The Adventures of Stephen Gashler

I, Teresa and Ariah took the bus and UTA Trax to Salt Lake City in order to contest a ticket I got for allegedly having no insurance while driving on the freeway, for which I would have to pay $435.  There’s been a big mix-up of red tape with Eric and I switching cars, but the bottom line is that I was de-facto insured.  Unfortunately, it turned out harder to prove this than I’d hoped, so the hearing officer gave me till July 10th to submit an official letter from Allstate.  Blech.

It was fun to make ephemeral friends on the bus and rail.  One always meets the most interesting people there.  While waiting for our ride back in downtown Salt Lake, we passed a lot of punkers who were unabashedly blowing their secondhand smoke all over, heedless of us and our baby.  It was hard not to judge them.  But my mind and our conversation turned to the subject of judging others, and my attention fell to a young man sitting across the street who was also puffing a cigarette.  Interestingly, as soon as we boarded the train, finding it comletely packed, this same young man promptly gave up his seet so that my little family could have a place….Who am I to judge another?

A finale to this philosophical episode took place when we found ourselves staring at a very eccentric fellow opposite from us, who, with his eyes closed was shaking all over as if with the palsy, those less spastic and more insane.  I imagine that my first reaction was, “Shame, another victim to brain-frying drugs.”  But as I studied him, determining to make sense of this apparent madness, I realized that there was a rhythm to it.  He foot was keeping a beet, and his body was actually dancing.  I realized that he was smiling.  My curiosity peaked, I said, “You must have  a great song in my head.”  To my surprise, he opened his eyes, smiled at me and said, “Yeah, I do.” - “What is it?” I asked.  He replied, “Billy Jean.”  I then asked if he was sad about the passing of Michael Jackson, and with childlike sadness, he said that he was.  He eventually told me that he was present when Michael Jackson and his brothers and sisters performed in Salt Lake City some fourty years ago, when little Mikey was only ten.

As a summation to my thoughts, this is what I told Teresa:  When I was young, I used to gag at the smell of cigarette smoke on the streets of Salt Lake and look at the offenders as bad people.  Now I’ve realized that there are few “bad people.”  God doesn’t make mistakes.  There are just people.  Some of them have made bad choices.  Some of them are struggling.  Some of them are dying.  But they’re still just people.  My mission opened my eyes to this more than anything.  How wonderful it was to focus entirely on the worth of the souls of others for two years.  I eagerly await an opportunity to do so again.

It’s funny that on this day when we were on a quest to set right one car problem, no sooner did we set forth on our journey than we created a new problem.  We locked our keys in the car at the bus station in Orem.  Luckily the insurance for Eric’s car had AAA.  So perhaps it was all for the best in some mystical, paradoxical way.

On Saturday morning, thanks to the driving power of New Film Project, we finally ventured the underwater green screen shoot I’ve been anticipating for my music video of “I’m Still in Heaven.”  We just showed up at the Old Mill indoor swimming pool and hoped no one would kick us out.  No one did.  Needless to say, Teresa was nervous the whole time.  This was only amplified by the fact that the water was bitterly cold, and diving into it proved incredibly difficult, inevitably to cause hyperventilation.  I thus had to compromise my original vision of singing underwater amid long takes and settle for some faster “stunts” to work with.  After dropping the green screen on a frame of PVC pipe, I dived down to 8 feet, where Randy, holding the camera inside of a fish tank, shot me twirling around.  This was literally one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.  The water was so cold, and the pressure was so splitting, and it was so hard to hold my breath, opening my eyes and trying to look cool amid the chlorinated water.  Anyway, we got some pretty cool footage out of it.

On Sunday I taught in Elders Quorum on the gifts of the Spirit.  For Father’s Day, Mom and Dad furnished us with a feast, and we cooked it up and had the whole family, minus Christy’s family and Eric, over for dinner.  On Teresa’s whim, I wrote a murder mystery game in less than two hours, which is an achievement I’m proud of, as there were 9 characters, and I had to write a complicated plot and subplot that intertwined all of them, gradually revealing the story and developing their characters over three rounds.  It’s a good exercise.  After the game, Teresa was chief engineer in finishing our presents for both dad and mom, which were little books of memoirs and love from each of their children.  We finally started to watch Forever Strong, the movie that I interned on and actually played as a featured extra.  This was the first time I’ve ever seen it, though I still only saw a few clips.

