Banned Books Week

The American Library Association (ALA) is a wonderful organization that brings attention to many important issues and causes. Take for instance Banned Books Week. I very strongly advocate this issue because of how essential it is that society maintain unobstructed access to works of literature - ALL works of literature - and that authors are given the right to publish free of censorship.

It is also vitally important for readers to read for themselves...and what I mean by that is that social groups (e.g. parents, teachers) that speak out against books have a tendency to do so without actually having read them. Their objections are based on hearsay, second- and third-hand accounts and word of mouth. While that may be enough to persuade a person to make the individual choice to avoid a book, it is quite a different matter for a person to speak out and demand official action using only rumors and gossip as evidence. That, to me, is the height of ignorance. (To be clear, it is the glorious 1st Amendment right of free speech that allows you to speak up against that which you don't approve. Just be informed before you open your mouth.)

Here's a list of many books that have been banned and/or challenged (some may surprise you):

ALA Banned and/or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century

As I was perusing this list, I was surprised to discover Orem mentioned as a place where a bookseller was arrested for selling A Clockwork Orange in 1973. I've lived in Orem my whole life and work for Orem City but have never heard the story of this incident, so I set about to do a little research.

In the online archives of the Deseret News I found only one article regarding a bookseller getting in trouble for selling an objectionable book, and it wasn't A Clockwork Orange.

Our electronic police records don't go back that far, and in order to check our archives I would need the name of the bookseller or bookshop in order to find the report. I'd like to know where the ALA got their information...I've been unable to find a source in any of the articles.

(Random note: I'm currently listening to A Clockwork Orange on cd as I commute to SLC for school. Weird.)

And here's a very long and very thoughtful blog post about freedom of speech and the CBLDF from writer extraordinnaire Neil Gaiman.

At any rate...censorship awareness. It's important and it affects you (ever checked out a book from a public library?). Happy reading.

Disneyland Half Marathon weekend

I registered for this race back in April...I can't believe it's already come and gone! I had such a good time. Steve and I went with our friends Jeff and Jennie Hill to California so that Jennie and I could run in the Disneyland Half Marathon. Needless to say, it was a FUN race. It starts off through California Adventure and then crosses the Disneyland Resort Plaza into Disneyland, where you run through Tomorrowland, Fantasyland, through Sleeping Beauty's Castle to Frontierland and all the way back to Toon Town. Then you go out onto the streets of Anaheim and at about mile 9 run through the Angels baseball stadium. The finish line is in Downtown Disney, and all along the route there were high school cheerleaders, marching bands, Disney characters, floats, music, and many supportive crowds. Here are a few pictures from the race:

I think my favorite part about the race was that my name was on the bottom of my race bib, so all throughout the course the crowd kept yelling out my name and telling me how awesome I was. It was especially thrilling during the last tenth of a mile where there was a huge crowd and everyone was rooting for me to finish strong. I've attached a link where you can view three videos from the race. In the stadium, Jennie and I come in at about 19 seconds. In the castle and finish line videos, we are right at the very beginning. As I cross the finish line, I cut to the left side of the screen to high-five Goofy.

http://www2.brightroom.com/email/75730/5607/112173251

We finished in 2:30, which was my exact time from the Utah Valley Half Marathon in June (the finish line says 2:46, but there were 13,000 people in the race so we started about 16 minutes after the official start time at 6:00).

In addition to the race, we spent three days at Disneyland/California Adventure. My favorite rides are Storybook Land, Peter Pan, Indiana Jones, and Toy Story Mania. I tried one of the famous Disney turkey legs, and it was delicious and greasy, but I still think my favorite place to eat in the park is The Golden Horseshoe. They put on a fantastic show and the chicken breast nugget basket really fills you up. Yum.

I don't know if I would do this race again (it was fun, but a little crowded with it being Labor Day weekend) but I can't wait to go back to Disneyland. Love that place.

