Tabernacle Choir Postludes & Miracles

TABERNACLE CHOIR POSTLUDES-Miracles

1. The Church in it’s wisdom, has used the power of music to member and non-member alike to soften, stretch and change hearts. Participating in choral music has had the power to change my heart. While the Tabernacle Choir has always been a good will arm of The Church, my true inner motive for singing has always been music’s power to deepen my faith and increase my testimony. The text of the scriptures and the praise of God, set to rhythm and melody has helped me retain, and reflect on their meaning and has provided me with personal therapy and needed truth. Bach said it best: “Where there is devotional music, God is always at hand with his gracious presence.” Music, for me is a purveyor of joy. My life’s joy derives primarily from my relationships: those with God and from bonds with other human beings, especially my husband and family. Joy also comes from the capacity to enlarge the boundaries of my soul. My own experience has taught me that joy is generally derived IN TANDEM with or maybe in spite of personal struggle. Music, especially great choral music, has been an important bridge to enlarging the boundaries of my soul. The immense satisfaction of mastering beautiful text, set to complex musical passages, has brought into an ordinary life, all the beauty, wisdom and learning that I have the capacity to hold. It has provided a rich and vast range of spiritual and emotional experience, beyond my deserving. I believe that there is a special repository in the soul where music lives to tutor and heighten the impact of the senses on the soul . I know this is true for everyone and that great music embraces all and alienates none. I think of GRANDMA ALLEY (Oma) in the advanced stages of Alzheimers. She often didn’t know me or where she was, but could sing in full voice along with any hymn, word and note-perfect. As she was dying, when we were singing hymns around her bedside, she opened her eyes to correct a word and asked us to sing it again, even though she had been laying nearly lifeless for days. One day I was making a drop-off at the Deseret Industries and had my choir study tape on, trying to memorize notes.. My windows were down and It was going full bore. The worker at the loading dock, who was clearly mentally disabled, but his soul alive and vibrant as anyone’s, handed me my receipt and said with tears streaming, “Ma’m I sure like your music!” The compliment belonged to M. Lauredsen, composer of the sublimely beautiful “O Magnum Mysterium”. Simply put, the power of music is the genesis of many miracles.

Grounded at the airport in Melbourne, AUSTRALIA by a dense fog, we were laid out on the floor, head to head, toe to toe, purses for pillows, coats for blankets. A prayer had been offered to temper the weather so we could sing our concert in --------------------that night. Adding increased sincerity to our prayer we broke into “Holy Radiant Light”, a Choir favorite. Our chartered plane was the only one that lifted off that night, as the fog parted only momentarily to allow our departure. And it seemed to me that we departed on a slim trail of “Holy Radiant Light.”

Assembled in front of The DRESDEN TEMPLE for a concert to dignitaries and important opinion leaders of the area, we were keenly aware of the history of the temple there and we knew there was much at stake. Right before the downbeat it started to rain….pour; it was coming in sheets. We had our umbrellas up, poking each other in the eyes, trying to keep dry. It was a disaster. As soon as Jerry (Ottley) raised his baton for the downbeat, the rain ceased…midstream, like in Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. (Kids, you remember that one). It seemed as though the water droplets just hung in the air until we were done and resumed on cue precisely at the conclusion of beat 4 of the last note. The rest in history.

Another miracle happened at CHECKPOINT CHARLIE as we were trying to enter Poland. The entire Eastern Bloc (Russia, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Poland, Hungary) was in the throes of divesting itself of Communism. The Berlin Wall was being chipped away, the glass shards lining the top of the wall going to the boldest of the scramblers, and Gorbashev was just about to be kidnapped during our stay. On our choir bus, it was discovered that two of our male singers were missing their passports. Without discussion, spontaneously, seamlessly, we began singing while the border guards, guns brandished, came aboard the bus to check identification. We reached into our bags to retrieve recordings and pass-along cards to share with them. Even the Communists are zealous music lovers. In the meantime, two tenors, one straddling the toilet, the other in a fetal postion against the tiny corner of the bathroom wall, had stopped breathing so they wouldn’t be detected. The distraction worked and the performance there was history-making. For me, breath control took on a whole new meaning.

