He's probably PTA's most prolific and consistent writer.
Of course, I think everyone on this blog has their moments of staggering genius. It's an honor just to be on here with all of them. Patrick's posts are poetry. Chris is effortlessly funny. Josh tells it like it is and does it with heart.
Ken posts on Monday and always kicks the week off right. But to pick my favorite post(s) of his is like asking Ken to pick his favorite child. I can't do it. I am not lying when I say every single post he writes is great. They are each thought out, funny, touching, and entertaining. I'm lucky if I remember to post something. Not Ken. There he is each week publishing another winner.
So, even though it's really impossible to choose, here are a few of my favorites from Ken this past year:
Rattlin' & Hummin' - "'Are you heading to Salt Lake?' 'Yep,' as he opens his car door. 'Can I ride in your truck?' 'Yep,' as he gets in and spits out his chew. He leans out the window to explain how I can't sit up front because they have some equipment up there. I looked. It was true. They also had some in the back, up against the cab. I threw my bag in the back, and climbed aboard."
Parental Discretion Advised - "You want I should tell you why I was not allowed to watch the Dukes and Boss Hogg squabble over bootlegged moonshine in Hazzard County? 'Because those shows are stupid,' said my dad, laying down the law."
Molokai Style - "When you tell people you lived on Molokai, you get one of two responses. 'Never heard of it' or 'Isn't that where the lepers are?' You are correct on both accounts. For the most part, even people who live on another Hawaiian island raise their eyebrows and are most surprised to hear that there are people alive and well on Molokai."
If You Like Me, Check This Box - "About 25 minutes into every class, I would receive a love note from Katie. As if we were in junior high. They were always thoughtful; but my favorite part was that she would write the note, fold it up, and on the outside of the paper write: 'Pass this note to the handsome, dark-haired man on the front row named Ken.' She would then sneak in the door of this monstrous classroom, tap the suit in the last row, at the top of the stadium-style seating structure, and hand him the note. The guy would read the instructions to pass it down, and he would hand it to the guy in front of him. Down and down. Down and down."
Enjoy these posts once again and here's to a great 2014 on PartTimeAuthors.
In 1993 my friend Eric D. Snider founded The Garrens Comedy Troupe. In 1993 my roommate/former mission companion/best friend, Lincoln Hoppe, forced me to audition with him for The Garrens. In 1993, I watched my future wife, Katie Fillmore, audition and join The Garrens. In 1993....it all began.
You know how you have that friend who you just don't get to see very often? You are separated by distance and the busyness of life, and it all gets in the way of what you really want to do - which is design a neighborhood where you get to live next door to each other. But when you DO get together, everything picks up as if no time has passed. There is no awkward small talk. It all just clicks.
Well, imagine having 25 of those friends. And that's what this weekend was. Even with those Garrens who I never had the privilege of working with - because they came in the later years after I was gone - it was like we had this experience we all pulled from that connected us. It was like...whatever the opposite of "serving in Vietnam together" is.
We had The Garrens 20th Anniversary Reunion Show on Saturday night, and it was spectacular! We all came together Friday night for dinner at BYU's Skyroom. Garrens alumni came from Florida, New York, South Carolina, Washington DC, Oregon, California, and Salt Lake City. The stories, tributes, and memories brought back all the feelings. I remembered how wonderful those years were - the creative energy and the people who I got to be creative with. The life-influencing friendships that abounded. I remembered how coming together to put on shows felt like coming into a shared living room. It was familial. It was a safe place. There was encouragement, acceptance, and hilarity. It became a part of my being.
It was my privilege to pay the final tribute to Eric on Friday night, at the dinner. As I stood in front of a group made up of some of my favorite people, I wished I had the time to pay tribute to each of them, individually. It felt like there was so much to say. But it also felt like there were not words to articulate all those feelings and sum up all those experiences and define their influence in my life. I love these people. And to go will just make this sound suuuuuper sappy. (Too late?)
Thank you to everyone who has been part of The Garrens! Thank you to everyone who worked countless hours to bring this show to light on Saturday! Thank you to those who traveled, sacrificed, and brought their all! Thank you to everyone who came to the show and celebrated with us! Some of you traveled from out of state - you crazy, wonderful people! Thank you! And our apologies to those who didn't get in because the almost 900-seat theater was SOLD OUT! YEAH!!!
A couple of days ago, over on
my personal blog, I announced that my wife, Katie, and I are expecting another
baby! For those of you keeping score at home, that’s Babies: 8, Marbles Left
Rolling in My Head: 1.
We are super excited! It’s
kind of the only thing that’s been on our minds the last few days. But rather
than repost the story on PTA (you can read it here, instead), I thought I would
present for your viewing pleasure a video of Katie, 8 months pregnant,
performing stand-up comedy about the joys of pregnancy.
This was two years ago, when
she was very pregnant with our youngest, Lucy. It was my 40th Birthday Party. And
after years making me laugh at her witty observations about pregnancy (I’m 72% sure her observations were supposed to make me laugh; she may have been expressing frustrations, in which case I owe her a huge apology), I asked if she
would do stand-up at my birthday party. She had never done it. She didn't want to do
it. But before an intimate group of friends, she did it. And I think she was fantastic.
