"That's my dream too"

Many people criticize Wikipedia as a source because its open source, but from my experience it has proven nothing but trusty. As Kortney and I have progressed through the movies in the Disney canon, we have visited Wikipedia to get some interesting background on the movies we are watching. Some articles are enlightening, some are interesting, and some are essential to understanding how the movie came to be. However, today, while reading the article on The AristoCats (number 20, making fine progress), we came across this sentence: "Snoop Dogg gave it a positive review as well.^[4]"

See that little four? That's a reference fools. Did we click on it to make sure that Snoop Dogg did in fact give this a positive review? Of course we did. And though Snoop Dogg may not be as analytical as Roger Ebert, Roger Ebert has never made me laugh as hard. Enjoy:

"I think The Aristocats is tha bomb. I'd lay back and watch it every day if I wasn't so busy makin' my own hits. I'd never dis this funky video about a downtown alley cat who smooth-talks a fine feline and ends up livin' large in the land of croissants. That's my dream, too.

O'Malley the alley cat is awright — he's no Dr. Dre, but hey, that homey's got a place in my dogg pound anytime. Ya gotta give him a big bowwow for getting his boys together to off that gangsta Edgar, the butler who's after the cats' big-bucks inheritance.

And ya gotta love mama kitty Duchess — she knows how to take care of her babies, and, meoww, she's cavvy. She's got that ooh-la-la accent and her nose is high in the air, but once she gets an earful of Scat Cat — voiced by the man, the great Scatman Crothers — she loosens up and shakes it out. Talk about cool jazz cats. Tha's right.

The tunes don't leave your head. I sho' have a bone to pick with the lyrics to ''Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat,'' but just try to stop hummin' it. Can't do it. I got my own ideas for doin' a Disney soundtrack — maybe the live-action 101 Dalmatians? I'd do it on the spot. Ha! Call my man and let's do lunch.

Ya don't like this movie, stay outta my tilt. Ya got the wrong attitude. The kids in the hood — who know French as the language of fries under the golden arches — will have as good a time watching this fine flick as those who can dig the meaning of, ahem, ''Scales and Arpeggios.'' And mamas and daddies, including yours truly, just may find themselves tuned in to this tape even when the pups are napping.

These cats sho' age well. My homeys don't look as good at 26 as this movie does. These cats got a lot more lives to live. A

Snoop Doggy Dogg, the father of one son, Corde, is currently working on his new album, Tha Doggfather."

Goals for 2011

As I cleaned up the apartment on Conference weekend I came across the goals Kortney and I set for the year. I had been trying to find them to remember what goals we had set for ourselves and so I was very happy to find them. We decided for 2011 that we would set 11 goals. We found that we are well on our way to some and were happy to remember and rededicate ourselves to the rest.

1. Visit six capitols.

This is a bite-size chunk of our overall goal to visit all 50 state capitols eventually. We visited six last year (Jefferson City, MO; Springfield, IL; Topeka, KS; Denver, CO; Salt Lake City, UT; and Frankfort, KY) and figured that that was a pretty solid pace. So far this year we have been to two.

Boise, Idaho and Cheyenne, Wyoming. Thanks to the Moyers in Boise and the Thomas' in CO who helped make those trips possible!

2. End the year with absolutely no debt.

One of those grown-up goals. With Kortney's good job and the possibility I have of getting paid work after my externship with Franchise Foundry, this shouldn't be a problem.

3. Watch a season of 24 in 24 hours.

This is something I have always wanted to do. And with all the seasons of 24 coming to Netflix instant play, it is more possible than ever. At the beginning of the year there were only two seasons of 24 I hadn't seen. Season 6 and Season 7. Kortney had never seen an episode. We figured we could leisurely watch Season 6 together and then set a day when we would watch Season 7 in real time. The idea is that we would start the season at the same time the day starts (8am for season 7) and then end at the same time. Pausing during commercial breaks to let time catch up and starting again once the real time matched the time on the 24 clock. We have only two episodes left of season 6 so we only have 24:Redemption left to watch before our 24 day is upon us.