Each of us has claim on those experiences when we feel the Lord propelling us beyond our own limitations to accomplish something worthwhile. In 1989 during the flurry of activity surrounding President George Bush Senior’s INAUGURAL, sleep deprivation was fierce. I was sick and my voice was shot. Approaching the risers at Constitution Hall, I was weak, daunted by the task of reaching row 8. At the conductor’s cue I tried to push off from the riser to stand but couldn’t. I said a silent prayer at warp speed and in an instant, rose to sing with renewed physical strength and vocal power. As if to remind me that the Lord is my strength, I was allowed to experience both the complete emptying and renewing of strength between each of the numbers. I also knew that the blessing was given, not because of my own merit, but because the Lord wanted us to sound good in the nations’s Capitol. In awe of the experience, I shared it with another singer who offhandedly commented: “You haven’t been in the Choir very long, have you?”

At the NAUVOO TEMPLE DEDICATION, a lovely and intimate space, yet too small to accommodate the size of the Choir, we divided into four small groups. At each rehearsal we sounded puny, shallow of sound. We lacked the usual depth and richness of sound. We were discouraged, all of us, and wondered along with Dr. Jessop, if we could or should sing. During the first dedicatory session, in which I sang, if I hadn’t had the discipline to “keep my eye on the stick:, I would have been sorely tempted to turn around to see who else had joined us in producing an angelic, rich sound with the depth we had been missing.

The whole gamut of human endeavor is open to us when we align ourselves with

God and his holy purposes. I have seen that truth reinforced time and time again as a participant and a bystander. I am profoundly grateful for my calling to sing in the Tabernacle Choir and express my love to you, my children for the many sacrifices that enabled me to honor that calling. Despite the challenges, some benign neglect, and being abandoned on an occasional Christmas, you grew into high-functioning, wonderful adults. I appreciate the good parents you are and the consistent striving to please your Heavenly Father that I’ve observed in every one of your homes. This Christmas, though we are separated by oceans of water and more land than I ever dreamed, I hope you will feel my love and prayers across the miles and know how grateful I am for you and your children, all of whom are a wonder. I love you dearly, Mom

(Sister Alley, Asia Area China Mission)

A Strange Land

Christmas, 2010

A Strange Land

Two generations ago Robert Heinlein wrote a book called “Stranger in a Strange Land.” The book became a cult phenomena for the “flower” generation – it was a strange book, and therefore fit the theme of the book perfectly. Of course, the original expression comes from the Bible, as all good concepts do, when Moses said that he was a stranger in a strange land (having left Egypt) and called his son Gershom “a sojourner there.” The concept is foreign-ness, strangeness – one of Orson Scott Card’s favorite topics. I suppose we are all “sojourning” and there’s a few things here that make me feel stranger than I do at home, although I’m pretty strange there as well.

· Language. And I don’t mean Chinese, although Chinese makes me crazy, too. We have a member on the staff at the area office whose name is Sally Ng. Ng is pronounced “mmmm”. Now I understand why they call her “mmm” instead of “nggg” (which sounds like something you say when your mouth is full of dental implements and you’re being stuck with a needle full of Novocain.) “mmm” sounds delicious, instead of a cry of oral pain. But if they went to the trouble to Romanize the character, why not spell her name Sally Mmmm. Dumb. It’s English that’s really driving me wild. Everyone speaks English, or at least they claim they do. (Last night in the cab, Marcie says to the driver, “You have such good English.” He says, “You do too.”)

So, we’re at the branch party yesterday, which is more like a party-thon. These young women have nowhere to go, so they have come to the chapel to have fun and that is what they’re going to have for as long as it takes to get there. The leader gets us all up on our feet and yells into the mike, “We’re going to have a groping game.” Marcie turns to me and says, “I don’t think we can play this.” Then the lady at the mike yells, “Grope yourselves into threes!!!” Just when I think that is pretty violent groping, I realize that it’s a grouping game. Oh. OK. We can do this.

Some of their mis-anglicazations are serendipitous. They aren’t just grateful, they’re so much grateful. This is in prayers, testimonies, talks. And it says how they feel – and they don’t have anything – they work like slaves for 500 bucks a month, but they’re so much grateful.

· Cars. Marc and Ben would have a hey-day here. I don’t recognize a lot of these mechanical marvels creeping around the crowded Hong Kong streets. And it’s not because they’re Maserati’s and Lotuses (Loti?). How about the Toyota Alphard, or the Vellfire or the Harrier? Why do the Chinese have these and we don’t? I feel like someone who hasn’t been called for a second date. They’ve even put the steering wheel on the other side for them.

