J. C. Leyendecker

I am incredibly calm at the moment. In actuality, I'm probably just in need of much, much sleep. All the same I feel serene, especially after reading another story out of The Martian Chronicles (Ray Bradbury). It's a very thought-provoking book; I'm glad I had some time to read it today. I think my cat is going deaf. She never seems to notice me until I'm right there next to her and I have to call her name loudly multiple times for her to hear me. I think I'm going to work on incorporating more visual communication techniques when I'm with her.

The other day whilst strolling the internet, as I so often do, I came across this illustration:

Isn't it beautiful? The young man who's standing second from the left especially caught my eye. He's positively glowing, at least to me. I found out later that his name is Charles Beach and the artist's name is J. C. Leyendecker. It's a 1907 illustration for Arrow Collar, an ad campaign for shirts with detachable collars. Apparently Leyendecker did a whole collection featuring Arrow Collar men. While I was researching all this, I learned a little about Leyendecker's life and work. I love learning about people. Lots of times I get sidetracked reading biographical articles when I ought to be doing homework. There's so much to know about so many people!

Anyway, the more I look at Leyendecker's illustrations, the more fond I grow of him as an artist. I truly admire artists who create beautiful things. To be so talented and to be able to share that talent with the world is such a miraculous thing. Human beings can be a lot of awful and ugly things, but sometimes they can be beautiful. The human figure, when skillfully portrayed, is absolutely stunning.

These are a couple more of examples of Leyendecker's work.

Back to school

Hey, I haven't blogged in a while. I figure it's best to keep it fresh with small relatively insignificant updates as opposed to waiting eons between something actually blog-worthy. Maybe it's just me.

In two words, school started. I won't go into a detailed account. I will, however, blog about my AP English teacher. She is completely amazing and I love her class. Plus, she has a poster with Oscar Wilde on it and it inspires me greatly. AP classes are good because they tend to attract the more serious and dedicated members of the student body. All the same, AP homework (combined with regular homework) devours all my time like chips or grapes or popcorn. But enough about school and the like. Actually, I will mention Obama's address to students today. I saw it (not live) in English class this afternoon. I haven't fully formed my opinion on it yet, but I think its message of trying to get more kids to really try in school is very good. There's so much apathy in schools (or at least, my school) and this was a good nudge. I get to analyze it for homework, and that should be interesting. My mom really dug it. My teacher mentioned something about the free education in this country and it got me thinking. It really is amazing, especially compared to a lot of countries. I wish more people appreciated learning and being able to go to school. I know I'm guilty of moaning about homework, but I really am very lucky. Kids should think more.

Thus concludes my little update. The weather-makers are still deciding what to do, I think. I also found Joel Stein's Twitter today. I've been looking for it since I made an account and I was fairly excited. I'm looking forward to taking a nice shower and possibly finding time to read a little if I can finish all my homework at a reasonable hour. A big if, but I can always try.

Set your heart at rest

I had a fantastic weekend ^_^

On Saturday, I went to a lovely movie theater and saw Ponyo, Hayao Miyazaki's newest film. Ponyo is about a goldfish princess who longs to become human and befriends a human boy who lives on a cliff by the sea. Like all his films, it was beautiful, enchanting, pure, and imaginative. Hayao Miyazaki is definitely one of my biggest heroes in life. His films have always had and will always continue to have a profound effect on me.

On Sunday, I went for the first time to Shakespeare Santa Cruz. It was fantastic! I've always wanted to go, and this year I was familiar with one of the plays (A Midsummer Night's Dream). The stage was in a beautiful redwood grove. Although Puck was my favorite character (in the written play and at SSC) all the actors and actresses were phenomenal. It was a truly magical performance and I hope to attend SSC in future years.

To top it all off, there was delicious vegetarian food the whole weekend. Veggie pizza, veggie sandwich, sweet potato fries, veggie lasagna, salad, bread, carrot cake... of course, I didn't eat all that at once. I spaced it out over two days. In short: living in an area with an abundance of vegetarian restaurants fills my heart and stomach with love.

