Oscars 2013

Most Americans I know go crazy over the Superbowl.  In recent years, I have gotten intrigued by some of their halftime shows, and watching the game isn’t horrible.  But I honestly don’t care.

The Oscars, though… I love the Oscars.  I love movies and even on years where I’ve only seen one of the movies that were up for Best Picture (like this year), I’m fascinated by what the film industry has created and brought into our culture.  And it’s fun to see the stars get together and honor each other for their hard work.

Because of other obligations, I missed the first half of the show, but thanks to Hulu, I was able to go back and see everything from the beginning.  There’s a lot to talk about, but the first, the elephant in the room: Seth MacFarlane.

I thought he was an odd choice to host the awards.  He’s very talented and very funny, but the only thing I’ve seen him host before was SNL—and let’s face it, the bar for SNL is “average.”  That, and he is not tame.  Eleven seasons of Family Guy, plus his other two animated shows and his raunchy comedy, Ted, was anybody surprised at what he did Sunday night?

Everybody he was going to offend he offended within the first ten minutes, starting with the “We Saw Your Boobs” number.  Considering how classy the Oscars are supposed to be, it really didn’t fit.  Did I laugh?  Yes.  I’m not proud of it, but yes.  But, come on, these women agreed to show them for past projects, why are they shocked that that would come back to bite them in the butt later?  Except for Jennifer Lawrence.  She’s practically the only grown Oscar nominee who’s never shown them and she looked victorious when MacFarlane pointed it out.

He’ll never be asked to host again.  Still, though not the best Oscars, it sure wasn’t the worst.  It was a great night for music, and I will give a lot of the credit to MacFarlane for that.  This guy knows how music works and he’s not a bad singer himself.  His closing number with Kristin Chenowith, "Here's to the Losers," was the cutest thing I listened to that night.

Channing Tatum and Charlize Theron’s looked great dancing on stage, and I had no idea Daniel Radcliffe was so light on his feet.

Both of the Bond songs were perfect.  The Les Miserables cast did not give their strongest show, but it was still nice to see everybody together performing what may be the best moment in their professional careers.

On the awards themselves, I thought Anne Hathaway’s acceptance speech was very sweet; the part at the end with the hope of having no Fantine’s left in the world was touching.

This sounds horrible, but my favorite moment was when Jennifer Lawrence tripped going up the stairs, because it’s something that I would do.  I thought she handled that mishap with grace and she was super cute the whole way through.  I don’t have nearly the crush on her that other men I know do, but she is a very pretty woman and seems as down-to-earth as can be.

I was very happy that Paperman won the Animated Short award.  That little film may be my favorite thing that came out last year.

Now that the awards are over, I’m thinking I might actually have to watch the rest of these movies.  We’ll see how quick I get on that.

How They Croaked

For any concerned, last I heard, the man I talked about last post is doing fine.

                    ***

One of the best things about Children’s Literature is the sheer variety of subjects you can find in there.  Nowhere else have I been able to find a title like How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous.

Yes, this is a children’s book.  And it is awesome.

It follows the lives of famous people throughout history, from King Tut to Julius Caesar to Henry VIII to George Washington and onward.  No horrible detail goes unmentioned, be it the guts exploding to pus filling the inside of the mouth and throat.  And the little factoids after each chapter are as much fun to read as the biographies of these people.

Did you know that caesarean section was named after Julius Caesar?  Or that the month of July is named after him as well?

Now, I usually don’t care about historical accuracy in my entertainment, as long as the moviemakers or novelists know their craft to still be interesting.  But you know, Cleopatra is the subject of many an awful movie, to the point where I’ve despised her for years.  That’s so unfair, because her life is so much cooler than the films ever do for her and her and Marc Antony’s deaths are much more ironic and intense than I’d given it credit for.

She didn’t get killed by a snake.  She dipped poison onto a hair clip and jabbed herself with it.

And poor Pocahontas.  Disney has done a huge injustice to that woman’s life.  From childhood, she worked hard for peace, only to be kidnapped, forced into a bad marriage, surrounded by greed, exiled and cast aside when she died at age 21.  Today, the popular image is of a princess with several grand romances.  Truth is, she was the most abandoned and terrified child the bulk of her life.

You know what’s funny about her, though?  Pocahontas actually means “spoiled brat.”  Great name for a role model.