· Food. I wrote about the chicken testicles in my blog. That’s not what’s bothering me – I can put almost anything in my mouth that isn’t moving. It’s that these eating places are a little close to smells that make your eyes water – the sewers run under the storm grates right by that cute little restaurant which have half-tan ducks piled up on a table. Not much of the meat is ever refrigerated, so those smells waft around. One of the places we shop is the “wet” market – you step around piles of skinned porky pigs to get in. We always go in that exit so we spend less inside. I can eat Dim Sum with the best of them – I just don’t want to chew the air outside before I go in to the restaurant. Eating out isn’t the order of the day because of price --- I don’t understand why the food is so expensive if the people are poorer in the US, at least most of them. You can blow 50 bucks on a plate of “sizzling prawns.” And you can buy an umbrella for a buck. Strange.

· Transportation. We’ve never had so many ways to get somewhere and had no place to go.

o There are double-decker ling-lings – trolleys that cruise around, so narrow you’d think they’d tip. (Rich folks rent one, have a band and an open bar and cruise around the streets like a land-yacht.)

o There are double-decker buses – we’re wary of these because we got lost a couple of weeks ago by missing our stop on the way to the temple. (Buses go under harbors and through mountains. Once you get on the other side, people don’t think they or you should go back. So you’re stuck there – buy property, move in.) We talked to half a dozen cab drivers; rather than take us back, they turned off their “available” lights. Weird.

o There’s walking with the masses – this isn’t fast, but it’s the preferable way to the office. Everyone goes their own speed – big people like us can’t do side-to-side. One breaks trail and the other follows. If you look determined, there are few little Chinese who won’t yield to a Scandinavian bearing down on them.

o There are cabs – these guys normally can’t understand English – they probably don’t do Chinese either. They just grunt and go, but they’re cheap. So you may wind up somewhere you didn’t plan going, but at least it didn’t cost a lot.

o There’s the MTR – Chinese subways, fast, modern, sleek, come every minute or two. When you exit the MTR, you normally have five or six choices of exits. From above, a subway station with exits looks like an octopus – so the card that you use for the buses, the ling-lings and the MTR is called – that’s right – an Octopus card. You can put money on the card at the local 7-11, which is on every street corner and in the middle of the block. If you pulled 7-11 out of Hong Kong, you would have an economic vacuum only equaled by the Great Depression.

· Christmas. This is hard to explain – Christmas is an imported holiday here. The merchants recognize the value of a time where everyone gets presents, but the rest of it is lost in the translation. You still hear carols, but they’re the Chinese version – they sound like they’ve been recorded by Alvin and Friends – tinny, high, happy, choppy. You could jitterbug to “O Come All Ye Faithful.” The sense of solemnity, the snowy-wood-by-evening Christmas card, the silence, the deep sense of family, the sense of “global” light – just isn’t here. Hong Kong has Christmas decorations – mostly silly – huge displays with round Santas, scary figures, huge oriental teenagers with round faces and eyes (why do the Chinese think of themselves as having round eyes and we think slant eyes?), big Christmas trees, big Christmas lights (some on 100 story skyscrapers outlining greetings and stars and trees and Santa…). Some wore Santa caps (me too) on Christmas eve – most of them were drunk. I was not.

· Nutcracker. Yes, we went to the Nutcracker Ballet. This was different from home, but good different. The biggest ballerina didn’t crack 100 pounds. They have thin elegant arms that are like water grass – barely moving, always graceful, always correct. The little boy by me kept saying “Merry Christmas” (on command from his mother.) There were hundreds of children and – except for my grandchildren – they’re cuter than American kids. Great solemn faces, eyes that would make you weep. Marcie has had to restrain herself from going into the business of kidnapping. I have an idea they wouldn’t like our rice, though.

· Church Service. Both of us tend to have a little “wild look” in our eyes at the end of the Sabbath. Today I attended Branch Presidency meeting, conducted a baptismal ceremony for two sisters, attended Sacrament meeting where I passed the sacrament and ran the podium (you know, up for the old white guys and down for the sweet Filipinas), gave the ABL Lesson (After Baptism lesson) to the group of our newest converts, prepared the Priesthood lesson as I was walking to the front of the room and then turned around and gave it, and attended Branch Council meeting where we announced the Branch goals (4 converts a month and 3 brethren – outside the missionaries – present at priesthood.) Next I met with our Sunday School President (Rexy. Nice girl.) about getting her some new counselors. I suggested 3 girls baptized a couple of weeks ago. She only knew them by their picture and said she’d pray about it. I didn’t have time to count tithing – do that on Tuesday – or fill out the expense reports and look over the petty cash reconciliation. We didn’t have a branch dinner tonight – that happens on 1^st and 3^rd Sundays, so I went home early after the meeting with Rexy. Marcie’s schedule is equally demanding – English classes, financial counsel classes, institute classes, bringing sense to branch music and keeping the RS from going off the track. This is like going to Church with 100 of our daughters. Except our daughters have more experience and are less flighty. It’s great to be the Lord’s hands here – His hands sometimes have the shakes though.

