Kwanzaa Celebration at UMass Campus Center

Tonight The Malcolm X Cultural Center and The University of Massachusetts, Amherst and People of Color United and Amherst Regional High School presented their Community Kwanzaa Celebration. The celebration was scheduled from 6-9 p.m.

Me, Andrew, Katelyn, Kasey, Mike and Eric got there while keynote speaker and UMass Professor John Bracey was giving a speech to the attendees. Katelyn interviewed Bracey, check it out here.

Concluding Bracey's inspirational speech, students from UMass and Amherst High lit candles for each of the seven symbols of the Nguzo Saba (the seven principles of Kwanzaa.) Mike reported on the history and origins of Kwanzaa, if you want to know more, check it out here.

After the light ceremony performers took to the stage. Here is a video of the Cape Verdean Student Alliance dancers.



Two poets from ARHS, Briana Figarella and Kindyl Tolson spoke and a UMass Grad, Denise Daley. A drummer performing in the West African Tradition, Backa Niag performed. Niag got the crowd clapping. A singer from ARHS, not noted in the program performed. After him, the UMass Gospel Choir sang Psalm 23.

Eric talked to the crowd, check out what he reported here.

People found that the symbols and colors come together and create a greater impact, “The music and songs are nice, but it is the symbols and lessons we have learned from our past that makes this such a great holiday, “said Simone Williams, “People need to be reminded that our struggles are not over, even with a black president coming into office.”

Andrew was live twittering the event, check it out here.

Then it was time to bless the feast. Kasey covered the decor and the Karamu (feast) here.

See the event in photos here.

Love Is A Mixtape

My friend Mike let me borrow a book of his called "Love Is A Mixtape" by Rob Sheffield recently. It was a short and sweet read, only took me about 2 weeks. The chapters were generally short and each started with the track listing of an actual mixtape of his, then he would reflect on that time in his life.

Sheffield is a former contributing editor for Rolling Stone where he wrote the column Pop Life.

The story really centered around Sheffield's relationship with Renee Crist, a fellow rock critic. Their story was adorable. After I finished I googled Rob and Renee and to my surprise found a couple pictures of Renee via Google. In the book it said she had dark curly hair, in the picture I can see it's very much like mine!

This is Renee with a different boyfriend, Jimm, not a very good pic of either of them, but the other pic of Renee and Rob together was really rather tiny.

I really related to the way Sheffield related music to events and times in his life. Many songs just really bring me back.

I suggest this book to everyone!

Christmas Time at Burlington Mall

My Thanksgiving break was pretty low key, a lazy holiday followed by get togethers at my friends' apartments. Not the most exciting idea for a blog post, but I decided to write about my trip to the Burlington Mall on Sunday.

This is the mall that I lived and worked at in high school. I spent two seasons working as counter help and a waitress at Brighams there, I worked a Christmas season at their American Eagle and I spent a few years doing part time work at their Lord and Taylor during my college years. I have a lot of memories of being a semi-mall rat here also.

You can never really go home though, the same mall is quickly becoming a suburban Newbury Street. Within the past year stores like Nordstroms, Betsey Johnson, Lush Cosmetics, Free People, Jasmine Sola and Burberry have moved in alongside Sears, Brighams Ice Cream and Bath and Body Works.

Within the past year the latest Kevin James, star of King of Queens, flick "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" was filmed there. The mall is up and coming now and it's very strange to walk through it now.

While I was there I admired the Christmas Window displays and took trips down memory lane with my friend Sarah. I came across one specific store I hadn't yet even heard of.

Ruehl, I found out, is a fairly new division of the Abercrombie and Fitch company. The clothing seems to be exactly the same. I don't see the point. The outside of the store is made to look like a brown brick type building that you'd see on a city street. Inside it's as dark as a dance club with some low mood lighting. There was no sign of Christmas inside or outside their windows.

The mall was bustling, especially since it was rainy. But when I was inside the Gap, I couldn't help but think it should have been busier though.

P.S. No one tell on me for taking pics inside the a store. Not allowed y'know, couldn't resist though.

Two Tongues

Saves The Day has been my all-time favorite band since sophomore year of high school. I've listened to a bit of Say Anything, though not my favorite. I recently learned that two members from each group have formed a sort of super group called "Two Tongues." The group consists of Chris Conley and David Soloway of Saves The Day and Max Bemis and Coby Linder of Say Anything.

On their myspace, Max Bemis said:

"Chris has been my favorite songwriter since I was 15. Ten years later he is now is one of my closest friends. The Two Tongues record is really an expression of the yin and yang; how two "opposite" souls stimulate and battle each other in any truly loving relationship."

Once I met Chris Conley and it was the best day ever. I am planning to get a Saves The Day related tattoo in the early spring.



I like the new song, here it is as a still youtube video. The song is called "Crawl"



The record won't drop till February 3, 2009.

Wilmington Town Crier

OOF! This is pathetic. This paper is always at my parent's house, though rarely read. Apparently it is the "newspaper of choice for people of Tewksbury and Wilmington." Hardly. I open the website for the homepage to say that the requested URL is "not found". The website is already largely unimpressive.

I called the phone number listed on the site to check that it still exists. The phone line still works, got the machine... but their site hasn't been updated since 2004. Guess they aren't into writing for the web.

How good is it you ask? - I'd say it pretty much sucks.

What economic model do they seem to be following? ...I'm gonna go with... none. Not online related?

What could they be doing better to reach readers like me? First off - they could update their website at LEAST once per year, that'd be minimum, it could be running, the pages might work. I would enjoy that. Being out of town I can't pick up the paper so their whole no website at all model kinda doesn't reach me at all.

FAIL.

Neutral Milk Hotel

Neutral Milk Hotel released In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, one of the most highly regarded albums of the 1990's, 10 years ago. The album was a concept album based around the Holocaust. The band quickly dropped out of the spotlight following their most highly acclaimed release, never recording another album since.

After years of seclusion, playing his last known show in 2002, Jeff Magnum, the creative mind behind the band showed up and played at numerous shows this fall including the Elephant Six Collective Holiday Surprise Tour. Magnum is a member of the original Elephant Six Collective which also consists of members from The Apples in Stereo, Of Montreal and Olivia Tremor Control. The label seems to have an affinity with psychedelic pop rock music as well as psych folk and indie influenced work.

