Overheard

On Saturday we went to see Mason's karate graduation where he received his purple belt. Graduation is a big event with hundreds of parents and family members there to watch these kids get new belts. The event includes videos and music playing while the classes demonstrate different techniques. As I was listening to this music play, I initially thought I was hearing well-known popular music. Then I started paying more attention and realized that the tunes were those I was familiar with, but the words had been changed. The words had been changed to something more in line with evangelical christian tastes.

My favorite example was the song where this band had taken the song "Pour some sugar on me" and turned it into "Learn some Deuteronomy." But since "Deuteronomy" has one more syllable than "sugar on me," it came out sounding like, "Learn some dude-er-om-ny." At first, I wasn't sure whether the song was some strange joke, or whether the song was supposed to be serious. I found the song on iTunes, and supposedly the song is meant to be a parody, though I suspect the song is not meant to be as big a joke as it comes out sounding like. It goes to show that sometimes you don't have to try to be funny to be funny.

In case you are thinking that I am being a little too harsh on the tune thieving evangelical christian crowd, feel free to check out this column printed in September 2000 where I pillory the Mormon crowd who brought us Book of Mormon action figures, among other things. Boy I sound like a hothead.

I've never quite been able to get into the christian rock thing. I think the mix of religion and heavy metal is just too much for me to wrap my mind around. And I will admit I feel the same way about Mormon attempts to mix religion and popular music. (See the paragraph on Afterglow in the above column.) This experience has done nothing to sway my opinion.

Mason's party

Mason broke this board with one swift kick

Mason turned eight years old this week. In celebration, we rented the tae kwon do facility Mason goes to and invited 37 kids to come to a birthday party. Luckily for us, only 21 showed up. I'm not sure how we would have dealt with 37 kids. We were happy, however, to not have to plan activities for that many kids or have them running wild through our home. The kids had a good time playing games and running through different tae kwon do drills. Mason enjoyed being the center of attention. He even got to break a board with his foot. I managed to catch the photo of him above but unfortunately missed the look of utter surprise on his face when the board actually broke.

Conference craziness

Before General Conference this year, we read a story from the Friend about a family that put up tents to watch conference, just like the people put up tents around the temple to listen to King Benjamin in the Book of Mormon. Of course the kids thought that was a great idea and wanted to do it, too. As you can see from the photos above, the tent may have been more of a distraction than a helpful conference tool. Even certain adults were getting in on the fun.