tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28300378629888887002024-02-18T21:05:02.950-06:00Overture | VentureAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08762413251168026712noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2830037862988888700.post-74129060855577214182016-02-28T16:18:00.000-06:002016-02-28T16:21:55.271-06:00A Love Letter to Chicago Winters<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAy_6O641eD20wL7gwunhYi8FU8DlqIlKwXvNEDEiqPVgRZwrfTCMFC2zsFzmn-Z3u2xRVRZUPOSmfLXxl0wiBG3yeJoiRi0kBuvTcn_ni3YI_F8a-2IYxkahapl6ioz_Urf7QpQCxWc8r/s1600/2016-02-16+13.11.57+HDR-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAy_6O641eD20wL7gwunhYi8FU8DlqIlKwXvNEDEiqPVgRZwrfTCMFC2zsFzmn-Z3u2xRVRZUPOSmfLXxl0wiBG3yeJoiRi0kBuvTcn_ni3YI_F8a-2IYxkahapl6ioz_Urf7QpQCxWc8r/s400/2016-02-16+13.11.57+HDR-1.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It’s February 28 and 64 degrees outside. I’m in Chicago. I know it won’t last long. We can live in denial for a weekend, but if it’s not April, winter isn’t completely over. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">You can’t talk about Chicago without talking about the winters, the bane of every resident’s existence, the reason outsiders who love the city hesitate about migrating here. But winter is integral to Chicago and its identity as a city, the way rain is integral to London and its sense of humor. What else would we have to talk about, anyways?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I have daily discussions with friends and colleagues about places we dream, or aim, to live. California. On an island. Anywhere south. Abroad, somewhere. I’ve carried a similar list with me since junior high. But the truth is, once I finally moved into Chicago, I don’t feel like going anywhere else. Blame it on this past season, relatively mild and forgiving, or my desire to actually stay in one place for more than one year, or the past 4 months of traveling for work, or the fact that I’ve only really lived in the city since October. I want to go everywhere in the world; that much isn’t lost. But to stay, to live...and then we go back to all the qualities a place needs to make one want to live in it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, winter as the caveat. I always loved Chicago, but I have come to appreciate the winter as much as any other time of the year. It heightens the appreciation for these 64 degree days. It gives me an excuse not to leave my apartment when 80% of the time, all I want to do is stay inside my apartment. When I do leave my apartment, it’s to visit cafes, museums, theaters, bookstores, restaurants (a given), or other indoor havens (AKA all the shit I love). So a few weeks ago, when I took a full day off of work just so I could have a day to myself, I did just that: I slept in, woke up, brewed myself some coffee, worked on a screenplay. I got dressed up and headed over to the Art Institute to see Van Gogh’s Bedrooms exhibit. I visited Cafe Integral for lunch, Alliance Patisserie to pick up a box of macarons, and the Music Box for a showing of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Son of Saul </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in 35mm. I listened to Rihanna’s new album throughout the whole day, and I remembered that my mom’s constant advice of knowing how to take care of myself can and should extend to mental and emotional health.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Van Gogh exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago meant to portray the artist’s search for belonging amidst his nomadic lifestyle. Between lack of finances and mental illness, Van Gogh lived in 37 different residences throughout the 37 years of his life. His search for a permanent residence was not only inherently human, but due to his belief that a stable home was essential to artistic success. So I considered that, and considered Virginia Woolf’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A Room of One’s Own </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">after visiting Women & Children First bookstore in Andersonville, and considered how cabin retreats are a thing, and how I gathered enough random hobbies throughout my 18 years of living at home, because I always stayed at home.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A long-lasting, urban winter forces me to stay inside and accomplish personal projects. It forces me to live with my true self and little distractions, only four walls -- a dangerous endeavor at times, but a worthwhile one when you succeed. Winters are no longer a period of time to disregard or to assume that little can be achieved -- you just have to know how to take advantage of it. Now I find myself, oddly enough, rushing through the next few months to write and create more, to sit inside all the cafes, to catch up on all the movies and shows, to consume all the podcasts and wear out the record player. I will not exit winter with the same bitter sigh of relief, although I constantly await the days of lakeside walks, lightweight clothing, and patio brunches, like everyone else. Those days serve a different purpose. But I admit I’ll always need winter, too.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08762413251168026712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2830037862988888700.post-16096142827080544862016-01-31T21:43:00.002-06:002016-01-31T21:51:10.565-06:00Sundance Film Festival 2016<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFAdWIwfoDsYTmwthHumek10Ukx-TyVZjx8t2qPyzp0jh00g6KFqpwy9A9C9ImL0RDJMgTSKF-D3bGPkjdTu7PrSVrD0b-6GrloTEiIBV1kvtoYSw33N8E21fzKOJRBs1Sf2lv7W2xV2cd/s1600/12534599_953367791399670_704474391_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFAdWIwfoDsYTmwthHumek10Ukx-TyVZjx8t2qPyzp0jh00g6KFqpwy9A9C9ImL0RDJMgTSKF-D3bGPkjdTu7PrSVrD0b-6GrloTEiIBV1kvtoYSw33N8E21fzKOJRBs1Sf2lv7W2xV2cd/s320/12534599_953367791399670_704474391_n.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFAdWIwfoDsYTmwthHumek10Ukx-TyVZjx8t2qPyzp0jh00g6KFqpwy9A9C9ImL0RDJMgTSKF-D3bGPkjdTu7PrSVrD0b-6GrloTEiIBV1kvtoYSw33N8E21fzKOJRBs1Sf2lv7W2xV2cd/s1600/12534599_953367791399670_704474391_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></a><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">TRUE: I took a five-day trip to the mountains to watch movies as part of Sundance Film Festival. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">TRUE: I could just give you reviews of those films, despite knowing that they won’t be released for several more months. I could tell you about the random, countless little stories and encounters that we had with different people. I could tell you how beautiful and underrated Utah is, along with the coolest places to check out in Salt Lake and Park City, like I do with every travel recap. But now that I’m back to reality, in a hotel room in Grand Rapids the night before going back to work, I’m realizing that the experience went beyond that.</span></span></div>
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<b id="docs-internal-guid-68fc68eb-9aeb-9748-de47-a0995831ae08" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">There’s a moment when your friend texts you asking if you want to go to Sundance Film Festival and though you hesitate because you just started your first adult job and vacation days may be rare and money might still be tight, you realize that this is one of the many benefits of growing up and getting older -- that you are an adult and you can give yourself permission to take on a spontaneous out-of-town adventure to a seemingly unattainable place with just a few clicks of the mouse, (a lot of planning), and a reply: OKAY / FINE / LET’S DO IT.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sundance turns into a haze. 4 days. 9 movies. 6,900 feet above sea level in Utah in January. 12 Lyft rides around Salt Lake and through the mountains to Park City because you didn’t know in advance that you’d need a car. Movies we managed to watch included: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Other People, As You Are, Certain Women, Uncle Howard, Joshy, Spa Night, Jacqueline (Argentine), The Fundamentals of Caring, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Maggie’s Plan.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> There were other industry-related events available which we weren’t able to attend, but for each film we did see, I kept notes that ended up filling a small notebook. There are films I wanted and needed to watch again as soon as the first viewing ended, a good sign that was the beginning of it all.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s no denying that attending a major festival such as Sundance is stressful -- getting our bearings, adjusting to the altitude, cramming as many movies in as possible, arriving at screenings on time, waiting in lines, and figuring out how </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">everything </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">worked ourselves -- so much so that we’ll be releasing a beginner’s guide to attending the festival as an audience member. I do wonder how I ever did Lollapalooza three days in a row for five years straight. But by the third or fourth day of Sundance, you already feel like somewhat of an expert and you learn the lesson to do what </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">you </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">feel like doing and not what the ticket cost or the critics are saying. F--- the critics. No, we didn’t see </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Birth of A Nation, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the talk of the town, the biggest studio deal in Sundance history. We waitlisted early on and a fight nearly broke out after some dude aggressively cut the line and dared a group of younger dudes to punch him in the face for doing so. Not one person in that line even came close to getting a spot in the theater, a trend that continued until the end of the festival, or so I heard from murmurs in every single line we waited in thereafter.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Salt Lake City is amazingly underrated and Park City has mountainous charm, but when I think back to Sundance I think of how inspiring an environment I allowed myself to be present in. Any stresses about transportation and waitlisting faded immediately each time a new movie began, and during each subsequent Q&A I wanted to exist there forever, to hear filmmakers talk about their creative process and interact with newly found fans. Sundance is the largest independent film festival in the country (and the world, arguably, considering its connection to Hollywood) and it seemed to uphold its reputation for supporting independent artists wholly and honestly. Maybe it was the luck of the draw and our smart taste in film choices or the fact that we attended the week after most celebrities left, but there was so much support for new artists and filmmakers all around, so much opportunity given to typically marginalized voices, and so little of a barrier between those creators and the audience. There are aspects of art I can never explain but now I fully understand how inspiration is an emotion of its own.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">In the Q&A for my favorite film of the festival, writer/director Miles Joris-Peyrafitte mentioned that he was 23 years old -- my age -- and though I wanted to curl into a ball and roll off the ledge of one of Park City’s numerous mountains, the other part of me was thankful to see the possibilities first hand. (Then I saw him board the same departing flight as me and wanted to tell him all the things but chickened out per usual.) Even if Sundance is a major festival for business purposes, I’m glad it wasn’t completely overtaken by that potential phony Hollywood feeling. Sundance may be one of the most competitive, most prestigious festivals to get into as a filmmaker, but it rarely felt like an institution that chose big names over quality content. It is the first festival of the year and thus one of the first major indicators of the year in film, so how we could start here and end up at #OscarsSoWhite is something to behold. Sundance levels the playing field for new and veteran filmmakers alike. Sundance reminded me of everything I love about film and art.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">In the beginning I had to ask myself if the effort was worth attending the festival at all, because couldn’t I just see these movies later in the year when they’re finally released? But to know that such a place and environment exists, even just for a few days, is worth all the time and money and effort for someone like me. I couldn’t have gone with anyone other than Sophia, who understands and respects every aspect of film and media and its industry more than anyone else I know. I’m not as dedicated to watching films on a daily basis and thus the binge of consuming stories, feeling the emotions, and analyzing all of it together felt like discovering film for the first time. Maybe I didn’t take a vacation in the physical sense of laying on a sandy beach blanketed by sun, but I do feel like I took a -- yep -- a mental, emotional, spiritual vacation thinking about films and about life, by way of film</span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08762413251168026712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2830037862988888700.post-6370166784112793202015-12-29T23:01:00.001-06:002015-12-29T23:10:13.085-06:00Top 10 Music Videos of 2015<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-56b24774-f125-ebb4-c1e3-3e23d67a61c2"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">To me, music videos are as essential to year-end lists as musical albums and films. In fact, I spend more of my year in the YouTube black hole than I do in the Netflix black hole. In this day and age of video streaming and internet memes, artist’s sounds cannot amount to much without images, and vice versa, images are only heightened with the right soundtrack. Without music and music videos, it is even doubtful that I would have ever taken an interest in film as an art. And while filmmaker/musician collaborations are nothing new, this year often called for multi-part music videos to open, entertain, and end stories. Call it smarter branding, call it modern art -- either way, here are the music videos I watched on repeat during 2015:</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></b></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: bold; white-space: pre-wrap;">1. Rihanna </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">- BBHMM</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Just... legendary. So twisted, so visually indulgent, so <i>Rihanna </i>as we now know her. As if the M</span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 20.24px; white-space: pre-wrap;">ads Mikkelsen cameo wasn't enough.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 20.24px; white-space: pre-wrap;">2. Florence + The Machine - The Odyssey</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 20.24px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Florence's visual accompaniment to her release of <i>How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful </i>should be considered a work of dramatic art in its own right. Directed by Vincent Moon, this six-part video series featuring Florence in a series of interpretive dances is Oscar-worthy at the very least.