve been looking at the world through rose-colored glasses.

I’m done.

Here’s the deal: if you lie around me, I’m going to call you on it. Especially if it involves me or someone I care about. If you try to frame me for being dishonest, I won’t just ignore it. I’ll shout it from the rooftops.

Honesty is the best ONLY policy.