"yyyyaaaAAHHHH!!!!" -Busta Rhymes.

A review  

Sexuality, racial discrimination, date-rape, and classism.

 Writer and director John Singleton weaves these powerful themes into a final message of tolerance and harmony for his film, Higher Learning. Released in 1995 by Columbia Pictures, this is a story that follows young Americans as they navigate their way through a semester of college at (a fictional) Columbus University. It opens with a soundtrack of the same kind of funky bass-lines and drums that punctuate the converging plots of the film. In the next scenes, we meet the main characters and are given a little bit of their back-story. The first three we meet are freshman. Omar Epps takes on the role of Malik, a black freshman on a track scholarship who struggles academically. Kristy Swanson trades vampire-slaying stakes for a heavy dose of naivete as Kristen, a white suburban girl from Orange County, CA. Michael Rapaport is prepared for his next racially charged role in The Basketball Diaries by playing Remy, a sheltered "mid-western" loner.
 The rest of the supporting cast deserves mention too. Laurence Fishburne gives an 'Image Award'- winning performance as Professor Phipps, teaching Malik's and Kristen's Political Science class. He is quickly established as the sage "voice of wisdom". Basically, Morpheus in tweed. Almost every line of his is quotable. A young Tyra Banks plays Deja, Malik's chest-licking love interest and tries to help him stay smart.
 Singleton isn't timid about establishing themes quickly; we are minutes into the film when Malik and Kristen first cross paths on an elevator and Kristen clutches her purse defensively. Malik notices and scoffs and shakes his head. Each of the beginning scenes fleshes out a new theme or elaborates on an already established one. Kristen meets Tarin (played by Jennifer Connely), a gay junior, and is educated about the lighted safety-phones around campus. Remy is bullied by his new roommate, super-senior and black nationalist, Fudge. Fudge, portrayed by rapper Ice Cube, gives a great  scene describing the class/race segregation. It reminded me of the beginning of prison movies as Fudge pointed to and described each of the visibly self-segregated cliques on campus.

  Through each of the characters' interactions and choices, The plot reaches a violent climax and soon lives are at stake. Through the entire film, we are kept firmly on-campus. We only see the students' interactions with each other and the faculty. It helps to drive the main point. Our differences still influence many of us to treat each other unequally, and Higher Learning shows how some overcome it, some embrace it, some are unaware of it, and we all suffer for it.

Here's a youtube clip of it with no context! :
(the blog title is 29 seconds in! :P)

A stroll in the park.

A stroll through The H. O. Smith Botanic Gardens at Penn State's Arboretum, to be more specific. 

The first thing I was struck with was how easy it was to feel secluded, even though about twenty other students were there from my class and a few others from other classes were there too. The paths through the gardens curved around a lot and much of the foliage was almost too thick to see through (ahead and to other paths). That, added to general quietness of the other visitors, made for a pretty peaceful time. It also gave an element of wonder. I was constantly curious about was around the next corner.  

Everything is densely packed together. Flower patches, in front of trees, flanked by bushes, surrounded by grass (not necessarily in that exact formation). It's actually very structured and pretty and not as jumbled as I make it sound. There are so many different types that you hardly see much more than one plant or one group of plants of the same species. Much of the flora in the gardens is non-native too. So what we have is all of these plants from all around the world, peacefully coexisting, beautifying this space together... One might find it inspiring. If I was the type of writer to wax poetically about the significance of this as an allegory for hope and the possibility of world peace, I would.

On my way out, I happened on two really great spots. One was an empty courtyard, surrounded by arbors and thick bushes. Two paths on opposite sides are the your entrances. There are a couple benches and some flower pots scattered around, but it's mostly empty. I also noted that the wind hardly touched the courtyard. The other spot was on the outside of the gardens. A rectangle of poplar tees within a rectangle of poplar trees. It looks nice now, but I think I'll make another visit later in the year. I bet it looks brilliant when the leaves from all the different trees start changing color. 

All in all, a good way to spend time.

Extra Post: Comic Book Coffee Table

Here's an arts-n-crafts-type-thing I did recently. (also, bonus drama!)

So, my the top of my coffee table was accidentally ruined earlier this month. Some high-proof ethyl alcohol got sprayed across it. Apparently, blowing giant fireballs indoors can have some bad, not-flame-related consequences. Who knew, right? This pretty much destroyed the varnish and stain. It looked pretty bad (mustard-stain-on-a-white-shirt bad), so I gave it a whole new look.

Behold:

Here's a quick (Edit: nevermind. not so quick) rundown of what I did:

1. First, I took the legs off. I didn't do anything to them; They are pretty much what the rest of the table used to look like.

2. Sanding. I did two sides of it by hand in about two and a half hours, then I remembered that my roommate had borrowed a power sander. I found it in the basement and I finished sanding the rest in about 45 minutes.

3. After I got down to bare wood and cleaned up a few scratches, I scrubbed it down with water and a dish sponge to get all the dust off. After it dried, I wiped it down again with a dry cloth.

4. I hit up the local comic book store. They have loads of great stuff in their discount racks; most of them were $0.25 or $0.50 a piece. I picked up a few from regular racks too, but all-in-all I didn't spend more than twenty bucks.

