every great cause needs someone who will
go to the extremes that no one else will
former utah governor mike leavitt – on tom welch

meet tom welch.  he was born in ogden, utah and was a prominent attorney and civic leader in utah in the mid-1990s.

and below, meet dave johnson.   he was a big car dealer and also a very prominent citizen in utah around the same time.

being the civic minded guys they are, they were charged with bidding to get the winter olympics to be held in utah.  they tried and failed.   they learned from their experience.  oh – and their boss was a guy named frank joklik.  nothing special about frank except his funny name, which was the basis for many jokes at the time.

what they learned was that it isn’t just about facilities, airports, stadiums, scenery, logistics and competition.   they learned that the olympics, like the businesses both men were involved in, were really just about money and often, swindling people.

after getting burned on an olympic bid they were sure salt lake would win, they went on all cylinders for the 2002 bid.    some would say they went too far – but they were successful.   this was back in 1995, mind you.

i remember listening to the announcement on the radio that we had ‘won’ the games.  (purchased would have been a more apt term).  i remember the guy who announced it, in broken english, saying ‘we award the 2002 winter olympics to the city of salt lake city”.  i always thought that was cute, the ‘city of salt lake city’.

seemed like it would be a good thing for our city.  and perhaps it was.

but that wasn’t what this article is about.

this is really about tom welch.  tom got into hot water, along with dave johnson, over how they handled the bid.  was then-governor mike leavitt privy to it?  what did he know and when did he know it?  did they commit a crime?

doing a little research it seems clear that each and every olympic games ‘bid’ and ‘award’ process is just a money game.  china ‘lobbied’ hard for the games, and put on an amazing show.  they surely spent more than they made back, but it’s about raising the value of the city – or the nation, itself.

many cities around the world have horrible olympic stories.  the olympics came and went, leaving newly constructed empty event centers and the like.  for a lot of places, there was no payoff.

in utah, however – i think it has paid off, and continues to do so.

but how did we get the olympics?   in the 1995 go-round, tom and dave spread around close to a million dollars worth of bribes, free tuition and medical care to 14 members of the ioc (international olympic committee) and their families.

there was testimony that welch once, while wearing a rolex during a dinner with an ioc member, actually gave him the watch off his wrist.  utah wanted the olympics badly.  tom welch delivered, no matter what it cost.

tom welch was riding high in 1995 and 1996.  but then in 1997 he had a problem.  in his fancy house with his rags-to-riches wife, he got into a spat.  he either ‘choked or slapped’ her.  it wasn’t ongoing abuse apparently, just a situation that got out of hand.  but the cops were called.  and tom, being the olympics big-wig he was, it made the national papers.

on top of that, in late 1998, a whistle-blower at the ioc said that members had been taking bribes.  investigations began.  tom welch, being the point man, was the name mentioned in the news every time they mentioned the salt lake bid.

after about a solid year of stories in the local paper and in the international news, tom stepped down, ostensibly to await his fate.   he would get divorced, by and by.  but would he go to jail?  would he lose all he had, just for doing what he was instructed to do by his mormon handlers in utah business and government?   nah.  he’d be fine.

i think it was all decided ahead of time.  i think tom welch is a soldier and did what he had to do to get the olympics here, and then to make sure they went off as best they could, he took the bullet.   i think he probably could have stayed on and ran the olympics.  he probably could have weathered the storm, if it were just the bid scandal looming.  but because of his getting charged with domestic violence prior to the blow-up, it seems like it was all too much.  i think the word came down from mike leavitt (or ‘higher’ authorities) that tom should take the fall.

and i’m sure that they were told that, in the end, nothing would come of it for him and dave.  and in 2003, a judge threw out the case against the guys.

and in the interim, mike leavitt brought in mitt romney to take tom welch’s place, so the bad press wouldn’t interfere with the olympic glory.    mitt took over in 1999, by the way.

alma welch fell on hard times.  she divorced tom and ended up going through any money she recieved.   in late 2011, reports surfaced that she sold her 2003 jaguar to a title loan company for $3000 and was homeless, or close to it.

tom welch is still a prominent member of the community, in his way.  dave johnson’s car dealerships are still selling cars, and the international olympic committee keeps selling the dream of the olympics to rich and poor cities alike, all hoping for a miracle.   and mitt romney is 100,000 votes in ohio away from becoming the president of the united states.

but really what this blog post is about is that i’m sitting in bed, the night before the presidential election, where mitt romney is challenging barack obama to lead that nation, and all i can think is: “if tom welch hadn’t slapped his wife around, would it be possible?”

i recently watched an overblown movie about ‘human connectedness’ called cloud atlas.  i hated it and wrote about it on this blog.   but looking at the butterfly effect, perhaps, of one couple’s bad night when the cops were called and how that has possibly panned out for the nation, i’m just a little in awe of how tightly everything really seems related.

“i’m going to tell you how god came to be god.  we have imagined and supposed that god was god from all eternity.  i will refute that idea and take away the veil so you may see…he was once a man like us: yeah, that god himself, the father of us all, dwelt on earth, the same as jesus christ himself did.”
from teachings of the prophet joseph smith

with mitt romney challenging barack obama for the presidency, i thought it would be something to read up a bit and spell out some of the particular beliefs of the church of jesus christ of latter day saints, since many in this country know very little about the mormons.

interestingly, at the first republican party convention in 1856, their platform contained the following language: “fight the twin relics of barbarism – polygamy and slavery”.    the republicans were anti-mormon because of polygamy and various anti-american stances the mormons had taken.  the church leaders also endorsed slavery.  democrat stephen douglas, in the following presidential election, counted on the mormons and backed their squatters rights of sovereignty.    he was defeated by abraham lincoln.

