Zany, Zealous, Zootime Merriment

Surely there’s a verb that starts with Z that could describe my zoo-going.

My black and white photos were developed! I had a fun time paroosing the zoo even though it was very, very hot out. A lot of the animals, especially the bigger ones, were more interesting in lounging than putting on a good show and posing for me. And since I grew up near a huge city, we had this big nice zoo all through childhood and I visited it frequently. This one in my little college town wasn’t nearly as big, although it was out on some back-road area so it looked way more natural.

As I walked around the zoo, knowing I needed to take over half a roll of pictures and upset that it was so hot and the most fantastic beasts refused to move, I began to wonder. Did these animals enjoy their habitats? Would they rather be in the wild? Do they even know the difference? I’ve never been a huge rally person on rights or anything, but I do care about animals. I had been told these animals were rescued creatures, and this very well may have been true since one of the llamas we saw did have an injury on its face—perhaps it was a newcomer.

I’d like to think that these animals have it good with scheduled meals and certainly here they have employees that care about the creatures. Many of the enclosures had more than enough playthings versus the zoo back home. They’ve also got little rooms here that they can escape to during the most extreme weather. But you’ve always got to wonder, even though the enclosures are often massive, they can easily look like cages versus their natural habitat of the whole, wild wilderness.

Though I say all of this, my friends can attest to me saying “I’ll take you home, I want a tiger as a pet!” when obviously this would be a terrible idea—not only do I have no idea how to take care of a jungle cat, an apartment is no place to keep one.

The Emmys and Other Outstanding Awards

I love watching things like the Emmys and the Oscars. Watching the Emmys with Jimmy Fallon, who I love for his not always funny jokes but for the way he can always manage to laugh at himself, in the year that Lost ended, I feel like it’s a bit closer to my heart this year than usual.

But aside from the shows and movies that we love, we get to see actors, writers, producers and directors being rewarded for what they do best. The most deserving (arguably, in some cases) are called forth and pitted against one and other for the coveted awards. In a battle of the arts the victors rise and spill their hearts and souls on stage upon the acceptance of said awards. I think I enjoy these specials so much because these people that we put above all others—celebrities---are brought back down to earth for a few seconds.

The acceptance speeches are often personal, “thanks mom!” and usually obligatory, “I have to thank Twentieth Century Fox…” But just watching these people up on stage exasperated, out of breath and trembling, you have to just smile and be proud. These people have worked hard and all through the Emmys so far, everyone has stated they’re grateful for their jobs and they love the people they work with. Everyone wants to have a job that they’re happy to go to and is filled with people we love.

I bitch about the quality of programming all the time, but watching these award shows, I’m left biting my lip. I don’t agree that Modern Family is deserving of such great attention, but when Jim Parsons of The Big Bang Theory won his Emmy, I was overjoyed. You want people you like and appreciate to do well and be happy in life. I could go on for half a day about how The Big Bang Theory relates so much to my life and my nerdiness and all of my engineer/doctorial friends. I, a film major, miss science so much that I’ve decided I want to double major in science.

But right, when we watch the people climb up on stage and fight back tears, we smile. I’m happy for the people and shows that get the awards they deserve and whine when House and Lost have missed the mark. But it really just gets me when people don’t thank a mile-long list of people and they share a piece of themselves instead.

This speech from the 82^nd Academy Awards is one of the most memorable, inspiring things to me.

"Thank you, guys. When I was... I was nine and I asked my dad, "Can I have your movie camera? That old, wind-up 8mm camera that was in your drawer?" And he goes, "Sure, take it." And I took it and I started making movies with it and I started being as creative as I could, and never once in my life did my parents ever say, "What you're doing is a waste of time." Never. And I grew up, I had teachers, I had colleagues, I had people that I worked with all through my life who always told me what you're doing is not a waste of time. So that was normal to me that it was okay to do that. I know there are kids out there that don't have that support system, so if you're out there and you're listening, listen to me: If you want to be creative, get out there and do it; it's not a waste of time. Do it. Okay? Thank you. Thank you." – Michael Giacchino

I firmly believe that anyone and everyone who wants to work in entertainment should, in this day and age, be allowed to do so. If someone seriously wants a career acting and is willing to do the work, they should have someone rooting for them. If not their parents, then this guy.

What we’re aspiring to, writers, actors, aspiring authors and directors; it’s not a waste of time. Even writing here is bettering your communication skills with others and your writing ability. I wish any and all of you reading the best of luck in your endeavors.

