I'd like to think I'm Neo

Sometimes I get a little too confident in my ability to do tricks, and it usually doesn't end well. These episodes are often somehow associated with the Matrix and involve me thinking I can do tricks like this guy:

At BYU, where I first saw Neo's moves, I attempted to do this in my apartment, much to the amusement (and encouragement) of my roommates:

Sorry, I could only find a video game picture of Neo wall running. I don't think I injured myself during this incident, but I'm pretty sure I left a mark on the wall.

Another incident occurred this week, and I'll just chalk it up to feeling overly confident with my newly found athlete status. I got together this week with a group of friends to have a water fight to help cool off from Heat Wave 2009. We had a slip 'n slide and water guns so I, of course, had to try this move:

Don't try that move unless you are 5 and only weigh 60 pounds. It's not recommended if you are 31 and weigh 185 pounds. Your neck and back will hurt for a few days.

I'm an athlete

I was called an athlete for the very first time today. Ask anyone who had a gym class with me in middle school or high school and they will tell you I am not an athlete. The best day of my angst ridden middle school life was when I broke my arm on the soccer field during gym.

The weather was just starting to turn and that meant gym class moved inside and we'd be playing basketball. Basketball was my least favorite because it was the hardest for me to fake. I could run around and kick a soccer ball or pretend to play football, but basketball involved handling a ball while moving my feet at the same time. Most of gym class was spent trying to make sure I was covered by a player of the opposing team so no one would pass the ball to me. I probably actually expended more energy pretending to play basketball than those who actually DID play.

Anyway, back to the happiest day of my life. My first day back in class after breaking my arm we started playing basketball. I tried, and about 5 minutes into the game the ball came at my face. Of course. I tried to block it from hitting my face with my broken arm that was now in a cast and quickly learned that having my whole arm in a cast severely limited it's mobility. Long story short, the ball hit me in the face. Please don't ask me why I didn't just use my other arm.

My gym teacher, who was probably watching from his office, took pity on me. He brought out a stop watch and a whistle and asked if I could sit on the bench, since I had a broken arm, and be the time keeper. THAT was the best day of my life. Up to that point, anyway.

Today we had voluntary health assessments at work. I've been working hard at getting in better shape the last year or two, so I was curious to see what my body fat percentage was. The nice lady gave me the video game controller looking thingy and when it beeped she said, while pointing to a graph, "13.9%, that means you're an athlete."

Just let it sit and marinate

Yesterday after church I had a conversation with a good friend over muddy buddies, the same good friend with whom I had this conversation. We were talking about choosing to gracefully accept compliments from others. She had just received a very thoughtful email from a friend of hers in which he paid her a very sincere and much deserved compliment. Instead of dismissing his compliment by saying it wasn’t true or by awkwardly throwing an insincere compliment back at him (Why is that we sometimes treat complimenting like a bartering system? Someone says something nice to us and so we feel like we have to scramble and come up with something nice to say back) she chose to accept his compliment, and thank him for expressing what he did.

I had a similar experience this weekend. I recently came into contact with an old friend from high school (yes, through facebook). I’m pretty sure I haven’t talked to him since we graduated 13 years ago. That’s back before I had an email address, a cell phone, or a blog. I sent my blog link to this friend (I’ll call him David MF Neisen), therefore essentially “coming out” to him.

DMFN replied on Saturday and had some very insightful and kind things to say. I was reading his response on my phone that morning after I got home from the gym. I was kind of rushing about because I was leaving to have brunch with a friend in an hour and a half and had some things I wanted to get done before that. It occurred to me though, that I wasn’t allowing myself to fully absorb what he was communicating in his email and so I decided to sit down on the couch, give it my full attention, and marinate in his kind words.

I was kind of unprepared for what happened next. I was hit by a tsunami of emotion. And cried. For 20 minutes. I’m not exactly sure where it came from, but it was one of those good, cleansing cries. A colonic for the soul. The kind where you can almost feel someone holding you as it happens. (If you’ve never felt that, figure out how to go there. It’s well worth the visit.) I’m glad I decided to soak in DMFN’s marinade before brunch.

In other news, it’s supposed to be over 100 degrees in Portland for a good chunk of the week. That’s hot for these parts. A lot of people don’t have A/C (including me) because generally it’s not an absolute necessity here. If I melt, I love you all and hope life treats you well. Soak in THAT, suckas!

I'm a bigot

Someone at work recently sent me a forward about a dog named Faith. This dog was born with only two legs (the hind ones), and his loving and patient owner couldn't bear the thought of him not being able to get around on his own, so she taught him to walk on his hind legs. Below is one of the several pictures that accompanied what is supposed to be a heart warming story.

