Thrown From the Vehicle

Hisan Says

2010-03-21T14:48:00.001-07:00

A Haircut on New Year’s Day

Hisan says, “What, like you no know where she is?”

“Heh, yeah, misplaced her. We went out for dinner and I just lost her in the lobby… No, I mean she left me. She’s gone.”

“…”

“I think it was her New Year’s Resolution or something.”

“…”

“Good day to get a haircut, I guess, hey?”

Hisan clips away. Hair fall from my head, bounces off the shoulder, cascades down the blue plastic. Clip, clip. Bounce, bounce.

“Well,” he says, “Tomorrow be better. Tomorrow always better.”

Hisan’s words echo and do not explain themselves. I don’t ask. Hisan is wearing a new shirt. He cuts my hair like he’s renovating the Sistene Chapel. It feels great.

Every year, he says, he goes somewhere new, he says. He is going to Korea tomorrow. Last year, India. Year before that, Nepal. This year, Korea, Laos, Thailand. His phone rings and he steps away to take the call.

On the wall behind me hangs a gigantic painting. It must be twenty feet long and fifteen high. This huge, white canvas with wide brushstrokes of every color in all directions. At the top, right behind me is a robust, oddly shaped eye. It is staring right at me in the mirror. I look away. I examine my own eyebrows: My face is lopsided.

“Tomorrow allllll-ways better.” he repeats, sliding the phone into his pocket. “That was my friend in Korea. He is a Buddhist monk. I stay with him tomorrow night.”

Clip, clip. Bounce, bounce. 
“I meet him somewhere, traveling, and he invite me to stay with him. So I go.
People ask me why I go, I tell them for four reasons and four reasons only.”

He steps to the side, four fingers ready to designate reasons. He points to each one with his comb. He’s not cutting my hair anymore. The eye is staring from the mirror.

“One, I go to be there. Two, I go to feel it. I don’t know what it will feel like, but I go there and feel it. Three, I go to think it. I don’t know what I will think, but I will go and think it. People want to know why I go, I tell them for these three reasons.”

“…”

Hisan is looking solidly at me in the mirror, combing his fingers. He tilts his head down, looks at me again over his glasses, combs his fingers.

“Memory,” he says, moving the scissors back into action. Clip, clip. Bounce, bounce.

“That is the difference between human and animal. Memory.”

The eye is not blinking, the hair keeps falling, and my face is looking more and more lopsided.

“I have property. I have cats there, seven cats. I go there to bale hay. I see one cat, golden cat, and he comes back maybe three, four months ago, all scratched up- I think he fight a rattlesnake!”

“Did he win?” I say, like an idiot.

“He win? I don’t know-- he is alive! He comes back, all scratched up, and what does he do? What is he doing next time I go up, and last time? He is taking a nap in the sun. He is sleeping! He does not care, he does not worry. He is napping. Humans, we remember yesterday, day before that, day before… Think about what am I going to do tomorrow, next day, next day after that… I know so many people. This monk I see tomorrow, me, everybody, think about past and future. This cat, he does not remember, no past, no future, only now.”

“…”

“Who has peace? Tell me, do humans have peace? No, always remember, always worry. People need to not worry, not spend so much time remember this or that. Lay down and take a nice, deep sleep.” Clip clip bounce bounce.

I look at the mirror. I am wearing my business outfit. I look good. I am not tired. The eye is still there, but it looks like it would close for a while if it could. I close mine. Once again, she has left. Clip clip. Bounce bounce. I get up. I pay for the haircut.

“Have a good trip, Hisan.”

“OK!” he says, waving from his new shirt. “Tomorrow better! Happy New Year!”

The little bell on the door jingles like a quarter you drop but don’t pick up.

Tomorrow will be better, I think to myself. Tomorrow always better.

FIVE

2009-04-22T16:14:00.000-07:00

The metal of the scrapyard had been glazed by a white frost layer; in the east the massive Utah sun had climbed only just above the sharp rock rim. The men stand near the rusted orange door smoking cigarettes and pulling long draws of yellow-green soda out of thin, yellow-green soda bottles. Some of the men have the hoods of their hooded sweatshirts up over their heads, their heads bowed like monks awaiting matins.

Work begins and the scrap gets sorted into like piles; loaders smoke and grind, vehicles crushed and the breaking of glass, the groan of old metal under force, and the smoke from the mens' cigarettes gives haze to the acrid air. Work ends later in the day, when the crew is tired, dirty, hands blackened and faces dusty. The wind dances eddies of dust in the afternoon warmth and the vast ocean of desert and the rock giants half-buried in the earth defy both innocence and experience.

