Month: September 2013

St. George’s mayoral candidates debated about public concern over drug and alcohol rehabilitation facilities, water conservation and public property changes at the Gardner Center Tuesday night in anticipation of next month’s election.

Although there were many empty chairs and about 75 community members present, Mayor Daniel McArthur said It was one of the best turnouts they have had.

 A question was asked about the possibilities of a new recreational facility like the one in Washington, which is operating at a loss.

“Most rec centers operate at a loss; we should maintain what we have,” Contending Candidate Jon Pike said.

Both candidates agreed the private sector would profit from such a center if there is a community need.

“The city should not be in competition,  [if there is a need] then the private sector can do it,” said  McArthur.

The candidates were asked for their feelings on the Lake Powell pipe line and what they foresaw happening with the project.

McArthur and Pike said if it became a necessity, they would be in support of such a project.

It should be researched and not done at max cost, Pike said.

They both favored working on local water conservation first.

A hot topic is the old Electric Theater, located on 68 E. Tabernacle, purchased by the city. Both candidates suggested it could be turned into a preforming arts center to support all local acts.

 A question concerning the good ol’ boys of St.George was brought to the floor.  The Mayor said he is content with current city operations.

 Pike said he could see room for more communication within the community for bidders and community involvement in general.

 Both candidates were friendly and run close in their optimism for the city of St. George.

 The Mayor talked about living his life here and closed with expressing his love of St. George.

Pike expressed his concern for St. George needing a set vision, more transparency and defined values.

“It would help set [a standard] and hold ‘us’ accountable,” Pike said.

On the sidelines after the debate Pike explained his closing remarks. 

 “Yes, that is why the question about the good ol’ boys was asked. It would leave less for the public to wonder about when something happens in the community,” he said.

The November ballot for St. George also holds two city council seats and a $185 million Special Education Bond.

Many students said they planned to vote. Others were surprised there are upcoming elections.

“Really, who are the candidates?” Darin Small, senior communication major from San Diego said. “No one really knows much about them. Do I vote for the best sign?”

Small not the only one in want of information.

“I might be a communication major, but I did not get the communication about an election.” Emily Flegal, a junior communication major from St. George said, “I’m kind embarrassed. I guess I didn’t pay attention to the signs around town.”

Some students are ready to vote and confused about why otherswouldn’t want to vote.

 “Why wouldn’t you vote?” said Mike Nelson, a junior communication major from St. George.“It’s vital to be involved in the community because they make decisions on local issues and vote on local laws.”

Jenessa Nielsen, a senior English major from Spanish Fork, is adamant about voting.

“Yes, I vote,” she said. “Last year was the first year I was old enough to vote. I plan on always voting.”

According to the Washington county website, there is still time to register to vote in the November elections, but not much.

 If you would like to vote in the Nov. 5 registration, at the County Clerk office is your only option.

 If you are not registered to vote and would like to vote in the Nov. 5 elections, you must register in person with proper ID by Oct. 21 at the County Clerk office, located at 97 East Tabernacle. You may still register online or by mail, but you will not be permitted to vote in this election.

 Qualified persons registering in person after Oct. 7 but by Oct. 21 can vote only day of in person at their assigned precinct. See the website for a list of excepted registration identification.

 

 

Island Souls brought bouncy reggae beats and a refreshing breath of island culture to Dixie State University.

Artists including Fiji, Bonafide and Sauny J performed at the Burns Arena Friday night. Students and community members of all backgrounds gathered close and let the jams take them away to paradise.

Honolulu Grill sponsored the event, and the concert was a fundraiser for DSU’s Polynesian Club. Vice President Kathleen Tupou, a sophomore CIT major from Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., said the concert will help spread the word and help Polynesians get more exposure at DSU.

“People want to see more Poly artists in St. George,” Tupou said. 

Tupou said posting fliers for the Island Souls concert around campus helped their culture become more student-centered.

On the contrary, community member Kallie Pettichord said they didn’t advertise enough. She said she only saw fliers in certain restaurants and novelty stores. Pettichord said the music scene is wide-ranged here, but there aren’t many performances to attend.

“If there’s something going on (in St. George), you better go,” Pettichord said. 

Sauny J kicked the night off, exciting the crowd. By the time the band was preparing to leave the stage, nearly half of the audience was up and dancing.

Bonafide was the next act. It brought heavy bass and synchronized beats to the arena straight from Jamaica. The band members’ long dreadlocks and big smiles set the mood, and the audience awarded them with an encore.

The headlining band of the night was Fiji, and nearly everyone was standing when it came on stage. People crowded the front of the stage, waving their hands in the air and singing along to Fiji’s smooth, bouncy vocals.

