necessity is the mother of invention. lack of necessity is the mother of self-invented struggle.

"I hate people." hell, if there's one phrase i can't stand over any other, it'd have to be that one. i hate when people don't think. when things just pour out of their mouths, unfiltered. they let all the trash spew out without monitoring it. and all that trash falls right onto my feet. really, though, how can you hate all people? i know that's not what you mean when you say it; again, that's just your pent-up frustration with life exploding out with mostly trash thrown in. you hate the things that people want you to feel and think. you're so fed-up with conformity but something is holding you back. you're a hopeless cynic yet you chose to conform to what society wants you to believe. sometimes i think you do it just for the thrill of the anger.

i was talking indirectly to holden there, by the way. indirectly because he's a character only. however i'm finding uncanny similarities between him and the personalities i see floating around the halls of our school. the attitude that you face everything with, you come face-to-face with your superiors with a look of contempt, "rebellion", without a chance all you offer the world in your adolescence is immediate anger. i really can't stand it when people don't think. when as a teenager you rush into your challenges - or "challenges" - with no preparation, or even contemplation as to what lays ahead of you.

i came into the catcher in the rye like any other adolescent would. i accepted it at face-value, taking holden for what he was, as an endearing and immediately likable and accessible character, at least to the reader. i felt that way after i finished the book, too. partly because i don't think about book when i finish them because i'm afraid i'll never come up with any good ideas, and partly because i just wasn't thinking at all, about anything. i don't think i wanted to see anything deeper and potentially dislikable in holden's character by analyzing his personality any further.

but now, as i'm required to write this post, the inevitable horror has occurred, and i am thoroughly pissed off at holden. (only at the first portion of the book, though. by the end the burden of vexation had lightened, if only very slightly.) it's a habit of his to complain, primarily about his discontent with people and the way the world works. of course it's understandable and very common to have grudges or annoyance against others, but as you progress in the story there seems to be no end to his worldly criticism, most of which he could have easily kept quiet. if he had actually thought about other people's lives, i think maybe the complaining would lessen. this has been suggested to everyone who has ever complained about another individual, and from experience we all know it's harder than it seems.

but what i find interesting is holden's reluctance to tell his story in the very beginning of the book, and his immediate negative attitude towards his audience. "...in the first place, that stuff bores me... i'm not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything." i find it interesting that the things he does choose to tell us about are his complaints. i can imagine that if holden were a real person, the composition of this story would be a delightfully liberating cathartic experience. and that's the theme i get from all these coming of age books - what it all boils down to is complaint. rebellion's built upon complaints, discontents with the world, nothing going "your way". is it really all necessary?

are some of holden's complaints about the world really just things he invented in his own mind as excuses to rebel? is he making up society's expectations just to have something to rebel against, when really society doesn't expect that much of him? he doesn't realize it, but even that hunt for a rebellion excuse is a way of conforming to society - it's expected for young'uns to rebel. he wouldn't feel mature without that "struggle".

maybe i'm minimizing the challenges that holden has to face. but it's hard to have perspective on holden's annoyances when the entire story is filled with them...you can't compare one to another. i'm just assuming here, but some of the things that bother holden seem so unreasonable, irrational that i can't help getting the impression that he's exaggerating.

at the heart of the coming of age experience there is essentially one huge, enormous, godzilla-like struggle that dominates all, the all branch off of. it's the desire, the need, to be understood and accepted as how you are. we need pity, we need sympathy for our own personal struggles, ones that we are convinced no one will understand. when no one offers us that kind of understanding, we look for things that will give us a pitiable sheen to ourselves. sometimes, like in holden's case, we invent our own struggles in our desperate search for kindness, artificial challenges in hopes that we'll get some compassion.

it took me a while to realize exactly how holden changed by the end of the book. he kept his rants, his friendly and familiar tone. but by the end i think he found out that his complaints were utterly fruitless, and that he was purposely seeking out people's faults to make people feel sorry for him. if not that, he was just judging them too harshly, looking for ways to rebel against the people he was close with.

in the end, i thought that the catcher in the rye had a fairly satisfying conclusion. this was when i wasn't thinking, before i really looked into holden's character as a complex mass of passion. but i feel even more so now that by the end of the story holden grew and matured as a character. it was holden against the world, when really the world had given him nothing to complain about.

Sleep Tight, Ya Morons!...revised and revisited.

Sorry about that last post, guys. I was doing what I usually resort to when I'm frustrated with writing... limitless rants that often merge into anarchist, anti-authoritative speeches. I realized this was unacceptable under educational standards. Right now I'll make an attempt at gathering my ideas and presenting them like prissy, rich people bouquets. In the good way, of course.

What I did come to at the conclusion of the previous post was that the topic of coming of age is horrendously difficult, if not impossible, to write about or represent in another other medium without coming off as generalizational (real word? somebody spot me on this one) or corny without offending someone or minimizing the experience of maturity. Because it's the kind of issue that every person thats ever been born has faced, or is going to face, or is facing, yet is different for everyone, makes it hard to express in something that will be mentally consumed by the public.

