Signs of the Times, Issue No. 197 - 02/28/12

I will be played by that ruggedly handsome and equally talented actor.

Greetings to one and all. My name is Aaron and this is my magnificent weekly publication known affectionately (by some) as "Signs of the Times." Thank you, thank you! You know what? I'll be honest. I wasn't entirely feeling the blogger's blood flowing freely through my veins today and I didn't know if I'd have anything good to say. But I know that there are like two or three people out there that can't go to sleep on Tuesday nights if they haven't read my blog yet, so I knew I had to put the pedal to the proverbial metal and knock this baby out. Topics to be discussed today: Jeremy Evans, Slam Dunk Champion; free stuff for everybody; a few random thoughts (in the literal sense of the word); Leap Day; the end of my Star Wars marathon; and the greatest movie that hasn't been made yet. On we go!

NBA All-Star Weekend is one of my least favorite sporting events. It should be no secret that I hate the National Basketball Association. I hate pretty much all things about  basketball that don't pertain to either churchball, video games, or the Utah Jazz. This hatred of the all-star festivities in particular stems back to days of yore when Kobe Bryant waived off Karl Malone as he tried to set a pick for him, as any good teammate should. More recently, though distant still, was the time when Jason Richardson bounced the ball off of then-Cleveland Cavalier Carlos Boozer's head as he sat in a defensive stance. The all-star game lacks one fundamental thing that, ideally, would make somebody an all-star to begin with: defense. If you love offense, if you love the now-popular selfish style of one-on-one play and high-scoring shootouts, you probably get quite a kick out of the all-star game. I, for one, grew up loving teamwork and five-on-five basketball, so this isn't really something that knocks my socks off. Another thing that I grew up loving and emulating on Nerf hoops from here to West Jordan is the slam dunk contest. There have been some classic, even iconic dunk competitions in the past 25 years, but lately, unfortunately, there haven't been many to speak of. Instead of coming up with new and innovative dunks, the Sprite Slam competition continually comes up with new and innovative ways to disappoint me year after year. Initially, this year's contest was shaping up to be one of the worst ever, with participants Chase Budinger, Paul George, Derrick Williams, and Iman Shumpert... Who?? I had no interest whatsoever in any of those dunkers and was not planning on dedicating an entire night to watching it. Needless to say, that all changed. Good news came for Utah Jazz fans was when it was announced that New York's Iman Shumpert would be forced to sit the contest out with a nagging knee injury. Sumpert was replaced shortly thereafter by the Human Pogo Stick, himself - the Jazz's bench-warming high flyer, Jeremy Evans. For that reason - and that reason alone - I plopped down on the couch last weekend to check out (allegedly) the best the Association had to offer.


Jeremy's first dunk was... horrible. There's no easy way to say it. It was bad. The more I think of it, the more I realize that, if his goal was not to miss any dunks, he threw the ball a little too close to the hoop and had to put it down somehow, settling for the most basic of reverse slams. The crowd was not impressed and I was a little embarrassed. It was not a good way to start, to say the least. As the contest went on, my fears were soothed, to some extent, as the other participants came out and bricked a couple dunks each. Paul George of Indiana tried to jump over two of his teammates and failed on his first couple attempts. He finally got it to go, but still had to push off of Roy Hibbert's shoulders while Hibbert leaned forward, so that didn't impress me. Derrick Williams jumped over a motorcycle, which wasn't anything monumental since Blake Griffin jumped over (the hood of) a car last year - and Williams missed his first few attempts at that, anyway. Chase Budinger re-enacted what was already one of the lamest dunks in the history of the competition as he "blindfolded" himself before dunking it down, but... seriously? Do they think we really believe them when they do these things? We could practically see his eyes! Williams' second dunk was impressive, but he lost the remainder of his credibility with me when he had to attempt his final dunk at least 10 times before having any success. It was painful to watch. I re-watched a few clips of the contest on YouTube and saw a comment that pretty much summed up my feelings: "Is this the dunk contest or practice for the dunk contest?" Exactly. I've never seen so many missed dunks in my life. It was really embarrassing for everybody involved. Paul George's best dunk was the so-called "Tron" dunk, where he turned off the lights, revealing his glow-in-the-dark outfit, and then did a 360-windmill dunk, which people there in the audience seemed to enjoy, but there was one problem - you couldn't see it on TV!! Not impressed. His third dunk was lame, too, because he missed it four or five times before ultimately completing it.


