Signs of the Times, Issue No. 100 - 04/06/10

Welcome aboard. This train will be leaving shortly.

Greetings to one and all. 'Tis I, Aaron. And THIS is the 100th Issue of "Signs of the Times." Topics to be discussed today: The three biggest Fools of all, the end of the Madness, tips for a screenplay, Survivor spoilers, the end of a long journey, the longest ride home, and A-Town in concert. On we go!

It's quite a momentous occasion in the history of my Newsletter.

**QUESTION TIME!!**

Q1. "By the Time you respond to my Question(s), it will be your 100th Issue of 'Signs of the Times.' First off, do you have any plans to celebrate this momentous occasion?

Q2. Also, what wonderful pranks were A-Town, Donny, and Craig perpetrators/victims/witnesses of on April Fool's Day this year? If you had a perfect April Fool's Day prank (assuming the victim is not able to read this Newsletter), what would it be?

Q3. Also, do you have any predictions on the NBA tournament? A-Town didn't do too well on the March Madness, so maybe you don't want to extend your misery."

Just Curious,

- Jon Blackham

A1. This is, as mentioned, the 100th glorious Issue of this rendition of my weekly Newsletters. Additionally, I failed miserably to mention "SotT"'s second birthday last week, so this is, indeed, a fantastic day in Jive City. (Jive City is where I live, by the way.) There are many festivities going on today and everyone is invited to participate. All the fun began this morning as I handed out free money to all residents of Jive City under the age of six. Then we all took a ride on TRAX and it was unbearably shaky and it really started to bother me. Then the transit authority made me show my ticket and it was just really a pain in the rear. Anyhoo, upon arriving at our destination, we watched Craig T. Nelson sculpt a replica of Mitt Romney's gorgeous hair out of Jell-O. He ate it when he was done,, along with the whole "SotT" birthday cake. That jerk. Later on in the afternoon, I donated an hour of my busy schedule to helping people learn Pig Latin. Backwards. Donny Osmond was also in attendance. He spent the morning, afternoon, and, well, I think he's still there, actually, reading each Issue of the Newsletter out loud. By himself. Tonight at 8:00 PM, I will be awarded the key to the City. By myself. It's Good to be a Loyal Subscriber today.

A2. Pranks? Well, I texted my family and told them that my manager had apologized to me, wanted to meet with me, and was going to give me a raise. They totally bought it. More on that later, though. Craig T. and Donny called Evan Lysacek and told him they wanted him to lose. Evan started crying. Then he came and slashed Donny's tires. Donny responded by writing a song for Craig, which nobody has had the courage to listen to yet at this point. Craig retaliated by doing nothing to me. He values his job here. As far as a perfect AFD prank, I obviously can't tell you, but let's just say it would involve whipped cream, nails, several pieces of blank paper, inaccurate clocks, and moving all the furniture out of somebody's house.

Q3. Well, Cody won the March Madness pool. He barely beat my Mom, from what I hear. I stopped paying attention a long Time ago when I saw that I had apparently was on pace to tie for last place in the family pool. I'll have you know, however, that I finished in a tie for first with my Mom in our "second chance brackets" pool. Eat it. Too bad that doesn't count for anything. I'll have more analysis of the NBA playoffs in a couple weeks when the season is over, but for now, with my recent string of super-accurate predictions, I'm going out on a limb and saying that the Lakers are going to win the championship. (*WINK*) Thanks for the Questions. You're one of the last living, original members of the Junior Mounties and I (SALUTE!) you.

Congratulations, "SotT"!!

Q. "Dear Aaron,

I'm writing a screenplay for my film literacy class and I had the idea to make a film where elbows don't exist (A.K.A. straight arms only) which will be titled 'The Invention of Elbows.' As a person who makes their own independent short films, what tips could you give me for writing a screenplay?"

In need of some help,

- EFY Son June '09

A. The best advice I can give you is to write everything down. That has been my biggest problem with my movies and even with the Newsletter - sometimes I'll have a sweet idea that I'd like to film or talk about the next Newsletter, but I forget to write it down, so I forget some of my ideas. That's no good. I'd recommend getting a notebook or something like that that you can carry around with you and write your ideas in. That way, the next Time you sit down to plan things out, you've got all your thoughts collected right in front of you. Also, it's Good to have a general idea of where you want the story to go early on. I find it easier to plot out the rest of the story if you at least start out knowing how you want it to begin and how you want it to end. Good luck and let me know how it goes!

Q. "How is your prediction coming along with 'Dancing with the Stars?' Do you still think Evan Lysacek will win? And what is your opinion of Kate Gosselin being on the show?"

- Suzy Petersen

A. Evan is doing well so far. He's consistently been second best in the first two weeks. I haven't watched this week's show yet, but I think he'll stick around for a while. As predicted he and Nicole Sherzinger have been the best so far, but the judges love Nicole. She's dancing with Derek Hough, the most annoying person in reality television and they're looking pretty Good at this point. It worries me quite a bit, actually. Hopefully her lack of a fan base will hurt her and hopefully Evan will develop a personality at some point this season. I'm sticking with Evan, though. I've got to. I haven't been wrong before, have I? Um... Kate Gosselin? Who's that? Just kidding. But seriously. She's gotta go. I can dance better than her. She's too much drama. That's exactly why she's not going anywhere, though. ABC loves it.

