Throw-up anybody? I got 146 bottles in the garage

What is it about our culture that makes us so intrigued by multi-level marketing companies? Take one drive down I-15 and you will be bombarded with billboards advertising the next big pre-pre-launch and if you get in now, you will be number 112 in the company, but if you wait until tomorrow you will only be eligible for the pre-launch and so you will be distributor number 111,843. Nevertheless, don’t be worried because at the actual launch three years from now, you will still have 8,443,608,119 people in your down line who tell two friends, and they tell two friends, and so on, and so on.

Billboards? Is that not exactly counter to what the whole MLM approach is anyway? I thought the whole justification was that rather than spending millions of dollars a year on advertising, like those evil corporations do, you spread that out among thousands of distributors. Could somebody please enlighten me on this?

As somebody who has tried it twice and failed, I am definitely not the person to talk to if you are thinking about taking the plunge, but for what it is worth, I found out what it takes to create one of these models that ensures success. Step 1) make a magic juice…the more it tastes like throw-up the more likely you are to convince people it is good for them. Step 2) invite your friends over for dinner and start drawing triangles on a white board. Step 3) repeat as necessary.

I have come to the conclusion that there are two types of products in the world, (I really don’t believe this, I know that some MLM products are legit and really do help people, I just think it’s funny to blast them) good products and not so good products. Luckily, there is a pretty sure-fire way to tell these two types of products apart. Good products are sold at Costco, and bad products are sold on “autoship”.

WARNING! Bad products are also sold on TV. I know for a fact if you do not already own the Sham Wow you want one so bad. Every time you see that commercial, you want to pony up the dough and get one. Take it from someone who had to learn this the hard way: save yourself some time and money and pass. Or better yet, if you are still not convinced, go cut a piece off of an old felt blanket and try to sop something up with it…it’s pretty much the same thing. I know what you are thinking: “don’t they sell the Sham Wow at Costco?”…yes they do, but in Costco’s defense it is not their fault, Vince is just that good. Every time I see that dang commercial I seriously think to myself “oh, my gosh, maybe it does actually work” and then I pull them out again and sure enough…they still suck!

Interjection about Parenthood

Oh my heck, Heather and I just got to level 17 on Text Twist….BOOO YEEEAH!!!! This is essentially our life now. Having a child really changes your idea of having fun. Believe it or not, we used to be cool…we would do stuff…cool stuff too, like people would be jealous of how fun and cool we were. Now we stay up late (late, like 10:30) playing Text Twist. I think we can say we have truly arrived at parenthood.

I have been mulling over the idea for a couple of weeks now of a post blasting the insane amount of multi level marketing companies and security companies in Utah. But the amount of fun I just had over the last 30 minutes caused me to reevaluate this Sunday evening’s post. Don’t worry it’s coming…just not today.

As a parent of one I pretty much consider myself an expert on the subject…seriously ask me anything! Really, this post should probably be written by my sister Jen or my sister-in-law Erica, but they are probably busy making lunches or Halloween costumes… I mean these ladies are real parents; like I can’t wait to see what Erica does for Owen’s Eagle Project. So take it for what it’s worth, this is my input on the little sacrifices we make as parents.

Last night, Heather and I went on our first date without our seven month old daughter. (For those of you wondering how to still have a relationship with your significant other after kids, we just stumbled upon a gem. Put the kid down early and have a younger sibling come over and watch a movie with their girlfriend while you go out.) Since it had been so long, we decided to get creative and splurge a little…we treated ourselves to a Butterfinger shake and a regular order of Yukon Gold French Fries at Arctic Circle and came home after 45 minutes (p.s. we used coupons…total?...$3.21). I still marvel at how much has changed just over the last seven months.

Have I really aged that much? I used to get excited about going to the baseball playoffs, seeing Jack Johnson in concert, and going on ski trips…now I get excited over watching my daughter roll over, getting a high score in text twist, and General Conference.

Maybe spending 3 quarters of my monthly salary on baby food and accessories has caused me to rearrange some of my priorities a little, but I think I could search the world for an eternity and never find a thrill or see some beautiful vista that could compare to the feeling I get when I get my daughter out of her crib in the morning or hear her laugh. Although we don’t get huge earthly rewards for the sacrifices we make as parents, if every once in while I get to change a diaper without poop in it, that is reward enough for me.

