There was superheroes, wizards, villains and monsters.

Some were there, too.

FanX is Salt Lake City’s venue to geek and/or nerd out. The spring 2019 edition ended Saturday at the Salt Palace Convention Center.

A woman got back more than she bargained for when she was reunited with her stolen vehicle, FOX 13 reports.

Kasey Stone told FOX 13 that her vehicle was stolen from a Maverick convenience store in Murray. Police eventually found the car.

“It was bad, it was heartbreaking,” Stone told FOX 13. “Before he ditched the car, he had defecated in my driver seat and left his dirty underwear in the passenger floor.”

Police also found a cellphone in the car apparently belonging to the 21-year-old suspect, who was arrested Tuesday.

For more, visit FOX 13.

Editor’s note: The Salt Lake Tribune and FOX 13 are content-sharing partners.

Everything seemed perfectly aligned for a Jazz victory in Game 3 on Saturday night — Donovan Mitchell couldn’t miss early, James Harden couldn’t hit anything and friendly whistles were giving Utah a virtual police escort to the free-throw line.

Which made it all the more crushing for the Jazz that they still somehow lost.

The Rockets overcame a historically bad shooting night from Harden, who missed his first 15 field-goal attempts, to rally for a 104-101 win at Vivint Smart Home Arena, moving within one win of sweeping the first-round series and eliminating Utah.

While the tone of this one was mostly different throughout, in the end, one of the same old problems from the first two games of this series — an inability make shots in key moments — crept up and proved too problematic to overcome.

“We started the right way — moving the ball, being physical defensively,” said center Rudy Gobert, who indeed had seven blocked shots. “[But] the shots weren’t falling.”

With the Jazz defense finally bearing some resemblance to one of the best in the league, and Houston frequently discombobulated, there were plenty of chances to pull away.

But with the ball too frequently clanking off the rim, it never happened.

Quin Snyder: “We didn’t capitalize as much as we needed to, whether it be from the foul line or that stretch there in the third quarter.” pic.twitter.com/AOpTYw2Qxu

— Eric Walden (@tribjazz) April 21, 2019

Buoyed by a frenetically energized home crowd, Utah started the game on an 8-0 run — including an alley-oop from Jae Crowder to Mitchell, and then a four-point play from the second-year star guard. And yet, within minutes, Houston was within 13-12.

With Mitchell lighting it up, however — he began the game hitting 5 of 7 shots — the Jazz again appeared on the verge of gaining some separation. But then, the Rockets once more got contributions from their supporting cast, with Eric Gordon, P.J. Tucker, Danuel House, and Gerald Green all draining 3s to keep the game close.

That Mitchell had 21 points at the break and Harden was 0 for 10 from the field but the Jazz were only up five points was lost on no one.

The third period seemed like the best chance of all to pull away. Seemingly friendly whistles resulted in plenty of early free-throw attempts. But within the quarter’s first three minutes, Ricky Rubio split a pair, Mitchell split a pair, and then Mitchell missed both.

While Houston was struggling to get much going, the Rockets remained close, as Utah wound up shooting just 5 of 14 from the field, 9 of 17 from the line, and committing six turnovers in the quarter.

“We didn’t capitalize as much as we needed to, whether it be from the foul line or that stretch in the third quarter,” said coach Quin Snyder. “I thought we blew a chance to build a little bit of a lead.”

A big opportunity was missed, and the suddenly nervous energy from the crowd at the Viv seemed to indicate everyone knew it.

Harden wouldn’t miss forever. After starting 0 for 15, he finally got a basket, making a transition dunk with 7:32 remaining. Moments later, he drilled his first 3-pointer of the game to give the Rockets a six-point lead.

His fourth-quarter stat line included 14 points, 3 of 6 shooting, 2 of 5 from deep, 6 of 6 free throws, and three assists.

“If you have a lead, particularly against a team like Houston, regardless of how you played [earlier in] the game, you know at the end of the game that’s James Harden, and he’s that good,” Snyder said. “And you give yourself a very small margin.”

While the Jazz didn’t give up — the game went down to the wire until Mitchell missed a shockingly wide-open game-tying 3 try with 6.5 seconds left — some of the same old issues from the first two games of this series hurt Utah again.

For one, the long-distance shooting was again mediocre, as Utah hit just 12 of 41 attempts from deep (29.3%).

Then, there were Mitchell’s struggles. While his hot start was about the only thing keeping the team going early, he eventually cooled down — enduring a 1-for-13 stretch at one point. He finished with 34 points, six rebounds, and five assists, but made only 4 of his final 20 attempts (he shot 9 of 27 from the field), and went 12 of 17 from the line.

“You’ve got to hit shots. I can’t miss 16 shots [late]. That’s my role, and I can’t miss that many shots,” Mitchell said. “I’ve got to be able to hit those.”

Donovan Mitchell: "I just started missing shots. Our mindset was just trying to get to the basket. … I was trying to find guys as well. But you’ve got to hit shots. I can’t miss 16 shots [late]. That’s my role, and I can’t miss that many shots. I’ve got to be able to hit those." pic.twitter.com/cngEIPAVyn

— Eric Walden (@tribjazz) April 21, 2019

Meanwhile, much of the supporting cast was again AWOL. Derrick Favors did score 13 off the bench, Georges Niang had a productive first-half stretch, and Kyle Korver looked capable of contribution for the first time all series. But Joe Ingles scored eight, and Jae Crowder and Royce O’Neale only had five apiece. The three combined to shoot 8 for 23.

The backcourt did the biggest damage for the Rockets, in spite of game-long foul trouble, as Harden overcame a 3-for-20 shooting night to total 22 points and 10 assists, while Paul added 18 points, four assists, and four rebounds.

The Jazz will now try to avoid elimination Monday night when the teams play at Vivint Arena again. And while the team was clearly discouraged to see their deficit sitting at 3-0 rather than 2-1, Mitchell vowed no one was giving up.

“I don’t think anybody is going to just [roll] over Monday; I don’t think that’s going to be the case. I don’t think [as an] organization that’s what we’re based on,” he said. “You can say no team’s come back from 3-0, but no team had come back from 3-1 [in the NBA Finals] and that happened, so that’s where my mindset’s at. It’s an uphill battle, but we’re not just going to [roll] over and give them the game. That’s not who we are — that’s not who any of us are. We’re not afraid — you saw that tonight. We’re gonna keep playing.”

Fort Worth, Texas • The Oklahoma gymnastics team spoiled the going away party for UCLA coach Valorie Kondos Field on Saturday as the Sooners won the 2019 title here Saturday night.

The Sooners won with a 198.3375, LSU was second (197.825), UCLA was third (197.5375) and Denver was fourth (197.0).

The title is the fourth championship for the Sooners, who also won in 2014, 2016 and 2017.

Oklahoma’s score was the second-highest in NCAA history, behind their 198.3875 in 2017.

The Bruins were hoping to repeat as champions and send Kondos Field into retirement with another title, but the Sooners were just too good, especially on the balance beam.

Many thought it would be a close meet, but it turned into a blowout.

The Sooners scored a 49.6125 on the balance beam to lead at the halfway mark with a 99.0625.

The Sooners had two 9.9375s and 9.9625 on the beam.

LSU was second with a 98.8375 to keep some hope of a comeback, but any thoughts of an Oklahoma collapse ended in the next rotation.

Oklahoma added a 49.65 on floor to lead with a 148.7125 after three rotations while LSU was second with a 148.3 and UCLA was third with a 148.1125 and Denver was fourth with a 147.65.

The Sooners finished with a 49.625 on vault, giving them three events in which they scored above 49.6.

James Harden is incapable of being stopped and Chris Paul is the kind of point guard every team in the NBA would love to have. But these steamrolling Houston Rockets are more than their reigning Most Valuable Player and the future Hall of Fame floor leader. The Rockets had the best record in the second half of the regular season and managed to overcome such a shoddy start to the 2018-19 campaign also because of the guys assembled to complement the guys who nab the headlines.