but given the current presidential race, a lot are calling it the ‘mormon moment’ – a time prophesied to come when a mormon would take power in the americas.  but romney isn’t the first mormon (or even the first romney) to take a stab at the presidency.  mitt’s father ran but didn’t get the nomination.   this has puzzled me a bit because he was born in mexico while his parents were living on a mormon mission there.  george romney wasn’t a natural born us citizen, nor was he born in a us territory or on a us military base, so i don’t know that he had a legal basis for running.   why were his parents in mexico in the first place?  it wasn’t simple missionary work.  many mormons originally went to mexico so that they could continue to practice polygamy.  and yes, mitt romney’s ancestors practiced polygamy.

in addition to the two romney’s running for president, the church founder, joseph smith, also ran for president in 1844.

up front i think i should say that i have never been close to being mormon.  i currently live in utah, but did not grow up here.  i came to utah for the first time in 1994 or so, and up until then i had only heard the word ‘mormon’ in an offhand way.  i never had reason or cause to investigate it, and i don’t think that before i moved here i had ever talked to a single mormon.

but being in utah, it’s a thing you learn something about.  a lot of non-mormons here are really hard on mormons.  they complain that they stifle and ruin the culture, that they are judgmental, boring, uninspired and sheeplike.  i don’t see them as any different from anyone else or any other religious group, as far as the individual goes.

mormons believe and follow a totally self serving belief system which comforts them and assures them of certain rewards and blessings if they believe, behave and contribute.

it’s just the odd specifics of some of their beliefs, some of them beliefs they don’t like to talk about publicly too much, that i mean to share for those who might not be aware of them.

it is a religion which borrows liberally from other faiths and scriptures.  it has a curiously comic but very specific origin story, because it is so historically new.    the mormons have a history of being anti-american, until it suited them – with spates of violence and rebellion filling that gap.   they believe in revelation and prophecy, and despite the moniker ‘the church of jesus christ of latter day saints’ they really are not ‘christians’.

mormons believe that the book of mormon is the most correct book of all.  they believe that every person that has ever existed is a spiritual brother or sister.  nothing new there so far…. but they go on to believe that there really is not just one god, but many gods.    mormons are essentially polytheists.

for them, god was once a human being and grew to be a god.  they believe jesus was the first born son to god and one of his 1000′s of wives.  they maintain that jesus wasn’t born to be our savior, but that he became one through a vote of a ‘council’ of gods.

mormons believe that they too can become gods.  they further believe that if they reach the highest level of glory they will eventually get their own planet when they die.  god supposedly lives on a planet called kolob.

for mormons, there are three degrees of glory for all mankind:  the telestial kingdom (doctrine and covenants 76:103), the terrestrial kingdom and the celestial kingdom (76:58).   the celestial kingdom is, of course, the highest.

maybe i’m getting ahead of myself.  let’s go back to the beginning:

“the bible is so full of errors, one can hardly believe a word in it”
mark e peterson (mormon apostle)
from the book the way of the master

joseph smith

joseph smith was the founder of the church.  he was born in 1805.  he was born into an area of upstate new york that was given to revivals and end of days preachers, so much so that it became known as the ‘burned over district’.   joseph, his brother and his father all had some limited involvement in the occult.  his father was said to have the ‘gift’ of visions.    i am not certain if this involvement was because they actually believed it or because inciting occult practices helped in short term con games.

joseph engaged in glass looking.   this was a con wherein a special stone or glass is used to ‘determine’ the location of treasure, other valuables or even water.    by and by this leads to joseph being charged in court.

where they were living was home to many indian burial grounds, and the idea that they were living in an area where ‘treasures’ could be found permeated.  so too did the idea already exist that the lost tribe of israel might be somehow interred there.

in the spring of 1820, as a teenager, he went to a grove to ask god what church to join.  he said that god and jesus both appeared to him over the sun and told him that all the earths churches were wrong, and that all their creeds were an abomination.

six years later is when smith is criminally charged for his necromantic exercises of glass looking and money digging.  this link is for the 1826 court proceeding against joseph smith

it is some months after this that joseph smith said that he was visited three times (religions are real big on things in threes:  visitations, trinities, books, etc) by an angel named ‘moroni’.

joseph smith will eventually provide at least 9 different version of these ‘visitations’.   he was told that the true gospel of jeus christ had been lost to the world early in the 1st century – and that he should uncover it.   the angel moroni appeared and instructed him what to do next in the holy restoration.  he was directed to a stone chest which was supposedly buried in the hill cumorah, luckily not far from where smith lived.   it contained a book written on gold plates.  it was left there by jewish settlers who came 600 years before christ.

likely due to a fascination smith had with ancient egyptian culture, he reported that the word of god was written in reformed eqyptian characters on the gold plates.  the question of why jews would write and bury a holy book in egyptian is never explained.   smith translated these via two ‘seer stones, the thummim and urim, which were also provided.

several people were enlisted to help in his ‘transcribing’, starting with martin harris.  they would be separated by a sheet and smith would put the seer stones in his hat, as he did when money-digging.  he would ‘read’ what he saw there.    why didn’t smith just write down the book of mormon himself? because he may not have been able to write, or if he could, he couldn’t write very well.

after the translation was complete, the golden plates ascended into heaven. not harris, oliver cowdery (another helper), or even joseph smith’s wife emma, ever saw the plates.

the book of mormon itself is really tiresome to read.  the phrase ‘and it came to pass’ is used over 2000 times.   a lot of text appears to have been liberally repeated from the bible itself – 25,000 words form the old testament and 2000 or so from the new.  many other ideas appear to have been culled from ‘view of the hebrews’ by ethan smith. this book’s tales were well known around the time smith would have been supposedly getting his divine direction.