The concert provided a refreshing reminder of what life would be like living in the islands. Tupou said America is so different from her culture, and it’s hard to find balance in life here compared to the islands. 

“Our culture has a high-value system,” she said. “In America, you’re more likely to loose your culture.” 

Tupou keeps her culture alive in many ways. Lately, it’s especially important for her to wear black. In her culture, after a family member dies, the mourning process includes wearing black every day for a year following the loss. In this case, it was her grandmother. Despite her efforts, she said Polynesians still lose their culture here. 

“Every day, we fall short,” Tupou said. 

Tupou said one of the main focuses for the Polynesian Club is to also emphasize higher education in the lives on Polynesian Americans.

“We want them to realize the opportunities we have out here,” Tupou said.

The Polynesian Club is already organizing next year’s event.

“Be on the lookout for next year’s event,” Tupou said. “It’s going to blow everybody’s mind.”

The Polynesian Club meets every Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Multicultural/Diversity Center on campus in the bottom floor of the Student Activity Center. They hold history nights and luaus, and they hope to work on more fundraisers. Tupou encourages students from different backgrounds to learn more about their culture. 

“We want to see people keep the culture alive here in America,” Tupou said. 

Running a marathon is mind over matter, and it tests a runner’s endurance, strength and will.

The 37th St. George Marathon will be held Saturday. Runners will race to qualify for the world-renowned Boston Marathon, which will take place April 21.

Ross Decker, a math associate professor and cross-country assistant coach, has raced in the St. George Marathon 25 times.

“Completing a marathon is extremely fulfilling,” Decker said. “The skilled runners that I have coached are very motivated by testing their physical and psychological limits. Running a marathon can really do that.”

A marathon is 26.2 miles, and to qualify for the Boston Marathon, an 18 to 34-year-old male must run within three hours and five minutes. For the same age group, females must cross the finish line within three hours and 35 minutes.

David Holt, a Pine View High School history teacher and cross-country head coach, has qualified for the Boston Marathon.

“Boston is a lot of fun,” Holt said. “It’s a neat experience. There are a lot of people from St. George that qualify for Boston and go back there.”

Holt said he trains year-round, while others may train only three to four months ahead.

“I generally run around 100 miles a week,” Holt said.

According to www.stgeorgemarathon.com, the St. George Marathon was labeled the “Most Organized Marathon” in the country. 

“I love the volunteer help,” Decker said. “The support of the home crowd leaves you with a really good feeling for the quality of the St. George community.”

Running a marathon is a goal in itself, but many others have goals of their own. 

“I have never won my age group,” Decker said. “One year, I was nine seconds away. I guess you can say that I have a goal of winning my age group some year.”

Holt finished with a time of 2:29:53 in last year’s marathon and is always in good shape, thanks to being a cross country coach.

“One of my goals is a sub-two hours and 30 minutes,” said Holt. “Injury kind of set me back a little bit, but I think a sub 2:30 is a good possibility.”

The marathon begins at 6:45 Saturday. 

Volleyball, a water blob, water slides and food were just a few of the attractions at Sand Hollow State Park Saturday.

The annual Sand Hollow Mayhem event gave students a chance to hang out on a beach all day and have a dance party at night with live bands and disc jockeys.

The Heart of Dixie, owned by Jared Keddington, set up Sand Hollow Mayhem this year.

“I see dances that happen all over Utah,” Keddington said. “They’re all the same thing. This is a really unique opportunity in a really unique venue and a cool way to have a good time by playing in the sand, the sun and the water.”

Students had a myriad of reasons to be at the event.

“I’m a really sociable person, and I (knew) there (were) going to be tons of people there,” said Morgan Miller, a junior dental hygiene major from Salina.

Students said the advertising was better this year.

“We got so many fliers for it,” said Alexis Finch, a freshman psychology major from Nephi. “It sounded so cool. We looked online and found out about it.”

Students were able to sit on the beach and have a place to socialize with friends and meet new people.

“I really wanted something to do for the end of summer,” said Kathryn Sassman, a sophomore graphic design major from Ivins. “What’s better than the lake?”

Saturday was the fourth time the Sand Hollow Mayhem was held, but only the second time the Heart of Dixie hosted it. 

According to the official website, www.sandhollowmayhem.com/site/index, this weekend had many more activities, food, people, sponsors and prizes.

“The sand volleyball games get really fun,” Miller said. “The skim boarding contests are always fun.”

Sassman and Miller said their favorite activity was the water blob.

The water blob is a blown up vinyl air mattress. One person sits on an end while another person climbs up onto a platform to jump on the other end. It launches the other person in the air and into the water.