Summer catch-up

Phew. We've had a busy summer. Here's a quick update on a vacation we took the first week of July. We attended a Carter family reunion (mom's side) in Nag's Head, North Carolina. Nag's Head is part of the Outer Banks, a chain of land off the East coast of NC. It's beautiful there. Also very hot and humid, but when your backyard is the ocean, the heat doesn't really matter. Some photos:

View from the back porch of the beach house where our entire family stayed. Loved having a pool, loved being just a few steps from the ocean. 

My dad returning from a paddle board excursion.

Some cousins and my uncle catching a little surf on the wake boards.

At the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kitty Hawk, NC. (just 10 minutes from where we were staying in Nag's Head)

The markers that indicate where the first four consecutive flights took place.

The monument.

It was really hot this particular day. I don't know if you can see, but there are beads of sweat glistening on my forehead.

At the Beaufort Maritime Museum in Beaufort, NC. Where Blackbeard's ship, Queen Anne's Revenge, ran aground. 

A beautiful burial ground in Beaufort. 

This is the Fort Macon war fort. It's actually pretty cool. And a little dangerous...as you can see, there are no handrails or guardrails around the fort. Yep, we like to live life on the edge.

Me and Dad at Nielson's Bay Cafe. Bring some Pepto Bismol if you go.

Cape Hatteras lighthouse, the tallest brick lighthouse in the United States. A few years ago, the lighthouse had to be moved because of beach erosion at its original site. Levers were slid underneath it, and then it was literally dragged half a mile inland. Amazing. 

Poor little guy didn't make it across the wet cement.

Steve on the bridge in downtown Roanoke Island. 

My best pirate grimace.

Pelicans flying across the ocean on our last morning in Nag's Head.

Steve at the apothecary's shop in Colonial Williamsburg, VA.

Me standing outside the Governor's mansion in Colonial Williamsburg.

Here Steve is looking studious; he's standing in the room where Thomas Jefferson studied law.

Steve and I also took a surfing lesson, which I don't have pictures of because we were both, well...surfing. It was a great trip. Besides seeing all these great places, Steve and I enjoyed spending time with my family that I only get to see every couple of years. Can't wait to see where we'll go for the next Carter Reunion in 2013.

Utah Valley Half Marathon

I did my first ever half marathon last September, and after my body had time to recuperate I was surprised to find myself itching to do another. So I did. The Utah Valley Half Marathon was on Saturday, June 11th, and I finished in 2:30:10. I'm a bit of a slowpoke, but I beat my previous time by about five and a half minutes and I ran nearly the whole way. There was a stretch on mile 12 where I didn't think I was going to make it, but I walked for a few seconds and then picked it up again to run through to the end. I'm looking forward to doing the Disneyland Half Marathon in September, and hopefully improving my time a little bit. I've set a lofty goal to complete a full marathon before I turn 30 (two years from tomorrow!) but I'd like to really feel confident in the half before I attempt 26.2.

Some pictures from race day:

I'm not in this one, but this was basically my view as I ran down the canyon.

This is me running through the finishing chute. I look like Death. The girl in front of me is annoyingly chipper.

And...crossing the finish line!

April - National Poetry Month

A poem:
Spring is like a perhaps hand (which comes carefully out of Nowhere)arranging a window,into which people look(while people stare arranging and changing placing carefully there a strange thing and a known thing here)and changing everything carefully

From "Spring is like a perhaps hand" by E. E. Cummings



Now if it would only stop snowing.

Sundance.3.4.5.6.7.8.9.10

It was a great weekend at Sundance. Here's a list of what we saw: Homework, The Convincer, Another Earth, The Troll Hunter, Salvation Boulevard, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, Cedar Rapids, and The Son of No One.

HIGHLIGHTS:

Nearly all of the films (exceptions being The Troll Hunter and The Son of No One) had a representative from the movie conduct a Q&A afterwards. As annoying as it can be to listen to audience members struggle through a painfully awkard question (real example: "Is it harder to get good actors for a comedic movie or for a drama?") each director/producer/editor handling the session took it all in stride, providing thoughtful answers and insight into the filmmaking process.