Houston coach Mike D’Antoni said so prior to Game 3 Saturday night inside Vivint Smart Home Arena. Without the defensive resolve of Eric Gordon, without the toughness of PJ Tucker, without the development of Danuel House, the Rockets weren’t getting back on track. D’Antoni went even further when discussing the impact of the midseason role players added midseason like power forward Kenneth Faried and point guard Austin Rivers.

“They turned our season around,” D’Antoni said.

The Rockets signed Faried after his buyout from the Brooklyn Nets in January and signed Rivers who was waived by the Phoenix Suns in late December after a trade sent him from the Washington Wizards to Phoenix. D’Antoni credited the Rockets front office and general manager Daryl Morey for finding the perfect fits when Houston needed them the most.

While Harden had another magnificent year, once again becoming the MVP frontrunner, the Rockets struggled out of the gate. Long-term injuries to Paul and Clint Capela necessitated some new blood. Faried and Rivers gave exactly that.

“Those two guys came in and won countless games for us,” D’Antoni said. “[They] kept us above water and even gaining ground [in the standings] which we stayed in the hunt at the end.”

Beyond the acquisitions of Faried and Rivers, Houston’s slew of role players helped the Rockets’ impressive end to the regular season as well as the hot start in the postseason. Tucker hit seven 3s in the first two games of the series while Gordon hit six from deep and perhaps most importantly played solid defense on Donovan Mitchell.

“That’s one part of his game that might’ve been overlooked, but he’s so strong and he just puts his chest on people and he’s one of the better defenders out there,” D’Antoni said of Gordon. “I don’t know if he’s gotten better, but by starting him, maybe you see it more. He starts off usually on [the other team’s] best perimeter guy. And he just does a terrific job.”

Sandy • Lo’eau LaBonta picked a good night for her first goal in a Utah Royals FC uniform.

The midfielder, who did not score last year despite playing in 16 games, picked up a goal in the 10th minute of URFC’s home opener Saturday at Rio Tinto. Her right-footed strike gave the Royals the lift they needed to win, 1-0.

“I was just lucky enough to get a goal today,” LaBonta said. “It doesn’t happen very often, so I’ll take it.”

LaBonta scored two goals in the 2017 season as a member of FC Kansas City. She said her goal could mean the Royals won’t have to rely solely on forwards Christen Press and Amy Rodriquez to find the back of the net due to the team’s overall versatility.

“It’s great for me, especially being [on] this team not getting a goal at all last year,” LaBonta said. “It’s definitely going to help me boost a little of my confidence, take more shots. But I think it’s just great to help the team that way.”

In the 10th minute, Press dispossessed a Washington player in the backfield and dribbled around the box for some time. She then passed to LaBonta, who scored with her right foot for the 1-0 Royals lead.

In the 75th minute, the Spirit had a great chance to tie the game after the Royals committed a foul right at the 18-yard box. Rose Lavelle lined up the ball, which was right in the center of the goal, but missed just over the crossbar.

In the 84th, Mallory Pugh had a pinpoint shot at goal and struck hard with her left foot. But Royals keeper Nicole Barnhart was there to save it. Barnhart had two saves on the evening.

Utah Royals FC coach Laura Harvey with some thoughts on tonight’s win. #URFC pic.twitter.com/PIsB0112x0

— Alex Vejar (@AlexVReporting) April 21, 2019

The Royals handed the Spirit their first loss of the season after they beat Sky Blue FC 2-0 in their opener last week. With the win, URFC moved to a tie for fourth place in the league.

Last season, the Royals lost their home opener in front of a sellout crowd. On Saturday, the fans were slightly fewer — an announced 18,015 — but the result was better. The team got the three points it wanted, but was still a bit disappointed in how they played.

“Thankfully, having a win and not feeling like we played great is arguably the best feeling,” Royals coach Laura Harvey said, “because you can go away, you can look at it, you can really be critical of yourselves and try and make sure you adapt to make them better for next game.”

Harvey said the team wanted to start off with better results than it did last season, when the Royals had four draws in their first five games. Harvey and company have not been shy about their desire to make the playoffs this season, and Saturday’s win was clearly a step in the right direction.

“I wish we could’ve made it easier on ourselves, both defensively and with the ball,” Harvey said. “But it will give us loads of things to talk about and learn from in preparation for next week.”

Midfielder Vero Boquete made her Royals FC debut, and appeared in the starting lineup. She was disappointed with her first-half performance, but settled in during the second half.

Boquete reiterated that the Royals would have liked to have played a better game, and joined that sentiment with hoping that they continue to get crowds like the one that showed up Saturday.

“We just hope that they come back,” Boquete said, regarding the fans. “We know that today was not perfect, but at least we tried and we got the three points. After now, we promise we will improve. We’re going to get better. The next game here, it will be a better show.”

Vero Boquete on winning the first game of the season. #URFC pic.twitter.com/PGVybNQPJU

— Alex Vejar (@AlexVReporting) April 21, 2019

It wasn’t quite an expression of complete devastation that creased Donovan Mitchell’s face as he left the floor late Saturday night, his team having lost to the Rockets by the count of 104-101. It was fractional devastation, about three-quarter’s worth, as the Jazz tasted defeat for the third time in this first-to-four playoff series.

In the previous two defeats, absorbed by a total of 52 points, no Jazz player had taken more responsibility upon himself for the sorry results than Mitchell. His descriptions of his own play had bordered on self-flagellation. To no one’s surprise, the 22-year-old had ducked nothing, had taken on everything, including much of the blame for the Jazz’s backward showings.

It was more of the same, but different, on Saturday night at Vivint Arena, as the Jazz now face elimination in Game 4.

The Jazz played better, but at no enduring time in this series have circumstances leaned the way Mitchell had envisioned them before this whole affair started. Remember that? Back when he and Rudy Gobert whispered about their intentions to win a championship? That there was nothing preposterous about such an aim?

Well. Preposterous is exactly what all of that seems.

Floating on a raft in the Mediterranean is the Jazz’s short-term destiny now.

And Mitchell is bummed, big time.

There was some satisfaction in him looking more like himself on this night. He drove hard to the basket, spinning and weaving through Rocket traffic, stopping and popping, firing from deep, dropping dimes out of trouble, the whole Mitchell repertoire.

He shot the ball, though, with only a bit more precision, scoring 34 points. It was a slight difference from the utterly shoddy shooting Mitchell had put up heretofore.

It had gotten to the point where observers were wondering whether too much was being asked of Mitchell, either by design or out of desperation on account of the fact that the Jazz had no other options at the offensive end. Even as Houston’s defense was building a wall around Mitchell, the Jazz gave the ball to him and relied on his athleticism to do … something, anything, because who else could?

That’s the burden Mitchell had successfully carried all season long.

Questioned about it, whether too much is asked, Jazz general manager Dennis Lindsey responded thusly:

“Maybe. That’s a legitimate question. And here’s the irony to me answering that the way it is: Hopefully, we can build him in such a way that maybe there’s more in the offering. Donovan’s got to do some things to be more efficient. How do you go through that? By facing real tests. He’s done amazing his first two years. … He’s our guy. Hopefully, we’ll be able to continue to build him, build his teammates, and augment with more and different talent going forward.

“This is hard. And it’s going to get harder. That’s where he and us collectively need to be better. You can’t run from the challenge. The struggle is real. So, let’s set our jaw and fight back.”

Mitchell fought back in defeat on Saturday night.

Ricky Rubio, Joe Ingles, Kyle Korver and Mitchell, too, said beforehand that the Jazz weren’t really the Jazz in the first two games, that the lot of them had been kidnapped by aliens and subbed with clumsy replicants.

OK, that last part is a lie. They didn’t quite say that, but they might as well have. People would have believed them.

