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Show Monday • July 28, 2008 (Your ideaJiere) -.>, * a c ft* aood. »*•••* and the PiKlated Amaion.com Panic At the Disco's second album doesn't shine with as much originality as their first. July dolorums and .ft poll to make my job easier Mel Sundquist J | Life editor Sometimes the editor of a section in a newspaper is lucky enough to gel his or her own column. And sometimes editors make their own luck. After two years of Cool Beans by Luke Hickman (the retired life-editor), we're moving on to something new. This is where you come in. As a reader o\' the Life section, you're entitled to some control over what we write about — after all, we do this all for you. By suggesting a title for a new weekly editor's column, you can influence what type of topics the column will focus on. You can see a copy of the poll here, but to answer it, you'll have to go to uvureview.com If you want to suggest your own ideas, just leave a comment on this article on the website. Now on to what's important this week: summer entertainment schedules. Particularly in Utah County, they make no sense. Typically, during the summer, the general public's schedule in the summer, which makes for at is more open to local entertainment. least three well-crafted productions. Sure, we go on vacations, but that But the closest theater of this species takes up only one or two of the twelve is in Logan, which means it might as v weeks of summer. well be out of state. For the weeks spent at home, we're It's difficult to think of a logical abandoned by the local entertainment .:. -reason for this trend. There is money industry — summer television is a '5.<•*&}be made in the summer, the audibomb, and quality live theater is prac- ence is willing to get into an air-contically nonexistent. There is usually at ditioned theater, and vivacious, young least one good concert a week in Otalv• actors usually busy with school are and Salt Lake Counties, but that can free to dedicate their time to rehearsget expensive quick. al. Terrible summer television aJmost In the end, this problem most likely makes sense. Television means stay- •/ arises because the actors don't want to ing at home. Concerts, movies and the work in the summer. This issue leads, theater could get us out of the house to an underlying flaw in the local thea few nights a week ~ an activity as ater community: 80% of the art is cremuch a part of summer as corn on the ated for selfish reasons. They're willcob or mosquito bites. Staying home ing to let you see how great they are, to watch television on a summer eve- but only on their time. ning is about as unAmerican as not beBut really, summer is the perfect ing afraid of the IRS. And that doesn't time for whimsy - the perfect time make for good ratings. to listen to a story. So it bites when But why do local live theaters our only options are Beauty And The leave us high and dry between June Beast And Pride and Prejudice, The and August? In most large cities, there Musical. are theaters that do a rolling repertoire It sure is beautiful From the frontline Staff Sgt. Brock Jones g Life writer What parent hasn't cringed and turned red at something their child has said? I know there have been times when my wife and I have given each other that look, the one that says, "I cannot believe what YOUR child just said!1'The old saying "Kids say the darnedest things" certainly applies in our house. But there are also those times, though perhaps fewer in number, when exactly the opposite occurs, and our daughter will say something so touching and sweet that my wife and I exchange glances and smiles and shrugs of momentary surprise, as if to say, "1 don't know where it comes from, but it sure is beautiful." 1 gel letters full of my daughter's sweet and innocent thoughts from time to time. In an e-mail and text message and telephone driven world, there isn't much use for regular "snail mail" anymore. But to read little notes written ftS unpracticed penmanship and adorned with crayon and colored:pencil drawings makes letters sent through the regular mail system nearly priceless. I simply can't get enough letters filled with misspellings and simple drawings. What they lack in technical perfection they make up for in feeling and innocence. I was reminded of this again recently in the unlikeliest of places. Because of weather concerns and visibility issues during a recent mission, our helicopters had not been able to land at our destinat io n, and in need of a place to get o u t of the sky, w e found ourselves off-loaded in Camp Taji. just north of Baghdad. We were put on standby until the weather cleared so we went into the passenger terminal waiting area, took off our body armor and helmets, and waited. A few hours into our wait, I stood to stretch and noticed the paneled walls of the little air-conditioned trailer we were waiting in 'were decorated with papers of'various sizes and colors. They were letters, painstakingly decorated and written by elementary school children, addressed "Dear Soldier!" There were American flags drawn in crayon, and tanks and airplanes and portraits of soldiers all imitated with child-like expertise. I couldn't help but read. "1 hope you win the war," wrote one child, the letter decorated in red, white and blue. "I wanted to join the Army but my mom said it was dangerous