For most of the last year, I’ve been reveling in, and suffering through, some major life transitions. Primarily, the transition from girlfriend to fiancé and the transition from graduate student to “real-world” job holding adult (that came with it’s own set of new job transitions a couple of times). It’s left me feeling unstable, in more ways than one, and a bit aimless. So, I’ve returned to focus on some topics that I love. And this is where I approach the topic of the teenager.
Mid-Year Exam, 1974 by Joseph Szabo (via tumblr – click image)
It’s weird that when you say the word teenager or teen, most people feel like it means something very specific. There’s an idea that being a teen embodies more than an age range but also some aspect of identity. The word itself however, wasn’t used much before the early 1900’s and was originally popularized to sell clothing.
But if you’re a fan of pop culture, and I so am, you know that we are obsessed with teenagers. So it’s a fair question to ask: what really is a teenager? And why do we like them so damned much?
Sometimes I feel like that should be treated as a dirty little secret. And I get it, for all the wonderful things (stories, characters, songs, theme parks) that Disney has played a part in bringing to the world; they have participated more than a fair share in perpetuating some awfulness. Despite that, I want to look at something else they’ve perpetuated, in the form of a particular kind of heroine. Because there’s a specific kind of character that I love from Disney, no matter how much it can drive me crazy at times, and it taps into one of the key commodities that Disney will sell by the truckloads: hope. I like to call her the Disney Lightbringer. Continue reading →
I just posted this over on my tumblr but I thought it was worth re-posting over here.
An interview with “Lost Girl” creator, Michelle Lovretta, hits on basically everything I talked about over here.
Here’s the part that I liked best (with a few choice bits highlighted by me):
4. Why did you decide to portray sex the way you do on the show?
Simply put? Because it’s the way I personally see sex, so it’s the most natural and intuitive way for me to portray it. As for the more complete answer, When Prodigy (our studio) asked me to create a show about some kind of bisexual superhero who uses sex as part of her arsenal, my first thought was “hell, yes!” But after that initial excitement came trepidation – it is so, so incredibly easy with a template like that to create something mind-numbingly insulting, anti-female, and exploitative. I wouldn’t want my name on that. And, as someone who respects both the straight and queer communities, I was afraid of alienating either of them in the process… or, of just making neutered, boring TV by overthinking it and being too PC. Gah!! The challenge was to create a fun, sex-positive world that celebrates provocative cheesecake for everyone, without falling into base stereotypes or misogynistic (or misandristic) exploitation along the way. I also really wanted to defend the bisexual community and counter some sad tropes out there (bisexuals are sluts, can’t commit, are just afraid to be gay, yadda yadda) while also valuing and representing female friendships that have nothing sexualized about them at all.
So, I came up with a few internal rules and I moved to Canada that first year to co-showrun the show (with the fab Mr. Peter Mohan) partly just to help institute them:
1. sexual orientation is not discussed, and never an issue;
2. no slut shaming – Bo is allowed to have sex outside of relationships
3. Bo’s male and female partners are equally viable;
4. Bo is capable of monogamy, when desired;
5. both genders are to be (adoringly!) objectified — equal opportunity eye candy FTW.
We haven’t always succeeded on all fronts, granted. Mea culpa. It’s hard to honor all those good intentions in the chaotic thick of production when manic rewrites and a million disparate studio/network notes need to be addressed. But I can tell you we’ve always tried, and that I believe Prodigy intends to continue supporting those original mandates for the life of the show.
To be clear: I’m aware (and thrilled!) that boiled down to our essence we’re just a fun, charmingly-flawed, quip-happy little series about monsters and heartache, and I make absolutely no claims of Deep Meaning or Super Importance! But, in a way, that in itself is its own little victory: we’re clearly at a point where a main character’s orientation not only doesn’t have to be swept under the rug, but also doesn’t have to be a big damn deal. Bo has lots of sex, with men, women, humans, Fae, threesomes… and she’s still our hero, still a good person worthy (and capable) of love, and that’s a rare portrayal of female sexuality. Also, a show built around a bisexual lead doesn’t have to BE about her bisexuality — orientation can just be an interesting element of a story, and not the story itself, and that’s the central spirit of our show. I consider that “I’m here, I’m queer, and it’s no big deal” approach to a main character still fairly rare and wonderful, at least in North America. It’s also rare to have a female lead who is so honestly sexual, without judgment. I don’t profess to be striking any new ground, here — I’m just saying that this is ground I’m very happy and privileged to be building on. In short: however long Lost Girl lasts, and however popular it does or doesn’t become internationally, I think the single element I will remain proudest of is just that we’ve been able to create and put out into the world a sex positive universe where a person’s sexual orientation is unapologetically present and yet neither defines them as a character, nor the show as a whole.
