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.