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">3. Troye Sivan - Blue Neighborhood</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Troye Sivan's first attempt at storytelling through a three-part music video hits right in the heart with the same maturity and immediacy as his songs. Troye is quoted as saying, "There’s also those little baby crushes you have when you’re younger. I wanted to show that naïveté, that innocence, and that joy before someone tells you there’s something wrong with you."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">4. The Wombats - Greek Tragedy</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dark and playful in true Wombats fashion, featuring <i>Skins' </i>April Pearson as its main subject. Was it just me or was that ending completely unexpected?! Now that's what I call entertainment.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">5. Nicki Minaj feat. Beyonce - Feelin’ Myself</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">This video, above any others, should teach us what star power is. Let's just hope our favorites continue this trend of low-budget genius.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg18uT9UncTAK2KQDdZumszwCpI-3ufdEzkmB5q6fFSQ8qjO1c686pfVfolnKAlKzZi9MAKanZgcCnNkk7CQk-htb2J4c64pqAly_7xUW091NSYMVFadOV7whq0EzhPsUYlaT18Ouig-_Sr/s1600/feelin+myself.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="274" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg18uT9UncTAK2KQDdZumszwCpI-3ufdEzkmB5q6fFSQ8qjO1c686pfVfolnKAlKzZi9MAKanZgcCnNkk7CQk-htb2J4c64pqAly_7xUW091NSYMVFadOV7whq0EzhPsUYlaT18Ouig-_Sr/s640/feelin+myself.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">6. Sleater-Kinney - A New Wave</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">SK and the Belcher kids. Random at first, but ohhhh it feels so right.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2Om46sLVDwmViwXUgNc3IGyGJDJUub4FvZTcUFInBAttuFB5a89mcfHBlSMLX95hYM6ISCXkJDro6-og_GUVYmKE2ZJdwbjVwp9QgPgmc1vRmuvOSYv-U7yjgq70ze-HBIFay1suQQGLN/s1600/new+wave.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="274" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2Om46sLVDwmViwXUgNc3IGyGJDJUub4FvZTcUFInBAttuFB5a89mcfHBlSMLX95hYM6ISCXkJDro6-og_GUVYmKE2ZJdwbjVwp9QgPgmc1vRmuvOSYv-U7yjgq70ze-HBIFay1suQQGLN/s640/new+wave.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">7. Adele - Hello</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Those POV shots, that phone booth in the forest, that flawless comeback. Directed by Xavier Dolan, a personal favorite.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJbRWpYtRIxBWvTA2nuZ3SSeFtVf5AmLlbjzQ3ymwy7p4weqkbkoFF6jKY-DAeMPt6sb4kCgL7ccwyqqQJ-VB1k6CRt9G-jA84XSqEsLhE1t3Pw-E-LaimedMIHJwFwU7rhUMZ_7U_zz2f/s1600/hello.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="274" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJbRWpYtRIxBWvTA2nuZ3SSeFtVf5AmLlbjzQ3ymwy7p4weqkbkoFF6jKY-DAeMPt6sb4kCgL7ccwyqqQJ-VB1k6CRt9G-jA84XSqEsLhE1t3Pw-E-LaimedMIHJwFwU7rhUMZ_7U_zz2f/s640/hello.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 20.24px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></b></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">8. Kendrick Lamar - Alright</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Everything about this video is cool. Absurd, even, which somehow brings flashbacks of music videos from the '90s (in a good way).</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlS3vIOWVNG4IAkBrPXdq7gW93hN1b6OAS-f6rBPd0vyx12rY-FL8T-eME9jJYzgTg4-awwhuau5yfTMBFjRu16iJFM0KnthNGlvoIdns1LmZ_V-bB-7oFBHxLu5malte_czVDC_OOELDL/s1600/alright.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="274" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlS3vIOWVNG4IAkBrPXdq7gW93hN1b6OAS-f6rBPd0vyx12rY-FL8T-eME9jJYzgTg4-awwhuau5yfTMBFjRu16iJFM0KnthNGlvoIdns1LmZ_V-bB-7oFBHxLu5malte_czVDC_OOELDL/s640/alright.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 20.24px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></b></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">9. Grimes - Flesh Without Blood/Live In The Vivid Dream</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 20.24px; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I think of Grimes and her corresponding aesthetic, I wonder how she managed to fit all of it into one music video (or even two). Like most of Grimes' videos, I also wonder how fun it was to be a part of the making of it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 20.24px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></b></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: bold; white-space: pre-wrap;">10. Sia - Alive</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">We've all gotten used to Sia's metaphorical, prodigy-centric videos by now, but this one, featuring mixed martial artist </span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mahiro Takano, was a pleasant surprise.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08762413251168026712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2830037862988888700.post-54659977252184896792015-12-19T18:22:00.002-06:002015-12-19T18:25:09.722-06:00Top 10 Albums of 2015<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhssAQN6AwVGb1MQutxkYpmgk9mx2qXmaF25MD1jUJJa-k8_6EfLD4rBrRDfkm6Py9glmXDe00BVR0jyeM9pCkQxmlQ-GbA6w4k7UVVltFWvBWNBS8CaChHTm6_3vow7o8sc9U8K3n6XruW/s1600/top+albums+2015.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhssAQN6AwVGb1MQutxkYpmgk9mx2qXmaF25MD1jUJJa-k8_6EfLD4rBrRDfkm6Py9glmXDe00BVR0jyeM9pCkQxmlQ-GbA6w4k7UVVltFWvBWNBS8CaChHTm6_3vow7o8sc9U8K3n6XruW/s400/top+albums+2015.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></span></span></span></div>
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<div style="line-height: 1.63636; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 22pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-e0c2c768-bcbd-d392-a96c-7b85f29fc286" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Highly subjective as always, with some effort of objectivity. This year, I’m most thankful for pop music, which may finally be living up to its full potential, becoming a new kind of sanctuary. Punk music told us to fight back against our own self-doubts and against everyone else who wrongs us and the people around us. The realization that art is getting better because reality is getting worse? Well, regardless -- this year was the year of the album for me, and as such it will be the first year I begin my tradition of purchasing my top three albums on vinyl. I’m still waiting for Rihanna to show up.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">1. The Wonder Years – No Closer To Heaven</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s been years since I teared up hearing a new album for the first time, and probably never since I burst into hysterics at how good it continued to be. It seemed like everyone held a sliver of doubt that no album could reach beyond </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Greatest Generation</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> but The Wonder Years proved that the boundaries of their own music can be pushed further and further still. The subject matter of Soupy’s lyrics may have changed, but the core spirit remains the same - it’s all heart, all the way through. It blends personal and political the way very few artists can. And it’s always fifty steps forward between albums, which reminds me of all the successful bands who planted roots in pop punk and went on to become music legends beyond the genre itself. So honestly, at this point...I’ll be damned if this band doesn’t last forever. I don’t even care that I got on the bandwagon three years after the first album - I’m just glad I’m here now. Oh, and I fucking lost it at “You In January”. </span></span></div>
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<b id="docs-internal-guid-e0c2c768-bcbd-5b0f-1ec8-f77dde8e2d24" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">2. Twenty One Pilots – Blurryface</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Blurryface showcases a beautiful production, a true feat for their sophomore album, and the only album on this list that feels interesting and varied, yet musically and conceptually consistent. It’s also a good sign when you know the album will live on within the context of its own conceptual era. Sometimes I hesitate around hype, but man, if you give your loyalty or attention to any artist this year, it’s Twenty One Pilots.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">3. Adele – 25</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2015 is the year that we got Adele back. I’d like to think that Adele is the one pop artist of this century that transcends all boundaries of fan demographics -- despite the fact that there is nothing truly controversial about Adele, her music is so good that it seems to reach listeners of all ages and genres. Adele is one of the few artists that still brings coolness to genuine, heartfelt music. I’d think that all anyone does is cry to Adele’s music, but it turns out that you can dance to it too.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">4. Troye Sivan – Blue Neighborhood</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Troye’s debut album is the latest release to be included on this list, and therefore the one that has been on repeat since its release. I can’t quite pinpoint one reason why I love this album so much, besides the fact that it is so damn catchy and so well-produced. If there’s anything that will continue to separate Troye from other young pop artists, it’s his immediate lyrical maturity. Blue Neighborhood is one of those albums where I think, “why didn’t this album before?” -- but I’m glad it does now.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">5. Neck Deep – Life’s Not Out to Get You</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">God, why is this album so fucking good? It’s your tongue-in-cheek self-esteem rollercoaster in musical form. The comparisons to Blink 182 are not unwarranted, which may explain why I fell deep into the pop-punk black hole this year. My favorite thing became starting the record from the last song, “Rock Bottom”, because when Ben Barlow sings “resurrect and start again”, all I can think is yes, I do want to start this goddamn record over...and over...and over again.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">6. Halsey – Badlands</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Maybe it was a wild ride watching Halsey transform from before this debut to after, but it seems that Badlands will forever serve as evidence that Halsey deserves this success. I recall seeing reviews noting Badlands as “overproduced”, naturally. But I’m so thankful that a pop artist and a pop record like this exist, indulgent and unfiltered all the same.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">7. Desaparecidos – Payola</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After over a decade on hiatus, Desaparecidos doesn’t rest on Payola -- a 14-song record that is as punk as you can get. Despite the 13-year gap, Payola still feels like a natural follow-up to Read Music, Speak Spanish.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">8. Sleater-Kinney – No Cities To Love</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another band that returned from hiatus 10 years since their last record. While I didn’t spin No Cities To Love as often as all the other albums on this list, 2015 wouldn’t have been the same without this album and the return of Sleater-Kinney. It cemented my place as a fan, and I’m glad to finally be part of the club.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">9. Frank Turner – Positive Songs for Negative People</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I agree with the artist sentiment that the most recent record should be better than the last, and Frank accomplishes just that with PSFNP. Produced by Butch Walker, it’s a stronger record than Tape Deck Heart - and above all, it’s good to hear him on the side of triumph. Overall, a record I can’t help but enjoy over and over again. Glad to have caught Frank and the Sleeping Souls on this tour for this record -- a show that easily entered my top three shows of all time.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">10. The Story So Far – s/t</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Look, I’m late on the bandwagon but 2015 should be known as the year I came to terms with how much I love The Story So Far (which is a-fucking-lot). Part of that admission is knowing I’d be remiss if I didn’t include it on the list. I could get into the whys, but the conclusion is that the music just speaks for itself. The change to Drop D tuning could explain why this self-titled doesn’t hit as hard as previous records, but the fact is that I still had it on replay for days, and weeks, and months, and always will.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.63636; text-align: justify; text-decoration: underline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Other 2015 Releases I Loved & Listened To Often</span></h4>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 1.63636; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alessia Cara – Know-It-All</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 1.63636; white-space: pre-wrap;">Christine and The Queens - s/t</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 1.63636; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chvrches - Every Open Eye</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 1.63636; white-space: pre-wrap;">Citizen – Everybody is Going to Heaven</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 1.63636; white-space: pre-wrap;">Drake – If You’re Reading This…</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 1.63636; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fall Out Boy – American Beauty/American Psycho</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 1.63636; white-space: pre-wrap;">Florence + The Machine - How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 1.63636; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Front Bottoms – Back On Top</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 1.63636; white-space: pre-wrap;">Grimes – Art Angels</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 1.63636; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 1.63636; white-space: pre-wrap;">Motion City Soundtrack – Panic Stations</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 1.63636; white-space: pre-wrap;">noWhere - Hell Knows I’m Miserable Now</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 1.63636; white-space: pre-wrap;">Skinny Lister - Down on Deptford Broadway</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 1.63636; white-space: pre-wrap;">Superheaven - Ours is Chrome</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 1.63636; white-space: pre-wrap;">Turnover - Peripheral Vision</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 1.63636; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Weeknd - Beauty Behind the Madness</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 1.63636; white-space: pre-wrap;">Waxahatchee - Ivy Tripp</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 1.63636; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Wombats - Glitterbug</span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08762413251168026712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2830037862988888700.post-66573639592299540292015-11-07T22:47:00.003-06:002015-11-07T22:48:00.638-06:00Answers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 1.38; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;">I started a new life recently and I’ve been getting a lot of questions about it. To answer those questions indirectly is to make this point:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Once, I was asked how much time I spend outside my comfort zone. Since then, I’ve struggled to define what my comfort zone even is, let alone how much time I spent outside of it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I am outside my comfort zone when there is lack of movement. Not exactly stillness -- to bring Pulp Fiction to mind, stillness and silence are comforts and achievements in their own ways, whether with or without another person. My introverted and reflective sensitive artist self would agree. I know how to sit still and I do it well -- I have very generous parents who let me learn how to be bored for nearly two decades. Like any normal person, I find peace in nights spent on the couch with people you love. But then there’s that metaphor about gaining inertia after being idle for too long, and it’s an idea I’ve struggled with since I learned what existential crises were. Lack of movement is lack of progress in building relationships and experiences.