looking at joseph smith and mormonism through the lens of history, it seems he plagiarized a great deal of, if not the words, then the character of the religions he knew a little about:  the texts of christianity, ideas from islam, and the character of the jews, going so far as to refer to non-mormons as gentiles.

the definitive biography of smith is ‘no man knows my history’ by fawn brodie.

later, smith reports that john the baptist returns to earth and baptizes he and oliver cowdery into the aaronic priesthood.   he further claimed that peter, james and john also come to earth to bestow the melchezinuk priesthood upon him.  in this way, followers of smith who were baptized could trace their spiritual lineage back to the ‘beginning’ of christianity.   it’s a kind of spiritual genealogy.  mormons are big on genealogy too.

more visitors appear to smith over time:  moses, elias, elijah all appear to smith with special messages and different keys for the restoration.

and so joseph begins to build his church.      over his life he would have at least 30 wives, many of whom were married to other men at the time of being sealed to him.   he had a lot of range when it came to women.  while many of his brides were underage children, many were also over 40.

he models himself on the islamic prophet muhammad, even appropriating an islamic slogan for himself:  either joseph smith or the sword.    he actually says “i shall be to this generation a new muhammad”, which is interesting because both were essentially illiterate men who were supposedly charged by god with writing lengthy holy books and who, in turn, borrowed like crazy from religious stories that illiterate men would be familiar with at their given times.

eventually he lands in nauvoo, illinois with 20,000 members.  on april 11, 1844 his council declares him king of the kingdom of god.  he’s also mayor of nauvoo, as well as the chief judge.   all this power and his numerous declarations, not to mention all the wives he takes and the men he casts out of his church because he wants their wives, begins to rub many non-mormons the wrong way.

at this time he also has an ‘army’ of 2500 men he leads under the title ‘general joseph smith’

1844 is  also the year smith runs for president.   smith is reportedly asked by a subordinate “why run for president when you’re already present pro temp of the world?”.    joseph smith was trying to build his political kingdom of god.  he meant to fulfill his own prophecy.   he and his apostles are constantly making anti-american statements, bucking the federal government and fomenting basic disorder among non-mormons around them.  the mormons, especially during the first 50 years of the church, tended to see the authority of the government as at worst a hinderance and at best secondary to the word of their prophet, and therefore the word of god.

eventually, joseph smith is bound over for trial on treason and is jailed.   quite fed up with him by then, an angry mob storms the jail on june 27, 1844.  smith and his brother hyrum are killed, unintentionally granting smith martyrdom and reinforcing for mormons for 100 years the doctrine of blood atonement.

a jupiter talisman is found on joseph smith when he died at carthage, illinois.

the mormons begin an exodus , eventually stopping in utah, under the direction of brigham young

“the father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s.  the son also”
doctrine and covenants
section 130:22

prophesies of joseph smith

the city of new jerusalem – smith said a temple would be built in missouri in his generation on ‘mount zion.  this did not happen.

the coming of god in 1891 – smith was very specific about the time frame, which is always a shaky move for a revelator.   smith said jesus would return within 56 years of the revelation.  this did not come to pass.  (history of the church vol 2, pp 189)

white horse prophecy  – this is the real biggie.  this is what many are excited about with the ‘mormon moment’ chatter.  this is the idea that the united states would fall under theocratic rule of mormons.  this has yet to pass.  and even if mitt romney gets elected, do you think it’s likely?  and yet, a lot of mormons might secretly think this is a possible and even realistic outcome.

civil war prophecy – smith, like a lot of americans, could see a civil war coming.  he thought that the entire world would become embroiled in it and that the confederacy would align with the british

he also actually and incorrectly predicted that the sun would disappear for ‘many days’ (doctrine and covenants 88:87)

“no, i don’t believe in the traditional christ.  the traditional christ of whom they speak is not the christ of whom i speak.  for the christ of whom i speak has been revealed in this the dispensation of the fullness of times”
gordon b hinckley
deseret news, june 20, 1998

brigham young

brigham young’s many adventures, misadventures, wives, crimes and conspiracies are worth a blog entry all their own, so i’ll cover just a few things here for historical continuity.

young succeeded joseph smith as president of the mormon church after smith’s murder.  but it wasn’t immediate.  there was a gap of over two years where the mormons fought among themselves.    he is the one who, like moses, leads his people west to fulfill more prophecy but also get out away from the government and the locals with whom they were in nearly constant conflict with.

over his life, brigham young had at least 55 wives in his life time, and had 57 children.

they arrive in salt lake city and brigham young is appointed governor by millard fillmore.  he sets up what would become the university of utah and starts mail delivery.  but he is also very isolationist.

in 1855, president franklin pierce appoints a non-mormon governor for the utah territory.  this incenses young and he starts a plan for cessation.   he tries to foment revolution among the native americans, too, because at this point they are often cooperating with the us government.

in 1857, brigham young has the faithful involved in the mormon rebellion, which is not referred to as the utah war.  it was really the first civil war in the united states.

brigham young employs a deadly group of militant mormon solders called the ‘danites’.  they are an armed militia and act as the political police of the mormon church.  the are ruthless enforcers and some tales revolving them will also get their own blog entry soon.

eventually, president buchanan sends troops to try to steady things.    but on august 11, 1857 – young tells a crowd in salt lake city “i have fixed my determination to not let any federal troops into this territory”.  immigration to utah ceases, and travel through utah becomes a touch matter for any travelers.

all this comes to a head when some travelers from arkansas are traveling through utah.  they are eventually attacked by the mormons and 140 are killed.      the date of the final attack?   september 11.     this would become known as the mountain meadows massacre.

brigham young remained president of the mormon church until he died.  and like joseph smith, brigham young wore a blood stone around his neck as protection.

