Have a Laugh on Me

Okay, I'm still working up to doing the blog weekly. In case you were wondering, we're doing well here, healthy and happy. The baby is getting cuter. When he gets upset, he has a face he makes that, when paired with his wrinkly brow, makes him look like Benjamin Button, but all in all, he's quite fetching. I am a father of three, and so I know there is no such thing as an attractive newborn, and have seen no evidence to the contrary. At any rate, on Sunday the little feller will be a month old, so time moves on as rapidly as ever. We (especially Amy) are eager for him to find a schedule he likes and stick to it.

The following is from a comedian named Bengt (pronounced Bent) Washburn. I went to see him at a live show last month in Logan. I wouldn't call his stuff offensive, but it's not for everybody either. He's no longer an active Mormon, and lives in Germany with his Irish Catholic, smoker, Air Force wife (which he also riffs on heavily in his standup), but is not unfriendly to the Church in his act. And some of his observations, especially about the missionary days, made me laugh until my gut hurt. And I'm not someone who laughs out loud all that much. Those who know me best would probably tell you I usually just smirk at my own cleverness (lies!) and chortle a bit. It sure seems true that the freaks are most likely to let Mormons into their house. I personally entered the homes of weirdos you couldn't even make up. Anyway, if you like this, there's plenty more on YouTube. Hope you enjoy.

Presenting: The Little Nipper!

So, last Friday, September 3, at 12:03 p.m., Emmett Lamond Orgill emerged reluctantly, but alertly, and immediately wailed about the cold. Here are a few pics, as I promised before. For those of you who don't know, we named him after Doctor Emmett Brown of Back to the Futurefame. (No, not really. How stupid do you think we are?) Emmett was a name that Amy has loved all along and took awhile to grow on me. But the Lamond part sealed the deal for me. With Seth, we used the middle name Pulham as an honor for Amy's late grandmother, whose maiden name was Pulham, a family that I don't know well but seem to be great people who have lived good lives. On this one, I wanted to pay homage to my late grandfather, Kyle Lamond Rigby. We kicked around the idea of using Rigby and Kyle, but settled on this. So he has a very old-school name, but not so old-school that he'll get mocked.

Anyway, special thanks to our families, especially my angel mother, who stayed with Jackson and Seth Saturday afternoon into Sunday. We are really happy to have the little tyke home, although he's getting circumcised in a little over an hour and will likely be pissed off about it. We are totally in love with him, and with the NFL season also starting tonight, what else can a man ask for? I'll be back again in a few days. Take care.

Looking not-so-happy to be here, just a few minutes after getting squeezed out. Those lips couldn't get any poutier.

New big brother Seth. He already functions as kind of a big little brother to Jackson, so I'm thinking he'll be ready for his new role.

All scrunched up and squishy. I keep trying to straighten him out, but he's like a Slinky.

My mom enjoying grandbaby number six. That number has tripled in just over a year!

Transitions, Fetus Update, and a Glowing Movie Review

I've let the summer get away from me. Honestly, it feels like July just started, and now here we are at the end of August. Here is a quick summary: cursed the heat, made a bunch of improvements on the house, Amy grew larger with my spawn, became happy as temps dropped and football season came upon us, and turned 31. Anywho, I am so very happy that fall is upon us. I don't know how anybody can have another favorite season. I can appreciate each for what it is, but September through November is perfect as far as I'm concerned. And to kick things off this year, on Friday, we're scheduled to have Amy induced with our thirdborn. I'm really happy about it even though I know we're about to be outnumbered. We're probably going with the name Emmett, which took a while to grow on me but Amy loves. It seems to go well with the names of our other knuckleheads, Testikov and Superfly. I actually have had several thoughts percolating for a while for upcoming blog posts, but they'll have to wait a bit longer. I'm sure the next one will involve the little nipper.

In the meantime, though, I'd like to give a major endorsement to a low-key movie that is in theaters now, in hopes that someone will be persuaded to go see it. I love finding hidden gems, and it's even more rewarding to my snobbery when I catch one while it's in theaters. A lot of people bitch about Hollywood making all trash, or not having anything new and interesting. Get Low is the perfect example of why that is not true. Based on a true story of a backwoods recluse in 1930s Tennessee who threw himself a funeral party while he was still alive, Get Low stars Robert Duvall as Felix Bush, whose legend has grown to almost Tall Tale proportions over the forty years he has holed up. He hires the local mortician, played by Bill Murray, to spread the word, and invites one and all to come share stories they've heard about him. It sounds quirky, but somehow the movie is pretty accessible for just about anyone old enough to get it, and combines comedy with poignancy, and features a great soundtrack with contributions from Alison Krauss and Oscar-winning composer Jan A.P. Kaczmarek. And honestly, Duvall and Murray should be enough for any movie buff. Four stars. Please go see this if it's playing in your area. With that, I take my leave of you. Until sometime this weekend, toodle-oo.

