My addiction to Lego has never been a secret. Around the time I was "supposed to" grow out of it (more on that ridiculous idea in another post), Lego changed for me from a plaything to an art form, so I never lost my obsession. I've been judged at times by people who didn't understand, but thankfully I've seen much less of that the past few years as adult Lego fandom has gone more mainstream (thank you very much, The Lego Movie). While there has always been a vibrant online Lego fan community, it has really boomed recently, and that's a good thing.
The local Lego fan community has grown a lot, too. Back in 2007, I was so excited to discover the Utah Lego Users Group (ULUG). There weren't a lot of members then, but I appreciated getting to spend time with people who shared my passion; for once in my life, I didn't feel isolated in my hobby. Now our group membership has grown into triple digits. An official Lego store opened in the Salt Lake City area a few years ago. And . . . we have our very own fan convention.
This was my first time attending Brickslopes, and it did not disappoint. I pretty much geeked out the entire time. There were so many inspiring models; ever since then, I've been itching to pull out my own bricks and build something. Here are some of my favorite displays from the event:
I've always wanted to build a gigantic Lego castle. Seeing this one made my heart so happy!
Way cool dragon mosaic.
This display by KeithLUG took nineteen people six months to build. Keith Goldman--the Keith of KeithLUG--has always been one of my favorite builders. I couldn't believe I finally got to see his and his LUG's work in person!
The Trade Federation occupation of Theed, built by ULUG member and personal friend, Brian Pilati.
Yoshi!
It wouldn't be a Utah fan convention without an LDS temple.
The few pictures here hardly do the event any justice, but you can see more in my Flickr album. Attending Brickslopes with fellow Lego fans did for me as a builder what my writing groups do for me as a writer: it got me excited to pull out my pieces and build. Maybe next year I'll have something of my own to display, but one thing's for sure: I can't wait to go to Brickslopes again!
Today my wife and I checked out a sale at a local business where new and used DVDs were only a dollar each. If it sounds like a bad idea, it most certainly was; I'm embarrassed to say how many movies we bought. But we couldn't say no to such a great price!
No regrets.
Man, there was so much good stuff at this place. And I couldn't help but get a bit nostalgic digging through stacks of movies that came out while I was growing up. These were images of my childhood.
But it was more than just the movies I remembered fondly. Some of the DVDs had Blockbuster labels, too, and that really took me back.
Blockbuster Video was a staple of my weekends all through elementary school. Every Friday (okay, maybe not every Friday, but that's how I remember it), my dad took my siblings and me out to the Blockbuster by my school to rent movies and video games to enjoy for the coming week. We made popcorn, sometimes ordered pizza, and stayed up late together. It was such a little thing, but those Friday nights really brought us close to one another.
So many of my happy childhood memories started with Blockbuster. And while I do appreciate the new convenience of online movie streaming, for me, nothing can replace the fun of driving to the video store, browsing shelves, and making an event out of family movie night.
I miss it.
A moment of silence, please.
Image credit: Wikipedia
But I'm glad that now I have some relics to remind me of the good old days. And someday, I'll share the adventurous tale of Blockbuster Video with my terrified grandchildren--just like this bold grandfather:
If you've never read a graphic novel, you owe it to yourself to try one. You'd be surprised how deep and engaging a "comic book" can be; you'll thank me once you're hooked.
My favorite graphic novel series is Case Closed, by Gosho Aoyama. The main character, teenage detective Jimmy Kudo, frequently helps the police crack difficult cases--until the evil Black Organization catches him witnessing one of its crimes, feeds him an experimental poison, and leaves him for dead. But instead of killing him, the poison turns Jimmy into a little kid, and he takes on the pseudonym Conan Edogawa to keep the crime syndicate from finishing him off. While he seeks out the people who turned him small, Conan continues to help solve cases and finds creative ways to get adults to take his deductions seriously. Case Closed is a fun series with great characters, an engrossing plot, and challenging mysteries. If you're new to graphic novels, this is a good place to start.