· Electrical. This isn’t hard to explain: America – small plugs, big appliances. Hong Kong – big plugs, small appliances. They’re a little switch-happy over here. A switch with light (SWL) for the water heater, a SWL for the oven hood, a SWL for the air conditioners (three of them in 600 square feet), a SWL for the bathroom fan, SWL for the extension cords (which we have a bunch of) and SWL for the water cooler. They don’t need night-lites. You can find your way to the loo by the reddish glow. By the way the toilet is flushed with sea water and has a button for a big flush and a small flush. The Sister Missionary who explained this to us was quite tactful – I think she had given great thought to the phraseology beforehand.

All in all, there is more that is home than is not. I was home when I first saw George at the airport. I was home when I walked into our meetings. I was still home when I knew I was still related to all of you. For that I am not just grateful, but so much grateful.

Christmas, 2010

Stephen Alley

First Date

First Date

Darron Johnson

The tapestry of my dating career was held together by this common thread—unbelievably weird experiences. From automotive mishaps to Freudian slips, my experience was largely one of confusion and regret, which makes for hilarious memories now that they are safely 10 to 15 years behind me. Without any Dickensian prologue to this peculiar chapter in my life I was thrown, Robert Zemeckis style, directly into the action without the foggiest idea of what awaited me. No single date embodies the strangeness of these experiences quite so well as the first.

My very first date at the tender age of 16 was with Robyn Williams—not the funny-man-turned-serious-in-later-years actor, but the goddess who graced the halls of dear old AF High back in 1994. This fated night was over before it began. It will be easiest to follow my trail of tears in table form:

Time	Event	Comments
5:00 pm	Depart home	I was in wet clothes because my turn for laundry had been pushed back to Saturday afternoon, and I couldn’t bring myself to wear anything but my black jeans and turquoise No Fear t-shirt.
5:10 pm	Purchase gas	I also took this opportunity to buy a single rose which was never removed from its plastic wrapping.
5:20 pm	Drive past Robyn’s neighborhood	This should have resulted in on on-time arrival at the group’s meeting place, but it turned out that my sense of direction as a new driver was actually very bad.
5:35 pm	Flip a U-turn on an unknown road	This location would later become the Micron facility near I-15 at the point of the mountain.
5:40 pm	See the “Welcome to Highland” sign.	Highland is just one city north of Robyn’s parents’ house.
5:55 pm	Arrive at Brigham Kelly’s house	By nothing short of a miracle, I found the meeting place for our date. I was still without my date, and I had no hope of finding her on my own. Without knocking, I burst through the front door and demanded to know who in the room could show me exactly how to get to Robyn’s house. A few tentative hands went up. I stripped Mike Davis away from his own date to feed me directions to Robyn’s house en route.
6:00 pm	Arrive at Robyn’s house	My clothes were now dry, my palms wet and my face red. I gave her the gas station rose, she gave it to a puzzled sister to put into water. We left.
6:10 pm	Arrive at Brigham’s house redux	Here we met with the other 8 couples to head up into the canyon for a fire and some hot dogs.
6:45 pm	Arrive at Altamont camp ground	The gate was locked, but we were able to get it open, so we caravanned in.
7:00 pm	Burn a hole in my new boot	Trying to make myself useful, I decided to tend the fire. Another helpful guy took on the same responsibility, and when he threw a log into the fire it kicked up ash and embers which fell on the nylon part of my new HiTech boot and immediately singed a hole through the toe.
7:15 pm	Lamely give a hot dog to Robyn	At this point in the night, I realized that I did not know how to talk to girls. Recognizing this weakness, I compensated by getting her food and drinks and standing next to her in stoic silence.
7:30 pm	Ranger escorts our group from the site	Apparently we were not supposed to jimmy open the locked gate.
8:15 pm	Regroup at Heidi Christiansen’s	This was a nice reprieve from the stress of the night. We played night games and watched the SNL.
11:30 pm	Announce that if I don’t leave I’ll get grounded	Actually, this was not as embarrassing as it had played out in my mind for the 40 preceding minutes. I rehearsed it internally as I built the courage to admit I couldn’t be out past midnight. Everyone else agreed it was indeed time to go.
11:33 pm	My car inexplicably begins to bounce	…until I look in the rear view mirror to see the undiluted horror on Josh Pearson’s face as he stares at the back of my parents brand new, leased car.
11:35 pm	Discover I hate Grant Robinson	We used to call Grant “Lenny,” you know the really dumb but strong guy from Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Grant had somehow decided to perform a stress test on my little Geo Prism by jumping up and down on the bumper. The Prism failed miserably, evidenced by the bumper which was strong and secure on the passenger side while touching the ground on the driver’s side.
11:50 pm	Depart Heidi’s	Silent and grave, I pulled from the Christiansen home, wondering what form my punishment would take.
11:52 pm	Disengage the clutch to early and stall at a stop sign	This did not help me maintain any emotional control or dignity. I think that my poor date began to grasp my desperation while I pounded my fists into the steering wheel. She commented on how that sort of thing happens to her all the time—sweet girl. I answered her with steely silence and finally a gruff, “Oh ya?”
12:00 am	Drop off date	Distractedly I pulled up to Robyn’s driveway and stopped the car, without killing it this time. I recall her saying something like, “I hope you don’t get into too much trouble with your dad.” Then I think I mumbled something like, “Ya, he’s going to kill me.” With nothing remaining to say she let herself out. I was far too preoccupied with my impending doom to remember to open her door.
12:01 am	Depart Robyn’s	It was fortunate that there were no children in the street or police officers patroling between Robyn’s house and mine. I drove as fast as I could to minimize the damage awaiting me for breaking curfew.
12:08 am	Arrive home	My dad was on the couch watching a re-televised BYU football game. When I came in, he acknowledged me only by turning off the TV and declaring through the darkness, “You’re late. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

