Anyone who has played in a band knows that with any one step forward there seem to be ten steps back. There are no breaks, there are no handouts, and there are no special tricks that will guarantee you power, fame and money. What does it take, then, to make it as a musician? Here are three points I would consider to be the most important.
BYU has an image problem, but it doesn’t seem to know it. Or maybe it just doesn’t care.
On the university’s home page recently — as well as in the alumni email I got earlier this month — I read about a new study by professors Jason Carroll and Brian Willoughby that argues that waiting until marriage to have sex benefits couples later on. The study was published in the Journal of Family Psychology.
The study was probably legit. It was published in a reputable journal, and my experience as a student at BYU (for more years than I care to admit) was that professors genuinely try to do serious scholarly work.
But whatever the study actually included, the uber-popular news website Gawker discovered it and expressed suspicion over how the scientific research “hews so closely to the Mormon church’s position on sex before marriage.”
Jimmer Fredette’s brother T.J. has always said he is amazing (see rapper T.J. Fredette’s song that is, interestingly enough, titled “Amazing”) — and after seeing Jimmer put up 39 points on UNLV last week in Las Vegas only to follow it up with the madness that was last night in Salt Lake City, I think I have to agree.
Fortunately for me I am not alone on this one. Jimmer and the BYU Cougars were the lead on SportsCenter last night, beginning the show with highlights of the BYU-Utah game, only to be directly followed by an interview Scott Van Pelt of ESPN had with Jimmer.
Despite embarrassingly missing a wide-open dunk late in the second half of last night’s game, Jimmer was able to do just about everything else. He had 47 points (32 of which came in the first half alone — more than any other Mountain West player has scored in an entire game this season), 6 assists, 4 rebounds, 2 steals and, for good measure, a 42-foot shot at the buzzer to complete the run Jimmer BYU made to end the first half.
The news is in. Not only was the entire offensive staff for the BYU football team released this afternoon by head coach Bronco Mendenhall and encouraged to search for job opportunities elsewhere, but my fellow colleagues here at Rhombus Magazine are starting a boy band. We plan to dedicate our first cover of the ground-breaking hit “Bye Bye Bye” from none other than ‘N Sync to BYU’s very own Robert Anae.
The news broke about 3:00 p.m. today from the Deseret News. Funny enough however, at 5:41 p.m. when I went to check the article before writing my thoughts here, the page that broke the news officially can “no longer be found” or “may not exist.”
Really? Is this going to be a major let-down to BYU football faithful everywhere? Let’s face it — Robert Anae has been a suspect (to say the least) play-caller for years. Thanks to a few questionable games he called this season without veteran quarterback Max Hall or running back Harvey Unga there to bail him out, Anae’s ineptitude was on full display and, thankfully for us, Bronco realized this… or so we thought.
Wandering the information superhighway lately, I discovered this recent video made by BYU’s Divine Comedy called “Provo, UT Girls.”
I found the video on the excellent, Provo-centric blog CJane’s Guide to Provo, where the author aptly points out that BYU culture and Provo culture are two very different things. Though C Jane doesn’t put it this way, I basically understood her point to be that if BYU students want to look like imbeciles, they oughtn’t presume to represent the larger community. I agree.
(It’s probably worth mentioning here that I did smile as I watched the video. I’ve also had a bunch of friends in BYU’s Divine Comedy over the years, and without exception they’ve been smart, witty and very cool people.)
However, a larger issue with this video — and with other, similar BYU humor — is that it actually perpetuates and reinforces the disparaging stereotypes it aims to mock. Or, put another way, these ideas about BYU wouldn’t exist without organizations like Divine Comedy keeping them alive.
A delayed flight from LAX to Salt Lake City due to a blizzard, unable to locate my car in the airport parking lot due to the same blizzard, driving over an hour at 20-30 mph over the 20 miles from the airport to Sandy due to the same blizzard, having to pull off the road and stay in a Comfort Inn over night because I could not make it home due to the same blizzard, and an awful first day back at school after an infinitely better and warmer Thanksgiving break in Southern California later, I can now sit down to reminisce about the BYU-Utah football game that took place about 48 hours ago.
Jake and Preston check in for a mid-week look at all the latest sports news, including a look back at last week’s BYU victory over Washington and a look forward at Saturday’s contest with Air Force in Colorado Springs. Enjoy!
Culture-bound syndromes (CBS) are cultural-specific acute behavioral disorders that are familiar as a disease or a mental condition in that population, but are not typically recognized outside of that society. What is crazy in one culture is not necessarily crazy in another.
After having lived in Provo for a couple years, I have come to develop a deep-rooted concern for cultural welfare of BYU students and the general population of those in Utah Valley. Now I know that I am not the most cultured person in the world, but I recognize the lack of value for entertainment [...]
I never have to open a door around campus, I rarely have to unload my groceries by myself, and I never pick up the check on a date. I must say, it’s good to be a woman. Yet I still live in the 31st-ranked country for women, according to the UNDP gender-related development index for [...]
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