Hands On, Cameraman

Cameras. Cameras inspire me. I like to pretend I know everything walking into a camera store, when really I know less about the technology that is cameras than I could throw one. I just like looking at them and envisioning the sharp quality the $1000 machines of metal and glass could produce.

I never took photography in high school. I took drawing and painting until they told me there weren’t anymore classes (thus I was always the youngest in each level) and then started taking digital art my senior year. I never really thought anything of photography, other than “Gee, those cameras look expensive and I don’t know how people navigate around a dark room.”

I personally have never had the feeling that all the girls in photography thought they were hot stuff, most of the photography kids I knew were actually very good with a camera and didn’t wast time taking pictures of lawn chairs and calling it art. They knew how to get the grade and what to take pictures of and truly loved the class and their talent. I know a bunch of people have this thing against photography—oh right you’re just doing this frilly camera crap, how about getting a real job? But when someone has any sort of knowledge about art, they know how to take a good photo. The rule of thirds and so on and so forth; it helps tremendously.

Then there’s just the technology itself—how the hell did someone think up a camera? And the science behind it? The light exposing the film and crystals gathering in certain areas and transferring over in the chemical bath… How did anyone stumble upon this? I have to have a camera on me at all times now that digital cameras are so inexpensive and so…everywhere. I use it to take pictures of my friends and to take pictures of art I like, pieces of furniture I think will work with my apartment, patterns that might or might not match something back home, etc. Digital cameras though, they’re the easy way out, aren’t they?

I went to my 8AM three-hour lab for one of my film classes this morning, yes I did. I don’t know how, because all my other classes start pretty much after noon…but I made it there (not on time. Because I refuse to run for a bus). Same class I talked about in my last post that’s requiring this big personal photo project. In the lab we got to play with fancy 35mm cameras. I haven’t touched one of those in…since 4^th grade. (Math, come on work for me here) Nine years. And what I remember were just the cameras that used 35mm film but auto adjusted and had flash and all that. This is a legit camera.

Also expensive. And it belongs to the school. But we get to play with them for a week before the working on the project.

When I have a camera in my hands, especially one like this, I like to make an effort to take good pictures and to try to make things look vaguely artistic. And boy, oh boy, does the camera make a difference. With this, I especially want to make that effort—given there are only 24 exposures per roll and those suckers are hard to find (and cost money, boo)! Well, black and white exposures are, and since the project’s going to be B/W I wanted to practice with it. But right, knowing this thing has the potential to take fantastic pictures just makes me want to burst out the door and play photographer in the fields and tree-y areas outside. You can only take so many pictures of the interior design before you begin to think you’re wasting film.

Besides, looking over my photo albums on the Mac, there are a very small number of pictures (taken on a digital camera) that hold any artistic value. I’d love to take a few that could be hung up—the last time I took shots that good was, again, in high school when I remember taking pictures of the butterfly garden at the museum.

This was from my trip to Cozumel the summer before last on a digital camera.

I just like art. Good art. It makes me happy and I miss the class!

Memory, My Memory, I Need You to Inspire Me

I survived the first day of classes! And I came home and baked cupcakes for a friend’s birthday on top of that! If only I’d gotten off my duff and gone to the gym this morning, then I’d feel on top of the world. Oh well.

I promise this post won’t be a boring recollection of my hourly adventures on campus. Instead I've got an assignment to share. I’ve come to learn that for one of my film classes (the particularly long one that runs from 5:00-6:30 in the evening), it’s required that the students keep a journal of their ideas. Just any ideas that come to us that pertain to projects. I’ve been told that only a few will be really reviewed and turned in, so I though to myself, why not post the thoughts here? By posting my thoughts here, it’s following the spirit of my professor who would rather see the whole class go paperless (although I really couldn’t function if I were told I couldn’t handwrite my lecture notes).

So here’s the project. Using less than 15 black and white still photographs—taken with a 35mm camera, mind you—we are to tell a story. Oh, but not just any old story. This story has to have some certain special importance to the author. The story must derive from a memory.

The first thing that comes to mind: my life is boring. I have no story from my memory to tell.

But then as lecture goes on and I’m gawking at all the supplies we’re going to have to buy for the projects for this class, a few things come to me. As a kid I fell off a horse. One of my cats died recently. I’ve shot more deer than I can remember when hunting with my dad. It took a good thirty seconds for me to realize that none of these will prove good stories, seeing as I have no access to livestock, I have no desire to attempt to train my remaining felines to lie still and play dead, and it is not deer season.

