Matt Foley: Motivational Speaker

Saturday Night Live Skit

Dad.....Phil Hartman
Stacy.....Christina Applegate
Mom.....Julia Sweeney
Brian.....David Spade
Matt Foley.....Chris Farley

[open on a family's front living room, everyone seated on opposite couches ]

Dad: Brian? Stacy? Your mother, Ellen, and I are so glad you decided to join us for this Family Communication session.

Stacy: So, what's up? You guys getting divorced, or something?

Mom: No. We just wanted the family to talk as a group.

Brian: Okay. Well, let's get it started.

Mom: Okay. Well, Stacy, Brian.. your father, Ted, and I are a little bit concerned. Cecilia, the cleaning lady, was in the family room, and she found a bag of pot.

Stacy: [ anxious ] She didn't smoke it, did she?

Mom: No! She didn't smoke it.

Dad: Now, we're not here to "come down on you" I mean, that's not what we're about, okay?

Mom: We're just concerned that pot could lead to other things.

Dad: Crack. Ice. Boom. Pow.

Mom: Well, we know you don't want to hear this from us.

Dad: Sure! I mean we're your parents! Who wants to hear this stuff from their parents, huh?

Mom: Your father and I came up with a brilliant idea to give you kids some direction - a motivational speaker.

Dad: Yeah. One of those guys who speaks to big groups at high schools and churches.

Stacy: You mean, to come to the house?

Mom: Yeah.

[ the kids get up to leave ]

Dad: Hey, come on, you guys. This set me back a few bucks. Okay, his name is Matt Foley. Now, he's been down in the basement drinking coffee for about the last four hours, and he should be all ready to go. I'll call him up. [ opens the basement door ] Matt, we're ready for you! [ turns to the kids ] His speech is called "Go For It!" Now, he's used to big groups, so make him feel like there's a crowd here. [ calls down the basement again ] Matt! Come on up, buddy!

Matt Foley: [ runs up the stairs, bouncing back and forth as he talks as if in front of a large audience ] Alright, how's everybody? Good! Good! Good! Now, as your father probably told you, my name is Matt Foley, and I am a Motivational Speaker! Now, let's get started by me giving you a little bit of a scenario of what my life is all about! First off, I am 35 years old.. I am divorced.. and I live in a van down by the river! Now, you kids are probably saying to yourself, "Now, I'm gonna go out, and I'm gonna get the world by the tail, and wrap it around and put it in my pocket!!" Well, I'm here to tell you that you're probably gonna find out, as you go out there, that you're not gonna amount to Jack Squat!!" You're gonna end up eating a steady diet of government cheese, and living in a van down by the river! Now, young man, what do you want to do with your life?

Brian: [ nervous ] I.. actually, Matt.. I kinda wanna be a writer..

Matt Foley: We-e-e-elll.. la-de-freakin'-da! We've got ourselves a writer here! [ jumps across the room ] Hey, Dad, I can't see real good.. [ lifts his glasses off and on his face ] ..is that Bill Shakespeare over there?

Dad: Well, actually, Matt.. Ellen and I have encouraged Brian in his writing.

Matt Foley: Dad, I wish you could just shut your big yapper! [ stumbles back across the room ] Now, I wonder.. Brian, from what I've heard, you're using your paper, not for writing, but for rolling doobies!! You're gonna be doing a lot of doobie-rolling when you're living in a van down by the river! [ turns to Stacy ] Young lady, what do you want to do with your life?!

Stacy: [ sarcastic ] I want to live in a van down by the river.

Matt Foley: Well, you'll have plenty of time to live in a van down by the river when you're.. [ tries to be clever ] ..living in a van down by the river! Now, you kids are probably asking yourself, "Hey, Matt, how can we get back on the right track?!" Well, as I see it, there is only one solution! And that is for me to get my gear, move it on into here, 'cause I'm gonna bunk with you, buddy! We're gonna be buddies! We're gonna be pals! [ picks Brian up ] We're gonna wrassle around! [ puts Brian down ] Ol' Matt's gonna be your shadow! [ motions] Here's Matt, here's you! There's Matt, there's you! [ trips and falls flat on the coffee table, sending it crashing to the floor ] Whoops-a-daisy! [ stands up ] We're gonna have to clean that up later! Me and my buddies! My pals! My amigos! I'm gonna go get my gear! [ heads for the door ]

Brian: [ runs after Matt ] Wait, Matt! You don't have to go!

Stacy: [ runs behind Brian ] Yeah, you don't have to do that! We'll never smoke pot again!

Dad: Uh, Matt, thanks for all you've done!

Matt Foley: I don't give a rat's behind, 'cause I'm moving in! I'm sick and tired of living in a van down by the river!
[ as Matt steps outside to grab his gear, Dad quickly locks the front door ]

Dad: [ frightened ] Is the back door locked?

Mom: [ petrified ] Yes!

Stacy: We love you, Dad!

Dad: I love you, too!

[ fade out on family group hug ]

Oh, about 18 years ago when our son Griffin was about 6 years old, we had a winter church outing. Living on the front range of Colorado snug against the Rockies about 30 of us in about 7 families drove up behind Fort Collins to Belair Lake in the Red Feather Lakes. The Lake was very frozen. So all of us walked across it with kids running and sliding on the ice when the largest eagle I ever saw swooped down and scooped up little Ellie May - just thought I would throw that in in case you were dozing off.....