below, watch a wonderful animation that explains a lot about mormonism:

parley pratt

parley parker pratt has been called the archer of paradise.  he opened a private toll road that runs from the park city area to salt lake.  to this day the road and the canyon bear his name.  he was great-great grandfather of mitt romney.

some accounts i’ve read say that the aforementioned mountain meadows massacre was allowed to take place because the mormon hierarchy circulated the rumor that the people from arkansas were somehow involved with or related to hector mclean.   who was hector mclean?  he was the legal husband of pratt’s twelth plural wife.    after a court battle in which pratt was cleared, mclean tracked down parley pratt and shot him.

i mainly only mention parley pratt because he is mitt romney’s ancestor and was a devout polygamist.    he had 12 wives and 30 children.   mitt’s father, george romney, was born on a polygamous colony in mexico, as well.   this is just background information.  it does not indict mitt romney or mormonism.  i’ve actually mentioned polygamy very little here, if only because i’m a little bored by the subject.

mormonism and freemasonry

joseph smith joined the masons in 1842.  he adapts many masonic rituals and dress from freemasonry for mormon ceremonies.     for example, the temple endowment ceremony is introduced just two months after he joins the masons.  additionally, the nauvoo temple architecture is very masonically influenced.

freemasonry is a curious fraternal organization i mean to talk about more in the future, but for now let me just provide some extremely basic information.

freemasonry most likely began so that men who worked with masonry could know if someone else knew what they were doing.   hundreds of years ago, as they were building huge buildings and temples with masonry, there were different levels of craftsman.   it was dangerous work, especially if you weren’t sure of someone else’s skill level.   this was before schools and certifications for trades, this was before social security cards and calling on the phone to check references.  masons formed an organization so they could ferret out who knew what.  they essentially certified themselves.   they would have meetings to teach each other tricks of the trade.   they would make each other swear upon death and other calamities not to share this information with anyone else because it was their bread and butter.  through all this, they were able to share knowledge and techniques only with each other and to quickly identify other master masons.  they developed various hierarchies inside the organization – replete with secret words and handshakes.

eventually ceremonies evolve and the organization expands.   in the modern age, freemasonry has little to do with masonry work.  the guy working on your house is likely not a mason.   now it’s a private group that boasts about it’s secrets and has long had men of power who enjoy whatever shadowy fun and knowledge is to be had there.

masonic ceremonies and dress are curious things and a lot of them are ripped right from the occult.   it is a lot of these aspects which smith lifted (again plagiarizing) for his own church to use.

baptizing the dead

the way mormons baptize, you can trace your baptism all the way back to john the baptist, peter, james, john and jesus.

one thing:  joseph smith claimed that john the baptist descended from heaven and restored the levitical priesthood of aaron upon him, but so far as i can tell, john the baptist never held the levitical priesthood, so how could he restore it to joseph smith?    but that’s just splitting hairs.

the point is, mormons are big on baptizing.  they don’t just baptize new members or eight year olds who can’t possibly know enough about god or the world to make an informed decision.    they have found a funny workaround for the fact of all those people who perished without knowing the good news joseph smith and mormonism had for them.

in secret temple ceremonies, the baptize dead people into their church.

the huge mormon genealogical database in salt lake city doesn’t exist just so that people can research their family trees.   it exists so that the mormons can systematically pray into the church, i suppose, everyone who has ever existed, save for those that they excommunicate.

this still goes on.

mormon archaeology

38 major cities located in south america are mentioned in the book of mormon, built over 1000 years, with temples and huge buildings and everything that goes along with ancient civilizations.  archaeologists cannot find any evidence of any of these places.

at least geographically, the bible, is based on many actual places that existed, that still exist.  this is just more evidence that joseph smith was mimicking bible stories as he made most of this up.

in the book of mormon, there are references to animals that would not/could not have existed at that time in the places smith mentions.  there are references to chariots and ‘steel’ swords which could not have existed at the time (and of course, of which no evidence can be found).  the book of mormon is full of these types of errors, because smith was describing a story that takes place hundreds of years before christ, but he was telling it through the eyes of someone living in america around 1830.  he just didn’t know enough about history to fabricate correctly enough.

for example, 500,000 people are reported to die at the battle of cumorah.  this would make this one of the largest battles in human history.  but nothing has ever been found – not even an arrowhead, at the the purported location.

antinomianism, blood atonement, voting, racism

the mormons had a very anti-law tradition, especially in the first 50 years of the church.  they paid dearly for their antinomian ways and slowly began to take a different tack.   when church president woodruff officially denounced plural marriage so that utah could finally become a state (in 1896), they can be seen of at least trying to appear they were coming into the modern age.  it would take another 40 years or so for this really to click into place.

it wouldn’t be until 1978 that the revelation would come down that black men could hold the priesthood in the church, an usually slow change.  there may have been a couple of freed slaves who held the priesthood back when joesph smith was still alive, but the church would officially become pro-slavery as it was trying to expand into southern states around the time joseph smith was murdered.

in the past 100 years they got much more savvy.   now the church of jesus christ of latter day saints is a diverse organization with an array of diverse, tax-exempt corporations under it’s umbrella.  they evolved their ceremonies away from the more occult aspects and cast out those among them who wanted to remain more fundamentalist.     they have a great pr organization that puts on a great show for those with just a passing interest in the church.

the mormons also engage in monolithic block voting.   this means that they essentially will all vote the in the same manner.   if you speak to mormons individually, they will say that this isn’t the case, that no one instructs them how to vote.  and how could they?  but the result of the conference talks and all the sitting in church is the same:  they vote almost exclusively republican.  and given the origins of the republican party, this is a curious outcome.  but then again, mitt romney is a long, long way from abraham lincoln.  so too is the rest of what the republican party is today.   but to be fair, there’s certainly no lincoln on the other side of the political spectrum, either.