Jeremy's second dunk was, in my opinion, easily the best of the entire night. Teammate Gordon Hayward sat on a stool a few feet in front of the basket, holding two basketballs. Jeremy jumped over Gordon as Hayward tossed both balls into the air. Evans caught both balls and slammed them in succession, one after the other. Granted, he did miss on the first attempt, but the second was money. That was something truly unique that has never been done before. Jeremy didn't need to boost himself over Gordon and Gordon didn't even flinch as his teammate soared to the rim. It was beautiful. The third dunk involved comedian Kevin Hart (who I had never heard of before in my life, but the audience seemed to like him) dressed as a postal worker and delivering a package for Mr. Evans. Inside the package was a retro Karl Malone jersey. Evans donned the jersey and jumped over the fake mailman, doing a tribute hammer dunk, a la the Jazz legend. Nice dunk. Nothing spectacular, but in the end, at least he didn't miss. After tabulating fans' votes via NBA.com, texting, and Twitter, Evans was crowned the slam dunk champion with 29% of the overall vote. In a normal year with normal participants, would Jeremy have won? With the exact same dunks he did that night? Maybe not. Probably not. If there would have been judges involved instead of choosing the winner completely based on social media, would he have won? Who knows? Maybe not. But here's the bottom line - he won in the format has was given. If people want to complain that it was a bunch of no-name dunkers, then it looks like some superstars need to step up and volunteer for next year. If they want to complain that he wasn't the best dunker that night, they should have voted for somebody else. He had the majority of the votes and he's on my team, so I'll take it. A win is a win, as they say. But other than that, it was probably one of the two worst dunk contests I've ever seen.

#WinJeremyWin

Twitter informs me that it's National Pancake Day today and IHOP is giving free pancakes to anybody who goes in to eat. That's fancy. I wish I didn't have a job so I could go do stuff like that. This makes me think... What are some other things that I think should be periodically distributed at no charge? Is there such a thing as National Bankers' Day? Everybody could go to the bank and get free money while supplies lasted. What about Ferrari Fridays? Every Friday there could be huge raffle drawings for somebody to win a new car. There could be National Snuggie Day in America: Free Snuggies for people living in the contiguous 48 states. It'd be like a big, warm hug from Uncle Sam. I dunno. A couple ideas, anyway. Someday when I'm elected President I'll be able to take these thoughts and run with them.

Oh yes.

By the way, what's with all the people texting me after last week's Issue telling me that I'm not old enough to be elected President? Do these people think I'm an idiot? Do they think I'm unaware of the rules? Of course I know the rules. That's why I'm running. Because America needs a leader. Someone who's young and innovative and can think outside the box. We're breaking ground in Washington this November, people. I will become the youngest President in the history of the United States of America. Get on the bandwagon. There's plenty of room. Aaron Christensen for President in 2012!




I don't understand traffic. I have a 20-minute commute to and from work every day and there is always slower traffic in certain stretches of the freeway - the Murray area, to be a little more precise. I don't get it. How does it start? The couple guys in front over everybody else are just not driving fast enough? Why don't they just drive a little faster? I mean, I understand if they're trying to get to the offramp and are being held up by a red light, but I don't know of anything other than a wreck that could slow down all four or five lanes at once. Coming home southbound, there's a stretch around 7200 S. which I can only imagine slows down because the freeway curves a little bit. How hard can that be, though? It's fine to ease off the gas a little bit, but do we all really need to come to a stop there every single day? I don't necessarily have any solutions for these problems, I just wanted to whine about them. Next topic.




If I could travel back to the Wild West and take with me one item from the present day, I think I'd take an office water cooler. I'd keep it in the shade just outside the door to the saloon. I think I'm going to get some Wendy's today when I get off work. [Editor's note: It was delicious.]




Confession: I saw that movie "Red Riding Hood" last night and I didn't think it was terrible. Not fantastic, but not terrible. Read my Examiner review. Debate me, haters.