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">It’s the reason my lifelines are rooted in punk shows, in long highway drives, in traveling and living out of temporary rooms for long periods of time. There is one common thread in all these things I love, which is constant movement -- a certain level of instability and unpredictability. It takes a certain amount of experience to be aware of the constant elements and unwritten rules attached to these seemingly unpredictable environments, which helps with being prepared. But I’ve realized that I settle in perhaps too quickly to packed venues full of energetic strangers, to unknown roads and exit signs, to unfamiliar routes and room arrangements. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">There’s a paranoid survivalist in me that never wants to get too comfortable, that always wants to remain as adaptable as possible in any situation, in any group of people, in any place in life. To be ready to pack up all the essentials and go where I need to go. It’s how I learn and grow, and it’s also how I survive. But it’s all the more possible with a strong foundation somewhere. Remembering that foundation is key to being able to carry on with this weird, crazy life that I’ve agreed to.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">This past summer, before starting a new job with promises of greater indulgence, I read several pieces of literature advocating for more streamlined, more purposeful lives. I suppose that, above all, constant movement allows me to be as less materialistic as possible. When traveling, it’s common to pack lightly, to focus on the essentials in order to fit it all into one suitcase. In recent years I’ve learned not to buy souvenirs at all unless those souvenirs are food and drink that can be consumed before taking up too much physical space. When I go to shows I’m serious about -- serious about giving my all and wearing my physical self out in order to achieve pure euphoria -- it often involves abandoning all my belongings, except for, or often including, my keys and cell phone.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I learned long ago how to not be sentimental about </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">things. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I take inventory of my possessions (and sadly enough, my social media counts) constantly. I clean out my closets annually. After I graduated college, I got rid of everything. I make efforts not to waste things on a daily basis, which ends up being environmentally conscious, but in reality I just can’t live with any excess. Words and memories and the person I am now are the legacy of everything tangible I’ve gotten rid of. Instead, there might be a reason I maintain a bad habit of spending $500 a month on entertainment.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am exactly where I want to be at this point in time and space. I love this life and I love the way I’ve been able to live it. I know it won’t be this good for long, but I want to remain flexible - to maintain an emergency fund of my own sanity. I try never to complain about being busy because it only means that I’m accomplishing </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">something</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I don’t get much sleep through any of this, but when I do, I sleep well. I feel stronger and more capable in more ways than one and I look forward to the future because life just keeps moving (- </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">pretty fast, and if you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">). There is no stopping. There is also no art being created right now. But there will be, at the end of all of it, after all the fuel.</span></span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08762413251168026712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2830037862988888700.post-46092607592297262512015-08-10T23:17:00.001-05:002015-08-10T23:26:20.896-05:00Mr. Stewart Was My Favorite Teacher<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Just a few days ago, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart aired its last episode after 16 years and 2,623 shows. As a result, I haven’t stopped thinking about the show and the man fronting it, and particularly why I and so many others admire him so much that all we could do was weep and mourn and bow and preach in unison, hoping that collective praise would render him and his creation immortal. The reasons are various, but I concluded that The Daily Show and Jon Stewart, like other media voices in my life, essentially served as a high school english class for my adult life. Let me explain:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After having graduated this past spring, I’ve been reflecting on the lasting effects of all those years of education. Between all the obvious major moments and special random moments, the most frequent education-related memory that I think about is my time in high school english classes. High school english is where we Millennial children learned how to analyze media as a whole, albeit primarily through classic novels. At the time, analyzing novels and writing long-form essays seemed outdated and almost unnecessary, but the lessons proved to be relevant. We were forced to investigate, dissect, communicate, discuss, and persuade in the name of poetry and literature. While I attended a privileged high school with generally great teachers in every subject, English was the one class where we were constantly forced to challenge the teacher against his or her own words. Likewise, many would agree that Jon Stewart constantly challenged his audiences to prove him wrong; but like a teacher, he earned the podium by taking ownership of the rhetoric and outsmarting the others. Those moments were either epiphanies or obligated noise to his listeners, depending on what type of students they were.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At a gut level, english class complimented daily life like applied therapy. The themes discussed in class almost always related to my own painful and confused teenage life. This idea is what makes Dead Poets Society an impactful film, along with Robin Williams as John Keating, the english professor who imparts life advice and profound change on his students through poetry. I always thought english teachers were geniuses for so easily relating to their students - but then again it also felt like they knew more about us than we wanted them to. My AP British Literature teacher introduced many of us to NPR’s This American Life, which I will forever appreciate. One of my best friends will start teaching high school english soon, so I tried to convince her to one day integrate Daily Show clips into argumentation lessons. My most memorable english and writing classes were upheld by great english teachers, who accordingly seem to be celebrated most often in comparison to teachers of other subjects. Consider <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/06/13/413966099/a-visit-from-kendrick-lamar-best-day-of-school-ever?utm_source=tumblr.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20150615">Mr. Mooney</a>, an english teacher who integrated Kendrick Lamar songs into his lessons and ultimately inspired the musician to spend a day with the school</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The fact is that I was never a great English student. I rarely participated in discussion, was scatterbrained when it came to effective argumentation, and wrote average AP essays (though I passed the exam). Truthfully, not much has changed. I only learned how to analyze media effectively when I became seriously interested in filmmaking and film theory. The closest I ever took to a college english class was Introduction to Playwriting, which allowed me to echo familiar sentiments of comfort and escape in the middle of a tedious school day. But the movies I prefer are the ones with one-of-a-kind scripts; the music I love the most is the kind with complex strings of words; and the lyricists I idolize are former students of literature. The best friends that I have are the ones who can converse intellectually for hours and whose lives are greatly defined by words or arguments or storytelling. Even as an accounting student in undergraduate, I gravitated towards word-heavy subdisciplines because I knew words were the endpoint. The business school implemented memo writing standards, much to the chagrin of fellow students. Proponents of the humanities knew that their disciplines especially used high school english as a foundation for analysis and dissertation. The fact is that high school english laid the groundwork for both a life of media consumption and a life of meaning. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A film professor once mentioned that she believed schools should be required to teach empathy. I agree. I think that employing characters, stories, and related media in the classroom can contribute positively to that learned empathy. Jon Stewart was praised for his character, for his sharpness as much as his empathy. He and The Daily Show entertained millions of people on a soapbox. Stewart grew to become an unexpected voice of comfort and the gateway informer for a growing generation of blurry-eyed media consumers. People viewed him as either a moral icon or a radical propagandist, but the agreement between those two labels was that he and his team understood people, media, and the relationship between the two.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For those reasons, Mr. Stewart was my favorite English teacher; or really, just one of my heroes.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08762413251168026712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2830037862988888700.post-28333170931693943682015-07-29T01:00:00.000-05:002015-08-15T19:01:59.327-05:00Where Can a Girl Yell and Scream?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Any time life gets rough, I turn to art - sometimes by making it, but usually passively by listening to music. I grab a pair of headphones or turn on my car stereo and turn the insides of my head over to whoever or whatever is flooding my ears. But lately, I’ve found a problem with this comfort and salvation.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span>
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Because
I create my own media, I’ve been considering more and more who my influences
are and whose art I’d like to imitate at best. The answer is that many of my
heroes – artistic or otherwise – are, and have been, white male figures. Considering
I raised myself on punk music and its ethos, I’ve especially been looking up to
white men since early adolescence. I take comfort in hearing angry dudes yell
and scream and sing in the name of punk rock. This is problematic for obvious
reasons, but reasons which I only recently realized (or admitted). I am an
Asian-American female. I am also an introvert who sought solace in short, fast,
and loud songs. The issues of diversity in punk, media, and art in general have
their own complex discourse (see: <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2015/08/07/429376816/all-songs-1-laura-jane-grace-and-lauren-denitzio-on-surviving-in-punk?utm_source=tumblr.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=nprmusic&utm_term=music&utm_content=20150807">this</a> NPR interview
with Laura Jane Grace and Lauren Denitzio). Knowing that this discourse <i>exists</i> is comforting at the very least,
but it’s not enough.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><o:p></o:p>
I’m bitter that I spent years listening to bitter white dudes scream and sing
about girls - girls who were probably a lot like my best friends - in a
demeaning but seemingly universal way. I’m angry that I spent years listening
to stories and looking at the world reflected through the eyes of certain men
without questioning their perspective. Idolizing white male artists never
seemed like a problem until I suddenly felt like I had been tricked into
working against my own goals. Until I realized that I could only find the most
honest comfort in art when I could relate to the person behind the words,
sounds, and images. Until I realized that I was afraid to actively or socially
create <i>anything </i>because it was almost always an all-boys club and I felt
I could never fit in. Until I realized that girls <i>still</i> get criticized for going to certain shows because they only
find the band attractive (seriously? that is not nearly enough reason to have
your sweaty body parts fall all over us).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
So who do I turn to? Growing up, my dad used to cycle through Garbage, Jewel,
and Natalie Imbruglia CDs in his car. There was Michelle Branch – who is an
icon to me in so many ways – and Gwen Stefani and Avril Lavigne, who I have a
lot to thank for. There are countless female musicians and artists working
right now that I love (see: Mitski, Banks, Grimes, Halsey, St. Vincent, M.I.A.,
Haim). There’s Patti Smith and riot grrrl, among many more, and somehow it’s
still not enough.<br />On
the other hand, there’s something to be said about universality in art. I’d
argue that many of my male idols directly stand up for equality and diversity
and creation all the same, and more importantly, show that support in their own
work (see: Jon Stewart, Anthony Bourdain, Dan Campbell, Jim Jarmusch).