You'll have to excuse me for not plowing over a bunch of kids whose hearts had stopped just to snag a few photos of Jeff playing "Engine" in the near total darkness. It was an experience best not encroached on by our culture of rampant documentation technology anyway, and yet who could blame the folks haphazardly setting off flashes in the hopes of capturing something they might take home with them. Still, you've got to hand it to Mangum for finding a way to play out in the sort of intimate spaces that befit Neutral Milk Hotel, even as the project's stature has grown well beyond them.

I would have killed to see Magnum live.

Here's a live video of "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea", my favorite song of theirs, at a 1998 show during their heyday. It sounds pretty good considering it's a homemade recording.

Put a Ring On It

I was starting to wonder what happened to good old Beyonce. Her singles are always really fun. She is dropping a new album this month and her first single off the dance CD of her double disc is called "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)."

Honestly i can't stop listening to it. My roomie and I are trying to learn the dance hahaha. Failing miserably so far but having fun doing it. The dancing is crazyyy.

i guess last Saturday SNL spoofed the video, with Beyonce but the back up dancers were Andy Samberg, Justin Timberlake and newcomer Bobby Moynihan. Someone had put it on youtube where it garnered over 600,000 hits but NBC had them take it down, yet they haven't posted it to NBC.com yet! i have only seen small clips of it, but it looks good.

Beyonce's video.



E!News has some of the clip in this online feature.

Joan Miró assasinates Painting

I love going to New York City to see the great Art museums like The Metropolitan, The Whitney, The Guggenheim and The Museum of Modern Art.

Unfortunately I don't often have the time or money to get there. The MoMa's ticket prices are no joke, but luckily the NYTimes.com photo gallery, , lets me see a bit of what I am missing. Here is the gallery.

I hadn't heard of Miró before, but he apparently assaulted art. The images of his work are varied, being unfamiliar with his work, it is hard to know if it is representational of it as a whole.

I appreciate the chance to become more familiar with what is currently in the New York City museums. Not as good as the real thing, but still nice. I didn't realize until I was searching for a photo gallery that the NYTimes even offered pictures of current exhibitions.

Grappling With Instability

Grappling With Instability

I found a nice photo gallery on NYTimes.com entitled Grappling with Instability. The photos center around the conflict happening in Congo between rebel forces and the government.

I thought this was a powerful gallery because the images from Congo are ones that I rarely get the chance to see. I think photo galleries or audio sideshows in general are really essential for many readers to connect emotionally with an event.

Since August, the forces of Laurent Nkunda, the rebel general, have been battling Congolese government troops. Fighting climaxed last week, with rebel forces poised to seize Goma, the strategic city in eastern Congo. Congolese fled areas of fighting.

The captions are short and sweet, allowing a taste of the story, but is more fulfilling visually and emotionally than reading a large article about the same subject.

Boston.com's Big Picture

This is my favorite website that has been assigned to look at in this class. The pictures take up the whole width of my browser and are in vivid color.

In particular I looked at the "Peering into the Micro World" and the Obama photos. These pictures were all brilliant, I had seen only one or two of them. I think these pictures are very powerful and are something valuable to a news website like Boston.com

Working at a paper myself, I often see a lot of good pictures go unused and unseen by our readers. These large photo galleries give a clearer picture of what happened at events.

Sondre Lerche

My friend Oliver invited me to go see Sondre Lerche tonight. But I had to decline as I was already late in passing in my 8 page paper on a chapter from a Kafka book. I had never heard him before... but if I was free I would have taken up the offer.

It's kind of indie and retro. In one song I heard of his, the music reminded me of something like Dean Martin or Sinatra.

Studies ruin everything!

Here is a "video" a.k.a. still with music playing over it, but it's Sondre Lerche having a duet with Regina Spektor.

Party Update

So tomorrow is the day of the party that I earlier mentioned.

Here are the totals for Facebook RSVP.

37 Confirmed
45 Maybes
14 Declines
30 Awaiting reply

My guess is to expect 40-50. Some maybes are definitely coming, some people don't use facebook and could come.

I will be interested to see the turn out. I was hoping to have a firepit going outside because my neighbors on the other side of the house recently built a pit... but it's going to be too rainy. Way to rain on my parade.

The Dutchess and The Duke

Over the summer when I interned at the Dig I often times got to open and sort the mail for the Arts Editor. I would listen to any CD that sounded promising, so when The Dutchess and The Duke's She's the Dutches and He's the Duke showed up, I popped it in. I probably briefly read their press release and it sounded promising. They sound very similar to the Rolling Stones except also with a girl and a bit more folky like Bob Dylan. I love classic rock from that era and The Dutchess and The Duke's sound is refreshing compared to a lot of newer music.

They hail from Seattle, WA.

Here is a video of them performing live at Criminal Records.

Internship #2!

There's nothing I love more than a good unpaid internship.

As this semester comes to a close, I have been looking into an internship to have in place of classes next semester. I have no requirements left besides R1 Math, which I will take the exemption test for.

I just found out no less than 5 minutes ago that I will indeed be an Arts and Features Intern at the Daily Hampshire Gazette next semester.

This is my second internship and it will be very different than my last one. Over the summer I interned at Boston's Weekly Dig as an Arts and Entertainment Intern.

First of all, the Dig is a weekly publication, and the Gazette is obviously daily. That in itself will be interesting to see the change in environment with.

I got a few writing opportunities at the Dig, but they were smaller articles. I know that at the Gazette I will get to do much more in depth stories. The Gazette is also a much more serious publication than the Dig.

My first week at the Dig, the News Editor Cara Bayles sent me an e-mail something to the effect of "In the future, you can swear. Welcome to the Dig." I used words like fuck, shit, and internet lingo like (!!!), LOL, ROFL, etc. in these articles. They'd probably have sent back whatever I wrote if it didn't have a swear or some sarcastic remark in it.

I like both of these styles of writing, but it will be a very different atmosphere. The Dig was very young, I would say I never saw a person in the office over 40, mostly in their early 30s though. I expect the Gazette to have a very diverse range of people.

Anyhow, I already see internship paying off for me, my resume is getting quite bulky and it makes me a bit more hopeful for a good job even though I will more than likely be graduating in a terrible job market.

I have my first assignment for the Dig to cover a theatrical production when I am home for Thanksgiving break. Money! sweet freelancing money... it will be a 400 word piece on this. I know from filing freelance worksheets for them over the summer that the freelance world is not that lucrative.