What Happened Last Night

For those who aren’t Latter-day Saints, I have to explain “home teaching.”  In my church, the men’s organizations, or priesthood quorums, assign the men a certain number of families (on average, three to five) for monthly visits.  The purpose is to share some spiritual message (it does not have to be long at all; in fact, I try to keep it brief and not overstay my welcome) and to see if there’s anything that they need help with.

Last year, my roommate and I were assigned one particular woman with many struggles but among the sweetest people I know.  Because of move-ins and move-outs, I was reassigned to home teach other people, but my roommate has remained her teacher, as he has for several years now.

So now, the story: I had another Monday off both school and work and I was taking great advantage of it.  Last night, my evening consisted of movies I was finally getting around to seeing.  One was a black-and-white …And Then There Were None (not a great ending) and The Outsiders.  I really enjoyed The Outsiders.  My sister has been trying to get me to read the book by S.E. Hinton and I’ve consistently ignored her in favor of other books.  Watching the movie felt like a good compromise.  I mean, considering how big the book is and who got killed in the movie, I’m fairly certain that the film is a good adaptation.

The film ends with somebody being gunned down, and it was a really shocking but inevitable moment.  It made the hero of the story really shine by the end of it because I believed that he could rise above that crummy neighborhood he was in.

A minute after I hit the credits, I went downstairs for a drink of water.  I was about to go back upstairs and get ready for bed when another roommate asked if I was going to go see this woman I used to teach.  “I don’t know.  What’s up?”

“Her brother’s been shot.”

My first thought was that I had just seen this movie.  My next reaction was to get my socks and shoes on.  I rode out with a small group to see her and her family at the emergency center of the hospital.  We got the story bit by bit, although the details are still sparse for me.  All I know for sure is that he was hit twice in the leg, very near the groin area.  We finally got word that he had to stay at the hospital for three days but he seemed to be stable for then.

Two things stand out to me about last evening: the first is the prayer.  It has been a long while since I’ve participated in a prayer in a public place, although if ever there was an occasion for one, that was it.

The other is how useless I felt.  I don’t wonder about why bad things happen to good people, nor do I wonder about why we feel pain.  But I never know what to say to somebody who’s hurting.  I have to rely on others for that one.

The words I do have, though, are for the one who fired the gun, and for all those who intend harm against the innocents: They who live by the sword die by the sword.  That’s the world they choose to live in.  I would hope they choose to relinquish their weapons and run away from that life before it swallows them whole.  As much as the innocents suffer, they’re the ones who will pay the heaviest price.

A Taste of What's to Come

It’s frustrating to talk about court reporting with anybody else in the world.  And I empathize.  Until last year, I didn’t even know it was a career.  I had gotten back from my mission, I’d been living with my parents for about a month, and one day when I was going grocery shopping with my mom, when she said, “Here’s a career you should consider.”

“What’s that?”

“Court reporting.”

I can imagine the blank look on my face.  “What’s that?”

For the next ten minutes walking around Walmart, she told everything that she knew about it (and ten minutes worth is probably all she knew) and had me to talk to a family friend about it.  The job sounded unusual enough to be enjoyable, so even though it took me several months to commit, I knew right then that this was what I was going to do.

So I moved, got into school, and ever since then when people I meet ask what I’m doing, I tell say court reporting, and witness the same blank look I must have had.  “What’s that?”

So here’s my answer to the world.  You know in courtrooms how there’s some guy or gal typing away at a machine recording everything?  That’s gonna be me.

“Oh.” Long pause.  “People get paid for that?”

Actually, I don’t run into this question a lot.  I’m surrounded by very supportive friends who, even though they don’t entirely get what I’m doing, at least recognize that I’m having a good time and it does provide a service.  But I have met a couple people and I know classmates and my teachers have had their fights with folks who believe that court reporting is going to be obsolete.

After all, we live in the technological age.  When we can videotape and audio record everything that’s said, why will our legal system need to rely on court reporters that are prone to human error and frankly, cost more?  Don’t you know we’re in a recession?

I’m going to save my response to that for a future blog.  It suffices me to say that they don’t know what they’re talking about.  Court reporters aren’t being replaced by technology, they are using the technology to improve their craft.  Court reporters are actually making themselves more valuable, but as I say, I’m saving that for a future post.