5. I cut up the comic books. Some bits were chosen because they're from some favorite comics of mine. Others were chosen because of the iconic characters they contained (e.g., I hardly read any Justice League or Superman comics, but I wouldn't leave such a huge chunk of comics out). Some were chosen at random for filler.

6. I used a clear, polyurethane wood varnish (the kind used for floors) to glue down the pieces. Some of it was roughly planned, but I made most of the design up as I went along. I had no idea if this would work. I figured the table was ruined anyway, so if I mess up, no biggie.

7. After all the pieces were in place, I put down a heavy coat of varnish on everything. At this point, I still wasn't confident that this would work.

8. I let it dry and applied another coat. I did this for a couple days until:

Oh, no. Timeout.

As it was drying in the garage, the table got rained on. I dried it off completely, but to my horror, everything turned an opaque, milky-white color. Not happy, I spoke my favorite Oedipean vulgarism and kicked the thing end-over. Oops. I put it in the basement to stay until I figured out what to do next. By some wizardry (evaporation, I believe they call it), the color had turned less opaque overnight. I put a dehumidifier in the room and turned it on to (hopefully) speed up the process. After another 24 hours, it was clear again and you could see the comics under the varnish again. I decided that this might work out after all.

Whew.

8. (continued.) I layered on varnish until I could hardly feel the edges of the paper underneath.

9. Used a putty knife to get the few bits of paper that had folded over, onto the side.

10. I painted the sides white. Since comicbook pages are usually bordered in white and black, I thought this would look good with the almost-black legs (it does).

11. Table, Assemble! (haha, get it?)

A closer view:

Class was held at an art museum last week.

Last week I spent one of my mornings wandering slowly around the Palmer Museum of Art. My purpose  there was to look at all the different works and settle on one that caught my eye. I will tell you how and why I chose the piece I am writing about, and I'll try to give you a good feel for how the whole experience was.

*Feel free to comment if you have something to add or if you have a criticism.

    The first thing I noticed about the museum is that the lighting was different every room (isn't that a weird thing to notice?). It was pretty crowded with fellow students. On the stairway to the second level, sunlight shined through blue colored and put blue images on the floor and whomever walked by it. I was mostly silent  with quiet chatter here and there. Upstairs, a woman was discussing some of the pieces to a small, seated audience. The work that's displayed there is great. I kept stopping to take pictures. Eventually, I found something that kept pulling my eye back to it. In the museum, there is a section full of old Chinese porcelain. One vase in particular, caught my eye. A vase.

I found a gap in the protective glass to take a picture through. 

This vase has no attributed artists, or even a specific origin. Here is the notation on the wall next to it:

It reads: 

Artist unknown

Chinese, Qing Dynasty (1644-1911)

Vase, Qianlong period (1736-17-96)

Porcelain with black underglaze

Gift of Ralph C. Marcove

    

What drew me to the vase, was its lack of gloss and color. All of the porcelain around it had color, shine and even gold accents in some. The vase is about six inches high and made of white porcelain. Very fine lines and geometry encircle the top and bottom of the body, while pointed arches adorn the throat of the vase. The main feature of the vase is the intricately designed dragon in a serpentine pose among clouds and smoke. The only color used is black. Its white seemed whiter with out the glossy shine, so it contrasted with the other surrounding pieces that way too.

I like the stark contrast of it. A bright, white vase with a dragon done in a very dark black.  Dragons are pretty synonymous with divine forces throughout Chinese culture, so this vase is something to be appreciated as art, but also carries with it a revered image. It's pretty old, but not exactly ancient. I try to imagine how it must have been to learn this craft. That really played into its appeal to me.

With the aid of museum display, the vase conveys a message of divine reverence and violent power. I doubt I would feel the same way about seeing that same image on a poster or tee-shirt today. Being on porcelain and being surrounded by similar porcelain helps give a sense of authenticity. By that, I mean that the artist had a connection with the art and style and content. Its age and ethereal origins keep us from understanding more of that.

This one piece is a part of a larger collection that was given to the museum by Ralph C. Marcove. It resides as part of the Palmer Museum's permanent collection. This adds credibility to it as art. For a piece like this, 

being a part of a professional collection or a gallery is a good way for legitimacy to be established. We don't have an artist to reference, so we have to rely on the opinions of professionals for that.

Analysis of Course Blog

Template: I chose a pre-made template that looked nice, and then made a few small adjustments to the text and colors to make it easier to read. I chose the arrangement to keep it from getting cluttered.  I wanted a very clean and easy to navigate look to the page, so there aren't a lot of bells and whistles.

Title: Art and rhetoric are the themes of this blog, so I chose a title that expresses these themes in an interesting way. A simple play on words with a short description works well for that.

Color: I tried to keep the colors subdued and easy on the eyes. I even changed the white background from white to an off-white. 

Font: Helvetica is one of my favorite fonts. The fact that it is one of the seven standard fonts available, made my choice even easier.

Pages: For now, the page setup is neat, but pretty bare. Under the blog title, there is a page with a short description of me and the purpose of the blog.This way the reader has less to distract from the posts. If I include any non-course posts, I'll put them away from the main page.

Tools: I included an archive, subscription, pages, links list, and search tool.

Links: I included a link list tool to list any links included in my posts.