I've realized that the reason why I admire JD Salinger's writing style and storytelling skills so much is that he can pull of the teenage life story very well in an honest way that doesn't make the reader feel uncomfortable, bored or confused. In fact, it's the perfect coming of age story. The endearing hero, Holden Caulfield, is an easily distracted and hopelessly cynical sixteen-year old who is kicked out of his boarding school and then goes to New York.

Holden is such an interesting character yet I'm finding it incredibly hard to find things to say about him. Like me, he goes on rants in the middle of talking about something else. I can connect to him in lots of ways, yet there's no meaningful conclusion I can come to.

I realize that it takes a true artist and a helluva lot of thinking to create a piece on the coming of age experience without "trying to hard" and inevitably failing. True artists like JD Salinger, Harper Lee and SE Hinton, who have written some of the most heartbreaking coming of age stories, ones that are so impossibly good that I can't wrap my mind around the fact that they were produced by humans, not created by some god. Well, that might be exaggerating a bit.

The essence of coming of age is rebellion, formless actions and personalities, independence and freedom. How can those things be conformed into a rectangle of writing without becoming paradoxical? I'm too unseasoned a writer to possess the art of writing about a topic this free without ruining its philosophies and lessons.

Holden Caulfield's personality is unfamiliar to me. He's passionate, silly, and deeply opinionated, and doesn't glamourize his life story, nor does he dumb it down. He tells it as it is, or maybe a little skewed with some of his opinions of all those morons and phonies. But even his style of talking shows the essence of maturity - he doesn't conform to the formal dialogue and actions of the people around him.

Well, this is turning out to be another failed post. What I'm trying to get through with these disconnected paragraphs is that Holden Caulfield is the personification of coming of age because he tells it like it is. JD Salinger captured the quirks of that period of life through an imperfect but friendly character, who makes us see the truth of teenage life.

Sleep Tight, Ya Morons!

before you read... theres grammar mistakes in this entry, there's also some things you may not understand because they are unpolished gems from the mind of a futterman, and i ramble, but please give it a try and try to see what i mean. it's not a four-paragraph thing, and it's not a thousand pages long, but i think i made my point, if you can pick it out of the mess.

what am i thinking about from the catcher in the rye? i love the book, thats obvious, but how the hell am i supposed to write a decent entry about it when its main character is an easily distracted little person who goes off on long,. drawn out monologues generously seasoned with goddamn's and phonies? where is there to go? i just read and follow the story as its told, and maybe here and there there's some bits of wisdom sprouting, but my mental capacity's too small to come up with anything deep concerning the coming of age experience of holden caulfield. maybe someone would say the moment he left pencey, his private school, before he was told, was the moment he transformed into an adult. i hardly thik this is evidence, as the kid was kicked out for his bad grades and had just spent the night complaining about his roommates. but wait...maybe thats it! ok, so holden spends the very first part of the book talking to stuffy teachers and whining about his school life, but the minute he leaves, he complains more...ok, so thats not it either. maybe coming of age is realizing that you can still complain and by cynical and act like a child while maintaining your maturity. everybody wants holden to be this big man who gets good grades, and people look down on him because he goes on mindless rants that actually aren't mindless, and they're all so condescending because they wont give him drinks at bars and he knows vain men who spend their time horsing around with no-g00d girls and combing their hair in mirrors, and everyone just tells him to be like them, but maybe their views of adulthood are all wrong! maybe that's the reason why holden's so cynical, because everything is just operating incorrectly and he doesn't even know it! its just instincts! and when he calls people morons, it's not because he thinks they're stupid, but maybe because he has this internal mechanism that tells him that everyone who misunderstands him is wrong, and he just uses the only vocabulary he knows, which is heavily dosed with "morons. "

i cant do this. i cannot come to a logical, deep conclusion. what do people expect from me! i'm not freud, or any of those other guys with high iq's, right? when i try so hard to create a good piece of writing that will get me a decent grade all i get is this, some lame excuse for a "thoughtful" entry. how can i write about holden when he doesn't want to be written about? how can i write about rebellion and coming of age when they just want to be left alone to fester in the stomachs of youth? how can i compress it into a rectangle when all it wants to do is be a formless mess on the floor? JD Salinger ended up a recluse and wouldnt let them make a movie based on the book. The Catcher in The Rye was instantly popular but did he care? does holden care? Do rebels need to be publicized in glamour shots and gushing reviews?

so this, i believe, is the philosophy of holden caulfield, and salinger, and everyone who comes of age... it's not something that should be glamourized. holden's rants are seamless and formless and go in different directions, but he is the true image of the coming of age experience. what i'm trying to say is that the only true way you can capture rebellion in a novel is to make it squishy... passionate... long and drawn our with maybe a few or more hints of madness thrown in.

Rex Reese as Peer Pressure.

Rex Reese is the boy at the party with the hair over his ears and in his face who doesn't look particularly sober. Rex Reese is the boy who drunkenly drives his car into a lake, escapes, but leaves his girlfriend in it to sink to her death. Rex Reese is the boy who eyes girls maliciously and blows smoke in others' mouths for fun. Rex Reese is the boy who makes us all believe that it's ok to do things you're not supposed to. He's the boy who said it was ok for Calliope and the Obscure Object and Jerome and him to go deep into the woods to "party". Who lit up Calliope's first joint and drove her to losing her virginity with a boy she didn't like "in that way". There's a Rex Reese at every high school, lingering in the corners of hallways and at the backs of classrooms. A Rex Reese comes to every house party and gets everybody worked up. There's a strong dose of influence that Rex Reese administers to all who cross his path, influence that makes us lightheaded and giddy and guilty when we come to.

