The Nice vs. The Not so Nice

Good Claims:

Books for Dummies (Like Me)- The frantic movement of the kids and the thundering suspense of the music conveys this sense of carnage and trepidation so that the audience might pee their pants in fright.

A Puppy’s Point of View- In Cate Parr's portfolio of about six watercolor paintings, the subtle vibrant colors and free flowing strokes of paint highlight the vulnerable passion for beauty.  

Not as good: 

As I've been told my whole life, the sun makes people happy. Maybe it's because the sun brings color and joy and hope to people. As someone once told me, "It's impossible not to smile when your world is full of color."  There is more to the beach then the sand, and the palm trees, and the ocean.

One article discusses his importance in sports and in China.  His popularity has grown everywhere, because of him, people in China have tuned in to watch him play.  His humbling story and attitude make him likable to fans everywhere.

The Spartan Reader #4

Sarah Illenberger: Architectural Digest

The radical range of color schemes, discombobulating object scale, unusual item combination, and drastic angling of geometric shapes combine to form a divine harmony in the middle of a flustering discord.  From drastic reds and harsh blacks to soft pinks and peaceful blues, the colors of the rooms create a dramatic range of mood from breathtaking to calming.  The objects are surprising and typically out of place, from an authoritative moon to a tediously arranged triangle of ripe, green apples.

 In Picture 1, the cold, rusty, silver, steel bed frame contrasts the blinding white and cooling blue soft, woolen blankets, but they are wistfully knit into unity with the bliss of the hopeful painted sky strewn across the walls.  The artful blending of the peaceful colors emphasizes the quiet, serene mood.  It is almost as if one can feel the soft, blowing breeze.  The size of the objects produces a vague, disconnecting illusion that throws away worldly perceptions and hurls one like Alice into a disproportionate Wonderland.

 Picture 5 contains eye-blazing contrast with a dramatic checkerboard of the white and black walls, tile, and bed comforter.  The angle of the bed and decreasing size of the contrasted diamonds creates a distinct depth that seems to elongate the room.  Splashes of color are provided from the vibrant lobster clawing its way across the bed;  the rustic, golden key with the matching authoritative door; and pink floral throw pillow lounging across the bed-spread.  The screaming contrast and overwhelming collection of colors and shapes arouses a mood of radical excitement and fascination. 

 Each picture, excluding the last, contains a bed. It generates a familiarity and parallelism with each of the photos and somehow subtly interconnects the gallery.  The bedroom is commonly the most personal, well known space in a house.  It is the one portion of the house dedicated typically to solely one individual.  Creating such wild combinations by bringing together such random objects and putting them in a bedroom begs the question: who would stay in this kind of room?  The neat, organized and yet mind-boggling arrangements mold an order out of chaos that catches the eye and intrigues the mind.  It is almost as if the pictures are teetering on the edge between sporadic decoration and perfectly designed order, and an object added or subtracted would completely tip the scale.

Lock and Key

Reading Lock and Key has emphasized the fact that I should definitely do my research about the literature I choose to read before doing so.  I was sitting at the library baffled with no idea what to get contemplating which book may be the best judging by the size, color, and title.  It was not the best decision I later discovered, and in a rush, I blindly picked up the book Lock and Key hoping it would be something of interest.  So far, I’m not a fan.

Lock and Key is a typical book for the day-dreaming teenager looking for a nice fantasy.  Ruby, the main character, has been taken from her past rough, poverty stricken lifestyle and thrown suddenly into an elite school, a perfect family, and a million dollar house when moving in with her long-lost sister.  Most people would find it to be the ideal fantasy and change of pace, but of course, to create an unsettling inner conflict; Ruby does not like her new life.  She finds herself wandering back to her old house and taking the long bus rides to see her old friends, and the adjustment to the new life is made all the more difficult.  She doesn’t fit in at the new school in all ways from appearance to personality, and her new home life is filled with a constant underlying awkwardness.