On this occasion, though, for the first time in these playoffs, Donovan Mitchell was Donovan Mitchell again, the Jazz were almost the Jazz. Wait, maybe this really is who they are, at least against this kind of playoff competition, even on a night when James Harden was not James Harden, making just three field goals.

That realization, that actualization, was evident on Mitchell’s face as he left the floor at the end. And, with Game 4 coming on Monday night, those pieces of devastation were creased deeper by the work, by the burden, still ahead.

GORDON MONSON hosts “The Big Show” with Jake Scott weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone.

Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 104-101 loss to the Houston Rockets from Salt Lake Tribune beat writer Andy Larsen.

1. It’s a make or miss league

The Jazz played so, so well on Saturday night. They made life exceptionally tough for James Harden, maybe the best defensive performance on him all year. They stopped a lot of the open shots that they were giving up in the first two games. The offense got open looks through some excellent execution and passing.

But, as the saying goes, “It’s a make or miss league.” And the Jazz can’t consistently make, which gave the Rockets the critical Game 3 win.

Many of those shots were corner threes: the Jazz shot just 4-18, or 22%, on those. 18 corner threes is more than any team has taken this playoffs in any game, to give you an idea of what a good percentage of shots that is. Jazz’s average is on the season is about 37.5% on those, that’s about league average too. The Jazz win this game if they hit two more corner threes.

Or, they could have won this game through the free-throw line. While the rest of the game was fine, a bad third quarter saw them miss eight free-throws. Obviously, make half of those, and the Jazz win the game. If they shoot 74% for the game, their team average on the year, they win.

Heck, you can even do this with the shots from 4-14 feet: Jazz made only one of eight of those. 12.5%. This won’t shock you, but usually, NBA teams make more than that.

My sense, too, was that more of the threes were wide open than usual. The NBA’s tracking numbers have yet to be released, but I’ll be watching that carefully when they are early Sunday. But after the Jazz shot just 7-32 on wide-open shots in Game 2, it seemed like a similar story in Game 3.

Update: The tracking numbers are in, and they are ugly. The Jazz shot just 4 of 26 on wide-open shots last night (defined as shots with the closest defender at least six feet away). That’s 15%. That’s incredible. Imagine how frustrating that must be for Quin Snyder and his coaching staff, setting up his players for a win if only they’d just make a reasonable number of open shots. But no.

There are obviously things the Jazz could have done better, there always is. But for the most part, it was that the shots didn’t fall, at the season’s most critical juncture. You could point to the need for more shooting on the roster, and I think that’s fair, but ultimately, the Jazz would have won if they could just hit shots at their season averages.

Remember, these same Houston Rockets missed 27 consecutive threes in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals last year. If anyone knows this pain, it’s them. But tonight, it was the Jazz on the other end of it.

2. Donovan Mitchell’s step-up performance, and fade late

Donovan Mitchell had his best game of the series, scoring 34 points, getting to the free-throw line whenever he wanted, and keeping his turnovers low. The Jazz heavily relied on Mitchell, as he played 42 minutes.

Mitchell was fantastic early, starting the game 5-7 from the field while hitting inside and out. The Rockets started to be more aggressive with him during these successes, but I thought he did a really nice job of adjusting to draw the fouls and get to the free-throw line: 17 attempts is an excellent number. Of course, he would have liked to make more than 12 of them.

He did force things late, finishing the game 4-20, but had one of the best game-tying looks you’ll ever see here. I really like this play by Quin Snyder: essentially, he bunched everyone up along that sideline until there was almost certain to be confusion and miscommunication in a loud crowd. Mitchell got the open look, but missed it.

Mitchell Misses Wide Open Triple 6.5 Remaining pic.twitter.com/sZAnFH8Z5O

— The Render (@TheRenderNBA) April 21, 2019

Afterwards, Mitchell was pretty distraught. Naturally, his teammates supported him on the court and after the game. Kyle Korver, after going through his normal postgame press scrum, actually asked to say one more thing. Cameras and microphones went back on, and Korver said this:

"I have never been around a young player like Donovan Mitchell. I have never seen someone so young take ownership of a team, take ownership of his play, do it with charisma, do it with class. Never seen that in my 16 years in the NBA.

“He missed a tough shot tonight, but it’s just going to be part of his story,” Korver continued. "If you’ve played any meaningful basketball in the NBA, you have a shot like that. If you don’t, that means you haven’t played in meaningful games, or you haven’t been trusted by your teammates or coaches to take that shot. I don’t care who it is in history, everyone has a shot they want back. This is going to be part of the story at the end of the day.

"Because of who he is, he’s going to put too much on that shot, but we missed free-throws, we missed dunks, we missed layups, we missed threes. It was not about that shot. It was not about that shot. We had so many more chances to win that game.

“But I’m super proud of him. He came out and like, he heard that he hadn’t played as well as he wanted to in the first couple of games, and he put the whole thing on his back. For a young guy, 21 years old or whatever he is, that’s really special. He is on a great path in the NBA. At the end of the day, this is just going to be part of his story, part of his journey. He’s just going to keep building on it.”

Korver is great for wanting to deliver that message, and he’s right: Mitchell is a unique force. That Korver has “never” been around a young player like Mitchell in a 16-year NBA career certainly says something.

Mitchell’s going to get some hate after this playoff series, especially from people outside of Utah. But the Jazz are still in a pretty good place overall, and the biggest reason is everything that Mitchell is.

3. Quin Snyder’s plan comes to fruition

Snyder’s gotten some criticism for his defensive plan in this series, but it worked incredibly well tonight. I know the Jazz lost, and I know James Harden isn’t going to go 3-20 in most games, but man, did they ever make life tough for the Rockets tonight.

The biggest thing was how frequently the Jazz just nailed their rotations. The Jazz frequently forced Harden downhill right into the waiting arms of Rudy Gobert, which has been a problem for Utah. But this time, the Jazz got into the body of Clint Capela and took away the corner three by having the defender sink deep.

Look at Harden’s options here, he doesn’t have many. That gives Gobert the chance to make a play, and, well this is an incredibly tough block.

Rudy out here blocking floaters 👀

DPOY has 4️⃣ rejections pic.twitter.com/yiXqwDE2yi

— Utah Jazz (@utahjazz) April 21, 2019

The Rockets, because they’re good, adjusted. They went to their smallball lineup with P.J. Tucker playing center, lovingly called “The Tuckwagon” by Rockets fans. (I think it’s a good name, to be honest.) But the Jazz adapted. Gobert guarded Tucker, but didn’t always help from the strong side. Instead, now Rubio helped from the weak side, again making Harden’s pass away difficult. This play worked for the Rockets, but the Jazz broke up the next one, and the Rockets didn’t really rely on the look much after that.

Nice counter from Rockets vs. Jazz scheme here. We've seen Capela spaced on right side, here they space Tucker in right corner. Still forcing Harden right. Gobert can't help from corner so Rubio pulls over. Ingles has to drop as soon as he does House cuts for a layup. pic.twitter.com/tX2oazwVEu

— Steve Jones Jr. (@stevejones20) April 21, 2019

It was really impressive on both ends: the Jazz’s excellent defensive performance, and that the Rockets won the game anyway. This wasn’t a Jazz win, so obviously, they were devastated after the game. But I agree with Snyder when he said, “I thought we laid it out there and I was proud about how we played and how we competed, we just didn’t get a win tonight to reflect that.... Offensively, we didn’t have as good of a night that we needed to win the game.”

Now, they face the brink.

Dear Ann Cannon • I come from a large extended family with all the usual kinds of characters. Some are guarded about their privacy, others aren’t. One of the grandkids has a problem communicating with his mom.

He recently moved away and is doing just OK, while his siblings are doing really well in their chosen arenas. He thinks (of course, thanks to social media) that all his “friends” are happy, dating, getting laid, buying cars, going on vacations and making lots of money. He called me in a complete funk and made a comment about how the world might be better without him.