We do forbidden things because some anonymous (or many times not) force tells us that it's ok, that one time won't hurt you, that it's no big deal, just go ahead because everyone else is doing it. I don't believe in peer pressure. In the end it all just boils down to you making your own decisions, and those decisions are based on a large number of factors - not only friends. But I do believe in the Rex Reese present in all situations. The lingering spirit that doesn't outright tell you to go ahead and do it, but has just been doing it all along itself that you must be sure it's ok. The spirit that makes you passionate and jealous and hungry for vengeance. That sly young creature that woos the one you love and draws you in with tactics that you barely notice until you've already done everything you're not supposed to. It's not peer pressure. In fact, it's the exact opposite. You're taunted by the subtle actions and almost unnoticeable things that the Rex Reese spirit performs, things that don't just jump upon you but snake their way gently into your life.

Calliope first discovers her "lesbianism" (if you can call it that - she's not exactly a "girl") when she encounters the new girl in her class, an unnamed redhead who goes by the alias "The Obscure Object", usually shortened to simply "The Object". Calliope hides in the shadows of her affection, admiring The Object from afar, making the occasional "risky" move, yet never venturing too far. One day at a party, The Object's brother, Jerome, brings along his friend Rex Reese, the handsome bad boy rumored to have driven his car into a lake, with his girlfriend in it. The Object is smitten with him as he makes eyes at her, and immediately Calliope picks it up and her jealousy radars start firing. Suddenly nothing is too risky. Calliope does what Rex does, trying to emulate his persona to win back The Object. One debauched night in the middle of the woods, Calliope follows the actions of Rex and The Object - smoking weed, inhaling someone else's fumes, drinking cans of beer, and eventually, in her drunkeness, lets Jerome, well, you know. It's a totally sudden shift in personality, caused in part by Rex Reese.

Now, the overprotective mothers of the world would place the blame solely on that Rex kid, the bad one who had a negative influence on the young'uns. But no, that's only the tip of the iceberg. Besides the whole aspect of willpower in people (or lack therof), there are a thousand other things we have to take into consideration about why we're driven to do the things we do. In Calliope's case, jealousy and undying affection for The Obscure Object was the biggest factor which made her do all those things. Peer pressure can take many forms, and in some cases it can't even be considered peer pressure because of its ingenious subtlety. Rex Reese's tactics were so effective and clever that he probably didn't even realize that he was doing them. It was his lack of pressure that drove Calliope crazy. It was the effortlessness with which he wooed The Object that made Calliope go crazy. Peer pressure, if it even exists, doesn't really depend on the verbal aspects, it's almost always the person who's saying them that matters. The most effective form of "peer pressure" is one that is so sneaky that it takes you over before you even notice. It's personified with actions, not words. Peer pressure takes the form of Rex Reese, the boy at the party and in the back of the classroom.

Please, Judge Me By My Cover. No Kidding.

When I was brainstorming ideas about Jeffery Eugenides' novel Middlesex, I found myself continuously straying back to the ever-popular last resort of a thesis - it's what's on the inside that counts. Yeah, this is really nice and considerate, I just feel like hugging fluffy bunnies when I hear someone say it. However - and I'm probably going to get a boatload of hater comments from you guys - this book is seriously making me change my thoughts about that theory - and yes, it is theory, not fact. Although our "inside" emotions and traits are what people try to focus on and care the most about, those "important" and "meaningful" factors of an individual's identity depend largely on outward appearance.

Take Calliope, or Cal, for instance, the main character in Middlesex. Born a hermaphrodite due to mutations on chromosomes and negative-two-generations-back incest, Calliope lives most of her young life as a girl before adopting the male sex, along with her/his new name, Cal. The first half of the book focuses on the lives of Cal's grandparents, from their inter-family romance, and then the lives of his parents, and then finally on the life of Cal himself, his transformation from one sex to another told in explicit detail. Clearly, this book focuses on the outward appearances of a person and how they affect life, so it's inevitable that that person's feelings are going to be almost completely controlled by his/her mutation. At times we forget about Cal's physical state, yet small tidbits sneak their way subtly into the text and remind just how important the middle sex actually is - Cal's doctor making a point of how she is a "beautiful, healthy girl" at birth, only reinforcing the fact that she in truth isn't; detailed descriptions of her boyish, adolescent body and frequent reminders of her "high testosterone levels"; her/his date suspecting that he is a homosexual. Without these reminders of Cal's body and mind, the story would lack the depth and discomfort that readers experience while reading it. He suffers extreme self-consciousness about his body as a teenager, especially when faced with potential sexual encounters. Those aren't really things that single-sexed humans have to worry about, but in Cal's case, his physical traits control his life. His outward appearance makes up so much of the story that you can't help but begin to believe that the outside counts more than the inside. In fact, it appears as if his hermaphroditism not only affects his view of himself and his own feelings, but the feelings and judgements of others.