Miguel stops Glenn on his way towards his truck.

"Glenn"

"Yes sir," he responds in a low tone.

Miguel hands Glenn an envelope, his pay from the previous week.

"How've you been doing Glenn?" he asks.

"Been doin' alright"

The men stand for a moment in recognition; eyes set on the other, distant though is the whine from the highway, washing in from the east a plague.

4

2009-02-04T10:13:00.000-08:00

When Miguel walks through the door into the kitchen it is late. His jacket comes off and he stands for a moment in the dim light. He leans heavily on the back of the chair, pushing down on it and then sliding it quietly out from the table, he sits.

In the bedroom, Inez sleeps and their baby, wrapped in a blanket and cozy at the bottom of the crib's protective cage, dreams of faces and sounds. Miguel's hand rests on kitchen table and his face is weary and his eyes cast upon the black plastic of the pepper shaker and the white plastic of it's neighbor. His gaze lingers for a few minutes and then he breathes in with purpose and exhales with languor.

In the bedroom, Miguel looks first at the soft, buried mound of Inez and then touches the soft blanket covering the baby. Undressing and laying down next to Inez, a strong tide of sleep covers him and he is lost under the washing flow. He dreams that long night of fire, of the junkyard and of its piles--patchwork colors of rusted metal, blue and orange, rusted and heaping--and at the center a flashing strobe of memory, of something in the past lurching forward, the black heat of burning tires. Miguel notices the man standing near the fire. They separated by a few yards and then are standing side by side, in the sudden manner that dreams may shift. The man lists sided to side, unsteady. He reeks of liquor, his heavy eyelids closed and his mouth slightly agape--a sleepwalker wandered into another man's dream. Miguel can see his hands, crusted and dark the deep redblack of old blood. The clothes workworn and stained, the gray hair shapeless and the fire's light playing against the scrap metal bent and twisted.

Three

2008-11-22T16:31:00.000-08:00

this moment happens many years ago, before the reckoning and before the cycle began again. there is a boy; there is the scrub brush in the desert--low and gray green and sharp. they are beyond the high hill behind the white weatherbeaten double-wide. there hadn't been rain in many weeks but the low ocean of cloud whispered of first snow. the father has a gun. he crouches low against the dust and the cold air rushing towards them spoke brightly in the father's ears of betrayls and disagreements. inside the mother sat with her back to the window facing the hillside and nursing the welt on her face crying and shaking--the boy knew this, the father knew this.

the wind blew low and the cloud cover drifted glacially across the sky. the pronghorn and the pronghorn calf stood near each other at a distance that made the shot difficult under good conditions. the animals stood with their heads lowered towards the ground; the calf moved one leg a step forward, putting it just below the point the father aimed for on the grown animal. watch the boy watch the father; watch him and know that he can understand, he is not too young. the rifle shot cracks and echoes across the hill; the pronghorn explodes in motion and zigzags sharply across the desert disappearing quickly around the next low hill of the anticline that stretches for a few miles in any direction from their property.

goddamnit.

the fathers' words carry on the wind; the boy hears but does not. he watches the lump of the calf in the distance watches his father get up and turn back, walking towards the house, gun hanging from the strap across his shoulders.

he sits and watches; alone now the air speaks to him--questions and intimations

he is standing over the body of the calf. he is watching it gurgle air through its nose, listening to its gutshot panting, watching it not die quickly.

afterwards he drops the rock bloadsoaked next to him. it was almost too heavy for him to lift but he wanted to in a way that he had felt before, an immediate and frightened mind. the calf lifeless; skull broken and panting stopped.

the boy's walk back to the house is slow, his return to the house unnoticed. he lay down on the couch and slept until late that night. he rose from bed and remembered.

Two

2008-11-19T16:26:00.000-08:00

i don't think much 'bout the way things have been, or used to be. i know i fucked up quite a bit and now i guess this is just the way things are. was born north of here and haven't made it too far--think just about the only difference between us here is how we got here rightnow. i mean--you've gotten here without really thinkin' 'bout it too much, and fuckin' here i am fifty-two this mornin' without a fuckin' leg to stand on. Goddamn leg to stand on. Migel i know you just sittin' there smilin' 'bout somethin...well fuck you anyhow its my birthday and i don't give a shit what you think

Miguel laughs, smiles, drinks his cerveza. Glenn you want 'nother piece birthday cake man or i buy you 'nother cerveza before i go home amigo--got work tomorrow like you

he waits a second as Glenn's head weaves in the air a little like a cow's might if you smacked it between the eyes with a hammer. he stares straight ahead, eyelids raised asymmetrically. Ok cerveza it is bud, Miguel states without response.