Opportunities for more female artists to showcase their work is slowly getting
better as they gain equal platform through modern media. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
It’s said that adolescence retains our most formative years, and if so, I’m not
sure I’ll ever stop finding comfort in listening to white boys cry resentment
through melodies, against heavy guitar riffs, through exaggerated airwaves. Often
times, we can’t help what we love. But if we are what we love, I need to be
real about the identity I’ve created for myself so far and the full identity I
want to achieve. In high school, I played music with three of my best
girlfriends who decided that changing pronouns in cover songs was dumb. My girlfriends
have always been my best inspiration because they themselves are creators,
because they’re what I know, because they’re some of the most interesting
people I know. This apparently shows the most through the films and videos I’ve
written and created, and it should continue that way. I made a list of the main
female artists and curators I personally look up to: Sofia Coppola, Alexa Chung,
Lorde, Hayley Williams, Carrie Brownstein, Kristen Stewart, Tavi Gevinson, Coco
Chanel, Tina Fey, Eva Chen, Beyonce, Rihanna. The reality is that these artists
influence my personal and professional identities as much as my artistic
outlook; it’s all intertwined. I spent years trying to conform to male
nonconformists when I possessed pure nonconformity all along. Now, I vow to put
as much of myself as possible into the things I produce.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
In the meantime, I need more Courtney Love’s and Kathleen Hanna’s and Kim
Gordon’s in the world – and not just in music. Not only do I need more female
voices – I need more females raising their voices, conveying a little more
anger the way I’m used to, providing arenas where I, too, can yell and scream
cathartically without judgment instead of just inside my own head and into the
abyss. I need more women screaming into my ear because it would be finally be
an accurate reflection of my own self. So please, if you are a fellow female,
speak louder and scream harder about the way you really feel and about the
things you really care about. I hear you, and I need you.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08762413251168026712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2830037862988888700.post-2427593905658418152015-06-10T22:31:00.000-05:002015-06-12T13:38:34.015-05:00Unstable San Francisco<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">If I had to describe San Francisco in one word, it would be: <b>unstable</b>. Unstable in its earthquake-prone geography, its non-earthquake-proof urban planning, its cold/shady or warm/sunny or mist-not-rain weather, its rapidly increasing housing prices, its infamous displaced population, and its entrepreneurial, mostly tech-driven population. This is not necessarily a bad thing, in fact -- the city owes much of its identity and innovation to this. Contrast these qualities to my adolescent romanticization of San Francisco, when I was fascinated by hippie culture and listened to too much East Bay punk rock. My trip to San Francisco was as much about exploring it as it was about deciding whether or not my old dream of living there would stay true.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is a difference between traveling and vacationing. The former is much more difficult, especially when trying to see an entire city like San Francisco, and its surrounding areas, in 10 days, on a budget. It was much less difficult, however, with my friend Andrea by my side, as we leaned on eachother for support (sometimes literally while walking up steep hills). San Francisco nearly destroyed us, but not quite.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">There were so many instances where our trip could have gone sour, but our luck remained until the end. We could have gotten stranded in the mountains, we could have easily driven off a cliff, we could have contracted so many types of diseases, we could have had bad first Airbnb experiences, we could have had to stay an extra night as a result of a cancelled flight home -- but we were rewarded with a private hostel room, rescheduled an earlier, more direct last-minute flight, and made it home safe. Despite how tiring our self-inflicted schedule was, we were able to see everything we wanted (minus a few restaurants and Twin Peaks, which was foiled by bad weather). There are endless stories.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.38; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;">Favorites include:</span></div>
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<b style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Adelaide</b><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"> -- I was initially hesitant about how an American hostel would be, but it turned out to have everything a traveler would need, from airport transportation to free food to cozy personal bunks to desktop computers to fascinating (mostly European) company. We spent five nights, went on a four-day roadtrip, and returned for an extra three nights. By that time it felt like a home away from home.</span></div>
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<b style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mission District</b><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"> -- A primarily Hispanic community continuing to experience <a href="http://www.sfchronicle.com/the-mission/documentary/">gentrification</a>, but one with the kindest residents. We explored the Balmy Alley murals from the Precita Eyes muralists, Luz de Luna, Philz Coffee, Valencia Street, Mission Chinese Food, and Mission Dolores Park, which was partially under construction but still offered a nice green space with inspiring views of the city.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>City Lights Booksellers</b></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> -- The best and largest bookstore I’ve ever step foot in, with its multiple sections beautifully curated by its staff. I would take the entire film section and spend a whole day within its walls. The poetry reading room is a classic. Strong self-restraint was required, but I left with a copy of Ginsberg’s </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Howl </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and a Cometbus special edition East Bay issue.</span></div>
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<b style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Swan Oyster Depot</b><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"> -- One of those Bourdain spots which would still be as popular otherwise. The freshest fish in arguably the whole city justifies the long lines, which we were lucky to skip by arriving before opening time. A seafood lover’s dream - we ordered a mix of West and East coast oysters (I could taste the difference!), sea urchin, clam chowder, sashimi, and mimosas - and coughed up nearly $100 in cash as a result. Completely worth it. The dudes behind the counter are great, very accommodating, and surprisingly unpretentious, too. Everything is sourced sustainably.</span></div>
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<b style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Off The Grid food trucks’ Picnic @ Presidio</b><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"> -- Good food, good views, San Franciscans hanging out in a field in the summer. How could any of it be wrong? The park’s free shuttle to Crissy Field to view the Golden Gate Bridge is a bonus.</span></div>
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<b style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Boba Guys</b><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"> -- A new establishment with locations in Chinatown and the Mission, Boba Guys mixes up different flavors of highly customizable teas usually featuring boba or jelly. Handmade syrups, no powder used. I wanted to go everyday to try as many flavors as possible, but we only made it twice - Hong Kong style milk tea the first time, strawberry matcha milk tea latte the next.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The best part was actually our four-day road trip to Yosemite, Big Sur, Napa Valley, and Point Reyes National Seashore. Nature and its views are always incredible and particularly rare in the Midwest; if I ever retire/go off the grid it would be to Big Sur or somewhere similar. The car rental company stuck us with a Dodge Caravan -- totally unhip and slightly difficult to maneuver around mountain roads, but brand new and large enough to throw our trash and belongings all over. We called it Grover.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ultimately, this was a perfect post-graduation alternative trip to a month touring Southeast Asia or a few weeks driving across America. San Francisco may be unstable, but it is quintessentially American in both its past and present. I decided that I don’t actually want to live in San Francisco -- but I’ll happy to revisit it in the future. Who knows what it’ll look like then.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08762413251168026712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2830037862988888700.post-1332484837441314562015-05-15T20:42:00.002-05:002015-06-13T12:58:30.400-05:00The Intangibles<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Since
I was a child, I fantasized about college and the ultimate freedom it would
afford. I could go anywhere I wanted, study everything I wanted, and do anything
I wanted. It didn’t quite turn out that way, and like many Illinois students, I
ended up in “the middle of the cornfields”.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">But
in fact, it was in the middle of the cornfields (and throughout various
travels) where I learned that place doesn’t matter so much as the people you
share your time with. I’m still astounded that in these few years, I managed to
find so many incredible friends that share such similar perspectives and
enjoyments. The intense laughs and conversations we had were moments I always
dreamt of, and god, even as an introvert I’ll miss them. I’ll miss going to class for only two hours
a day, exploring the towns just to keep from boredom, eating and drinking my
way through a long list of food establishments, frequented spots in Kopi, empty
classrooms, outdoor amphitheaters, so many other places, the Quad. But above
all, I’ll miss the community – the resources and general support system of
Champaign, Urbana, the university itself, fellow students and friends – and the
feeling that I could do whatever I want to do because there is a group of
people somewhere near that I can go to. Enactus regionals, Enactus in Russia,
late night group project camaraderie in BIF, Pygmalion, Ebertfest, Illinifest,
all the films I made and slaved over, all those nights with friends and roommates,
all the people that supported me and my endeavors. I can only hope I returned the favor at some point, in some
way. TO ALL MY FRIENDS, THANK YOU FOR BEING FRIENDS WITH THIS WEIRDO and listening to me complain all the time and coercing me out of my apartment every now and then.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I
did have the chance to study everything I wanted – mostly through electives –
and had the chance to do everything I wanted – funds permitting, of course.