Media Experience

While I was at the Paradise City Tavern last night the bar had MSNBC on their T.V.s. I was very pleased with the coverage on there, they had real time updates from each state and showed all footage of Obama and McCain's speeches without commentary.

That was the only media that I paid any attention to last night. This afternoon I checked out some of the usual news websites like CNN.com, NYPost.com, and WashingtonPost.com.

On CNN.com, in this story entitled "Obama's election redraws America's Electoral divide" they quoted my favorite part of Obama's speech last night:

"To those Americans whose support I have yet to earn -- I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your president, too," he said.

On NYTimes.com, WashingtonPost.com and NYPost.com, the main story is about Obama's new transition team.

On CNN.com the main story is entitled "Obama's Job Creation Challenge."

"Economists generally believe there's little Obama can do to stop more job losses in the short-term, even if he's able to get a new economic stimulus package passed by the lame-duck Congress and signed into law by President Bush.

"Superman couldn't change what's in store for the U.S. economy. It's going to be ugly," said Rich Yamarone, director of economic research at Argus Research."

None of these sites seem too biased to me, they each featured coverage of the general events including Palin's future.

I most loved watching MSNBC in real time and experiencing the news with other Americans around me. That news was delivered faster and I felt the most involved with those stories because they had engaging video and there was no delay.

Presidential Election Night 2008 in Northampton

Last night Barack Hussein Obama became the 44th president of the United States of America with a landslide victory over John McCain with 349 electoral votes vs. McCain's 156. Missouri's 27 electoral votes have yet to be decided, but either way it is a land slide victory for Obama. He is the first bi-racial and African American president of the U.S.A. ever.

I spent election night from 10:30 p.m. until 1 a.m. in downtown Northampton. My roommate Edy and I went to the Paradise City Tavern where we had to wait a good 10 minutes just to get inside. The crowd seemed upbeat but nervous until Obama had won. When Obama won the entire bar was screaming and cheering, many cried and hugged others. Many others bought more celebratory drinks as they awaited McCain's concession speech. They began playing Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" as soon as the win was announced.



After Obama's speech the bar played Nas and Lauryn Hill's "If I Ruled the World." As the night wore on, it all really started to hit me. I was living history, watching Colin Powell cry and villagers in Kenya rejoice in real time with those of us in the bar. I cried tears of joy while watching the footage and a fellow American next to me noticed, patted me on the back, and handed me a tissue. For the first time in my life I really felt connected to every person with me as an American, and I also felt the most proud that I had ever felt to be American. This night surely changed the entire world.

In the streets of Northampton after we left the bar, cars did victory laps around town honking as did bicyclists. Cops were out and watching as crowds started to form outside of Dirty Truth and La Veracruzana. It was pretty insane.



Every time I've thought about it today I've almost cried, tears are perpetually welling in my eyes.

OBAMA!!!

YES WE DID.


What an incredible night. So much to talk about.

Instapundit v. Daily Kos Coverage

Today is election day and many news outlets online and paper have been covering an immense amount of stories up to the this day. More often than not, these online outlets show an overt lean to the far left or far right.

On this post I will be taking a look at the coverage of the election race on two online news outlets, Dailykos.com and Instapundit.com.


The Daily Kos blatantly glorifies Obama. On their front page is an AP video of Obama voting. They refer to "our candidate" in which they make it obvious that they mean Obama.

"What a difference two years of hard, smart campaigning makes."

This came from a story where they show a poll from 2 years ago showing that Obama only had IL, DC and HI then. They really glorify the Obama campaign here.

Both sites are confident that "their candidate" will win, aka Obama for Daily Kos and McCain for Instapundit.

Instapundit looks distinctly republican just in the design of their site. They seem to be covering stories in direct opposite view of Daily Kos.

There is less info on Instapundit, more just link outs. Instapundit also did not focus solely on the presidential race, they featured many other stories.

Jens Lekman

Yesterday I got two invites for the same event on Facebook. A Jens Lekman concert being held at Northampton high school for only $8.

The show is being held to benefit Clara Gardener, a Northampton teen that lost both of her legs in a car accident this past August.

"We all love her and care about her so much, that we need to step up and we are," says crew teammate, Kierstin Knightly.

Clara Gardner, the 17 year old soon to be senior suffered some serious injuries that led to both legs being amputated at the knees. She was hit by an alleged drunk driver as she was loading a car at the Amtrak station in Springfield.

"I couldn't imagine the pain she was in when she was pinned between the two cars," Knightly says.

The show has been set up last minute due to Lekman's proximity to Northampton during his tour. Lekman is a 27 year-old Swedish pop/folk singer who has become quite popular in recent years. I had always heard of him, but never listened. When I received the invite for the concert I decided to give a listen and I really like it. His singing style at times reminds me of The Magnetic Fields.



I'll be there Saturday.

New Cat in the House

The two cats of my house. Bailey is the big brown one, Owen is the little orange one.

So my old roommate moved out and a new one, Molly, moved in. She has a cat named Owen, about 6 months old. My cat, Bailey, already lives here and has now since last September. Needless to say, Bailey pretty much feels that he owns the place.

So the first time they met, about a week ago, wasn't too pretty even though Bailey is generally a very friendly and happy cat. We each held each of our cats in our arms and got as close as we could to one another. Extreme hissing.

Later we set them both free. This was when I heard probably the strangest noise that my cat had ever made. Never before had he sounded like this. This youtube clip pretty much sums up how my cat sounded, except he might have sounded even angrier.



when the cat says "why i eyes ya", is what Bailey sounded like ha.

Luckily, they have warmed up to eachother. The first week was hell though. This Monday Bailey let Owen lay on my bed with him. Since then they seem to be getting along swimmingly.

My Favorite Local Blog

My favorite blog for my current town, Northampton, is Tommy Devine's Online Journal.

It's my old standby, though I admit I don't spend a lot of time seeking out other newer ones. I was also a fan of The Northamptonist, but he has since moved to New York City and that blog is more or less now deceased.

What I love about this blog is that it is both personal and political. There is always something fun in every post, he uses a mix of videos and pictures. He uses both found videos and his own original videos.

I don't like blogs that talk too much about families and kids... and where Tommy doesn't have kids, that rarely comes up. The content is more about interesting or controversial things happening in the community.

