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My Page: Randy Harward

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SALT LAKE CITY SOUND OFF

Meet The Happies. On the strength of their first album (titled, incidentally, Meet the Happies), the quintet was deemed City Weekly's Best Unsigned Local Band of 2005. But the album, which you can download in its entirety at TheHappies.net, is a sleepy little pop album that screams virgin recording. It sounds tentative, as if The Happies weren’t quite debuting but rather cautiously peering out at the local music scene from behind their semi-somber ear candy and happy appellation. It's on their newest album, If We Were Really Here, that The Happies really strut their stuff. It’s a mature, focused album fraught with songs that win your attention and affection from their introductory notes—and continue to reel you in as delightful, sublime verses and choruses fly and flutter through your core. For a taste, trying “Everything’s Fine, Cover Your Eyes." It's a soaring power-indie-pop anthem with airy vocals, subtly singing organ and guitars that walk on gilded eggshells until it’s time for them to cut in and sing out. For more (like the geek-rock via the Polyphonic Spree gem “Sun Don’t Shine" or the plaintive, wintery “Polarity") visit the band's page at MySpace. [more]

WELCOME TO DRAPER

For most of my life, I've lived near a Deseret Industries store--or D.I., to use the local vernacular. They are what they are: secondhand stores where you can dump your old junk or, if you're in need of old junk, an oasis of needful things. Those are the practical functions. Many Utahns regard these stores as they would a blood donation center, welfare office, adult bookstore or dumpster. In my life, the D.I. has been the dump and the oasis. As a kid, it was a place for my single mom to find everything from a saucepan to replacement Wranglers to Halloween costumes or church ties or funeral clothes. That’s why I’m so infuriated at the Draper City Council's decision to block a Deseret Industries store from opening in what it regards as prime real estate. [more]

SALT LAKE CITY SOUND OFF

Adverse (a.k.a. David Hunt) isn't your carbon-copy white rapper. For that matter, he's nobody's easy stereotype. While he has the incisive humor, rapid delivery and nasal brogue of Eminem, he lacks the turgid ego--and the throbbing homophobia. Although he dresses like an indie rock scenester, he's naturally sardonic and shuns the concept of ironic distance. Despite being a hip-hop artist, he's one of the few who decline the built-in excuse from including melody in his songs. On his debut album, Juice, Adverse displays surprising skills in a context where clichés are expected and accepted. The beats, courtesy of turntablist Shalem and multi-instrumentalist Ellipsis, rise and fall with poetic precision and minimal samples--they’re not playing records, they're playing music. Over these sounds, Adverse nimbly and wryly disses that which truly irks him: People who take themselves too seriously, the folly of ego. How perfectly ironic and contrary, and quite unlike carbon-copy rappers, period. [more]

WOW. SWEET.

Have you seen the video? [Use caution when clicking that link. Not for the faint of heart.] The one where a kid, riding in the backseat of a car, opens his door to hit another kid on his bike? He falls out of the car and, on the way down, smashes his face into the bumper of a parked car? You haven’t? Well, it’s brutal. And as I surfed for information on the aftermath of the accident, I discovered there’s a word for that kind of brutality.

When someone gets so thoroughly jacked up, one can say “He got owned.” [Note: the emphasis is essential. See also Burrrrrn! and Face!.] This week, Rep. Chris Buttars’ (R-West Jordan) “origins of life” bill—which would have forced teachers to read an anti-evolution statement before teaching evolution—got owned. [more]

HATE MAILERS, START YOUR KEYBOARDS

The Salamander Society (formerly The Latter-Day Lampoon) is like a gay bar in that it's a place for non-Mormons (or non-Mo curious) to be with other non-Mormons and also be really, really bitchy. That is to say it's a whole lot of fun and, on another level, very cathartic for anyone who feels constricted by the clip-on tie/Mr. Mac set. It's crammed full of everything from satire (in the form of humor pieces, song parodies, editorial cartoons and spoofs—check out the Planet Kolob Restaurant) to contemplative academic content (“Mormon Space Doctrine”). Much of it is reader-submitted (and as such, surprisingly good) but some notable names—like Arizona Republic editorial cartoonist Steve Benson (grandson of late Church President Ezra Taft Benson)—provide especially entertaining (and insightful) fodder.

Currently, the site is holding the Sixth Annual Salamander Awards where its readership recognizes its contributors as well skeptical, satirical and academic sites. Voting in various categories has already happened—winners are posted here. Anyone still wanting to cast a vote, however, can still weigh in on the Best Top Ten List and Best Sarcastic Remark. Stand up and be counted (just make sure you use a valid email address)! [more]

HELP WANTED

At first blush, signs like this are hilarious. Some moron signed up for a get-rich-quick "opportunity" that involves suckering other morons--er, apprentices--into the same rare prospect. Only he actually believes he's about to commit a not-so-random act of magnanimity by sharing his sage wisdom and secret to financial independence (that he acquired yestereday for a one-time payment of say, $300). Our well-intentioned idiot buys a magic marker, poster board and posts. Tongue lolling out of his mouth, carefully letters this sign. Thinking locationlocationlocation, the guy prowls the city looking for prime space and chooses the least busy, least visible corner of a T-intersection. The line baited, he sits back and waits for the money to roll in.

What a dumbass, right? What serious investor finds an "apprentice" through a crude, handwritten street sign? Pitiful. [more]

NOT AGAIN

Some among us believe hosting another Olympics is a good idea: why? What did the 2002 Winter Olympics do for Utah, really? We got some tourism money, some serious TV time. The LDS Church put on a public-realtions debutante gown and flashed its pearly whites at the world. Cheap Trick and the Foo Fighters played to 150 people in a tent. We have some new winter sports venues and several Olympics-related adornments around the city. There was that juicy scandal. People made serious money on cheap shit. (And we got to laugh at the expense of the purchasers of said crap.) Are we better off now than we were four years ago? Enough that another Olympics sixteen years after the fact is a good idea? [more]

STRIKING THE POSE

The UK humor website Bad Gas has a Abu Ghraib torturer Lynndie England. Says Bad Gas, "The image has shocked, sickened and outraged people. But more importantly, it has captured the imagination of young men and women all around the world who don't give much of a shit about anything. The result is a new craze called "Doing a Lynndie." If you aren't doing a Lynndie now, you soon will be." [more]

THE NAME GAME

How would you describe Utah's "emotional core?" That is to say, given the opportunity, what would you suggest as a new state slogan--er, "tourism brand?" This Deseret Morning News piece says it should be pithy, three to five words, and really encapsulate Utah's "emotional core." This, because it has to somehow convince a lotta people to spend a lotta money here (according to the piece, the Utah Office of Tourism and Film is thinking in the tens of millions of dollars). It was the UOTF and local ad agency W Communications that came up with the emotional core garbage. Supposedly, Utah's emo-core would be composed of the "look..., soul..., and sound of Utah." [more]

2006 WINTER OLYMPICS

21-year-old Park City skier Ted Ligety has won the combined gold medal in the 2006 Winter Olympics at Torino, Italy. His combined time of 3 minutes, 9.35 seconds covered two slalom and one downhill run and put him superior to Croation Ivica Kostelic (silver) and Austrian Rainer Schoenfelder (bronze). These are the first Olympic medals for Ligety, the youngest member of the U.S. men's ski team, but he won three slalom medals on the World Cup Circuit this season.

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