Mike Cahill

I especially enjoyed listening to Mike Cahill, director of Another Earth. I liked the movie anyway and Cahill's happy-go-lucky persona completely won me over. He was so friendly and completely invested in the audience's response to the movie; he greeted each person who asked a question with a genuine "Hey, how are you?" and gave the impression that there was no other place he would rather be than at that theater discussing his project. Very cool.


Morgan Spurlock, director

The representative from Morgan Spurlock's documentary The Greatest Movie Ever Sold actually turned out to be the editor, which was of special interest to Steve, of course. The editor had the daunting task of whittling over 400 hours of footage down to 90 minutes, a feat he accomplished admirably. This doc was definitely the most consistently entertaining of the movies we saw; I laughed out loud several times and was captivated from start to finish by Morgan's considerable moxy (he interviews everyone from Donald Trump to Noam Chomsky (!) to Ralph Nader to Brett Ratner) and general sense of humor. Morgan manages to avoid melodramatic heavy-handedness (e.g. "Advertising is a mind-numbing plague on society that must be eliminated!") while still poking fun at himself and maintaining a smart, insightful narrative flow. Mindful-playful, indeed.

Lastly, and perhaps most pathetically, was the Incident of the Drunk Girl. During the screening for The Son of No One, a girl (age unknown) and her (presumably) boyfriend walk in and sit in the row across the aisle from me and Steve. I can hear her mumbling (and occasionally shouting) incoherent things at the movie, and it gets to the point where her boyfriend decides things are getting a little out of hand and tries to escort her to the nearest exit. Which would be fine, of course, if Drunk Girl could walk. After a few painful attempts to get out of her chair she resorts to stumbling on all fours across the floor, face-planting it a couple times in the process. Two security guards, three ushers, and one wheelchair later, she is finally escorted from the auditorium, effectively ending the most interesting part of the movie. Ironically, this was the one screening where Steve and I decided to sit near the front instead of in the balcony, where we would have missed the whole episode. Life is full of tender mercies.

Sundance.2

I take back what I said yesterday. Sometimes you do see famous people when you go to public screenings of Sundance movies. Last night, for instance, this man was in the audience:

His name is Treat Williams and he, in his younger days, looked something like this:

I'm assuming this look is what made him famous, because heaven knows I couldn't recall anything he'd been in off the top of my head. (Turns out he most recently appeared as James Franco's character's dad in 127 Hours. My cousin plays the woman who, with her family, finds Franco after he makes it out of the canyon, which puts me at two degrees from Treat Williams. Woo!)

THE MOVIE

Last night marked another first for me, in that it was the first Sundance screening I've been to where we actually got to hear from a filmmaker of the movie. The director/writer of The Ledge, Matthew Chapman, introduced the movie and then conducted a Q&A afterward. Hearing from the creative mind behind the film always humanizes the whole experience and made me much more forgiving towards what was an otherwise mediocre picture.

Matthew Chapman

Within the first ten minutes of the movie we see a man, later identified as Gavin (Charlie Hunnam), ascending to the roof of a very tall, very imposing building and perching himself on a ledge. Police Detective "Just Call Me Hollis" (Terrence Howard), who has just learned some disheartening personal news, is tasked with talking Gavin to safety. Hilarity ensues.

I kid, of course. The movie is appropriately somber and also pervasively melodramatic, with a weirdly uneven creepy vibe that was a little off-putting for me. We learn through a sort of flashback-narrative (kudos to Chapman for accomplishing this without any sappy voiceovers) that Gavin, who is single and heterosexual but lives with a gay roommate (Christopher Gorham), has fallen for neighbor Shaina (Liv Tyler), who, happily, is also heterosexual but married to handsome Joe (Patrick Wilson), a Christian fundamentalist nutcase.

The script focuses largely on philosophical issues concerning religious idealogy; at one point, Gavin and Joe sit across a table from each other and debate the existence of God, the necessity of baptism, and the nature of heaven and hell. Such conversations can and should be enlightening and thought-provoking, but Joe is so born-again crazy that it's hard to take his character seriously, while Gavin is really only there to nail Shaina.