He has a great eye for noticing things around me that I never do. I often go to his site to find ideas for longer stories for classes or the Collegian.

The blog is especially interesting lately as Tommy has moved about a few times between Northampton and Amherst, and in his daily travels he passes through both towns. This is similar to how I live my life commuting to school in Amherst from Northampton so all of his content is of great interest to me.

Most recently I liked his entry where he mentions how a local bookstore is going out of business. I didn't know till I read his blog.

The internet has made it difficult to impossible to run an old fashioned bookstore at a profit. The same thing is happening to record stores. What book or record store, however large their selection, can match the size and price of the internet? In the case of the Jeffery Amherst however, it also didn't help that the owner is 79 years old. He offered the business for sale at a low price, but no one wanted to climb aboard a sinking ship.

He links out a lot and the posts are always fun to read.

I also love that he makes his identity known and as a result I have met him in person. I see him around quite often and it's pretty great that I actually know the person who's local blog I like the most.

Montreal Candiens Hockey Fans

Last April I took a trip to Montreal with my good friend Sarah Zimmermann. And everyone knows that Canadians LOVE hockey.

That week the Montreal Canadiens fans had a riot and I believe had destroyed a police car. Two days later we were out and about while another game was about to begin. Cops were everywhere and the fans were out in full force decked out in their favorite hockey jerseys. The passion of the fans there reminded me of the Boston Red Sox's fans.

Here's a clip of the fans on the streets of Montreal near the hockey stadium.

Blog Comparrison

iBrattleboro and Baristanet both seemed much more like a citizen journalism blog. While Loudounextra appeared much more professional. They had more interactive videos and overall seemed to be higher in quality.

Loudonextra.com reminded me of Masslive's setup.

iBrattleboro has a lot of event promoting on it. Both Baristanet and iBrattleboro have a lot of links on the side with great resources for the community.

Baristanet has an ad from a local tavern for election night festivities. They have other smaller ads from local businesses throughout the homepage.

Loudounextra is by far the most professional and most well funded of the three.

Facebook Party Update

16 Confirmed
16 Maybe
4 Declined
40 Awaiting reply currently

I guess not bad considering I just made the event last night. I'll keep you guys posted though.

We also now have a reason to party/ theme. It will be in celebration of the renowned rap artist O.D.B.'s death, as he passed away on November 13th.

Please enjoy O.D.B.'s most likely biggest hit, "Got Your Money."

Fox on a Trampline

I still use livejournal and I joined this very interesting "group" over the summer called wtf_nature. People post videos and pictures and info about weird animals or health/nature related thing.

Now I've heard of wild animals hanging out in backyards, but this is just ridiculous. This fox decided to use someone's giant trampoline and he LOVES it.

Enjoy.

Friends and Facebook

On the note of Scott Brodeur's last entry, I found the article he posted from the NYtimes about the Facebook friend experiment to hit home.

After a week the responses stopped coming in and were ready to be tabulated. Fifteen people said they were attending, and 60 said maybe. A few hundred said not, and the rest just ignored the invitation altogether. I figured that about 20 people would show up. That sounded pretty good to me. Twenty potential new friends.

I just made an event for the first party I'll be having at my apartment this year. So I myself have invited about 68 people I believe. My roomates will invite more I suspect. I want it to be a big party, but people are so weird.

Currently 9 are confirmed to attend, and 8 are maybe, 2 not attending. The maybes bug me because a few of them I am actually close to and it makes me annoyed because they really might not come.

I do have faith in those who are confirmed so far.

I also went the old fashioned route and called people up and left voicemails inviting them. Some of them don't even have facebook, makes you work harder ha.

Keeping in mind that people are generally flaky about coming to events... I made sure to plan it far in advance so I don't have to deal with people saying they are already busy. Now they have no excuse not to come because it's November 15th.

Who shows up to my parties totally shows who my real friends are ha. Within reaoson of course, I can't expect all of my friends from home to be able to make it.

Getting Comments

Blogging sure is tricky.

Getting comments is even trickier.

I can blog and blog till I'm blue in the face (keyboard?) and be totally happy with it, think it's interesting. But still, no one will comment. I suppose this is why I should just post a lot without thinking too much about it.

For my post I sort of over thought it. I was dead set on trying my darndest to get the comments in a natural way. I thought: what are people talking about? what might get them all riled up?

First thought was Sarah Palin. I thought, "BRILLIANT".

Not so much.

Still the comments didn't really come to me. I hadn't thought out that my Sarah Palin hate post would likely get lost in the shuffle of many others just like it.

So I resorted to advertising my blog on facebook and twitter.

I had one friend, Jeff, challenge my thoughts on Palin, though only on FB, he kept promising to comment but never did. I'm still waiting for the day he defends her... because I really am interested. Also it would be amazing because this guy is the king of procrastinating writing to me. Worst Las Vegas pen pal EVER.


On the other hand a few good friends of mine put their two cents in for me like Kelsey, Teresa and Mike. A few class mates chimed in too. I responded to the posts as much as I could. I still have a hope it could be commented on even more.

Scott Brodeur brought up in class that the subject of Sarah Palin will just be sort of dated. Thus hard to get any comments after a while. Also - politics is often something that people are reluctant to discuss or feel intimidated to respond to.

I certainly feel for that.

I was a bit surprised that my post didn't draw more comments. I thought people would vehemently agree or disagree with me and start some all out posting war. No such luck.

I think that in the future I will try to do more posts where I put something out there, and don't say much about it myself. Then ask the readers to make their own assumptions in responses. That seems to work pretty well. The more open the post is, the more people respond it seems.

I wish that I had went with something funny and random like Katelyn did. She got 24 comments! So jealous!

West Coast

Most of you are probably familiar with Jason Schwartzman's acting work in such films at "Rushmore", "The Darjeeling Limited" and "Shop Girl." But I bet you didn't know that he used to be in the band Phantom Planet. He wrote their song "California" which was the theme song to the teen drama "The O.C."

For a number of years Schwartman stuck to acting but last year he released his own solo album under the name Coconut Records. He recorded it in just a week at home with help from friends like Kirsten Dunst and Zoey Deschanel. The record, "Nightiming", isn't terribly revolutionary but it's cute and fun.

This is the only music video for the album, for the song "West Coast." At first I thought that it wasn't the official video, but it turns out that Schwartzman got permission to use Mark Gonzales's 1998 skate video footage.