8. Is there anything more you would like to add?
Most of these questions (and, therefore, my answers) have been canted towards sex, so I’d like to clarify that this show isn’t about sex for me: it’s about relationships, and one of the core relationships on Lost Girl is NOT sexual, by design. On a show that deals with female sexuality, I felt it was crucial to also demonstrate that sex and romance aren’t the only ways that Bo measures a relationship’s worth, to give the show balance. Fans may have noticed that Kenzi clarified her hetero orientation at the end of ep 101 — pretty much the only time someone has addressed their orientation directly on our show. That line was necessary because in production I kept running into directors who wanted to sexualize the dynamic between Bo and Kenzi, to make the show “hotter”. I was determined to protect their platonic-yet-epic BFF-ness, so I made sure it was written in as canon. Partly, this was to debunk the gay-panic cliche that bisexual people sexualize everyone, and are incapable of platonic friendship.But there was another, simpler and more personal reason:I think friendship is the fifth element. Truly. I think it’s that substantial and nourishing a thing, so friendship and loyalty are part of the bone structure of Lost Girl, always just under the skin. So, hidden in amongst all the romance and cleavage and threesomes, the Lost Girl Bo and Kenzi relationship is my own little love poem to all the BFFs out there who do it right. I salute you.
It’s interesting to note that while acknowledging that this show is cheesy, quipy, and ultimately cheesecake; Lavretto understands it’s all the more important to deal with sexuality respectfully. Again, you can read the rest of the interview over here.
I like bad television. Not always but sometimes and yes, I have a slew of guilty pleasures. But more than bad television, I like those shows that revel in their questionable status. Those shows that openly accept their status as guilty pleasure and challenge you to question if maybe they’re better than you’d like to admit while still holding on and indulging in their own camp and soap appeal. The newest show to join that lot for me? Syfy’s Lost Girl.
Okay, so technically it’s not a Syfy show, it’s been on since 2008 in its’ native Canada, but unless I have readership I don’t know about (any Canadians give a holler) if you’ve heard of this show and you’re reading this post, it’s probably because of Syfy’s current airing.
The show is about Bo, the above-center Anna Silk, a succubus who was raised by humans and didn’t become aware of her Fae (think magic/fairy/non-human) World powers until she discovered them Rogue-style by killing her first boyfriend as they were about to get it on for the first time. In this Fae World, succubi feed off of sexual energy, so she runs away jumping from town to town killing dudes and dudettes (more on that later) until the powers that be of the Fae World show up and tell her she has to pick sides. Sides of what exactly? Why the Light and Dark Fae, of course!
Because she’s all “I don’t get this” and “I don’t belong” she chooses to be neutral and chill with her human friend Kenzi, the green-streaked Ksenia Solo, who is snarky and cute and really there for her and stuff; together, they decide to form a supernatural detective agency which allows for plot-lines of them sticking their noses into matters of which they are woefully uninformed. And so Season 1 goes, with Bo and Kenzi mismanaging the politics of the Fae World and occasionally, almost getting killed.
Aside from the reasonably interesting version of Fae world-building, the show bids for its audience through Whedon-esque banter and at least one sex scene between Bo and the wolf-shifter/werewolf Dyson, the above thoughtful and seated Kris Holden-Ried (also, a dude named Kristen? Wha-?[and double what, he was totally on Degrassi!]), per episode because that’s how she heals and the premise seems to demand for an Angel to her Buffy. At the same time, there’s a budding romance-laden professional relationship between Bo and scientist/doctor-for-the-Light Lauren, far right blonde Zoie Palmer, which offers a slight switch-up to the typical television romantic triangle.
This show is driven by sex and identity, due to the nature of its star character who is learning to control her sexual urges all the while searching for information to find her real parents, but it glosses over any real discussion of sexual identity. This could possibly be excused by the fact that the show is Canadian, if it was American it seems like writers would feel more pressed to make this a main topic of discussion. Either way, the sexual identity of Bo, is the most pervasive metaphor underlying all story-lines.
via Lost Girl Confessions
It’s hard not to read into it: Bo is consistently asked to choose one side over another, Light Fae or Dark Fae, but stubbornly remains in-between. Just as her desire leads her to engage in relationships with both Dyson and Lauren, all the while she laments not wanting to be forced to rule the other one out. Bo is clearly unwilling to accept simple white and black, male and female binaries. Her relationship with Kenzi acts as a a balancing point, sisterly and affectionate peppered with easily managed arguments, where she can develop a non-sexual relationship outside of the triangle.