jesus supposedly gave joseph smith special knowledge.  this is  not really christian and more like gnosticism.      the idea that a mormon could ‘become’ god is a facet of the original teachings of joseph smith that hasn’t been abandoned by many in the church.  and it’s what makes mormons un-christian, despite their branding.

i spent a lot of time on the origin story of mormonism here, which was wonderfully parodied in an episode of south park.

religions lean heavily on their origin stories and i don’t know why.   there is this needless, eternal justification of religions having to be true and correct and the ‘one, true faith’ that they all go through.  they needn’t do this.

if religions stuck to the tenets of:  here is what human nature is, bad things will happen and this is how you can deal with it.  good things will happen and you ought not to get to swell a head about it.  this is why you often are unhappy, here is how you can be happy since, as people, that feeling is very important for you.  if religions could stop at teaching people that they will be happy if their life has meaning and purpose and went on to show them here is how to give yourself meaning and purpose so that you can live a kinder, better, richer life, who could find fault?

if religion were just a guide for life, religion might have a great deal to recommend itself.   instead, religion insists on itself.  teachings that merely help you live without having to define yourself as this-one or that-one are referred to as self-help and are relegated to something below religion, because they don’t require faith in some silly backstory that was written in a primitive time when people understood very little about the natural world.

they have to put forth the notion that you aren’t righteous enough or holy enough to know the truth, as you are.   you need more than just morality lessons for life.  you need to accept the church’s origin and history as fact and be prepared to defend it.   mormons take it a little farther to believe that the real truth is only for some.  in fact, some people, though study and time and more importantly, money – can themselves become more than human.  this is a good basis for cult.

the mormon church is big on disciplining members who say or do things the church elders think they ought not to.  joseph smith’s own biographer, fawn brodie, was excommunicated almost immediately for her book.

even more recently, blogger david twede, who ran mormonthink.org, criticized mitt romney and was threatened with ex-communication.  he resigned the church instead of waiting to be cast into outer darkness, but as of this writing, his blog and all of his writing has disappeared.  maybe it’ll pop back up after the election?

mormons seem nice when you deal with them – but i often wonder if it’s because they really want to be friendly or help me, or if they are simply trying to prove their worthiness.  maybe it’s a mingling of both.   it’s not a bad habit to have, but i always wonder what’s behind it.

mormons are instructed to never question the church leaders.  it is the word of god.  to question your leaders is essentially to doubt god.  this seems like a doomed path not just for religion but for man kind.

looking at the origin story of mormonism, it seems to show that smith was just making it up as he went along, cherry picking various ideas from occultism, christiaintiy, islam, freemasonry – a cafeteria approach to creating a religion.  and with whoever the current leader (prophet) of the church is at any time having the power of ‘revelation’, he is allowed to do just as joseph smith did: improvise!

i initially intended this blog to be much more comprehensive than this, covering topics like:

märk hofmann and salt lake bombings
ervil lebaron – crimes he and his followers committed
brigham young in general
the kirtland, ohio mormon cult murders
warren jeffs and the flds church
the mountain meadows massacre
gordon b hinckley sexual controversy
freemasonry basics and history
the john birch society (strong mormon ties)
joseph smith and the mummies (papyrus)
brief history of mormon temple ceremonies and changes to them

instead i’ve pulled out the stuff related to these because this is getting too long.   i will do a post or so a week on each of these topics until i get bored.

knowledge is a mirror

cloud atlas is a sweeping film.  it aims big but with a simple, reassuring message.  it’s populated with some of our most well known screen actors, almost all of them playing multiple roles.   it has three writer/directors.  but i think it fails miserably.

it aims to be revolutionary, as almost all of the wachowski brothers films do.  revolution and subversion run through this film just as they do in v for vendetta and the matrix movies.

but i don’t quite get what the revolution is here.  actually even in those films i didn’t get it.  for me, the end of the first matrix negated the need for everything that happened before it.  and v for vendetta was a perversion of the actual guy fawkes story.

cloud atlas seeks to be an exploration of the human spirit and the idea that we are all connected:  past, present and future.  and yet it seems to contradict the most insistent aspects of human nature – the ‘self’ that we all insist on.

the film tells six stories, across centuries, of several people.  lets call them souls.  in each life they commit such and such deeds and end up somewhere very different in the next life.  you are kind of beaten over the head with this idea because they are played by the same actor in each life.

this is a bold technique but very failure prone.  here i think it fails – especially when the asian girl is made to play ‘white’ and when tom hanks is supposed to be a scottish writer but he looks more like fu man chu.

the thing that seems to rule out reincarnation is that fact that there are now more people alive than ever on the earth.  so at some point, new souls would have to be created.  i know that people who believe in reincarnation have a cute workaround for this logic, but for me it’s just that – a workaround.

and a major thing that bugs about reincarnation is it’s nature itself:  some think that if you do bad things, you’ll be reincarnated as something we think is distasteful or lowly.  whether this is the case or not isn’t important, but if you don’t get to carry some form of the knowledge you learned in that previous life, what difference does it make if your soul ‘goes on’ or a new one is created with each new life?   if i’m a rich man in the next life, or a cow, or a little girl who dies in a car wreck, how does me ‘being me’ behind it all matter one way or the other?

reincarnation is a very comforting, super simple and, as is customary, wholly self-serving belief system.  the function of most belief systems is to quiet your fear of death and the unknown.  reincarnation is hardly any different from the christian idea of heaven or the mormon idea that you’ll go to your own planet and live with your family forever, with everyone well, happy and intact.    oh, and if you misbehave in this life, you might end up in a somewhat lowly station in the next.   it’s almost always the same with belief systems.

