Endings and Beginnings

I am in the midst of watching one of the most moving documentaries I have ever seen. It is called Dear Jack and it is about my hero Andrew McMahon. He is the lead singer of both Jack's Mannequin and Something corporate and is one of the most incredible people I have ever met. In 2005 he was diagnosed with adult leukemia and survived when it seemed there was no chance he could. In the movie he talks about the ending of his relationship with his long time girlfriend before he was diagnosed and how when he got sick, they found each other again and it was like the beginning of something new. I feel like that a lot this week as we transition out of being juniors and take our first steps into senior year and getting closer and closer to becoming adults. Through out the year we've been talking about how things start and finish, how seasons reflect a comedy or a tragedy in stories, and how one ending in history opens another new beginning. So I guess with this being my last graded blog post, the end of my junior year, and the start of senior year, I should reflect on all that I've done (not like its an assignment or anything haha)

The blog post I'm most proud of this quarter is And the shot heard round the world was the start of the revolution. Although it may not have been my most well crafted blog post, it is one of my favorites from the whole year. It was the biggest mind-f moments ever to meet the people who wrote a letter that we studied in class. Both the women were so amazing and explained their points so well I really understood why they did what they did in writing that letter. And I think that me going through this moment was really what I wanted to get out of AS this year. I wanted to be able to learn from different points of view and see where my true ideals lie. Obviously, one class can't do all of that for me but finding out things about literature and life that I have never known opened my eyes to a new part of the world. There is always room for improvement and I think I could really go into more depth in some of my blog posts but I think my overall comfort and ability to successfully use this medium to share my thoughts has improved greatly since the beginning of the year when I just wrote paragraphs and pretended that each post was a mini-essay.

That's really all I have to say, but its been a great ride.

What does the future hold?

With all this year ending stuff, I have suffered from a tiny bit of almost-being-a-senior-itis so I have been checking the RSS feeds I have in my email a lot to distract me from all the things I need to write (like my junior theme rewrite and preparing for my final lol) and I found a link from my favorite audio engineer and it was a video of him talking about the process of sorting through a bunch of different signals in the studio and I loved it. And then I realized what all this work was for, for me to accomplish my goal of being Chris Holmes. Maybe its a vicious cycle of hard work for more hard work but I can't wait to find joy in a career that makes the work I'm dreading worth it. Kind of a babble post, my bad

Here's the video if anyone was curious!

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=219956664695094&oid=172859467408&comments&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed

Each one a perfect porcelain doll

I was babysitting my sister on saturday night and like every time I babysit her, we ordered pizza, got ice cream, and rented movies. My sister chose the 7th harry potter and I picked Mulan. Mulan is one of my favorite movies of all time, but I haven't seen it in a very long time because we don't have the DVD of it. Anywho, for those who don't know, Mulan is a Disney movie whose main character is a brave young woman in China during the Ming dynasty. She takes her fathers place in the army and pretends to be a boy and wins the war against the invading huns for China (pretty much the story of Deborah Sampson in China). Although I remembered how much Mulan kicked but in the movie, I had never paid attention to why she really had to in the first place.

Throughout the movie each character, except for Mulan, keeps saying how women need to be "Kept in their place" and need to be "obedient" to their husbands. This reminded me of the discussions we've been having about how class affects your social standing. In this movie, women are 2nd class citizens and aren't expected to do anything except pour tea and make food and children. It really impressed me that a company like Disney highlighted this fact and counteracted it by having an incredibly strong female protagonist. I was very impressed and watching this movie with more critical eyes made me enjoy it even more.

Hey your part of it, talking about the iGeneration

This doesn't have much to do with what we are currently talking about in class but it has a lot to do with everything we've been talking about all year so I'm gonna blog about it :)

So my favorite rapper, and maybe one of my favorite current artists is MC Lars, an indie hip-hopper who graduated from Stanford and is supremely nerdy in the coolest possible way. Since I adore him and his work, I follow him on twitter through an RSS feed on my email (which are super sweet btw) and his post from today was "I was on CNN today talking about indie rap". I FREAKED OUT and immediately went to the CNN link he gave and watched intently to the guy I've heard speak a zillion times on a huge network (I was so proud haha) which I conveniently have posted right down here!