That talk was one of the least pleasant I’ve had to date. It wasn’t so much what my dad said, but rather all that he didn’t say while we both gazed into the back of his new car where the bumper should have been.

I paid the piper in many respects for that night, but I also learned something very valuable: Nothing could possibly be worse than that experience so my prospects had nowhere to go but up.

Friday Nights at the Alley Home

Brandon Alley

Christmas 2010

Friday Nights at the Alley Home

My parents developed what I thought was a good habit early on in their marriage. As far back as I can remember Mom and Dad always seemed to manage to go out on a weekly date with eachother. They usually did something simple like dinner or a movie, and while it provided my parents a brief respite from us, it also gave us (kids) some much needed freedom. Of course there were some unintended consequences that resulted from these short bouts of freedom. Case in point…the time Marc decided to take justice into his own hands and duct tape an M-80 firecracker to the Paxton’s back door. You may wonder why. No reason really, it was simply a combination of boredom, some curiosity as to how much power an M-80 packs, and the fact that a few smug, bratty, self-entitled young girls that we just couldn’t tolerate conveniently resided directly across the street from us. Perhaps, this story should be told another time, or maybe not, but suffice it to say that night that Marc vicariously fulfilled something that Ben and I had always wanted to do, but simply could not for lack of cajones.

Another Friday evening, while Mom and Dad were out on their date, Ben and I found ourselves positively bored out of our minds with nothing to do. I don’t recall Marc being with us that evening…he was probably in the process of masterminding his next covert operation or detonating an explosive. Anyway, Ben’s real name was “Robert”, but he always went by “Benji”, until at a later date, we began to refer to him as just “Ben”. I still take credit for making the conscious choice to start calling him “Ben”, rather than something more appropriate for a toy poodle. I don’t know why he went by “Benji” as long as he did, but if Mom had her way, Ben would still go as “Benji”, I would go as “Brandy”, Megan would go as “Muggles”, and Kristen would go as “Kissy”. And, there would’ve been no end to the ass kicking we would’ve received at school on a daily basis. Marc never had to deal with any so called endearing nicknames, and he still had his fair share of ass kicking. I digress.

Back to the story…so there we were. Benji and I had nothing to do, and out of nowhere I say, “You know what ‘Benji’ reminds me of?” “What?” says Benji. Then with apparently no filter between by brain and my mouth, I say, “a barn door”. I admit this was a stupid thing to say, but first you have to understand the logic of a seven-year old. “Benji” reminded me of the word “hinge”, which invariably made me think of a barn door. This makes perfect sense right? But no, I didn’t have time to explain this brilliant logic to Benji, because with his next response you would’ve thought I had used the worst possible insult and kicked him in the crotch.