Miguel buys the beer, finishes his own, slaps Glenn lightly on the back and leaves his weaving head and droopy eyes alone in the haze of the bar.

Glenn sits like that for a few more minutes and then emerges from whatever place he had visited, raises his head up and gets off the barstool like a praying mantis negotiates walking over a highly uneven surface.

he bumps into the door twice before succeeding in exiting the building. The cold is liquid and bracing, the sky so full of heavy stars. Glenn retches before his hands can fumble with the pickup's door enough to get it open, and he pauses again to pant and wipe his mouth before he ascends in slow-motion into the cab. The bar is at most a half-mile from Glenn's trailer and he's made the drive wasted more times than is reasonable; he drives slowly along a road adjacent to the highway, swerving slightly but remaining amazingly true. He passes out fully clothed, and after a few hours continues to sleep as the sky drips stars and a long car swerves off the highway and into the loop of the trailerpark, gravel dustcloud gray in the starlight, back end fishtailing and occupants thrown to one side of the car then righting themselves as the car straightens out and screams back onto the black road.

One

2008-11-17T17:38:00.000-08:00

Glenn Canyon stepped down out of the trailer and into the cold morning of his fifty-second birthday. The only other vehicle in the park was a light blue Chevy pickup, old but not rusted; spared the cancerous metal rot by its apparent years in the arid wastelands of northern Utah. His namesake, a few hundred miles downstream, was as full as it ever was, evaporating daily the lifeblood of a tired civilization for whom milking the fresh water of the Colorado was barely an afterthought. Glenn had visited the dam once, as a child. Today, he celebrated alone. He drank to celebrate, but drinking was more a reflex than a decision. He shook until he drank, he drank until he slept, he slept until he hurt. He sloshed whiskey into a mug and topped it off with black coffee.

Glenn's own truck, a faux wood-paneled chevy a decade older than the one parked near him, rattled to life and carried him towards work. The scrapyard was unbearably loud to unconditioned ears, but after twenty years the metal grind and crunch lessened its assault on the hearing--Glenn hardly noticed. It was January--cold as death in Hope Springs Utah, the red rocks and sand held heat in the summer, ice cold in the winter. The scrapyard appeared organized; in fact it was. Piles of discarded refrigerators, iron pipe, the colored metal of car bodies crumpled by force, all lay about in sprawling heaps. That morning snow fell slowly from the gray sky, drifting in small whirls and eddies around the collected debris of the scrapyard.

NYC to SF

2008-03-10T11:21:00.001-07:00

I assembled this project from photos I took over winter break. I had first traveled to Connecticut to visit an old friend of mine. She and I took the train to NYC for the day, arriving at Grand Central Station. It was very cold that day and we found ourselves ducking into stores every few blocks to warm up. Two weeks later I flew to San Francisco to visit my friend and brother Scott. He and I wandered extensively that week. Most of these photos are from the Mission district of SF, and the beach shots are from near Big Sur. Hopefully this slideshow conveys some of my feelings about both trips, as well as being coherent as a whole. Thanks to Scott for providing the 'guest shadow' at the end.

Winter Break CA Voice Thread

2008-03-06T09:00:00.000-08:00

This visual essay prompted me to reflect back on my experience in California over winter break. I had flown over the ocean, seen the rather unimpressive coast near South Padre Island, Texas, and visited coastal areas of Norway. None of these modest ocean experiences compared to the Pacific coast near Big Sur in California. My friend Scott and I had driven down from Oakland the previous day, and arrived at Andrew Molera State Park well after dark. In the morning, we hiked to the coast and spent the rest of the day hiking along the shore and then up over 1500 feet of elevation gain to the bluff summit.

In terms of visual literacy, or "the ability to read, understand, value, and learn from visual materials"(Selfe 69), projects of this kind can lend themselves well to the development of impact, salience, coherence, and organization. One thing that my voicethread illustrates well is impact. It is coherent in that the pictures all share a common location, however a much better example of coherence is Genevieve's blog, found here. She does a fantastic job of combining themes and really making the division of the photograhs create a sense of place. She has motifs in each set, and the senses of pattern, line, and movement are balanced and recognizable. There is also no need for captions with her photo sets, as the necessary elements readily emerge from the selected images.

