Author: jdwhiting

This is just a special little shout-out to my friend Zak, who of his own initiative doctored up my Drive-In photo so that it says “Josh’s Froz-T-Freez” on the marquee (as seen above). It was really cool of him to do that. It probably would have been months before I got around to doing such a thing, if I ever did it. So thanks, Zak. And speaking of Zak, he has his own blog which, among other honest truths, contains a virtual video compendium of the sayings of Dwight Schrute, inspiring television personality of that beloved television program The Office (beloved by Zak and I, at least). So go check it out, whoever you are.

Now that a friend has contributed to the betterment of my blog, I guess I’d really better start using it.

I always kind of thought that I would grow up and be a writer. In 1st grade I started writing stories, and I kept on with it through elementary and junior high (Most of them I never quite finished, though). In high school I signed up for creative writing classes, and I discovered I liked poetry. So I wrote poems, and I wrote more never-finished stories with grandiose aspirations that were never fulfilled. I always maintained an impeccable GPA. I edited my high school literary magazine that nobody read. I stayed living at home, but went to college for a year. I took an intro to creative writing class. I started on classes for the English major. I submitted a poem to the New Yorker. Funny. Then I served an LDS mission in Ohio for two years. I sometimes tried to write things on my preparatory day, but it wouldn’t come. I sent some poems into a church magazine contest. I didn’t win, but they bought one of my poems and sent me a check for twenty-five bucks. I don’t know that they ever actually published it, though. I came home from my mission and took more English classes. I took poetry workshops. I felt like I did pretty good. The deadlines forced me to produce things, plus in a workshop you have a built-in test audience that has to read and react to your writing. I thought I would try to get an MFA in Creative Writing, and eventually become a Creative Writing professor. Because that is what poets do, right? They become professors and teach other people to write poetry and they get their poems published in the journals of all the other universities, right? That’s how all the great canonized ones did it, right? So I guess even then I was a little disillusioned with the state of poetry in society, as a niche academic specialty that seemed a little too cloistered, self-affirming and self-perpetuating. But I still wanted to play the game, because writing poetry doesn’t pay the bills unless you’re Kanye or 50. My senior year, I found that the two professors that I had planned on asking to write recommendation letters had both gone on sabbatical. I also was feeling very poor and like I wanted a job and to try something a little different. So I decided I would take a break from school for a year after I graduated, and try substitute teaching in the public schools, because I wanted to see if I liked teaching. I would then apply for MFA programs the next fall after graduation. So I started substitute teaching. My grandmother got really sick, and that took up a lot of time and made me kind of stressed. I didn’t write any poems. Fall came around. I kept putting off trying to get in contact with my old professors, kept putting off getting my portfolio polished. When I finally started trying to talk with the professors, I found it incredibly hard because I was no longer in school and didn’t know what was going on. I wasn’t a student so I had no claim upon their time any more. I asked them for letters at the last minute. I wrote a horrible self-sabotaging letter of intention. I slapped together a portfolio of old poems at a time when I basically hadn’t written a line of poetry in months. Needless to say, Spring rolled around and I got my rejection. I kept substituting. I told myself I didn’t really want to be part of that whole esoteric contemporary poetry crowd, that I didn’t want to teach stuffy academic classes to college students. My heart wasn’t in it, that is why I had sabotaged my own application. I’m still unsure if that is true or not. I kept substituting, I had nothing else to do. I read Harry Potter books and I read other children’s’ books I discovered while substituting, and I started to remember the kind of books and feelings that had gotten me interested in writing in the first place, when I was a kid: Roald Dahl, C.S. Lewis, Brian Jacques, Tolkien, Lois Lowry. I realized that an idea I had been kicking around for some poems ever since college was actually a better idea for a children’s/young adult novel. I started writing the thing during the summer when I didn’t sub. I wondered about trying to get a better job that had benefits, but I didn’t have a clue where to look and felt like I had no qualifications, just a B.A. in English literature. I did happen to get offered a better subbing job that payed a little more and was a little more fun. I didn’t write poetry. I got halfway through my first draft of the novel, and I got stuck. I decided to put it away. I just worked, and otherwise was lazy. At the end of the year, the good subbing job went away, but for some reason I didn’t feel overly concerned about this. Then early in the summer, the office through which I had worked as a substitute (Instructional Technology) called me up because a couple of secretaries were out with extended illnesses, and they wanted to know if I would help in the office. I did it for a month. I worked hard and enjoyed it. They decided to keep me as a sort of substitute-at-large for the department and just have me fill in anywhere extra help is needed. I discovered that, in addition to being in charge of the technology specialists who are supposed to train teachers in how to use computers and other technology for teaching, my department was also going to be inheriting all the library media people. I had always thought being a school librarian could be interesting, but I didn’t have a clue how to get into it. Now I am in the department that is over all such positions, and they are becoming more technology-centered. The idea of a job where I get to spend some time messing around with computers and the rest of the time trying to run a library and get kids interested in reading and help them learn to do research and stuff is quite appealing to me. So I’m thinking about starting next semester (January 2008) to take the classes necessary to get a media endorsement. But that book is still back there somewhere, whimpering for attention. And then there are the memories of my high school teachers who gave up their own writing to be teachers; I appreciated them, but I was never going to become like them. Books that never get finished don’t pay bills, though, and working a good ole’ 7-4 job and then coming home and watching t.v. or whatever feels pretty nice right now. The burning two-tongued question: If put in the work to become a librarian, do I give up the other dream, or can I do them both? Did my laziness give up the dream long ago? This is where my life is at at this moment.