On Monday, while going on a walk, Teresa came up with a great idea.  We’re always trying to market ourselves, our business, our performing group, our film company, etc., so why not start our own marketing venue, through which we could market ourselves?  Within minutes after getting home, I registered the domain http://whattodoinutah.net.  I’m still developing the site, but it will be an awesome resource through which any group can let the public know about upcoming events.  I have a great business plan for it, and I think this will be the most successful of my business ventures thus far.

Tonight was the first rehearsal for Teresa’s play, “The Man Who Cried Woof,” directed by Christian Cragun.  It was fun to start blocking it out, playing the role of the dog.  I think I make a pretty natural dog, if I might say so.

My dad and Brian arrived in town last night.  We spent the day visiting with family at Aunt Carol’s house.  As we began to unwind, they put on some romantic film with Richard Geer and some lady called Nights on the Beach or something like that.  It was absolutely unbearable for me.  Teresa abused her power as number 5 (I being 6) to force me to watch it, but eventually, seeing my mysery, she relented.  I know I was acting like a baby, and I realize that there must needs be movies about people who are late in life, carrying baggage, finding solace through new relationships…but I certainly don’t want to watch them.  Or at least not often.  I want to see movies about people whose lives aren’t messed up, who know how to love, who have self-control and spirituality, who fight evil, build and create.  Not just another empty story that preaches “all you need is love.”  Blech.  Not all of us are depressed and lonely.  Not all of us enjoy re-experiencing the fire of new relationships vicariously through actors on film.  I find nothing insulting about the generality that guys can’t stand romantic comedies.  I absolutely can’t stand them.  It’s a matter of principle.

Brian and I secured the location for our underwater shoot tomorrow morning.  We just went to the Old Mill apartments and made a friend.

Today I finally got rid of all 600 fliers advertising our puppetry workshop, most of them delivered to doors, but a hundred or so dropped off at libraries.  It’s hard to believe that I hit up close to 500 houses.  Alas, I’m really not that confident that they’ll take much effect.  But at least I tried.

Teresa and I finished watching the documentary “Visions of Light.”  Hooray for cinematography.  Makes me want to go do something revolutionary with my camera, like mount it on…the ceiling.  Aside from helicopter and extremely wide establishing shots, You don’t see the overhead shot very often.  Maybe that will become what Gashler was famous for.  Or perhaps the floor shot.  Can you imagine watching an entire movie from a mouse’s POV?  That would be funny.  Perhaps even brilliant.

For hours last night, going until 1:30 AM, amid pouring rain, I delivered fliers advertising our Summer Puppetry Workshop.  It’s interesting how after hours of delivering fliers at night, I never fully graduated beyond the fear of someone flinging open their door and shouting, “Get off my property!”  Today was a little easier, though after hours of work, I couldn’t get over the disturbing feeling that I was delivering my fliers mainly to the homes of the elderly and poor Mexican families.  Tomorrow I’ll hit up an upper-class neighborhood.

At our New Film Project meeting, we began to work out the logistics for the underwater shoot on Saturday for the “I’m Still in Heaven” music video.

Then we went to the second New Play Project audition night, where my assistant director Ben and I cast our play Gotta be Happy by Lyvia Martinez.  It was really hard to turn away so many good actresses.  We had a big inner battle over whether or not to cast Teresa, as my assistant director and I agreed that she was best for one of the roles.  Teresa was also deeply nervous about this, none of us wanting to appear as nepotists.  But we agreed that it was equally wrong to turn away the best candidate simply because of the fear of nepotism.  We agreed that the best way to approach the issue was to simply not let the family tie bear any bearing either way.

We finished this extraordinary song, and it only took us two years!

Listen to “Dead Chicken Song.”

“Dead Chicken Song” is the touching tale about a boy who loses his pet chicken, created by Your Imaginary Friends and Maxed Out Puppetry.

Music by Stephen Gashler - Lyrics by Caitlin Shirts - Produced by Monte (Trance) Emerson - Vocals: Stephen and Teresa Gashler - Guitar: Curtis Wiederhold - Piano: Stephen Gashler - Bass and drums: Freddy Desposorio

This morning we had Desire and her kids and Mom and Deanna over for some puppet shows.  I helped Desire record a harp and vocal song for their anniversary today.  Teresa and I prepared 600 fliers to advertise our summer puppetry workshop.

This morning, Mike hosted a detective-themed birthday party for Desire at BYU campus.  We ran around from building to building, as if a giant game of clue, only able to call him when we were touching one in order to get clues.  We had a series of ten very difficult puzzles to solve.  My group eventually figured out most of them, though some were so hard that none of the groups got them, and Mike kept calling us to give us clues.  Finally, after hours of problem-solving, the other two groups had dropped out, and only ours discovered the location of Mike, Desire and Jaime.  It was fun.  It inspired Teresa to want to create a fusion between “How to Host a Murder Mystery” games and logic puzzle games.  I think it’s a good idea.

