Friday, December 18, 2009

An excerpt from The Memoirs of a Septuagenarian

"Grace was different from others in another important way. She was charming, kind and gentle, so much so that I kept looking for the other side of her nature to show up. Gradually, I came to realize that there wasn't any other side. She didn't have one set of ‘company manners’ to be used in public, and another set which she used in private. She was, like a pure gem, genuine all the way through."
- Maurice Mountain, Sr., writing about meeting the woman that would become his wife of over fifty years.

When my grandfather turned seventy, he sat down and wrote a memoir, which, over the past few years of my life I've turned to in attempts to get to know him as he passed away before I was old enough to realize what a gift grandparents could be. So often, I find myself caught in the traps of life, thinking long and hard, pawing through columns of metaphysical debates in the depths of the internet, only to find that the greatest wisdom that could be instilled upon me about life and love are right in front of me. I have always really liked that passage, but now as my skepticism towards the female gender mounts, I relax knowing that it will only serve to hold you back. Life may be a game of poker, but not everybody's bluffing.


Monday, December 14, 2009

The Stress!

Tell your friends, "Once, I lived!" And please, don't let your visions of tomorrow cloud the beauty of today.


Monday, December 7, 2009

We have all the time in the world

It's Christmastime, and I'm coming to the conclusion that some of the best love songs ever written were James Bond themes. Give 'em a listen and check out some shots from Saturday night.



Nancy Sinatra - You Only Live Twice (from You Only Live Twice)

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Carly Simon - Nobody Does it Better (from the Spy Who Loved Me)
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Louis Armstrong - We Have All the Time in the World (from On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
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Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Ira Glass at Syracuse University

In a moment of educational bliss, Ira Glass, host of This American Life, graced Syracuse University's own Hendrick's Chapel to give a powerful and educational talk on storytelling, radio, and the future of journalism.

Already a fan, I came hoping to be surprised and inspired. While he maintained his usual candor and demeanor, I left this talk with a bit more than from his usual weekly broadcasts. If you're interested in hearing what he has to say about storytelling and the methods he uses, you can search for him on YouTube and watch the videos- he basically repeated the same rhetoric he does on videos there. His methods, tried and true, are brilliant, simple, and beautiful. He truly is unique in his simplicity of mind and straightforward way of storytelling. He expressed well-thought ideas about how to approach the next wave of journalism - with a sense of humor, with a sensitivity to people, and with, perhaps most importantly, a central theme on the humanity of stories and how imporant stories are to people. Using Arabian Nights as an allegory to the importance of stories (they may save your life!), Glass briefly brought us into the world where words shout themselves, and the beauty of straightforward storytelling transcends into spirits that last longer than the sounds that carry them to our ears and rock us to our cores. The stories of heartbreak, awkwardness, hope, betrayal, and new beginnings are central to humanity, for within the stories of other people, we learn more about ourselves as we, if only for a few moments, are the storyteller too.

What touched me most about the entire talk, was that during the question and answer portion, a nine year old boy used his question to ask for a handshake. It made me a bit emotional, thinking that this nine year old was touched as equally by his talk and the weekly experience that is This American Life as it touches me every week. Whether you're nine or ninety, the stories on the show ring true to the human element that exists within us all, and I felt inspired to know that somehow, 1.8 million people per week (and 500,000 more on podcasts) tune in to share the silences and moments of sensitivity that break through to fits of laughter that Mr. Glass brings to the radio.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

China Town

I watched 500 Days of Summer last night. I quite enjoyed it, it's quite a story. I have one like that.


A shot from China Town this past weekend when I went home, best viewed listening to slow violin-infused indie folk.

Friday, October 9, 2009

The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize

You know, Woodrow Wilson got a Nobel Peace Prize for founding the League of Nations, and that shit failed.

They gave Yasser Arafat one, too, for "the promotion of peace in the Middle East" which is arguably one of the many things he did not do in his lifetime. The list of laureates is varied and astonishing.

I'm not a political scientist; I'm not even a regular scientist. I do wax political from time to time, though. It should be said that I'm not a source of knowledge on these sorts of things. But, its my personal belief that the prize exists to say "Please keep trying to make peace, because with enough tries you may succeed" rather than "thanks for all the peace, man." If you don't think the election of the first black American President doesn't promote tolerance or hopefulness, and change the shape of global peacemaking, you're ignoring the other 7 billion people on this planet. Future elections, globally, will have new precedence and tone. Obama's presidency alone is a global step in the right direction towards peace.

But, I say, the prize should have gone to the American people for showing the world that the rules of life are still being written. America, as a country, promoted the kind of tolerance, change and forward-thinking that I personally feel the Prize exists to pay homage to. However, as Presidents often are, Obama is the face of the American people on an international scale for his tenure, and he will be the face of our successes, as well as our failures.