Visual Essay Collage Test

2008-03-05T13:04:00.000-08:00

Photo Collage by Dundoo - MySpace Editor

Media Literacy

2008-02-27T17:06:00.000-08:00

In Rick Beach's class last semester, we immersed ourselves in the topic of media literacy. To read his manifesto this week was a nice reminder of what we worked towards in that class. I love the idea of using blogs for students writing in my classroom, but I doubt that it will be well received by the school. We will see, I think I may try to do it. In the whitepaper article, the topic of transparency struck at chord. I think it is reasonable to expect that students will find their way through the modern media landscape without harm. But nevertheless it still is necessary to teach the critical skills or at least develop existing critical capabilities. One thing I think that is necessary is moving towards the higher-level thinking skills with the media students will have already interacted with. They may be able to navigate the complexities of a video game but can they synthesize disparate materials and develop their own analysis? This is the value of teaching media literacy.

My link this week is the Internet Archive. It has a wide range of materials, all potentially to be used in the Media Studies classroom.

Evaluating Evaluation, Entertaining my Daily Fears of Impending Burn-Out, and a pretty, pretty song.

2008-02-20T11:35:00.000-08:00

Dornan offers more sensible options for teachers in chapter seven. The importance in finding distinctions between response, assessment, evaluation, and grading I must say I was ignorant to before reading through this. My perspective has always come from my experiences as a writing tutor in undergrad. I would sit for hours in the writing lab, and students would come in with their disorganized, poorly edited, and either verbose or horribly inarticulate papers, expecting a twenty-minute fix. Although I did have repeat customers with whom I could work on specific issues, largely I would just grind through their essay, mark the Abercrombie right out of their paper's Fitch and send them on their way reminding them to 'read it out loud' to find errors. Although this strategy proved effective for me as an editor, I doubt it will work well with students. I'll probably have WAY too many papers to either provide responses for, assess, evaluate, or grade, and not enough time to help them all individually.

That being said, I like the idea of teaching self-evaluation as a skill, and focusing my reponses on High Order Concerns (HOCs in TLA-land), and using mini-lessons to address Low Order Concerns (LOCs) which, if I may field a guess, will occur throughout the classes writings with some frequency.

Anyways, I just got done with a three hour discussion of Frantz Fanon's Black Skin White Masks and my brain is mush. It's amazing the rhetorical and discursive acrobatics you need to be able to summon at will to not sound like a sparklingly lowbrow, ham-fisted primate in theory classes.

Right now, I'm on at least my fifth listening of Beirut's "Elephant Gun" today.

Why not listen to it again right now?

Re-vision, seeing again.

2008-02-13T10:29:00.000-08:00

Harper: what I liked about this article was it's focus on the most difficult aspects of writing and the specific strategies we can use to counteract those difficulties. "Snapshots," "Questions," "Thoughshots," " Exploding a Moment," and "Making a Scene" are all wonderful examples of how a change in perspective can be the boost that students need to progress in their writing.

I wonder how these techniques could be applied to essay writing. In the article they seem to be mostly regarding creative writing. I'm going to give this topic more thought, as some of the terms that we use in essay writing don't translate well to the novice writer. Analysis is an intimidating word, but why is not.

Dornan: This dense chapter reminded me of how necessary the classification of errors is. Developmental, rhetorical, and usage errors have critical distinctions for those assessing student writing. I had not thought about developmental errors in this way before. Dornan suggests thinking about these errors as an opportunity for scaffolding. Allowing certain errors, for example in the use of relatives, and pointing them out as areas of revision is important. The methods for teaching sentence variety were quite good. In any scenario, using authentic examples for teaching mechanics are critical.

Culham: I think it is important to understand voice or style, but I found Culham to be lacking in substance on this difficult topic. To a certain extent I feel like voice is not something as quantifiable as the other traits. Without background knowledge or prior exposure to an author's works, it would be very difficult to guess the identity of a writer from her compositions.

Culham links students losing their love of language with the emphasis on formal writing in primary and secondary classrooms. I agree with this, but I see the "loss of language love" problem originating elsewhere. We have relegated writing to the English curriculum only, and students writing in a variety of settings would help them to see writing as a tool and not a peculiarity found only in the English classroom. Also, if we don't balance formal, essay writing with informal, personal writing, we will teach students to see writing as only the province of "boring" analysis. This connects to the wholesale consolidation of disciplines within schools. Instead of teaching a broad spectrum of disciplines, we move towards a simplified (read cheaper) overall curriculum. If students are taught to have ownership of their skills rather than simply mastering them for a grade, they will want to internalize it and make it part of their life outside of school.