I chose this one because it appears as though Faith is out for a day of shopping and happened to run into some admiring fans. White shirt lady is completely in love with him. He's not interested though; he's posing for the person that is snapping a picture with his/her phone. I imagine that he makes snarky comments and has the voice of Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog. Look him up if you've never heard of him.

This forward wasn't heart warming to me. This dog totally creeps me out. As a matter of fact, I would feel very uncomfortable in this dog's presence. I'm not sure what kind of person that makes me? Is it bigotry if dogs with disabilities make you feel uneasy? Tell me this though, wouldn't you feel just a little bit uncomfortable if your doorbell rang and you found Faith standing there on your doorstep? Would YOU invite him in?

On becoming curious

Yesterday I gave the priesthood lesson that I talked about in this post. I didn’t go there, I didn’t even come close. At no point during the lesson did I feel like coming out to a group of 300 priesthood holders would enhance the lesson and so I didn’t. That’s about what I was expecting though; I was 90% sure that I wouldn’t, but I wanted to remain open to the idea if I felt so moved.

I did feel good about the lesson though. It was about the Wentworth letter, which Joseph Smith wrote at the request of the editor of the Chicago Democrat detailing the history of the church up to that point and also laying out the 13 Articles of Faith. The thought occurred to me as I read the chapter that one thing that made Joseph who he was, was his intense curiosity. I think that’s probably something all great minds share, whether it’s religion or academia or music or whatever.

This idea wasn’t totally new to me, after all, at age 14 Joseph was concerning himself with some pretty weighty topics. I think it means more to me now though, because I’ve tried to develop my own spiritual/intellectual curiosity over the past year or two. I think I’ve had to. I realized that this attraction I felt to men wasn’t going to go away, as some had so irresponsibly promised. I decided it was here to stay and that it was time to take the pressure off myself to marry a woman. It doesn’t feel right or authentic and I don’t think it would be fair to me or her.

I also refused to throw my spirituality out the window (speaking of which, I don’t know what it is, but the word defenestrate kept coming up this weekend in completely unrelated situations) and so that left/leaves me with some reconciling to do. Some spiritual and emotional gymnastics, which requires some spiritual curiosity.

This process, however, is not something that is limited to Joseph Smith or gay Mormons. We all could afford to be a little more spiritually and intellectually curious, to be more engaged and connected to the people and environment around us, ask difficult questions and attempt to find answers, listen to different ideas and people and let them help inform, shape and solidify our own beliefs.

And the grand prize goes to...

Ariel and Ruth both for finding and sending me a picture of the contraption I was talking about in my previous post. If this was a blog that had giveaways, you two would be the proud new owners of whatever this thing is called. And I'd probably even throw in the pictured exercise outfits, cap and all

Seriously, though, this thing was up in my friend's mother's bedroom and Osvaldo and I would sneak up there to play on it. I think we faced the other direction on it though, so that the belt went around our butts.

Osvaldo also taught me that when Whitney Houston sang about wanting to feel the heat with someone, it meant she wanted to have sex with someone.

I also remember watching Weird Science up in his bedroom and feeling dirty for doing so. I saw it recently in the free section of On Demand when I was home sick and watched part of it for old time's sake.

Oh, and we also liked to pass the summer spying on the polygamists that lived behind him.

And once, he kicked me in the nuts.

I dream of Nazis

Sometimes I have bizarre and vivid dreams. Last night I was an exchange student in Nazi Germany. I'm not sure what my dream parents were thinking sending me to Nazi Germany, or how they got me to the early 1940's. I was in line to enter the school on the first day of class and two guys grabbed me and told me to come with them. They informed me that if I went to this cottage on the same property as the castle-like Nazi school, the family that lived there would take us in and we wouldn't have to be brain washed by the Nazi's. The only hitch was we could only speak German and we had to help them cook brats and sauerkraut. It sounded like a good trade-off so I accepted. We didn't have to wear the same matching heavy green overcoats that the kids at the Nazi school had to wear either. That was another bonus.

The only other part of this dream that I remember is that I snuck into the Nazi school to use their gym to work out. I got there only to realize that their gym was just a giant room with a floor that slanted downward from the entrance at more than a 45 degree angle. That seemed totally normal to me in the dream. There were a bunch of women in the room working out. And by working out, I mean they were laying on the ground at the top of the hill and then rolling to the bottom. In my dream, it was a totally acceptable way to work out. Maybe the theory behind that mode of exercise was the same as what was behind that machine my friend's mom had when we were little. It was that machine that you stand on and wrap a belt around your butt/hips and it shakes them. I tried to use google image to find a picture but I have no idea what that thing was called. Does anybody else remember those? Help me out. Was I just dreaming?