I think that, on average, I don't get nearly enough sleep. I always say to myself, "I'm going to bed at 10:00 tonight," but you all know that never happens. Every two or three weeks, I'll have a night where I just come home exhausted and call it a night a little earlier on than I typically do, but I'm usually all right. This past week, it all caught up to me and I got a little sick. It was just a little cold and it wasn't anything that affected my ability to go to work or perform my normal duties during the week, but once I got home on Friday, I had one thing that I wanted to do: sleep. And sleep I did! Including a two-hour nap on Thursday night, I got more sleep last weekend than I think I normally do in a week. I spent a ton of time on Saturday down in bed and I also took two long naps on Sunday afternoon. I'm not a nap person. I may take one nap every week and a half or two and I think that last weekend I took six or seven. It was beautiful. You might as well all call me Rip Van Winkle. I think I'm going to start doing that more often. Who needs dating? Who needs food? All I needed last weekend was a bottle of orange juice, a box of Kleenex, and a couple of pillows. It was beautiful, people.

This was me.

Somebody messed up my hair today. It didn't make me happy. I think they thought I was joking, but I wasn't. I was serious. Next topic.




It's Leap Day tomorrow - February 29th - and that only happens once every four years. I hope you all have some wonderfully amazing plans in the works. In honor of Leap Year, here are some other things I think should only happen once every four years: NBA All-Star Weekend, public appearances by any of the Kardashians, taxes, having to brush your teeth before bed, dentist check-ups, filling up with gas, home teaching appointments, sorting socks, Valentine's Day, eating vegetables... The list goes on and on. Again, once I'm President, I'll bring real change to America.




My brethren and I finished our intrepid Star Wars Blu-ray marathon last week, much to the pleasure of my Twitter followers, whom we had all thoroughly annoyed by this point. I had a good time watching all six films over the past couple months. I'd like to believe that we provided a few good tweets along the way to those who followed along with our progress, which was none of you. I'd like to sum up our entire experience with one tweet, as posted by my youngest brother, @Codeman013: "One day, hopefully my children will read these tweets and will learn of my love of Star Wars.. #StarWarsMarathon" ...Indeed, brother. I hope they do. Let us pause for a moment of silence as we reflect upon the passing of our beloved Star Wars marathon.......................................................

R.I.P.

Speaking of great movies, my dear cousin, Andrea Chapman, posted on my Facebook wall last week saying she had a great idea for the movie based on and inspired by my life that will inevitably be made at some point in the next 30 to 40 years. Said she, "In the movie about your life, I've figured out who plays who. Of course Robert Pattinson plays you, George Hardy plays Craig T. and Marie Osmond plays Donny. BAM! Movie Magic." That's spot on. Great work, Andrea. I will be played by that ruggedly handsome and equally talented actor, Robert Pattinson. I didn't know who George Hardy was, but I looked him up and he's a good fit. And who better to play my pal Donny than his sister, Marie? We can't play ourselves, now, can we? Marie will do just fine. Oh baby! It's a cast made in Heaven! I'll start production immediately! Wait, no. No, I can't. I've got a few things that I need first: A) Who will play Austin? B) When does the movie take place? C) Where does the movie take place? D) Who are the villains (and who plays them)? And E) What is the main storyline? I know all of you people hate to participate and actually comment or ask Questions or anything like that, but I need your help!! Submit your ideas to me within the next six days and I'll put together a rough outline of the movie! You know where to find me. Hop to it!




I want to end today by talking about something awesome. I have racked my brain to think of the coolest thing I could possibly bring up at the close of today's Newsletter... Ding. Light bulb. I've got it. Go kart racing. Ohhhh yeah. That's definitely the coolest form of racing. I'd like to list for you now the Top Five coolest things you could build a go kart out of in random, non-sequential order. Start your engines!


1 - A washing machine


2 - A garbage can


3 - A bunch of soup cans held together with string


4 - A recliner


5 - Something shaped like a banana


One day when I'm elected Cub Master...

This dude knows what's up.

The Shoutout of the Week goes to Suzy Petersen, long-time Subscriber, dearly Loyal A-Towner. Suzy and I made our way back to Salt Lake International four years ago yesterday after providing what many would deem "commendable" service to the Lord our God, spanning the years 2006-2008. Time flies. And so did we.




That's about it for this week, kids. Wow, was today all over the place or what? Goodness. I think I need to go to sleep. Oh. No can do. No rest 'til Friday. Seriously, though, I'm expecting a couple movie suggestions from the five of you that have cajones enough to contact me. Oh yeah. I just went there. Burn, sizzle.




Until next Time,


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


Aaron