Resource Link: The UNC School of Education has some really good resources. Click on this link to see their section on teaching style.

Essay Writing

2008-02-06T10:39:00.001-08:00

Dornan, Chapter five: this reading connected back to our Deeper Reading text in Reading Methods course. A lot of practical applications for the classroom. Generally quite useful; I loved how they squeezed the five-paragraph essay into a triangle! It seems like my question last week of 'how to get ideas going in the struggling literature student's mind' is more a matter of having intentional design in your curriculum and helping the student use tools to make connections in the reading.

Culham, Chapter three: I did like the 'transitions chart.' I think it would be helpful to use with post first-draft writing, if the student was struggling with organization. I think the 'scoring guide' is generally good. It reflects a lot of the major sticking points in organization--although I'm still concerned that a rubric combining all of the scoring guides across all traits would be unwieldy.

Gillespie: the idea of multi-genre writing is really promising. The concern that presents itself immediately is that this style would be incompatible with the high-school classroom. Most college-bound student writing at the secondary level should be concerned with the formal essay writing process, shouldn't it? It is the form they are going be required to use as undergraduates. Maybe this would be better used in the middle school classroom, or as a possible differentiation for students who are struggling with the formal essay process.

Wesley: the author makes good points. Her example of the 'stunted student' is relevant, but it seemed that maybe the student just outgrew the form she was being told to use, not that it was a problem with the form itself. The idea of having even the paragraphs modeled is the same as the idea of a Cloze passage. The student masters the form by repeating it over and over again. I agree, teaching a more simple ABA form makes good sense. However I do believe the FPT will still have relevancy for the intermediate writer.

Novick: all praises to the FPT! In Kimberly Wesley's defense, I don't think she was 'tearing the FPT limb from limb.' I think she was arguing for a little differentiation. She was also arguing in favor of teaching the essay as an ABA form, with the possibility of using the strict FPT format if need be. All students will need the structure of the FPT at some point, but allowing form to stifle creativity is really just one extreme among many.

Resource Link: this is part of the Canadian Academy's website. Canadian Academy is an IB international school located in Kobe, Japan. It has quite a few examples of student writing, the rubrics, and the commentary to explain both the grading and writing processes. I think it's kind of helpful...

http://intranet1.canacad.ac.jp:3445/High/749

6+1, a half dozen of The Other

2008-01-29T15:36:00.000-08:00

Well, today we began our journey into the teaching of composition in Culham's work. All of these essays about kitties, summer vacation, pizza, and kidneys kind of make my skin crawl, but the foundations of this particular pedagogy seem sound. I'm definately of the camp that students who struggle with the particulars of standard, academic English can benefit from the focus on content.

My questions are this: rubrics? Will all rubrics look the same after adopting this program?

The Doran chapters were quite good. I especially like the questionnaire on page fifty, although the real logistical problem is getting that out to forty students and making a connection on that level.

Overall, my response to these readings is that we are certainly capable of making writing a more student-centered activity. The problem I see is making that step from composition to analysis of literature.

My connection or resource link for this week isn't all that exciting. It's Apple's Itunes U, which has a great many free downloads relating to education!

Here is the link: http://www.apple.com/education/itunesu/

Local News

2007-12-18T13:46:00.000-08:00

I generally avoid watching the local news. Mostly it is because of the large amount of commercials that are aired, in combination with the focus on sports, weather, and human interest stories. It seems like the local news programs need to show a balance of all the components of a half hour news program, so in order to accomplish that they avoid detailed and thorough reporting.

If I want to find the forecast I can do so easily on the weather channel if I really need to. I don't follow sports at all, and that is a large chunk of what local news covers. Also, the world news and national news is covered much more thoroughly in by other sources, and the local stations realize this (that is not their market), so if I want those stories I can usually find them either on line or NPR will cover them quite well and succinctly.

I think it is important to not rely on one source for all 'news.' It is good to watch Fox news, CNN, MSNBC, look at Google News, read Al Jazeera and the BBC's websites, listen to NPR, read the paper when it's available, and then of course read magazines once in a while. Basically, to consume a diverse diet of news. One of my favorite things to watch is CSPAN. Although it is boring, it is interesting to see some of the senate hearings and subcommittee hearings.