He was being interviewed about his thoughts on piracy and how he got his start in the music business. He pretty much said that he supports piracy because it means kids will come to his shows and support his music.But the most interesting part of this interview to me was what he said about social media. According to him, without social media, he doesn't think he would have become anything. I think that even though Lars is an insanely wicked rapper, I kind of agree. I think that facebook and limewire and online forums and podcasts have helped launch the careers of so many artists that wouldn't have been heard of otherwise. Not many people want to hear raps about Edgar Allan Poe on the radio, even though they're sweet. Its very interesting how many lives can be changed just by the click of the mouse.

Dirty deeds and they're done dirt cheap

We've been talking a lot about social class in the past few weeks and the fact people are apprehensive about saying they're upper class or lower class. In our class discussion an idea came into my head. Why are extremely rich people called "filthy" rich and extremely poor people are called "dirt" poor, but middle class people aren't referred to as anything "dirty". There's no "muddy" middle class and I was thinking, well... Why? So I did some google-ing on the origins of the phrase "filthy rich" and here's what I got.

This was first used as a noun phrase meaning "rich people; who have become so by dishonourable means" It has become to mean "extremely rich" rather than "dishonourably rich", although there may still be a trace of an unfavourable implication associated with it.

And as I continued my google-ing I couldn't find a solid definition of "dirt poor" but some of the guesses were that people who were "dirt poor" actually had to sleep on dirt floors because they couldn't afford a bed. I think this shows how the middle class is still idolized in America because it isn't partnered with any name that is unclean. Why is this?

And found that we each had something to say

The past 24 hours have been a complete whirlwind for me. My dad woke me up late last night and told me to turn on the T.V. and wouldn't tell me what was up. So I turned my TV to NBC news and saw one of the most shocking headlines I had ever seen.

OSAMA BIN LADEN DEAD

I was stunned to stay the least. I still remember being a little wide-eyed second grader when the Trade Centers fell and not really understanding that a group of people could hate Americans so much. Now, this man that stood for all of that is gone. So why am I still a little uneasy? We talked in class today about this fear a lot of us have about retaliation. It is a scary to think that another attack could happen after the man behind it all is gone. I just pray that this can mark the end of this chapter in American history and we can begin to make peace.

Happiness is two kinds of ice cream, finding your skate key.. and being filthy rich?

 We talked about markers of class all week and one of the big markers that kept coming up was wealth. And what people kept saying was that it is easier for the upper class, but I don't think that necessarily makes the upper class happier. According to Anna Melio, more girls from upper class backgrounds suffer from eating disorders than those from lower class backgrounds. Also, depression and anxiety problems are higher in those in the upper class than lower class.

I find this both surprising and unsurprising.

I find it surprising because lower class families have more struggles financially, which definitely causes stress and can cause depression, while upper class families do not have to worry about that quite as much. On the other hand, upper class families can feel an insane pressure to be the best which can adversely affect their children's and their own mental health.

How does our social status affect our mental health?

Its a great big beautiful tomorrow... if I can figure out what I'm supposed to put in my junior theme!

AHHHHHHHHHHH
I am trying to write out my body paragraphs for junior theme and I have hit a wall. Most of the time I write papers, I can't figure out what to write about, but luckily I don't have that problem this paper. Unfortunately, I have WAY TOO MUCH TO WRITE ABOUT! At the beginning of the year we kept talking about how people who write textbooks have to make decisions about what to put in and leave out of heir books. I never thought it was that hard of a decision to be honest, just put in the most interesting stuff and leave the rest out. But what if everything is interesting????? To me, all of the stuff I'm learning about is more exciting than the last, I can't figure out what shouldn't be in the paper!

And the shot heard round the world was the start of the revolution

On Saturday, I officially joined the B'hai faith after almost a year of research. On Sunday, I went to my first devotion at someone's house. While I was there I met so many different people, including a Black woman who had lived in my town for 35 years. We began talking about prejudice and I brought up our discussions in AIS about the use of the N word in Huck Finn, when she told me that they took it off the shelves at New Trier while her children were in school there. I then said that the book could only be taught in AIS classes because of a letter sent by concerned parents a while ago. The woman hosting the devotion and the woman I was talking to look at me and said "We fought the school board because of that book, we wrote that letter".

They went on to explain to me why they sent it. Their children, who were both black students who attended New Trier, had been apart of classes who read Huck Finn. After students in those classes had read the book, they began using the N word when addressing the black students. Their kids came home hurt and degraded day after day. They felt that they had to remove this book to protect their children from harmful words and future black students from hearing the same words.