4. Visit a National Park

The only National Park I've ever been to is Yellowstone. I've lived in Utah for over a decade and haven't been to Zion's, Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, OR Bryce's. I wanted to set the goal at three national parks so that we could really take a chunk out of that horrid underappreciation of Utah's natural beauty, but Kortney talked me down to one. We may see Hot Springs, AR, in May (America's first national Park), or Yellowstone this summer, or one of Utah's. Either way, this one is a must.

5. Start our State Scrapbook and finish at least three states.

Kortney comes from a long line of accomplished scrapbookers and has wanted to chronicle our adventures in that medium. We decided a fun way to tell our story would be to have a section for each state and so instead of seeing what we have done in chronological order, we would instead have a Chapter for each time we have been through a state, full of pictures, mementos, souvenirs, etc. But, it won't happen if we don't get started, so this year, we begin. So far we have been to 16 states, so, we've got work to do.

6. Read the Book of Mormon

Though we both have read this book of scripture, we have never read it together. That's on the docket for this year. So far, we are in Mosiah.

7. Go hanggliding

This is something we have talked about doing since we were dating and have never done. We were going to go as a graduation present to me last April but the weather didn't permit. The point of the mountain is world reknown for its wind conditions and we would be remiss not to take advantage of this while we live so close.

8. Run in some kind of a race

We originally registered for the Red Rock Relay last year but had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts with Humor U. This year, we would like to complete some kind of a race and see how that goes.

9. Improve Sundays

With our busy schedules it is easy to let certain important but non-urgent things slip between the cracks and this is most often the case with spiritual things. We figured we could start the process of improving ourselves by improving our use of Sundays as days of spiritual growth. This was a goal we had forgotten about until we found the list....so...we'll let you know how that goes from here.

10. Watch all the movies in the Disney Animated Canon.

There are 50. From Snow White to Tangled. We have a trip planned at the end of the year to go to DisneyWorld and we hope to finish this by then. The last one we watched was Sleeping Beauty (15) and the next will be 101 Dalmatians (16)

11.Throw an awesome President's Day Party.

Done and Done! See the post about it for pictures and a beautiful poem describing the event.

The Disney Canon

When Kortney and I were long distance last summer, we made a list of things we were gonna do when we were back together. Some things were cute, like learn a new recipe together, some things were spiritual, like go to Conference together, and some things were adventurous, like climbing a mountain peak. Two items were a little ambitious. The first was to road trip to Mt. Rushmore (this was my suggestion), the second was go to Disneyworld (her suggestion). Well, we did about 20 of the 30 things on our list before leaving Provo for the summer. On our way out to St. Louis for the summer we made a 10 hour detour and went to see Mt. Rushmore. It was AMAZING. And now, as our summer draws to a close and we head back to Provo we are putting together our plans for making the second item, Disneyworld, a reality.

Our tentative plan right now is to go out in May, once the school year is over, and spend a couple days in Orlando doing all four of Disney's parks and both of the Universal parks. We are planning on going with Ali and Brent, our Tenessee couple friends who get done with classes the second week in May. Ali is a Disney expert as that is the regular family vacation for her. She will be our guide.

My only Disney experience is with Euro Disney which my family went to right before we moved back to the States. I was too short to go on any of the good rides and my inability to go on the Indiana Jones ride (my hero at the time) is what I most remember from that trip. It was very disappointing to me at that time. So I don't really know what to expect.

Kortney and I have season passes to Six Flags this summer and she was explaining to me not to base my expectations around an amusement park like that. Disneyworld is a theme park. The rides are not there to be thrill rides, they aren't roller coasters, etc. The whole Disney experience lies in seeing the Princesses and visiting the different lands and its all an excersice in nostalgia. Apparently.

Well, I suggested that in order to get the most out of our money we needed to go through a crash course in Disney. We looked up the list of all the Disney animated classics and there are currently 50, Princess and the Frog being the latest. We made a spreadsheet, looked up which are available on Netflix (all but 7) and decided that we would do it. We would watch the whole canon in chronological order.

This was today. We also hopped on YouTube and discovered that most Disney movies uploaded on there in 10 minute increments. We decided to get a jump on our goal and watched Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I can't believe how much I enjoyed it. Her voice is rather shrilly I must say, but I laughed at the gags more in this movie than I've laughed in most comedies for a long time. It was great. If you haven't seen an old Disney movie in a while, I recommend going back and reliving those old memories. These movies really are timeless. Next up...Pinocchio!