It really surprised me and then it scared me. He was very clear that I should NOT tell/share any of this with his mom. His mom will be furious if she finds out that she was not told, which seems like the wrong thing for her to be upset about. I am very concerned and actually think that the mom should be told, but am afraid of what could happen with her son. So, two questions, what can I say or do to help the son? And should I tell mom?

— Deeply Concerned

Dear Concerned • Before I get started here, I want to remind everyone that I am not a therapist, so please put my responses in that context — especially when questions, like this one, raise serious mental health issues. Instead, I speak from my own life experience.

When I first read your question, my initial response was YOU HAVE TO TELL HIS MOM — probably because I’m a mother and would definitely want to know if this was going on with one of my own kids. But, actually, the paramount issue here involves the personal safety of this young man. Your focus should be on him, not on how his mother will react if she feels like she’s been left out of the loop.

Threats of self-harm should never be ignored. Because this relative obviously trusts you and feels more comfortable talking to you than to his own mother, I would be direct with him. Don’t be afraid to ask if he is, in fact, seriously thinking about harming himself. Press him even if it makes you uncomfortable to do so. Ask if he has a plan. Raising these questions will NOT increase his risk of committing suicide. Evidence, in fact, suggests the opposite. For more information about suicide prevention, you can visit the QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer) Institute online at www.qprinstitute.com.

If you feel like your relative is in real danger, see if you can get him to commit to finding help. Follow up. Help him locate a good therapist. If he won’t commit, then tell him you WILL bring his mother into the conversation, even if he doesn’t want you to. His safety — and whatever it takes to ensure it — is your first concern.

If, on the other hand, you feel like he’s not seriously considering suicide — after all, it’s not unheard of for young people to overstate their intentions — think about keeping his confidence in the house for the moment. Stay in regular touch with him. Encourage him to take care of his physical and mental health. Remind him that everything he sees on social media is heavily curated and even suggest that he get off social media for the time being. Meanwhile, remind yourself that you can’t make this young man do anything he doesn’t want to do.

This is a serious matter, and I hope I’ve given you good advice. I’d be happy to hear what our readers have to say. Good luck!

If you or people you know are at risk of self-harm, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline provides 24-hour support at 1-800-273-8255. The Utah Statewide Crisis Line number is 801-587-3000.

Ann Cannon is The Tribune’s advice columnist. Got a question for Ann? Email her at askann@sltrib.com or visit the Ask Ann Cannon page on Facebook.

The five broadcast networks will announce their 2019-20 schedules in mid-May — which is when we’ll find out what they’ve canceled.

Sometimes we don’t need official announcements. It’s been clear NBC was done with the “I Feel Bad” since weeks before the finale episodes aired in December. And we know NBC will renew “This Is Us” — although it isn’t done working out a deal with Fox, which produces the show.

Oh, wait. Fox sold its TV studio to Disney, so NBC is working that out with the new owners.

Renewals are most often a function of ratings — not just how many people watch, but whether those people are in the 18-49 or 25-54 age demographics advertisers covet. But there are other factors, including:

• Does the network own the show? If so, better odds of returning.
• If a network owns a show, how well does it sell in overseas markets? That matters, even if U.S. ratings aren’t great.
• What do the new pilots look like? Does the network think a new series would do better than what it’s already airing?
• And there are intangibles specific to some shows. CBS owns “Bull,” and the ratings are decent. But will a network rocked by #MeToo headlines renew a show that had to pay actress Eliza Dushku $9.5 million to settle her complaints that series star <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/12/14/676940694/cbs-paid-eliza-dushku-9-5-million-after-alleged-sexual-harassment-termination" target=_blank>Michael Weatherly sexually harassed her</a>?

It’s also worth pointing out that cancellation isn’t always the end for a show. A year ago, NBC picked up “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” after Fox canceled it; Fox picked up “Last Man Standing” after ABC canceled it. Both have been renewed for next season.

Oh, by the way, NBC owns “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” and Fox owned “Last Man Standing” — until the studio was sold to Disney.

Here’s a look at what we know is coming back, what we know isn’t, and semi-educated guesses about the rest.

ABC

Renewed • “America's Funniest Home Videos,” “The Conners,” “The Good Doctor,” “Modern Family” (final season), “Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” (Season 6 begins airing in May; a seventh and final season has been ordered), “A Million Little Things”

Guaranteed to be renewed • “Grey’s Anatomy”

Probably safe • “American Housewife,” “American Idol,” “The Bachelor,” “The Bachelorette,” “Bachelor in Paradise,” “Black-ish,” “Dancing with the Stars,” “Fresh Off the Boat,” “The Goldbergs,” “How to Get Away with Murder,” “The Rookie,” “Schooled,” “Shark Tank,” “Speechless,” “Station 19”

On the bubble • “The Kids are Alright,” “Match Game,” “Single Parents”

Probably dead • “The Alec Baldwin Show,” “Child Support,” “Dancing with the Stars Junior,” “The Fix,” “For the People,” “Splitting Up Together”

Canceled • “Take Two”

CBS

Renewed • “Blue Bloods,” “Criminal Minds” (final season), “FBI,” “God Friended Me,” “Magnum P.I.,” “Mom” (two seasons), “NCIS,” “The Neighborhood,” “Young Sheldon” (two seasons)

Probably safe • “The Amazing Race,” “Hawaii Five-0,” “MacGyver,” “Man with a Plan,” “NCIS Los Angeles,” “NCIS New Orleans,” “SEAL Team,” “Survivor”

On the bubble • “Bull,” “Madam Secretary,” “S.W.A.T.”

Too early to say • “The Code,” “Life in Pieces”

Probably dead • “Fam,” “Happy Together,” “Murphy Brown”

Canceled • “Salvation”

Not coming back • “The Big Bang Theory” (retiring after 12 seasons); “Elementary” (returns for final season in May)

NBC

Renewed • “American Ninja Warrior,” “The Blacklist,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” “Chicago Fire,” “Chicago Med,” “Chicago P.D.,” “Ellen's Game of Games,” “Good Girls,” “The Good Place,” “Law & Order: SVU,” “Manifest,” “New Amsterdam,” “Superstore,” “Will & Grace”

Guaranteed to be renewed • “This Is Us”

Probably safe • “Titan Games,” “The Voice”

On the bubble • “A.P. Bio,” “Blindspot”

Probably dead • “Abby’s,” “The Enemy Within,” “I Feel Bad,” “The Village”

Canceled • “Marlon,” “Midnight, Texas,” “Reverie,” “Trial & Error”

FOX

Renewed • “Bob’s Burgers,” “Family Guy,” “Hell’s Kitchen” (two seasons), “Last Man Standing,” “The Masked Singer,” “9-1-1,” “The Simpsons” (two seasons), “The Resident”

Probably safe • “The Cool Kids,” “Empire,” “The Four,” “Star”

On the bubble • “The Orville”

Probably dead • “Proven Innocent,” “Lethal Weapon,” “The Passage”

Canceled • “The Gifted,” “Love Connection,” “Rel”

Not coming back • “Gotham” is ending after five seasons

THE CW

Renewed • “Arrow” (final season); “Black Lightning,” “Charmed,” “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow,” “Dynasty,” “The Flash,” “Legacies,” “Riverdale,” “Supergirl,” “Supernatural” (final season)

Probably safe • “Roswell, New Mexico”

Probably dead • “All American”

Not coming back • “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” ended after four seasons; “Jane the Virgin” is ending after five seasons; “iZombie’s” final season begins in May

On his first trip to the twin towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., Tom Bennett visited Maxwell Park.

It’s like any municipal park, with a playground, a baseball diamond and a picnic area — except that Maxwell Park is tucked between red rock peaks in a canyon on the northeast tip of Hildale.

“And I was really hooked on putting on a concert there,” Bennett said.