The question that I get asked all the time, which is natural but it’s so annoying, and it’s annoying because it’s so natural: “How much longer do you have in school?”

My answer is just as annoying and confusing to them: “I don’t know.”

What do you mean you don’t know?

No matter how often I explain it, few ever quite grasp that this is not a normal school.  Certainly not the type of school any of the rest of them are going to.  In America, we have a very rigid educational system; you have semesters or trimesters with homework, and midterms, and finals.  You have a structure of classes to gain your diploma or degree.  You have grades.

None of that happens.  There are no “real” grades.  There are things that we have to learn and tests to pass, but there are no tests.  I haven’t ever had a lecture.  There’s no group work.  “Class” is really just scheduled practice time.  Really, the program is little more than a block for individual practice, kind of like playing the piano without the noise.

But I’ll also have to can of worms this for a future post.  It might even take two posts.  I mostly just wanted to bring up questions that I’m faced with and let you know now what’s coming up in the near future.  I haven’t done much of anything about my program in the nearly seven months I’ve been in there.  If this interests you, look forward.  If not, you’ll be aware of which posts you want to skip.

A Dance with Dragons

I finally finished A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin.  So now I’m in the same boat as everybody else in waiting for the next installment to come in, assuming it gets here before Martin himself dies and leaves us all hanging.

This book was a step up from the last one.  A Feast of Crows had good character arcs for Jaime, Cersei and Brienne, but the plot was rough.  I still can’t really tell you what the core of that novel was.

A Dance with Dragons, on the other hand, has two very distinct, powerful threads.  The first is Deanerys trying to abolish slavery and bring peace to the city she’s conquered.  The second is at the Wall, where in order to battle the greater evil, Jon Snow attempts to unify his army and the wildlings, who have been at war with each other for the first three books.  The book is about the internal and external oppositions they face, the beauty of their plans, their bold moves, and ultimately, how they fail to accomplish their ends.

Daenerys fails because even though it was noble of her to bring peace and abolish slavery, it was not where she belonged.  She has another responsibility, to reclaim a kingdom that has been torn apart and must be unified, and even though abolishing slavery is a virtue, she was in the wrong place.  And she pays for that misstep.

Jon fails for another reason.  He is absolutely right in every decision he makes.  He knows his duty and he follows through even knowing danger is on every side.  His only mistake is not paying attention to Mellisandre, the red witch, about his impending doom but then, it’s hard to blame him because that lady is not as smart as she thinks she is.   Regardless, where Daenerys’s punishment is an exile of sorts, Jon Snow dies in a way similar to Julius Caesar, betrayed and murdered by his own men.  That alone could cost them the war.  And they might even deserve to lose it after that.

As far as deaths in this series go, especially in the Stark bloodline, Jon’s death was by far the noblest.  Through these books, part of their downfall came with Ned telling a lie, Robb broke an oath, and Catelyn made way too many stupid decisions trying to protect her children and none of them actually doing it.  Jon is the only one killed for doing the right thing every time.  As that goes, I can have a lot of respect for that death.

Of course, it’s deeply annoying because I had hoped for Jon and Arya reuniting at some point in the series.  The two siblings that were closest to the other, I felt they at least deserved a hug somewhere down the line.  And unless Melisandre brings Jon back from the dead (not an unlikely situation but I’m not holding my breath) that will never happen.

Of course, maybe I shouldn’t be so doubtful.  I mean, fans have told me not to get attached to characters in the series because Martin kills characters, but as I’ve mentioned before, Martin is a tease.  Yes, a lot or characters die in the series, but most of them are minor.  As far as viewpoint characters go, Ned is the only one who died and stayed dead.  I mean, Martin brought back Theon Greyjoy (a character I despised in book two), and made him a player of sorts in this novel.  (For the record, it’s hard to hate Theon in this book.  He committed some awful crimes against humanity in the first novel, but considering the tortures and degradations he’s suffered up to this, I just pity him now.  I’m starting to wonder if there might be a redemption of sorts for him later in the series.)

And I can’t forget Tyrion.  Tyrion is one of my favorite characters in all literature.  His story is one of constantly being thrown under the bus.  But no matter how many hits he takes, he always gets back up and runs even faster.  This novel just exemplifies it.  He starts off drunk and feeling guilty for his past crimes, and then he gets sent on a journey.  Lands with a group that hates him and almost dies, but he ends up becoming a counselor for the only member of the group that matters.  Then he gets kidnapped and turns out that he’s headed right where he wanted to go anyway.  He almost dies again.  Gets captured and put in slaver and nearly dies again.  And he gets out of that and ends up with his third army in these books.  You cannot keep this man down.  I can’t wait to see what happens next here.