Media consumption

2007-12-18T13:38:00.000-08:00

In a week, generally I'll listen to Minnesota Public Radio while I'm in the car, and I'll watch some television in the evening. Usually I'll tend to watch the Daily Show / Colbert Report, although lately it's been nothing but reruns (settle with the writers union already!). I really hate advertisements, so I flip channels a lot. If I leave the television on a single channel for very long, it's usually public broadcasting--it has no commercials.

3-4 criteria for evaluating student work

2007-12-18T13:27:00.000-08:00

1. visual presentation / proximity and alignment: it is very important to have your work make sense visually and for it to be organized.

2. critical engagement: to have the bulk of the work be utilizing the higher cognitive skills (Thanks Blooms Taxonomy!): analysis, synthesis, evaluation.

3. use of media: it would be critical to have a variety of sources. Text based, image, video, or sound would all be acceptable. Of course, the media used would have to be successfully and logically connected to the topic.

4. writing will naturally be at the center of student work; mechanically it will need to be sound, and be well developed and mature. Breadth of vocabulary and variation of sentences will be take into account...

Incorporating Media and Film into the Classroom

2007-12-18T13:07:00.000-08:00

I would like to have students be able to do critical work in the blog format. Allowing the introduction of small segments of film to be included within the text as embedded html is a really powerful tool. It gets you thinking about how textual evidence can be introduced into a critical essay. Also, the notion of having students create podcasts or other content in order to provide a level of differentiation is very appealing. It allows students to better engage with their assignments because they are not forced into choosing one certain type of product.

Documentary Topic Idea

2007-12-18T11:49:00.000-08:00

I think for a documentary topic, I'd like to explore one of two things or maybe they could both be covered in the same film.

First, the Tracker School. It is run by Tom Brown, who has authored many books and founded the school. I haven't been there myself, but have had a few friends who have taken wilderness survival or native American philosophy classes there and have described it in very interesting terms. I'd like to interview people that have attended classes there, and look at the school in terms of both its culture and the folks that are drawn to it.

Second, any in-depth exploration of the culture and lifestyles of outdoor education. This is something close to my heart, as I've worked in this area for some time. It would be really interesting to capture some of the individuals involved as case studies and then also to focus on the outdoor pursuits that many of the folks working in this field are involved in. Specifically, the activities of technical canyoneering and whitewater rafting I think are particularly interesting.

An interesting corollary to this is the idea of Urban Exploring. Melody Gilbert directed a documentary, Urban Explorers: Into the Darkness, that I've yet to be able to find here in a story but really want to see. There is also a very interesting website on this topic called infiltration.org.

Podcasts

2007-12-18T11:07:00.000-08:00

I don't listen to that many podcasts, to be honest. Part of the problem is that I have a bad internet connection at home. It takes me a very long time to download anything more involved than a word document.

That being said, I really like some of the podcasts available from Minnesota Public Radio. This American Life is one of my favorites. They have a podcast directory.

The guys at dawnrecorder.org do a great job of finding some songs that I may not run into on my own. However, their commentary on the songs they pick can get a little tiresome, and the Mp3 downloads I can't get to work.

The resource Podcast.net seems like a good one, although the amount of information available is really overwhelming (this is a problem with a lot of the online resources available: how to sort through it all?).

Thanks to Technology

2007-11-29T11:18:00.000-08:00

Just for inspiration:

Both of these clips, I would argue, are a strong and visceral example of how the self or subject is defined relationally by it's context. Louis Althusser, who argued that interpellation occurs as the dominant ideologies influence or even create how we are identified. This relational creation of self-identity is really an extension or re-naming of the process of cultural transmission, most applicable in our own pluralistic society.

What we see in Girl Talk, perhaps the most recognizable artist in the contemporary phenomenon of mash-ups, is the removal of artifice and the pretense of originality from the creative and cultural act. In a pluralistic society, where the multicultural ethos and reality of American culture has replaced earlier designs, we see formerly disparate elements combined almost constantly, and to reflect this in the mash-up reflects ourselves and reflects our modern life.

Mash-ups are in my eyes an extension of hip-hop culture, specifically the mix. The mash-up is taking the form a step further by removing the linear quality of the music (where the beat stays consistent, the rap provides a narrative) and adding a fragmented style and purposeful combination of genres.

As a postscript, check out this clip from youtube regarding the origins of some of Daft Punk's samples:

We have become adbusters.