Every week I tell myself I’m going to start a daily writing regiment, but I always put it off until the next day. No deadlines, nobody waiting to see what I come up with, nobody to answer to but myself, no paycheck, no easy finish like a fourteen line sonnet, not a thing about it easy or engaging in the least. But it’s still back there in the darkness, yelping and whimpering. Do I dress the wounds, pet it and feed it, give it therapy, put one of those big plastic cones around its head so it won’t lick itself, and take it out for a walk every day? Or do I get out the .22 and make it quick and painless? Not even PETA would care, in this case. Daydreams don’t have any feelings, they don’t have any advocates.

I think I’ll start writing again tomorrow.

Ever since I started the Froz-T-Freez, I’ve wanted to get a picture of some old derilect drive-in. Derilect primarily because I didn’t want to take a picture of a currently operating business and try to claim it as my own. At any rate, I finally found one on my most recent trip on the highways and byways of Utah. These sad remains were found on UT-28 in Elsinore. It goes at the top of the page now. Sometime later I might mess around with cropping it to make it fit better.

I took several different shots, but I kind of regret now that I didn’t go right up to the window for close-ups of the artifacts and instruments of ice-cream treatmaking entombed within. The soft-serve machine can clearly be seen in this shot, though, which is partially why I chose it.

So, I might start actually using this blog now. I know I’ve threatened that a lot of times, but you never know when I might start actually keeping my word.

I hate photography. I hate it because I often see potential photographic images, but I rarely am able to get them to actualize into real photographs. I don’t have the time or opportunity at that moment to stop and take a photograph. I can’t get to the right location to get the right view or framing. My little camera gets too shaky and blurs the image. I don’t have the right lenses or equipment. The equipment I do have I am uneducated in how I can use it to effect the outcome of my photographs. My reasons and excuses for failure run on and on and on.

This weekend I went on a trip with my family, up to Grand Teton and Yellowstone. I had become frustrated with my camera, and I sort of decided that I would try to not take any pictures during this vacation. I would just be there and enjoy the moment and not let myself get consumed with these urges to document anything that looks interesting to me. Great things rarely come from following them, anyway, and there are enough pictures of the Tetons already, right?

So, I did good with the not taking pictures thing all afternoon of my first day in the park. I walked around on a shore trail on Jackson lake and it was perfect in real life but the light was so bright on the lake and the mountains so backlit that I knew it wouldn’t be worth taking any pictures. This made it easy to stay with my goal. But later, driving to a different area of the park, my dad stopped the car at a certain point and started taking pictures of the mountains, and I looked over at Mount Moran and I liked the way the light looked on it and the way a little sagebrush ridge came up in front of it, and I wanted to take a picture of it, even though I knew it wouldn’t turn out the way I wanted it to turn out. I hoped the feeling would pass, but my dad kept taking pictures (I think he has the same problem I have, but he hasn’t yet recognized or admitted that it’s a problem). Trouble. Finally, I succumbed and I brought out the camera and took the picture. Then I tried it like six different ways, none of which were that great. Oh well.

As the trip went on I only fell into the trap a few more times. I had to play with the way the mountains were reflecting on String Lake. I had to take pictures of the Tetons and Jackson Lake and the surrounding valley from the classic spot on Signal Mountain. I became mesmerized by the water in Yellowstone Lake, and the only thing that broke my trance was the thought of what the waves and ripples of water would look like if I took pictures of them. And then I had to snap photos of bison in Hayden Valley. And then I had to take pictures of Yellowstone Canyon. But other than that, I was good with my goal.

I think my problem is I want to be a good photographer, but I don’t or can’t put in the time for it. You can’t be a photographer and a tourist. When you are a tourist or sightseer, you get to places when you get to them, and that is your chance to take a photograph, and if its not the right time of day or if there are five hundred people there that is just what you get. Usually there are the other people in your group to consider as well. You try to make it work, and usually you fail. Photography requires a special trip all its own. A certain place must be chosen and studied. The luxury of waiting for the right moment must be provided. You go to a place because it will provide good images at the moment, not because it is convenient or the next on the list. You then achieve the usual postcard image.