I had never heard of Gonzales before, but it turns out that he revolutionized skateboarding. He and Natas Kaupus were the first skaters to skate on handrails. He was also one of the first people to skate in "switch stance."

Gonzales has also created a parallel career for himself as a fine artist.

I find it interesting that Schwartzman opted to use old skating footage instead of making his own video. But the song is "West Coast".. and skating is inherently California esque. Then again, he released the record on his own label, and likely doesn't have the money to shoot his own video.

Also noteworthy - Schwartzman's brother is in the band Rooney.

What do you think of the song and the use of the skate footage? do you think he's a good skater?

Saturday Night Live Dress Rehearsal

I went to New York City for the day on Saturday to see the dress rehearsal of Saturday Night Live.

During the day my friend Kira and I went to NBC to take the studio tour. We saw the nightly news studio and the SNL studio. I learned some very interesting facts.

Only 2% of people who apply for SNL tickets get them.
The audience only sees about 60% of the skits. Some of the other stages built the audience can't directly see, and you watch them on monitors.

On Friday morning I learned that Sarah Palin would be on the show. It was strange being in the same room as her... she wasn't funny, except maybe when she danced.

Mark Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin also made appearances.

I'm interested to go back and watch the "live" episode and see what sketches they cut.
They tape the dress rehearsal and use them if the live version didn't come out as well.

Oh... and I got an NBC Page's number.

Honestly I've been sick and really stressed out... I'll probably write some more about this later. Sorry my posts have been lacking.

Screen Printing #2

This is essentially what my image is going to look like, except that the phone will be in a half tone.

So at this point in the semester I have one screen print done, and I'm about to print my second one. The first process was done a different way, with drawing fluid, applying the fluid directly to the screen with a paintbrush.

This time we used a machine called an "Exposure Unit" to expose our screens, applying a coat of photo emulsion on to the screen. Then we taped a vegetable oil covered xerox of our image onto the screen. Magic works in the exposure unit and after 2 minutes your image is on the screen! You just rinse it out.

So maybe it's more complicated than that, but it would never make sense to you unless you saw the machine. Or maybe I'm just too lazy to try and explain it better. There is the whole part where after applying photo emulsion to the screen, you must wait 2 hours for it to dry before you can expose your screen.

Luckily wikipedia breaks it down for those interested. The process on here is very similar to what we did, though not 100% accurate.

I'm really getting into screen printing and I'm very proud of this second image. My concept for the semester is dealing with the concepts of distance and closeness in the physical and mental capacities. This image is specifically about how technology affects feelings of closeness.

Kind of have an idea for the next print, but not really.

I'm officially sick by the way! I'm on antibiotics. I need sleep, now. Except I am going home tomorrow and then to NYC for SNL on Saturday! Gonna be worn out this weekend.

Final Presidential Debate

Tonight I went to Paradise City Restaurant and bar in Northampton to watch the third debate between McCain and Obama. I met up with my friend Adam and his girlfriend Liz.

This was the first debate that I didn't watch in my living room while avidly following twitter. In fact I didn't look at twitter once tonight!

What a different experience being surrounded by people's real time reactions in a bar as opposed to twitter.

It was pretty clear to me this time that Obama won, keeping his cool as usual.

Choice quote of the night:

Now with respect to a couple of things Senator McCain said, the notion that I voted for a tax increase for people making $42,000 a year has been disputed by everybody who has looked at this claim that Senator McCain keeps on making.

Even FOX News disputes it, and that doesn't happen very often when it comes to accusations about me.

I'll talk more about this later as I think I'm getting sick. I know I'm gonna feel worse in the morning... not going to classes tomorrow.

The Stranger

Earlier my old roomie, who is currently in Seattle working for City Year, called me up. She was like "Hey Drea, my friend is gonna have 2 extra rooms in her apartment next year. We should move in there." and I was like, "Yeah, if I could find a job there!" And then she told me about The Stranger.

Dan Savage has a syndicated advice column called "Savage Love", it runs in Boston's Weekly Dig, where I interned over the summer. The column is so interesting because it's a gay man giving straight people advice.

Savage is the Editorial Director of The Stranger, looking at their site, they've got some great articles. It reminds me exactly of the The Dig which makes me love it. The whole sarcastic, young, alternative newsweekly thing.

I was reading Savage's feature this week, "In Defense of Dignity," and I was struck because it brought tears to my eyes. He is a great writer in my opinion. The article is about his mother dying of pulmunary fibrosis.

They gave my mother some more morphine—not enough to kill her, only enough to deaden the pain while her lungs finished her off. Still: Was she in pain? I'm haunted by the thought that she could have been in pain—the pain we promised to spare her—but had no way to tell us, no way to ask for more painkillers, no way to let us know that she needed us, that she needed our help, that she needed us to do whatever we could to hasten her inevitable death and end her suffering.

The story is really sort of heart wrenching, but a good read and a good argument for assisted suicide, if you call it that.

Features

Today the article I told you that I was writing before ran in the Daily Collegian. I wrote a profile piece of the father of western Massachusetts blogging, Tom Devine.

Here's the intro to my story:

You've probably seen him hanging around the Haigis Mall; a man about the age of your father, in his daily uniform: a worn baseball cap, a ratty T-shirt, some classic blue jeans and usually some well-loved Converse Chuck Taylors. Thomas "Tommy" Devine was a student the University of Massachusetts in the late 1970s, during its party hey day. Now, Devine is known as the "father" of the western Massachusetts blogosphere. He never did finish his degree at UMass, but still went on to become influential in the Pioneer Valley.

I hope you'll read the story, I linked it above. Devine's life is a very interesting one.

It's funny because I just bumped into him at the W.E.B. Du Bois library, while he's making his daily blog post himself.

I have a couple other articles in the works now, one potential one that will run in the Arts and Living section about my trip to NYC next week to see SNL. I'll chronicle my time there, touring the NBC studio, how I got the tix etc.

The other story will be a feature for my section about the Flywheel in Easthampton. The music venue was a staple to the local scene for years. They moved out of their old location and have yet to finish remodeling the old town hall in Easthampton to re-open in.

Running my own section of the paper this year has been interesting. I hope if anyone in class wants to write features stories that they'll contact me! I need stories guys!

This blog was getting really politically heavy... so I hope today and yesterday lightened it up a bit.

here's another SNL skit for chuckles.