Hermaphroditism seems like an nontraditional, somewhat awkward topic to write about, but Jeffery Eugenides actually made a smart choice in picking it. In a society where gender is as little thought about or pondered on as it is, Eugenides forces us to take into account our true identities that are controlled largely on our sexes. Gender in itself is to blame for countless limits and bans and unspoken rules that are placed upon our heads, yet they're molded themselves into our daily lives so seamlessly that we take little to no notice of them. Sometimes I believe that Cal's physical appearance affects so much of his daily life only because of his rare condition. I mean, it must completely consume your thoughts and subconscious when you're part of that kind of minority. But gender defines us, and it only amplifies that when you don't know if you're supposed to conform to the male or female sex. Our lives are built upon our genders - we've been brought up like girls if we're girls, so we think what girls are supposed to think. Cal has boyish thoughts, but he also mentions his feminine side reemerging through almost indiscernible actions, like a hair flip. All this is because of his double-sexed identity, and that's an outside factor.

There are some things that are so "normal" to us that we never notice them unless we look or think hard enough. We forget that those things shape our own identities, so we disregard them; make them something that we think doesn't matter or just seems wrong or silly. That's where this whole "don't judge a book by its cover" idea came in. We think that since gender is such a "small" part of our lives that it doesn't matter. What I admire so much about Jeffery Eugenides, however, is his insight to the importance of the outward appearances of people. He's completely changed by views about human identity through Middlesex, and made me see just how significant gender and a person's facade can be. I'm shaped on being a girl, and everything I do and say, down to the way I walk, is reflecting my feminism, just like Cal's often androgynous persona is a display of his being a hermaphrodite. So this is why I say, please judge me by the way I look, the way I dress, the way I act. I'm a girl, and that's the most important thing about me. So jump to conclusions, because it's only natural.

The Words and Images of Romeo and Juliet and The Genius of Baz Luhrmann.

Baz Luhrmann made an interesting choice when he transported the classic story of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to a modern setting yet kept the original language. I'm glad he stuck to the old script - reading the play has made me appreciate the beauty of Shakespeare's words so much more. I wasn't sure that it would work with a modern setting when I was first told about the movie, but walking away from it I realized that the themes of this story are still present and will always exist, and it turned out I had barely any trouble interpreting and understanding the story at all, regardless of the old-fashioned language. So was it necessary for Luhrmann to change put the story in a current setting? If I had seen this in its original state, time period and costumes intact, would I have understood it as well?

Baz Luhrmann's directing style is very distinct - you could watch two of his movies, Moulin Rouge and Romeo + Juliet, and immediately be able to identify the intense visual aspects that they have in common: fast, choppy cutting, overly-saturated colors, an overall energetic and dizzying way of presenting a story. Even without watching his film interpretation of R+J, by just reading the play you can see the importance of images, settings, and personalities and the way they add a subtle, deeper meaning to the story. Baz does something very smart by utilizing these powerful bits of the story and amplifying them by making them much more obvious to the viewer and putting a modern twist on them.

R+J is not only a play, it's a work of art - in the literal sense, too. It's not enough to just read about it, but you have to see the play to experience the subtle imagery of the two houses, the warlike allusions they sprinkle throughout the story, and just the all-powerful image of the two authoritative, violent, passionate houses. The entire story is based upon image: the beauty of Juliet, the grandeur of the lives they live, and the general basis of teenage love in this story, which "lies not in their hearts, but in their eyes". This story was written for the stage; it was written for people to look at and experience. Shakespeare's other plays seem to include this intense imagery as well: the powerful image of the African king Othello, the ghost of Hamlet's father and Ophelia's fateful beauty, the fanciful and imaginative characters of A Midsummer Night's Dream. It's all visuals.

It's pretty clear why BL wanted to put this story in present time - to make it more appealing to the masses and give a classic story a new twist. But it's the images he uses that really set this movie apart from other film interpretations. The close-ups of the Montague's cowboy boots in the very first fight scene, the "Wherefore L'Amour" sign that he shows in several scenes, the costumes that R and J wear at the party (Juliet as an angel, Romeo as a knight. Could you make it any more obvious, Baz?) He takes Shakespeare's images and uses them to create a passionate, romantic film while still sticking to not only the script, but the way that Shakespeare writes. In his little behind-the-scenes sheet, he even says "Martin and costume designer Kym Barrett drew on all sorts of imagery, giving completely different looks to the Capulets and the Montagues. The Capulets became Hispanic, adorned with very Catholic cultural icons. For the Montagues they wanted something far more Anglo; hence the "GI Joe" imagery" of the Hawaiian shirts. With such distinctly different wardrobes the two opposing gangs become easy to understand and follow". Isn't this exactly what I was talking about?

Now, I'm not going to pretend that I know much about Shakespeare. I'm not a drama student, but I'm an art student, which gives me an eye for visual details in film like color or camera angles. And Baz Luhrmann's film gave me a whole new idea and perspective on this play - that just as much as clever and beautiful writing, the story contains subtle images that make it especially intense, and BL uses those images to create a movie that is truly a work of art which both gives credit to Shakespeare's gorgeous words and includes smart, thoughtful, and modern images that symbolize thought-provoking deeper meanings throughout the story.