The problem with stories about mystery-solving children is that the authors of the puzzles are also the authors of the characters.  Hence the characters always add up the clues to the single, intended answer that’s never wrong.  In reality, when faced with difficult puzzles, humans are incredibly slow and often give up.  Even when persistent, we often come up with other plausible answers to riddles that are usually very arbitrary when analyzed and end up in places the riddles’ authors would have never wanted.  For example, in one of the riddles, Mike wrote about a famous baseball player and Grover Cleveland balancing an elephant on his nose.  Teresa convinced herself that the elephant was a metaphor of the Republican party, and the meaning of these images would come to light from reading up on Grover Cleveland in the library, so that’s what she did.  After all, that’s what the kids always do, and they always find a telling clue from their research.  It turned out that Teresa just wasted a lot of time, not being able to make sense of any of it, us later finding out that the elephant portion was just put in there to confuse us.  Life is terribly unromantic.  Though it would be funny to read a realistic, mystery-solving young adult novel.

I made a coconut milk cake that should be amazing.

Ariah has developed a phalsetto and the tendency to clap her hands in the last few days.  Her cuteness and happiness factors have also recently skyrocketed.

I’ve resurrecting and updating yourimaginaryfriends.net, mainly with a video I finished today advertising Teresa’s and my new attempt at paying the bills without having to get real jobs, a summer children’s puppetry workshop. I sincerely hope this works out, because it will be a blast.

After a very late night, I woke up a little after 4:00 AM to take Eric back to the airport.  He drove, and running late, he sometimes reached speeds as high as 90 MPH.  Within a minute after dropping him off, I was pulled over by a policeman for driving a little over 40 MPH in a 30 zone.  This wasn’t so bad, because I have a clean record, so I just got a warning.  But when he asked for my insurance information, I realized that I had nothing on me.  He checked his database and told me that I’m listed as uninshured.  For this he gave me a ticket.  This was strange, because we are insured.  It’s possible that there’s confusion because Eric and I have switched cars, but he’s insured too.  Now I get to go to a court in SLC to apeal it.  The story gets better when in the evening, when late for a concert in a park, another cop pulls us over.  She said that she pulled us over because we don’t have insurance.  Talk about “Big Brother is watching you!”  This in America?  Anyway, we told her that we were ticketed for the same thing this morning, and we promised to put our information into our car as soon as we got home.  It’s nice to be interogated when you have a wife and crying baby in the car; the policemen seem far more likely to believe in your integrity.

Tweese and I had a fun-filled two hours at Seven Peaks, role-playing the scifi adventure we’re making up this “season”.  This stemmed from my realization that everyone who subjects themselves to the popular media, coming home after a day’s work to eagerly consume the latest and greatest TV show, movie or video game–no matter how enlightening the content–categorizes himself as one to be acted upon instead of one to act, at least temporarily.  While I don’t dispute the necessity for leisure time, still I question if a god must truly ever reduce himself to something to be acted upon.  Certainly not for hours a day, every day.  Thus I concluded that while wholesome entertainment is divine, its most celestial form is proactive, creative,  self-engaged.  Hence, while watching Star Trek is good, role-playing Star Trek is better.  And in my opinion, more entertaining.  This is why children are inherently enlightened beings: they create their own worlds.  They act.  Furthermore, how cool is it to say to your friends, “Did you see the new episode of Lost?”  Definitely not as cool as saying, “Last night, in the second episode of Kyle and Kara, Teresa and I were abducted by this wild band of snobberogs, and there was this really awesome fight sequence.”  I find what I see as America’s favorite pastime–criticism and discussion of the arts and media–fundamentally flawed in nature, at least when such becomes a major occupation, for it presupposes that we are things to be acted upon, rather than to act.  Only when we carry two books, one to read and one to write in, filling each equally (though in my opinion, the latter is far more important), are we balanced.  And filling the latter book with nothing more than criticism of the former is hardly elevating us from the status of one to be acted upon.  I would to God that every man were his own artist, his own creator, his own prophet, his own…god.  Let the media and all the other art in the world be damned.  It means absolutely nothing if we can only consume it as things to be acted upon.  Rather, I believe that only when we are drawing from the colors and inspiration around us and creating our own worlds from it, are we truly living.  If we are simply consumers, then we might as well plug ourselves into the “Matrix.”  Perhaps we’ve been plugged in for a long time.