Travel Log

My job has many good attributes, but one the greatest is that I get the summer off. This year we are making the epic trek out west. If you read my blog and wonder why I have not posted in some time, this is the reason. So far we made the two-day drive and have been staying at my parents house in Sierra Vista, AZ. It has been a pleasant stay, we get a chance to get out town and my parents have a pool, so we can lounge around. I have many historical and political issues that I want to get to, but I am on break and so have been trying my best not to think. I wanted to read a book that I could shut off my mind. My wife gave me Twilight, written by Stephanie Meyer. Twilight is a novel written for teenage girls, but my wife and sister have enjoyed reading the series. Meyer is LDS and has taken the literary world by storm, so I thought it fit what I wanted. It was an interesting read about a girl who falls in love with a vampire. I must admit I enjoyed reading it; it had interesting characters and intriguing story line. I even found myself gripped at the end as the heroes were struggling to deal with the conflict.


To complete my girly week we also saw Mamma Mia. I have already seen the play, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The movie and the play are very similar, a few parts have changed and different people sang different songs, but the movie does a good job following the original story line. I had one major problem as I watch the show. I do not understand casting non-singing actors in singing roles. Directors want big names to draw in money and every actor thinks they can sing, such as Nichole Kidman, Rene Zellwiegger, and the guy who played the phantom in Phantom of the Oprah. My problem is that these actors tend to fail in my opinion. I do not under stand using these actors when stages are full of good voices. Back to Mamma Mia, which may have put forth on of the worst performances with Merle Streep playing one of the leads. No one can question her acting, but she is not a singer. She did sound good when she sang with her back up singers (they should have made one of them the lead), but she struggled at the end with a couple of solos. Her performance reminded me of Marlon Brandow in Guys and Dolls, great actor but lousy singer. The men were not great either, but yet for them it seemed to work. I thought the casting of Sophia was perfect. She not only was very pretty, but sang amazingly. My guess is we will be seeing more of her in the future. Even with some bad singing, this was a very fun movie that I would recommend for everyone.

I will get back to some historical topics soon, but till then I hope everyone enjoys their summer.