Standing Before Rebellion.

I didn't actually realize this at first, but my book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, has a major theme that ties perfectly into the not so long past protests in Egypt. When an unexpected guest checks in at the mental hospital, his bold and ambitious ideas soon spark a flame of rebellion and a kind of mutiny throughout almost the entire ward. Not in Egypt, I mean in my book. But our antagonist, Big Nurse, who rules over the hospital with a cold, strict eye, could certainly be compared to Egypt's past leader, Hosni Mubarak. I guess before I begin my real post I though it would be interesting to show the connections to the real world through this book, which was written almost fifty years ago.

But instead of digging deeper into the major theme of rebellion in this book, which I find a bit overused, I thought it would be more compelling to see rebellion through the eyes of a bystander, one who is caught between playing it safe and going by the rules, or standing up for their beliefs. But then again--what if they don't believe in rebellious ideas? What if they're fine with the way the system is running already?

Rebellion is an issue that you can probably see has much to many branches (and twigs off of the branches) for me to fit into one blog post. Attempting to would completely mess this up, and many of my posts have been the victim of too broad a topic. I'd like to take a walk in our main character (Chief Bromden)'s shoes for a moment.

Bromden, or "Broom" as he is called by his fellow patients, is a huge, silent "Chronic", or presumably very ill patient who also works most of the time as a janitor. When the unexpected guest, Randall McMurphy, steps into the hospital, he quickly realizes that the rules there are not for him and he's determined to crack the Big Nurse and change the way the hospital works, and in a while he has many of the other patients joining him on his quest. Bromden stands aside the whole time, staying out of the votes for cigarette distribution or television watching time. At first he doesn't see what's wrong with the ward, but then his eyes are opened up as McMurphy displays all of the horrors to the patients. Yet he still holds back. He has been labeled as an idiot and wants to keep that label and avoid trouble.

Change of subject once more--I'm studying acoustics in science class for my exit project. I learned about refraction today. Say you have two mediums-air and water. A sound wave can travel through air and into water, but the sound of it is changed as it passes from air to a much denser medium -- water. There's an imaginary line that's perpendicular to the boundary in which the two mediums meet -- the normal. Together they form an x -- the normal is the vertical, the boundary the horizontal. (Is this too confusing? Bear with me, please. I swear, it does relate to my book). As the sound wave hits the boundary at an angle, it bends towards the normal because the second medium is denser. If the first medium was denser and the second was less dense, then the sound wave would bend away from the normal.

Now, to the point. This is exactly how I feel with the issues in this book. The boundary represents the separation between the rest of the ward and Chief Bromden. The normal is exactly what it sounds like -- the strict policies of the ward that Bromden decides to live by. The sound waves are like Bromden himself. At first, Bromden's world is a dense, hard medium, and the rest of the ward is light as air. Bromden bends the sound waves towards the normal in order to contain himself and keep out of trouble. However, everybody else's sound waves are coming in and changing his medium into one so much lighter, one that can allow his waves to bend away from the normal and out into open space.

The point of all of these complex scientific analogies is really meant so I can explain that you have to believe in a rebellion in order to take part in it. That belief may be instilled by other people, and many times it is. Sometimes we get so enveloped in our corrupt worlds that we don't even realize the terrible things going on. We need a sound wave from a dense medium to break through and make us believe. It's not like you can just jump into a protest when you don't know what it's about. You need passion, information, and enlightenment.

You're probably really confused by now, what with all the wandering ideas and such, but I warned you that rebellion was much to broad a topic to be represented in one single blog post. But don't expect any more on this -- those science facts are as painful for me to write as they are for you to read.

...rosebud...

Now, I'm no film snob or anything, but I happen to love old movies. I find such a great sense of comfort in them - I like the fuzziness of the black-and-white shots of glamourous women with lace covering their porcelain faces and of stern men in thin mustaches and bowler hats. Something about old-fashioned settings and scenarios always makes me feel better after a long day.

I have my dad to thank for most of my "tidbits of culture" - from music to movies. However, I was outraged when he failed to show me what I just recently found out was widely considered the greatest movie ever made - Orson Welles' Citizen Kane. And I was doubly outraged when I found out that we've had a copy of it for a very long time and he's neglected to even put it on.

Well, this past weekend I was bedridden and miserable with the stomach flu, and I decided to finally put on the greatest movie of all time.

And from the second I saw one of the very first shots of Kane's lips muttering the word "Rosebud" and his hand dropping a snow globe, I knew this movie would be a true work of art. I was not wrong.

For its time, the style that Citizen Kane is shot in is incredibly modern, from the long-focus shots of long corridors to the silhouetted figures against a background of light that

illuminates floating dust particles to create this airy, ethereal effect. This was the movie that truly started modern filmmaking.

Every single second of this film is a masterpiece - I was continuously blown away as each scene passed. It's very rare that I feel this strongly about a film, but I do believe that Citizen Kane deserves to be called the greatest movie ever made - not only for its beauty, but for its earthquake-like effect on the world of filmmaking.