Once, when I was at BYU, I had a dream that I was riding in a car with my humanities professor and two other students. I was occupying the seat directly behind my professor and he was passing CD's back to me which I would then eat. I enjoyed the class and liked the professor a lot...so much, apparently, that I subconsciously wanted to eat his CD's.

Several months back I had a series of dreams that involved many famous, middle-aged liberal women, with one exception. The exception was the dream I had that I was an aide to Barack Obama. The other dreams? In one I was hanging out with Joy Behar, one of the co-hosts from The View. I think we were having lunch or something and laughing hysterically. I think I even woke myself up laughing. I had a series of dreams that involved Whoopi Goldberg. In one, Ruth Bader Ginsberg retired from the Supreme Court and I, of course, was appointed to take her place. No senate confirmation hearings needed (suck on that, Sotomayor). The first day on the job, I couldn't find my office, so Whoopi was helping me. Some people have celebrity sex dreams. Not me.

If I were a rich man

Nope. This isn’t going to be about musical theater. Stop stereotyping. You don’t know me! This IS about a fairytale though. A fairytale sent to me by a friend that tells the story of Princess Petunia, who is supposed to marry a Prince, even though she’s in love with Violet. Petunia’s plight is not unfamiliar to me and many others. I responded to my friend’s email with the following:

You are making me think on a Saturday morning. More and more I wonder what's so wrong with gay marriage. I think about this a lot at times and it's hard to reconcile how I feel with the positions of the church. There are a TON of gay LDS guys who, when they are young, start experimenting with their feelings. It's all done in secret because there are no official and overt avenues of exploring these feelings in healthy ways inside the church. Because it's done in secret, the avenues of exploration lead to unhealthy things. Mostly addictions. Whether they are sexual, drugs, alcohol, bad relationships, etc. There's a lot of self loathing. There are thoughts of “how horrible am I that feel this way, something that my church that I love and was largely formed by, teaches is evil”.

For most there's little choice but to start feeling apart from the church and to eventually make that feeling more of a reality on every level. It's that or stay in the church and continue feeling that they are damaged and unclean and less than. For many men, I think they would probably be better off emotionally and spiritually outside the church at this point, simply because the church is so far behind the curve in knowing what to do about all this or in handling it in healthy ways.

So I get back to my earlier point. What would be so wrong about the church being more accepting of homosexuality and gay marriage. I honestly don't think it would take away from the marriages that already exist. It would be very difficult for many people to swallow, but in the end I think it would lead to healthier young gay members and more love and acceptance and tolerance from members of the church. But maybe I'm not seeing everything. Maybe there's something I'm missing. I'm definitely willing to accept that I don't have the whole picture. In the meantime though, I'm left thinking the same question that a middle aged Jewish man wondered about why he couldn't be wealthy. Would it spoil some vast eternal plan?

I’m not naïve enough to believe that the church is going to change their position on homosexuality or gay marriage, but I do think the church could do a lot more to show acceptance of homosexuals without changing doctrines or policies for practicing members of the church. The problem, I think, is that the church has approached the subject almost exclusively in the political arena. There is sometimes a mention or two of the subject in General Conference about how those with homosexual inclinations are welcome in the church, but that’s largely where it stops. There’s not a lot of trickle down to the local levels, and even still the message seems to be or become, “you are welcome in the church, but please act straight and please don’t talk about it”.

I think a big misunderstanding by many is that this is all a purely sexual issue, and that perception makes it easy to view it as something perverse. Too often we forget to take a step back and acknowledge that maybe there’s a great deal of love between those in same sex relationships. As my friend BC recently wrote to me, “is it such a stretch to believe that homosexuality has a place in God's plan? that we're not abominations or perverts or hoodwinked? and what God would, in his great goodness and power, place such restrictions on love? people can say whatever they want about controlling appetites and passions, but there has never been a bad way to truly love.”

I have a crush

On this woman

For these reasons, among others:

One

Two

Three

Four - Careful, this one's a tear jerker.

Oh, and this is just to lighten things up because it's Friday. Please excuse the lazy post.

God Bless America

This is part two of my 4th of July weekend. For the night of the 4th I went to the Blues Festival. To get an idea of the atmosphere, think state fair except for everybody is drunk. And dancing. Lots of overly tanned and overly exposed wrinkly skin. 90+ degrees. Warm potato salad. Flies. Actually, there were no flies, but if felt like there could have been. This picture should help further illustrate. Here's a picture of a shirtless man leading his shirtless grandson? through the crowd. What you can't see is all the mardi gras beads around his neck. The grandson looks so sad. I imagine that he's visiting his grandpa for the summer and seriously wishing he were back home in Des Moines. Or St. Louis.