Things I want to see happen:

Tyrion rides a dragon.  That would be awesome.  And if not, it might be Jaime, since it’s clear to me that Jaime and Cersei are really Targaryens and related to Daenerys.  This makes the story hilarious since now it looks like Cersei's children may have a more legitimate claim to the throne than suspected (although, maybe not since it would mean that Jaime and Cersei are bastard-born themselves.)  The incest makes so much more sense now with that little puzzle piece put into the picture.

We discover that the greenseers have been talking through Mormont’s raven, and most recently, it’s Bran that’s spoken through the bird.  What else would that raven talk about?

Jaime kills Cersei.  There’s no way that that doesn’t happen.  Of course, Jaime will probably die soon after.  Much as I’ve come to like that character (and he starts off being the most hated) I don’t see how he survives through the end of the series.  Not unless he goes into hiding or takes the black.

One Sentence a Day

I hate journal writing.

I have no problem with journals.  Granted, I don’t read many of them (unless they’re dead, there’s privacy issues).  And this blog alone proves that I have no trouble with writing.

But writing a journal… bleagh.

I think I’m pretty fascinating but when I put what I’ve done on the page, my inherent awesomeness doesn’t seem to come up.  And rereading my journals is awful.  When they’re not badly written, I find out a little too much about myself.  When I was a teenager, I was constantly throwing my journals into the garbage to make sure posterity never found out what was what.

As I get older, though, the real issue is the updating.  I believe that journal writing is most effective when written daily.  There are some exceptions to this, but for the most part, if you’re trying to get across life as it is, you need constancy in your writing.  And that is an investment in time.  It doesn’t matter what happened in the day, I always have to take ten or fifteen minutes to get a proper entry in the journal.  Many days, if I don’t plan out that I’m going to write in my journal, it won’t happen.

Enter Cesar Kuriyama.  On a recent TED talk, he discusses a video project he started that he calls “One Second a Day.”  He videos one second of his life every day and makes a movie of it.  If he’s dedicated to just that second per day, he’ll have a five-minute movie by the end of his life.

I’m not going to make a movie of my life.  Even if I had the proper video tech that I wanted and the editorial know-how, I wouldn’t bother.  It’s a movie I doubt I’d ever want to watch.

But it has inspired me to try a project of my own in my own journal writing: “One Sentence a Day.”  We all know where this leads.  When I post this, I’ll be three days into this project.  I intend to do this for a year, just writing on only one thing that stood out to me for that day.  This is doable and not such a vacuum of my time as what I’ve been doing.

I am curious, though, what things do you do for record keeping your life or do you even bother?

What Grabs the Heart

Talk to me long enough about television and you will eventually get me to talk about Lost.  Lost was absolutely my favorite TV show in high school and through college.  One of the first things I  did when I came home from serving my mission in Texas was to buy the last two seasons and spent a two-week marathon watching the series come to a beautiful, explosive, and poignant end.  I loved the heroism of Jack and Hurley; the romances between Sawyer and Juliet and Jin and Sun; the downfall of Sayid and Locke and the slow redemption of Ben Linus.  It was a great ride.

It also left me callous.  After watching Boone and Shannon and Libby and Charlie and at least half the cast croak before the series was close to ending, death does not bother me at all in fiction.  I’ve shed all the tears left in me for character deaths.

And this bothered me a little last week when I read the latest volume of Fables.  In this installment, two of Bigby and Snow’s seven children take the leading role.  These children are approximately seven- or eight-years-old and in it, one of the children is kidnapped and the other goes off to rescue her.  Without giving away too many details, her brother reaches a point where he has to sacrifice himself in order to save her.

It’s a raw, brutal moment when this eight-year-old boy, alone, starving, weak, and frightened about what he’s about to do, still expends all of his energy to prepare his blood to be shed, otherwise he loses his sister.  The worst is that he knows there’s a chance that nobody will know what he did to save her and he still takes his life without hesitation.  And I felt nothing.