the film has this idea behind all the amazingly shot scenes that people can be ‘perfected’ if only we’d pay more attention and be more mindful of our connectedness.  if we would only pay more attention to each other, and be more loving.  if only we appreciated the unforeseen consequences of our ‘words and deeds’ (although, being unforeseen, i don’t know how you would act differently  most of the time).

the films point of view seems to be that if we all treated each other better, things would be progressively better each generation.   this seems horribly simplistic.

but it denies that pushy and selfish ‘me’ of human nature.   a space ship like the one halle berry lands on the water wasn’t developed because people wanted to be do something good for one another.  it was designed and built because a government, business or individual wanted something or needed something for itself.    sometimes technological advances come out of war.  sometimes understanding and deeper knowledge come out of grief.   it seems quite rare that great art or music (or even film) comes from perfectly happy, well adjusted and comfortable people.

i think the film could have been served by giving fewer details about each story and not necessarily having each actor put on all this (sometimes quite silly looking) makeup to play the roles.  having separate people play the roles and conveying through subtext that they were the same ‘soul’ might have been more elegant and ultimately, effective.

anyways – some things that bugged me about the movie:

why did the composer have to kill himself?  he just composed a great work, he had someone who loved him…sure he had the law on his ass but he could have tried to get out of the country.   i didn’t quite get that.

on the hawaiian islands or whatever in the distant future where tom hanks plays zachary, an islander and halle berry plays meronym, they speak this goofy english that really takes you out of the scene.  it’s so strange and off putting that i would have appreciated subtitles.  (that true true, no minder need – meh)

but the chief complaint against this movie is that it’s too damn long.   it’s almost three hours long.  this film is the best argument yet for bringing back intermissions and against the giant 50 ounce sodas the theater sells.

i think just as with their last film, speed racer, the wachowski brothers (or rather, brother/sister) have failed miserably.

what did i mean about that brother/sister thing?  well, above is lana/larry wachowski.  many people aren’t aware that one of the wachowski brothers under went gender reassignment surgery and is now a woman.

lana seems much happier being lana, so good for her.  why did lana change?  because she was unhappy as a man.  because it was in her self interest to change.  because of her past or her ‘identity’, she wanted to change.  i guess my problem with the movie is that it tends to disregard a lot of the ‘wants’ that people have that drive people and society forward. the film wants us to be nicer,  to feel happy and connected.  i don’t think humanity is ready for that type of society, mainly because we are still slaves to the illusion of the self.   but for someone who would want and then can actually undergo a sex change, real transformation seems more feasible and likely, i’m sure.   as for me, i can’t see it as possible because i’m here with my life and my problems.  you see my point?

i wonder if lana gets reincarnated, will she be reincarnated as a man or a woman?

anyways – below is a nice speech lana gave when she got an award recently.  she’s a great director, even if the ideas she and her brother tend to tackle feel overly simplistic.

i found this extended trailer for the movie.  even in trailer form it’s too damn long.

meet jeff dowd.  he was a member of the ‘seattle seven’ during the vietnam protester days.   more recently he’s been a movie producer and helps get independent films distributed.

he really hasn’t produced anything super interesting, but jeff has a lot of friends in the entertainment business.   he’s an easy going party guy, but he won’t go down in history as a great movie producer.

but he will go down in history as the basis for jeff bridges’ character ‘jeff lebowski’ in the coen brothers comedy the big lebowski.

the big lebowski didn’t do a lot of box office and opened to mixed reviews.  at the time it came out, i was managing a 5 screen movie theater and i was excited to have the movie show at my theater.

i watched it several times and i downright hated it at first.  then it grew on me.

it’s like raymond chandler meets cheech and chong.  it’s a funny mix of crime drama, bowling, intrigue, sex (or coitus, if you will) and the most fully formed but nonetheless one-dimensional characters ever assembled.

the point of this blog is to show the full length documentary about jeff dowd, that was directed by jeff feuerzeig.  watch it below.

this isn’t the type of movie i usually bother writing about, but it’s very well done and not enough people know about it.

it’s an indonesian film by a welsh director, gareth evans.  he studied film and after graduating and making a small feature, he was hired to go to indonesia to make a documentary about ‘pencak silat’, the martial arts school popular in indonesia.

he got really into it and a few years later we have the raid: redemption as a result.

the story is a standard action film setup:  a crime lord is holed up at the top of a building, with each floor progressively harder to get through to reach him.  it’s like a grand hotel of losers and hooligans, all loyal to the crime boss.

a team of cops go in to get him, after several similar missions have failed.

there’s a big twist i won’t bother to reveal save that it really doesn’t matter.  the story is only a framework for the action.

and the action is key.  the often single-take, extended fights seem all to real.  it really seems like people are being beaten and slaughtered.  there’s some insane acrobatic stuff that traverses floors that is unbelievable.    anything is a weapon here and almost everything in sight is used as one – but it’s all so well staged and ingenious that you totally accept that someone would assault someone with a refrigerator or what have you.

this is an opera of violence.  or, a ballet, if you will.  and, as violent films go, it’s a masterpiece.

meet gilberto valle.  he is a new york police department cop who works out of harlem.  well, worked i should say.  he was just arrested by the fbi for conspiracy to kidnap.  but it’s the details of his case that have everyone talking.

he had been spending a lot of time on the internet, at sites like devoured.  these sites caters to those who like ‘vore’, which is an odd fetish which revolves around cannabalism – either as the one eating or even, if you can imagine, as the one to be eaten.

in theory, or perhaps just fantasy, he hoped to abduct, torture, rape, kill and cannabilize two women in particular, and kept a file on as many as 100 more, complete with information as dreadfully specific as bra size and other such personal details.

