we’re going to salt lake city (man, i'm a sensistive man)

quick note on my month long challenge to have a post for each day of august: true, i did not post anything for the last three days, but i will still hold true to my promise to have a post for each day of the month. as such, you can expect 31 posts on this blog by the end of march. they may not come out each day, but they will be here in the end. i gave my word.

this post corresponds to tuesday, august 5.

on tuesday, my sister-in-law got married. she got married in salt lake city, utah, at the temple in the downtown area of the city. i hadn’t been there for a few years, so it was nice to go visit. more than ever, the architecture of the temple caught my eye and made me realize just how amazing of a building it is especially when considering it was built over a hundred years ago. the church has invested a lot in the downtown area, so there is a lot going on right now (construction/renovation). pretty fun to see what is happening. they’re doing a good job.

the wedding was great. it’s always quite an experience to sit in on the sealing of a family member. thanks, tam and adam. the weather was close to ideal as there was a nice cloud covering (still a little warm, but not too bad especially considering the vegas heat we had come from). we had a luncheon at the joseph smith memorial building and it was pretty tasty, although not terribly accommodating for the token non-member invitee looking for a drink. the hodges had some non-lds friends in from houston for the wedding one of which was apparently rendered completely befuddled after being turned down each time after successive requests for coffee, then coke, and finally ice tea. probably the most sober wedding he had ever been to.

since we were at the joseph smith memorial building, and i haven’t seen the new movie about joseph smith, i thought it would be fitting to take the family to see it after the luncheon ended. so, being the funny guy i am, i thought we would all get a kick out of me inviting my sister-in-law who had just gotten married, and her new husband, to see if they would like to take in a movie with us on their wedding night. and so i asked t-cakes and i guess she didn’t get it was a joke as she started seriously considering accepting the invite. sadly, i had to quickly inform her that the proper response to such a request given the timing is not just a polite “no”, but instead an emphatic “hell, no!” maybe t-cakes wasn’t the only one in need of something a little stronger than ginger ale.

long story longer, we (the cooper five sans t-cakes and adam) went ahead and saw the joseph smith movie. good stuff, however, upon leaving i vowed to never see another movie in that theater again. why? because i cry like a baby every time i set foot in there. i cried in legacy, i cried in the testaments, and i balled during the joseph smith movie. overall, i think i liked the testaments more, and i’m not crazy about the actor they picked to play joseph, but somewhere in the mix slightly overdramatic lines of typical lds cinema and overzealous acting, there were some very powerful and emotional scenes that really hit home.

for instance, i can’t imagine what it must be like to say goodbye to your beautiful wife and young, unsuspecting children knowing full well it would be the last time you’d do so here on earth. then to sit in jail awaiting what you know will be your eventual murder, somewhat helpless and likely a little hopeless. add to that the witnessing of your older brother’s murder who had unflappably stood by your side through the thick and thin of it all while holding him in your arms as he breathes his last breath just before you breathe yours.

those are sacrifices i cannot even begin to imagine. i have a beautiful wife, young amazing kids and an older brother who would follow me to the ends of the earth if i asked him. the thought of losing any of them is unbearable. i can’t imagine a world without any one of them. those are the thoughts that weighed on my mind as i watched this show... that and the lack of justice, humanity, and civility leading up to his death. ignorance is lethal. intolerance may be worse. but when the two of them get together, blind hatred results and tragedy is inevitable.

interesting. that is the first time i have actually gone serious on a post. it was supposed to be a lead into a funny story, so i’ll still try and make this work so the post ends on a lighter note. bottom line: i am not afraid to admit that i cried (and by cried, i mean a river). i think aimee was ready to laugh at me when i stepped out of the theater and she saw how red and swollen my eyes were, but she didn’t because she had to know that would be inconsistent to hers and every woman’s wish for a more sensitive man . yes, my friends, i am a sensitive man.

i am not afraid to admit that i cried during bambi, swingkids, and after united states’ loss to russia in basketball during the olympics in the eighties. and while i am at it, i might as well come out and say that i like blogging, interior decorating, chick flicks (only on dvds), so you think you can dance, fashion, painting, drawing, etc. that’s not to say i am always comfortable when i do any of these things, but at least i am willing to admit as much.

to illustrate, as the movie ended and i knew i looked like a crying fool. thus, i silently prayed that the exit doors would not open so my eyes would have time to return to normal before re-entering the public domain. no such luck. instead, i had to stealthily make my way over to the wall outside the theater that outlined a timeline of joseph smith’s life in an effort to act like i was copiously studying every word on it when in reality i was just trying to hide my face from everyone else exiting the theater. i don’t think anybody bought it. besides, my eyes were so bad it was going to take a lot more than reading through brother jospeh’s life to get the redness and swelling to go away.

if only i hadn’t vowed some twenty years ago to not be that guy who wears sunglasses indoors. didn’t matter, i left them in the car anyways. i could do this, though, i thought. i only need channel a former version of a more sensitive jeremy cooper. in this instance it seemed appropriate to channel: getting highlights in his hair jeremy cooper. yes, that same vane jeremy who visited a sweat shop hair salon run by a chinese cartel of illegal immigrants in a not-so-great area of san jose, california, in an effort to bear an even more striking resemblance to the likes of brad pitt or the backstreet boys or nsync dude of your choice.

i can still see the situation as if it were yesterday. me under a perm hair dryer domed headpiece thing with a plastic cap on and little thickets of hair sprouting out from equidistant holes in the cap while some white foamy liquid saturated and colored my soon to be golden locks.

i feared for my life that day. the salon was not safe for a sensitive man such as myself in that moment. i sat there minding my own business... wishing i could gossip in chinese and doing everything within my power not to grab a people magazine, national enquire or whatever worthless periodical lay within reach when i peered out from under the safety of my hair dryer and noticed a grip of street-hardened cholos in their wife beaters sitting randomly throughout the salon getting either their handle bar mustaches trimmed or their bald scalps bic’d. i saw the tatoos on their necks, heads and arms and wondered how they viewed a little gringo, pretty boy getting his hair highlighted and dried under the dome.

needless to say, they showed mercy on me that day by letting me leave without a quarrel. and so i left, highlighted hair and all. i would live to cry another day... probably when i see sisterhood of the traveling pants 2 (seriously, i draw the line there. i will never see that show). with that, i went straight home and started fixing things. changing spark plugs, spitting, grunting, talking sports, the sorts of things us emasculated types do.