Case Closed also exhibits some of the best-written villains I've seen. That's because they're actually human. Great writing acknowledges that human beings aren't simply black and white; I think it's hard to get the reader emotionally invested in a protagonist who is all good, or an antagonist who is all bad. Have you ever met anyone like that in real life?
Gosho Aoyama has a way of making me sympathize with all the characters in his books--even the killers. For example, one case I read last night involved members of a musical family dying in the C-scale order of their names. When the evidence pointed to a young, talented, and kind composer and violinist, I didn't want to believe it could be him, so until the end I hoped the uptight butler did it. But--spoiler alert--the murderer was the gifted musician! And to make matters worse, he kept being kind and helpful even as the police were loading him into their car.
He was such a cool character.
He seemed like a great guy.
He killed four people.
And I was so sad he was the one who did it.
Murder is wrong, no matter who does it. As much as I loved this character, he got nothing more than he deserved when the law put him away. And yet I still feel so conflicted about him.
That's the magic of three-dimensional writing. And that's what keeps me going back for more.
As a Mormon, I strive to follow a code of health called the Word of Wisdom, which encourages healthy eating and forbids coffee, tea, alcohol, tobacco, and other harmful drugs.
I love this kind of lifestyle, but it leads to a natural question:
If Mormons don't drink coffee, do they have coffee tables?
The short answer is no, we don't. Instead we furnish our living rooms with stone altars where we offer up the blood of goats to Satan.*
Of course we have coffee tables. If we want them, anyway. I'm pretty sure the Lord hasn't made a commandment against any particular type of furniture.
Though some people are pushing their luck.
Image credit: Caitlyn Babin
But I won't lie: I've always been somewhat uncomfortable calling my own coffee table a coffee table. Not because of the Word of Wisdom, necessarily, but because I just don't use it for coffee. Calling it a coffee table has always been a little silly to me (same with the craft table I never use for crafts).
My parents' solution during my childhood was to call our coffee table the Lego table, because we did all our Lego building there and it had a compartment where we kept our family Lego bin. But these days, I don't have a fancy coffee table with a cool little Lego compartment. So here are some other names I've brainstormed:
Step stool.
Clutter catcher.
Mess magnet.
Infant head poker.
. . . .
Come to think of it, maybe "coffee table" isn't such a bad name, after all. If the name were honest, nobody would buy one.
Except baby haters.
I'm off to ponder other things obviously named by advertisers to make an easy sell (jumbo shrimp, anyone?). But a conversation about coffee tables would never be complete without hearing the authority on coffee tables himself. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Cosmo Kramer:
Do you call anything in your house by a unique name? Mormon friends, what do you call your coffee tables?
*Don't let my dumb attempt at sarcasm mislead you. Mormons don't worship Satan. Nor are we Satan. To learn more about us, visit Mormon.org. And be nice to goats.
It takes a village to raise a child, and I was blessed to grow up in a neighborhood full of the best adult friends and teachers a kid could have. My Scoutmaster, Wally Rupp, took me on adventures and helped me turn my weaknesses into strengths. His brother, Keith, had immeasurable faith in me even when I doubted myself, and he always met me with the kindest smile and sincerely asked how I was doing. My youth leader in the local church congregation, Gordon Daniels, treated me like family and taught me how to live happily near God in an increasingly tough world.
I could spend all month writing tributes to the host of people who helped make me who I am. But few have had a greater influence on my life than my piano teacher, Pam Larson.
Pam played the organ for our congregation every Sunday. As a church organist myself now, I can honestly say that it's the kind of position where it's easy to just show up and not really think about what you're doing. But Pam always took it seriously. She cared about the way her music inspired reverence at church. Her music was her testimony; she played the organ with the hope that someone listening might actually draw closer to the Savior.
As a piano teacher, Pam taught me more than just the theory and the scales and the notes. Learning how to play the piano was only the first step; the most important part to her, I think, was how to make the piano mine, how to pour myself into the music and paint pictures with the sound, how to become the keys and the pedals and the strings and feel more deeply than I'd ever felt before. Pam made me a musician. But in a lot of ways she helped make me a writer, too.