he’s alleged to have chatted with other people via the web so much about these fantasies that they may have gone farther than fantasy.    the fbi alleges that he talked about his fantasy so long and so particularly with others that he committed the crime of conspiracy to commit the actual acts themselves.

it’s an interesting idea, that part.  if you talk to other people about some dark scenario, at some point, it may be considered conspiracy.   but what if you just wrote about it on a blog or even in a private diary where you interacted with no one and did not engage in conversation?  would it be possible, just with that, to be considered guity of conspiracy?

take it a little further and imagine someone laying in bed, thinking about killing their spouse.  they think of every detail, they lay it all out:  how to do it, how to deflect attention, how to act when told, how to get away with it.   they haven’t committed a crime, have they?   maybe they search for things on the internet, they procure certain necessary items legally (a gun, a knife, a hammer, duct tape, rope, whatever their plan might entail).  perhaps they have every intention of doing it all until the moment comes to actually start the act – and they stop themselves.  are they guilty of anything?

at this point, it seems like the only thing gilberto valle is legally guilty of is using law enforcement computers to gather information on women he might potentially have stalked.   he also may have followed a woman on at least one occasion in his police cruiser, ostensibly to ascertain her address.

but what is he really guilty of?    who were the ‘conspirators’ and will they be charged?  or perhaps the fbi was tipped off by an estranged wife and gilbero was caught in a sting, like so many of our domestic ‘terrorists’?

will all this lead to very little, again?  or was gilbero the real deal?

there’s a meeting going on right now, as i type this, in new york city.  it’s the first assembly meeting of the newly formed united front against austerity.

what is austerity?  in this sense, it’s when the government tries to curb deficits and spending by cutting services and benefits.   right now in spain, there are riots taking place on the heels of these measures.  austerity is a school of economic thought right now that is in danger of prevailing in some places.   and it’s likely to show it’s face here in the united states, too.

cuts made in the name of austerity aren’t often from the largest part of the pie, nor are they often the ones that make the most sense, societally.  mostly, they are the simply the easiest ones to make.  the people affected by them a great deal of the time are the lower classes, the elderly, the poor, the student class and the disenfranchised.     they are the people whose voices often aren’t easily heard in the public discourse.

in the united states, men like paul ryan (currently running with mitt romney for vice president) have proposed these types of measure here.

initially, their measures will affect senior citizens the least, because in the united states, senior citizens are a huge voting block.

but what they will try to do by and by is simply convince older folks that the measures they endorse are something other than they are, so that the senior citizens will ultimately argue for what is actually against their own best interests.

it’ll be interesting to see what, if anything comes of this anti-austerity movement.

the event is streaming live here and i suppose all the videos will be saved on their ustream profile or posted to their youtube channel

below i have shared video of webster tarpley’s talk before the group today:

it’s halloween time.  that part of the year where we all flirt with, confront and indulge in a little darkness, a little fake danger, a little harmless faux-monstrousness.

it’s also the time of haunted houses – places set up to frighten you.  and people pay a lot of money to be deliberately and repeatedly scared as much as possible by actors covered in fake blood or wielding chainsaws with no chains.

but there are some haunted houses, which are put on by christian organizations, which take it to the next level.

they are called ‘hell houses’ and they show what happens to people who commit certain sins or who abandon god.  it’s really funny, actually.

kids who do drugs, people who have just about any kind of sex, people who worship satan or those who have forsaken god, are all depicted in the worst possible way and getting the worst possible punishment for their crimes.

i believe i went to a hell house when i was very little.  it was in palmetto, florida, in a creepy old house that’s behind a car dealer that was still there the last time i visited florida.  the only part i remember was a girl who was having a ‘back door’ abortion.  i remember her , behind glass, crying and yelling.  from the neck down she was all prothesis.  a big, bloated belly, with blood all over it.  there was a person who looked like a zombie with some apparatus at work between her legs.  this was obscured by our access (which is why i think this particular exhibit was behind glass, so we couldn’t cheat the angle), and the girl howled in agony about how sorry she was.

outside the building they handed out religious tracts.  i remember being really scared – so scared i wouldn’t even take the literature.  i might have told my aunt ‘i never want an abortion’ or something silly, because i remember everyone laughing and laughing at my unintentional funny.  i was probably in 2nd grade.

that hell house was only put on the one year, i think.  i remember we’d ride our bikes by months later and wonder aloud what was going on in there now.  we all had diabolical theories of the evil that must still be going on.   i never saw that building used for any other purpose, ever.

anyways – all this is in service to introducing the documentary hell house to those who are unaware.

it’s a simple film, with no real point of view.  there’s not an intense narration informing how you should think or feel about what you are seeing.  events and people are portrayed just as they seem to be, and you are allowed to make your own inferences.

it follows the buildup to putting on the annual hell house in cedar hill, texas by the trinity church/assembly of god.

no part of the process is spared.  from confessional type interviews which are starkly revealing, to the actual working of the hell house itself:  writing, casting, staging, building sets, and all the squabbles and drama that would go into putting on any show, religious based or not.

hell house is an important and beautiful documentary, not so much because of it’s look or anything artistic – but simply because of it’s honest portrayal of it’s well meaning, earnest subjects.

it’s something that everyone should see, whether you are religious or not.  it was made in 2001 but it’s always been in my top 10 of all documentaries.

i don’t write about every movie i see anymore, though i tried that briefly a couple of years ago.  lately i only write about newer movies, or if i rewatch a classic film and there’s something about it that i want to remember, share or reflect on.

even some new movies i see, i don’t write about.   i saw looper on opening day.  i wasn’t blown away by it, though there were parts of it i like.  it wasn’t my choice to see it.  it was one of those deals where someone wanted to go to a movie and time was limited and it’s what was starting.