Somewhere between this love triangle and the collegiate atmosphere with her roomie, what is slowly forming is my new favorite reason to watch the show: despite its fantasy setting and less-than-literary goals, Lost Girl has produced three female characters that are reasonably well-balanced, interesting and interact with each other in basically realistic female relationships. This isn’t to say that these characters and their relationships aren’t entirely unproblematic…
By now, no doubt, even if you haven’t watched Community you’ve probably heard about it. Yes, you might have only heard about it because it was pulled from the air for an indefinite amount of time but now is the time to really pay attention because it’s coming back!
Aren't they cute?
If you read this blog regularly, you know that I’ve been a long term fan of Community, especially Danny Pudi who plays Abed.
While it was away, the online community for Community has social-networked itself into some healthy buzzes of recognition. As a fan, it’s been fun to watch. In the same way that Firefly acolytes, Browncoats, are still creating* art inspired by the Whedon one-season epic, Human Beings (the fictional mascot of the show’s fictional community college) have celebrated the show in its absence.
My favorites include this spoofy drawing of the cast as Batman villains:
Abed-Joker wonders if he and Abed-Batman are the same person...
As well as Megan Lara’s tee of Abed and Troy in the style of Calvin and Hobbes*:
Cool, cool cool cool.
However, as Vulture points out: if it’s going to stay back, more people need to watch it.
The question is always, how do you make that happen? The article from Vulture “Community for Newbies” gives you a list of five episodes to start from because
Community is often called “meta” because of its frequent allusions — an entire Claymation episode, an Apollo 13 homage, a Halloween episode that doubled as a zombie movie. But that’s not quite the point: Community treats genre as malleable. Think of genre here they way you might think of patients on doctor shows, or cases on lawyer shows, or spoof-centric episodes of The Simpsons. (You can hear creator Dan Harmon expound on this on his “WTF” episode.) Don’t worry about catching every nuance of the homage — just enjoy the ride.
And I completely agree with this. Part of what gives Community its charm, and fan-base, is that it’s willing to push the envelope on what we expect from big non-cable networks. While it’s clear that plenty of people love this show, it’s clear that many of them are geeks and geek-o-philes, an audience that is fiercely loyal whether or not the shows/movies/etc. they love stick around. Part of this may because it’s easier for misfits to relate to the show.
What we have in Community is a world where characters of different racial and religious backgrounds are defined not by their census categories, but by their very extreme personality quirks. The study group at the show’s epicenter has not bound together because of or in spite of their differences, but because of their undeniable love for one another.
The show is also refreshingly feminist and non-racist, as noted in a great round-table with the women of the cast and one of their (yes, there’s more than one!) female writers over on The Daily Beast. Where Gillian Jacobs re-counts a feminist scholar referring to her as her character: “Britta Perry, feminist icon,” Yvette Nicole Brown discusses how happy she has been to not be pigeonholed as the “sassy black woman,” and Alison Brie notes that Danny Pudi has played “four or five Sanjays” with an accent.
I just wonder if people who don’t fall into this main group of geeks will be able to take the advice to “enjoy the ride.” Because it’s that group that needs to be courted/converted/begged into the fold to keep this show alive.
So what do you think it will take to keep Community afloat? Have you watched it? Will you start? Are you a loyal fan, and if so, what are you doing to spread the word?
Community returns to NBC on March 15 at 8:00 (set your DVRs NOW!) and past seasons are available on DVD, Netflix, and Hulu Plus.
*yes, I know that I linked to the same source/artist twice… but Megan Lara‘s stuff is super cool!
Okay, if you’ve already had a handful of people tell you to watch this video and haven’t yet, I’m adding myself to that handful and telling you to watch it now:
At this point, you only have yourself to blame.
I have to admit, I saw this video posted at least three different places before I watched it and each time, the person posting it said a version of “I’m not sure why I waited so long to watch this but damn it’s good, you should watch it too!” And it was only posted on February 3, seriously.
Having said all this, Max Landis, son of movie-maker-mover-shaker John Landis, seems to be hitting a nerve.
making dad proud...