What I wanted at the very least was to learn something; to become a better
person and a more informed individual. And after all this, I’ll admit – I feel
like I’ve learned a lot, in more ways than one. All that knowledge made me more
skeptical than anything (the mark of a true accountant, and arguably a good
thing), but the accompanying experiences also made me believe in possibilities
more than ever. I also suppose this knowledge gave value to the $70k+ my
parents just spent on me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">When
we look back on major life events we tend to only remember and reiterate the
positive experiences. But those are nothing without the struggles – the stress
and long nights and impossible exams; taking finals in Foellinger Auditorium; going
to class in below freezing temperatures; being away from the comforts of home;
missing out on the life events of family and friends; extreme boredom leading
to existential crises; constantly challenging my crippling introversion;
comparing myself to others for the first time ever; doubting myself for the
first time ever; fighting for my own decisions; the bureaucracy. I can only say
in retrospect that I never want to forget these feelings, but that I’ve always
been ready to move on. I’ve always felt most at home in that “real world”, and I’m more
excited for the future than anything else. I shall follow fellow alumni Nick Offerman's advice: "<o:p></o:p><a href="https://twitter.com/Nick_Offerman/status/599248516209319937">Make things with your hands; consume less. Say please & thank you. Engender mirth. Spill the wine. Excelsior.</a>"</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The
fact is that I entered college wanting to accomplish certain things, and so I
did just that. But the achievements that can’t be explained to anyone can’t be
qualified by official ceremonies or pieces of paper. My beautiful parents
worked just as hard as I did for this, and so that Sunday ceremony and that
diploma are equally theirs. And frankly, it’s true that the title of “college
educated” will literally afford me the freedom I always dreamt of. But along
with all the incredible memories – days and nights spent with friends – the
intangible personal achievements are the ones <i>I’m</i> celebrating.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">PS. Yes I have a job, it's at a consulting firm in Chicago, I start in September, but first I'll be spending the next four months studying for and trying to pass the CPA exam, what else can you ask me?</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08762413251168026712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2830037862988888700.post-78202695598835561382015-04-28T00:34:00.003-05:002015-04-28T10:45:05.378-05:00In Defense of TV, From A Cinephile<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; text-align: justify; white-space: pre-wrap;">Television is taking over film.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This has been a major point of discussion within the media industry for the past few years -- because it’s true. It used to be the other way around. I can’t even believe the amount of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">movies </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that have now been turned into </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">television shows </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and the amount of film directors, producers, and actors that have shifted focus to television</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Part of me knows it makes perfect sense, but the other part of me hates to admit it. I’ve been committed to film since age 15 and I’m still trying to get my <a href="http://letterboxd.com/iamjazmine/watchlist/">watchlist</a> below 200 before the end of the year. But ironically, I can’t get into certain shows </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">because </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of my commitment problems. Over the years, my tastes in television have been limited and mostly reduced to cult status, not unlike my primary tastes in film. I’m what they call a <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2015/03/take-our-myers-briggs-tv-personality-test.html">DEUH</a> (drama-episodic-cult-highbrow). I’m partial to British television. I have a self-imposed rule regarding television, which is that I will not begin a new show if it has already released more than two seasons. I know I would love Game of Thrones, but I’ve chosen to alienate myself from the general public instead. You mean, that really popular show that already has how many seasons with a dozen episodes which are an hour long each? I don’t have time for that; I need to feel like I accomplished something after devoting an hour or two to it. Plus, film has </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">traditionally </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">been academic</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You’re </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">supposed </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to study it and learn from its history, and that in turn is supposed to teach you how to make films.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">But this past weekend, I realized: I have learned more about filmmaking from watching television than from watching films. This past weekend, I completed my first Netflix-original television binge -- Marvel’s Daredevil. It was a spontaneous undertaking, but the show turned out to be more than I expected with indulgent symbolism, unexpected realism, and a truly darker edge than most mass-produced superhero portrayals I’ve been exposed to. In truth, I wanted to analyze Daredevil the way I typically analyze films. And after watching it, I felt like I had acquired insights that would inspire me to make better films in the future.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I started to think about my favorite television shows. The first: Shameless US. No one really talks about Shameless US. There’s a modestly-sized following, enough to warrant its fifth season on Showtime; William H. Macy recently won a Golden Globe for his role as Frank Gallagher. The show’s premise, in theory, appears uninteresting. Shameless is not as flashy as other television shows, although its cinematography is impressive and its soundtrack is unbeatable. But Shameless is as raw, edgy, honest, and as witty as the characters and environments -- a working-class, Irish-American family on Chicago’s South Side -- that it represents. Shameless is a realist’s dream, a case study on how to create incredibly interesting, diverse characters, and a lesson in balancing black humor with heartwarming, maddening drama. Shameless was the one of the first to school me on character attachment; and the first to teach me that high production value is nothing without compelling characters to support it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Before the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Before</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> series and before </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Social Network</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Gilmore Girls taught me how to keep audiences interested with just two people talking. From Freaks and Geeks, I learned the value of casting. From New Girl, the appeal of pop culture integration. From Doctor Who, I learned about consistency and realized how innovation could still occur within a firmly established brand. With Sherlock, The Hour, and Downton Abbey, I realized that cliffhangers were not mutually exclusive to high style. (To that, I recently discovered an old Tumblr post stating, “</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">i decided i would like to become a television writer for dramatic series bc how else can you emotionally manipulate the general public on a weekly basis”.) </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was the same with Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, where I learned that cinematic references and experimentation were not limited to cinema itself. There are more. They all taught me how to use screen time economically and how to remain relevant in storytelling.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><span style="font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the end, television is not mutually exclusive to cinema -- although there are logistical differences, both serve the same purpose. To entertain, to teach, to expose, to express, to take hours out of your day, to tell stories. No one should limit herself to one medium. I’m just like any film lover -- I don’t want that medium to die out. But my time is an investment, and in the end, I want a return: I want to be moved in some way. There is great television out there; there are still great films out there. If one can learn from the other and vice versa, the end result is all the better.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08762413251168026712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2830037862988888700.post-71477479039641989112015-04-20T16:36:00.004-05:002015-04-28T18:54:44.490-05:00Ebertfest 2015: Reigniting a Love for Film and Life<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
A hectic
college life has often meant lasting weeks or months without watching a movie –
something of a problem for a cinephile, to say the least. So as my final year
as a college student in Champaign, I promised to experience Ebertfest as fully
as possible. For the past two years, I succeeded in attending one screening each;
this year, I cleared my schedule and dedicated my time to its full five days.
Five days of constant education and inspiration, including viewings of seven
films: Goodbye to Language 3D, The End of the Tour, Girlhood, Wild Tales, The
Motel Life, 99 Homes, and Seymour An Introduction. (All reviews may be found
<a href="http://letterboxd.com/iamjazmine/tag/ebertfest/films/"><b>here</b></a>.) A lack of time and money prevented me from witnessing all screenings, as
well as morning academic panels, but luckily, Ebertfest maintains recordings of
all its Q&As and panels on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/Ebertfest"><b>Youtube</b></a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Additionally,
I’m currently enrolled in a film festivals class at the university which blends
lessons of festival history and cultural theory with practical organization
skills for our own student film festival. Because of this, I knew Ebertfest
would be even more unique, and not to be missed. Ebertfest stands to appreciate
film with true cinephiliac honesty and, in recent years, has successfully
remained true to Roger Ebert’s vision and the person and film lover that he
was. Its success also has as much to do with the organizers – Chaz Ebert, Mary
Susan Britt, and Nate Kohn – and the community of filmgoers that attend each
year. The tenderness is evident – in how the audience interacts with one
another, how the audience interacts with the films, how visiting filmmakers are
treated, and how the program is presented. Ebertfest is carefully curated: it
is a retrospective; it is a chance to view some of this year’s upcoming
independent films; it is a chance to discuss films directly with those who created
them; and thanks to James Bond, it is a chance to experience what prime film
projection looks and sounds and feels like. The fact that Champaign houses the
university is another plus, ensuring the discussions are rarely dull. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Personal
highlights include The End of the Tour (an experience so personal that I came
home and stayed up for an extra three hours to write the review and reflection),
as well as Seymour: An Introduction (Ebertfest’s annual Sunday music
documentary). To say the least: Seymour was the perfect – no, only – way to end
the festival. To elaborate: Seymour was this year’s first and only standing
ovation, and for good reason. Director Ethan Hawke enters the picture, fueled
by his own crisis of soul, and then quietly steps back, redirecting the
spotlight back to pianist Seymour Bernstein, who teaches the audience how to
live a life with brutal honesty. Seymour was present at the festival, along
with his friend Andrew Harvey, the man responsible for introducing Seymour and
Hawke. With Seymour’s film, I almost didn’t want to say much. Although I love
film (a lot), music has always been my first love – and so Seymour’s
philosophies on life and art and solitude resonated even stronger. At the end
of the film, we see Seymour perform his first solo concert in decades in front
of a small audience of close friends. The last song finishes, the screen cuts
to black, and we hear Seymour’s voice: “I never dreamt that with my own two
hands, I could touch the sky.” Roll credits. “Holy shit,” I muttered to myself.
