I went to see my brother Michael's performance as Adam and Noah in his high school's (and my alma mater) production of Children of Eden this weekend.

I don't know how much of my opinion comes from the fact that he is my brother, but I thought the production was fantastic. It was a long show, over 3 hours. But it moves right along, and before you know it, the first 90 minute act is over.

He doesn't have the most powerful singing voice in the cast, but he didn't detract from it (and it is much better than I would ever be), but he makes up for it with stage presence. When the little things that happen in every performance came up, he didn't miss a beat, even when his pants fell down mid-dance. :) (he was wearing a tunic, so it wasn't the obvious wardrobe malfunction we had a few years back in the Superbowl).

He also starred in productions of Our Town (he was the narrator, and a toss up for my favorite of his performances, tied with his Adam/Noah role), Pippen (he was the head), and Greater Tuna (he was one of the radio guys).

The house was pretty full, the fire marshal sign in the back of the house says capacity is 1045, there was probably over 800 people in attendance.

I wanted to give kudos to some of the other fantastic performers (in no particular order) from the show. Scooter Rosenthal (Father), Susannah Hallagan (Eve/Momma), Claire Walton (part of the snake/Yonah) and Tim Crawford II (Cain/Japheth). This is by no means the list of the cast that did a phenomenal job, but these are the ones that stood out in my mind as I watched the performance.

Kudos also go out to the army of parents and volunteers that helped out with costumes, sets, tickets, etc.. the animal costumes were very clever. I liked the alligators slinking around the stage on skateboards and the giraffes with the canes as front legs.

Great job guys, you all have a ton of talent, and if you keep up the hard work that you obviously put into this production, there is no limit to what you can achieve in the future.

This is likely my brother's last high school performance. He will graduate this spring. He plans on attending college for film production at either BYU or RIT in the fall.

For more on the play, and photos of rehearsals, click on the school's web site, here (it's a pdf, so you need adobe).

Does the ACLU really have our best interests in mind?

Recently, News10 (the local NBC affiliate) did a story about how easy it is for anyone to walk in off the street and view adult themed web sites at the public library.

Shortly after the story, complete with hidden camera footage and a convicted pedophile sent back to jail on a parole violation, County Executive Maggie Brooks threatened to pull county funding of the library if they didn't do something to filter out the porno sites.

Cue the ACLU.

They come riding in on their high horse and start screaming 1st amendment violations. They came in shouting about government censorship.

Here is why the ACLU is full of crap..

Sure adult themed websites are (for the most part) well within the bounds of the law. Adults, who are so inclined, have the right to view the material if they so chose, but is it the tax payers responsibility to provide it? In a word, No.

Now, an argument can be made that that is the government censoring what can and cannot be viewed at the library.

Perhaps.

There are books about Nazis, Marxism, all sorts religions, and many more subjects that some people may find offensive, and if you wanted to, you could do internet browsing on such topics.

The library is a place where people of all ages can come to do research on any number of subjects. It is an open source of knowledge.

Here is where I show a bit of ignorance. I do not remember the last time I was in a public library. I know you can read magazines, but I doubt you can read the latest issue of Playboy. You may be able to, I didn't check.

About the censorship, where I work, I can't even view my bank's website. There are a number of reasons why, but one reason is the whole 'unsafe work environment' thing. I can't go to an adult site from work because it might offend someone else.

The library employs people, why can't we use this reason?

What about that stupid 'no smoking' law? It's the same thing. I bet if there was a physical health effect like second hand smoke, there would be all sorts of people lobbying to block it.

Bottom line, If you are a consenting adult, you can pick up a copy of a porno mag in any number of places, but I don't want to pay for you to read it. If you want to view this material online, I don't want to pay for you to view websites of similar content.

The funding should be pulled until they install a state of the art filtering system, or until the computers are pulled from the libraries.