Just like every wistful teenage girl novel, there’s an “unexpected” love interest.  Following the stereotypical plot line, Ruby is interested in a boy named Marshall that is low, trashy, and shallow.  Her overbearingly confident belief that she’s in control of her whole situation blindly leads her into believing that he is everything she needs and she can handle their estranged, unusual relationship.  On the other side of things, she meets a boy named Nate who is the definition of the ideal man.  With an athletic body, friendly personality, broad intellect, and high placement on the high school food chain, its obviously assumed that most every girl would be interested in him except, of course, for Ruby.  Although I am not far enough to know where they’re relationship is headed, it’s obvious that the old idea of opposites attract is at play.  As different as they may seem, it already appears that they are being drawn together, and maybe later in the book similarities will reveal themselves and bonds will be made.     

Short List 2-19-12

The Art of Clean Up

Supposedly, it should be exceptionally satisfying to make order of chaos; however, there’s something disconcerting and robotic about the organization of things that are meant for sporadic arrangement.  In my head, I almost hear sounds attached to each photo.  In the commotion of the park I imagine a bustling place with a thousand different conversations, screaming children, and blasting music.  When I see the order in everything from color, age, and gender, I feel that any sound would disturb the peace and a pin dropping would tip the scale into utter insanity.  The unusual order is disturbingly fascinating; it emphasizes the turmoil around us all the time that we take for granted simply because it’s normal.  

 

Sarah Illenberger: Architectural Digest

Sarah Illenberger’s geometrically beautiful and gravitationally defying collection of architectural artwork is intriguing.  The colors, shapes, and objects sharply contrast to such an extent that they create an obscure harmony.  The designs are clean and organized while still containing a sense of sporadic eyebrow-raising disorder.  The scale of the objects simply throws the room into an unusual proportion that throws the viewer like Alice into some ambiguous Wonderland.  

A Restless Transplant

The pictures from A Restless Transplant contain a sort of freshly artistic feel.  It’s almost as if a representation of the cleanly wiped slate of the photographer can visibly been seen and felt through his photos.  The rustic and antique feel contrasts the vibrant colors and drastic shadows thrown and splattered across the frames.  The peaceful simplicity of them depicts the life of their photographer.  An acute pleasure plants a seed of curiosity an encourages me to travel beyond the safety of my town.  

This American Life: Middle School

MiddleSchool

A few weeks ago, I paid a visit to my old middle school with a group of my friends.  Everything in it seemed to devour my senses and shoot my mind instantly back to both the beautiful and painful memories of those terribly wonderful years.  Every teacher we visited was blown away; each took a step back and a double take as though the young boys and girls they had mentored and taught through those three years were all in some kind of foreign, nearly unrecognizable bodies.  One exclaimed in awestruck surprise, “You all look like real people!”  Needless to say, the middle school years seem to be a time dedicated in every life to growth and development in nearly every aspect of a human being.  Like in any life stage, the choices made in the middle school years help determine the direction of a person’s life and the path they choose to follow.

The Acts 2 and 4 (“Anchor Babies” and “Stutter Step”) of the “Middle School” podcast from This American Life looks into what is really on the minds of Middle School students.  In “Anchor Babies”, instead of reporting the weather and daily lunch menu, the kids on the morning announcements at Parkville Middle School near Baltimore were given a chance to write up a newscast on subjects and social matters that were important to them.  These video announcements mock real newscasts with back drops, theme music, green screens and the whole nine yards; not only is the appearance the same, but they all “tend to follow a formula” like local news.  When the kids were given a chance to report what mattered to them, the results were utterly widespread.  Reports varied from a debate over the appropriate age for trick or treating, rumors about a boy getting suspended for clapping in the lunch room, and an opinionated analysis of the appearance of the new Martin Luther King Jr. statue in Washington D.C.  Everything from concern about dirtying UGG boots to potatoes being permanently removed from school lunches weighed heavily on the intriguingly sporadic minds of the pre-teen world. 

