How to hit a kick serve
Friday, May 2, 2014
Album Review
“Sunrise Over Sea”
John Butler Trio
With a satisfying blend of rock, folk, and blues, John
Butler Trio fully delivers with its debut album Sunrise Over Sea. The band has no problem evoking an earthy tone
utilizing a strong rhythmic bass, melodic acoustic guitar and creative
percussion. This album is great for listening to around a campfire or working in
the yard. In “Peaches & Cream”, an
ode to his wife and daughter, the lyrics tell a story of hope, painted vividly
by John Butler’s vocals. My personal favorite track is “What You Want” which
starts out with moving orchestral strings and reveals itself as a ballad of love
and longing. Other notable gems on the album are “Mist” and “Seeing Angels”
however, this is definitely a listen through album. The group certainly has its
own vibe, but if you’re a fan of Jack Johnson, Eric Clapton, or Mishka, be sure
to check out John Butler Trio.
My Life the Screenplay
Clay Hribar My Life the Screenplay
It had been six years since he had last saw her. Six years
ago he had strode from the house into the pouring rain outside, leaving her in
tears on the sofa. For six years he had felt her absence, stuck with his
decision and without the slightest notion of what had happened to her. It had
been six years, but now her face was in the newspaper, almost unrecognizable,
distant. His hand shook and his throat seized with the power of those six years
bending back on him. Tears fell from his face to hers.
Flash to past
The smell of spring crept through the window into the dorm.
From the window you could see the flowers, the birds, the shirtless boys
playing Frisbee and the girls with only a little more clothing watching them.
Outside it was springtime, and the world couldn’t look any fresher. On the
third floor of the dormitory adjacent to the green, stood a girl who dreamed of
becoming a writer. Peering down on the scene like a princess in her tower, she
gazed at the imagery below. She had no particular fascination with the
situation, except for the brown haired boy with biceps that was tossing the
Frisbee. She allowed herself a moment to daydream before getting back to her
desk to write her term paper. After attempting to restart the flow of words a
few times and failing, she arrived at the conclusion that she had reached a
momentary injunction and needed to go outside for a headful of fresh air. Just
for a minute she thought.
She had not put three steps between her and the door before
the Frisbee hit her in the head. She had been so preoccupied in looking
nonchalant that she had failed to notice the black disk of pain whipping
towards her.
JAWS
Shit,
I’m so sorry that looked like it hurt
FRANCINE
Oh,
no, I’m fine, barely felt it. (picks up Frisbee) Mind if I join you?
JAWS
For
sure. What’s your name?
FRANCINE
Francine
JAWS
I’m
Jaws, real name’s James, but really, everyone calls me Jaws. Even my probation
officer
FRANCINE
You’ve
been arrested?
JAWS
Maybe
once or twice
FRANCINE
Are
you saying you're a badass?
JAWS
(laughs)
Of course. My name’s fucking Jaws
Francine gives him a look
FRANCINE
Must
be.
After this first encounter, the two run into each other
around campus a few more times through mechanisms of fate. As they share more
about themselves, it is revealed that Jaws is a nefarious drug user, and
Francine, being the curious and creative type, gets roped into the lifestyle.
Getting into psychedelics, the two realize their mutual affection and begin a
physical stage in their relationship. With the drugs and the sex, the bond
between the two increases at a fantastic velocity. Feeling invincible, they
push themselves to the limit. Doing this, he energy that the dynamic duo
becomes accustomed to reaches a point of unsustainability and they seem poised
for a fall. And fall they do. After Francine learns of the death of a childhood
friend, they both decide to commemorate the death with a dive into
hallucinogens. In a state park, the two ingest a concoction of Acid, mushrooms,
ecstasy, and mescaline. Due to the loss of her friend, Francine is in a fragile
state of mind and as a result has a horrendous trip, causing her to lose her
grasp on reality. Jaws rushes her to the hospital where the doctors have to
sedate her. After the drugs leave her system, it is clear that she is not the
same. She has false memories, continually swings from energetic to depressed,
and an overall warped view of reality. For her health her parents check her
into a special house for people dealing with psychosis. Jaws attempts to help,
to love her, but eventually it is too much for him, seeing that he would need
to change his life and kick his drug habit in order to be with her.