When we had first read the letter, I assumed that these parents were bored, white Glencoe parents who wanted to take a stand against something, I couldn't believe that anyone at New Trier would really feel like they were verbally abused by racist language because I just assume that New Trier students are intelligent and kind at heart. I guess I was just very naive.

Both these women are highly educated, kind women who were just concerned for their family. When I told them we still read the letter and examine their points they were so thrilled because they felt like their voices were still being heard.

It's a small world after all...

Junior Theme: All the birds sing words and the flowers bloom

I've been a big fan of watching documentaries as resources for Junior Theme, and this last one I saw was fantastic. It was called The Boys: The Sherman Brothers Story, and it chronicled the lives of the brothers who wrote the music for Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book, Winnie the Pooh, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, as well as the soundtracks for famous Disney rides such as "It's a Small World", "The Enchanted Tiki Room", and the "Carousel of Progress".

Before watching this documentary, I had really no idea of their personal relationship. I figured that since these guys worked together and were brothers, that they just got along great. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, they kept their families completely separate. For example, when Robert and Dick Sherman's parents died, they held 2 separate wakes at each of their houses and once guests entered their chosen house, they could not leave and attend the other party.

I find it interesting that they were portrayed as loving brothers in the media while they were dealing with this frustration with one another. I'm definitely going to address how they kept up appearances until Disney no longer found them useful then they moved to separate countries and hadn't spoken until the broadway opening of Mary Poppins.

The title of this post is from "The Enchanted Tiki Room" theme song. It's awesome, take that record for a spin ;)

Junior Theme Post! WAKA FLOCKA (Yeah chloe directorrrrrrr)

Also this is a combo post, please look at "Give up the funk" for my blog review

I am researching the Disney corporation as apart of my junior theme. On Suday when I was sick, I watched a great documentary about Disney's animation practices in the mid 80's in early 90's, called Waking Sleeping Beauty. I found it super interesting that so many of these films I love so much we're kind of cast aside and thought of as lame when they were first being produced. For example, one of my favorite movies (and subsequently favorite disney channel tv shows) is The Little Mermaid, and during the first pitch of this movie, it wasn't even supposed to be a musical! CRAY CRAY. Its interesting to see how much things can change through a long process, like junior theme!

Give Up The Funk

Today was my first day I could take sometime to watch TV this week so I turned on VH1and watch the 100 Greatest Artists of All-Time countdown. Most of these countdowns have the same artists: Stones, Beatles, Zeppelin, and Michael Jackson, but no one exciting or new to a list and this one seemed the same way. Then came number 38. Sly & The Family Stone was a funk band from the late 60's who challenged every aspect of mainstream culture at the time. Not only were their lyrics a call for social action during the civil rights movement, they really pushed the envelope and showed what the future could bring for music. They had black and white musicians playing this intense funk fusion music calling for a change of the American social structure.

Their first number-one hit was "Everyday People"

They changed their sound from funky funk to a more commercial pop funk to appeal to the masses. This song coined the phrase "different strokes for different folks", which became a phrase of empowerment in 1969. This band really tried to change to world they were living in one song at a time.

We've been talking so much about the civil rights movement and how it was a grass-roots movement and this song attests to the fact that "Everyday People" can change things.

Sly and The Family Stone paved the way for so many integrated bands like Alice in Chains, Rage Against the Machine, Prince and the Revolution, and the new generation of music listeners need to be introduced to this band.

(And for reference, Give Up the Funk is a Parliament Funkadelic song which owns)

I Can't Give No Satisfaction

On the Grammy's last sunday, Sir Mick Jagger sang a tribute to the late Solomon Burke. When I was watching this, the only thing that struck me was the fact it was the first time Mick Jagger had ever performed on the Grammy stage, but DocOc brought up another side to this that intrigued me. He found it interesting that the man paying tribute to this great African-American artist was a British white man. But to me, this wasn't strange. Although the Rolling Stones are a british based band, everything from their sound to even their name are deeply rooted in American soul and rock. Their band name came from a Muddy Waters song, and they've been so heavily influenced by American blues and rock, I feel that Mick Jagger was a great person to pay tribute to Solomon Burke.

I do see how a white man paying tribute to a black man can seem to be making the world more vanilla but I think that the Grammy Academy made a good decision to enlist the help of Mick Jagger. Many people who watched the Grammy's this year had no idea what Lady Gaga was wearing let alone who Solomon Burke was, and by having one of the biggest rock stars from one of the greatest bands of all time introduce his music to a new generation of fans (who sorely need it may I add), then it is their responsibility to share this mans talent. If it has to be through a brit, then so be it. Any vehicle to help a man continue to give his greatest gift seems worth it to me, black or white.