However, there is part of me that feels that documenting things as they really are is of value, even if it won’t sell postcards. I looked back at my pictures tonight, and I actually liked a lot of them. Many of the skies you would think were too bright and distorted against the mountains, and yet it expresses what it felt like to look at it exactly. It almost hurts to look into the sun, and in these photos it almost hurts, too. I looked back through some of my other photographs and realized that a lot of my favorites are the mistakes. They are interesting to me, even though they don’t follow the “rule of thirds” (whatever) or they are blurry, or whatever it is. They didn’t turn out the way I had hoped they would, but that doesn’t mean they are not of value. The ones that do turn out the way I expected are sometimes actually quite boring.

So now you can see why I hate photography so much. I hate it because it takes over my mind if I let it. I hate it so much that I am going to have to get a Digital SLR camera and learn how to use it.

[I refrained from including any of the images from my trip on purpose, because I am just kind of a jerk like that. I think I will start posting my photographs on here randomly whenever I feel like it, not in any type of groupings by location or subject. I have threatened to to do it before, but this time I think I will really do it. It will be a help in blogging consistently.]

[I wrote this last night (9/4) on my laptop while the power was out from a windstorm, so I couldn’t post it until today.]

1) The Road by Cormac McCarthy. If you didn’t want to read it because Oprah told you to read it, now you can go ahead and read it because I told you to read it. I was already a huge fan of the Border Trilogy before this book even came out so I feel that I have a little bit of C-Mac cred.

2) Diet Dr. Pepper ice cream floats

3) pandora.com – it works best if you give it some specific songs rather than just a band name, and have a little bit of patience.

4*) sitting in a chair all weekend instead of going hiking or camping

5) The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the N64 (or in my case the sixtyforce emulator for Mac)

6) Chicken Curry plate from Curry in a Hurry, Beef Brisket sandwich from Sugarhouse Barbecue Company, Torta from La Palapa Juice Bar

*I actually wish that I was able to do without #4, except for the fact that that would also do away with #s 1, 2, 3, and 5.

This morning I drove downtown and stood in a parking lot and watched a 20 story building explode, then drove back home and went back to bed. I went to the library and picked up all my holds, the music I feel duty-bound to document. I fell asleep reading John Ashbery. I finally decided to buy the more expensive mountain bike, but I can’t bring myself to go to the bike store and buy it. The new Smashing Pumpkins album is better than I thought it would be, but still not all that great. Right now some people I know are water skiing, along with some people I don’t know. A stranger wrote a kind comment on my blog, which made me feel embarrassed, and she left me no way to reply. My life never really changed. The blind date was better than I had feared it might be, but still not all that great. The new Interpol album sounds like sitting in a new Mercedes that is stuck in the mud, spinning out the wheels and splattering it everywhere. I’m starving, but I don’t feel like going to any of the restaurants and all I have at home is junk food. It is a beautiful day, but what would be the point of driving up any of the canyons? I need a new pair of shoes for work. I wish someone would get out of the car and push.

The silent alarms start going off in your head, because it looks like it’s going to be prog rock before you even listen to it. The cover fits squarely into the surrealist landscape prog rock tradition. A cursory look at the tracklisting reveals a closing song entitled “Knights of Cydonia.” The sounds coming out of your speakers during the opening moments of the album do nothing to dissuade you, as they feature a synthesizer figure which bears more than a passing resemblance to the theme music from Dr. Who.

And then something incredible happens. Over all of this prog rock pomp, the band get all pop on us, aping the likes of Prince, Coldplay, Timbaland/Timberlake, and New Order. But its still all firmly bolted to that solid Queen/Rush/Radiohead prog base. I think this is the first unabashed prog-pop album I have ever heard. It sounds like what Marillion have been trying and failing to do for the past 15 years with all their attempts at “mainstream” singles, and it sounds like what I think a lot of people wish Radiohead had done since Oklahoma OK Computer. Whether you agree with that or not I don’t care. All I know is that the anti-prog rock processing chip that was interfaced with my brain a few years ago (I think maybe the Strokes put it there) finally malfunctioned, and at long last, thanks to this album, the loop is broken and I am deprogrammed. I suddenly have this aching desire to listen to prog and quasi-prog. I’m going to get my Marillion albums out. I’m going to get all the Catherine Wheel albums I can get my hands on. I’m going to jam Permanent Waves and Grace Under Pressure. I’m going to give The Mars Volta another chance. I going to listen to everything Pink Floyd ever did. I may even dig out that old vinyl copy of Tarkus I found in the 99 cents bin once. O, most wonderful world of immaculately produced, melodramatically delivered and sometimes pointlessly complex but delicious music: why did I ever turn away from you in 2001? I’m no longer worthy to be called by your name, only let me be your servant.

I actually have no idea if this is true or not. I was just curious about how many hits I would get if I put a title and tag like this on my blog. Ha ha. Sorry to disappoint you.