Political Animals (and a little bit of Breaking Bad)

Last summer (2012), the USA Network put out a mini-series titled Political Animals. The entire time it was originally running, I wanted to watch it, but never got around to it. It was only 6 episodes, after all.

I was wrong not to watch it. I ended up marathoning it; not because I wanted to, but because it was addicting. Sigourney Weaver was the main character, a former first lady who starts out running for President and ending up Secretary of State (sound familiar?). She divorces her husband, has two adult sons (one is gay and the other engaged), and while in office as Secretary of State decides again to run for President.

All of the things that are coming to me to talk about are spoilers, therefore I'm holding back. But. What I can say, is that as a drama, it not only surprises you and keep you on the edge of your seat, but it appeals to your emotions. The quality level was the same as Breaking Bad (which I just finished and if I may be so eloquent : ohmygod) or a netflix original (even though I have a lot of problems with Orange is the New Black, I cannot say it isn't a quality program). And the finale was everything I wanted. As with Breaking Bad (I'm going to be talking about this show a lot for the next few days), the finale found a way to tie up so many of the loose ends and give closure and you can see how this truly is the end and tries to help you do your best to find peace. That's a bit of a ramble, isn't it?

On friday morning, first period, my history teacher started talking about how politics are like reality television, if you understand the jargon. I already knew this to an extent, but after seeing this show, I understand it even further. In my last Breaking Bad comparison, the shows also both have strong female leads. And I think that was one of the things that appealed to me.

While I wasn't around or paying attention to the reactions to Political Animals when they were happening, with Breaking Bad, there were a lot of people who really hated Skyler, the wife and mother. That's actually a surprising form of misogyny which a lot of people refused to acknowledge for a long time and some still do.

Now, I loved Skyler. No one I know liked Skyler. But, when I'd ask their reasoning, they couldn't give valid reasons. A lot of it was that she was a strong woman who stood up to her husband and for some reason that made people dislike her. People have actually begun calling it the 'Skyler White Syndrome'. I just want to leave on that note. Misogyny is still widely prevalent in pop culture, which, I mean, we all know. But. It's interesting to see it in a show of such high quality and critical acclaim. Also, watch Political Animals. I guarantee you won't regret it. It's only less than six hours of your life.

'I Love My People'

It's 12:26 AM, and I still have to take a shower. I'll try to make this quick.

I make mix CDs for the people I love. I don't know if I've talked about this in the past, in depth, but I do. Mostly they're for Birthdays or Christmas, and sometimes they're because I feel like the person needs it, but sometimes it's because I feel like I need to give them something to show I care.

I'm not the best at vocalizing my feelings, at all, and writing is the only semi-coherent way  I feel that I can actually do it. Through music, it's different though. I can take someone else's words and make them my own. Throw my own emotions on top and show that I care enough to pick songs, put them in an order that I feel fits best, and then hand write out the tracklist, usually along with a short note of my utter love and devotion.

I've been doing this for, I want to say, at most five years, at least 3 and a half. I feel like I've gotten better with time. Right now, meaning, earlier today into what will probably take until tomorrow night, I'm making Emily one. I felt like I needed to after hearing this one song, 'About Sophie' by Keaton Henson. 

My friends are the some of the most important people to me on the planet. I feel like that's an obvious thing to say, but I feel it in my core. It's important for me to express me emotions for them or else I feel like I'm doing them a disservice by not telling them how absolutely amazing they are all the time. Being able to do things for people I love through a hobby I love is a luxury I wish everyone on the planet had. 

12:38. Time to shower. 

Does He Know Not To Talk About Your Dad?

Over the weekend, I fell in love with the singer-songwriter Keaton Henson. Specifically, I fell in love with his debut album from 2010, Dear.

Last year, I found a blogger (who I still religiously follow) who described one of the types of music she likes as "Men who sound like they might start crying at any moment." Henson is one of those men.

His song, 'You Don't Know How Lucky You Are' has brought me to tears on numerous occasions. This blog title is actually a lyric from the song. His music videos are what get me, though. In the music video for the previously mentioned song, the entire video is just a woman dressed as a pioneer in a field/valley holding back from crying. From one angle. Slowly panning out, so that by the end of the video, you're only out to about from her head to waist. Now, this reminds me of FOT/PHOT, which we learned about last year. For newbies, FOT stands for "Freaking Obnoxious Thing". I'm obviously paraphrasing. And PHOT is an even more obnoxious way to think about it. In the end, it's anything that is so pretentious while making no sense that it kills you inside. But. Me being me, I can pull a symbol out of anything, even if it's a stretch. 

So in the end, I love the video.

Another song of his, 'Small Hands', has an actually beautiful music video. It's an animated/claymation/puppet video (I'm not quite sure which), focusing on the story of a small forest. There's a pair of owls, a pair of rabbits, and a pair of frogs. Throughout the video, a member of each pair is killed, and then you have to watch the ones remaining live on. The rabbit is the one that gets me. The rabbits start out sleeping in their den. A fox comes in, and eats one. The rest of the video, you see the lone rabbit shivering in it's sleep and finally, it isn't in the den any longer. 