The Kinks

Lately I've been downloading a lot of Kink's music.

I downloaded an album called "The Great Lost Kinks Album."

There's an interesting story behind the album. It was an 1973 LP comprised of unreleased material. Reprise Records released the material after The Kinks moved to RCA Records.

The Kinks and their management were not told about the release of the album, they only learned that it existed because it showed up on the US Billboard charts.

Kinks song writer Ray Davies took legal action against Reprise. As a result Reprise discontinued the album in 1975.

The vinyl LP became a huge rarity. On Ebay a sealed copy of the album recently sold for $100.

The Kinks are perhaps best known for their hits "Your Really Got Me" and "Lola." "You Really Got Me" was the first hit song based around power chords and later heavily influenced heavy metal songs.

Here's The Kinks playing "You Really Got Me" live.

Obama and McCain Debate #2

I used twitter again last night to (attempt?) to converse with others and share quips about what was going in the second Presidential debate.

I used both #umassprez2 and #debate08 for hashtags. Both hashtags were trending on the twitter search throughout the night. I was surprised that the UMass tag made the trends! It made me feel like I was really a part of something when I participated in it.

I made a lot of new twitter friends; I found some familiar UMass faces twittering on #umassprezz2. At least 6 other people from places like Missouri and Greenwich Village decided to start following me too! I have a following!

Shelby Landeck in Steve Fox's Politics, Journalism and the Web class commented on their entry that she found participating in twitter, watching the twitter tag feeds, and watching the debates was overwhelming. I very much feel the same, reading other twitters and thinking of my own caused me to focus less and really get a grasp on what was being said.

Both Obama and McCain had a few snide remarks, Obama even laughed to himself while McCain was speaking. It seemed a lot more catty than the last debate.

Tom Brokaw, the moderator, tried to keep them in check with the time limits from the start, he had to get more aggressive towards the end because neither cared to keep it to 1 minute.

Fellow UMass Twitter SPsullivan caught McCain botching a Teddy Roosevelt quote. I like the live fact checking.

A lot of people picked up on McCain's new "my friends" phrase that he unabashedly overused.

The debate really focused on the state of the economy, with good reason. Yesterday the economy in Europe was also having major trouble.

John McCain refused to prioritize between healthcare, energy and entitlement reform (social security and medicare). While Obama, actually ANSWERED the question and prioritized... like a president would.

Brokaw: The three -- health care, energy, and entitlement reform: Social Security and Medicare. In what order would you put them in terms of priorities?

McCain: I think you can work on all three at once, Tom. I think it's very important that reform our entitlement programs.

There was of course another big issue with lag on twitter.
You could really see people getting riled up in their twits, too many twitters = FAIL. I know a few times the site completely stopped for me and I had to refresh.

It was interesting to see what both professors and students were saying.

I personally focused on being a bit petty at the beginning and digging at McCain's ancientness. As the night wore on I tried to be a bit more civil and focus on the meat of the debate.

I find it hard to call a winner in these debates. It might help if I read over the transcript of the debate. Between twitting and following others I don't believe I was able to absorb enough of what was actually going on. Twitter can be distracting, I found myself hitting refresh every minute to try and keep up. But perhaps that is my mistake. I should look at twitter and use it at my own pace, and concentrate on the event more.

Twitting to a live event is my favorite way to use it. The commentary and insight of others is invaluable. They catch some things that I didn't, like the botched quote.

Here's the whole debate if you missed it, or y'know, if you want to just relive all of the excitement!

The Daily Beast

Editor Tina Brown's new site.

I really like what I see on this site. I was starting to read a piece that was an open letter to John McCain from an Iraq vet.

Also the Cheat Sheet has a wide array of stories up, ones I hadn't heard of yet. So the content on this site has been at the least, refreshing.

NYtimes's headline this morning read something like "European Stock Market Collapsing Too!" but on thedailybeast, they choose to focus on Iceland which was an interesting angle.

The layout is great, I don't see it specifically leaning one way or another. I can see some balance, but maybe a little leftist.
The story called "The Enablers" is something I'm going to read later on. It's all about the congressmen and woman who enabled the mortgage meltdown to happen.

Why I Hate Sarah Palin

RARRRRR! Are those her politician go-go boots?

Now, I'm going to tell you from the start of this, I don't claim to or think I am incredibly knowledgeable on politics. But I have been trying to keep up, watching a lot of interviews with Palin, or news pieces about her.

And what I really think is that I don't like her at all. Maybe hate is too harsh, as I don't know her personally.

My most recent frustration with this down home air head was her misquoting Madeleine Albright.

"Now she said it, I didn't," Palin said of Albright. "She said, ‘There's a place in hell reserved for women who don't support other women.'"

As it turns out, Palin misquoted both Albright and her mocha cup, which reads: "There's a place in hell reserved for women who don't help other women."

I know she is only in the McCain campaign as a cheap ploy to win swing voters over, or to enrage people on the same wave length as me. But her complete lack of professionalism frustrates me more than anything, the thought of her being next in line to lead the country is unbearable.

Really? SERIOUSLY? She couldn't even quote her "Starbucks mocha cup" correctly?

And she twisted the quote so much. Yes, all people who don't support you, all mighty Sarah Palin, must be going to hell. There you go pouring religion into politics! Isn't religion separate from state guys? C'mon.

If anything, Albright's true quote puts Palin in a bad light. How does not supporting other women having a right to choose help other women, Mrs. Palin? Please, Sarah Palin, help me out by taking away a right that other women had to fight for me to have, just because of your personal beliefs.

I mean, who wouldn't mind having a baby that came to be because of their father raping them, Sarah Palin could be there to support you the whole way! That would make it better!

From her non professional demeanor to her unprepared responses, I can't have one ounce of respect for this woman. If she seemed like a responsible and prepared candidate, I would be more supportive, but I can't just support her because she is a woman.

What REALLY has been getting my goat is people like Elisabeth Hasselbeck from The View, staunch Republican supporters, claiming that Palin somehow (through a divine Christian miracle?) has more experience than Obama. Over at Comedy Central.com there is a great piece breaking down how Palin for sure entered politics after Obama did.

Not to mention the extreme hypocrisy of the McCain party for incessantly trying to put down Obama for lack of experience, compared to the "Maverick" himself. So instead of sticking to your guns of needing experience, you bring in someone less experienced than your opponent who you criticize for being inexperienced?!

