The Christmas Spirit

The other day, while trying to pass the time in my empty boring house in the Maryland, I came across a very interesting Facebook status.  The post came from a former student at an inner city school I used to volunteer at.  The post reads as follows, "Christmas is a bunch of bullshit. The world has turned it into an excuse for people to go out and buy shit. It puts people who dont have anything feel bad because their family cant afford anything while rich kids get what they want. Just appreciate the stuff you get year around. Tired of this i want this i want that shit."  When I first read this post, I felt offended and attacked, like this huge and traditional part of my life was being condemned.  But as I further considered it, I realized that he had a point.  Christmas has been transformed from a Christian religious celebration of Jesus's birth to a season of buying, giving and receiving.  When you talk to you're friends about christmas, you don't say, "man, I can't wait to celebrate Jesus' birthday", but rather you look forward to the presents, all the stuff you're going to get.  At this point, I thought to my self, christmas feel more like an economic holiday than a religious holiday.  My research has shown that that feeling is completely accurate.  A study I found, shows that more people shop online on christmas day than went to church.  Christmas has become a day about the exchange of "stuff".  

A "more efficient use of time and money"

        This morning I was reading another edition of the world's finest newspaper, the Wilmette Life and came across an article that I felt compelled to blog about.  The article reports that the New Trier Booster Club has pledged one million dollars to help them lay down an artificial turf for the athletes to play on.  The entire project is expected to cost almost 3 and a half million dollars.  The article quotes Kaci Smith, the Booster Club president saying that this project would be "more efficient use of time and money".  The Booster Club will raise the money through donations.
       I personally struggle to see a less efficient use of time or other's money.  I have a hard time imagining such vast sums of money being thrown away to something as inessential as fake grass.  Think of all the people someone could help with 3.3 million dollars.  People have played sports on grass for over 3,000 years, it is surely not essential to change this now.  The argument for turf is that it is an even playing field that is more durable so that teams can practice safely all year long.  There are plenty of cons too, such as overheating, lead poison, and pollution.  I won't argue however, that the cons outweigh the pros or vice versa,  because frankly it doesn't matter.  I am more focused on the fact that our nation is going through recession and New Trier is focused on laying down fake grass.  

Wafflepwn

The other day, I discovered a youtube channel called wafflepwn.  The channel belongs to a teenaged boy, Jack, who makes videos of himself antagonizing his older brother, Steven, who clearly has some serious anger issues.  The videos are entitled, "The Greatest Freakout Ever" and he has made almost 20 videos of his brother's anger outbreaks.  To give you an idea of what these videos are about, here is an example of one of the  videos on the channel. 

Some believe that these videos are fake and that they are all acted.  It is definitely possible, but for the purpose of this blog post, let's suppose they are real.  Now when you watch the video, you will probably at first get a good laugh out of it, I certainly did.  Maybe you will go watch some more, they are definitely hilarious and addictive, but after I had gotten over my hysterical laughing phit, I started to think about the morals of the videos. I started to think, how is this any better than making fun of someone with downs syndrome.  The owner of this channel takes advantage of his brothers issues and exploits them so that he can humiliate his own brother in front of literally millions of people.  To me that is just completely immoral.  One might argue that Jack doesn't realize or believe that his brother actually has issues, but I saw him say in an interview that "There's definitely something wrong with him."  So Jack understands Steven's disability and exploits him secretly without his knowledge.

Thanksgiving: A Day of Mourning

      Since we were kids, we have been taught about the origins of the national holiday, Thanksgiving.  Friends and family get together to eat good food, drink, play football and enjoy themselves.  We are supposedly celebrating the union of the Native Americans and the settlers.  It celebrates a day where the European colonists and the Native Americans got together, shared knowledge and harvested a field.  While this event is widely accepted as historically accurate, many historians have an issue with the overall picture it paints of the events to come.  Most people simply accept that Thanksgiving celebrates peace and happiness, yet for others, Thanksgiving marks the beginning of a genocide.  

     I read a very interesting article that speaks of a group of people that has an unorthodox approach to "celebrating" this national holiday.  While most Americans watch football and stuff themselves with pie and turkey, a group of mostly people with Native American Heritage gather near Plymouth rock to mourn the genocide of their ancestors.  Most Americans don't even consider what they are actually celebrating when they gather on Thanksgiving day, but rather just accept that they are allowed to stop working and enjoy themselves for one day.  