JAWS
Francine?
(beat)
Baby?
(beat)
Francine?
FRANCINE
What?
What do you want?
JAWS
Can
we talk for a sec?
FRANCINE
Er,
um, yes. Yes we can talk. We can talk.
We can talk.
JAWS
How
are you doing today?
FRANCINE
What
are you suggesting? That I’m not fine sometimes? I’m fine.
JAWS
I was
just wondering, you know, just wanted to know how you were feeling.
FRANCINE
Like
I said, I’m sometimes fine.
Jaws brings out a book.
JAWS
Here
I got this for you, just a little something and before you ask what for, its,
um, it’s because I’m leaving soon…
Ya.
FRANCINE
I
hate you! Your not, no. Where?
JAWS
My
family is moving, and I’m going to go to Boulder to be closer to them.
FRANCINE
No
your not, I can tell your not.
JAWS
What?!
Francine, I swear, my family…
FRANCINE
NO.
no. You’re right. You’re right.
JAWS
Ah…
FRANCINE
Your
leaving. It’s ok. It’s ok.
JAWS attempts a hug. FRANCINE stops him
FRANCINE
You
are leaving. Now. You should have left already.
JAWS leaves the house.
Return to first scene with Jaws over paper. We replay the
whole scene, but when the tears drop on the paper this time, we see the whole
paper. And we see that the story is not a tragic article but is shows that
Francine has published a book. The title of the book is possibly the same title
as movie.
Monday, April 14, 2014
Sunday, April 6, 2014
Monday, March 10, 2014
Section 2 Opening
Genius By choice
To me, someone exhibits genius when
they stir up a stagnant pool of thought. Think Cubism and Picasso, Relativity
and Einstein, Apple and Steve Jobs. What each of these examples has in common
is the reevaluation of a commonly held understanding of a subject ultimately
giving way to explosive progress in their respective fields. These sterling and
novel concepts did not happen spontaneously of course. They were mulled over,
chewed on, spit out, smelled, smeared, stamped, thrown, picked up, burnt, glued
together, magnified, lubricated and, with every transmogrification,
scrutinized. And while each of these geniuses had intelligence, their
creativity is what granted them access to unclaimed territory. While the
developers of genius ideas are often intelligent, they are most certainly
creative. And, as I’ve alluded to, creativity doesn’t happen in a vacuum. There
is a process involved, and to use a food analogy, it’s like beef. Whether it
becomes a meatball, frankfurter, or burger depends on the processing of the raw
meat. In this comparison, to create a new beef product, a general knowledge of
some meat-manipulations is needed. Breaking away from the analogy, to be
creative, it is important to be knowledgeable in a specific field and also to
be aware of other paradigms of reasoning.
In Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk,
she approaches the Greco-Roman belief of people having a genius, instead of
being a genius. In her talk, she paints this idea of someone’s “genius” as being
some sort of guiding spirit. And to me, this makes sense. If you consider your
“genius” as a combination of your genetic disposition and past experiences,
than your “genius” is sort of out of your control, perhaps a separate entity
altogether. Unless you could choose what you got to experience. And you can,
for the most part, although it may be a bit trickier than you think. Bringing
in the Radiolab on choice, what difficulties could someone encounter when
deciding to try something new? In the last section of the talk, there is a psychological
experiment where people had to choose between cat posters and more
sophisticated impressionist posters. If you recall the experiment (the group
that had to describe their decision vs. the group that didn’t), it reminded me
of a very interesting facet of adolescence. The experiment, done on kids,
reminds me of myself getting dressed for school. My conversations with myself
would go something like, “I want to wear these black jeans, but how will this
be received? How would I be able to explain myself if someone asked why I was
wearing black jeans? Do I have the reputation needed in order to convincingly
wear black jeans?” The connection between the jeans and the posters is the fear
of being misperceived and potentially isolated. Even though the kids initially
wanted Impressionist posters and I wanted to wear black jeans, we would
actually talk ourselves out of it because our reasoning was simply, I like it,
or, it’s something different, which to a kid, isn’t very substantial.