Says Benji, “You know what your name reminds me of?” There I was stupidly grinning thinking that he was going to repay me with a compliment. “Barn door” after all was a fairly neutral connotation associated with his name. “What?” I said, still clueless to what was about to come. “A bleep”, says Benji without skipping a beat. Now, I won’t tell you what he said, but the word starts with “Fa” and ends in “ggot”. I felt like I had just been punched in the stomach. I had no clue what the meaning of this word was, but I knew enough that, in fact, it was not a compliment. This was too much for me. I came unglued and began to spout out the first thing that came to mind. As I began to form those terrible words, far off in the distance, I heard a familiar sound. But it did not fully register at the time as I was intent on giving Benji a piece of my mind.

Unfortunately, I cannot repeat the words I uttered, but suffice it to say it was the mother of all cuss words strung with another word that I had heard at school starting with “g” and ending in “ay”. Once again, I was clueless as to its meaning, and the word combination made no sense at all as I was not experienced in the use of profanity. It did, however, have the intended effect. Furthermore, the all-too familiar sound I had heard as I began to scream profanities at my sibling turned out to be the jingling and turning of keys in the deadbolt lock of our front door. That sound quickly transitioned to yet another sound, a very terrible sound. It was the sound of Dad’s footsteps rushing down the stairs to the basement at mach speed where I awaited my impending doom.

Dad looked as though he would tear me to pieces, but of course he didn’t. He simply picked me up, carried me to the bathroom in search of some soap, while I began to cry. It was no surprise to me that he didn’t find any soap in our downstair’s bathroom. After all, this was the boys’ bathroom. “Hmmm, no soap!” he said as he flung the bathroom door open. “Well, this will have to do!” he said as he then hurriedly inspected the shower and produced a bottle of shampoo. Soon, my mouth was cleansed of its impurities and smelling like Suave (I think).

Dad then took me aside to explain the meaning of what I just said. The explanation had to be simple enough for a seven-year old to understand, so needless to say, the explanation was short, to the point, and without mincing of words. Not only was this awkward and disturbing, but I was horrified both at what Dad was saying and also at what I had said to Benji. I had never heard of such things as what Dad explained that evening. He then hugged me and all was well.

The whole experience made such a deep impression on me that I took it upon myself to educate my friends and acquaintances at school any time I heard this particular word. Each time I explained the meaning I got the same disgusted reaction, but it seemed to do the trick and the cussing would invariably stop.

THE END

Old Tron

Christmas 2010

Marc Alley

Old Tron

I watched Tron the other day on Netflix. No, not the super sharp all-digital version popping out in 3D all across the country on Disney’s platinum dime. It was the original one, comparatively grainy and two dimensional, with young Jeff Bridge’s grinning face peering out from his monochromatic helmet and stretch suit. Although. . . it sure looked sharp to me when I was 12. Boy, do I feel old. The distance between me and these tweeting teens is palpable. Yet they seem even more wired into the “grid” then the laser bike-wielding drones in the original film. See what I did there?

We all watched Tron: Kate, Cindy, Gabe and I. Cindy and Kate thought it was just plain stupid. They just didn’t get it. You can imagine how Gabe felt about it, he had the opposite reaction. I still like it too. Though it doesn’t look as cool as the new one, it represents an attempt at putting some of the first CGI in a Hollywood film, and one of the first, if not THE first movie to create a computer-simulated world in which a human could be lost in, a world that could be navigated and mastered. But it was a grey and neon world, with crisp edges, deep chasms and darkness. It represented what was coming, the dark, sharp and unyielding grids of the World Wide Web. Hello Japanese people, the Web isn’t just on your cell phone, you know!

I digress. I don’t think people now realize how exciting the late seventies and early eighties were. Microcomputers were emerging for the first time and so were games. Drives were being produced that didn’t sound like a jet powering up. Pong was the first game out, but before my time. Dad’s first gaming experience was just a text-based game, such as Adventure, which could be mapped out on a grid. That simple game kept him and Lynn up nights for hours, trying to defeat it. Maybe Dad actually did something other than listen to the birds slide off the roof of his office or program “12 hours a day” at Datawest.