All that said, I had a beautiful weekend. I hope you did, too. Now, I have a lot of work to do in preparation for the coming school year and I am going to start that as soon as I post this and brush my teeth. Still, when daydreaming of faeries and underwater cities it surely can't be that bad...

Ye gods!

As of right now, I'm a little more than half-way through Queen of the Damned. For those who don't know, it's the third book in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles series. So far I'm liking it more than I thought I would, but I'm not too sure how I feel about Akasha and her whisking Lestat away from all the other characters. I suppose I'll have to keep reading to find out...

You know, I really dig Anne Rice's views on human sexuality. I really do, odd as this sounds. I was watching an interview with her and one of the questions was why she had so many gay characters. She replied by saying she just sees the world that way and that in her mind the ideal being could love both men and women. She then elaborates about how attraction and love with her characters are fluid, transcending gender, age, status, etc. In short, it ended up sounding to me like she favors extreme pansexuality. I personally think this is really great, because I feel the same way and it's neat to find a like-minded soul, especially a prolific author. She writes it really well, too, in a way that doesn't dwell on the characters' sexuality but rather incorporates it as a natural part of them. I like it.

Anyways, enough about that. One of my favorite parts of Queen of the Damned so far is the excerpt from Claudia's diary. It reminded me how much I liked Claudia and how absolutely priceless she, Louis, and Lestat are together in their little vampire family. Someday, I would like to reread Interview with the Vampire. I think it'd be interesting to read it with a greater knowledge of Lestat, Armand, and Théâtre des Vampires. Perhaps I would like it more than when I initially read it.

It's rather late and I'm very tired. I stayed up watching a meteor shower last night, and today I finished my summer assignment dealing with Oedipus. I am incredibly excited by this. Tomorrow, I plan to sleep late, exercise, start another summer assignment, and read more of this mentioned book. I sort of left off at an Akasha bloodbath scene, so we'll see how that works out. Say, I'm not sure if the correct title is Queen of the Damned or The Queen of the Damned. I can't properly tell because my version has the movie promo cover. Ick. I hate movie promo covers. Well, it was that or a beastly hardcover, so I decided to go with a scantily clad Aaliyah and a half-naked Stuart Townsend in a compact paperback form. Oh, the things I do for purse-sized books....

I bid thee goodnight.

Another Country

I usually watch movies at night, when it's good and dark like a theater, but sometimes it's nice to watch movies in the afternoon. Today was such a day, the movie being Another County, a 1984 film adaptation of Julian Mitchell's play by the same title. The movie centers around Guy Bennett (Rupert Everett), a student in snobby and rigid 1930s-ish English public school. He and his friend Tommy Judd (Colin Firth) are rather outcasts, Bennett for not being discreet about his being gay and Judd for being a devout Marxist. Bennett aspires to be a "God"-- a member of the school's elite. I don't want to give it all away, but that's the premise.

I thought it was an excellent film. Like many people say, it has beautiful photography. Unlike some people say, I only struggled with the English accents a couple of times. I liked Bennett and Judd's characters a lot, and I though Rupert Everett and Colon Firth gave superb performances portraying them. I've seen them together before in The Importance of Being Earnest, which was also happens to be a very good film, which also happens to be a very good play, which happens to be an Oscar Wilde play, which increases its win points substantially. I also "visually sniped" (as my brother would say) Cary Elwes (i.e. "Westley? Westley, is that you?" Princess Bride fan, much). Elwes played James Harcourt, the object of Guy's affections. All the actors were so young! I always think its neat to see actors when they're young, because you can see how they've changed and how they're the same.

While it's not exactly a feel-good movie, I thought it was really interesting to see the hypocrisy and cruelty-- not to mention prime snobbery-- of (most) English public schools at that time. It was an awfully oppressive school. Near the end, Judd gives one of the Gods a good speech about how the boys oppressed by the system grow up to be the fathers that maintain it [cite Wikipedia on that last bit]. That was one of my favorite parts, along with Guy and James having a rare peaceful moment in one of the school boats and all of Judd's clever Marxist ranting. Come to think of it, the whole movie was my favorite part. I think it's a film definitely worth watch, so if you find yourself at a loss next time you're searching for a flick, keep Another Country in mind.