Back to Basics

After a couple of weeks of ranting and writing about things that might only interest a small segment of the county population, I have decided to try and stay on theme this week and give a little plug to one of my favorite locals in the valley. Technically it's not in the valley at all actually but we can make it work
Living in Utah we have the privilege of living at the base of one of the most beautiful mountain ranges in the United States…Maybe even the world. Perhaps some of us tend to take this for granted from time to time. I like to think I have tried to make the most of my experience along the Wasatch Front. One location that I believe everyone who ends up leaving the beautiful expanses of Happy Valley really misses is Provo Canyon. Honestly this place provides an array of recreational activities that no individual no matter how young or old could not find something to keep them entertained. These are a few of my favorite things: Rain drops on roses and whiskers on kittens….JK Rowling, I couldn’t help myself
Fishing. If you don’t like to fish you can just get the heck out of here, this is America. Not only is Provo River one of the premier fly fishing destinations in the United States (well, for me maybe), but the vistas are incredible. Plus, if you go often you might actually be lucky enough to expose yourself to a local celebrity.
Bombing the Canyon. For all you old people who are not hip to new vernacular, this is not a terrorist threat. This is what we call long boarding down the Provo Canyon Trail (sorry again old people, a long board is a long skateboard…seriously get with the times). This can provide hours of enjoyment but if you decide to go, do me a favor and don’t be that guy who thinks it is hard core to break the rules and annoy everybody else on the trail.
Rafting the River. Although this has most recently turned into an activity for white trash people to waste time between NASCAR races and the summer rodeo line-up it actually is so much fun. A buddy of mine chartered tours a couple of summers ago for his in-laws who own High Country Rafting and it is worth every penny. You can also bring your own tube but if you get one from Wal-Mart make sure you start way down stream because you are not going to make it 15 feet on that piece of crap…no offense.
Outdoor Movies. I thought I would throw this in as we do live in the cheesy date capital of the world. (by the way, did you know that in other parts of the U.S. people ask people on dates by calling them…weird huh?). I actually did this once and I almost felt like I had to wear camouflage because the thought of running into somebody I knew seeing me do something so "BYU" gave me the gee willikers. I did have a good time though, but don’t take my word for it.

Hiking, Timpanogos Story Telling Festival, Water Skiing at Deer Creek, Skiing and outdoor theatre at Sundance, rope swing at Murdock Diversion Dam, and hucking pumpkins off cliffs were all honorable mentions…accept outdoor theatre at Sundance actually, I redact that, get some decent actors and maybe.

I would like to thank Julie Andrews and LeVar Burton for helping me with this post

This is Just Really Sad

It is totally unfortunate that I have to do this and I apologize in advance to all of my true fans who have to put up with this. I am going to take a week off what my normal theme and address a concern. Do you remember that movie "The Bodyguard" with Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner and there was that really creepy stalker who the cops arrested for sending crazy hate mail to Whitney Houston’s character? Well, apparently I have one of those crazy stalkers.

I read online that stalkers typically target people they idolize or who they are jealous of for some reason and they might be people from your past. My stalker apparently went to my high school but I will have to dig up an old yearbook because I can’t quite picture his/her face. I’m told his/her name is Morgan Jensen or something like that. I’m not even sure if he/she is a man or a woman. I have not visited the site myself ,but it’s rumored he/she created an entire webpage about how much he/she wishes he/she could generate the same web traffic that I do.

Not that I have given much thought to it, but if he/she is a he I picture him looking like this guy

If he/she is a she, I kinda picture her looking like this At any rate Morgan Jensen, if you are out there, I want to say that I am sorry for whatever it is that I have done to offend you. I want to be able to walk out of my house in the morning without having to put on a disguise for fear that I am being followed. If you need help coming up with material for your blog I am happy to help. Please don’t blame me for your uncommentable posts and your lack of social capital.