I have never felt such a close relationship to a puppet. It both puzzles me and amazes me how well the emotions were conveyed in the video. I highly recommend it. I highly recommend Keaton Henson, as well.

Refresh

On Thursday afternoon, I finished Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee. It’s a play that was written 1962 and first performed as well. And I love it.

For those of you who don’t know me, I’ve been in STAC for three years now, since Freshman Year. That year, the writers did playwriting. I fell in love. Luke gave each of us a book of plays to read, and mine were by Albee. The two scripts were The Zoo Story (1958) and The American Dream (1960). I still talk about those plays whenever plays in general come up, and this Christmas I plan on adding them to my list.

They have influenced me a lot, both as a storyteller and a thinker. The creativity and new thinking expressed in them shocked me.
Before STAC, I had never read a play. I knew that in High School I’d be reading Shakespeare, and I was ready for that, but I was very inexperienced in general about plays. I had never read one. The entire format surprised me, and made me want to try. Now, I do not fancy myself a screenwriter. I get so caught up in the visuals, the cinematography, it becomes harder for me to get across the story. I think that partly has to do with my inability to feel adequate using sub-par materials. I know, it’s picky of me in a situation I cannot afford to be picky in. But that’s what I like about plays, you know what you have as a base and you can only go up. You put a blank stage in your head, and build upon it. Movies are already so many things. Plays have layers you can physically see. I also love the live-ness of it all. I love that every time you see it, there’s something new to every performance.

This is a pitch for plays. Everyone should at least try them out. But what’s important to me, is finding what you love, and sticking with it. From what I’ve read, I love Albee. Sure, I’m willing to try new things, but I don’t plan on giving up what I already have in the process.

See you guys tomorrow.

A Blind Library: Podcasts

When you google ‘podcasts’, you get exactly 103 million results. I’ve fairly recently become very interested in podcasts. I have this romanticized view of old radio, like soap operas and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and podcasts feel like the last hope of a dying breed. People always say that today’s generation and daily life requires a shorter attention span, but podcasts challenge that. People will sit down and listen, if it’s something worth listening to for them.

I didn’t think I would enjoy this medium when I first fell into it. The only podcasts I had ever listened to were opinion pieces done by youtubers whom I was already used to enjoying visually as well as audibly, and interviews done with the talented and famous, which I personally think watching an interview is much more interesting than listening to one. But.

That was before.

The reason I started this new medium of podcasts was because I found out about this ‘fantasy’ storytelling/news broadcast, Welcome to Night Vale. Every time I try to explain Night Vale correctly, I never end up doing it justice. Night Vale is a small town in the Southwest deserts of America. Welcome to Night Vale is never what you expect. It’s supernatural while being rooted in fact. It’s ironic because that fact is fact in the story, not to you. Someone in Night Vale saying “There’s an army preparing for war against our small desert town with a hole leading down to their underground city under Lane 8 at the bowling alley” while being completely serious about it is completely unheard of for us. The fact that sometimes statements like this turn out to be true blows us out of the water even further. It’s all told through the voice of the community broadcaster, Cecil Baldwin. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

But I found out about Night Vale a month or two ago, so I think I should talk about the new one I’ve come across. It’s called All the Faces of the Moon by Mike Daisy. In the city, currently, Mike Daisy is performing a new monologue every night at seven p.m. until October 3rd (when I found out about it at first, I just wanted to go to a performance. Now I want everything). It’s going to conclude with there having been 29 separate monologues performed. Each monologue is performed minimalistically, using only a desk and a chair. Mike doesn’t really move. There is also a different oil painting present every night to go with each monologue, the artist being Larissa Tokmakova. He is telling stories of his life, which is now having him referred to as “the modern day Scheherazade”.

I actually love the story of Scheherazade. For those of you who don’t know, the story goes that there was this Prince in Persia who would marry a virgin every night and have them beheaded the next morning, after his first wife was unfaithful. One night, he took Scheherazade as his bride. But, in a tactical trick to save her life, she told him a story so wonderful that had such a cliffhanger that he had to keep her alive another night. After she’d finish one the next night, she’d start another and the cycle would continue. After 1,001 nights, and 1,000 stories, she told him she had no more stories. They were together for so long that they had children, and after so long, he had grown to love her. She is the speaker of the classic One Thousand and One Nights, alternatively titled Arabian Nights. I learned the story after reading a poem with ‘Scheherazade’ as the title, and I was interested.

But back to the podcast. The point is, All the Faces of the Moon, named because over the month every night a different face of the moon will show, is being uploaded every night after it is performed onto iTunes under the album name ‘All Stories are Fiction’. I’ve only gotten through one full episode so far, not counting the preface, because the episodes are thick intellectually and require you to pay attention, as well as being around an hour and a half long as opposed to about 20-30 minutes of Night Vale, usually separated around minute 15 or 20 by a song. I’m really excited to listen to all of them, though. I’m hooked. If anyone has any more suggestions for new podcasts, I’m totally open.   

I Overdid It, Didn't I?