The concert is called the Colorado City Music Festival, and it’s happening for the third year on Saturday, April 27. Admission is free for people under 18. Adult tickets start at $10.

The festival features rock, blues and country acts. The two previous incarnations have each drawn about 1,000 people, Bennett said.

He’s hoping for a bigger attendance this time. The Salt Lake City rock band Royal Bliss is the headliner. And the 2019 version will have the festival’s first beer garden.

The towns are collectively known as Short Creek, and they’re known as the home of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Bennett said this is the first year members of the church will participate in the festival. FLDS members will sell homemade baked goods and crafts, he said.

Short Creek has gradually become more secular, and Bennett wants to be a part of that. He’s a touring musician from Villa Rica, Ga., and now lives in St. George, Utah. He visited Short Creek a few years ago after having read about the community for years.

As he met people who had left the FLDS, he discovered they longed for cultural activities. The towns also are trying to build a tourism economy. Short Creek is positioned between Zion National Park and the Grand Canyon and offers outdoor activities synonymous with the American West.

“It’s one of the prettiest areas of southern Utah,” Bennett said, “and I think they want to be known for what they are now.”

The community is pitching in to support the concert. Bennett said a local man rents the festival its stage. Hildale’s mayor and city staff have helped with permitting and other logistical issues.

Last year’s festival ran late. The ambulance crew who stood by in case of an emergency turned on the vehicle’s flood lights so the final act could finish its performance.

Bennett hopes the festival attracts people who used to stay away from Short Creek out of concern about the FLDS faithful there. “I got a comment from one lady who said, ‘Well, I didn’t even know you could come here,’” he said.

COLORADO CITY MUSIC FESTIVAL

The festival is now in its third year.

When • 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturday, April 27

Where • Maxwell Park in Hildale

Who • The headliner is Royal Bliss; supporting acts include Tom Bennett and the Living Proof, Cleo, NVM, Lisa MacFarlane, Dick Earl’s Electric Witness and Marji Mozart.

Cost • $10 for adults; free for everyone under age 18

If the cannabis industry perfectly complied with Utah’s expectations, it would grow 84,292.98 plants annually.

These perfectly obedient plants would offer 10.4 million grams of THC (marijuana’s psychoactive compound), enough to supply exactly 100,000 patients with 2 grams of cannabinoids per week for the entire year.

The supply would meet the demand, and no cannabis buds would be left over to sit in storehouses, at risk of falling into the black market’s clutches.

That, at least, is how it is supposed to work on paper. The state has calculated size limits for the cannabis-growing operations that will undergird Utah’s new medical marijuana program.

The medical cannabis law passed by legislators late last year codifies these caps — only 10 growers will be allowed at first, and each of them can cultivate no more than four acres outdoors or 100,000 square feet indoors.

But Justin Arriola, a cannabis business consultant and advocate, believes these firm constraints could set the state up for product shortages, potentially hampering patient choice when Utah’s medical marijuana pharmacies open.

Look at other medical cannabis states for example, he said. Recently, shortages have been reported in New Jersey, which has estimated it will need to increase the number of cannabis growers from six to 24 to supply a projected 180,000 patients by 2022. Connecticut, too, has dealt with a lack of inventory as it relies on four producers to grow cannabis for nearly 26,000 patients.

“The lesson there is that pretty much always, the amount of market demand is underestimated,” said Arriola, a board member with Together for Responsible Use and Cannabis Education, a medical marijuana advocacy group in Utah.

The state’s cannabis pharmacies are on track to open next year, and regulators concede that bare shelves are a possibility in the early days. But it won’t be because growers lack the requisite space to cultivate enough cannabis.

“That is plenty of product the first year. In fact, it’s going to be an oversupply if all 10 [cultivators] are growing that much product,” said Melissa Ure, a senior policy analyst with the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food.

The problems with supply would arise if there are hiccups with timing, she said, and the growers aren’t established in time to stock all the state’s new pharmacies.

With the cultivation caps, officials tried to find a sweet spot that would produce enough cannabis to supply the state’s patients while preventing excess that could end up in the illegal drug trade.

They’re anticipating the average patient each week will consume less than half the THC allowed by the new law. At the same time, their assumed patient count of 100,000 is more than double the state health department’s working estimate, mostly to allow for the program’s growth, Ure said.

Still, even the agriculture department’s liberal patient projections could end up being low, said Arriola, who believes the number could be closer to 180,000.

Adam Orens, founding partner of the Colorado-based Marijuana Policy Group, commended Utah for using data to right-size cultivation operations.

In Oklahoma, which has eschewed license limits and created something of a cannabis business free-for-all, the state has already approved more than 2,460 grower applications. That, Orens said, could lead to a glut of cheap marijuana. On the opposite end of the spectrum, imposing too many restrictions can drive up the cost of cannabis treatments until they’re only affordable to higher-income patients.

Utah’s framework looks like a “public safety motivated market” that will put cultivation into the hands of 10 corporations, kept under the watchful eye of state regulators, he said.

The state’s estimated harvest of 84,000 plants per year is only a fraction of what’s grown in recreational states, like Colorado, where cultivators were raising nearly 1 million plants at the end of 2017 to fuel the state’s adult-use and medical industries.

But, in conservative Utah, it might take awhile for cannabis treatments to catch on among medical providers and patients, another factor in predicting the demand.

“Part of the meaning of the word ‘conservative’ means they proceed cautiously to do things. But who knows?” said Orens, whose consulting firm has worked with government officials in Colorado and Canada to study cannabis markets. “Utah is going to become easily ... the most conservative state to have a medical marijuana program.”

Some of the state’s growing assumptions looked off to Bruce Bugbee, a Utah State University professor who’s studying cannabis cultivation, but he didn’t see any hidden agenda in them.

The estimates for indoor growing appeared to be on the low side; the state predicted that cultivators could raise three marijuana crops per year, while Bugbee said they could probably squeeze in five if they set their minds to it.

The permit limits as designed also probably encourage cultivators to grow indoors in greenhouses or warehouses that blast cannabis plants with electric lights, he added.

Both Arriola and Orens agree that the state cap of four acres or 100,000 square feet per license will permit relatively large operations and say it’s possible to run a successful business within those parameters.

The larger issue, in Arriola’s opinion, will be with the state’s proposed system for dispensing the cannabis.

Utah’s law only allows for seven private “cannabis pharmacies,” with a state central fill pharmacy handling the remainder of the distribution by delivering marijuana orders to local health departments for pickup by patients. That’s not difficult to do for one patient, Arriola said.

“But now do that 40,000 times," he said. "How do you do that?”

I’ve been trying to teach my teenage son to take on some responsibility. I told him he is a selfish person, but only in the way that he’s a typical teenager. He immediately tried to correct me because don’t I see that he drives his little brother home from school and so he can’t possibly be selfish because he does so much for the family?

I took a little time to inform him that he drives his brother in a car that his parents gave him, a car we fill with gas as the teen lounges on his bed and watches the large television on his bedroom wall.

And he’s all, “Yeah, I don’t cause any problems. You’re welcome.”

So I gave him a chore. He needed to mow the lawn.

He agreed that maybe, possibly, mowing the lawn could be something he could do to contribute. But the first time he went out to the backyard, he was there for only a minute before coming back inside.

“Can’t mow,” he said. “Bees.”

I rolled my eyes. This is the same kid I sent into the grocery store one day with the mission to buy milk, and he came back to the car empty-handed and said, “They don’t have any.”

Long story short, they had milk, of course they had milk, because it’s a GROCERY STORE.

OK, I get that he lives in oblivion. But someone has to mow the lawn. So I said, “Look, there are always going to be bees outside. You still have to mow the lawn.”

“But mom,” he said. “Bees.”

And I responded, “But son, nature. It happens.”

He went outside again, and lasted two minutes before he came back inside.

“Bees,” he said.