Funny stuff from Nick Frost

Those of you who know me well know that I love British humor (I guess I should spell it humour). From Monty Python to Spinal Tap to Jeeves and Wooster to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to Hugh Grant to Ricky Gervais, I have great appreciation for the comedy brought west from our friends across the pond. In recent years, I have come to love Nick Frost and Simon Pegg, the creators of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. I just stumbled across a couple of Frost's snippets on YouTube that I laughed my butt off at. Women will probably appreciate the Man Cold even better. Who knew that the wussiness of men was so universal?

Bizarre Injuries

I've decided I'm getting serious about blogging at least on a weekly basis. It's only been thirteen days since last time, so I'm getting better. It promises to be a strange mix of whatever's on my mind. This week has been strange due to a couple of oddball injuries in our family. Last Saturday, I was injured by a buffalo wing to the eye. No, Amy didn't chuck it at me, although she is getting feistier as she suffers with heat and child. I was just minding my own business, eating peacefully, and as I pulled it away from my mouth, a piece flew off into my eye, somehow making it underneath my glasses. I was more embarrassed than in pain, until I opened my eye and felt the burn of the buffalo sauce. It took some rinsing with cold water and a few minutes of extra care until I recovered, but let that be a warning to ya.

Even more strange was the next day. We came home from church and Jackson immediately fled to the backyard as he is wont to do, and after changing clothes, Amy went out and found him completely dirty from playing in his favorite spot just under the deck. She threw him in the shower, and as time went on his upper lip started swelling. And I'm talking comic-book proportions, like the scene in Hitch where Will Smith eats shellfish and his whole face starts puffing up. He looked like a platypus, but he showed no signs of pain, and was in fact in above average spirits. We called the pharmacist, I made a quick Sabbath excursion to buy some children's Benadryl, and it took two days for the swelling to completely subside. We found out later that what happened was that he'd been stung by a bee on the inside of his lip. How that happens I have no idea, but of course it had to be the autistic son who can't communicate. Here is a shot of the damage:

Anyway, I've been no stranger to bizarre injuries in my life. My all-time favorite was when I was a missionary in Cape Verde (a small island country in West Africa), and hurriedly got out of the shower when I heard a ruckus which I knew could only mean the guys were in hot pursuit of a mouse. As I did so, I scraped my leg against the jagged edge of a bidet (a porcelain plumbing fixture, popular in Europe, that is situated next to the toilet, with a nozzle that squirts your unmentionables as an alternative to toilet paper). I bled profusely and allowed one of my missionary cohorts who was semi-trained in first aid to stitch me up rather than going to the local hospital where I figured they'd probably amputate my leg with a rusty saw. I still have the scar, but came out of it much better than the mouse, who was literally torn in half when my fat, hairy companion tried to stomp him and lost his footing, sliding across the floor with the upper body under his foot. Now that I think about it, that was a pretty colorful day, and that was just the lunch break. Anyway, I'd love to hear any stories you may have of bizarre injuries. I'm tempted to prematurely declare Julia Munns Burdych the winner, since I know about one particular owwie that you couldn't even make up, but I'll wait a few days and see if anyone can top it. Okay, go!

Note to FIFA: Your Sport is Not Worthy of America

Congratulations to Thpain for their victory over the freaky-deaky Dutch.  With the World Cup now over, we can all now move on to football season.  I mean real football, if there are any pantywaist soccer lovers among my readers.  As far as I'm concerned, June and July are by far the worst months in sports, especially when the Lakers are in the NBA Finals. I'm close to renouncing the NBA as it is, but the Jazz have kept me paying attention for this long, and I'll continue following for at least one more season before the almost certain lockout, then I'll switch over full-time to college.  You know it's bad when you can actually script most of the next year or so.  Next June, it'll be Lakers-Miami, which will cause most of the country to wish both teams could lose, then the collective bargaining agreement is up, but with the current situation untenable, barring a miracle, there will be a major impasse between owners and players that will cause SportsCenter to be overrun with stories on a work stoppage instead of actual sport.

But I digress.  Four years ago I was sucked into the World Cup when Portugal, the country of my mission, took fourth place, and this time around, I expected that I might start giving a crap at any time.  I kept my eye on it virtually the entire time and saw nothing that captured my heart or imagination.  Today's championship game, which I tuned into for a few minutes out of sheer curiosity, was a 0-0 tie until the 119th minute.  It's complete and utter hell, and I don't see how the world can be so wrong about anything.  In Europe and South America, for even a mildly interesting match between two local teams, the streets are empty.  Vacant.  Deserted. So I can only imagine what it's like when the stakes get high.  Spain will probably be hung over until Thursday.

