Everybody Wang Chung wrote: ↑Sun May 31, 2026 2:13 am
Marcus wrote: ↑Sat May 30, 2026 10:33 pm
These tales he tells are hilarious.
Marcus,
The Afore's tales really are manna from heaven. Reading the delusional chronicles of a raging narcissist like the Afore is an absolute, delicious treat. Who can resist the unintentional comedy? A few of my favorites are when we have God acting as his personal wake-up call, an encounter with learning the German language that somehow left him with a permanent accent, and the deeply unsettling '"taking his time with his hands" in a dark-basement groping incident. And who could forget his groundbreaking foray into the paranormal, where the Afore was utterly stunned to discover he possesses the mystical gift of dowsing, a revelation triggered by the profound, supernatural movement of a wire coat hanger. Then there's the action movie Guatemalan river rescue, a teenage traffic ticket magically dismissed by a sympathetic Mormon judge, and that time he almost dumped a bowl of steaming hot goulash onto Bill Maher’s head. And, let's not forget his academic brilliance so staggering his professor excused him from the final exam. And let’s not overlook his agonizing brush with compassion when he won a high school student body election and felt a sudden, confusing wave of conflict while savoring the literal tears of his vanquished opponent. These tales are pure comedy gold, and I fervently pray the Afore never stops.
Another inspiring tale is one that friends of mine refer to as the Afore’s “
Galileo Event.” It’s told
here. I can envision him muttering under his breath
E pur si muove while being forced by a ruthless BYU administrator to write a letter of recantation to the
Salt Lake Tribune.
Incidentally, I knew the “taskmaster” administrator in the story. I intend to forward the Afore’s tale to the administrator’s family members. They’ll probably find it amusing.
ETA: here is the “Galileo Event” tale (plus a few other stories):
I first met President Holland — to me, he has always been “President Holland,” from the beginning — when I was a new member of the faculty at Brigham Young University. And it wasn’t a very auspicious start.
I had been invited to speak to a small group called “Students for Human Rights,” or something to that effect, about human rights in the Middle East. So, for about forty-five of the fifty minutes allotted to me, I discussed the sorry state of human rights across the region, which continues to be sorry pretty much to this day. At the end, I devoted roughly five minutes to the situation in Israel at the time, saying that Israel had a far better record than did the countries surrounding it, but that it was still definitely not perfect.
Brigham Young University’s Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies was under construction at the time and was still the focus of loud controversy in Israel and even beyond, because of fears that it wasn’t really going to be an academic institution but, rather, a sneaky missionary project. There remained a possibility that it would be blocked. I pointed out the obvious, which was that, in a country with full religious freedom, whether or not the Center was for proselyting would be a matter of complete indifference to the government.
I saw nothing controversial in what I said about Israel. However, unbeknownst to me, there was a “stringer” for the Associated Press in the audience, and an article soon appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune and elsewhere that made it look as if I had devoted the entirety of my remarks to denouncing Israel as unfree and religiously oppressive.
University leaders were concerned that what I had (allegedly) said might threaten the completion of the Jerusalem Center, and I was soon privileged to meet several senior members of the administration. I recall actually sitting in the office of one of them, a physics professor, as he watched over my shoulder while I wrote a kind of recantation to the Tribune. At one point, when he seemed distracted for a moment, I muttered under my breath E pur si muove. “What did you say?” he asked. “Nothing,” I quickly replied.
I made my letter to the editor as unyielding and accurate as I could while still satisfying my taskmaster, but this was not a good position to be in for a junior, junior new hire. I was very vulnerable. Not only did I not yet have tenure (or its rough BYU equivalent, “continuing status”), I hadn’t even finished my dissertation.
Later, I was told by a high-ranking friend that my name had come up in one of the leading councils at the University, and that someone had described me to President Holland as a “loose cannon.”
Within a day or two, I found myself standing right next to President Holland, whom I had never before met. We were both browsing in the BYU bookstore. I introduced myself to him and said, “President Holland, I am not a loose cannon.” I explained and justified what I had told the student group, observing that what I had said was self-evidently true, and describing myself as very much a moderate on Middle Eastern political matters, much more sympathetic to Israel than the overwhelming majority of my fellow non-Israeli Arabists.
We became friends that day. I don’t want to overdo it — we were never poker buddies, we didn’t meet every Wednesday for lunch — but we remained friendly thereafter. A large part of that friendship was due to his remarkable memory for people and personal details. And to his genuine warmth and lack of pretense. Communications from him were always to “Dan,” from “Jeff.” (Elder Neal A. Maxwell had been the same way. “Hello, Dan? This is Neal.” I remember thinking once that I would never, ever, worlds without end, call him “Neal.”)
On one occasion, Elder Holland asked me to drop something off at his office. (I can’t recall what it was.) My wife and I were headed up through Salt Lake City to visit her parents in Bountiful. So I dressed up in a jacket and tie for the delivery, while she drove. When I reached his office, he asked (by name) where my wife was. I said that she was down in the car, that she wasn’t dressed appropriately for the Church Administration Building. “Oh,” he replied, “she should have come up. We’re just plain folks.”
Elder Holland was enthusiastic about BYU’s Islamic Translation Series, as Elder Maxwell had been. He even spoke at one of our events, in Beverly Hills, to a sizable audience of diplomats invited from Muslim countries. And he often carried copies of our published volumes with him to hand out as gifts when he traveled in the Middle East or in the Islamic world more generally. I was deeply gratified that, beyond being intrinsically worthwhile, they could be used in that way.
When, in 2012, I was ejected from the Neal A. Maxwell Institute at BYU in what, to me, was an unexpected coup, I was as low as I’ve ever been in my life. (My brother, my only sibling and the last remaining member of the small immediate family in which I had grown up — and to whom I was very close — had unexpectedly died shortly before.) So it was a helpful surprise one day to receive a very kind email from Elder Holland, expressing his “best wishes.” I won’t quote all that he said, but this will suggest the flavor of it: “University matters have to be university matters but personal friendships continue. Hope you are well.”
The last occasion on which my wife and I spent time with President Holland was probably about a year ago, in the Church Administration Building in Salt Lake City. For calendar reasons, he had been unable to attend the premiere of the Interpreter Foundation’s dramatic film Six Days in August. He wanted to see it, but his mobility issues and his public visibility and his schedule posed real challenges. Could we possibly do a private showing for him, as well as for a few of his family and his office staff? Would that be too inconvenient, too much of an imposition? It was, of course, a privilege. We had a wonderful time that my wife and I will never forget.