I’ve spoken about the movie he co-wrote, Chronicle, and the emotional impact it had on me just a couple of weeks ago but it’s more eloquently detailed in this piece from Roger Ebert far-flung-correspondent Omer M. Mozaffar. Mozaffar’s The Pursuit of Power succinctly describes how the movie
starts out as a curious plastic toy. Along the way, however, it carefully reveals itself as a colossal amusement park of screams and shouts. Don’t let anyone spoil this movie for you, because it is the cult film of its generation.
It’s hard to watch the above Youtube video without feeling this description echoes as a description of the young Landis (he’s a year younger than me, that feels young). In the three and a half videos (including the one above) that I watched with him this morning, I grew more and more interested in what Landis had to say.
Sure, we can say that he’s carefully crafting this casual yet intellectual geek persona and I recognize that it might not at all reflect who he actually is but watching him make a Caprese salad or drunkenly goof off all while waxing on about the history of comic storylines touches me right to my geek core. In short, this is a guy I could easily see myself being friends with. At least, that’s the feeling I get.
And in a culture where celebrity is as much about your persona as your actual talent, it’s always interesting to see someone who seems to actively and cleverly cultivating both, famous parentage or not. It’s rare to see someone this early in their career resonate in this way.
So here goes, I am officially marking Max Landis as someone to keep an eye on. Can I put some money on it?
There’s no arguing that 90s culture has found a resurgence in a big way. Between the subtle and not so subtle fashion trends that draw inspiration from 90s grunge and flannel to florals and day-glo, like Jeremy Scott’s most recent collection pictured below, to the return of some of my favorite shows from growing up (Nickelodeon’s “The 90s Are All That” = Love!) you can see signs of it everywhere.
Eat my sweater!
But the literary theory lover in me keeps speaking up as I re-watch Clarissa explaining it all and I’m starting to question what it is about 90s culture that just seems so right right now.
I wonder if this is just a “Fashion 360⁰”, where we grow up and wear what we wanted to wear when we were 10. After watching a couple of episodes of “Clarissa Explains It All,” I found myself unsettled by how much my brain was registering Clarissa and her friend, Sam, as mini hipsters. In other words, I was confused by how familiar their fashion was to what I’ve seen people wearing now. In reality, of course, the situation is reversed. These kids, around fifteen when the show began, were dressed at the height of progressive 90s fashion. That same fashion is being revamped and sold by big name designers and then eventually, filtering out into mainstream clothing availability like the trend-setting American Apparel or the trend-relevant Target. (I recently bought an ankle-length button-down floral dress that, while being current, made me feel a lot like Amy Grant.)
Why does fashion feel so important? Fashion doubles back on itself all the time, re-inspecting those layers of past-self-representation and mining them for new fashion gold. But is there something that fashion was responding to in the 90s that we are finding ourselves trying address again in the current?
Another picture that article displayed a handful of “high-tech gadgets, built to fit easily into your backpack” that are laughable when compared to that computer-in-your-pocket existence of smart phones and that ad is probably less than 20 years old. In my lifetime, which I recognize as being relatively short, we have been witness to an astounding revolution in technology.
The 90s saw the birth of that all being accessible and it’s hard to detach my first memories of the internet with America Online and the intellectual explosive from the bright colors of Day-Glo and Lisa Frank; that’s all just as easily juxtaposed with the gritty realness of grunge rock and the death of Kurt Cobain. The 90s remain as a weird amalgamation of extremes.
And maybe that’s why I find the 90s so attractive. Sometimes, we look back to the 50s or 60s, and coming up the 20s, trying to idealize the past. We appreciate that past because we feel like we can understand it, that it was a simpler time. Maybe the 90s, are still close enough that we can identify instead of idealizing. Maybe we can see the 90s as the decade that introduced causes that were both easy to believe in and yet feel easy to digest:
Because who doesn't like Girl Power when it's sexy and sings catchy pop tunes?
As usual, I’m not sure that I’ve really come to a conclusion on this topic. I know I appreciate the influence of the 90s on our current culture and that we are reveling in its glories from a comfortable distance. Even though feminism packaged inside sex-appeal may give us plenty of problems now, the easy-going openness of the 90s feels starkly in contrast to the Tea Party politics and Arizona white-washing. Were there negative politics in the 90s? I’m sure but I wasn’t really aware of them yet; I’m older and, with the internet, it’s harder to avoid it.