I swear I could not make this up

As I pondered what I was going to blog about today, my wife reminded me that I am supposed to do a follow-up to lasts week’s post….buuuut I’m totally over it! And since this is my blog and nobody can tell me what to do, I am going to share a fall back story that I have been saving for a rainy day where my creativity seems to be lacking severely (today qualifies as one of those days).
A lifetime of living around old people in Utah has taught me one thing: a real man has a great fishing story and a great BYU football story. (I totally made that up, there are several things I have learned from my elders and that actually isn’t one of them, but it’s essential to set up the story.) At the age of 26 I finally have one of my own that better be passed down from generation to generation. Lucky for you it’s a combo story, a football and fishing story all rolled into one…a fishootball story!!! Ideally this story should be told in front of a chalkboard so that a suitable diagram could be constructed, but we’ll have to make do.
A week before the beloved Cougs set out for Arlington to take on the highly ranked Sooners of Oklahoma, I took a Thursday evening fishing trip up the mighty Provo River with a fellow angler (he’s an angler, I like to consider myself more of a “fisher of men” if you know what I mean). After arriving at one of our favorite spots and experiencing little success, I decided to head upstream a ways and look for more uncharted territory. A log—seemingly placed in the river by divine intervention about 15 feet out from the shore—provided a perfect place for me to work my magic. As I waded through the river to the log the cold water caused the 44 oz. Diet Coke that I had just sucked down to digest more rapidly than it would have otherwise.
After about 15 minutes of complete solitude, I figured it would be safe for me to answer the call of nature from my current location, as a trek back through the frigid water would only make my dilemma all the more urgent. I strategically positioned myself in such a way that if somebody did come from the path I would be shielded by a tree back on the bank and if they came from the opposite direction only my backside would be in view and would be less revealing and obvious.
As I started peeing (sorry, I truly sat here for 15 minutes trying to find a more appropriate way to say that and for the life of me…), I was startled by a rustling in the bushes directly in front of me, but I took comfort in the assumption that it was just one of the members of a family of beavers that passed by about two minutes before. So you can imagine my horror when BRONCO MENDENHALL popped out of the thicket with a full frontal nudity shot of me being too lazy to find a more private location. The awkwardness was so thick you could cut it with scissors.
Five minutes later I landed the most beautiful rainbow trout I have ever caught in that river and feeling the need to put the past behind me I stupidly and boyishly said, “Hey Bronco, check out my fish!” He politely replied, “That’s a nice lookin’ fish,” and then he looked at me with these eyes that seemed to say “I know you know who I am, and I know that you know I come up here to be alone, so if you are going to fish next to me let’s keep the chit-chat to minimum.”
Despite having embarrassed myself in front of one of my idols, I did walk away with a feeling of pride having outfished the coach. The very next Thursday I went back up to fish that exact same spot to see if I could have some more luck, but somebody had beat me to it…Bronco Mendenhall!

Rolled Up Jean Shorts and Birkenstocks with Socks

This post is dedicated to all of the funny little idiosyncrasies that seem to typify Utah County residents. These are not meant to be criticisms, just observations—most of which I have an affinity for myself so I hope nobody gets offended. I do have to admit that I stole this idea from a book that I saw a while back entitled “What White People Like”; I just tailored it for my 11 dedicated followers. Once again this has a high risk of running long so the list will not be exhaustive so feel free to tell me what I missed.

Photography. I’m not talking about the hobby, I am talking about the epidemic known as commercial photography. In the good old days, you paid someone to take your picture for three things: your wedding, your always dreaded yearly family Christmas picture, and your school pictures (tip to parents on that last one: always get the cheapest package. Any photographer that uses a rubber chicken does not deserve the satisfaction of selling you 13 wallet-size images. Those guys could get a way with murder!) In modern Mormondom, we somehow think it is necessary to pay for photography at every milestone in our lives from baby’s first steps, turning 16, graduation, mission farewell, mission homecoming, pre-engagement, engagement, bridals, post wedding and so on. I swear I even know somebody who got professional head shots taken for their facebook profile. Aspiring individuals have seized that opportunity and entered the market. I would venture to say that 3 out of every 5 Utah County mothers consider themselves to be professional photographers. Interestingly enough, very few of these women have actually been trained in the art of photography; seemingly their single qualification is that they have a camera that is bigger than everybody else’s. (I just googled “Utah County Photographers” for fun…18,500,000 hits. That sounds about accurate)

Arrested Development and Acoustic/Local Music. What do these two things have in common you ask? I am as guilty as anybody on this one. To begin, the tv show Arrested Development is truly one of the most underrated shows ever and Tobias Funke might actually be the greatest character ever to hit television. Aside from its comedic genius, it seems that we tend to love this show and talk about it so often because not very many people know about it. I guess, truly, we just like to think we know something that nobody else does and being the first to tell them about it gives us some kind of sick satisfaction. We do the same thing when we think we were the first ones to discover some new musician; we want to tell everybody about it, but when it gets wildly popular we get all defensive and start telling people that we heard them first—hence our attraction to local music and single name acoustic guitarists that don’t have albums with huge record labels. Do you see the connection or is that a stretch?