It is a joke and an insult to all women, that she is "representing" us as any sort of presidential candidate. Someone who thinks her state's proximity to Russia qualifies as foreign policy experience. Someone who would love nothing more than to take choices away from other women.

Here is the video where Sarah Palin, bless her heart, tries to quote Madeleine Albright via her Starbucks mocha cup.



How do you feel about her? As a woman or just as a concerned citizen of the good ole U.S. of A. Do you think she's qualified? I'm interested if anyone who reads my blog supports her and why. Does she also make your blood boil?

Say Hi To Your Mother For Me, Aight?

So, yes, there was a tina fey SNL palin debate opening this week. But really... I love this clip.

Andy Samberg is becoming a really great cast member. Here he is impersonating Mark Wahlberg and he NAILS the voice. It kills me. I've watched this about 5 times tonight.



Actually I might watch it once more before I go to sleep.

Can I Call You Joe?

I don't watch sports, OK?

Really. Never. It would be useless for me to even have tried to cover one of those events.

So I decided to twitter about the Vice Presidential Debates between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden even though I was at The Collegian.

This situation made it infinitely more frustrating. I streamed it live from CNN.com, first the audio was too quiet. Then I got to plug my laptop into some speakers, but every so often it started lagging BIG TIME. Then in addition to that, twitter was lagging for me. Sometimes what I wanted to type would literally take 2 minutes to show up. I just kept doing the best I could with the situation.

Then finally towards the end I realized people were watching it on TV in the other room. So finally things went my way, not until then though.

I tried not to be biased, but I kept only hearing Palin, I think because I find her voice so annoying. So therefore I more or less only commented on her.

She said a lot of phrases that I have heard her say repeatedly in the past such as but not limited to: "bless their hearts", "the maverick", "ingenuity", "McCain said...", "_____ rears his ugly head" and "I think what the American people need is something new and different" (hypocrite much?)

Palin didn't answer a lot of questions well, saying she wouldn't, similar to Jonathan Safran Foer.

I tried to keep up with the general discussion but my lag and the volume of response with #vpdebate on twitter was hard to follow.

In the end, two new people started following me on twitter.

The debate transcript is here.

Here is the Vice Presidential Debate in its entirety.

Pushing Daisies

Ah, so, tonight was the season two premiere of ABC's Pushing Daisies.
I started watching the show last season, mostly online, then caught the last couple episodes on TV. There were only 9 episodes in the first season thanks to the writer's guild strike. I thought not too many people were into it, people I knew at least. I really got into it though.

ABC has been promoting it for weeks though. I had been worried it wouldn't get a second season because it started during the strike.

On E! there is an article with spoilers for the season.

I had been anticipating tonight since... oh last February.

The show was nominated for 12 Emmy Awards this year.

The premise is that Ned, a pie shop owner, can bring back people from the dead with his touch. The only catch is if the un-dead is alive for more than 60 seconds, someone else must die in replacement. Also, after the 60 seconds, if Ned every touches them again they will be dead again forever. Emerson Cod, a private detective, accidentally discovers Ned's secret and convinces him to solve murder cases with him by questioning the dead. In the first episode he brought his childhood sweetheart back to life.

Wikipedia tells me that the idea of the show is based off of Bishop Severus of Naples who supposedly brought a man back to life to solve a fraud case.

Anywho - one of the best shows on TV in my opinion. Reminds me of a cross between one of my all time favorites, Six Feet Under, a now deceased HBO show and the art direction of French film Amelie. Love the story lines, love the characters, love the sets, love the camera work! What's not to love actually?

Here's a promo clip for season 2, hopefully you can get a feel of the show from it.

Hack - NYC Taxis

Over the summer I interned at Boston's Weekly Dig. Even though I didn't get paid, I got to attend some free events, got free beer, free redbulls, free books, free CDs and free DVDs. In fact I still haven't gotten to read or watch everything.

One book really stuck out for me though. I read Melissa Plaut's "Hack: How I Stopped Worrying About What to Do With My Life and Started Driving a Yellow Cab."

What I thought was interesting about it off the bat, and I know the class will too, is that the book came to be after her blog, "New York Hack", received over 1 million unique user hits and she was subsequently offered a book deal. The blog served as her record of driving cab, dedicated solely to that.

The book was a real page turner to me. You can read my review of it here.

So keep blogging everyone! There is hope to make money from it yet! It really makes me want to start a specialized blog. One that someone will give me a book deal for doing.

Here is an interview with Plaut about how she got into driving taxis and the experience. Like many of us, in or out of college, she didn't know what she wanted to do with her life.

NYtimes vs. Drudge vs. Huffington

I'm checking NYtimes.com, Drudge Report and Huffington Post at around 5:30 pm.

I've been here for about 45 minutes and none of them have updated so far but they are all focusing on the story of the $700 billion dollar bailout not passing.

Huff focuses more on it being a failure on President Bush and nominee McCain's part.

I'll check back in a few more hours.

EDIT: 8:30 pm. NYtimes and HuffPost both changed their pictures but keep the same story/headline. Drudgereport has stayed the same.

9/30/08

EDIT: 12:47 am. Drudge Report hasn't changed - headline says "DOWN IN FLAMES."
Huffpost now says "THE BUSH ECONOMY - Dow Jones lower today than first day of Bush's presidency."
NYtimes has same headline, has changed their picture to a graphic of the stock market at close.

EDIT: 10:50 am - Drudge Report's healdine reads "CALM RETURNS" (to the market.)
NYtimes says "BUSH URGES CONGRESS TO PASS BAILOUT" (after it was rejected yesterday,
HuffPost says "MCCAIN AT 'POLIITICAL END' AFTER BAILOUT FAILURE."

Very interesting they all made the same story yesterday but now each of the aftermath stories are taking new directions. Huff is concentrating on it hurting McCain's image. NYtimes seems sort of hopeful and non blaming. Drudge seems to think it's all fine and dandy.

While looking online about the founder of Drudge I found some claims that he might be sort of right leaning. Within the headlines I can see NYtimes tries to be unbiased, Huff is definitely left and Drudge does seem to support the right more.

Here's Mass State Rep Barney Frank speaking on the rejection of the bailout.



EDIT: 2:20 pm
NYtimes is the only one who changed their top story. They are now saying senate leaders and pledging to work toward a quick bailout plan.