A little past halfway into the movie, however, the DVD started breaking up and freezing - ah, the dreadful curse of disk scratches has come upon us again. I was in utter despair for the rest of the day. And alas, I have not seen all of this movie.

However, there is no doubt in my mind that Citizen Kane is not an excellent, excellent movie. But sometimes I wonder if my opinion on it would have been different if I hadn't been telling myself that it was the greatest movie ever made, before I even started it. Is that causing me to twist my ideas unknowingly into something they're not? Hm.

ps...sorry about the tiny pictures. i think something's wrong with the computer.

ye olde mentor bloges.

I am one of those mean/selfish/inconsiderate interweb personalities that becomes absorbed in their own blog and only the comments they receive, meanwhile neglecting to comment on the blogs of peers. That doesn't necessarily mean I do not read other people's blogs, it just means that I am too "busy" basking in my own blog comments. Which is terrible, I know, and I feel very bad about it.

However, here are some of my favorite blogs and the links to them, in case you are a nicer person than I and can actually take the time to make someone else feel happy by commenting on their wonderful posts.

My brother Ben's blog. I find it incredibly fascinating to be able to so easily access his work when he is always so protective of it at home. I have never been able to read so much of his writing normally, and I feel like I am seeing a whole other side of him when I can read his posts. He is extremely creative in his posts and I love the poems he writes and his interesting opinions and connections with books. I feel like his blog really stands out from others because he writes about such unique things and has such a special writing style. The post that really exemplifies this creativity is one of his first posts, Mrs. Whatsit, The High Priestess. It was really interesting to read about the connections between tarot cards and A Wrinkle in Time. Fascinating. Nice work, bro.

Secondly, there is my friend Izzy's blog. And I'm not just writing this because we're close friends - Izzy writes about interesting books and topics with unexpected and thought provoking angles to them. She doesn't limit her blog to just school-related posts, however - she posts about music, movies, and other aspects of pop culture that are so interesting to read about. I look forward to reading her posts each week because she never fails to be creative with her writing. One of my favorite posts of her is called Congratulate Me..., where she talks about Alfred Hitchcock's movie Shadow of a Doubt. I personally love reading movie reviews and opinions, so this was so much fun to read. She also leaves great comments, and I thank her for that.

Then there's Pia's blog -- how could I leave this lady out? Pia never ceases to amaze me with her impossibly advanced and developed writing style and vocabulary. Her posts are marvels in themselves - it's as if a doctor or some other really smart person wrote them. But on top of all that, she writes about interesting topics and great books and with such creativity - it is clear that Pia is a very gifted writer. A great post is this one on the book Looking For Alaska by John Green, called The Great Perhaps. She gives an excellent interpretation of a wonderful book. Not much to say here - keep up the good work, Pia.

Lastly, there is a blog by a classmate that I admire so much for her bold, creative writing style. This is Audrey and her blog "My Infinite Reading Post". Besides writing about good books, Audrey always presents her readers with an entertaining, humorous, and very creative blog post that's almost casual - she doesn't overanalyze things - instead, she addresses her ideas and opinions with a voice that is unique and always a pleasure to read. One that shows so much of her unique voice is Are We Allowed to Have Co-writers? PLEASE!! Even by just reading the title of this post, you can tell that she has so much personality. I love how she lets her younger sister write part of it - it adds a whole new feeling to the post. Great blog, Audrey.

Please check these blogs out, readers, they are well worth reading.

Tom Waits and Edward Hopper

I have a weird thing where I often inform my parents about what I've blogged about, yet I prohibit them from reading my posts. When I told my father about my poem inspired by Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, instead of him immediately asking "Can I read it?", he offered me one of the thousands of music facts stored in his brain. And now I know that Tom Waits has an album called "Nighthawks at the Diner", whose album artwork is apparently inspired by the Hopper painting. I was intrigued, but my laziness kept me from immediately rushing to the computer and researching it on the Interwebs.

However, lately I've been reacquainting myself with the Tom Waits album "Rain Dogs" and having major flashbacks of the songs playing in our stuffy car while on a long trip to some far away state. Ben and I have happened to love his song "Tango 'Till They're Sore", so I guess I possess a sentimental sort of love for this singer and his husky, sandpaper voice.

I still haven't had the chance to listen to the entire album yet, but I'm intrigued. I'll listen to it this weekend and see if it resembles the painting in any way. I find this so interesting.

Inspiration Drawn From Hopper

Nighthawks

Edward Hopper

counter

i've only come here to sit

i say wearily

He passes me a cup of desperate coffee and nods

careful, don't spill

offering me a smile of faded hope and unfulfilled dreams

and we understand each other,

as he wipes the counter down.

i sometimes like to imagine

secretly

that all those empty stools were filled with the friendly folks i've never met

and that spark of flame was my girl

not his

as i stare at the two of them in silence

envy masked by the brim of a hat

cheaper than his

envy staining the counter at phillie's

cheaper than the place cross the street

but glinting with bleak pride

nonetheless.

he wipes

steady circular motions

even though there's never a stain

on the counter at phillie's

and the only sounds hitting our lonely eardrums

are the gentle squeaking of an old man's meticulous hand

and the soft giggling of my spark of flame

as he touches her hair

and i watch the fiery reflection drift

across the polished wood.

and maybe when she gets home

she'll comb out her red hair

and he'll hang his jacket on a hook

and she'll kiss his cheek

and i'll be alone

just me and the counter and the old man

trying to scrub away my impurities.

but tonight

leaning on the steady wood

underneath our hair and cheap hats

the future is wiped away with the imaginary stains

for we are all nighthawks

placing our burdens on tattered wood

staying out later that we should

and wishing that the old man

would rest his withered fingers

and let the counter get dusty.