Most of the kids in our east-side neighborhood had the cartridge-based Atari systems, but not our house. After all, that was just for gaming. Our first computer was an Atari 1200XL with the optional “type-quality” printer. I’m sure that Mom and Dad were sold by the fact that it was capable of some mind-numbing word processing as long as you could follow the characters for your only sentence onto the next blue screen. I don’t think the printer was ever even used. Later on we would be one of the first kids on the block to experience the otherworldly and groundbreaking Apple Macintosh. Suck on this mouse, you WordPerfect PC users! Word processing anyone?

I digress again. We used our 1200XL pretty much exclusively for gaming. And what a great little gaming computer it was. The plain old Atari console could do little more than represent simple block characters, while making up for what it lacked graphically by clever movement and riveting joystick play. The Magnavox Odyssey was a bit more creative, with faster reaction times and creative game design like fantasy games where you could cast spells or become a warrior and work as a team. Yet both systems relied upon the clunky 7-pixel characters that were the industry standby.

The Atari 800 and its 1000 series predecessor kicked it up a notch with much faster processors, and more memory capable of rendering more detail in full color. Even better, you could just copy a friend’s game diskette. Ah, the days before software piracy and algorithm encryption. One of the best games for our 1200 XL had simple graphic design, but wicked and strategic 2-player battle game play. The game started out as a chessboard, with a dark and light side, each with different characters that could challenge each other. Then the characters would crawl off the chessboard, and do battle upon a rock and tree-strewn simple battlefield. The Giant could throw a huge boulder but lumbered along slowly with a thumping sound, while the Unicorn and Basilisk could move at unnerving speed and spew their lightning missiles. The game proved that you didn’t need great graphics to have great game play. The secret of its fun was playing someone else, like a brother or friend. It’s no wonder Archon was such a successful game . . . there were about 10 versions of it available on several systems.

The all time system favorite, though, had to be Bruce Lee, a 1-player 2D scrolling action fighting game that was just a thing of beauty. On a recent online blog I was happily surprised to see Bruce Lee as one of the most revered and highly-rated game of its time. The Atari 1200XL was so fun to play Bruce Lee with Ben and Brandon because we would take turns and watch each other play. It was almost as enjoyable to watch as it was to play. The graphic colors were rendered beautifully for its time and almost looked 3 dimensional. There were other Asian warriors to battle, including a fierce, fire-breathing little savage. But the real challenge was the unending levels of flooring that contained bundles of electricity that would pulse in various waves and patterns. Touch a verboten object and you were dead. I remember Ben and Brandon holding their breaths as I bounded over those difficult boards over and over. Actually, the most challenging and absolutely brutal aspect of this period of games was the fact that once your 3 lives were over that was it. There was no do over, no continue. The hours of struggle just didn’t matter and you were left staring helplessly, limply, in absolute horror at the subjugation and endured inhumanity. GAME OVER.

I laugh at the preening weenies that call themselves gamers nowadays. The sycophants chattering dully into their broadband headsets as they virtually stroll through Liberty City punching innocent immigrant bystanders while all of their progress is saved three ways to Sunday. You guys don’t even know what the phrase means! It used to really mean something!

Do you remember in the movie Aliens what Hudson says when they get their butts handed to them by the acid-pumping skeletal aliens? That's it man, game over man, game over! What the * are we gonna do now? He said that because it was truly the end and he knew what it really meant. We all did.

Losing to Donkey Kong at the local Emigration Market was even more complete and final. Game Over only meant one thing to me. Do you have another quarter, punk? If I didn’t, it meant back to the grindstone, and underneath that great and heavy stone was an unending pile of nice, healthy whole wheat which was being ground for my breakfast, lunch and dinner. Gone would be the land of nacho cheese Doritos, Coca Cola and extra gumballs. Violins needed to be tuned and sawed, little sisters needed babysitting, and diaper pails required emptying. Maybe that’s why Ben stockpiled this stuff and sold it to us on Fast Sunday. He was selling us the essence of Emigration market and those long summer nights when we had nothing else better to do but bike around the neighborhood and catch a game of Qbert, Defender or Centipede. Like impotent inmates handing out their last pack of cigarettes for some meaningless favor, we’d shell out for it in the end.

One day, a few years later, I was strolling through the basement of Crossroads Mall and I wandered by a game that blew my mind. It was a game that had four joysticks, two for each player and no buttons. No jump or fire button? Weird. It was really unnerving. It was called Karate Champ. The concept was way ahead of its time. You basically had to memorize the combination of each joystick combo to make the character move forward to your opponent, attack him, block, etc. The distance between each player also had to be carefully gauged when you attacked or you’d miss your opponent completely and set yourself up to be killed. I noticed these details and seemed to be able to master the game quite quickly. It must have been my earlier Jedi/Archon training with my brothers.