but since seeing it, because a lot of people think of me as the ‘movie guy’, i have had a lot of people coming up to me saying ‘so…..what did you think of looper?’.  and when i tell them, a long conversation ensues.

i guess a lot of the people in my work and friends circle like this movie.    i did not.

the plot of looper seems slick on the surface:  in the distant future, the mob no longer kills people.  instead, they send them back (approx 30 years) to specific locations in time where a hitman is waiting, gun drawn.  the guy will pop into existence where he’s immediately killed and disposed of.

there’s a subplot where 10 percent of the population has telekinetic abilities, although for most of them, these abilities are only powerful enough to levitate quarters.  this seems like a senseless throwaway notion.  it’s goofy until the full plot is revealed, but it didn’t make it any less goofy, for me.  when i found out why this was part of the movie, it made it more goofy.

occasionally, a hitman will kill a guy and, upon inspecting the body, will find a bunch of gold on the body.  this means he has just killed himself.  he will still get to live the next 30 years.  he gets paid off and all that, but it also means he is done being a hitman.  somehow, in the future, he has offended the mob.  i guess that would go with the territory.  but then again, if he gets killed by the mob in the future, and hence stops being a hitman now, i don’t understand why he would still be involved with the mob in any way that he could offend them in the future.

all this isn’t as mind bending or as interesting to me as it is to almost everyone i’ve talked to about the movie.

the film features joseph gordon leavitt and bruce willis, playing the same man 30 years apart.

the decision to make gordon ‘act’ like willis and then to put him in this creepy makeup that makes him look a little more like willis seems unnecessary and really bugged me as i watched the movie.  leavitt is just barely recognizable.  the makeup makes facial expressions for him wholly unnecessary.    this step seems like the typical kind of indulgent, hollywood flash that is a substitute for solid storytelling.

the film is filled with lots of fights, action and goofy inventions that one might imagine seeing in a skymall magazine 30 years from now, but it mostly feels like familiar territory.

the main this that annoyed me about this big, complicated movie was the initial premise.   why does the mob in the future need hit men 30 years in the past, with all the complications and dangers to the future which that entails?  the only explanation is a throwaway line in the narration by leavitt.  he says something like ‘you can’t dispose of bodies in the future, what with tags and all’. that’s really it.

maybe i over thought it, but even in the theater i thought it odd that in the future they’ve harnessed time travel and even telekenisis (which is bullshit) but they can’t figure out how to dispose of a body?

that bugged me.  this loud, flashy production with it’s one dimensional characters and two central, silly premises (one of which i am not revealing) left me immediately bored.

killer joe is a surprisingly dark film.  and surprisingly funny for being such a dark film.    parts of it’s relentlessness remind me of david cronenberg’s great film, crash, and other parts are as wickedly absurd as dr strangelove.

the plot revolves around a trailer-trash family.  the son has a drug debt and his well being is on the line.   he takes his father (now married to someone other than his son’s mother) to a strip club to propose that they hire a hitman he has heard about to kill his mother.  why tell his dad?  well, he needs the money to pay the hitman.

the dad isn’t shocked by this request.   he sees the ‘logic’ of it, after a brief discussion, but he has no money.   they agree to meet up with the hitman.

the hitman, killer joe, is matthew mcconaughey.   the men meet with him, intending to pay him after the hit with part of the insurance money.  but joe is adamant that they pay in advance, in cash.  but after seeing the young daughter of the family (juno temple), he says he will take her ‘on retainer’.

by this he means he will get use of her until they can pay him.

again – the ‘logic’ of this horrible request is quickly accepted, and the arrangement is made.

joe comes over to dinner at the trailer and after some wooing, takes the girl’s virginity.  he spends a lot of time at the trailer after this, appearing to have partially moved in.

eventually, the ‘hit’ is carried out.  but due to a twist i will not reveal, all does not go as planned in the aftermath.

what follows are some scenes of such degradation and uncomfortable hilarity that i will not spoil them.

the acting in this film is bold.  mcconaughey’s quiet but intense portrait of joe is riveting.  i think he really only shows anger or raises his voice in the final, protracted, pivotal scene, when everything has gone to hell.

juno temple is perfectly cast as this breezy, underage girl who often doesn’t seem to understand why things around her are happening, but who accepts it all as still somehow routine.

thomas haden church is a polite yes-man playing the father – whether it’s his son suggesting a murder or joe is demeaning his wife at the kitchen table.

the new wife is sharla.  gina gershon plays her.  she always has a smouldering sexuality underneath any role she plays.  this movie is no different.  her performance really steals the movie.  she’s laid bare, she’s made ugly, she’s treated like an object and acts like a virago.  eventually, she is made to fellate a chicken drumstick for her crimes.  you read that right.  her vulgarity is underpinned by a real vulnerability that is sad, gritty and feels all to real, especially at the end of the film.

killer joe was adapted by actor/playwright tracy letts from his own play.  and the stark direction here is by verteran director william friedkin.

this is the second film friedkin has done of tracy letts’ work.  their previous collaboration was bug.

friedkin has been directing films long before i was born.  he directed one of the first films to honestly portray gays, the boys in the band, in 1970.  he went on to direct things like the french connection, the exorcist, to live and die in la, blue chips, and jade.  he also directed cruising, the gay-themed film starring al pacino, which is still a little controversial.

this kind of material is right in his dark wheelhouse.  it’s not for everyone.  i could see many people walking out due to some of the more adult content (the film is rated nc-17).  but if you can see through that, to what is behind it, killer joe is an amazing piece of writing.  it’s got astounding acting.  i think it borders on being a great film.