So I mull it over. I lean over and ask one of my friends why on earth we should pay $100 for a script-writing program that we’ll use once for this class. I think to myself, “You want to be a screenwriter, you’ll use it.” I still question why we have to spend $100. It isn’t until nearly an hour later that I remind myself that this is technically an art class, and they were always expensive in high school.

I think of the drama I encountered in high school and decide against it, knowing many of my fellow high school students followed me to my college. I go further back. I think of how I was in Science Olympiad for 5 years, and all the crazy-sciencey things I did. For fun. (For those who don’t know, Science Olympiad is basically science club, but instead of partaking in a science fair, we compete in certain events that encompass some math or science skill against other schools.) There were countless times when we spent hours practicing only to go to competition and fail. Tears and heartbreak. Oh what little nerds we were…but I loved it and miss it now.

I think that the Science Olympiad idea may require too much building (reconstructing old projects) or too much explanation to squeeze into 15 pictures. I go home, check the mail, my roommate cooks for me (for the first time and I’m estatic!), and I bake cupcakes. I think some more.

I think of things that scared me as a child. I remember being afraid to lock bathroom doors—really any doors—because I thought I’d get trapped inside. This happened to me in a paint-your-own-pottery place when I was in elementary. I was banging on the door and nearly in tears by the time the handle jiggled free, only to find everyone staring at me when I escaped. I think this could be an interesting story if I tweaked it and heightened the dramatics a bit.

Stuff evidently has happened in my life, I just fail to remember any of it. Perhaps it’s because I’ve got a difficulty opening up and sharing my life with others—complete strangers, really. I love art and I take pride in my work, but to rip myself open like that and lay it all out on a table for potentially a whole auditorium of strangers to see, it’s hard! Alas, this just means I'll have to spend a lot of time lying around eating the remaining cupcakes and being inspired by life. So difficult, but some how I'll manage it, just you wait and see.

Yes, I Will Judge Them By Their Covers

The other day, the last day of summer I’d spend at home before really moving into my college apartment, I was incredibly bored. Most of the day was spent worthlessly lazing around the house, and even though I think I’m rather mellow, spending a whole day in pajamas is no bueno.

So I up and went to a few bookstores once night started to settle in. I wasn’t really looking for anything in particular, there’s 10+ things on my shelf I’d like to read but I know I won’t have time to when classes start up again (tomorrow). They include Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein books, 1984, Ender’s Game, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Dorian Gray, Harry Potter 7 (which really is just there so I can reread it again before the movie comes out), City of Ashes, The Hunter’s Moon, and Wicked Lovely.

Whoo. What a list. I’ve got a stack of Marvel comics I’ve got to read as well.

But let me get back to the point. Though we are told to not judge a book by a cover, I can’t help it when I walk into a bookstore with nothing on my list of books to buy. I went into Half Price Books at dusk the other day and barely remembered while I was in there that I read a positive summary on a book called Wicked Lovely—it’s about faeries and such, which I can’t really say I’ve read anything focused solely on faeries. Let me just say, if I hadn’t read the summary, based on the cover alone, I would not have even touched this book.

It looks like one of the million of teen/supposedly YA books on the shelves of any given store. I used to be in love with YA books, but now that I’m fast approaching 20 I’m teetering between the more mature YA and “adult” books now. I like fantasy and science fiction and all of that, but when every book focuses on some girl finding this fantastic boy she thinks she’ll spend forever with…and they’re both 16, I have to resist the urge to roll my eyes with every page turn. For all of these stories to end like this…there’s a huge imbalance between reality and fiction. It’s not that I’m against what the stories are saying, it must just be that I’m growing cynical in my old age. Haha.

Although, you can tell from my list that I’ve not outgrown the YA books. Some people never do.

But moving away from YA, I wanted to share a couple covers I saw on new releases that I found intriguing. I didn’t even pick up these books and read their summaries (because we were at Barnes and Noble at this point, and I really dislike buying books at full price), but the covers spoke a thousand words on their own. Often times I feel like covers do that, and that the whole cover game is really hit or miss. I don’t know if the authors get a say on what their covers look like, especially if they’re new authors. If they do, then they know what to put on the book to symbolize the story within in. If not, then the artists chosen to do so have a heckuvalot riding on their shoulders. Because whether or not we want to admit it, we do judge books by their covers.

This one, I will say I gravitated to because of the cat. I love cats. Then I like the look of it—the text more compact and not spread across the cover in boring, proper fashion. Looking at the cover, it makes me wonder if this is a novel about some old lady’s disappearance and whether or not she’s left her twelve cats all alone at her little cottage at the end of the block… Those poor kitties… Never mind what it’s about, this book will stand out against another with a simple background picture and words in a straight line across the center.