Ten years of piano lessons turned my mentor into a cherished friend. By the time I started high school, I couldn't wait for our weekly visits. We talked as much as we played music. She cared about what happened in my life, and through her teaching she gave me something that has gotten me through countless challenges. I don't know where I would be without the piano. I don't know where I would be if Pam had never been my teacher.
The summer I turned seventeen, my family drove through Canada to see our Alaskan relatives. Over three thousand miles lay between Salt Lake and my grandma's doorstep. The entire trip would take three weeks, and knowing I would be without a piano the whole time, I spent the morning of our departure getting my fill of the keyboard. I played until we finally left in the early afternoon.
My mom's phone rang as we sped up the freeway on-ramp heading out of town. Then came the news that turned my whole world upside down.
Pam passed away at 12:30 that day.
I couldn't cry in front of my family, couldn't express my anguish at the loss of such a dear and treasured friend. I wouldn't have had the words to do it, anyway. I don't even have them now.
It rained the entire drive from Salt Lake to our first hotel in Montana. I had exhausted myself holding everything together all day, but at last I found some privacy when my family left me in the car to get our room keys. In the safety of the darkened parking lot, raindrops trailing down the windows, I wept loudly for the mentor who had given me so much.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ gives me hope that I will see Pam Larson again. One of my favorite scripture verses says that "that same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, only it will be coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy" (D&C 130:2). We will play the piano together again.
But the pain didn't go away overnight. Pam's death left a gaping hole in my life. For a while, it hurt too much to play the piano, so I didn't do it. Sometimes even hearing a piano was too much. The light of music went out for a long time.
I'm not writing this for pity, so don't give me any. Instead, I want to tell you what I learned from mourning for my friend: The way to keep someone alive in your heart is to use the gifts they gave you.
It's okay to hurt when someone you love dies. It's okay to be sad, to weep, to struggle. But if that person made you smile, you don't honor their memory by never smiling again.
If they made you laugh, nothing will make them happier on the other side than to hear your laughter.
If they gave you children, love them and spend time with them.
If they made you appreciate the beauty of the world, go out and enjoy the world.
If they taught you something, teach someone else.
I'll never stop missing Pam. But every time I sit down at the piano--whether in my living room or in a crowded auditorium--Pam is still alive.
A tribute I built shortly after Pam's passing. Based on the Lego rendition of myself, I had a lot more hair back then.
Today marks ten years since my teacher passed away, so I thought it fitting to share a video of myself playing the piano. This one's kind of old, but I couldn't think of anything more appropriate: William Joseph's Sweet Remembrance of You.
The summer before I started first grade, my dad took a job in southern Utah and we moved 250 miles to Cedar City.
That was a strange time in my life, so I remember it more vividly than some other periods of my childhood. Each room of our new house had a different color of carpet. We had fire ants in our backyard, and I kept a jar of them in my bedroom. The kid next door was deaf, but I didn't know what that meant so I
thought he was just being rude when he ignored my invitations to play. I befriended a big fifth grader on the school bus who looked out for me on the ride to and from school each day. In class I sat next to the first other Nathan I ever knew existed, and he became my best friend.
I could go on, but I'll spare you. Tl;dr: I remember lots of stuff about living in Cedar City.
Anyway, after six months my dad's job ended up not working out, so we moved back to Salt Lake and Cedar City became just another awkward family memory.
Fast forward twenty years.
Last week my wife and I took our kids on our very first family vacation. We wanted to keep it small--the boys would need breaks and we couldn't afford much anyway--so we drove to St. George and stopped in Cedar City for dinner.
Cedar City is still pretty close to how I remember it. I found the Lin's Market where my family used to shop, the historic Rock Church I loved to explore, and the big city park.
But a lot can change in twenty years. Like my house.
Definitely not what I remember
The grass is gone. Business hours hang in the kitchen window. Pickup trucks parked to the side (not pictured) suggest someone's going to shoot me if I creep around the house with a camera.
I basically had my own Ocarina of Time moment. I kind of wish I could return my old house to the glory it still has in all my gilded childhood memories.