2007-11-01T17:01:00.000-07:00

Below is an advertisement for an energy drink, pervasive in our society as both a product to be consumed, but as a marketed lifestyle.

To the right is our response to this ad.

Media Representations

2007-10-13T14:05:00.000-07:00

VS.

For this assignment, I'd like to discuss briefly the construction of contemporary representations of rural spaces and wilderness spaces. The seperation of wilderness and rural spaces into two distinct identities is a very interesting phenomena, one that goes back a very long time in human history. My guess, and of course this is validated by no evidence whatsoever, is that once humans began to be agrarian and primarly farm for their food, natural places that were not suitable for farming became "wild" and began to collect the meanings that we know associate with wildernes and wild spaces. One of these meanings involves the level of human control that is exerted on the land. In rural spaces the land is groomed and functional for human purposes. We are not challenged in these spaces, except in instances of drought or other extreme weather. Accesibility is also an element of wilderness vs. rural. As we have moved towards methods of transportation that are limited to roads (or the air) we have lost some of the ability to explore. These two tropes, accesibilty and the level of human control, are important aspects of how we define wilderness culturally.

In this country, as well as in other places where wilderness is protected from development by law, we often do not recognize the value of wilderness. Understanding how wilderness is defined, as well as looking at how other issues of geography play out in our modern society is something we don't pay enough attetion to. It is when we loose sight of why we set aside wilderness in the first place that we are at risk of making decisions that would permanently affect those spaces.

Concert Observation-Trampled by Turtles at First Avenue, Minneapolis

2007-10-13T08:59:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, October 12, I headed to Minneapolis to attend a concert at First Avenue, the venerable downtown music venue. I went to see Trampled by Turtles, a Duluth based bluegrass ensemble who have been playing to large, appreciative audiences for the last few years. The group plays a great hybrid of traditional bluegrass with some elements of metal thrown in--namely driving tempos, and a sort of lock-step cut-time thrash that one needs to hear to fully appreciate.

Since Trampled has played with success at the annual, monstrous 10,000 Lakes Festival, and at the annual Harvest Fest, they seem to be most accepted by the jam band crowd. This is peculiar since 'jamming' in the conventional, Grateful Dead sense isn't a particularly significant element to their music, though the mandolin player does solo briefly sometimes as is the standard in traditional bluegrass. However, their music is high-energy to say the least, and really makes you want to move. This, plus given the status of other, more traditional bluegrass ensembles (Yonder Mountain String Band and Leftover Salmon come to my mind) in the jam-band scene, makes Trampled a natural fit.

The crowd at this show is largely young people, who are generally consuming some sort of alcohol. The shared social agenda seems to be to dance, and enjoy the energy of the crowd and the music. As is the case with many concerts where movement is a common element, sharing the collective energy of the crowd seems to be a social goal. My friends Brian and Beth, who I attended the concert with along with a group of eight others, described feeling "overwhelmed in a good way" by the energy of the crowd, and we all agreed that the character of the music, collective energy of the crowd, and what we agreed was an "uplifting" quality we felt before, during, and after the show, made the whole experience feel very powerful. I think high-intensity, driving music like this is sort of cathartic.

I'll include a youtube clip of a show from last year, which I attended as well. The sound quality is pretty bad, as well as the video quality. But it's a song they usually reserve for an encore, and it gives a good sense of the energy of the crowd. There is a thumping pulse that sounds like a bass drum on this clip, which I believe is either from the crowd or the speakers, because Trampled is a string band--no percussion. There is a drum set in the background, but I think that was for the opening act.

This one's stop motion too, but if forced to choose, I would pick this one :)

2007-10-10T18:44:00.000-07:00

A shout-out to all the mac users out there who remember the days of the lovely little green screen cube monster.

The title warmed my heart too "I am the teacher" !!!

It's by a Canadian band called Germans.

crazy new stop motion clip for my blogging buddies

2007-10-10T18:40:00.000-07:00

Enjoy. And as always, let me know your thoughts...

What I've Found

2007-10-10T15:45:00.000-07:00

What does this mean?

This clip uses stop motion animation techniques. Although it lacks formal narrative structure, and defies the conventions of plot, character, and virtually all other traditional elements, I maintain faith in it's basic awesomeness :)

What this short has is a fantastic union of music and images. It is fragmented, but all of the evolving animated characters, although their existence is extrememly brief, have a real life to them. The fragmentation of the short is contradicted by how fluidly the characters evolve into other images, characters, and micro-narratives.