so I can't join the Army," said another boy. On his letter he had drawn a green tank and a smiling. he 1 m ete d soldier. "You are my hero," wrote one little girl. "Do you miss your family? Thank you for making us safe." What caught my attention in every letter on that wall was the honesty and innocence that shadowed every word and every drawing. Those kids, and the thousands of others who have written letters to soldiers since the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, poured out their tiny and pure and naive hearts in the hopes that a soldier somewhere would read what they had to say. I don't think the children will ever fully know the impact I don't know where it comes from, but it sure is beautiful." Staff Sgt. Brock Jones Panic at the Disco's day of reckoning has come of their letters. I have letters from my first two deployments from children across America who I will never meet. I don't know how the notes came into my possession and I will probably keep them forever. There are certain things a person never throws away, and these letters fall into that category. Every soldier with a son or a daughter, a little brother or sister, or nieces, nephews, cousins, neighbors, sees the drawings and painstaking notes of their own 1 ittle loved ones in each anonymous letter hanging on walls in faraway places, like a pax terminal in Iraq. In Taji that day, I read those letters and could picture my own daughter seated at the kitchen table, putting the final touches on a colored-pencil rendering of our little family. I couldn't help but long to one day regain a piece of her innocence and that of children everywhere, the very innocence that causes us to shrug our shoulders in surprise and say, "1 don't know where it comes from, but it sure is beautiful." Second album pulls back the curtain Dave Fullmer J Life writer In Panic at the Disco's first single pff their new album, Pretty. Odd., there is a line that asks, "Do you know what I mean?" No, Panic. Nobody knows what you mean. In 2006 a group of 17-year-olds fresh out of high school formed Panic at The Disco and released their first album, A Fever You Can't Sweat Out. A panic is exactly what ensued. Two million copies of the album were sold, the radio stations were flooded with requests, and Panic's video won the Video of the Year Award at the MTV Video Music awards. Not bad for some 17-year-olds. Fast forward to a year later and you never even hear anyone mention PATD, and each of those two million CDs has found its way to the dumpster or some closet, never to see the light of day again. And when was the last time you heard a song from their first CD on the radio? People discovered something: It's bad music. The album is 14 jumbled, incoherent tracks that follow no song structure whatsoever. The album left as quickly as it came in, and that's a pretty good description of a flash in the pan. As for the lyrics, it was as if they pored over the Oxford English Dictionary in search of the longest, coolest-sounding words to put in their songs, even if they didn't fit. And somewhere along the way they decided that the longer the name of the song, the better: "There's a Good Reason These Tables Are Numbered Honey. You Just Haven't Thought Of It Yet." The thing that they forgot to do with those long-winded lyrics is tell a story ~ let alone convey something that people can understand. In an interview, guitarist Ryan Ross said of his debut album, "I can't knock that album too much. For a bunch of 17-year-old kids we did the best we could with what we knew about music." To prepare for their follow up album, Pretty. Odd., PATD immersed themselves in Beatles music. The band even mixed their album at the legendary Abbey Road Studios in London, which has served as a hit factory for The Beatles, Radiohead, U2 and many other greats. The result is Pretty. Odd., which is a pretty accurate title. It's pretty odd that a band would do everything in its power to emulate one of the greatest bands to ever play instead of making their own sound and carving out their own identity. Pretty. Odd. is a very nice sounding album, but anyone can copy the greats. Their first album was terrible, but at least it was original. They might as well call it "Panic's Lonely Hearts Club Band" since each song on the new album is reminiscent of the Beatles in some way. The members of PATD have each grown dark, mop-top hairdos and wear vintage clothing, and they' ve become keen on manufacturing madcap music videos in which they playfully run throughout the town -- in direct correlation to the Beatles' 1965 film "Help!" Maybe PATD wants to be mistaken for the Beatles. Maybe they couldn't decide as a band what direction and identity they wanted, so they chose a proven identity to mimic. Hopefully in the future they will be able to make decent sounding music on their own. Who knows, maybe a couple years from now PATD will immerse themselves in Led Zeppelin and we'll get a chance to hear "Houses of the Holy Part II." Wait for it to come to the doilar theater!! Festival Cinemas Utah County's Premier Dollar Theater Showing major Hollywood movies mixed with quirky Independent films For showtimes Call 226-1770 or go to www.festivalcinemasutah.com Student Prices only $1.00 Brock is a UVU student currently serving in the National Guard in Iraq. 959 South 700 East - Orem (behind University Mall) |