What makes you different...

We've been talking a lot about race these past few weeks, and I've wanted to make an insightful blog post about my interactions in interesting race situations in that time. I wracked my brain, looked through pictures to jog my memory and... nothing. I could not remember a time in my young life in which I was in a place where someone's race mattered. My dads best friend and my pseudo-uncle Leon is black, my best friend in the universe is Peruvian, I grew up in a heavily jewish town, and I am a member of the B'hai Temple in Wilmette. I guess its a little weird that I've never been in a situation I can remember where race mattered, and it is not even that my whole life has been sheltered. My dad worked as a Dominick's security guard all around Chicago when I was growing up so I was exposed to different races of people from a young age. When Barack Obama was running for president, I was honestly annoyed by how much people brought up his race and how he would be the first black president. To me, that didn't matter. He was an intelligent man and a very engaging speaker and I didn't know why that was being over shadowed by his race or that it was some how a "surprise" that he could be as polished or "clean" according to Joe Biden. I had known black men who were very smart and incredibly articulate and I didn't know how that could be surprising...

This may simply be me babbling about my lack of racial tension in my life and how I've had a vanilla life, but I feel like I haven't. I feel like no matter what my exposure has been or will ever be, I'm not going to see race as a class marker or anything other that genetic code. I mean, if there was something about me that I couldn't control that people judged me on, I'd just want it to stop and feel like an equal, with equal opportunities to prosper and fail as the next person, but my only genetic oddity is that I am a 6 foot tall girl from Glencoe so maybe I can't really know what I would do in that situation but I would hope that is what I would do...

maybe this doesn't make sense, but I just wanted to explain my frustration with not being able to connect class discussions to my life in interesting blog fashion.

If it makes you happy, it can't be that bad?

We've been talking about how Huck Finn should end in class lately. Max was talking about a "Hollywood Ending" (I more equate it to a Disney ending but its cool Max) to Huck Finn and everyone more or less rolled there eyes because no story as complicated as Huck's could possibly end happily. But in the immortal words of Miss Sheryl Crow-

  If it makes you happy, it can't be that bad

What would be so wrong with Huck buying Jim then freeing him, letting Jim go back and be with his family and adopt Huck and have them all live happily ever after?

When things end well in books, people write off the book as the writer giving up. Like at the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, many people believed that when J.K. Rowling ended the book with Harry and Ginny getting married and having kids named after their fallen friends, she was coping out of writing a real ending. But why does everything have to be sad? Why does every great piece of literature have to end bittersweetly? Why can't it be a big chocolate sundae with whipped cream? Why does it have to be baking chocolate?

I am a sap for happy endings, and I always think there should be more of them. Peony should have been able to marry David and lived happily ever after, instead of her having to go to an abby and be away from the man she loved. Tita in Like Water for Chocolate should have been able to marry Pedro and they could have had babies who were also incredibly sensitive to chopping onions and had crazy magical tears. Anna from My Sister's Keeper should have been able to live with her Kate after Kate's leukemia was cured. The world is sad enough, can't we allow ourselves to escape into a book that is complex but doesn't remind us of the sadness in the world we're trying to escape from?

Shameless Plug

Not really AIS related buuuuut...
Over the summer I interned at a local recording studio owned by Gary Fry, CSO composer /Emmy & Grammy winner. While working there, we worked on the score for a short film entitled Last Wish, starring former Bond Girl, Lana Wood. We also recorded the intro song "Tell Me" which I ended up mixing. It was in the papers a month ago or so (can be seen here). It's a very interesting film with great msuic, not that I'm bias or anything ;) but you guys should check it out for sure :)

Happy Birthday to you!

I have one of those daily calendars with fun little facts on each day by my bed, which I got for Christmas. It is called The Left-Hander's Calendar and has facts about famous lefties and famous left hander's birthdays. Today, my handy dandy calendar informed me that it is the birthday of Lewis Carroll (his 179th to be exact), author of The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland and other books such as Through the Looking Glass, And What Alice Found There. Alice in Wonderland is one book that has thrilled me and terrified me my whole life. The scenes that Lewis Carroll creates are so vivid and strange, I can't help but get the chills when I read them. But Alice's story is one of childhood imagination, retold through the words of an adult. Today in class we were talking about how an author creates characters and tells stories through them. Clearly, shrinking to a size smaller than a mouse and being swept up in a river of your own tears is fantastical and not a big T truth DocOc has been talking about all year, but a broader, little t truth can be drawn from the chimerical pages of Carroll's writing. Carroll is giving his truth about imagination, the worlds we go to when day dreaming like Alice (or tripping like he was) and the glories and dangers of dreaming your life away (and drug use). Alice visits the fun side of dreaming at the Mad Tea Party, and the dangerous side when she meets the testy Queen of Hearts. This story, like the ones we've read in class, have a very important little t truth from the author, being told through a character of his design.