Watching Seymour: An Introduction felt like soul cleansing, like cosmic
awakening.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Chaz
Ebert emerged from behind the red curtain with Seymour on her arm and mentioned
his comment on the fact that our screening was the best sounding out of all the
ones he’d seen – and he’d seen a lot of them. Plus, as a musician – he knows
something about sound. Chaz burst into tears, telling us that Seymour felt “as
if Roger was speaking to him” during the final scene. She presented the Golden
Thumb award to both Seymour and Andrew. The Q&A began, where Seymour
continued to beautifully articulate his philosophies while still managing to
make the audience laugh. After, Seymour himself taught one of his mater classes
to two talented and privileged university students. I had to leave before the
teaching began, but I can only imagine how inspiring it must have been – and particular,
because the lesson itself lasted an hour long.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">There
was a point in the festival, on Saturday when the sun was out and the theatre scheduled
four films in a row until midnight, when I grew tired and yearned to resume my
work. This was in contrast to the first few days when I exhibited an
unstoppable drive and desire to write about each film. Then during the final
days, I was more focused on consuming and admiring the experience. But the fact
will always be that these kinds of experiences are nearly useless to me without
active reflection or return. The heart of this year’s Ebertfest lied in
ultimate truth and human existence – and as always, personal integrity. I saw
it in the message of Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye to Language; in The End of the
Tour’s David Foster Wallace; in Girlhood’s Mariame; in the captivating,
hilarious, tragedy-ridden Wild Tales; in Frank and his loved ones in The Motel
Life; in Nash and his dilemma in 99 Homes; and all throughout Seymour: An
Introduction. Truth, human existence, integrity. Did I go to a film festival or
a spiritual retreat? Either way, the whole experience was more than worthwhile.</span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08762413251168026712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2830037862988888700.post-67374834687975398482015-04-09T21:54:00.002-05:002015-04-28T18:54:36.076-05:00On The Wonder Years & Second Chances<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Individual aesthetics dictate that -- guess what! -- not everybody enjoys the same things. Over the years, I have attempted nonviolently to make people I love enjoy all the same things I love -- and they have often returned the favor. But most of the time, one must discover great things on her own time. Case in point: me and The Wonder Years. So...is there </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">anybody </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">out there who didn’t </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">get </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Wonder Years to begin with? Was I getting old too fast at a point when I became so keen on indie rock that I failed to notice the appeal? Well, I’m back from the bland and I learned my lesson.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The thing that continues to guilt me is that even with all the stars aligned, I could not be a fan for the longest time. Besides “that one song -- ‘All My Friends Are in Bar Bands’?” -- I was on the verge of being </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">annoyed </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">by them, by how they appeared to be the next poster boys for American pop punk. In my mind, no one outside the Midwest could ever claim that title -- save Tom, Mark, and Travis. After a high school acquaintance suggested I listen to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Upsides</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> because he knew I had terrible taste (or incredible, rather), I encountered an introductory skim-through of the album, essentially writing them off as “just another pop-punk band”. I was so immediately unconvinced that I didn’t bother paying attention. Obviously, I feel terrible about that now.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">upside</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">...I was ushered into future retribution when a good friend wanted to see The Wonder Years at Middlewest Fest 2011 between sets of Gold Motel and our mutually-beloved Tokyo Police Club. I sort of understood the die-hard motivation more after that show...but again, selective memory suggests I don’t remember that missed opportunity at all. But if there’s anything I’ve learned from years of music immersion, it’s that live shows have more potential of converting a non-fan into a fan better than all the mixtapes in the world. So, f</span><span style="color: black; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ast forward two years later, post-Riot Fest when pictures of Dan Campbell stage-diving from a free-standing tree started springing up everywhere on social media. This, for some reason, read credibility in large letters to me, so I tried listening </span><span style="color: black; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">one more time</span><span style="color: black; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> with all efforts of dismantling preconceived notions, the way many modern musical discoveries happen: YouTube. Almost every day since that September it’s been hard to listen to anything else while I cycle through my trivial regrets.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s true that I missed out on the prime live experience, but I made the better part of the discovery at the most necessary time in life, and I drove myself across the Midwest twice in one month to prove my admiration in person. To be honest, I still agree that listening to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Upsides</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> as a whole is as physically exhausting as using my small, weak arms to try to hold up a human swarm of male crowd surfers -- but I can tell you now that Dan Campbell is my favorite lyricist of the 21st century and that if anyone’s going to save-pop-punk-or-whatever, it’s probably this band. I mean, Campbell wrote </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hey Thanks</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for his ex-girlfriend, whose favorite singer is Rachel Minton, the track’s guest vocalist -- the choice was largely a sentimental one. That’s actually the thing about The Wonder Years -- and live and recorded music in general. You have to get into it for the emotion...otherwise you just won’t get it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After my proper reintroduction to The Wonder Years, I started writing again -- a lot -- including my first short film which was coincidentally inspired by the band’s most recent album; and I started holding myself accountable for all things. Because of The Wonder Years, I was introduced to new, similar artists; started revisiting other artists I thought I never liked or simply never understood; and challenged my tastes for the better. One of my friends always questioned why I didn’t listen to La Dispute when I listened to so many of their contemporaries, so I tried again. Now, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rooms of The House </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">might be one of my favorite albums of all time, and Jordan Dreyer one of my (other) favorite lyricists.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Challenging one’s musical tastes, I think, is the ultimate test for the most dedicated of music lovers. I tried for years to understand the musical appeal of Taylor Swift -- and stuck with it until </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1989, </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">where I realized that her lyrics have become smarter, more complex, more engaging, more poetic. I realized that one day she can become an artist I personally, wholeheartedly love -- and with that, I can now exist peacefully alongside the rest of the world. But ultimately, this isn’t a lesson on the bandwagon or</span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">my regrets -- it’s simply to say that second chances are worth giving. So do it: give out second chances like charity. Not only because you have the chance to share love and fanaticism, these intense, positive emotions, with a greater number of people -- but because you owe it to yourself to receive all the benefits of being well-rounded and open-minded. </span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08762413251168026712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2830037862988888700.post-46235758176722696432015-04-09T19:45:00.001-05:002015-04-28T18:55:16.122-05:00Hymns & Hardcore: Rock Music as Religion<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-lbMJ29NWD1gUhyphenhyphenQBOTCNN4uqOSDej1CRg4eIA5QncdmVgSB5_NWZSJLYHFylFNS3azsl4JbSsKz8jsLR-owU5d7q6tYhgCB6ObfDGU9LHPiymYHzuIOZWdFzi5QDEaMK1ELzz2-mq64c/s1600/tumblr_n8opnyMeir1qzp2n0o2_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-lbMJ29NWD1gUhyphenhyphenQBOTCNN4uqOSDej1CRg4eIA5QncdmVgSB5_NWZSJLYHFylFNS3azsl4JbSsKz8jsLR-owU5d7q6tYhgCB6ObfDGU9LHPiymYHzuIOZWdFzi5QDEaMK1ELzz2-mq64c/s1600/tumblr_n8opnyMeir1qzp2n0o2_1280.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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</span> <span style="line-height: 1.38; text-indent: 0pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">When rock music is positioned against religion, the discussion is usually reduced to cults and Satanism in the mid-20th century, influenced by one variation of diehard fanaticism. On the positive side of this broad discussion, there’s the idea of “rock gods”, along the same lines of celebrity worship culture and largely prescribed to major 1980s arena frontmen, and then there’s Christian Rock as a genre. Despite the decrease in religious faith itself, especially amongst younger generations, religious elements of music (rock music, in particular) remain present today, if not in more subtle forms. </span></span><br />
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</span> <span style="line-height: 1.38; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Historically, connecting music directly with religion evokes the thought of tonal praises to or of a god (this is true for various religious communities throughout the world, although for the sake of familiarity I’ll stick to examples from Western culture). Christian hymns, for example, include elongated notes and selective harmonies, consciously or not emulating hypnosis and attempting to connect to the natural world. Similar hypnotizing harmonies are arguably a trend in recent indie music a la Fleet Foxes or Bon Iver, though the simple acoustic instrumentation that accompanies these hymns is more connected to early American folk music.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Through hymns, one might achieve spiritual enlightenment; and like one’s quest for spiritual enlightenment, foundational beliefs in hardcore and punk music stem from the search for truth in all things -- perhaps the separating factor for punk philosophy being its inherent realist perspective. During the search for this truth or enlightenment, there is inevitably some form of catharsis -- a purging of negative emotions -- through song, verse, even physical movement or ceremonial procedures. The live show experience associated with live hardcore and punk music, including moshing and crowdsurfing, is ultimately an attempt at catharsis for both community listeners and performers alike. On the same note, various forms of screaming and singing in hardcore and punk music act as releases of anger, sadness, or oppression in personal or sociopolitical terms.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thinking on a larger scale -- musical festivals are not a 21st century invention, but the popularity of such events have dramatically increased in the past decade, including legendary frontrunners such as Lollapalooza and smaller festival gatherings in every in-between town. Within these festivals, thousands of fans gather to experience music as a community; festival-goers strive for these experiences to be “spiritual”, or memorable on a collective level. Depending on the artist, audience involvement tends to be a major defining factor of a praiseworthy live performance, and while call-and-response is traditionally more typical in arena rock, sing-a-longs constitute a large majority of audience involvement today (think Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up” or even small venue situations with acoustic instruments). These live musical experiences once again share similarities with religious-oriented congregations such as gospel choirs and Sunday Assembly alike.</span><br />