      To me it seems incredibly insensitive celebrate a Thanksgiving without even considering the overall historical background that so drastically contradicts what we are celebrating.  I am not arguing for the abolition of Thanksgiving because we are celebrating a historically accurate day, however I do think that there should be some recognition of the devastating events to come.

Please comment with your opinions.

"Dude, thats racist!"

Today in advisory we talked about halloween costumes that are and are not acceptable.  The usual inappropriate costume ideas were mentioned, the gangster, the nun, the indian and so on.  Our advisor telling us the facts and rules really brought about a very interesting debate about racism.  When our advisor had gotten through a few of the pictures of inappropriate costumes, on kid stood up and asked, "wait what is racist about these costumes?"  "Well, they depict another race, of course they are racist!"  His response really got me thinking, I feel like racism is like walking on thin ice constantly watching where you step so that you don't fall through.  The word is completely overused to the point where even mentioning a person of another race immediately makes listeners think "that's racist."  The definition of the word racism is "a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others."  Thus simply portraying or referencing another race isn't racist, it becomes racist when you portray that race in an unequal and negative light.  Yet the school has simply declared and reference to another race to be racist.  The school refuses to recognize that there is a major difference between portraying someone of another race and portraying someone of another race based on stereotype.  For example, I have a friend who wanted to be Barrack Obama for Halloween.  He proposed to wear an Obama mask, and his advisors response was that he couldn't because he was portraying another race.  That seemed absurd to me, he isn't portraying another race in a negative light, he's simply dressing as another human being.  Thus the school makes no distinction between for example, the costume shown in the costume shown in the top left and the costume shown in the bottom left, even though one is a stereotype and the other is simply a mask that is meant to look like the president of the United States.  Furthermore, I wonder how the school would react if I came to school dressed in the costume shown to the right.  As you can see the costume doesn't portray another race, the costume means to portray someone of my race, yet it is clearly racist.  It takes the stereotypes of a race and accentuates them to portray that race in a negative light.  But by the school rules that were presented to us in advisory, this is not racist at all and a totally fine costume to wear on Halloween. 


Please comment and share your opinion!

Setting Limits?

Last weekend, for a friend's birthday we all watched a movie we had been dying to see since we saw the ridiculous looking trailer On Demand.  The movie was entitled "Hobo with a Shotgun".  The film exceeded our expectations of absurdity.  Because of the inappropriate nature of basically any video giving you the idea of the plot I will write a brief summary.  Basically a Hobo comes to a crime ridden, no lawed and corrupt city that is run by a sick murderer and drug dealer named Drake and his two sons Slick and Ivan.  The city lives in constant fear due to Drakes monthly shows where he demonstrates his dominance by savagely killing a random citizen and threatening to do the same to anybody who refuses to watch.  The hobo takes it upon himself to clean up the streets with a shotgun and kills anyone who does anything wrong.  After I watched the movie, I started thinking.  I remembered some scenes that just seemed wrong to me.  I think the rating system of movies is a great step to limit what  film makers publish, but after seeing that film, I think there should be a line that is not allowed to be crossed.  In the film, there was a scene where the two sons burned a school bus full of toddlers to send a message to the community.  This scene was clearly meant to only stir up a shock value that sells tickets.  There are several other scenes that I could describe in all the bloody, gory detail.  But to me, they seem too unethical to even describe for the purpose of this post.  I think there are certain things that just shouldn't be allowed to be published and this movie was full of those things.  This was an especially interesting idea to me since we have been talking about limiting civil liberties in class.  I understand that this is protected under the first amendment, but I have trouble understanding why.  Much of this movie was simply for shock value.  There was no artistic point to it.  It got so over the top violent that it just felt unethical to watch.  

What do you think?  Do you think there should be a limit to what moviemakers can publish?