Here’s what The Vanishing of Katharina Linden is about:

“Ten-year-old Pia, who lives in the quaint German village of Bad Münstereifel, is having an especially difficult year in school. Ever since the gruesomely freakish accident that claimed her grandmother's life, she has been unmercifully teased by her classmates. Forced to socialize with the other school outcast, StinkStefan, Pia is only able to forget her troubles when their kindly neighbor, Herr Schiller, invites them over for hot chocolate and beguiles them with ghost stories. When young girls start disappearing from their small town, many parents become hysterical, but Pia and Stefan decide to find out who has taken them.”

With this one, the letters being dark and light, all on needle-thin stands, it made me feel like something eery was waiting to creep out of its pages. The letters remind me of Coraline and how I just thought the tale was particularly creepy. Then of course the word “dead” on the cover just solidifies the uneasy feeling. From first glance I would think it was a horror or suspense story, and a lot of people actually enjoy things like that. I love films but very rarely will I agree to a horror flick. So the cover isn’t there to scare people off, but to rather tickle their senses and draw them in with assurance that something will go wrong.

Here’s the summary for Procession of the Dead:

“Moving into the city to work with his small-time gangster uncle, Capac soon finds himself at the service of the Cardinal, the leader of all the criminal gangs and the ruler of the city. Capac enjoys his new life except for a few small details, including the enigmatic blind and mute monks who have a way of appearing at significant moments in Capac's life, and the fact that he can't really remember any of his life before he came to the City. Then he meets and immediately falls in love with a young woman who is determined to dig out the Cardinal's secrets.”

What I mean to say in and among all of this mess about covers is this. A picture is worth so many unspoken words and can inspire the imagination more than mere words can. I’d like to think that the words I read are things to be taken as fact (even in a work of fiction, you have to believe what the author’s telling you), where as a picture allows you to think whatever you’d like about the work. In the case of book covers, this of course may lead you to make very wrong assumptions about a book, but that’s a chance you’ll have to take. If you judge a book by the cover and read it to find that you were wrong, perhaps that’s a sign you should write your own take on it.

Donkey Kong Country…Returns

The first time I heard news of this game was on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, of all places. I will admit I didn’t keep up with E3 that well, other than there was some stuff going on about Harry Potter and the 3DS, but those are different apes entirely (haha, see what I did there?).

When I heard them say, “we’re going to play this game” and saw the screen in the background, I was in shock! I had no idea that a worthwhile DK game was in development. I'm still moping about losing my DK64 cartigride and spent a fair amount of last summer playing the original Donkey Kong Country to make up for it.

...and I’ve had my SNES since I was probably 6 or 7, and never had I gotten to the final boss, King K. Rool in the game before. I was tickled. Really, I was just thrilled with the game overall, because it wasn’t so difficult you didn’t want to play it, and it wasn’t so easy that it was boring. What really got my attention for this game was the art and the graphics. The pre-rendered sprites and the beautiful sets blew everything else out of the water in 1994. It was design like this, colorful, imaginative and all and all just good-looking art that originally made me want a career in video games.

Of course I loved the characters as well, and the general gameplay (racing through nature and using parts of the course to advance from point A to B, like the vines and barrels) that made me keep buying Donkey Kong games. I had DK Country and Diddy Kong’s first game for the SNES, one game for the old black and white Gameboy that I’m quite fond of, and then DK64. The original was most definitely my favorite, though I liked the length and complexity of DK64 just as much.

Though the plot of these games might not have always been the best thing (DK, hire some security for your damn bananas if you must), King K. Rool was always a favorite villain. Who would have thought to put crocs up against apes? The games were heavily linked to nature and really, to a certain degree believable. Animals are territorial and are protective of their stuff, and animals fight out in the wild.

So as for this new game…



The geekiness center in my brain just explodes. How many new Zelda games have we gotten in between DK64 and this? At least a couple, right? Donkey Kong was due for a new adventure game. I didn’t even bother with DK Jungle Blast because I’m leery of buying specialized controllers, and the controls plus game just didn’t seem very fun at the time. Then Nintendo started pulling DK out of Mario Party as a playable character, so it seemed like the ape just fell off the radar for a while. Thankfully come November 21st, we’ll be reunited again.