On the far side of the lake there was an erosion scar in the slope leading right down to the ice of the lake that must have seen many a spring thaw roll down it. Anyway it was a severe slope through the trees straight down to the lake without an obstacle in view. So with our truck and tractor tubes we climbed the slope in unseasonably warm air.

Griffin and I were about the 5th ones down. I lay across in the tube first and he lay crosswise on top of me. Somebody gave us a better start than we needed or wanted and down we went. Because our tube was larger than most we tapped an imbankment at the bottom so when we hit the edge of the ice we hit FLUSH a bump that the prior riders careened nicely off of. The balloon hit the bump and left the earth. We were airborn, a truck tube airborne and as we began to drop from altitude the snap memory occurred for me because it was as if in memory time stopped. I was off the tube directly above it and my son was off my lap about two feet above me. That's the picture. I reached up pulled him toward me as I fell flush back into the tube and went skidding across the lake ice laughing. There is something tender about that moment that I can't quite put my finger on excepting....perhpas it was metaphorical for a moment in the future when I figure I'll be there again to snatch him back to safety. Yes that must be it.

Split Rock is my most favorite place. As a young boy, the family would drive north out of NJ to nearly one hour south of Montreal. We went to our little cabin in the heart of the Adirondacks. Deep and dark woods. Heavy pine scent combined with old growth oak and maple. Winding through the Adirondack State Park (the largest state park in America) runs from south to north the Bouquet (Bowket) River. A few miles up Route 9 from the cabin is found carved through sheer granite what is aptly called Split Rock. You can see a picture of part of it two topics down. Crystal clear, numbing cold, Spring fed Pools. The force of the water coming off the three tyres of falls has created deep and sculpted pools/// Granite with smooth molded surfaces. Powerfully noisy turbulance. Pebble bottom without any form of algae. Ever. There are days that the water comes through in such a mass that the middle pool disappears in the torrent. People have died swimming here. 5 years ago 4 college buddies trying to save each other....every one of them died.

Perhaps the biggest reason why the cabin at Split Rock was such a great place was because my father was much more stable there. He drank much less in a place where just trying to get things to work so you didn't freeze took up a lot of his time. No telephone, no reports from the office on Wall Street. We were alone with us. and that was good.

Quality research has not been the hallmark of some Christian apologists who all too frequently shoot from the hip in their anti-LDS assertions. It was a former member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who claimed to prove the Book of Mormon to be fraudulent in the form of a doctoral dissertation. The study concerned the supposed absence of DNA evidence in support of the Book of Mormon.

Being open minded, the discussion required my personal, focused attention.

For those familiar with the Book of Mormon, the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) lineage of Nephi's children (and of Laman's offspring) would come through Ishmael's wife since the four oldest sons of Lehi as well as Zoram married the five daughters of Ishmael (1 Nephi 16:7). Unfortunately, Ishmael’s wife has an unknown background and heritage. She is only mentioned twice in the Book of Mormon (see 1 Nephi 7:6, 19) and probably died prior to Ishmael’s death because she was not mentioned as being present at Ishmael’s death at Nahom (1 Nephi 16:34-35).

Additionally, there is nothing known about the background and heritage of the wives of Ishmael's two sons (see 1 Nephi 7:6) and Nephi’s sisters (2 Nephi 5:6). They would also contribute additional mtDNA lineages into the Nephite and Lamanite descendants. As a consequence, we are left without enough information from the Book of Mormon record itself to identify definitively an appropriate genetic source population that could be used to declare the Book of Mormon not true.

We know Lehi's sons would possess a copy of his Y chromosome. However, it is unverifiable whether or not these offspring would also have Manasseh, Joseph, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham in their patrilineage. This is because Lehi is listed only as "a descendant of Manasseh" in Alma 10:3. Lehi would much more likely meet the definition of a descendant of Manasseh from a large number of genealogical lineages without being in the direct patrilineal line and possessing an Abrahamic Y chromosome.

Mormon seems to indicate that Lehi was not in direct patrilineal lineage with Abraham. He uses the phrase “pure descendant of Lehi” to describe himself in 3 Nephi 5:20, thus implying that Lehi's lineage was a rarer one in Mormon's day.

The critic also failed to consider the Jaredites. The Jaredite nation, with at least 29 generations (Ether 1:6-33), existed for more than 1,500 years before the Lehites arrived on this continent. They had combinations of marriages between people whose background we know virtually nothing about. The Jaredites most likely journeyed from central Asia to northeast Asia and then via barges to the New World (see Hugh Nibley, Lehi in the Desert; The World of the Jaredites; There Were Jaredites [1988], 181-82). Genetically, their path of travel would be plausibly consistent with land passage across the Bering Strait. It would not be surprising if others along that route joined them with Asian bloodlines.

Further trouble exists after the Jaredites arrived in the New World. They had hundreds of years to grow and spread across parts of the continent, reasonably encountering and intermarrying with other groups of unknown origin.

While it is possible to speculate endlessly, the record itself is simply not descriptive enough to provide authoritative calibration points with which to make confident scientific conclusions.
So we are left where we began. – in the realm of faith. We have always been told within the Book of Mormon and by prophets in the latter days, a spiritual witness is essential to the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.