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-f6ee6c97-a0c8-e45e-bb79-e99e26c9777a"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, you know -- that cliché that “music is my religion” -- I think it very well could be.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08762413251168026712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2830037862988888700.post-88628431132253130342015-04-04T11:40:00.003-05:002015-04-20T17:52:05.989-05:00Modern Nomads & The Meaning of Travel<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">What constitutes a home? Foundation, familiarity, comfort, contentment in the lack of desire to be anywhere else; a place, a person, or a group of people. For many, regardless of physical location, home is with family. I strongly share this sentiment. But when it is not possible to be with family, there are other places I consider “home”. For example:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The Metro in Chicago (or in a crowd before a stage). A journey to this locally established music venue has always taken place in the dead of Chicago winter with the same best friend. The Metro is the right amount of run-down as any good venue should be, with a decorative main stage frame that’s passed so much local musical history from performer to audience and through its almost-familial musical communities.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Cafe Kopi in Champaign. More than the architecturally impressive Business Instructional Facility or Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, more than the Art Theater, more than my own various apartments, Cafe Kopi has offered a type of comfort similar to concert venues with the ability to feel simultaneously individual and connected. Kopi also contains all my favorite “small” things in life: relaxed atmosphere, hot drinks, quality food, agreeable music, soulful interior decoration. Part of me wants to travel the country searching for a cafe as good as Kopi -- and part of me never wants to know, because it is already known by locals and regulars that Kopi is the ultimate cafe.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">London, England; St. Louis, Missouri; or anywhere on the go, in the driver’s seat of a car on a highway, on foot navigating an unfamiliar street that eventually becomes a sense of accomplished familiarity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">For the privileged few with stable, defined homes (those having reached the “love/belonging” or “esteem” portion of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs), it’s a wonder why we travel away from them. To experience new places, feelings, and things, to take a break from the constant lifestyle, to acquire inspiration; or because that innate sense of survival remains the one consistent factor. For me, it’s the same sense felt when in a crowd of people moving in the same direction, thousands of pounds of body and flesh involuntarily against my back. Overcoming that struggle for survival leads to comfort in some form -- and maybe eventually -- the creation of a home. In the event that our initial home is rendered useless or inaccessible, these experiences ultimately allow for the discovery of an alternate or “second” home.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08762413251168026712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2830037862988888700.post-10685782447478229122015-04-04T00:01:00.002-05:002015-04-20T17:52:37.459-05:00First Impressions of Fresh Off The Boat<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>Written February 2015</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">You can read all the reviews from media outlets, the tweets, or the other essays debating the significance of the show, based off of Eddie Huang's memoir growing up Taiwanese-American in Orlando, Florida. You can (and should) even read Eddie Huang's <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2015/01/eddie-huang-fresh-off-the-boat-abc.html" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.298039); background-color: rgba(68, 68, 68, 0); background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(68, 68, 68, 0) 50%, rgba(68, 68, 68, 0.247059) 50%); background-position: 0px 1.15em; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1em 2px; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0.15em; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">own essay</a>, which includes anecdotes and personal opinions on the process of and conflicts involved with creating the show. Or you can read this long-form perspective from a young Asian-American who creates/critiques and lives/breathes media, who attends UIUC with many other fellow Asian-American friends. Recent conversations with such friends inspired this review:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">ABC's "Fresh Off The Boat" caters to its primetime audience with ease -- using other family-friendly network shows such as "Modern Family", "The Middle", "Black-ish", and "The Goldbergs" as templates, a good portion of the show's situational humor seems to appeal to a broad audience. Jessica Huang (Constance Wu) plays Eddie's mother, the unofficial head of household and the most honest, badass character on the show -- my favorite moments are when she tries to fit into a new friend group comprised entirely of stereotypical housewives. The rest of the family carries equal entertainment weight, but the heart of the show stems from the strong-willed Mr. and Mrs. Huang. Most situations and issues specifically meant to depict the Asian-American experience are highly accurate, and therefore even more entertaining.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">To a certain degree, however, there is collective agreement that the Huang's experiences in "Fresh Off The Boat" are almost too relatable -- traumatizing, even, when they bring back specific memories of growing up Asian-American. For some, it's difficult to laugh when being forced to re-experience micro-aggressive insults, even direct insults (Eddie gets called the C-word in Episode One), childhood punishment, and other moments on screen. To have these experiences whittled down to minutes or seconds for either comedic or dramatic effect -- some are quick to claim overreaction, but as first, modern on-screen representations, these moments do not pass lightly for others.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Of course, the experiences that "Fresh Off The Boat" portray do not apply to all Asian-Americans. Personally, I'm happy to have been raised by fairly lenient, cultured, self-aware parents who were usually more encouraging than forceful. While I've been familiar with every cultural reference on the show, some personal experiences are lost. For example, Filipino-Americans didn't have an equivalent to Chinese Learning Centers (Catholic school, maybe), but afterschool math homework with my dad was a torturous three hours per evening and additional learning was continually enforced outside of school (I'm thankful for some of it, but only for reasons of pride). I enjoy that "Fresh Off The Boat" maintains Eddie's burgeoning love and idolization of hip-hop, a music that gave him self-confidence when growing up -- because that's what rock and punk were for me (though I'm a little insulted that they made his Nirvana-loving cousin all sensitive and lame -- but at least it's realistic).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The main downfall is that, in order to establish these characters and experiences in mainstream media, stereotypes are inevitably employed, among concerns that inaccurate representation is fueled even further. Huang himself claims to have come to terms with the simultaneously differentiated and universal aspect of the show and maintains that the show is imperfect -- not the "great, historic Asian-American television show and [...] everything we ever wanted" -- but the "first wheel", the beginning. It's a long road to get to the point of "Orange Is The New Black"...even "Community", "Brooklyn Nine-Nine", "How To Get Away with Murder", "Shameless" (my #1 and the most underrated), even "New Girl" (the only other show I keep up with), but at this point, representation is what matters.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Despite the fact that the show's actors will be able to find even greater future career opportunities as a result of its success, despite the fact that the show's success would lead to the creation of even better shows and media representations of myself, my friends, and my family, "Fresh Off The Boat" is worth watching because it's funny, entertaining, and it roots for the outcast. I want it to be that way, to be able to stand on its own without the necessary attachment of sociocultural discussion. As of its second week, "Fresh Off The Boat" was the highest rated Tuesday night comedy on television -- here's to hoping it maintains the broad viewership and success that it deserves.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08762413251168026712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2830037862988888700.post-47309860712664847432015-04-03T23:31:00.002-05:002015-04-28T10:48:17.869-05:00An Introduction to Jim Jarmusch<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Written January 2015</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Within three consecutive days, I watched three of Jim Jarmusch’s most essential films: Down By Law, Mystery Train, and Stranger Than Paradise. The interesting part is that I always knew I would be a Jarmusch fan; the surprising part is that I felt and feel immensely, immeasurably connected to his films and him as a filmmaker. I related to each of Jarmusch’s films on every plane: from the filmmaking side -- the look, the feel, the characters and stories that I dream and strive to create or represent -- and from the side of the audience -- the experiences, the settings, the characters, down to the smallest one-liners.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">As the son of immigrants, Jarmusch grew up in the American Midwest, an aspect that is clearly evident in his representation of places. Stranger Than Paradise (more like Strangers In Paradise) was Jarmusch’s breakout film and -- above all -- showcases the reality of the American landscape and of travel, including familial relations between immigrants. Aside from the setting focus, the dynamic between Willie, Eddie, and Eva is reminiscent of Band of Outsiders. But as a complement (and compliment) to such places, Jarmusch and cinematographer Tom DiCillo employ that trademark black-and-white photography which is anger-inducing and immaculate even when Jarmusch decides to later include color in his film, Mystery Train. In spite of this constantly beautiful cinematography, Jarmusch’s characters are, without hesitation, the main focus of each film and frame. They are characters which we are so quick to fall for, despite their leading flaws. That characterization aids deadpan humor (a personal favorite) as the primary entertainment elements.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Mystery Train also presents the realities of travel, shown through three varying tourist scenarios in which the people change but the location does not. This foray into color cinematography was tightly controlled and ultimately not in vain. Here, the details -- pieces of clothing, specific locations, and music -- become their own characters. Jarmusch has particular influences for each act, and there are only very small connections between each, unlike Stranger Than Paradise. Mystery Train is also an excuse for Jarmusch to create roles for each of his friends and frequent collaborators, the diversity of which only strengthens the film and hints to Jarmusch’s breadth and quality of filmmaking.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Down By Law has become my favorite of Jarmusch’s films, if not just for Tom Waits’ radio voice (which he reprises in Mystery Train). The admirable thing about Jarmusch is that his films are consistently poetic without isolating their audiences; Down By Law is undeniably the most poetic of all, as told through dialogue, frames, and tunes -- just within the first few minutes. Despite failed intentions for Down By Law and Mystery Train to be part of a Southern blues trilogy, Jarmusch offers satisfying segmentation and connection both between acts and across individual films. Roberto Benigni is perfection in his introductory American role.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">With that said, Jarmusch’s humor, characters, and focus on geography as central to his stories are only the beginning. The influences of and influences from Jarmusch are simultaneously immediate and difficult to discern, which is likely an indication of the magnitude of the influence itself. His early films as trailblazers in independent cinema remain original in comparison to even their most original successors (Mystery Train brings the more recent, more brash Pulp Fiction to mind). Jarmusch is an auteur because he is consistent, authentic, and excels in every aspect that a good film should be made of. The general mood of each film is created with the help of blues songs as links and odes to pop culture; the pacing is slow but deliberate, and therefore rarely distracting. The “not for tourists” version of stories, and portraits of American cities in their most truthful, unglamourous form, are rare in cinema but a signature of Jarmusch’s perspective. With this, it is only logical that heis able to elevate the ordinary, seemingly small moments in life that are, in actuality, the most essential.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">His films can now be added to the very few which I consider comfort films, and despite considerations of immediately rewatching these three films, I will continue onto more of Jarmusch’s work (up next: Night On Earth, Dead Man, Broken Flowers, Coffee and Cigarettes, Only Lovers Left Alive).</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08762413251168026712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2830037862988888700.post-22986019149799310642015-04-03T23:30:00.001-05:002015-04-28T18:53:35.917-05:00Letters to LA: Family, Travel, and the Year 2014<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Written January 2015</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">After 21 years, I finally made it to California.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Let me say this up front – Los Angeles, in all its self-imposed glory, is not my style. It was never meant to be, despite family and friends assuming my future in the city that houses many filmmakers and writers. The various aspects of its cultural identity have never intuitively been relatable like the qualities of my favorite cities, and there’s too much damn sun. all. the. time. It hurts to take LA down from its mainstream pedestal because its sights and people and weather gave me only me the best treatment throughout my stay.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">But I’m always up for a new place and all of the adventures that accompany it, so I made the trip for the holidays with my parents, sister, and grandmother to visit relatives – some I saw earlier this year, most that I never met, and distant in some (literal) ways.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It was my first Christmas breaking tradition by traveling away from my aunts, uncles, and cousins in Chicago, and for the first time I understood those commercial sentiments about family stress and the holidays – since my Chicago family had always been moderately sized and relatively civil. So Christmas Eve was spent in my newly adopted room, away from our thirty or so relatives; Christmas Day included mass at a mostly Filipino church, followed by an even more crowded party filled with games and the Hawiian version of “12 Days of Christmas”. It was fun, but exhausting, and I realized that my general introversion stems from both parents after my mom admitted to running away from her large family as a child in the Philippines.