Jonathan Safran Foer Conversation

Last Tuesday our Web Writing Class attended the Jonathan Safran Foer talk about his newest book, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.” The plan was to live twitter on twitter.com. The plan didn’t work out for me.

I went with my laptop into the FAC auditorium and noticed right away that I couldn’t get a wireless signal. So I made my twitter remarks in a word document and then posted them in order as soon as I could after the event.

Prior to the event I did my homework and read the article about him in The Republican. There I discovered that he also authored “Everything Is Illuminated.” I saw the movie for that book, thought I couldn’t concentrate on it as much as I wanted to because the idiot I watched it with wouldn’t stop making comments as he’d seen it before. ANYWAYS.

Foer was invited to UMass by the Commonwealth College because they are reading “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” for their Dean’s book.

Right away I could tell the talk was going to be interesting. Foer made wise cracks and plenty of hysterical comparisons from the start. At times he has me in stitches.
I guess as I went along I tried to focus on funny or profound things he said. In retrospect I wish I made my twitters more opinion based.

In the introduction to his speech, I learned that Foer is a fellow vegetarian, which was pretty exciting. That was my first twitter.

Right away Foer made sure to note he didn’t want it to be a speech but instead he wanted to have a conversation. I felt that it really was a conversation. I think that set the tone for the night. I twittered about how it was to be a conversation.

My next couple twitters were observation based.
“He has a very fun sense of humor. Uses a lot of comparisons. He holds my attention very easily. I think he is really funny. #foer”

Then, “He seems so comfortable on stage. It’s as if he’s just talking one on one to each person. Wish my lecture professors spoke like him. #foer”
I was impressed with how comfortable he seemed on stage. I don’t know if I could ever command an audience like him.

He was done with his conversation by 7:30 and I noted that in my twitter. As soon as he was done CommCol questions were asked.

He sort of made a disclaimer that I twittered about. How he is infamous for evading questions. Boy, did he live up to that!

A point I twittered about and found interesting was that he didn’t do any research for the book. Except maybe accidental research by just reading on his own.

“I think a lot of writers become writers not because of what they can say, but what they can’t say.” Cheesy but i think it's profound. #foer”

I thought he had a lot of profound and interesting things to say.

“Do you really think I like writing? No, I don’t… I like having written.” HA - sometimes I feel the exact same way. #foer”

That was my favorite quote from the night I think. It was delivered so well. I find it fascinating that he doesn’t like writing and more or less claims to do it on accident. That is why I think his writing seems so artistic, it really is an art that pours out of him. Like he can’t help but create it, even though he doesn’t really want to.

Later I mostly twittered about how funny he was being. He totally shut down some people who asked questions.

By the end of the talk, I decided that I just had to read the book. Luckily there was a table set up where they were selling hard cover copies of the book for $10! Ten dollars, compared to the retail $25. I was stoked and Katelyn and I each bought a copy. We then waited in line for a good while until we met Foer. He was very nice, signed our books.

We told him about what our class was doing and he said he didn’t even know what twitter was!

I started reading the book and LOVE it so far. I’m already on about page 90. I shouldn’t even be reading it considering all the other reading I need to do for classes. To heck with other reading I say!

Tina Fey Strikes Again

Ah, Sarah Palin, America's laughing stock once again. If you haven't seen her interview with Katie Couric yet, you need to, as it's worth a good laugh.

For the second week in a row Saturday Night Live had an opening sketch with Tina Fey as Sarah Palin. This time Amy Poehler played Katie Couric.

I wonder how long they'll keep up doing these Palin skits.

The Monkey Bar

Last night I was coaxed into going to the Monkey Bar for the first time in my UMass career.

I hated it.

I hated everything about it.

I hated the people there, I hated the music, I hated the set up, I hated the people having sex with clothes on next to me. I especially hated the people having a full on make-out session next to me.

I like going out to dance, but not with these people. I felt beyond out of place.



There is an unfortunate video of something close to what I experienced last night. I will never go back there again.

Sudoku

So I'm sitting at the Collegian after finishing my layout. You know what it's time for? Sudoku!

Sudoku is something that I never thought I'd like. But to my surprise, when a friend showed me how to do it in late August, I LOVED IT. And I hate numbers, I hate math etc. The only thing that is really involved is logic.

I've even bought a Puzzle Lovers Sudoku book.

Some people like Sudoku a lot more than me though.

Mixtapes

Is there anything as great as receiving a mixtape from a friend or flame? I think not.
I also think it is so gratifying to finally finish what you consider to be a perfect tape(CD nowadays) for someone.

I've made CDs for my ex, I've made them for my car, I've made them for my friends after they were dumped. The music that is on a mixtape can really set a mood and burn memories into your brain.

I can never hear The Beatles "Got to Get You Into My Life" without thinking of the first mix my ex ever made for me. Certain songs bring me back to a specific time in my life.

The past couple weeks I worked on a mix for someone in Seattle. It should arrive on Thursday and I eagerly await his reaction!

The website Cassette From My Ex lets people post the story of a love affair and post the audio file of each side of a mixtape to the site. It's really fascinating to see what other people put on mixes for those they care about.

Linking

The section I found most interesting in chapter 8 was on page 158 entitled "Permission to Link."

I had never once considered that it would be illegal to link to another site. For pictures, yes, I had considered that. But I also considered that my blog is probably not important enough to even get their attention.

For links though, my thought was that I was in fact always doing the linked site a favor. I'm getting my readers to check out their site, further legitimizing their information, and I'm even bumping them up on the Google search pages. Where is the problem? They are obviously getting credit because the link distinguishes my website from theirs.

Now I'm afraid to link in this entry. But this entry is a lot more boring than others, right? Sorry, but I need to cover my ass.

(Chapter 8 Foust)

Misery Business

So I lied, I thought I wouldn't be posting Saturday. But here I am up after 12 am at my friend's before we depart for NYC tomorrow. But he just inspired me to post before I go to bed.

The past couple weeks I have finally been giving Paramore a listen to because of him. The song "Misery Business" is a very catchy song from their second release entitled Riot! . Easily my favorite. When I got to his place tonight he had made this music video for the song.



He plays all members of the band in the video. Which he made in only a little over a day.

Brian Babineau is a graphic designer by profession but he makes music videos and short movies for fun. He's been on youtube for years and has a bit of a following. For good reason too! His videos are always really fun and creative. Check out his vids!