Quasimodo's Revenge

If you happened to have been on BYU campus on Friday around noon, you would've heard some strange tunes coming from the carillon (yes, the infamous bell tower).

My nephew, Six, has been taking a carillon class this past semester (because he just has to take every weird class that's offered) and this was his big performance. We all met at the base of the tower (where his mother, Lorna, tried to take a picture of him with her tape recorder -- she gets crazier by the minute).

Those of us who didn't know better followed Six up the 105 steps up to the top (yes, we counted -- and we were very surprised that Jorge with his gimpy leg could make it up all 105!).

Six's first song was very pretty, but sounds vaguely familiar. Babs asks him the title. Six replies, "Tetris Theme A."

What? The theme music to a video game? Six is so weird. How can he possibly top that? Oh, just you wait.

Then he plays a few classical carillon tunes (for those of you who are bell tower groupies) and surprises us with a few modern favorites ("If I Were a Rich Man" from "Fiddler on the Roof" and "Moon River" from "Breakfast at Tiffany's").

Then he says, "This is for my brother, Fred."

And proceeds to play "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath.

Oh, he's going to the Standards Office for that one.

And then just to make sure he gets kicked out of the university, he finishes up with a rousing rendition of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" by Iron Butterfly.

I'm telling you, I'll never be satisfied with "Come, Come, Ye Saints" again.

I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille

Back in the early 50s, my father worked in TV. Even though he soon left that job to work as an electrical engineer, he still had some of that movie magic running through his veins.

It started with a Super-8 camera taking simple films of his growing family hanging up their stockings every Christmas eve. As the years went by, we couldn't just hang up our stockings, we had to have ever more elaborate skits that went with the hanging of the stockings. Regular lamps weren't good enough, my dad had these super bright spot lights that would blind us all as he would yell, "Open up your eyes!"

Lorna's husband, Jorge, proclaimed ours "The Cecil B. DeMille Christmases." Just like real film making, we had to wait forever for the lighting to be just right, we'd finally get our skit perfect and my dad would realize that he had the lens cap still on (or no film in the camera), and it would always go over time and over budget. I would half expect to see a couple of grips eating at the Crafts Services table in our living room with the way these productions would play out.

Then in the early '80s, we were introduced to video tape. SOUND. Just like the old silent movie era actors, we were kind of hesitant and some of our skits were still done with no sound. After a year or so, we used this new medium to showcase J.D.'s band or Rena's vocal lessons. Soon, all the neighborhood kids were also involved in our movies.

My favorite Christmas film was when the entire family was struck down with the stomach flu, but we still went on with the show -- with all the kids carrying pots around for barfing in.

Another good one was when Ardale went on and on about how proud he was of Spence and how much we miss him while he's on his mission. Then we hear Spence in the background say, "Don't you mean Henry?" Oh, you should've seen my dad's face on that one.

Just like in real life, we try our best to plan things out and control everything. And just like in real life, our favorite memories consist of the times when everything goes wrong.