Of all the performers I saw that night, Candye Kane was definitely the most charismatic. Meet Candye Kane:

The getup is to promote her new album Superhero. You can hear her sing it if you go here. This lady has a voice the size of the grand canyon. And a chest to match. You can't really tell how big it is in the picture I took, but you can certainly get a fairly good idea by going here. I think they give her magical powers. The woman fought off pancreatic cancer. Her website says her show is "part humor, revival meeting and sexuality celebration". Yes, yes, and yes. She also had these fine ladies backing her up on their saxophones:

The highlight of the evening though, was when my friend CH said, "Um, that's a doll." I turned to look and this is what I saw:

Some lady thought it would be a good idea to come to the Blues Fest with a toddler doll. Dressed in a denim jumper. On her shoulders. She also thought it would be a good idea to wear spurs on her boots. Perhaps the most bizarre moment though, was when I was laying down on our blanket to rest after rocking out to Candye Kane. This lady was trying to get by, and apparently I was in the way. She then did what any woman with a toddler doll would do when someone is in the way. She spanked me.

2,398 Calories

My 4th of July weekend was so amazing that I am going to have to split it into two posts. Friday I had the day off, so I hiked Dog Mountain with my friend CC and a couple of his friends. Round trip it ended up being about 7 to 7.5 miles. And those were very steep, and at times gravelly, miles. By the end of the hike, my ankles were jell-o and I kept CC entertained when my ankles would give out every 5 steps. The view at the top, however, makes it all worth it. Here's a picture I took with my phone:

The field you see in the foreground is covered in wildflowers in the spring. So I heard. Either way, the view was amazing. If you want to see a cool panoramic shot taken by someone else, check this out. That lady was not with us. Fanny packs were NOT allowed in our group.

After the hike, we decided we would probably need to stop somewhere for ice cream. As we were driving through the small town of Stevenson, WA, I spotted a place called Granny's Gedunk and decided that was where we needed to stop. Apparently, a gedunk bar is a snack bar on a large US Navy vessel. And yes, we made granny badonkadonk jokes.

I read up on the hike, and I noticed that the site I was on had a calculator where I could put in how much I weigh and it told me how many calories I burned on the hike. 2,398. And now I can't get that minutes song from RENT out of my head. "How can you measure the life of a woman or man? In truths that she learned, or in times that he cried. In calories he burned, or the way that she died."

Coming up next: Blues Fest 2009 featuring Kandye Kane

Kris and Adam sittin' in a tree...

This article from the New York Times is really quite fascinating slash entertaining. It explores the interesting dynamic that can exist in a friendship between a gay man and a straight man. As stated in the article, the gay man/straight woman relationship has been explored in media and pop culture ad nauseam, but not the friendship of the gay man with the straight man. Is it because the latter is less common? More awkward? One interesting thing I noted as I read through this paragraph is that I used the word relationship for the gm/sw coupling but used the word friendship for the gm/sm um, coupling? Not sure what that means. Quite possibly nothing.

Anyway, I got to thinking about my own friendships. Certainly, of all my male friendships, my closest male friends are gay. I have a lot of straight male friends, but there’s definitely something different. Some kind of divide. Generally speaking, I don’t connect with them like I do with my gay male friends. I’m sure part of the greater ease of connecting with gay friends is having a shared experience. It also seems like my gay friends are more willing to delve into a deeper level of communication that involves more emotion, sharing of beliefs, ideas, etc. Maybe that’s just a result of me feeling more comfortable with them though and therefore more willing to delve myself.

There are many more of my male friends who don’t know I’m gay than my female friends. Part of it is that with most of my male friends, we rarely delve into those deeper levels of conversation where it would feel natural to bring it up. Another part of it is that with some of my male friends, I think the process would just be way too draining. Especially the super straight ones that I’ve known for a long time and who would probably try to convince me that I just haven’t met the right girl yet. And well, it just feels more dangerous to divulge to a male friend over a female friend. There's more at risk.

All of this isn’t to say that I don’t connect with any straight men. That’s not true either. I have many straight friends that I feel a different kind of connection with. I have one straight friend who I feel like I am able to connect with just as much as my gay friends and there are other friendships where I feel like the same could happen if we lived in the same state.

Anyway, I’m curious what the experience has been for others. Male, female, gay or straight. Do you have a friends of the same gender but different sexual orientation? Is it ever awkward? Do you find it easier to connect with the same gender? Opposite gender? Most importantly, when is dinner? I’m effing hungry…