And here's where things get a little strange. Joe may be a religious fanatic but he turns out to be pretty astute when it comes to recognizing that his wife just might be falling for another, less intimidating, man. Without being too specific, it's possible that Joe's persistent fundamentalism combined with the jealousy he feels at losing Shaina just maybe, maaaaybe, might have something to do with Gavin being out on that ledge. The director tries, in the final twenty minutes or so, to turn the whole thing into a thrilling nailbiter, complete with a jumping-off-the-ledge countdown, a hostage situation, and a frantic man hunt. Everything falls kind of flat, though, due in part at least to Liv Tyler's vacantly monotone performance (although in fairness the stilted script did her no favors) and an almost complete lack of buildup to the final will-he-or-won't-he moment.

Grade: C

Q&A

Happily, however, we stuck around after the credits and got to hear from a very genteel Matthew Chapman. He hinted at (but didn't dwell on) his budget constraints in making the movie, which affected everything from the shooting location to his camera work to the amount of takes they were able to complete for a scene. A limited budget is no excuse for poor writing, but it does affect the overall effect of the film and could have something to do with its uneven tone. Chapman also discussed how it's best to write what you're interested in, and for him that apparently includes religion and philosophy. His script isn't exactly mindbending, but it's clear that he made a great deal of effort to include ideas that are resonant to him on a personal level. I really enjoyed hearing from him, despite the obsequious and rambling questions asked by the audience members, and felt much more generous towards the movie as a result. Which, I guess, is one of the purposes of Sundance.

Sundance.1

My Idiot Brother

I've got a busy week ahead and I can't guarantee daily updates, but here goes Day 1 at Sundance...

Last night we saw 'My Idiot Brother' at Peery's Egyptian Theater in Ogden. (I know, right? Ogden!) The theater itself is pretty cool...it's much bigger and cleaner and maybe newer (?) than the one in Park City, and we were treated to 45 minutes of a live prelude organ performance. There was this little old man sitting down at an organ at the base of the stage, just playing showtunes and love songs until the movie started.

Otherwise...seeing a public screening of a Sundance movie is pretty much like seeing a movie anywhere else. There are no famous people (did I mention we were in Ogden?) and the woman behind you still thinks it's okay to spend 20 minutes unwrapping her granola bar and another 20 trying to figure out where to dispose of the wrapper once she's eaten what was inside it. Pretty much the only perk to these screenings is that you get bragging rights for when the movie is widely released six months or a year from now and you can oh-so-casually mention how you saw it "at Sundance."

THE MOVIE

'My Idiot Brother' stars Paul Rudd as Ned, an easygoing hipster with a heart of gold who finds himself a little down on his luck and who must rely on his three sisters (Emily Mortimer, Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel) as he tries to get back on his feet. It becomes quickly apparent that Ned's sisters have significant issues of their own -a cheating husband, a struggling career, and a commitment phobia, respectively- and that, conveniently, all of them are made to confront and deal with their problems over the course of the movie. Strangely, by the end of the film, it doesn't really feel like any of them have grown or changed in any way (as much as the movie would like me to believe otherwise, seeing as how Ned *SPOILER ALERT* got a haircut and all). This could be because none of the characters actually feel like real people or that all of the action in the movie is contrived to specifically make Ned's life as complicated as possible without actually motivating him or causing him to learn anything. I like a twinkle-eyed stoner dude as much as the next fat person, but let's be honest, unfortunate circumstances and funny scenarios do not a character arc make.

The script provides a few good-natured laughs, though not enough to really make up for its overall lack of focus. Every character takes his or her turn at being the butt of the joke; there was no one to really embrace as the moral center or the comedic foil or even the blatantly obnoxious antagonist. It was neither really funny nor totally serious, and while it's enjoyable enough to watch an eternally sunny hippie sail through potential conflicts with lots of smiles and effortless charm, I didn't care enough about him or his family to be amused at their mistakes or heartbroken by their misfortunes.

C+ (not rated yet, but in its current state will be an R when it is released later this year)