An "Educated" Mind

As the thought of college approaches, my parents and I have been in an ongoing debate about the idea of going to a conservatory versus a liberal arts college.  They have agreed to let me study music in college but only if I get good academic education along side it.  My problem is most of my top choices are conservatory's where it is difficult to get a good education.  My parents say they think an academic education is important even if I want to be a musician because they want me to be an actively thinking member of society no matter what I become.  This is my question: why do you need a formal liberal arts education to develop your mind and be a critically thinking person.  I believe that an active mind can be achieved independently.  In my opinion, an active mind comes from reading, communicating and zealous an involved thinking if you are motivated enough.  It seems to be an American assumption that you need a college education and a liberal arts degree to have a truly educated mind.  I wonder what you really get out of college that you can't achieve on your own other than a piece of paper that label you and allow hirers to gauge your intelligence and qualification.

Please comment and let me know what you think!

Jazz and Drugs

Something that makes me very angry when thinking about Jazz history is the use of drugs and how not only, the irresponsible use of them ruined the lives of some of jazz's most influential artists but also how they have come to affect how people think about jazz today.  Two members Wynton Marsalis' Jazz at Lincoln Center orchestra share there thoughts in the video below.

**Due to publising issues, the video cannot be cropped or displayed on my blog, please click here and skip to 5:11, watch until 5:42.

When I think Jazz and drugs, the first name that comes to mind is Charlie Parker.  Charlie Parker, or "Bird" made Jazz what it is today.  He was one of the most influential Jazz musicians of all time.  But his contributions came with a severe price.  Bird was and in many cases, still is, the pinnacle of what a Jazz musician should be.  He was just lightyears ahead of everyone else, and Wynton Marsalis himself once said at a masterclass that no one has done what he did as well as him since and described himself as a "Bird imitator".  Parker also had a severe heroin addiction.  So he created a legacy of Jazz musicians who were all searching for Parker's secret.  Many became convinced that heroin was that secret.  From that point on, drugs, specifically heroin use was of epidemic proportions.  They caused the death many of the music's most prominent artists such as Chet Baker, and ruined other's such as Miles Davis.  Modern jazz has for the most part grown out of that era.  However, the stereotypes remain strong.  I hope that people can recognize the growth in responsibility jazz has experienced and move beyond old stereotypes.

If you ain't first, you're last

Saturday night I was driving in the city.  As a new driver this was a nightmare.  I cant tell you how many times people laid on their horns for me not doing something that would save them a second at most.  For example, in drivers ed I learned that at an intersection, even after the light turns green, I should give about 3 seconds before going to allow any other cars to exit the intersection.  Well, the young lady doing her make up in her audi, in the car behind me didn't like this safety maneuver too much, seeing as she loudly honked her horn and screamed out the window "Move A-hole!" despite the obvious New Driver Bumper sticker on the back of my car.  This really got me thinking about the American desire for speed and constant motion.  There is always a place to be, a person to see or a thing to do for Americans.  I remembered our conversation in class where Mr. O'Connor talked about his European friend who talked "But there must be time to dream, no?"  It's part of American culture to always be moving.  It is looked down upon to simply do nothing and think for an extended period of time.  I wondered why this is, because from class discussions and my foreign experiences, this seems to be an exclusively American phenomenon.  I believe this has to do with competition.  Americans strive to beat out others and get ahead of the game, because that is what you need to do to get what you want.  We believe that every second counts, thus if time is not being used efficiently then it is time wasted.  

Rivalries

Friday night my friends and I went to the New Trier Homecoming football game.  As we walked to the field, we passed a group of Loyola students wearing maroon shirts that said "Beat New Trier!" on them.  They were shouting and making obscene gestures at other New Trier fans.  Now in case you didn't know, New Trier played Main South for homecoming, not Loyola.  This struck me as a rivalry gone way to far.  I would have understood if it was Loyola fans at a NT vs. Loyola homecoming game but it wasn't.  The came to a New Trier game that had nothing to do with them just to watch New Trier lose and be obnoxious.  This just seems absurd to me.  Why do two High school football teams have such an intense rivalry that kids see going to NT games to be obnoxious as a good use of time on a Friday night.  If you think thats ridiculous, think about this, after every New Trier vs. Evanston basketball game at Welsh-Ryan Arena there are multiple fights which often results in kids spending the night in the hospital, or prison.  Last year, one fan was beat over the head with a brick, this resulted in serious head injuries, the perpetrators were arrested and expelled.  Its hard to imagine a stupider and more pointless reason to ruin your life and harm another's.  Sports were invented as a fun passing of time but they have become a cause for violence and animosity even at the High School.  I also believe the schools are contributing to it.  Do you think that a basketball game versus Evanston would be as big a deal if it was held at the school like all the other season games?  I don't.  Yet the schools continue to rent out Welsh Ryan Arena and heighten the rivalry and anger.
Let me know what you think.