She is currently available for booking but you only have about 6 months to schedule her for your holiday
parties before touring season is over and baby season arrives.
Eighteen years ago this week, in one of the most brilliant and intricate sting operations in modern history, I tricked Katie Fillmore into agreeing to marry me.
Since that day she has tricked me a number of times. Her favorite is this thing she does when she’s driving the van on a road trip, where she tilts her head so I can’t the left side of her face, and then makes it look like she’s totally and completely asleep at the wheel, because I can’t see her left eye, which is actually wide open, keeping our family safe from flying off the road into a tree, off a cliff, or into a stranded motorist. I can’t say I like this trick, but turnabout’s fair play, I suppose.
By complete serendipity, we happen to have an Engagement Video. Now, this was in 1995, long before everyone casually sported a camera-phone at all times, so it's really quite amazing that we have it. I mean, it’s not much; but technically, we were never even supposed to have one. And yes, I am going to tell the story before showing you the video.
It was April 1995. Provo, Utah. The days were a warmish spring, with the nights still quite cool. TLC was warning us not to chase waterfalls and Bryan Adams was demanding to know if we’d ever really – really, really ever loved a woman.
I had known for a couple of months already that I wanted to marry Katie. I also knew Katie wanted me to meet her family before we got any more serious. And finally, I knew her family was coming out to Utah for the graduation ceremonies of two of Katie’s older sisters. The graduation was Thursday, April 27th. Sadly, Katie had torn her ACL in her knee and would be heading back to Kentucky with her family on Saturday, the 29th, for surgery. This meant I had a window of Friday, the 28th, to ask Katie to marry me.
Katie’s cousin happened to be a jeweler, so I visited him the week prior to Katie’s family coming, and we selected The Engagement Ring. He had designed it and he was going to craft it and have it ready for me on Friday morning so I could propose Friday night.
Except that when I called on Thursday to make sure he was ready, he said, “Oh, I won’t have it ready until Monday.” I responded, "Well, I hope you're happy; because now I can't go to heaven, because I hate you and your face."
Oh, the humanity! My life was poop. Nothing left to do now but watch Katie leave for Kentucky, unengaged and ready to fall in love with some toothless, shoeless, slack-jawed yokel with a substantial crop of tobacco that I could never compete with.
Friday arrived. I was packing to move apartments and Katie was packing to go home for surgery. The only highlight of the day was that a big group of us friends decided to get together for dinner at The Underground that night. A kind of End of Semester send off before summer, when everyone would be going different directions for a while. A friend of ours, Mike, played guitar at The Underground, and we were all going to hang out, eat, and take a listen.
I called Katie to let her know I was going to come pick her up in a bit, then I sat on the couch to pack my last box of junk when the phone rang. It was Katie’s cousin/my jeweler. “Hey, your ring is ready. I canceled all my other appointments for the day and finished the ring." I shouted, "Huzzah! My chances of going to heaven have slightly improved since I don't hate you anymore!" He then responded, "I just left it with Katie’s mom, so you can pick it up from her.” "I'm sorry, you left the ring with WHO?"
With only a few minutes to throw everything together, I ran over to Katie’s grandpa’s house to find my future mother-in-law and, in exchange for a ring, I explained to her that I was going to ask her daughter to marry me that night. Fortunately for me, my mother-in-law was ecstatic and oohed and aahed at the ring with me, securing her place in the Best Mother In Law Hall of Fame.
The rest of this story is told in fast-framed, cartoonish fasion.
I ran back to my apartment and handed the ring to my good friend, Lincoln. In one long sentence I explained to him that I was going to propose to Katie at The Underground, that I needed him to go buy roses for Katie and hand them off to our good friend Lisa to bring out to Katie right after I propose, that I needed him to talk to Mike about playing U2’s All I Want Is You while I propose, and that at some point, after I arrived, I needed him to slip the ring back to me when Katie wasn’t looking.
Then, in maintaining cartoonish, frantic energy, we ran into each other three times and then ran to our different destinations. Me, to pick up Katie, and Lincoln, to The Underground to set everything up.
When I ran into Katie’s apartment to pick her up, I realized I needed to CALM DOWN. But it was too late. She came down the stairs, gave me a hug, then stepped back and said, “What’s going on? You’re shaking.” “Oh. Huh. Must be the heroin.” “Oh, YOU (small chuckle).” Yep, I covered that one pretty well.
Having stalled as long as I could, we finally made our way over to the restaurant. As soon as we walked through the doors I knew everything was in place. I knew this because two of our friends who were supposed to be there that night but who also worked there, Lisa and Rebecca, had just gotten off their shifts, and came running over to us. I mean, they hurdled tables and pushed paying customers out of the way to get to us, so excited were they.
They stopped right in front of us and then Lisa, with her eyes bulging, started talking like an auctioneer. “Yeah, we-just-got-off-our-shifts-but-we’re-going-to-stick-around, maybe-get-something-to-eat. Even-Chris-is-coming-over, you-know, just-to-casually-hang-out-and-stuff.”