The Persistence of Song

The Persistence of Song

by Howard Moss

Although it is not yet evening,

The secretaries have changed their frocks

As if it were time for dancing,

And locked up in the scholars' books

There is a kind of rejoicing,

There is a kind of singing

That even the dark stone canyon makes

As though all fountains were going

At once, and the color flowed from bricks

In one wild, lit upsurging.

What is the weather doing?

And who arrived on a scallop shell

With the smell of the sea this morning?

---Creating a small upheaval

High above the scaffolding

By saying, "All will be well.

There is a kind of rejoicing."

Is there a kind of rejoicing

In saying, "All will be well?"

High above the scaffolding,

Creating a small upheaval,

The smell of the sea this morning

Arrived on a scallop shell.

What was the weather doing

In one wild, lit upsurging?

At once, the color flowed from bricks

As though all fountains were going,

And even the dark stone canyon makes

Here a kind of singing,

And there a kind of rejoicing,

And locked up in the scholars' books

There is a time for dancing

When the secretaries have changed their frocks,

And though it is not yet evening,

There is the persistence of song.

I have this book that I generally turn to when nice poems are needed for miscellaneous assignments at school; Good Poems, selected and introduced by Garrison Keillor, who hosts and writes the (since cancelled) radio station The Writer's Almanac. This poem, The Persistence of Song, is one of those that I usually skip over because it's too confusing or too long and I don't have patience. However, I thought I should shed my cape of poetic ignorance and try to decipher this poem, which I later realized was totally worth it. This is one of those poems that you have to reread several times to fully grasp the meaning of it. There's some strange and complex metaphors and the writing style is deceptively simple, so it requires some extra thinking power. But after the third or fourth time reading it I saw that this was a truly beautiful poem that shouldn't be tossed aside like a stale bagel. Ms. Robbins told us to pick a poem that's changed our lives, and this poem has. On, like, so many levels, man.

First, I will observe. This poem doesn't have much to pick apart technically, because there's no rhyme scheme or real rhythm. One of things that stood out about this poem for me was the sort of rewind style of the whole thing. The first two stanzas are said and then stated again, but backwards, and almost with the exact same sentence structure and whatnot. It's almost like the author wants to reinforce the ideas of the poem, yet the poem takes on almost a totally new meaning when rewound, which is probably intentional. I also noticed that strange, unexpected metaphors are very prominent in this poem - "who arrived on a scallop shell with the smell of the sea this morning", "at once, the color flowed from bricks, as though all fountains were going". They don't seem to really belong in the poem and might confuse the reader. In fact, the entire thing seems all over the place and all weird and stuff and doesn't really make sense.

Ok, now that the boring stuff is over with, I can get to the cool stuff. In-ter-pre-tation. Ok. So what is this poem really about? It took me a couple of rereads to actually get it. The author does this wonderfully balanced thing of only putting down a few things that evoke "song" to him without sugar coating it and putting in stupid things like rabbits and dandelions. It's not what someone would usually think of as being happy and sunshiny and song-like. It's the sheer simplicity of this poem that makes it so meaningful and appealing to me. Howard Moss is saying that even in the smallest actions we do each day, like changing our dresses even if we don't need to and reading a book, there always this underlying sense of joy and hope. Howard Moss is really expressing his love for music by associating song with a feeling of rejoice. This poem is different from many others that are about music because instead of addressing the topic directly, he sort of slides it in to a poem that appears to be about something else. Hm... clever. In many ways this poem evokes a sense of extreme hope - I was enlightened by the message that it was sending. In simple actions of hope and beauty, there is always song because this poem is saying that joy is song, and song is joy.

Right, I find myself verging into that state of blog posts where it all becomes mushy and repetitive. It's been happening a lot lately. Sorry.

It's so hard to interpret a poem like this because it's all mushy and there's so much simple complexity (oxymoron) in it. I feel like those metaphors aren't meant to confuse you, but it's just that the author is trying to express his complicated emotions of happiness to us and we might not understand them. Yet by comparing these joys and small moments to music, he's making it easier for us to understand.

oh goodness, this was a terrible blog post. i'm losing steam...not using capitals...i'm so sorry, readers, but i'm falling into a pit of crappy blog posts. forgive me... this sucked. i'll rewrite it when i'm not feeling so brain dead. i didn't do justice to a poem that really means so much to me.