---SPOILER ALERT---

Q. "Aaron,

If you were stranded in the middle of the desert, dying of thirst, who do you think would be more likely to give you a drop of water: Boston Rob or 'King' Russell? Also, prediction for who's going home this week?"

- Whitney Metcalf

A. Of course, this is in retaliation for my anti-Boston Rob comments when I discussed Survivor last week, is it not? Who would give me water? Probably both of them would. Rob would probably give me water first, though, since he's so desperate to have followers. Obviously that plan didn't work out too well for him, though, did it? Boomshakalaka! Russell is the King of Survivor. Admit it. Russell rules. As for a prediction, the villains are weak now that Rob is gone and Colby is back to his season two form. I've got Courtney going home this week... and it's About dang Time.

All hail, King Russell.

Ah... Responding to your Questions makes me Feel so Good About Myself. Smiley face.

Well, I made it another week without getting fired. Sort of. The short version of this story is that I quit my job at Costa Vida yesterday. The not-as-short version would say that I called the corporate office last week to complain About my manager and they ended up telling me that my "best option" would be to transfer to the location in Foothill (Salt Lake City). That's a little further than I'd prefer and I was planning on quitting in five or six weeks anyway, so I don't want to be a dirtbag and bail on them like that. How nice of me, right? Anyway, so that didn't quite work and it's not like I was really "employed" anymore, so I just decided to cut my losses. I went in, waited for him to have Time to talk to me, and went into his office to have a little chat. There were lots of things I could have said and there were lots of things I wanted to say. I ended up basically telling him thanks for letting me work there and that I enjoyed my Time there, but I was quitting. I shook his hand and walked out the door with my final, 36-dollar paycheck. And that's the Bottom Line... 'cause A-Town said so.

I quit, Mr. White.

Well, my "SotT" birthday/milestone celebration was going pretty well until this afternoon. I got out of class an hour early, so I was on schedule to get home about 45 minutes ahead of schedule. Well... then the dang TRAX operator has the brilliant idea to start moving while the door was still open. Seconds later, he slammed on the breaks, sending people sprawling down the aisle and breaking the door clean off the hinges. I was sitting next to a Mexican guy who said, "This is like a Mexico train! Give us our money back!" Ha. To make a long story short, I got home about 20 minutes after I normally would have if my class would have been let out on Time. That's the perfect candidate for The Boo Box. Everybody together now - BOOOOOO!!

This is pretty much what it was like.

Nobody wants to end on a negative note on a Tuesday such as this one, so it's Time for The Week in Review. As I've mentioned, I took a date to the Muse concert last night - and, believe it or not, I think she liked it! Miraculous, I know. First, let's take into account the absolutely horrible traffic. People do really dumb things when they're driving. Like sitting on an offramp for 40 minutes. That's a brilliant idea. The show started at 7, but we didn't get to our seats until 7:40, so we missed the opening act, Silversun Pickups. Oh well. We heard a song by them on the radio while we were on the offramp, so it was kind of the same, I guess. I almost forgot to mention that, after we ran through a dang blizzard to get inside, the will call peeps couldn't find our tickets for 10 minutes, either, so that was exciting. Our seats were nice - second row of the upper bowl, but we had a good view of the stage. Muse hit the stage a little after 8:00 to one of the best intros I've seen. They kicked things off with "Uprising," their latest hit and my personal favorite. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know all of Muse's songs - I knew maybe 70% of the songs they played and was clueless for the rest of the Time, unlike the guy next to me who tried to sing all the words to every song. The E Center was rocked by other songs like "Starlight," "Resistance," "Unnatural Selection," "United States of Eurasia," "Hysteria," and (the finale) "Knights of Cydonia." Overall, I really enjoyed it. Perhaps the most impressive element of the concert was the elaborate stage setup, featuring three elevating platforms - one for each band member. The central platform for the drummer rotated 360 degrees during some songs, which was a nice touch. The lighting and visual effects were also fantastic. They played for About an hour and a half, which is About right for a concert nowadays, but I really would have liked it if they would have taken Time to talk to the audience. Muse was by far the least personable band I've seen live, only taking four or five moments to say "Thank you" or "How are you doing, Salt Lake City?" That's a little one-dimensional, but whatever. They're rich. They can do whatever they want. The traffic on the way home was horrible, too, but I won't hold that against them. I'd give the Muse concert an 8.5 out of 10. Good work, fellows. Good work.

Oh yeah, baby. I was there.

The Facebook Fan Page of the Week was submitted by Kristin Manning: "Stopping in the middle of a conversation to say "You smell Good." I don't think I've ever heard anyone do that. Ever. So why would I become a fan of it? Ponderous.

The Shoutout of the Week is threefold: Jason Moffat, one of the funniest people ever. Paris Gibson, who is reading the Newsletter for the first Time (Welcome. And don't mind my seemingly-random capitalization.). You smell Good. And my father, who is celebrating the 18th anniversary of his 35th birthday today. Happy birthday, Pops.

That's About it for this week. Hope you've enjoyed it - and thank you for supporting "Signs of the Times" for 100 Issues. Here's to 100 more. Maybe. It's Time for some birthday cake. Happy birthday once again to my Dad and my Newsletter.

Until next Time,

Move It. Sell It. And Leave the Door Open.

Aaron