“Blah,” I responded, in the form of a sigh. “Fine. Let’s go out and see these *air quotes* bees.”

We went to the backyard, and on the fence there were two active hives, and after some study (which means I got bit) we determined they were yellow jackets.

Yellow jackets are meat eaters. They bite to feed on your flesh, not for any defensive measures.

So the oblivious kid had a point this time. But yellow jackets or no, the lawn needed to get mowed eventually.

Now, I’m all about appreciating nature. But I’m also about committing mass murder of yellow jackets. I went to Home Depot and bought a spray that guaranteed to annihilate them on contact, without mercy.

But then the guy I was seeing at the time said, “No. We don’t kill living things.”

And I said, “What do you mean ‘we’?”

And he said, “Let’s just let them know that they need to relocate.”

“How?” I asked.

“We’ll knock down their homes. And they will find a new place that isn’t here.”

He went outside, armed with a shovel, and knocked down the hives. Then he came running inside, because apparently he’d made the yellow jackets mad.

A couple of days later, new hives appeared. Three of them. The yellow jackets had not gotten the memo that they were not welcome. In fact, they had invited friends.

So, I did what any sane person would do. I sprayed them all and I got rid of the boyfriend.

Now, the backyard is littered with dead yellow jackets, my teenage son mows the lawn, and my Tinder profile includes the phrase, “Must be willing to murder yellow jackets.”

Brodi Ashton is a New York Times best-selling author who lives in the Salt Lake City area. She’s also an occasional columnist for The Salt Lake Tribune.

If you think fly-fishing is all about relaxation and peace, think again.

“A lot of people associate it with [the 1992 film] ‘A River Runs Through It’ — Brad Pitt out there making beautiful casts as the sun goes down and the beautiful butterflies are fluttering behind him,” said Utahn Thad Robison. But in “Fish or Die,” his new Animal Planet series, “We kind of reversed that. It really does turn into chaos.”

The title gives you an idea of what to expect. Robison and three of his friends travel to remote, dangerous parts of the world in pursuit of big fish with huge teeth. It’s a show about guys who fish, but it’s not exactly a fishing show. It’s more about the journey.

In Sunday’s premiere (8 p.m. on DirecTV and Dish; 11 p.m. on Comcast), Robison, Chris Owens, Brian Jill and Jay Johnson travel to the jungles of Bolivia, where they go 60 miles upriver to the foothills of the Andes in pursuit of golden dorado.

“We all love to fly fish. That’s our passion,” Robison said. “We really want to go to places where a fish has never seen a fly cast in front of its face.”

In Bolivia, a small, rather rickety plane carrying Robison and Jill needs repairs before it can make it to the jungle air strip. From there, they travel into an area filled with poisonous plants and insects, dangerous animals, vampire fish whose “teeth are so big that they actually protrude to the top of their head,” and indigenous people who, they’re told, might be cannibals.

On a river in a deep canyon surrounded by jungle, they hear an eerie hooting that could be animals, or might be humans.

“It sent chills down my spine,” Robison said. “We went dead silent and then turned around and looked at each other and said, ‘Holy crap — what is that?’”

They never figure that out, but other threats were more concrete. Johnson’s hand swells alarmingly after a bug bite; Owens develops a highly painful and hugely disgusting case of jungle rot on his feet. All so they can “get to this place to be able to, basically, just throw a piece of chicken feather tied to a hook at the end of the line at some fish that we’ve never caught.”

Don’t be surprised if you ask yourself — what the hell were they thinking?

“I asked myself that the whole time,” Robison said with a laugh. “We just like going to places that are really difficult to get to. And the fact that we’re not survivalists doesn’t really help the situation.”

That’s part of the appeal. They’re pretty much regular guys who know how to fish but aren’t trained to survive the rigors of the Bolivian jungle or (in future episodes) nine other countries, including Borneo, Greenland, Mongolia and Zambia.

They have guides, and they get help from locals. And that’s the best part of “Fish or Die” — the interaction between the four Americans and the people they encounter.

“There’s so much that we have learned with all these different native cultures and people and tribes around the world,” Robison said. “That is the biggest thing that I take away from every one of these locations that we go to, more than the trophy fish, to be quite honest.”

You don’t have to be into fishing to enjoy “Fish or Die.” Although if you are, that’s a bonus.

Robison, who grew up in Bountiful and now lives in Salt Lake City, fly-fishes for trout in Utah, where “you get a 5-pound fish and that’s huge. You get a 10-pound fish and it’s a monster,” he said. “And we’re going to these places getting 200-plus-pound fish. If that doesn’t get the adrenaline going, I don’t know what does. It’s just complete chaos when that fish gets on the line.”

(They catch and release the fish.)

Not all the fish are 200-pounders — the golden dorado are a fraction of that — but they are all “apex predators.”

“Fish that have big teeth like that are going to be really challenging to catch‚ and they’re going to put up a hell of a fight,” Robison said. “Those are two very distinct qualities that we like to look for in these fish.”

Robison himself is living the dream — traveling around the world having adventures and fishing. And he’s got the support of his wife, Jennifer, their 7-year-old son and his five children from an earlier marriage.

“I was gone for almost eight months solid to film this,” he said, with just four or five days between trips and a two-week break for Christmas. “But my wife and kids are so supportive. It’s unreal how lucky I got — the fact that all of them just think that what I do is the greatest thing. They know it’s my passion and they support it 100 percent. Otherwise, I’d probably be single.”

His wife doesn’t hesitate, however, to point out that he spent more time with his three friends than he did with her over the past year.

“It’s like I’m married to her and three other dudes, because we spend so much time together out on the road and working together,” Robison said. “And she laughs at that.”

Jennifer Robison is also happy that “Fish or Die” got picked up by Animal Planet so that her husband and his pals aren’t just traveling the world on their own anymore. In every country they visited, the producers hired a medic to accompany them.

“That makes her feel so much better,” Robison said. “They follow us around in case we have a serious accident or Jay gets a rash.”

Easter 1977 stands out as my family’s most memorable celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I’ll bet it’s still a salient Easter memory in the minds of another family.

We lived in Kearns back then. It was our first home in a nice neighborhood, where we expected to raise our young daughter and get to know everyone.

On that most special of all Christian Sundays, neighbor kids prepared to hunt Easter eggs in their backyard alongside a live white bunny wearing a pink bow.

Just as the hunt was ready to kick off, our husky-Lab mix jumped the fence and tore this Easter bunny to bloody pieces in front of them.

Oh, stop. Both the dog and the rabbit were merely following their natural instincts. Chomper was born to be predator. The rabbit was born to be food.

Like I said, it was an Easter to remember. It was also — or so I thought — a symbolic Christian message worth sharing.

As our daughters appeared on the scene, my daughters celebrated Easter the traditional way — with boiled chicken embryos, chocolate rabbits the size of mules, decorated loot baskets and new dresses. Oh, and church.

My wife — a sensible woman despite marrying me — forbade the telling of an important Easter story that I would like to see become part of the ritual. That Chomper had killed the Easter Bunny back in ’77, and, as a result, eggs at our house were in fact delivered by a specially resurrected rabbit.

I realize that this isn’t approved religious doctrine. I’m in good company, though. None of major religions’ holiest of texts mentions an egg-laying rabbit. There’s plenty of crazier stuff in them, to be sure, but not that.

Easter is a pagan celebration incorporated into Christianity ages ago, way before even disco. It’s named after the pagan goddess Eostre (Ishtar), who was worshipped centuries before Jesus.

How pagan rituals were rolled into Christianity makes Easter problematic. At first glance, a newcomer might wonder if it was rabbits that killed Jesus, and that chocolate is a sacrament of sorts.

Yes, I know. Chocolate is a sacrament to some people. No offense was intended.

The point is that Easter, as it’s recognized today, is a huge mess of rites and rituals borrowed/invented by various cultures that had nothing to do with Christianity.

