Special
Offer >>> Be a “Viewer Like You”!
By
Marvin Payne
This column begins with “special offer >>>
Be a ‘Viewer Like You’!” This is because when Backstage
Graffiti usually appears, it’s near the top of things
to read on Meridian Magazine. Then, day by day, it slides
downward on the screen, until it slides right off.
(Hey, have you heard of the natural phenomenon of “continental
drip”? I don’t know, it makes a lot of sense to me.
Look at a globe. What’s at the top? Nothing. I mean,
water — no land. Next, you have these fat continents.
But look at how they end, at the bottom. You have North
America with its Florida and
So on Meridian you have this journalistic phenomenon
we might call “column drip” or “column slide.” Except
pieces that begin with “special offer >>>,”
which stay parked eternally about four titles from the
top. Thus you see how the inexorable slide can magically
be rendered downright exorable. (Also, buried deep in
the treasure cave of this column is an actual very special
offer ((>>>)), like a humble seed about to
burst into sprays of diamonds ((<<<hyperbole))!)
Follow me, here. A child, with its grown-up, sits before
a TV as before an altar. Imagine we are the child’s
grown-up (unless one of us ((that would be you)) is,
in fact, a child, in which case does your mother know
you’re on the internet?). Our eyes are riveted, all
our senses laid bare. We are hungry and trusting as
baby birds. On the screen:
Hawks wheel overhead. Armadas of white clouds sail toward
us from beyond distant peaks. This is mountainland.
Three little kids in pith helmets, shorts, and backpacks
spy on the horizon a broad golden cliff, and strike
out for it with fixed purpose. A grappling hook chunks
into the surface at the top of the cliff, and these
young explorers clamber over onto a wide plain of perfect
white, with mysterious rows of sharp black discolorations
stretching out before them.
They come, in time (a few seconds, actually), to a wide
ravine, straight and deep and directly across their
path. They slide down its smooth slope and scramble
up the other side, only to find another plain, like
the one they’ve just crossed. Eagerly they push on.
Their path is blocked by a thick red wall, meandering
across the plain like a gigantic ribbon. Some distance
off to the right, it kinks upward, forming a kind of
low bridge. The scouts squeeze under it and are on their
way again.
One of them stops and kneels along one of the rows of
black markings. Another pulls from his backpack a big
fold-out ruler. The third unsheathes a pole with a red
tip and scores a broad line on the ground alongside
the black row. They pack up and move on.
Suddenly they are at the edge of another golden cliff.
Warm wind from the lowlands beyond breathes into their
faces. Cut into the cliff below them are black ledges,
like half moons. Embossed on each is a different set
of strange gold letters — “JAS,” “HEB,” MOR.” Directly
below is a ledge marked “TG.” The scouts consult urgently
and then in quick succession leap off the cliff toward
the ledge.
But it’s not a ledge! It’s the mouth of a cave (not
unlike the gap between the roots of the Whomping Willow
of popular renown)! Our little friends shoot like darts
down the dark and winding tube and emerge in a flopping
pile into a circular timbered room with a domed ceiling,
lined with balconies of bookshelves, carved with alcoves
full of archeological curiosities — a strange mix of
musty vaulted library and space-age technology.
Suddenly a Basset hound whips around to face them from
a computer terminal. “Woof! I’m so-o-o-o glad you’re
here! I need help answering this e-mail! Dogs can’t
type, ya know!”
The room is the Scriptorium, deep in the heart of the
gargantuan set of scriptures the children have just
traversed in order to get here.
They are Scripture Scouts. And this is Scripture Scouts
TV!!!!¡!
Breathlessly you ask, “Mormon Sesame Street?” Yup.
Why not? If kids can learn numbers from watching blue
monsters count cookies, can’t they learn to pray from
watching a talking dog, conventionally colored?
Just ask I. Q. Nibbleby. He’s the Lord Baden-Powell
of Scripture Scouts (and the owner of Boo Dog, incidentally).
