I'm fairly new to this board, and searched for but did not find any comments on the Thomas Monson birthday celebration video. I did enjoy the thread on the Thomas Monson "Santa Baby" fiasco, and that brought the video back to mind.

Did anyone ever find an explanation for why Thomas Monson attended his birthday celebration back in August, but just watched with others while he gave his thanks in a pre-recorded video speech? He certainly sounded lucid in the video. Why couldn't he have given the speech live?

I suspect this has been discussed, and maybe his performance in this last General Conference as well, but I could not find any threads about it.

Thomas Monson died earlier this year, and has been replaced by a CGI character, animated by WETA Digital using state of the art motion capture performed by actor, and a machine generated voice created based on his vocal performaces in past general conference talks. That is why he looks and talks rather like Gollum.

and ironically Gordon Hinckley is still alive ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH8uAYNdVcw

I was given gordons birthday video as a gift it is still in the original packaging i never cared to watch it.

After searching a couple of other sites, I found some mentions of the Monson birthday video, but no one seems to know why it was made. Monson attended his birthday celebration and sat there and watched his own video thanking people for it. But he didn't speak live. Surreal.

I remember that Monson's wife, who was there at the party, looked out of it. My mother said Monson's wife has Alzheimer's. But I can't find anything on that either.

I talked to someone who watched General Conference in October. They said Monson acted and spoke normally. No sign of Alzheimer's or anything.