The fam and I took a couple of days off and headed to Salt Lake City for a Muse concert this past Sunday. Now, it should be stated for the record that I don't particularly like Muse. In fact it would be safe to say I actively dislike Muse. They are moderately tolerable as background noise, but further inspection in the music leaves something to be desired. Muse has a fake veneer of progressive rock, but its only skin deep. Any serious study of the music leaves one thinking they've heard this backing beat about a million times before on any radio friendly track (there's even a song that sounds like it could be a dance floor hip hop hit if they added in a little rapping). To be blunt: Muse is a band that lets people feel they are listening to something outside the mainstream, while they are actively listening to the mainstream. To each their own and all, I mean I obviously like music other people despise, but Muse is so not my thing.

Now the family on the other hand loves Muse, so there I was headed to Utah, land of the Mormons. Yeah, I know, the last place I should be with all my anti-religious rants. I've been there before, and my initial impressions were reinforced on my return trip. There's a lot of fun stuff to do there, but holy shit you have to wade through some nonsense to get to it. The first thing you'll notice on the highway into Salt Lake are the billboards - of which most are advertising for liposuction or some form of weight loss program. Yes, this is a shallow town focused solely on outward appearance and social appearances. But they can't help it, they're Mormons. One of the remaining non-liposuction billboards had the whole car laughing for a good long time. "Have a problem with porn? We can help!" Well, if the problem is that I don't currently have enough, maybe they can help me...

Things got even more absurd when we reached the hotel and saw a newspaper sitting on the counter top. I can't even make this stuff up here. The headline on the front page actually read "EVIL TARGETS FAMILIES." Take a moment to absorb that. How did a journalist not feel dirty writing that down? "Evil" isn't a thing. It's not a tangible person like Osama Bin Ladin, nor is it an organization like Focus on the Family, nor is it a law or political policy or anything else. It's just whatever the hell anyone wants it to be. What precisely is this "evil" supposed to entail? Who is the source this "journalist" used to find out about this evil? If you can't show a picture of it, list its address, or provide a source who has seen it, then it isn't newsworthy. But again, they can't help it, they're Mormons. They didn't think through their headline too far either, since it should actively encourage people to either stay single or shack up and live in sin. Evil only targets families after all, so why start a family and be targeted by the great cloud of unknowable darkness and doom that only Mormons are somehow able to detect?

Nonsense aside, there are some pretty cool things in Utah, especially for someone like me who lives in a relatively small place. The outdoor walking mall is something that really takes a full day or two to explore, and its very appealing to the eye. Mormons may believe some absurdly crazy things (even more crazy than standard religion!) but their constant focus on physical beauty does make them keep their city incredibly nice. You won't find garbage on the sidewalk or dirty streets here. The fountain light/water show is pretty spectacular, although the overblown orchestra music makes you feel like you are in a ridiculous fight scene from Pirates of the Caribbean.

For the gamers amongst us Salt Lake actually has an amazing hobby shop called Hastur's Games. How in the hell a Cthulhu themed game store that sells role playing and card games managed to take root in Utah is beyond me, but man I'm glad it did. I knew I was in the right place when I walk in and see Elder Signs painted across the walls and Cthulhu fanny packs and altar statues in the display case. Their role playing selection was out of this world (pun intended). Old, new, in-between, they had pretty much everything. There was of course a ton of Cthulhu stuff, from Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu to the new Cthulhutech game system.

We mostly play Pathfinder, and I wasn't disappointed in my options there. They had almost everything Paizo has released so far, so I picked up a couple of the Adventure Path books I missed out on previously, which were "Legacy Of Fire #2 - House of the Beast:"



and "Council of Thieves #1 - The Bastards of Erebus:"



I was particularly interested in the rules for variant tieflings in "The Bastards of Erebus." I had to chuckle at the introduction to the adventure path when the author was discussing how the adventure assumes the party is generally chaotic enough to be willing to oppose the oppressive government in Westcrown (former jewel and capitol of Cheliax, now city in decline since the death of the living god Aroden). Being chaotic isn't an issue with our party, and generally causing havoc wherever they go is the rule, rather than the exception.

Initially I was a little leery of "House of the Beast," since is a big dungeon crawl, which I don't particularly care for, but Paizo again delivered the goods as usual. The backing stories of the dungeon's inhabitants, the various side information, and the way the dungeon is structured allows for massive story telling opportunities. I especially appreciated how the party can recruit or work beside several evil creatures who are opposed, for one reason or another, to the main bad guys. That helps me out, as our party almost never consists of altruistic or selfless adventurers.

They also had tons of preconstructed decks from old Magic the Gathering sets, so I picked up the "Sacrilege" deck from the Torment expansion, which was one of my favorites way back in high school. Combining white and black in a Magic deck is an all around awesome thing to do.



I probably could have just wandered around for hour looking at all the books and minis they had, but alas we had to move on. After picking up a Jamba Juice (except no substitute - we have a "Junga Juice" here at home, and its disappointing to say the least) we noticed their Super FYE had a sign saying all CDs were 9.99 so we had to check it out. It was an awesome deal, so I picked up some of those albums I only had the digital copy of from the record labels for review purposes. We also had some really great sushi that day, but I'll get into that in the next blog which will only cover our food adventures in Salt Lake.



Later on we went to a lingerie/porno store called Doctor John's, which again shocked us for the very fact that not only did it exist, but it was massive. More lingerie than I've ever seen in my entire life. They had a policy where they have to keep your ID the entire time you are in the store, which I'm guessing would piss off all the 40 somethings who very much don't look like they are under 18. It probably makes Mormon guys nervous too, as the whole time they'll be wondering if the lady at the cash register is looking up their bishop in the church directory. We didn't end up buying anything after browsing through, as the prices were absurd. To give an idea - they were selling the same brand of lube we buy from Walmart, but at three times the cost. (For the record, no bottle of lube should ever be in the double digit area, and certainly not in the "almost thirty dollars" double digit area.) We did notice one cute little Salt Lake City-ism though - they used white out tape to cover all the nipples on the movie covers and clothing tags. That's so cute.

Weirdly enough there was also a movie theater next door that was also a pub. Yes, you get to drink while watching a movie. Unfortunately we didn't have time to catch a flick that day, but we'll have to next time. We did see a movie the first day of the trip in the theater at the outdoor mall though (love the ability to pick your seats from a touch screen and buy your tickets from an automated machine!). "Clash of the Titans 3D" was pretty lame to be honest. The 3D was a tacked on after thought, the constant injection of lame humor did not help the movie, the action scenes were too choppy so it was hard to tell what was going on, and the characters constantly changed motivation (I hate the gods, no wait, the gods are awesome so go ahead and use their gifts, no wait, I hate the gods again!). It was basically a popcorn action flick in the vein of Indiana Jones, so if you dig that sort of stuff you'd probably like this.

That's all for now, more to come tomorrow!