You might have to wait, though, until he has a rare
free moment. He’s out in Second Chronicles, examining
text, imagery, artifacts (and the occasional Assyrian
warrior who has lost his way) with a magnifying glass,
noting his observations on a clipboard. You can only
reach him by videoscope, and you have to grab his advice
quickly, because he pixelates out on you after only
a few seconds (Second Chronicles is quite a long way
off, remember — not as far as First C., though, where
the pixelization is even worse ((You’ve probably never
even considered the morass of pixelization difficulties
to be encountered in the Old Testament — we Television
Moguls have to deal with this sort of unimaginable opposition
whenever we undertake to do something worthwhile (((Most
TMs simply cave in and develop shows starring kitchen
items ((((like, shall we say, sponges?)))) that will
tell underwater wisecracks and wear geometric clothing.)))
.)) !)
[Editorial department, relax. Macintosh has “punctuation-checker.”
(This feature was developed under a special consultation
contract between Apple and Victor Borge before his untimely
death in 2000 from vocal complications arising from
his compulsion to speak punctuation out loud when telling
stories.)]
Victor Borge appeared as a guest on Sesame Street a
number of times (once, I think — one is a number) and
well illustrated the basic premise of that brilliant
series, as articulated by its creators: “We are a comedy
show that teaches.”
Well, Scripture Scouts TV is a comedy show that teaches,
but, like its twenty-year-old audio antecedents, with
the erstwhile moment of piercing sweetness that could
easily have been a regular part of Sesame Street, too,
had they featured as guests, along with Victor Borge
(a pretty sweet guy, at that), a couple of LDS missionaries
from Idaho.
I could go on and on, I suppose, describing the elements
of the show, moments like “Off The Wall,” wherein Boo
Dog exchanges one-liners with hieroglyphs, or “And Now,
A Talk,” wherein scriptureless primary talks drive their
listeners into sleeping bags on the primary room floor
versus scripture-rich talks, which ignite celebration
on the scale of the Republican Convention and reduce
the primary president to tears of joy, or “Joyful Noise,”
wherein Victor Borge gathers wide-eyed youngsters around
him on a sound stage and teaches them wonderful Scripture
Scouts songs with his magical piano (just kidding, it’ll
probably just be me and a banjo). Except that, technically,
it doesn’t exist. The show, I mean. (Literarily it exists,
just technically it doesn’t exist.)
special offer >>> click here! Now! Forget that
you wanted to stay on Meridian long enough to read how
enterprising sisters can take clueless guys on dates
to Gospel Doctrine class and overcome their pornography
addictions with photo essays of Nauvoo while apologizing
for dissing Mormon movies and waiting for a child to
utter some Mormon humor. Instead, click here now.
http://www.scripturescouts.com
(WAIT! Don’t click here! Not yet! Not until you’ve
read the disclaimer. To wit: The video to which you
will be miraculously linked by clicking here, er, there,
might be misunderstood by that small ((but not necessarily
socially or spiritually backward, and we love you anyway))
segment of Meridian Readers who are not already Scripture
Scouts fans*. They might, for example, question the
plausibility of entrusting the direction of an important
piece of film work to a dog, or they might be so young
((or so seduced by commercial TV)) as not to remember
Alistair Cooke, or they might be so attention-deficited
by MTV as not to have the patience to sit through end
credits, and thus miss the point of the whole presentation.
Or, Scripture Scouts fan or not, you may not have a
computer, and so clicking on the link would be... oh
yeah, never mind. Go ahead and click here now. I mean,
there.)
Post Click: There you have it. The way to escape with
finality and grace the whole difficult controversy over
Mormon movies. Do Mormon Children’s TV instead. (Ask
me questions, I’ll tell you no lies —
mp@marvinpayne.com.)
Fun as it is to hang out backstage, making and reading
graffiti, sometimes you have to step out into the light.
*Footnote for the asterisked “not already Scripture
Scouts fans”: If you’re in the neighborhood, you are
cordially invited to join Roger & Melanie Hoffman
(my co-creators of Scripture Scouts, along with Steven
Kappppp Perry) and the Mormon Choir of Washington D.C.,
Saturday, April 9th at 7:00 pm at the Washington D.C.
Temple Visitor’s Center, for an introduction to said
Scripture Scouts. Lots of Scripture Scouts songs, including
some from the new series on the Family Proclamation,
also “Consider the Lilies” (Roger wrote that
song! I know somebody who wrote “Consider the Lilies”!
Dude!) and the choir’s premiere of a new song, “One
Child at a Time.” It’s for the whole family — sing-alongs,
fun and inspiration!
--------------------------------------
Visit marvinpayne.com!
"...come unto Christ, and lay hold upon every good gift..." (from the last page of the Book of Mormon)