Them Heavy People
The first few times I watched and listened to the song, it felt so disconnected to me. The video meant something completely different than the song. At first, for me the song was about learning something from those less fortunate. After listening to and watching it more than a couple times, I’ve come to a conclusion slightly different, but that slight makes all the difference. Now it feels like it’s about someone teaching you to be yourself and come out of your shell, in order for you to teach it to someone else, a constant “rolling the ball” of responsibility to help people.

My Verse:
my cage has cracked and I’m awake
instead of sleeping in all day
I was meant to scream out loud
not inside my pillow clouds
I don’t care for what I’ve done
living alive is much more fun

I know it’s pretty basic, but I am not one for writing lyrics. I’m very free-verse. Anyways, it’s all about being learning to live, really live, instead of just breathing and going along, just making it by.

Let's Be Alone Together

As I'm writing this, I'm coming home from a concert at the Barclays Center. I'm going to post the proper blog homework tomorrow, but something quick just came to mind that I wanted to share.
I'm excited. I'm really excited for this year. What is fueling this excitement is the fact that we have so many Newbies that have never been on a STAC trip. I get a strange feeling whenever I think about it. Usually, it's worry. The fact that we have so many people unversed in how we do things usually freaks me out, as well as that since we have almost an equal amount of Newbies to Oldies, I know that I probably won't get to hang out with all my friends on the next trip seeing as we'll probably get split up. But being in Brooklyn, so close to the city, made me much more confident in whatever may happen. STAC trips are one of the best things about the program, in my opinion, and I don't feel scared anymore about taking one. In fact, I want one as soon as possible. I want to feel the energy that goes along with these trips as soon as possible. I want the comradery, I want the friendship. I want a lot of things. I'm excited.

"I Need An Adult"

Over the summer, I have grown to strongly dislike the last post I’ve made on this blog. Since then, I’ve made three other drafted posts that I never posted mostly because they were all so strong. One was a pretty depressing look back on the past year, one was a crib notes on me for newbies, and one was about my expectations for the year. I’m going to try to summarize all of them now, as positively as I can, and only part of wanting to do this is to put off finishing my English essay. Let’s go.

Last year I was a depressing little brat who didn’t get a lot done and felt really bad about it. Done.

I suppose the most important thing that newbies need to know about me is that I don’t take bull and show my love through hitting my friends upside the head and using a lot of pet names. Some of them don’t sound very nice but I’m already kinda overemotional so I need to cut back in some places. I love the people around me and this program even very deeply and am loyal to the end.

I think that’s enough.

As an upper classman, this year I want to seriously take charge in making us as a unit more tight-knit and trusting of one another. I don’t want a repeat of last year (I doubt anyone does) and I am more that seriously willing to make a change. While I don’t want to put Luke in a position where he has to be a Nazi dictator, I want the upper classman to support him and if we have any problems then to try to discuss them dispute-free and privately instead of making them a public problem. I made all of my personal problems very personal last year and it’s never a good idea. I want this to be a respectful community of intelligent people who can handle things maturely. I want to lead by example and be a better person. Now, for my personal artistic growth in STAC.

I was talking to Ellen and she was saying that when an type five (enneagram talk) is unhealthy, they act like a seven. While I’m still pretty sure that five is my wing and not my dominant feature, I know that I’m not being myself, and while I want to fix it I’m also willing to try out the new skin first. I’m willing to try almost anything. While I love writing, I feel like I need a break. I’d be willing to spend more time on art or even (eek!) acting. I took quite a few pictures (150+) on a trip I took with Emily that I mildly obsessed over editing-wise on this fabulous app from Hipstamatic called ‘oggl’ that I highly recommend. Basically, I’m open to suggestions for this year.

Now, I’ve started thinking about the future. As my friends know, from the experience of me squeaking and squealing every time the subject is brought up, the future scares me. I’ve looked into colleges that I’m really set on, the only downside being they’re far away and, as college tends to be, expensive. Setting that aside for the moment, it’s important to say that the things I want to do with my life are rather varied. I know I’d love to take classes on European History and try out Slam Poetry and Performance Art, but professions are iffy for me. I’d love to write, definitely. Stageplays or screenplays or poetry or short-form word art, I’m open. But I’m scared. I really am. I think I’d also like to go into Social Work, which really interests me and my favorite poet is a Social Worker, but I’m worried I’d be “selling out” as an artist if I were to go down that road.

Even further down that road, despite the foggier it gets, I know I want to adopt or at least foster inner-city kids over the age of eight up to kids in their teen years, almost legal. I want to be able to give these kids chances, and I have since I was five years old. Because of this, I worry I won’t make enough money to financially support these kids, which goes back to professions which STRESS ME OUT. I don’t even put a spouse into the equation because while I’m set that I will get hitched, I’m not about to expect their professions or anything and don’t want them to shoulder all the work. I try to do as much as I can in these situations. Mostly out of guilt.

I’m getting too personal again. Oh well. Luke, I look forward to a comment about my inevitable accidental self-centeredness which I enjoy in a masochistic way tomorrow. Everyone else, I love you, and let’s make this a great year.