P90X. I will give you one million dollars if you can walk into a gathering of greater than 50 locals and not find a single soul talking about this workout video. For those of you who aren’t listening and don’t know anything about it, this is not your typical Jane Fonda stretch pants and leg warmer work-out vid, this thing will blow your mind!
*(side note: my wife and I are on an indefinite exercise hiatus so I do not speak from experience)

Pregnancy and Entrepreneurship. Pregnancy in general is part of every Utah girl’s skill set, but here in Utah County we don’t stop there…Your pregnancy is also your small business license. The downside to this is that our poor kids have now become our dress up dolls. Remember when onesies were all you ever needed to keep your kid protected from the elements? Now there are roughly 61,448 “baby boutiques” along the Wasatch Front selling all of, but not limited to, the following items: tutus, leggings, hats, shoes, nylons that are worn on the head, grossly oversized hairbows that often require their own nylon head band and zip code (a trend reemergence that I have not welcomed with open arms), insanely priced diaper bags, binky clips, nursery decorations, jewelry, decorated baby wipes containers, and wigs….okay not really wigs but what if?

I have had so much fun with this post and have so much more I want to say that I am going to continue it on next week with your recommendations, so don’t be stingy with your comments.

Lay off me I'm starving!!!

Before I start this post, I need to add a couple of disclaimers: although I love eating out, trying new kinds of food, thinking about food, dreaming about food, making food, watching food network and writing about food, I am in no way qualified as a food critic. I do not even necessarily consider myself much of a connoisseur of food. I could not eat some delectable dish and correctly identify four out of the five native and/or non-native ingredients. And I do not know what goes good with coriander. I do, however, particularly like Mexican food and have tried my fair share of local Mexican cuisine, which brings me to disclaimer number two. This is not an all-inclusive list of all the local “south-of-the-border”-style dining establishments. Such a list would take too long and it’s Saturday night and my wife and I rented from Redbox….sorry to disappoint.

Here is a short list of some of my faves and least faves. Let’s start with a least fave: Living in Utah County, I could potentially be hung for this. In some circles my opinion in this matter could get me excommunicated on grounds of heresy. At the risk of total alienation from my family, friends, and classmates, I am going to go out on a limb here and say that Los Hermanos might actually be the worst Mexican food restaurant in the valley. I do not mean this to be offensive, but if I want a Lynn Wilson quality burrito I don’t need to pay somebody a tip to bring it to me, I can work a microwave just as good as they can. The atmosphere I will admit is not half bad (I’m throwing a bone to all you poor saps who thought it would be a romantic place to “pop the question”). The lines, however, are totally unsubstantiated other than they might be proof that we BYU students are truly not as adventurous and creative as we like to think we are. The most authentic thing about the place is the wall of foreign currency, although this points even further to our ignorance and naiveté (news flash Los Hermanos….just because a country speaks Spanish and lies south of the United States does not mean that they eat Mexican food…or even spicy food for that matter. I served a mission in Nicaragua and somehow the spice trade routes that Columbus was so desperately searching for missed that country by a 1200 miles or so.) I could go on but you get the point, Los Hermanos is Bush League…that goes for you too Joe Veras!

It has been my long standing opinion that a good Mexican restaurant is only as good as it’s Carne Asada. Las Tarascas in my opinion gets this right. It may not be the crowning jewel of Provo cuisine but it is certainly one of my favorite spots. For those of you who don’t know where this is it shares a strip mall with Albertsons, west of “the diagonal”. If you are looking for a quaint authentic atmosphere, do not touch this place with a ten foot pole; but if you are looking for really good Mexican food and a great salsa bar at reasonable prices be sure to tell them Jared sent you.

To keep from boring my audience the rest of the places on my list get to share one paragraph. We all know if you want “Fresh-Mex” or “Tex-Mex” or whatever the lame made up term they are using now-a-days is, you go with Café Rio (my wife actually made me say that, I personally like Costa Vida [their medium sauce is succulent…I would bathe in it]). If you want a lot of pretty dang good food for cheap and you are just coming out of the canyon after a long day of skiing, you have to go to Mama Chus on 8th North in Orem. Tacos? Try the little taco shop in the Amaco gas station on state street as you go up the hill into Orem (no that is not a joke, this place is legit). Really good salsa, try Tacos Guanajuatos in the parking lot by Movies 8 (not the one on 8th north and state street in Provo I have never been there and it looks like it could be contaminated). And lastly if you want amazing enchiladas like the ones that you used to be able to get at Rosa’s on bulldog (may it rest in peace), well I am sorry to say you are going to have to go to Mexico for that…