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Once Christmas festivities ended, my parents, sister, and grandma flew back home while I was allowed to remain in order to explore numerous aspects of the city they didn’t have time or interest for. I assumed this exploration would be undertaken alone, which I didn’t mind as I usually do adventure by myself. However, staying with family meant offers for tours and such, and in the end I had one partner in crime in my main adventures, passenger side of my last-minute, red rental car, a car seven years older but coincidentally identical to my car at home. With that I learned to navigate the 405, the 110, most of the in-betweens, and especially the parking struggles of Los Angeles residents.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">As far as sights go, I covered all the tourist necessities on a double-decker bus tour; was most inspired from the Warner Bros. Studios tour despite my aversion to big-budget filmmaking; took advantage of California winter weather at Redondo Beach and Santa Monica Pier and had a Thoreau moment while watching the sunset on Venice Beach; counted the Getty Museum’s architecture, views, and collections as a favorite; walked through major shopping streets such as Abbot Kinney and Melrose without going through the painstaking labor of actual shopping; fulfilled my <i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">500 Days of Summer</i> fanaticism by visiting Angels Point, Bradbury Building, and Grand Central Market in Downtown LA; racked up 12,000-13,000 steps between LACMA, MOCA, and the Japanese American National Museum; experienced the Rose Parade in person; and of course, hit up personal foodie spots, including In-N-Out, Little Tokyo, Groundwork Coffee, Blue Bottle Coffee, Kogi truck (the original Korean BBQ taco), and Pink’s Hot Dogs, where I waited an hour in line for chili cheese guacamole hot dogs – nothing compared to Hot Doug’s in Chicago (will any food trip ever top 6 ½ hours in line and five gourmet curated sausages?) -- but worth the visit. My favorite things about Los Angeles are the ample street art and daily rainbow sunsets.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In the beginning I had to fight for my freedom to knock all these places off my list, but eventually my elders understood my love for “gallivanting”. Gallivanting. The word of the week, of this trip, of my life. According to a simple internet search, “to go around from one place to another in the pursuit of pleasure or entertainment.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Through games, tours, and conversation, my relatives were a source of entertainment in the purest sense; until then, I had never been to so many large family gatherings in one week. Unfortunately, I’ll always be the traveler with the list, usually hoping for artistic inspiration as a result. But in the end, I remembered the main mantra of travel and of life, which is this: it is the people you are with that make the trip what it is. Family is a funny thing – the concept of blood relations included. When being introduced to my relatives for the first time, I felt slightly invasive, trying to make immediately warm connections with what were, to me, a group of strangers. But with time, they turned out to be an incredible family in their own right, hosting me in their homes in Carson and Pasadena (two great towns with their own adventures), making sure I was never hungry, asking about my life and family in Chicago, taking time out of their daily schedules to accompany me and my family around the Los Angeles area. Family is also a funny thing in the sense of being raised similarly – of course, main Filipino and American values likely coming into play – but how my aunts reminded me of my own mother in the best way and how my cousins – the cousins I always wanted as a kid but never had – could be so similar in personality and interests, I wondered: how much does coincidence have to do with it?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In the end, I also returned to the essence of travel as learned by years of Bourdain guidance: that food is at the core of any place and any people. Food was at the core of my trip to Los Angeles, with tables overflowing with lavish, home-cooked meals of Filipino, Hawaiian, and Persian origin, along with the constant sharing of secret recipes. After all the parties and food-related comments that most people with large immigrant families are used to, I turned to my cousins and asked, “Does your family ever stop telling you to eat?” The response was along the lines of, “Never, but they just want to see us happy. But when you start eating too much and it shows, they’ll start criticizing you. It’s a vicious lose-lose cycle.” That mealtime brings about culture and conversation is a continuing truth, and in the end, all the food I consumed within each home was infinitely better than any trendy food destination I could have conjured up.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">2014, if not hellish, was a year of many major changes for the world, for my family, and for myself. 2014 was largely defined by the passing of my grandfather, after which I realized his legacy of family, friends, and food as being the most essential elements to life. In truth, this trip wouldn’t have been as likely if his relatives didn’t visit Chicago for his funeral earlier in the year. So to spend the end of the year with them and learn about their lives over home-cooked meals was not only a joy, but comforting at the very least, and one way to close the year. I suppose it’s not necessarily about closeness <i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">or </i>bloodlines, but that connections are made and that in the end, there is another place in this world where I feel at home. My hope is that some day I could do the same for them or for anyone else.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">PS. I’m still a damn good traveler.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08762413251168026712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2830037862988888700.post-25703512452579058952015-04-03T23:28:00.004-05:002015-04-28T18:53:25.663-05:00Summer in St. Louis, or The Glamourless Midwest<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Written August 2014</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">So it would seem. I mean, if you want to ask an 18-year Chicago-area resident what she thinks of St. Louis after three months of living there as a summer transplant…</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">As two major Midwest metropolitan areas, the comparisons between St. Louis and Chicago are inevitable. The truth is that St. Louis is a better city than Chicago, if only by logic -- the cost of living is cheaper overall; the job market is flourishing, particularly for young hires; traffic means sitting in your car for an extra five to ten minutes; parking is never more than $5 a day unless you’re at a Cardinals game; from parks to bars, alcohol culture is relaxed across the board; food trucks are welcome and abundant; and the city is making valiant efforts to modernize the area with its CityArchRiver project and ArchGrants initiative. But like any other, St. Louis is its own city -- by no means a perfect one, but a good one, and soon to be one of the best.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">There are peculiarities -- of how a common question is where you went to high school, how one street can take you from a prosperous neighborhood to a questionable one in just a few hundred feet, and how it truly takes 20 minutes to get to any place from just about anywhere. It was only fitting, then, to spend the summer with my car, a love-hate possession but seasonal necessity that spewed freedom across the suburbs and around the city, caused multiple maintenance jobs and parking fees, and in the end -- I think -- made me an overall better driver. I suppose there’s no choice going from completely flat roads on perpendicular gridlines to those rolling river hills of Missouri. Those hills led me to about 50 food establishments, all major tourist sites, multiple summer traditions, a trip to Kansas City with a stop in Hermann on the way back, and a full-time internship that was an unbelievably worthwhile journey of its own. I wish I could be an intern forever, if not just to see a different city each year.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Among those experiences, I lived in the most luxurious apartment complex; dealt with hair frizz for probably the first time in my life thanks to the insane (yet unusually infrequent) amount of humidity; and went to my first baseball game where I began to understand the appeal. I discovered that the best places to get coffee are Blueprint, Kayak’s, and Sump, and the best places to eat are Half & Half, Seoul Taco, and Pappy’s Smokehouse -- I conditioned my body to expect the highest quality BBQ weekly. If you’re touring the city for a weekend, must-visits are Ted Drewes on Chippewa Street and the City Museum. I failed at sufficient photographic documentation, but a friend did confess that St. Louis is the new addition to her travel to-do list.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">While it may not be as natural, initially, to romanticize St. Louis the way I would romanticize a city like Chicago or London, the point is that every place has its own food and traditions, its own peculiarities, its own advantages and disadvantages of living...and after a few cities, they all seem to blend together. I’m always one to try to pinpoint a city’s identity based on history and current culture, but what truly makes a place is the people -- the company kept while there. My unbreakable independence agrees that I’ve been lucky to explore a handful of cities on my own, but I can tell you that who to see matters just as much as what to eat, where to go, and what to do. St. Louis is, ultimately, an understated city not because of the comparative size of its population, its underestimated cultural prominence, or its geographic location, but because of its continual evolution alongside the consistent humility and kindness of its residents. And without my fellow interns, co-workers, and occasional friends and family visiting from out of town, St. Louis would have been the dull city I was expecting it to be in the beginning -- especially with a suburb that translates to “Broken Heart”, in a state that sounds like the word “misery”, which is situated even further into the American Midwest than I would have ever willed to go.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Regardless of location, and as tired as I am of moving so frequently, two or more months in any one place is always enough to make me restless.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08762413251168026712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2830037862988888700.post-19382653565469451462015-04-03T23:27:00.000-05:002015-04-28T18:53:14.037-05:00Consumption vs. Creation in the Age of Social Media<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Written March 2014</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A friend recently confessed that she didn’t want to start a Twitter account because, “I already have a Facebook, a Tumblr, an Instagram...a Snapchat, and a Last.fm...and an 8tracks.” I understand, I said, because I have just as many accounts to keep track of. I check all of them at the breakfast table before class and throughout the day, measuring the busyness of each day by how far behind I fall on my Twitter feed. Even as I increase my efficiency so as to spend less than 5 minutes on social media at a time, my disenchantment with it continues to grow. Is it because I’m getting older? I’ve been in the social media game since age 10 with your classic MySpace, Xanga, and LiveJournal. At this point, I’m about to declare social bankruptcy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">While it’s true that I like to limit my consumerism and that I strive to live the James Bond minimalist life, it’s also true that I get bored easily and that my life is too mundane, yet busy and socially connected, not to take part in these various interactions. At the same time, I don’t doubt the usefulness of Facebook, or Twitter, or any other outlet. Each serves its purpose.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The main problem with all these services being integrated into our (my) daily life is that we (I) have become more comfortable (and more consumed) with passively absorbing content than striving for original creation, especially outside the virtual landscape, and it allows us to become the idle critic instead of the active artist. When the New York Times interviewed Jack White in 2012, he said, “You ask a kid, ‘What are you doing this Saturday?’ and they’ll be playing video games or watching cable, instead of building model cars or airplanes or doing something creative. Kids today never say, ‘Man, I’m really into remote-controlled steamboats.’” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I felt so guilty reading the truth. “I don’t have time or money for xyz hobby,” we all claim. But we had time for all those Netflix marathons and money to buy those random $4 apps. A few years ago, no matter how talentless I was or how often I kept my creations to myself, I was still able to say things like, “I play music”, because I did. Now, it’s more, “Well, I used to play music...I think my Instagram is pretty decent?” This has led to a new, ongoing series of existential crises. Just ask my last roommate.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Can commentary and conversation be considered forms of creation amidst our culture of sharing and retweeting? Certain websites like Tumblr, Stumbleupon, Pinterest, YouTube, and now Adizu are more obvious sources of inspiration and instruction for users to create original content. Social media channels can only thrive if someone is creating content, so you could argue that they actually encourage and facilitate more creation than consumption. We don’t all have to be activists or artists, all the time -- entertainment can exist for the sole purpose of entertainment. Sharing knowledge is usually a good thing. But I’ve read far too many articles and quotes to know that inspiration is something to be sought out and creation is something to actively work towards.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">So here I am, writing this and sharing it on a new social media forum. It’s spring break and I was planning to watch all two seasons of House of Cards. I haven’t been able to, it turns out, because I’ve also been using most of my nights to write a new screenplay (inspired by an album I've been listening to a lot! consuming!) for my Digital Filmmaking class, which started last week. Unlike all my other screenplays, I’ll actually be making this one into a short film. You know, because it’s required...for a class.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It’s a start.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08762413251168026712noreply@blogger.com0