A Violent Interest

While I was researching Timothy Treadwell for a comment, something very interesting occurred to me yesterday.  I began to research in the usual for our generation, I pulled up google and began typing T-i-m-o-t-h-y- -T and the second i typed the T for Treadwell, a google suggestion popped up.  It predicted that I was going to search "Timothy Treadwell death audio."  I could't believe it.  Google suggestions is based on other searches from other computers, so that means that so many people had searched for an opportunity to listen to Treadwell's suffering as he was being torn apart that google assumed I must be searching for it too.  This seemed demented and abnormal to me, but I started thinking about modern interests and entertainment and of course, television was the first to come to mind.  I searched for a list of the most popular television shows.  I discovered that among television's most viewed programs are Bones, True Blood, NCIS, Criminal Minds, Dexter, and Law and Order: Special Victims.  These are all shows about death, murder and over all pain and suffering.  Video games also came to mind.  Some of the most popular video games are Call of Duty, Halo, Battlefront, Grand Theft Auto and Gears of War.  These are all games about war, murder, crime and death.  I wondered, why is that what Americans find most entertaining?  Too further my research, I googled the worst and infamous name that I could think of, Jeffrey Dahmer, who was arguably the most troubling serial killers of American History.  First and foremost, I only had to type J-e for google to predict that I was going to research Jeffrey Dahmer Murders.  I clicked on the first link that came up to try to understand what so many people were researching.  First was an at depth description of who dahmer was, what he did and what happened to him.  It seemed normal until I continued scrolling down to the next section.  The site showed pictures of what the police found at Dahmer's apartment!  (I knew so many people were researching this because I found links that had been viewed almost a million times.) I wondered why would someone ever post these horrors and who would seek them out?  However I found that millions of people were searching for them.  This small amount of rough research has really made me question American mainstream interest and entertainment.  Why is it that we millions of people search for chances to view pain, violence, murder and suffering?

Please Comment with your opinions.

The Death of Jazz

This past weekend I attended the Chicago Jazz festival.  As I looked out at the sea of people I thought about how many consider jazz to be a dead and forgotten art form.  The Walrus news magazine wrote an article called "Life after the Death of Jazz" and the Chicago Tribune has written a piece called "The Death of Jazz."  This is only to name a few.  It is safe to say that the general consensus of researchers is that Jazz has been mostly forgotten.  You know that music you have on your ipod that your parents don't understand or like?  Whether its rock, pop, rap or electronic music I think you know what I'me talking about.  There was a time when jazz was that music.  Jazz was that rebellious youthful fad that bonded teenagers like us together at one point.  Now of course your thinking, that point has passed, its happened to other musics too.  But think about the fact that there are still plenty of people who are really into 80's heavy metal or 70s hip hop.  So why is jazz so scarcely appreciated, especially among young people.  Guitarist Pat Metheny has the right idea in my opinion, here are his thoughts. 

A point Metheny makes is that in all genres there is both good and bad music.  However the reason jazz has been forgotten is because it takes more work to discover the good stuff because there is so much bad music surrounding the good music.  Furthermore, usually only the bad music is advertised when it comes to jazz.  You never see an advertisement for the jazz greats living today like Chris Potter and Nicholas Payton, you have to find that yourself, yet there are commercials advertising the music of Kenny G.  The reality is good jazz is hard to find, and Americans don't want to do the work to find it, because music is about pleasure, thus we believe there shouldn't be any work involved.  This really got me thinking about the stereotype that Americans are lazy.  There is a reason jazz is still popular in almost all other civilized nations but ours.  Everything is so simple when it comes to music here.  You hear something on mainstream radio, and you can purchase is from your computer or even your smart-phone.  With jazz its not that simple.  As Metheny points out, you have to talk to people to find good jazz.  Americans don't want to do that which in my opinion is why jazz is so under-appreciated in America today.