Oy!

The blog is all dusty and musty. I don't like it. Consider this post to be like a Swiffer.

Many blog-worthy events have come and gone un-blogged, and I feel sort of guilty. After all, what else is a blog for? So: I'm going to make a list of all the things I wished I blogged about but never got around to, complete with brief descriptions and comments, etc.

In June, I went to a David Sedaris reading/signing in a lovely little book store! It was amazing! I must have been smiling the entire time, I was so excited. He is very friendly and rather short in person. He read us two new (well, new at the time) essays, in addition to parts of his diary and a couple other things. Everybody was laughing and having a marvelous time. The setting was very intimate and was so happy to be able to go. He signed my copies of Me Talk Pretty One Day and Naked, and gave me a condom (he was handing them out to all the teenagers). This book event has got to be one of the highlight of my life so far, and I love him to pieces!

Also in June, I saw Third Eye Blind with a bunch of friends at a free concert in a park. Excellent, much? They were fantastic live and played a lot of my favorite songs. The entire day was an adventure and a smashing good time.

On a more somber note, huge funding cuts have been made to the public libraries in my area. The new hours-- which became effective July 1st-- are truly devastating. I continue to volunteer and drop by often. Hopefully these cuts will be revoked when the state budget gets back on track someday, as I believe libraries to be among the most precious of resources.

Speaking of reading, this summer I've gathered up the courage to finally read Anne Rice. I've always seen her work labeled as horror, which made me steer clear of her for a long time (I'm not really one for horror, you see). However, I was reassured by other readers that her writing is more gothic than horror and my curiosity eventually won out. As of today, I've read Interview with the Vampire and am getting very close to finishing The Vampire Lestat. I find I'm more fond of the latter, but I did like Interview, too. While the book as a whole did have its weak points (i.e. Rice's tendency to write in such a flowery manner it's often distracting), I found it overall a good read. I find I've been much more motivated while reading Lestat, probably because I really like Lestat. It's good stuff, I tell you. (As a side note, I thought I'd tell a little story about my early experiences with Anne Rice. I used to babysit these darling little girls, and prominently displayed in their living room were all of Anne Rice's works. I'd read the ghoulish titles and see the macabre cover art and be very afraid [I was also afraid of the Gollum bookends and oriental masks, but they really are very, very kind people.] Anyways, I think it's a funny way to first become acquainted with an author.)

And what was I most looking forward to in July? The big screen adaption of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, of course! My two friends and one of their moms saw a late show downtown. We dressed up and had a wicked time! I must say I was impressed with this film and thought it far better than the last one. I was satisfied with the portrayal of teenage Tom Riddle, who I feared would be butchered, and I swooned often over Alan Rickman (and Tom Felton, who appeared quite a lot). I thought they did a lousy job of explaining who the real Half-Blood Prince was in the end. In the book, it's so enchanting, because who doesn't believe Snape is made of win? Yeah, nobody. Overall, I liked it very much. Also, did anyone else notice that the wonky, smooth black bricks from the department of mysteries made a comeback? They were in the orphanage. I guess David Yates loves those bricks. I also was impressed with Slughorn's performance and character portrayal. I thought it to be one of the film's strong points. I really must reread the series one of these days!

If anyone read all that (and I realize it's a beast) I really am flattered and applaud your perseverance. Of course, loads of other things happened and are happening or will happen, but I thought it'd be nice to skim over the main points in my life as of late. Now, with the clear conscience of a good blogger, I shall move on to my one of my summer assignments, which is what I really should have been doing for the past hour. Cheers!

Coincidence?

So, the other night while cooking up a killer batch of fajitas, something on the tortilla packaging caught my eye...

See the no on 8? I do believe the tortilla company is covertly trying to say they support equality via gay marriage.