In that weird world of extreme contrasts that are somehow permeable, the loudness and brashness of Day-Glo and DIY zines allowed niches to disappear into. And maybe that’s what we’re looking for as we look back through those cultural markers of fashion, the ideals that somehow seem embedded in them. So, do we really remember the 90s? We’re just far away to know what we feel to be the capital-T-Truth of that time while it’s already glossed over with a fine sheen of nostalgia.
I never really dated growing up. I always thought it was because I was the fat kid but recent clarity on looking back shows, I wasn’t all that fat. But I was shy and I was weird; I’m sure my story isn’t all that odd.
My first kiss was Truth or Dare at a band party in seventh grade and my first real kiss was backstage at the children’s theatre I spent all of my free time at until I moved away from it. My theatre friends and I all flirted and played around but it was never serious. I tried the best I could to date a guy I met at my friend’s Quinceañera but he was a bit old for me and, thankfully, called it off before it turned into something it shouldn’t have been.
The only “boyfriend” I had in high school was a guy named Justin. For two weeks, I sat with him at lunch and watched him play Magic: The Gathering. We kissed and he told me about his cats and his knives and, upon the realization that he loved them both equally, I called it off when I realized we didn’t have that much in common.
And thus, I was left to bemoan my existence, like so many do, on every Valentine’s Day. It was at that time, back in the days before Facebook, when I still didn’t know what an Internet Browser was and thought the only grand portal to the World Wide Web was America On-Line, I would sit down and write a letter to all of my single friends.
I asked them all to join me in my loneliness, to join my Lonely Hearts Club (which I thought was truly original and ingeniously derived from a certain Beatles album) and eat garlicky food and read melodramatic poetic quotes with me on Valentine’s Day. I sorely wish I still had these so I could quote some to you.
It was around that time that I needed love too because, when I was sixteen, my mom was diagnosed with cancer. My world was set askew and amidst all this, still trying to be a kid, my friend and I had a long conversation about what love meant. (I had said “love ya'” when hanging up the phone or saying bye and he really questioned whether or not I meant it. And, true to who I am, I took him far more seriously than he had bargained for.)
Since then, I make an effort to tell everyone I love that I love them. Chances are, if I count you as a friend, I do love you. Because love is for sharing, not hiding away and later wishing you could tell someone you loved them just one more time or at all.
But look, I’m older (we all are) and all day I’ve seen people post to Facebook about the triteness of the holiday and how stressed out they are. And I’ll admit, since officially entering my later-twenties (I know, smallest violin moment here) I’ve become a bit more reserved about telling people I love them. Those same social rules and regulations that tell us that THIS is the ONE day to share love have also told me to hold back fro sake of seeming too weird.
not that hammers wouldn't be helpful...
And I have to admit, I still feel like whipping together a new version of my old email. Even though I’m engaged, that long-suffering single girl who wants to throw her arms open to the world is still in my heart, and honestly, I hate some of these traditions as much as the next person.
Every gift-giving-day that Daniel and I have been together though has ultimately been tackled by the keystone that always saves our relationship and makes it as awesome as it is: conversation. We decide in advance, no matter how un-romantic it may seem, what the holiday is going to mean to us this year. What we can afford, what we want, and what we’re going to do is always arrived at after we talk to each other openly and honestly. And while it might not yield too many surprises, it never looks much like the head-banging-anxiety portion of this:
Instead, it looks a bit more like this:
From the movie "Up."
Just a couple of best friends learning how to grow old together.
And that’s how I view Daniel, more than a boyfriend, a fiance, or whatever, is my best friend. So, if you don’t have a significant other in your life, I suggest you look to your friends because as much as Valentine’s Day is now about my relationship with him, in the past it was so very much about my relationships with all the special people who made each day a little better and a little easier. Mostly, it still is.
I may not be a relationship expert or be saying something you haven’t heard anywhere else, but I’m always a big fan of love and spreading it around.
As always, I’m sorry for the radio silence. To those of you who still choose to read when I have time to up-date, I’m really thankful! Having said that…
Last weekend, Daniel and I went to go see the new movie Chronicle. For those of you who haven’t heard about it, here’s the trailer:
In short, it’s a story about three friends (who weren’t always friends) who make a discovery, end up having supernatural powers, and what happens from there.
It’s not the most original plot, I’ll admit that, but it’s well done. It’s poignant, genuine, and (kinda barely spoilers alert) despite the fact that those powers inevitably bring out the best and the worst in these kids, they remain sympathetic characters throughout.