The technical aspect of this film, although it's end-product appearance is somewhat simple, is brilliant. It must have taken a very, very long time to compile enough single images to combine them into this short piece.

Please let me know what your thoughts are on this short.

UTAH Slideshow

2007-10-04T14:28:00.000-07:00

Well here is the brief slideshow I compiled in class last Thursday.

These are all photos from Utah, where I work during the summer season. Most of the photos are from a place called Mineral Bottom, which is outside of Moab. It is the put-in for the Cataract Canyon section of the Colorado river. Some of the other photos are shots taken on the way to a place called Sand Wash. Sand Wash is the put-in for the Desolation Canyon section of the Green river. It is a very empty place that is currently in the throes of a natural gas drilling boom. There are oil derricks everywhere and they add to the landscape something haunting and very compelling. Obviously, the stark beauty of the desert is altered. As well, the constant motion of the derricks slowly rising and falling is a weird counterpoint to the emptiness of the desert that surrounds them. The shot of the oil derrick in this slide show is very overexposed, and although I had hoped to capture the motion of the derrick, it is still a fairly striking image. I've found the physical and landscape components of this natural gas exploration very interesting and worth documenting photographically. The sidebar of this blog also contains an oil derrick photo. "Epic, Dude!" is my homage to my friends out west; it is sort of 'outdoor culture lingo' and I think it's sort of funny :)

Film Clip

2007-09-27T10:44:00.000-07:00

OK. This is a clip from the film Fight Club. I'm sure many of you have seen it, but it's worth taking a look at again! In this scene, Tyler and the unnamed main character, who, for the purposes of this post, we'll refer to as Cornelius (the name he gives himself in the testicular cancer group therapy session he attends (as an impostor)). Tyler is in the process of making soap from human fat the two have stolen from a liposuction clinic. He kisses Cornelius' hand and then dumps lye onto it, giving him a chemical burn. The scene is primarily dialectic in construction, cutting back and forth between the two characters who sit opposite each other at the table. This back and forth, argumentative style is interesting in retrospect, as Tyler and Cornelius (SPOILER ALERT!!) are actually the same person. As the scene progresses and develops, David Fincher (the director) chooses to abruptly cut to a number of different scenes, which are intended to be images from Cornelius' mind as he endures the burn:

1) the super-saturated green of the forest
2) again, close ups of very saturated flames
3) pages from a dictionary, defining words like "searing" and "burn," although the definitions are shown in a very extreme close up, so that the whole definition is obscured and really only implied.

and

4) the ice cave, where Marla Singer is laying on the floor, in a pose that I find sort of reminiscent of Bernini's The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa. Cornelius leans in to kiss her, and she (a constant smoker) exhales a large cloud of smoke at him.

The scene ends with Tyler dumping vinegar on Cornelius' hand. This clip from youtube, continues on to the next scenes, where the two are selling the soap that they've made from the liposuction clinic to a high-end department store, and then finally to the office workplace of Cornelius. Cornelius has a brief and aggressive interaction with his boss, and then is rescued by Marla's bizarre phone call.

All of the techniques utilized in this clip serve to emphasize the psychological crisis of the main character. At the same time, they allow for the sort of twisted philosophical dialogue between the main character and his dominant alter ego that is a hallmark of this film.

PS I'm not a fan of the subtitles (they're not entirely accurate) but it was the best I could find...

beautiful video clip

2007-09-13T16:05:00.001-07:00

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xxfun_inout-10-nancy-151206_creation

Why I liked those video blogs

2007-09-13T14:33:00.000-07:00

They all seemed to operate more on the principle of showing rather than telling.

Their video editing seemed minimal at most.

Love,

Mr. M

Video Blogs I Liked!

2007-09-13T14:21:00.000-07:00

Here's a good one:

http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/3507717/

This one is also sort of neat:

http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/3481915/

Or this:

http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/3436372/

I generally like these short and abstract clips. I'd like to do something along these lines maybe with some dialogue...

This one's awesome!

http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/3267844/

Here's a short clip off of wooster, my favorite and definately most-visited site. It's got old-skool flavor with Special Ed rapping! Gotta love it...

http://www.woostercollective.com/2007/09/rene_gagnons_video_of_the_nuart_festival.html#mail

That's all for now, LETTUCE BLOG together again soon :)

First Post!

2007-09-07T08:29:00.000-07:00

Lettuce see if this works:)