Hooked on the Brothers (and Sisters)

The '90s TV program "The Super Mario Bros. Super Show," designed to cash in on the popular video game franchise, featured a theme song that included killer lyrics such as these:

"We're the Mario Brothers, and plumbing's our game
We 're not like the others who get all the fame
If yo' sink is in trouble y'can call us on the double,
We're faster than the others, you'll be hooked on the brothers!

The show was, well, terrible. Worst of all was the choreography for "Do the Mario," featured during the closing credits and sung/danced by Captain Lou Albano, aka Mario.

It didn't make any of us like the video games any less, but it did make us all cringe a great deal.

Anyhow, my topic today revolves around being "hooked on the brothers"—or, rather, the brethren (and sisters) who lead and guide the Church in these latter days. They're amazing, valiant, strong, inspired, and exemplary people, and I enjoyed so many of their talks from this weekend's biannual general conference.

I am hooked on the brothers (and sisters).

Speaking of the sisters, did you know that the still-relatively new general women's meeting is now considered to be the first session of a six-session general conference?

True story.

This conference was also the first at which speakers were invited to give their talks in their native languages, and we ended up with Conference Center sermons delivered in Cantonese, Portuguese, and Spanish.

It's wonderful to be reassured twice a year like this that, as Elder Bednar taught, "Absolute truth exists in a world that increasingly disdains and dismisses absolutes."

The Best Two Years, and Beyond

I spent a good deal of the weekend listening to two old cassette tapes, which I dug up the other day. Cassette tapes, in case you were wondering, came along way before MP3s and iPods and also preceded CDs, which are sadly becoming more and more passé these days.

These tapes had spent a few years collecting dust and basically just lying around. One tape was a recording of the sacrament meeting in which I gave my "farewell" address before heading off to the MTC and then the mission field at age 19, and the second recording was of my "homecoming" talk upon returning from Peru two years later at age 21.

I can sum up the experience in one word: Wow.

It all brought back so many memories to listen to myself speak on both occasions, and I don't like to listen to my own voice all that much, so it took some patience and self-consciousness, too. It was interesting to listen to my young and eager but not-so-wise-in-the-ways-of-the-world self speak before departing and then my heavily Spanish-accented self (much more than I recall being at the time) speak somewhat extemporaneously and much more fluidly upon returning.

Reflecting back on those times and on the perspective I've gained since then, it's interesting to me to hear now, from many different sources, that the mission is "the best two years" in your life. Certainly, it was an amazing, unforgettable, growing, and educational experience that I'll never, ever forget, I saw some very beautiful and also some very ugly places, and I made many friendships that I hope to carry with me into the eternities.

But "best two years"? Well, if my life has already reached its greatest point at age 21, then I've been living through years of disappointment, with additional years of disappointment still ahead.

Another school of thought, and the one that I agree with, is that the mission is "the best two years" of your life up to that point of your life. You then return home, go back to school, work, marry (well, two out of three isn't bad), etc. and then make the next year the best year, then the year after that, and so on.

Have the years since my return home been disappointing? Has it been nothing but a downward slope? In some ways, these years have not turned out at all like I expected they would. I've had my share of disappointment, trials, grief, thorns in the flesh, and unfortunately also consequences when I've not done some of the things I should have done or I've let opportunities slip away. To quote John Lennon, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

Nevertheless, I've also been richly blessed at the same time. I've been given opportunities to work, to play, to study, to learn, to develop talents, to grow, to date, to meet new people, to travel, to give, to receive, and to take uncertain steps into the dark future, one day at a time—some of which have paid off, and others have not. And I wouldn't have missed nearly all of it.

Except for January 2008. That was a tough month that I never want to repeat, ever again.

Flippin' Heck

A little more than a week ago, nominees for the 2014 Academy Awards were announced. Unfortunately, in the Angry White Loner's humble opinion, Hollywood tends to get these things wrong far more often than it gets them right. Harrison Ford, for example, who was absolutely amazing in the role of Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey, was completely robbed of a Best Supporting Actor nomination for 42. Tom Hanks, likewise, certainly deserved a Best Actor nomination for the title role in Captain Phillips, which is hands-down the best film of 2013. No Best Animated Feature nomination for Monsters University, either.

But still, the Angry White Loner pays attention to things like these. One of the categories that caught my eye was Best Adapted Screenplay, because one of the nominees was Terence Winter, who wrote The Wolf of Wall Street—a script that included a staggering total of 506 F-bombs over the course of a 179-minute movie, or about one F-bomb for each 20 seconds of screen time. That's not even mentioning the graphic sexual content, which I understand is explicit and frequent.

This is what Hollywood calls award-winning filmmaking.

I mentioned something to this effect on Facebook the day that the nominations came out. People, as they are wont to do, opined on the subject. While many tended to agree with me about the objectionable content, a few brought up the fact that people swear everywhere, and filmmaking that uses a great deal of swearing is "realistic" and simply a product of our culture.

You're a prude, I felt some of them were saying in essence. You're a Prudy McPrude Pants with a Prude Casserole, with Prude Sauce on Top, Served with a Tall Glass of Prude Juice. And Prude Cake for Dessert.

Even America's (or Canada's) "sweetheart," Justin Bieber, is now making a name for himself with the potty talk. At least, according to the transcript I saw on the news following his arrest last Thursday for drag racing and driving while intoxicated (with an expired license, to boot), every fourth or fifth word out of his mouth was reportedly an F-bomb.

Which is the kind of intelligent talk we've come to expect from a genius such as him by now.

Though cursing may be realistic, it doesn't mean I want to be around it. I believe that the words we choose to use do matter, and they reflect our minds and character. And I've been around all sorts of cursing. There are plenty of other things that actually happen in the real world every day that I don't want to be around, either.

Twerking, for example.

President Hinckley, I believe, summed things up very well in the April 2007 general conference:

"Be clean in your language. There is so much of filthy, sleazy talk these days. Failure to express yourself in language that is clean marks you as one whose vocabulary is extremely limited. . . . A filthy mind expresses itself in filthy and profane language. A clean mind expresses itself in language that is positive and uplifting and in deeds that bring happiness to the heart."

If following this counsel makes me a prude, then I'm proud to be one. Cursing not only offends the ears; it is the product of a filthy, lazy, uneducated, and impatient mind, too.

Or so I've been told. Now, it's Netflix time for me. I'm going to be watching "Christmas with the California Prudes."