For years, it's been said that America is poised for soccer to break away and garner the same gigantic interest that our other sports generate.  They've been saying that for at least thirty years, despite the fact that most of our guys couldn't even sniff the top leagues abroad.  Major League Soccer?  Please.  At best, MLS is a low-level minor league on the international scene. But this year, the U.S. did show some major improvement and captured the public attention for a moment.  I personally think this was just a hiccup, and most of us won't give soccer a second thought until 2014, but that won't stop the conversation.  For a more detailed view of why I believe soccer will never gain the ground its supporters hope for, articulated as well as anything I could ever say, read Sal Paolantonio's How Football Explains America.

Unless, that is, FIFA's governing body, along with all others involved in the sport, adopt these rules, as suggested by Bucky in today's Get Fuzzy comic.  Bucky Katt is a hilariously antisocial, hostile, and ignorant character, but I feel that in this case, his suggestions would vastly improve the many and varied weaknesses of the game that the world has been so obsessed with over the past month.

1.  Put one of the forward's grandmothers in a dunking booth that drops her into ice cold water whenever his team takes a shot that misses the open goal.

2.  No cleats.  Everybody wears those lead-soled Frankenstein-type boots.  (That should make #1 more interesting too).

3.  All the substitutes are knife-wielding monkeys.  Except the back-up goalie.  He has a slingshot.

4.  All the refs are MMA fighters and every time a player falls down and fakes an injury, the ref steps in and administers to that player the very injury they were faking.

Okay, people, tell me you wouldn't watch this, and that it wouldn't make the matches infinitely more watchable.  Does this not just reek of common sense to rid us of the things that are most contemptible about soccer?  Bucky Katt for President!

P.S.  An interesting note: soccer enthusiasts, especially Brits, have long gotten on America's case about using the word football for our own brutal, far superior game.  But did you know that the term soccer actually originated in England as an Oxford "-er" abbreviation of the word association?  So they're bitching at us for using a term that they created.

Real Men Wear Pink

Once upon a time, from 6th through about 9th grade (approximately 1990-1994), I was a pro wrestling fan. Not just a fan, but a fanatic. In fact, you could say my obsession became a significant tool I used to survive junior high purgatory. Despite (and possibly because of) shameless gimmicks and ridiculous storylines, I was hooked. Call it moronic, call it fake, or stupid, or juvenile; you could never say it was boring. And one of the greatest ever to grace a leotard was Bret "Hitman" Hart. He brought actual skill to the ring to a sport where theatrics reign supreme, during an era where steroids were starting to get out of control (more on that later). I somehow got nostalgic about this era of my life a few months ago, and started searching for books on the subject. I got Davis County Library System to order Hart's autobiography, brilliantly titled Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling. And in May, I read all 600 pages of it. That's right, this is the great book I alluded to earlier.

Anyone familiar with pro wrestling knows that it's as real as it is fake. There's only so much you can do to cushion yourself from the impact of piledrivers and suplexes (and turnbuckles and chairs). But the wear wrestlers' bodies take in the ring is just a start. In fact, if you Google the phrase "dead wrestlers," your computer will start to smoke like Snoop Dogg at Mardi Gras. There have been some high-profile casualties in the business, but many others, even famous ones, that have not generated much publicity. The media doesn't care because, at the end of the day, the general public doesn't care that much about a fake sport with scripted endings, even when there's a list of wrestlers who have died before the age of 50 - and the list is more than 70 names long. But if it were any other sport, those figures would make for a major scandal. Pro wrestling has grueling schedules, brutal physical punishment, and a tacit understanding that performance enhancers are okay. There is no off-season. There are no pension plans for retired wrestlers. The industry chews these guys up and spits them out, then their bodies give out and they die.

At any rate, Hart's insights into that industry are part of what made this a thinking book for me. But really, it only takes a paragraph or so to realize that even if you were an uppity reader, picking the book up out of sheer snobbery, Hart is a person of great intelligence. I got the wistfulness I was looking for, especially the first half or so that focus on the early days working for his father's company, Stampede Wrestling, along with many others who would later become stars when wrestling had its heyday in the 1980s and 90s. And it went a long way for me that Hart doesn't attempt to make himself look perfect. He is completely forthcoming about his extramarital affairs on the road (which were many) and use of steroids (much more moderate than most of his contemporaries). Imperfections notwithstanding, I came away with an enormous amount of respect for the man behind the Hitman persona, and can't recommend this book highly enough.

To end on a lighter note, the following is an homage to the pro wrestling wardrobe designer, from perhaps the most clever, hilarious advertising campaign of all time, Bud Light's Real Men of Genius. Enjoy.