The egg is reportedly an ancient symbol of new life, which Christians appropriated as representing the resurrection. It follows then that jelly beans, another Easter staple, should be regarded as holy rabbit droppings.

Some say the idea of the Easter Bunny arrived in America during the 16th century, fetched here by German immigrants who had a fanciful tradition of an egg-laying hare.

It caught on fairly quickly. In 1878, U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes made egg rolling practically a national ritual in which children rolled colored eggs across the White House lawn.

Some see this as symbolic of the stone being rolled away from Jesus’ tomb; others see it as the effects of hallucinogens. Anyway, only a U.S. president could think up something like that.

For me, Easter is the perfect religious holiday, given that irony is one of religion’s greatest tenets.

Robert Kirby is The Salt Lake Tribune’s humor columnist. Follow Kirby on Facebook.

Editor’s note: This story discusses recovery from depression. If you or people you know are at risk of self-harm, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline provides 24-hour support at 1-800-273-8255.

—

Heather Armstrong can recall the precise moment that she “just sort of went off a cliff.”

Armstrong's deepest bout of depression, she says, started when she downloaded her training program for the Boston Marathon, inviting months of exhaustion and hunger.

Or was it the moment three weeks later, when a boyfriend’s comment triggered her lifelong anxieties about body image? But could that be traced back to the remarks she says she heard relentlessly growing up, about "what a beautiful woman looks like?” Of course, she only agreed to the marathon while mourning the death of her dog, whose health took a nosedive after Armstrong’s divorce.

The “why” of depression has flummoxed Armstrong since she rose to international fame blogging about it in the early 2000s on her immensely popular website, dooce.com — where, incidentally, she had announced she would be taking a break just a few months before her mental health deteriorated in 2015.

Now Armstrong is back with a new story: How, in a few short years, the “Queen of the Mommy Bloggers” went from superstar influencer to a hospital gurney, hoping doctors could cure her depression by almost — almost — granting her wish to die.

Armstrong’s memoir, “The Valedictorian of Being Dead: The True Story of Dying Ten Times to Live,” recounts the experimental treatments during which doctors at the University of Utah repeatedly administered high doses of anesthesia to nearly flatline the Salt Lake City author and “reboot” her brain.

The treatments produced “abrupt” positive results in Armstrong’s case, her doctors say. Now Armstrong hopes her outcome will supply not just hope, but also relief to depression patients for whom the unanswerable “why” of the illness has made it hard to justify their suffering to others. Depression can’t be chalked up to a character flaw, personal weakness, or failure to cope, Armstrong says, if it can be cured on a gurney.

“It was very validating in the sense that I had been so sick, and my brain had been so diseased it had convinced me that life was not worth living,” Armstrong said in an interview at her home in Federal Heights. “Suddenly a day after the treatment I was like, ‘How? How could I have possibly gotten there?’”

‘I guess I’ll feel this way forever’

The events in the book begin in spring 2017, about two years after Armstrong dialed back her blog sponsorships and took up speaking engagements and consulting. Costs mounted and income was irregular, Armstrong said, so she began working full-time in web branding for an animal welfare nonprofit.

She also had full custody of her two young daughters following her highly publicized divorce in 2012 from Jon Armstrong, who cofounded the family’s online business and had been characterized in the blog as the sturdy straight man foil to Dooce’s neurotic screwball.

And she was training to guide a sight-impaired runner in the Boston Marathon, following a rigorous workout schedule on a vegan, gluten-free diet that left her chronically tired, famished and fixated on her weight. Armstrong blamed her despair on the physical exhaustion and stress of training.

“A lot of times, there’s no explanation for why we are so depressed,” Armstrong said. “There’s no explanation why we’re so sad and sorrowful and hopeless. And so I thought, ‘Oh, well, I have a reason. The reason is this marathon.’ And so when it was over, I was like, ‘I’m gonna be fine.’ And then I didn’t have that reason anymore. Which was like, ‘Well, then … what is it? What is wrong with me? I guess I’ll feel this way forever.’

The day-to-day pressures of parenting and work magnified into insurmountable agonies until Armstrong would wake up each morning and “gasp for breath as my anxiety set fire to every molecule in my body,” she wrote in her book. Routine power struggles with the kids landed her in her closet, weeping on phone calls to her mother. Text messages from work came with piercing nausea.

And, frighteningly, she no longer was responding to antidepressants that had helped her in the past.

That put Armstrong among the more than 5 million Americans who suffer from treatment-resistant depression — about a third of all depression patients, said anesthesiologist Scott Tadler with University of Utah Health.

It also made her a perfect candidate for a study Tadler and a team of researchers were conducting: Could using the anesthesia propofol to reduce brain activity to almost nothing bring relief to depression patients who aren’t helped by traditional medications?

‘I saw the fear in her eyes’

It’s not the first time doctors have used anesthesia to treat depression. The Food and Drug Administration last month approved a version of ketamine for depression treatment, and researchers at Yale last week announced a similar, and possibly safer drug mimicked the effects of ketamine in tests on mice.

But ketamine, which is taken in a low-dose inhaler spray, has only shown short-term effects, Tadler said — “if you're lucky, a week or two.”

Previous research at the U. indicated deep levels of other types of anesthesia could come closer to replicating the effects of electroshock therapy (ECT), which is considered the most effective treatment for depression, said Brian Mickey, associate professor of psychiatry at University of Utah Health and the lead researcher on the pilot study on propofol.

It’s not clear why ECT improves mood disorders, Mickey said — “which is kind of surprising, for a treatment that's been around for so long and has been so effective.”

There might be similarities between the seizure effect of electroshock therapy and the suppressed brain activity from anesthesia. But, Mickey said, “when we do ECT or propofol treatment like that, there's so many things that change in the brain, it's not always clear which things are responsible” for the mood improvement.

Although it’s effective, many patients are reluctant to try electroshock therapy due to cognitive side effects and its scary depictions in popular media, Tadler said: “Think of ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.’”

Propofol isn’t associated with cognitive side effects — but general anesthesia taken in doses far beyond what is used in surgery, to produce something close to brain death, isn’t a fear-free proposal, even though Mickey assures patients that the technique is safe. Armstrong had signed up for at least ten treatments, each with 15 minutes of heavily suppressed brain activity. These took place two or three times per week.

In her book, Armstrong describes hallucinating in the first treatment, possibly a reaction to fentanyl, which she was given to prevent a headache (which she experienced anyway). She reprints pages from the journal of her mother, who watched each of Armstrong’s 10 treatments and described the first:

“I doubt anyone could fully comprehend my dread as I saw the fear in her eyes a second before she went under. I watched at the foot of her bed as they shoved the breathing tube into her throat and started the oxygen to keep her alive,” the journal entry read.

But throughout the treatments, Armstrong said, she was not seriously afraid of dying or suffering side effects, even though she describes extreme fatigue following the early sessions. There was only one fear: That it might not work.

‘A switch being flipped’

In Mickey’s report, published in the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, a graph shows the progress of the 10 depressed subjects in the pilot study.

Armstrong said it is easy to pick out her line: It’s the dark green one, the one that has the highest score for depression symptoms at the beginning of the trial, and the lowest score at the end.

“She really improved, probably the most abrupt,” Mickey confirmed. “Kind of like a switch being flipped.”

Six of the ten subjects had at least a 50 percent reduction in their scores — the criteria for their depression being considered “responsive” to the treatment, the study found.

For Armstrong, by far the most significant improvement was after the fifth treatment. “It was thrilling,” she said. “I wanted to dance naked in the streets.”

The degree of improvement for the six who responded was unusual, Mickey said.

“This is larger than the effect you would see with an antidepressant, typically,” he said. “Seeing this improvement within a couple of weeks [is a ] relatively fast improvement.”