What was really funny is when inexperienced players would move forward to an opponent and they would jump over you. The newbie player wouldn’t even know how to turn around. The experienced player would just casually walk over to the newbie, helplessly kicking and jabbing the air, and deliver a ruthless strike to his lower back.

This game was really a different concept in that you could battle a complete stranger in an arcade as long you had that quarter. When you were playing others and beating them you could play forever while the losing chumps would just keep depositing their hard-earned cash. One time, I played opponents for almost an hour with as a queue of those soon-to-be beaten were waiting and other outside observers would even gather around to watch to see if I would be defeated. They’d eventually lose, and I’d end taking on the CPU who would usually vanquish me in the final scene. When it was all over, it was kind of surreal as I didn’t know anyone there and they didn’t know me. I’m sure that parents strolling by thought I was a wastrel youth, blowing my mowing money on a stupid game. To me, though, it was totally worth a buck or two to have a fun 100 minutes. I could earn this in 10 minutes mowing somebody’s lawn or re-inking a printer ribbon.

Nobody in the arcade cared what you were wearing, if your hair looked right or if you had a bad zit day. It was very egalitarian. If you wanted to play a game someone was playing, you’d just lean a corner against the screen and as soon as the engaged player died, you’d have control. I never once had a problem with anyone in any store or arcade and they seemed to follow a good code of conduct, especially around younger children. Often you’d see dads with their younger children who would drag them in for a first time. The atmosphere in the food court or on the street in front of Crossroads was never as friendly or courteous. They were the dread-locked and woven pullovered loiterers and ne’er-do-wells.

I never could understand that. I always had some place to go, some deadline to meet, whether it was for a parent or friend. There were days that I pretended that I didn’t, those days before cell phones, but I still had obligations and people expecting me to be someplace. Maybe it was because those kids parents didn’t care if they came or not, and didn’t care when they did. Now that I think back, I think that made me feel more secure, more sure of myself. Sure, I was a pretty insecure teen with a lot to prove, and not exactly sure who I was. I tried on a lot of hats, a lot of identities. Many around me did the same. But I think that I did it with the comfort and knowledge of knowing that when I did that I wasn’t risking everything, I wasn’t painting myself into a corner. Maybe those kids didn’t even have the fifty cents to walk in to the arcade, and a lifetime of hacky-sack only cost the same.

Eventually, programmers and I think mostly the corporations that paid them figured out that if you could CONTINUE a game in progress that it was a lot more profitable, and frustrated players wouldn’t just walk away, they would put in more money. I was always careful about what games I’d continue and I wouldn’t play them if they were quarter suckers. Games had permanently changed in nature after this feature, and drove the console and arcade market to some pretty weird consequences.

A lot of people are pretty snobby about video games and think that they are a complete waste of time. Yet those same people are perfectly fine spending hours playing Solitaire at work, or mindlessly chatting on the phone for hours or texting or tweeting everyone but the Pope. There are some pretty objectionable and realistic games out nowadays and it’s not the best hobby for people that have the social skills of a gnat and no friends. If you’re spending your nights stalking young girls as a vampire you might want to rethink your life. Oh wait a minute, isn’t that the theme of the latest new book craze?

Let’s not forget that not everyone can be the star of the college football team, save the U.S. from terrorist threats, play with the Beatles or climb/heli ski Mount Everest. But in video games, you can. Some of the best times I’ve had with my friends and family have been playing video games, or even board games. Card games are pretty fun, too. OK, this is not really making my point too well. Am I still getting that Xbox 360 for Christmas? Hello?

Getting back to Tron, I think we’re all a bit more wired in then we care to admit. I've got to say that the future as we’re now living it is much more boring than the eighties films portrayed it. Where’s my hover board, self-fitting Nikes and air car? My jeans don’t have glowing lines to protect me from traffic or tell me when they should be washed. A cool cell phone just doesn’t cut the mustard. I want a future where we have all of the cool stuff but less of the danger. I’m just hoping that in the future that we won’t be chased by hovering, legged Ms in our lightcycles and that we won’t have CPUs implanted in our skulls. Does anyone want to go with me to see the new Tron film? I’ll buy the popcorn.