It was almost like the Friends episode where they realize Chandler doesn’t ever cry.  They asked if he felt anything when Bambi’s mother died and he said, “Yes, it was really tragic when the animator stopped drawing the deer.”

This is not me saying that the writers did a bad job.  They did a great job telling that story.  But with my prior experiences, I can’t experience that Fables story the same way now as I would have three years ago.  And I thought to myself, if matters of life-and-death have no emotional impact on me in fiction anymore, is it possible to feel any such turmoil or conflict ever again in a story?

The answer came when I finally got on Hulu and caught up on all the new Office episodes.  I don’t care what anybody says, that show got along fine without Steve Carrell.  His Michael Scott character was funny but nobody really cared about his happiness.  Everybody cared about what happened between Jim and Pam.  From their bad timing in other relationships to their dating, marriage, having their first child and onward have all been great rewarding moments.  They were and still are the heart of the show.  I’ve always cared about what happened between them because that relationship matters.

Starting with the episode “Customer Loyalty,” their marriage is heading for a cliff.  The story arc this season has been about Jim getting a new job with a start-up athletic company.  He’s excited about it, he works hard at it, and he spends a lot of time away from home.  It’s finally taking its toll on Pam.  I have to re-watch the last three minutes of that show where the two of them have the worst fight.  It’s wrenching, tragic, ironic conversation which unbeknownst to Jim, leaves Pam in tears.  It may be the strongest moment in the whole series.

It kept me up for an extra hour just marveling not just how well-executed it was, but the effect it had on me.  What a fascinating concept when a child’s death doesn’t make my heart ache even a tenth to seeing Pam weep in those fifteen seconds.

The Office is achieving greatness not just in filmmaking but in storytelling and I think will live past this generation of viewers.  Jenna Fischer, John Krasinski, and all the other actors and writers should be proud of what they’ve accomplished in these nine seasons of programming.  My roommates keep talking about how 30Rock is leaving on a high note.  While a good show, it’s nowhere reaching the human chord that The Office is striking on its finale.

TED

I’ve known about the TED talks for several months and even saw a couple of them before one of my roommates got married.  But I wasn’t keen in keeping up with it.  The talks that I watched tended to be focused on the latest technology and its effect on society.  Now, I’m not against that; I find that sort of stuff fascinating.  But… I’ve never been quick to get the latest gadget.  I’m still on only the third cell phone in my life, and this is the first one I’ve had with a camera on it.  Never owned an iPod or mp3 player.  The most recent game system I had was a Playstation 2 and I sold it so I wouldn’t have any more distractions than necessary while I was in school (boy, do I miss it, though.)  Even in school, most of the court reporting students have a new paperless Wave machine and their CaseCat software, whereas I make do with my Stentura Protégé with its paper tray and the free DigiCat software (this means nothing to the rest of you, but long story short, I’m not up-to-date.)

I wasn’t interested in TED.

This past week, though, I was looking for new things to practice and on a whim, I went to www.ted.com and was blown away.

What TED does is present talks from speakers in all walks of life and they will talk about their programs, careers, agendas or lifestyles, both business and personal.  It’s a fascinating array.  Some talks are better than others, but some of the stuff is plain cool.

There were talks on the value of teaching children to code, structure for families, the ethics in treating HIV, the personal lives of fashion models, and news reporting in war-torn countries.

The coolest part is that they upload a new talk every day.  It’s incredible.  As of this writing, I have just finished Fahad Al-Attiyah’s speech on his home, Qatar.  Qatar’s economy is growing at a steady 15% a year, a population of over one million, and all without water.  Seriously, they have a two-day supply total of water for their nation, and since there’s virtually no farming happening, most of their food is imported.

This is unheard of, nay, undreamed of.  If anything is proof that we live in a time of great wonders, a country that is not only surviving but thriving in a land of no resources is it.  That talk goes over briefly how that is possible.

But the one that made a great impression on me was Leslie Morgan Steiner’s, “Why Domestic Violence Victims Don’t Leave.”  A talk on personal experience with her first husband and some discomforting facts and statistics about domestic abuse, this helped answer one of my great questions that I have had.  Why don’t they leave the bad situation?  How did they get caught in that trap?  It was illuminating and her solution was to get the information out to everybody in the world, to be open about it.  The main reason I decided to do this post is that it’s my own small way of getting that message out.  If you listen to no other talks on Ted, check this one out.  It’s worth it.