In “Stutter Step”, the focus was taken away from the academics and fully focused on the chaotic social realm.  Middle School dances are the “epicenters of middle school awkwardness”.  A boy named Ethan in a striped button-up shirt picked out by his mother, spoke of his strong desire to slow dance that heavily contradicted his immense fear that he “won’t do it right”.  Ethan, like many of the other kids, aimed to have a good time while still remaining low key enough to keep any tragically humiliating events out of the lime-light.  The exited, nervous, quick, high-pitched, and giggly chatter among the uncertain students filled with a steady presence and repetition of the word “like” defines nearly all of the verbal communication put forth by the middle school students.       

The petty stress, naïve uncertainty, immature arguments, shallow friendships, and constantly high pitched speech depicts middle school as not only a period of mental advancement, but also physical and emotional development as the ambiguous leap from childhood to adulthood is uneasily embraced.  A mental, physical, and emotional foundational base is laid in those tear filled, frustrating, smelly, pimply, and complicated years.  The insecure, undefined battle of middle school is bound to hurl people off-balanced and uneasily into the realm of adulthood by opening their social and intellectual understanding beyond the bounds of mere trifling childhood.  Looking back, I can see how my middle school years molded and shaped me into the person I am today.  The experiences and growth experienced by the kids in the podcast and everyone else at one time is the cocoon that transforms what was once a caterpillar of a child into a butterfly of an adult. 

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

When I read a depressing book, the feeling seems to subtly set a gloomy damper over the rest of my day.  Needless to say, I typically stray from reading any book of the heart breaking realm.  That being said, you may find it surprising that I chose to read one of the saddest and most devastating novels from one of the most horrifying and disturbing times in the history of the world.  I was surprised too.  I never saw myself reading by choice a book about the Holocaust.  When I started The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, I had no idea what it was about.  I was in a frenzied hurry to find a book from the local library before it closed; I did not want to be a burden or that “one customer” who after close never seemed to leave, so I literally grabbed the book off the shelf.  One of my friends had read it and recommended it; however, she failed to explain the plot or setting.  I set off blindly reading a book I knew nothing about, and was I ever in for a surprise.

The point of view in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas struck me because I had never heard the story from that vantage point.  The whole story is told in third person with a focus on the son of a Nazi commander.  Being only nine, the young boy, Bruno, does not understand the gravity of the situation right under his nose; his father is the commander at a concentration camp no more than 50 yards away from his home in Poland.  It creates a sense of dramatic irony since the reader understands the horror and disturbing situation, but little Bruno in his childish ignorance does not comprehend the appalling situation.  Piece by piece, Bruno attempts to frustratingly develop a small understanding from what he has seen and the little adults will share with him. 

The absolutely astonishing contrast between Bruno and Shmuel takes the spot light in the story.  Shmuel is a young Jewish boy in a concentration camp, and Bruno is the son of a Nazi commander.  It’s mind-blowing to see the next generation of the opposing forces becoming good friends.  To see the son of a Nazi officer and a young Jewish boy sit for hours and talk through a fence that draws a line between their worlds, lives, and fates.  It’s truly a heart-wrenching, incredibly touching, and unbearably painful story that recreates all of the horror and inhumanities of the Holocaust through the eyes of a little boy.

Although it was easily the saddest and most painful book I have ever read, I can honestly say that it was exceptionally powerful and definitely worth reading. 

Podcast Response: Middle School

The kids in this podcast truly help recapture the difficulty, awkwardness, and discomfort of the uncertain and rapidly changing physical and emotional world of middle school.  Through whiny voices, nervous giggles, and shaky words the kids bring to life this stepping stone between the different realms of childhood and young adulthood.  In the scenes Stutter Step and Anchor Babies the podcast is representing the “experiment of miniature adulthood”.  Reporting the unimportant, uneventful news of the average middle school and participating in the hormone crazed events of middle school dances are both baby steps towards adulthood.  The shallow friendships filled with petty name calling and hourly arch enemy and best friend for life status change is exhausting.  The trivial relationships starting and ending as the hours bloom and pass away represent the extent of the naivety and inexperience as middle school students work their way through the murky waters of growing up my imitating the steps and motions taken by those who came before them.  The insecure, undefined battle of middle school is bound to hurl people off-balanced and uneasily into the realm of adulthood by opening their social and intellectual understanding beyond the bounds of mere trifling childhood.