But I’ve got a couple qualms upon watching the demonstration on Late Night. Though it’s nice and traditional, why…is this game for the Wii…a side scroller? The articles I’ve read go on and on about the entire game being rendered in 3D. Why is it I’m not able to explore in every direction, including that third dimension? Boo. Third dimensions tend to make things more interesting and far more open. Red Dead Redemption is being celebrated because of its massively open map that lets players do whatever they so choose. Zelda’s Twilight Princess was so very open. DK64 had a pretty big home world map too, if I recall correctly. Although I suppose if this game wasn’t a side scroller, a lot of that “traditional” feel would be gone. (Also I am reminded that the New Super Mario Bros. was quite a nice game and it too was a side scroller.)

The second potential issue I see is the difficulty of the controls. Maybe it’s just because Jimmy Fallon is a bad gamer or he’s just getting acclimated to the Wii that this looks like a problem. But having to stop and thrash the Wiimotes around to break a crate open or beat up on an enemy seems distracting and difficult and like another enemy could easily come up and kick your tail because you’re not moving when you’re shaking the remote. I dunno. I’ve not actually gotten to play it myself. And then again, I guess that’s what we get for it being on the Wii—the interactive gaming system. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a whole lot of point to this reboot, other than cooperative playing and better graphics, I suppose.

…one more. You took the Kremlings away? Nintendo! I shake my fist at you. Bowser’s been around for sixty trillion years. How dare you axe another beloved villain of the reptilian persuasion?

In the end, I’m sure this is going to end up on my Christmas list and that when I do get my hands on it, it will be the cause of some extreme nostalgia.

X-men: the Fate of the Future of this Franchise

X-men. I like it. But as of late, I’m wanting to tell Hollywood GTFO of it.

For the past three weeks (probably more, to be honest) I’ve been hearing “so and so has been casted as character xyz in the new X-men prequel (X-men: First Class)!” Like we’re all supposed to drop our jaws and applaud every time the casting managers do their job.

I don’t have anything against the casting managers or the actors. I’m sure they’re nice people just trying to make a living. But really, I feel like I need to be there telling them what’s what, and I don’t even know everything there is to know about everything. What I do know: a fair amount about the comic’s origin.

The movies X-men and X2 were, for probably a couple years, my absolute favorites. Bryan Singer quickly became my favorite director. I saw these films for the first time late 2005, mere months before…the atrocity….came out. My mother repeatedly told me the films would be right up my alley, but when I was a wee teenager, it was cool to not listen to your mother’s suggestions (as I did with this series and Lord of the Rings, both of which became favorites of mine).

…and here’s where this story turns to tragedy.

Looking back on it, I don’t know why I loved Cyclops and Jean Grey as much as I did, except that maybe I sympathized with him for being, in a way, blind, because I’ve had glasses since I was a kid. Maybe because he was built up as the good-guy boy scout who could never do wrong. Maybe I just liked them because they’re likeable folk. Whatever the reason, once X2 ended, I was dying for more. I read the Phoenix Saga and poured over X-men comics, reading every last detail and knowing in my head that the next X-men film would be the absolute BEST thing because it was going to cover the life and trials of Cyclops and Jean Grey.

The Last Stand sure as shit proved me wrong. Since it’s release, I’ve learned that getting excited for a seemingly good movie is often a bad idea.

I can’t even talk about X3 without getting angry and falling into a literal hour-long rant. I will spare you the pain and save that discussion for another day. I blame the change of director, and I really believe that Bryan Singer is the only person capable of tackling the universe. I wrote my college entrance essay on Singer and how I aspired to be a director like him.

So going back, it’s like the media is trying to force me to be excited about First Class. “WE GOT SO AND SO AND ITS GONNA BE GREAAAAT!” No. Please. Besides, there’s no guarantee that even if all of my favorite actors were signed on for the new X-men that it would turn out to be a good movie. Half the time Marvel doesn’t even have their shit together and their fantastic leading men fail horribly. Over and/or pre-hyping this thing to me says that the studio’s reaching.

I’m just so leery of this movie since Singer was forced out because of scheduling conflicts. The fact he’s producing is a good sign, but it just broke my heart when I heard the news of the director shift. At least if Singer was still helming the whole thing and it turned out to be crap I could blame myself for being too excited. Now I can point fingers at the new directors and the new writers who threw out Singer’s script…ahhh…. And I didn’t even like Kick-Ass and that’s the director they pick? That movie was completely devoid of the comic book spirit. Can’t they just let me direct the thing? They don’t even have to pay me. I just want it done right.

I guess we’ll just have to wait until 2011. But until it hits theaters, I'm taking the advice of the poster overhead and still wishing for Singer's return.