“I really want to go on the water blob,” Miller said. “That’s all I really want to do.”

A beach dance party started at 8 p.m. until midnight. Fireworks also went off at 10 p.m.

“We do fireworks at night and have a bonfire down here,” Keddington said. “We do paddle boards and kayaks also.”

The Heart of Dixie is hosting an upcoming college-aged Monster Mash dance Halloween night. Keddington is also planning a foam dance and a paint dance, which were held in the past, and those will be in January and February.

For updated information, find the Heart of Dixie on Facebook at www.facebook.com/theheartofdixie or on the official website at www.myheartofdixie.com.

 Jordan says, “Yum!

“Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2” has stunning visual effects of food that has become alive as animals.

It is funny, it has a great cast and amazing animation. It is a great film for viewers of all ages.

If you haven’t seen the first movie, the beginning of the film gives you a quick rundown of what happened.

In the first film, Flint Lockwood (voiced by Bill Hader) is a young inventor who eventually creates the “Flint Lockwood Diatonic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator” or “FLDSMSFR,” which is a device that turns water into food.

The machine starts creating food that is problematically humongous, so Lockwood ends up having to try to destroy his greatest creation.

The second film begins only minutes after the first one ends. Lockwood is contacted by big-name scientist Chester V. (voiced by Will Forte), who requests him to come to San Fran Jose to work for him.

Lockwood accepts the job opportunity and is soon sent on a mission to stop the “FLDSMSFR,” which the viewer finds out isn’t destroyed. Lockwood goes with the same crew of misfits who helped him destroy the machine the first time.

The animation of the film is incredible because of the way the producers created animals made out of food. There are elephants made out of watermelons, chimpanzees made out of shrimp, and a spider made from a cheeseburger and fries. The movements of the characters had life-like fluidity.

The way the producers made the animals out of food, or “foodimals,” was awe-inspiring. The names of the “foodimals” were hilarious and fit perfectly with the real names of the food, like”shrimpanzees” and “watermelephants.”

The voices fit perfectly for each of the actor’s respective characters. In most films, I’m not the biggest fan of the way Anna Faris acts, but her quirky voice was perfect for the film.

Hader is hilarious in all of his movies. He even has me laughing in his T-Mobile commercials. Andy Samberg voiced Brent McHale, and he is one of my favorite comedy actors. The guy’s voice alone can make me laugh.

Overall, I liked this movie virtually from start to finish. The cast is awesome, the storyline is wonderful, and the animation is amazing. The only thing I thought could improve the film was the jokes. Some of them made me laugh out loud, but others were just too similar to each other.

I am giving this movie an A-. With better jokes, it would have easily been an A, if not an A+.

Matthew is on the fence

“Cloudy 2” is a lot like some of the girls I meet in St. George. It’s really pretty, and it’s fun for a few minutes, but there’s not a whole lot of substance.

Sony Pictures breaks what I consider to be the cardinal rule of animation (and Dreamworks is guilty of this, too): An animated character should be voiced by a person with an animated voice. 

When you’ve got characters like Bill Hader’s Flint Lockwood who sounds like Bill Hader and Anna Faris’ Sam Sparks who sounds like Anna Faris, then you’ve got dull characters. Neither Faris nor Hader use any sort of real cartoonish inflections in their voice overs, and that really bugs me because I know both of them are capable of doing cartoonish voices.

However, Kristen Schaal’s voice is a different story, and you can’t go wrong with Will Forte’s, either. Barb and Chester V. were both fun to listen to. I only wish they got more air time. 

I can appreciate the word mashups. It takes a smart cookie to come up with a term like “tacodile” or “shrimpanzee.” 

But the wonderful wordplay and beautiful imagery doesn’t make up for the sheer ridiculousness of the story.

With all the chaos and color, I can see why this killed at the box office over the weekend. It’s the perfect place to take a screaming child. The story is so scattered that it doesn’t matter if the theater is full of whining brats. Any plot points you miss won’t matter because the film doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to begin with.

But hey, this movie’s target audience isn’t adults. So I can’t fault it for being batcrap insane. 

In the end, I’d give “Cloudy” a B-. It’s visually stunning, and I might bump that grade up if I could watch it with the sound turned down and Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” playing instead.

Salt Lake City Radio personalities came to Dixie State University for a live broadcast and took the time to give students advice about their career choices.

Gina Barberi, Bill Allred and Kerry Jackson from X96’s “Radio From Hell” show were on campus Friday for a live broadcast of their show.

Barberi, Allred and Jackson told audio students what it was like to work for a radio station and gave them tips that will help them progress in their field of choice.