MetaBlog round 2!

I would like you guys to reivew my What You Don't Know Won't Hurt You blog, it was a blast to write... no joke.


Wow this quarter is already over. I feel like my writing has gotten a lot more informal. Instead of going to NPR for every post basis, I reference things I see everyday. I have goten to finding connections in movies and TV show I see, like in my most recent post about Say Yes to the Dress, to things we discuss in class. I am not quite sure if this is a better way to blog, but I am a lot more engaged in it than just forcing connections like I did first quarter.

During my day I continually look for things to connect back to class. This morning for example, I was making pancakes and Aunt Jemima on the box (yeah, I can't make pancakes from scratch...) looked a lot like the Norman Rockwell Jim we saw in class and I was trying to think about why that was and if I could make a blog post about it. I tend to now think in terms of blog posts, whether people would enjoy reading what pops into my head and even if I don't think they would, if I find it interesting, I'll blog about it.

Next quarter I want to insert more of my personality into my posts. I started doing that this quarter, but I would like to strike a balance between putting myself into my posts, but also making them a little more informative and give my opinions more. I also want to start commenting on different peoples blogs because I have a tendency to just comment on the blogs of people I'm close with in class.

How Young is Too Young?

I am an avid watcher of the TLC show Say Yes To The Dress. This past friday, the new season started with back to back episodes. One of them was the normal plot line, girl finds dress, loves it, buys it. But another episode made me stop and think about our discussions from class this week. One girl, couldn't have been older than 22, was shopping for her wedding dress. The weird thing was, she met her 40+ year old husband on a golf work trip... he is her boss's boss's boss. The entire thing gave me the shivers. This girl was marrying a man almost twice her age, and she was just beginning her adult life. In class we discussed how the average marriage age for women has gotten higher in the past 10 years, for women it is up to about 26 (according to the USA Today article). On this show, I see first hand the age of these women getting married for the first time. Some are younger, around 24, some older at 30, 22 is very young. Usually with younger brides on the show, they have been dating their fiancee for since high school, so they really know their mate well, but this girl had barely dated this guy for a few months. We talked this week about why people get married young, why so young before their lives have really even started, and why so quickly? Someone shared a story this week about her cousin who got married at 18 and people kept asking questions about why they weren't going to wait, and they're reply was simple. We don't want to wait. Maybe when you're really in love, time and age don't matter, but its still surprising when I see someone only a few years older than myself committing their life to someone, becoming someone's wife.

Here is a link to the full episode if you'd care to watch... she is looking for a piratey dress... whatever that means haha

The Language of Friendship?

In class today we were talking about parenting styles and how differences in parenting styles affect children. I started thinking about how language affects not just how I view my relationship with my parents, but how language affects all my relationships. With one of my best friends, we usually speak in hyperboles (examples from break include her saying "oh my goodness my soon to be step-dad and his daughter are coming on vacation with us and things are STRESSFUL AND TERRIBLE I AM GOING TO DIE"; and me saying "Half my bumper just fell off in this crash I am never going to be able to drive again"). We both know that she will not be dying and that I will (in 22 days) be able to drive again and our lives will go on, but we always talk that way because we have such an emotional friendship. We've been so close for so long, we're almost family. Everything we've ever gone through we've gone through together so we continue to say what we feel, even if we know its an exaggeration, because we know the other person will understand. With my guy friends however, we are never dramatic. We keep things grounded and real. When we talk, we are straight to the point without beating around the bush, which works for us. Being straightforward and brutally honest won't work for every friendship, but when you find the way that works for you, you keep going with it, just like parenting. If one style of parenting doesn't work for one of your kids, you change it to fit what that child responds to and makes your relationship best. If I were to go up to my guy friends and say "OH MY GOODNESS MY LIFE IS OVER MY PARENTS HATE ME" they would probably freak out and think that my parents hate me and I am going to die. You have to find what language and tactics work in the relationship and know what doesn't.