During the five treatments that remained, Armstrong said, “I was really afraid it was going to reverse.” But since the final round, Armstrong hasn’t experienced any recurrence of the hopelessness she felt before the treatment, she said.

More important, she added, she hasn’t felt any lurking apprehension that her depression might be returning — something that followed her through her recovery from postpartum depression, which she had chronicled on her blog years earlier.

“Now when I have a bad day, I can recognize it’ll be better tomorrow,” she said. “The difference is so stark. … It gave me back the ability for my medication to work, and to think about things rationally and determine solutions to problems.”

Of the six who responded to the propofol treatments, five saw the results continue for at least three months, Mickey said.

‘A time of great discovery’

As Armstrong reflects on the situational factors that may have worsened her depression, there are always more pieces to the puzzle — more “stray dominoes in the sequence that led to that gurney,” she writes. The marathon training may have been the biggest persistent stress, but it’s never just one thing when a mind is biologically predisposed to depression. There was grief over the dog that died. A job that required being glued to a phone at all hours. Kids being kids. And trying Utah’s dating scene as an over-40, divorced mother of two.

And there were stresses tied to the roller coaster of professional success in a career that hadn’t really existed before her.

Armstrong was one of the first internet celebrities to shed the caveat “internet.” She had parlayed her blog into a slot on the New York Times bestseller list and a contract with HGTV. Her Twitter following was well over a million. She was the first personal blogger to monetize the medium, and three years after she was fired for blogging about her workplace, the blog was a lucrative family business — though Armstrong won’t say how lucrative.

Over time the content shifted. The first post on Dooce, in 2001, began: “I should probably shoplift something before I die.” That was followed by years of often frank and profanity-laced observations from daily life, ranging from vulnerable to irreverent to bizarre, peppered with grainy, slice-of-life snapshots. After a decade or so, meticulously posed portraits filled the site. Shopping guides for apparel and home furnishings eventually crept in, as revenue from advertising from tanked.

The profession Armstrong had pioneered — writing candid personal stories online for ad revenue — had morphed into a tiring infomercial-machine for “content sponsors” who only want their brand attached to images of a perfect life.

Dooce had built her name on screw-ups and poop stories.

“I call it the Pinterestification of the internet: where nothing is messy, your kids are never shown with food on their face, the clothes are always pressed, and they’re running through Central Park with a happy face,” Armstrong said. “And it’s not wrong. People making money this way is not a bad thing. That’s great you can make money putting Old Navy clothes on your kid and going to Central Park and taking pictures of them. That’s not what I signed up to do.”

In 2015, Armstrong’s kids started objecting when household plans were built around product placement, and Armstrong began posting more sporadically. She still produced some sponsored content, but the blog was no longer her family’s central source of income. The business model she innovated was upended, and that led to a loss of community as the first generation of mommy bloggers drifted into the background, she said.

It also brought about anxiety as to the lasting value of what Armstrong had built.

“It was kind of devastating because what happened was, brands caught on to the fact that, ‘Oh, these women who are nobodies have created an industry and we need to get in on it,’” Armstrong said. “So they wove their way in, and then they started dictating the entire thing. … The community around voices and stories just really isn’t there anymore. It’s about the pretty picture.”

That also worries Armstrong for younger women and girls, whose aspirations are being shaped by a bombardment of flawless images manufactured by influencers. Armstrong recalled a social media event last year where she saw at least four families being followed by hired photographers to document their days in the most attractive light possible.

“Commenters say, ‘This is exactly how I want to be,’ and it’s like, ohhh, man. That’s really hard. Especially for my 15-year-old. That’s a really, really, really hard standard when you have a professional photographer following you everywhere.”

It’s maybe fitting that Armstrong’s next writing project reverts to the most conventional medium: a single narrative, printed in ink on bound pieces of paper.

After the propofol treatments proved successful, Armstrong quit her marketing job and moved to Paris to write while during the summer months when her daughters live with their dad.

Now, she says, she plans to focus on mental health advocacy and suicide prevention, especially in Utah, where suicide rates are exceptionally high.

“I’ve dedicated my life to writing this book,” Armstrong said. “I really believe in the team that helped me, I believe in the study, I believe in the science.”

She also says she wants to get the word out about Mickey’s study. The team is beginning a larger, double-blind study of propofol and recruited the first of 24 subjects last week, Mickey said. Further results likely will be available in two to three years, he said. To learn more or to support the study, visit https://medicine.utah.edu/psychiatry/research/labs/mickey-lab/current-studies.php.

To Utahns suffering from seemingly incurable depression, Tadley pleaded: “Don't give up hope.”

“This is a time of great discovery in our understanding of depression and its treatment,” he said.

The Mueller report indicated that President Trump did not commit illegal conspiracy.

For Utah’s Rep. Rob Bishop and Sen. Mike Lee to announce from Mueller’s report that it “concluded that there was no collusion and no obstruction,” when the report most certainly did not make those conclusions, makes me all the more sure we’ve got to vote these men out of office if we want accuracy, fairness and justice.

Ellen Birrell, Cottonwood Heights

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The other night I was appalled to watch so-called “exclusive interview” with Donald Trump and the executive of Sinclair in the middle of the news program at 10 p.m.

It must be excruciatingly painful for the news anchors to have to listen as they are called perpetrators of “fake” news, terrible people, etc., etc.

They, as employees, have to listen to it. I don’t!

I have been a follower of KUTV news since the days of Michele King, Terry Woods, et al., but if I wanted to listen to this drivel, I could always turn to “Fox & Friends.”

I hope this is just a short-term mistake, but inserting opinion in the middle of a news broadcast that has nothing to do with the topics at hand is ludicrous and disingenuous.

I am, of course, only one voice, but the other local options are looking much better right now.

John Gurr, Salt Lake City

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President Donald Trump, a denier of climate change, should watch “Our Planet” on PBS. It might convince him to change his opinion.

The documentary is a powerful portrayal of how climate changes are taking place now, and the deterioration will only get worse without our help.

Trump may become a victim of his own ignorance.

Linda Green, Salt Lake City

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The Notre Dame de Paris is an awe-inspiring edifice, one of the most renowned examples of French Gothic architecture, home to countless histories of immense importance, and a representation of Catholics’ devotion to their God.

Just days after the historic landmark suffered tremendous damage in an accidental fire, a fundraising effort amassed more than one billion dollars to restore the structure to its former glory. Donors included Apple’s Tim Cook, the Walt Disney Company, Ubisoft, the CEOs of LVMH Group, Kering, L’Oreal, President Donald Trump, and many, many others.

The immediate rallying cry surrounding the desecration of this symbol of God’s glory calls into question our priorities as a civilization and our hubris as a species.

Where is the same expedient devotion to saving and preserving God’s greatest creation — our planet? Why do we, time and again, and without fail, hold our own creations paramount to the natural world around us?

Is there no beauty in the biodiversity of our rainforests, oceans and freshwater bodies? Can we truly devote ourselves to God’s glory and beauty if our continued actions cause more than 16,000 different species to be endangered and nearing extinction?

We recoil with shock at the burning of a single building, but are immune to the slashing and burning of millions of hectares of forests each year and the resulting displacement of countless species. Recent data suggests ice sheet loss in Antarctica increased by nearly 60% over a 10-year timespan and grows worse by the year.

What is our billionaire class doing to address these tragic losses and emergencies? Where are the multi-hundred-million dollar donations? Did they have a secret meeting and assign Hansjorg Wyss the sole responsibility of trying to save our planet so they could focus on the important things, such as having a pew to pray in while the world around us is burning?

So long as these companies rely on palm oil, the Borneo Forests will be depleted. So long as these companies rely on leather, more ecosystems will be destroyed in favor of unsustainable, methane-emitting and climate-changing ranches.

But take solace in your pews. These companies will try their hardest to follow the sustainability procedures they set for themselves. So long as it appears profitable.

Trey Elvis Hansen, Salt Lake City

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