“Being involved with the school radio station is a good start,” Barberi said. “I did radio as a student at the University of Utah, and it was a great experience.”

Neither Barberi nor Allred planned on being radio personalities.

Barberi only participated at the station on campus because it was fun and something to do. It wasn’t until she got an internship at a station that she decided radio was for her.

“My dream was to become a news anchor,” Barberi said. “I interned at different news stations, and things just did not fit.”

Allred tried acting, but it did not turn out like he thought it would, and he started working at a bar. He then realized he did not like the environment and chose a career in radio.

“Radio definitely slowed down the road to alcoholism for me,” Allred said.

Jackson, on the other hand, knew he wanted to be on the radio since he was in middle school.

“I would talk to adults and they would say they didn’t know what they wanted to do for a career,” Jackson said. “I was in middle school and knew, without a doubt, I was going to be on the radio.”

Jackson went to a broadcast school for only three months when he was offered a job at a local news station.

They addressed students’ questions about what steps they can take to have a successful radio career.

“The No. 1 rule in radio, to make sure you have a long career, is not to make your sponsors mad,” Jackson said. 

Students were also concerned about whether jobs are available in radio today.

“Stations are using fewer people now,” Allred said. “Computers are taking over everything.”

Allred said computers have changed the way radio is ran. Companies want to save money, and having computers lets stations keep money and still get the job done. 

Barberi said the job at the station is great, but she has long days.

“My day starts off at 3 a.m. every day,” Barberi said. “I then go to the station at 5:30 a.m. to get things ready for the show. We are then online from 6-10 a.m., and then we go to parties and charity events.” 

All three agree radio is hard work with bad hours, but, in the end, it is worth it. They are glad they chose to pursue the career.

A giant peach squished the first play of the semester at Dixie State University flat, just like it did to Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker.

The play is designed as a children’s theater production, but, even so, the play seemed a little too childish. While children’s theater is meant to be over-the-top and fast-paced, it is not meant to sound like the actors are talking down to children. The lines felt over-acted, like they would in a rehearsal. From the costumes to the set, the whole thing felt like a high school theater production.

Matt Russell, who played Centipede; Justine Davis, who played Spider; and Andrew Bullard, who played Earthworm, were, by far, the closest to what I see children’s theater being. They were outlandish without being extreme, and the children’s laughter in the audience during their scenes made them seem like the favorites.

Some of the other actors were extremely difficult to hear. From where I sat in the fifth row, I was only able to hear about half of the lines spoken by Grasshopper and Ladybird. There was also one scene where the ship captain and two of his crew members were right in the orchestra pit. Despite how close the orchestra pit comes to the audience, I couldn’t hear anything the crew members said. The only characters with microphones were Centipede and the narrator when other cast members could have used microphones as well.

Part of the difficulty of hearing the actors were the sound effects, which were overpowering for the most part. They could have been cut down to a seagull sound effect and maybe the boat horn instead of adding in the creaking noises for the peach or the raven noises at random. 

I was also rather distracted by most of the bug costumes. A few of the costumes would have been impossible to tell what they were if the bugs didn’t have their species as character names. The main costume choices that seemed confusing were Glowworm and Ladybird. The costume for Glowworm was too much fabric and drowned the actor. Ladybird’s costume was an awkward mix of human and bug characteristics.

Not all of the costumes were awkward, though. James and Aunt Sponge were costumed perfectly. I do have to give kudos to Danica Christensen, playing James, who appeared to have cut off all of her hair for the show. When I originally spoke with her before the show opened, she had long, black hair. In the show, she had a pixie cut.

Jacob Beecher, who played Aunt Sponge, had outrageous makeup that worked for the role as such an eccentric, and his ability to seem comfortable in a dress was cause in and of itself for applause.

Other aspects of the technical side of the show made the play unique. Director Mark Houser chose to give the play a storybook theme, complete with the edges of the stage looking like an open book. The set included multiple two-dimensional cutouts to help achieve the pop-up book feeling. The best example in the show was, by far, the very beginning scene showing Mr. and Mrs. Trotter being chased by a wild animal.

The play’s lighting also kept the fantasy feeling alive. Multiple scenes used stencils over the lights to give them a more whimsical feeling.

The only suggestion I would offer on the technical aspects of the play is to be wary of actor and technician movements backstage. I could see people moving around behind the scenes multiple times, even though I was sitting in the center of the audience.

Overall, the play was a little bit overdone, and it was condescending at times because of how over-acted the lines seemed. “James and the Giant Peach” is still a good show, and it is great for children, but don’t go in expecting anything but children’s theater. 

The play continues on the Eccles Main Stage Oct. 1-5.