While the
fear of being different from the larger collective of people is an often-experienced
feeling among humans, fear of becoming something else and losing one’s identity
may be an even stronger driving force.
This self-image, or ego, is how we interact with the world. It is how we
make decisions. Don’t think of ego as only a limiting apparatus though, because
it is also beautiful tool that streamlines the decision making process. Instead
of analyzing every decision ad infinitum, the ego can register things on an
emotional spectrum and allow one to arrive at a conclusion relatively quickly.
However, the ease in which conclusions can be reached using only emotional
reasoning can hamper a person’s chances at growth. Instead of pursuing different and possibly
uncomfortable avenues, we tend to stay on the familiar path when relying only
on emotion. Without new experiences and challenges to gather data from, the
mind can become a fairly shallow matrix of thought.
Putting it all together, looking at
old things through new lenses can expand a person’s creativity, and one way to
gain a new lens is to try on some different glasses. If you favor bifocals, try
a monocle, and then analyze their discrepancies objectively. Drifting away from
the sea of simile and toward the shore of “please stop the metaphors, its
making me sick”, holding one frame of reference over another can be detriment
to the creative process. Genius exhibits itself in no particular way, making
what can be called a work of genius fairly subjective. So experience some new things, take risks, and
expose your genius.
Friday, March 7, 2014
backwards backbone
the spine is where your emotions are
as i've heard
but i can't feel it right now
and dessert doesnt help
and yoga doesnt help
and drinking doesnt help
and lifting doesnt help
and reading doesnt help
im dissorted
head over heart
heart over spine
and thats backwards
aint it?
Interactive storytelling- The sound of Knowledge
In C.S. Lewis’s, The Magician’s
Nephew, the protagonists of the story are given magic rings that have the
ability to transport them to a number of different worlds depending on what
pond they jump into while they are in the “World in between the Woods”. To make
the story interactive, it would be easy to have the gamer decide what pond to
jump into. The intrigue is on the other side. On the other side of the ponds are other worlds, each of
which has a sort of puzzle or riddle that forces the player to
make a decision. While to the gamer the pond problems seem discrete from
previous ponds, missed opportunities and mistakes actually carry over, except
in different form. Properly, the very first pond you jump in has a bell in
it (as in the story), and you can either ring the bell or not. If you ring the
bell, every puzzle you attempt will seem incomplete or unsatisfying in its solution. If you don’t ring the bell, the solutions to the puzzle will be
satisfying, but everyone will ask you why you didn’t ring the bell, for no one
thought the bell still existed, the power of the bell, the knowledge that goes
with it, yada yada, yada. Near the end of the game, the gamer stumbles upon the
first world again. I forgot to mention, the gamer had to leave his lover in the
first world, and then was kicked out of the world, so that the driving force
for his exploration is love. So, the gamer gets all the way around to the
original pond and is faced with his last decision. Either ring the bell and
gain the power that goes with hearing the sound or ignore the bell and deal with the hankering of not hearing. In both scenarios, he gets to leave with his lover... If he just leaves with his lover, the gamer can
return to all the worlds he went to and see that his solutions turned out better
than originally thought and is celebrated as a hero with his lover. If he rings
the bell, he leaves with his lover, goes to all the worlds again and sees that his
solutions have broken down and he needs to re-fix them and also tend to his
lover. The real puzzle, the game is designed to go ad infinitum.
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