This fact won me over more strongly that I would have suspected and I had to ask why? Why? I talked to other friends who were not won over and, moreover, had a fraction of the emotional response that I had. Why is it that I am so obsessed with other people’s reactions and my own? Because, sometimes, I feel like I don’t understand how people aren’t more affected by the negativity we are bombarded on a daily basis.
Another reason, for sure, is that I recently read this article about Tyler Clementi and the tormentors who drove him to commit suicide.
The article, The Story of a Suicide by Ian Parker, is a simple and well-written piece that humanizes the aforementioned tormentor and forces the realization that, like many situations in life, there is no clear cut line between who is “good” and who is “evil.” However, there are are hundreds, if not thousands, of people who will be ready to tell you there is without knowing the full situation and without caring for the truth. My feeling is that this is because the truth, often, is hard to define and unsatisfying to hear. Why is it so much easier to believe the worst of people? To pick a whipping boy and demonize them past recognition?
To some degrees, both Tyler and his roommate were victims not of any one crime, but of a social situation. They were both quick to judge based on what they felt were fair markers of understanding who a person is: ethnicity, sexuality, and economic class. They avoided actual direct communication and researched each other via Facebook, Twitter, and Google. Where Tyler could have used more support, his roommate, Dharun, received support where he shouldn’t have.
Now, I’m not saying that I think everyone deserves to feel victimized all the time or that that Dharun is innocent of the crime for which he’s being accused. But one of the hardest lessons to learn at any age is how to take full responsibility for your actions. Human beings are excellent at crafting excuses and blaming other people. We’re also excellent at underestimating the effects of our actions.
Which leads me back to my previous concerns. How much of the negativity that surrounds us is our responsibility? How much to we rely on others to create our environment?
Living in a society that is so entrenched in the media machine, it’s easy to accept what we’re fed about the news and the world around us; this includes everything from entertainment to news. It’s easy to believe what others tell you to believe, whether or not it’s who’s a good singer or who’s the best candidate. It’s harder, though not by much, to find answers for it ourselves.
There are clear examples on all ends of the spectrum. From Lana Del Rey‘s SNL performance debacle, that some viewed as a rough first performance while others believe it was the most insulting waste of public broadcasting time, to the ridiculous spanning points of view on gay marriage that start with believing it’s a basic human right and range to The Marriage Protection Act and believing gay marriage would somehow lead to bestiality.
Clearly, one of these examples far outweighs the others in importance, but the point is that no matter the seriousness of the subject someone exists to tell us often and loudly what they think we should believe. And unfortunately, we are easy to judge, easy to hate, and easy to self-righteous bigotry.
Famously, sources like Fox News are scrutinized for openly lying to their viewers to the point that their viewers, who are often religiously faithful, are wary about simple truths. This is not a biased statement.
This brings me back to my subject title. I believe that, in some ways, we are intent on creating a world without winners. A world where every success is only judged by the severity of its critique. As with Lana Del Rey, more and more, we criticize the arts for producing bland and boring but largely because of the fear that any tiny failure could be not just “Tomorrow’s Headlines,” but “10-Seconds-From-Now Headlines,” and Tweets, and Facebook status updates, and on and on.
I find it hard to separate these unimportant criticisms as feeding our larger problems. If we spend our time throwing insults at a TV, or by posting them anonymously online, aren’t we slowly inuring ourselves to this negativity? Do we stop noticing how much hatred we speak? Do we draw the lines between constructive honesty and real complaint or do they all start to bleed together? Because I know that, even as an adult, it’s hard for me to distinguish sometimes.
I’m not innocent of this myself. But I know that, as someone whose heart sinks at the piercing negativity I see others breed, I pause before I speak negativity. I hope to never (or as rarely as possible) be the reason that someone else has a bad day.
So what does this have to do with “Chronicle” or the article about Tyler Clementi? Well, maybe this blog post is just another ramble that I needed to clear my head. But both this movie and that article have reminded me that if there is so much I can’t control about this world, there is at least one thing I can control: how I treat people. Both the article and the movie remind me that each day is another opportunity for me to reach out to an old friend, to smile at a random person on the street, to focus on my small circle of the world and make that as good as possible. Because you never know what the person next to you might be dealing with.
I like to think that, if there is a purpose to life, it’s to make each others lives easier because life is, so very often, very hard. I’ve been called idealistic, optimistic, and naive because of this. I’d like to think I’m just not an asshole.
the red speech balloon 