There was this wall of energy coming from the two of them and the hairs on my neck were standing straight up. I was hoping this was all coming across to Katie as casual as Lisa and Rebecca were trying to sell it. Somehow, Katie didn’t pick up on it. Not even when Lisa squeezed my hand and looked at me out of the side of her eye. If I didn’t propose to Katie soon, it was clear Lisa was going to do it for me.
I couldn’t even order anything to eat. My stomach was in knots. We had talked about marriage before, but I still felt like I was taking an anxiety bath. I suppose it’s because that is the moment when you say, “Yes, I will spend the rest of eternity with you.” Plus we were doing this in front of our friends...and compete dining strangers.
We sat at the center table, right in front of where Mike was playing. Our good friends Chris and Lisa, who had gotten engaged less than two months before, sat right across from us, and so did our friend Rebecca. Many of our other dear friends were also there.
Lincoln pulled me aside, handed over the ring, and told me that as soon as I signaled him, he would signal Mike, and Mike would start playing U2’s All I Want Is You. He was going to stop in the middle of the song, Lisa would slip out to bring the roses, and I would drop to my knee and wet my pants.
I sat back down at the table and noticed the faces of several friends, some of whom seemed more nervous than me. After what felt like a week I signaled Linc, and he signaled Mike. Mike started playing. Then, in the middle of the song, he stopped. I stood up and announced to the restaurant that I needed everyone’s attention. I knelt down and helped Katie stand up (she was still on crutches from tearing the ligament in her knee), and I actually said the words, “Katie, will you marry me?” She threw her head back and screamed “Yes!” and then started crying. And it was really a very incredible, surreal moment….
And here it is on video. Mike, the guitar player, actually had his mom visiting, and she actually brought a video camera to record his performance. And during his performance, for just a small moment, she swung the camera around just enough to record Katie and I. And now that moment is immortalized.
It wasn't until the next day, when Katie had left with her family and I was at dinner with Lincoln and Mike that Mike said, "If you want a copy of that video, just let me know." "What video?" "My mom recorded you guys getting engaged last night." Completely surprised, and quite grateful, I said, "Well frankly, it wasn't any of her business, but if you've got the video..."
If you watch closely, you’ll notice the following:
Lisa, in the lobby, holding the roses that Lincoln had just brought for Katie.
Lincoln conspiring with Mike on how to set up the moment for me to propose.
My friend, and fellow Part Time Author, Chris, so nervous for me that he actually covers his face in case Katie says, "No."
Katie saying, "Yes."
Some horrible 1995 wardrobe choices. (Yep, I'm wearing flannel.)
If you frequent this blog, then first let me say this. "Hi Patrick's Mom!" Also, if you frequent this blog, then you might be familiar with our title "Part Time Authors," and that it started when four of us (Chris, Josh, Patrick and myself) were contributing authors to a book of essays called "Tell Me Who I Am." (We have since added 5th Part Time Author, Brett Merritt, who brings to the table his writing skills, as well as abilities for scouring the Internet, making witty comments, and showcasing a huge-normous music library.)
One of the stories I included in "Tell Me Who I Am" is about my wife, Katie, and a miscarriage. I was recently invited to participate in a month-long focus on The Family: A Proclamation to the World, being held over at the blog Diapers & Divinity. I submitted this story, and it just ran. I share it now, with you wonderful readers of Part Time Authors.
Recently on this Part Time Author blog you saw some clips of Chris and Lisa Clark doing some part time acting – Chris doing both voice over work as well as excelling at his craft as he tried to sell us on food storage, and Lisa starring in a Deseret Book commercial and her own web series, Pretty Darn Funny!
So I thought I would let you know what my wife, Katie, and I have been doing, part time.
As of late, we appeared on a new technology program on The Mormon Channel, called Tech Savvy. There are two episodes currently available for viewing (it’s that new) and we are in the second one. It’s called Parenting in the Tech Age, and we appear with none other than the famous parenting duo of Richard and Linda Eyre.
Don’t believe me? Here is a photo!
I like to think that this photo captures the moment when the baton was passed from last generation’s New York Time’s Bestselling Authors (the Eyres) to this generation’s New York Times Bestselling Authors, the Craigs. I’d like to think that; but unless there’s a demand for books called Parenting by the Seat of Your Pants or Waiting for Someone to Call Your Bluff, then I’m not sure that we’re who you’re looking for.
Here’s a clip from it, which is actually now being used as a Mormon Message video! Or you can also watch the entire episode HERE.
Also, Lisa Clark’s Pretty Darn Funny web series? Katie is in it. If you've watched it, then you’ve noticed a certain special lady auditioning to get in to the comedy troupe…by playing the recorder with her nose! Yep, that’s my wife. And yep, she is playing “Time to Say Goodbye” on the recorder. With her nose. And yep, she taught it to herself that very day, when I suggested that the song she had previously prepared, “We Thank Thee, O God, For a Prophet” might be less appropriate.