Just A'wonderin'...

alas, i call once again upon the bountiful world of bloggists for advice. here is my question, which all are free to answer at their own leisure.

does one "follow" their own blog? i am considering doing so merely for the gluttonous satisfaction of seeing my name come up upon the newsfeed on the virtual dashboard. but other than that, there is not a specific purpose.

i require answers! please comment.

Dissecting Comedy

I've been feeling so strange lately. It's as if my personality has migrated south for the winter and has inhabited another being. In return, my emotional immune system seems to have reacted by unearthing every trait I've tried to smother. Frustration, confusion, fatigue, extreme curiosity and desire to rebel against people and things that frustrate me. Each trait impacts one another, and although I've done my best to keep them under control, they affect my life daily and cause me to think about things differently and more deeply, which, unfortunately, ultimately leads to utter frustration and/or rebellious tendencies. Even the things I love most, like food and music, I've been psychoanalyzing to the point where they become almost totally foreign and unappealing to me. It's as if I'm molecularly deconstructing a mass-produced brownie and finding all the animal by-products and such. Suddenly I don't want to eat it anymore.

Over the span of the few months I've been labeled as an "eighth grader", I've realized that comedy is one of my true loves, and it loves me back, apparently, because some of its wit rubs off on me (occasionally) and I can apply it to my writing.

Now, reader, if you have put two and two together you'll be thinking right now that it's utterly inevitable that Annie is going to destroy her love for comedy by questioning its very existence. Well, you would be wrong there, my friends, because it's already happened.

That's right. I've been engrossed in the thick, funnies-packed object which is Steve Toltz's A Fraction of the Whole. (Yes, this is my fifth post on it.) My whole life has been revolving around comedy, from catching the occasional re-runs of Saturday Night Live episodes from 2001 or simply making mental jokes about my cat's obesity. There's a battle going on between the world of satire and my newly uncovered emotions, and the emotions are winning. I keep asking myself the same questions: What makes things amusing? Why am I laughing at this joke? What makes other people's misfortunes funny? What is comedy? Instead of wallowing in my own confusion and eventually going mad with answerless passion, a new idea sprung upon me--I would answer these questions myself, applying my obsessive inquiring to the things that actually required it. And then, what-ho! I had a blog post! Funny how these things work out so well.

So why exactly are certain jokes funny? What makes a man in an office cubicle wearing a banana suit while eating a giant hot dog amusing? Many hours of intense theorizing has brought me to a conclusion. We, as humans, have a specific agenda, whether we believe it or refuse to admit it. We are used to things happening the way they're supposed to, and when suddenly, out of the blue, something occurs that we never expected to happen, even if it's a snippet of dialogue, a joke is born. A sudden change in a world that's expertly paced produces something that we chose to take as a signal for happiness. Why does it not make us cry? Several reasons. The first, easiest, and most obvious reason is that it's human nature (for most people, at least) to want to be happy. Also, the change is usually so small (yet able to leave some impact) that after it's finished, we can go on with our lives as if nothing's happened. Some people find this little quirk in space and time amusing, yet some people don't take it so well, which is what determines sense of humor.

So why is something that's still sudden and unexpected, like a cat impaled on a street lamp, not amusing at all, except to kitten-haters? I think that the trick to good comedy is to present something that many people have similar feelings for in an unexpected way without altering it too much. In the case of the office worker in the banana suit, it is only changing one thing, which is the assumed attire of office workers. Having something so blunt and out there that it becomes too opposing to society no longer seems funny. It must be subtle, kind of like that almost-clear nail polish that you can still sort of see. It must leave a slight tint on the fingernails of the universe.

Wow. After getting out all my ideas on virtual paper, I've realized that comedy is so much more complex than many people take it to be. Sure, it comes naturally to some people, but even then, before delivery, you have to take into consideration the impact it will have on certain individuals. I even admit that A Fraction of the Whole goes a bit overboard occasionally with its wildly revolting jokes. Yet the thing that makes it for the most part consistent in its humor is the fact that it's set in such a natural environment that's tweaked only in the slightest to leave a huge comedic impact. That's the genius of humor: the ability to screw up society's ideas in the perfect way for people to actually be able to laugh at them and not cry.

My Life In A Quote

The minute I saw this quote in an outdated copy of Rolling Stone Mag, peeking out at the top of the "Random Notes" section, my heart exploded into a million pieces of grateful, fleshy confetti. Thank you, Damon Albarn (of 90's band blur, and currently Gorrilaz).

"Glee is a homogenization of everything, and ultimately will lead to emptiness."

Now, I could go on pretentiously psychoanalyzing this, or I could spend my time basking in its sheer simplicity and boldness and loveliness. I think I'll take the latter.

Now, readers, I don't mean to be one of those extreme, mainstream-television-program-haters who goes around trying to make a point about how bad Glee is, but if you're a person with a passion for good music, like me, you don't take it lightly when a preppy, make-believe glee club with pregnant teenagers and obnoxious cheerleaders sing (originally) great songs in ridiculous, suburbified harmonies. And it's aired on Fox.

Sorry, Glee, but you've destroyed the musical excellence of Beck, Parliament-Funkadelic, The Police... and you'll probably never read this post anyway. Once again, I have a newfound respect for a man whose music was already dangerously catchy. If only they had made the print a little bigger.