New Beginnings

Seeing as how I am about to jet off into the world of unknown, I want to keep all of my friends and family updated on all of my status. Since I don't like to talk on the phone that much, and I just got a new plan that cut WAY back on my minutes (Verizon always knows how to stick it to you, don't they?), I have decided to keep a blog of all of my new adventures.

I case you haven't heard, I am moving to Florida for four months. I leave January 1 and am making the long drive down to Ocala to work with one of the top horse show farms on the East Coast. SBS Farms is home of Jennifer Alfano, a trainer that I have admired for years. She has been the World Champion Hunter rider several times and ride some of the most prestigious horses in the nation. The picture to the left is Jennifer riding RockStar. I recently got to meet him while I was in Buffalo interviewing for the job, and he is the sweetest horse in the world.

I am very excited to go down and live at Post Time Farm for the HITS Season and take care of all the wonderful horses.

Also, when the winter circuit is over, I move back to Buffalo and get to continue working with the animals and travel all over the East Coast with the farm to some of the most prestigious shows in the country. Am I excited? You bet I am.

At the same time I am also writing for a children't show. Kid Fit is a half-hour show centered around exercises for children. Two of my shows were recently put into production and I am hoping to get the DVD's soon.

Seeing as how I just got a new Digital Camera for my birthday I will be documenting my trip and keeping everyone up to speed on what I am doing. Wish me luck!

Been a long time...

SO the adjustment after college hasn't been as hard as I thought it would be. I worked at a temp agency for awhile doing some mindless data-entry jobs (which I don't recommend for anyone, EVER.) and then after three weeks of that, I got hired at a wonderful little place called World Dealer,Inc. There I help with website development and advertising for car dealerships all over the US.

I also recently traveled to Charlottesville, VA to interview for a producing position...no Mr. Weaver, I didn't see Luke, he was getting married the weekend I was there. I really liked Neil, but I had driven all night to get to the interview and I forgot my bag with my pajamas, toiletries, and make-up so I arrived at the interview pretty much looking like hell. So much for first impressions, right? But to anyone looking for a job, it is the cutest place in the world and everyone is really nice there. And really young too. It's DMI is 182, but they're set and program are better than some I've seen in Pittsburgh, so its a really nice place to start. We'll see what happens.

But that's the latest, I'm supposed to start writing copy soon at work which I'm really looking forward to. I hope all is well with everyone.

TTFN

Unwrapping my performance

Well the capstone project is over and now it's getting to be that thime where I face reality. I'm not going to lie when I say that I was getting slightly upset during my presentation. I'm still slightly upset. Four years of growing relationships with these wonderful broadcast majors makes anyone choke up wjen they think of leaving them. But we'll get to that later.

The presentation itself went ok. I feel that I could have been a little more prepared, but everything worked out fine and everyone seemed to enjoy my presentation. I still need to work on slowing my speech down. I've gottien that note ever since I can remember. From theatre in high school to speech class to now. I can't help that my mind moves faster than my mouth and it tries to catch up. Like I said in my presentation, I'm a genius, so deal =).

Anyway back to me being sad about graduating. I always like to shock people my senior year with the fact I do have feelings. Shocking, I know. Most of the time I'm too busy to face them, but I have few minutes to be sentimental.

Out of all the seniors, though, I must say I'm going to miss Mike the most. I was in my very first class with Mike, lived through some french with Mike, and spent years on the radio with him...Not to mention spent some awkward trips on the road in some fields too. He also saves my ass all the time when I break something. So Mike, I'm gonna miss you, but I'm sure you'll be getting phone calls when I break something in the real world too.

I must also say that I'm going to miss Liz, DJ, Amy, Leanne, and Stevi bunches too. All of you guys are so awesome. Everybody has atleast one skill that I wish I could just suck out of you and posess for myself, but alas, I don't have those kinds of powers. I have enjoyed the time I spent with you more than I can put into words...so I'm not even going to try. Thanks for everything you guys, I'm sure you'll be getting calls down the road too..from a payphone, probably collect, from little homeless Aidan asking if there are any custodial positions opening up at your successful places of business. Just say "Go back to your box, Aidan and take a nap." And that's all I want. Everyone of you are going to be something great, and I'm glad I'm going to get to say "I knew them back when..." True. I really do love you guys.

So that's all I can handle right now. Don't worry Mr. Weaver I'll probably have some words for you soon, but I need to go do things for your cluster ::angry face::

Thanks again for all the memories. Hooray for the BC Class of 2007!

Too Much Lipp form Lippmann

First and foremost I must address Walter Lippmann's writing style. I'm sure that he could have gotten a really great job writing stereo instructions for RCA, but instead he went the academic route so all of us could fall asleep a little easier each night. Maybe he was employed by a lesser known Serta, and was the inspiration behind the counting sheep...the world may never know.
Now looking at what Lippmann was trying to say: The basic idea is that the media controls all of the "pictures in our heads" and that the common public is not intelligent or perceptive enough to figure things out for themselves. He offers a philosophical option by employing an "intelligensia" which is a higher order of people who are educated about culture, politics, and media savvy.
While this may sound like a cracked out idea, if you look at it from tody's perspective, isn't that sort of already employed? We are controlled what to think about by the gatekeeper's agenda setting ways and the hyper reality that they create by making things more important than they really are. While some may say that we are only exposed to what we want to be exposed to, who decides what we get to choose to expose ourselves to? Books, magazines, television, and movies are all forms of media that are in the public for a profit. They are all owned by huge companies that are pushing their own agendas and have powerful friends that don't want people to think about certain things (Ahem, sugarcane run cars?) so they expose us to other things to distract us from reality.
Most easily this can be viewed as a part of the conflict theory where as big media is in the powerful position and the citizens are the powerless. There seems to be no way for the public to reverse the structure because as lippmann says, there really is no democracy, which I wholeheartedly believe. We are living in the biggest scam in the world and there's no way out. Welcome to America, the land of no free healh care, oil-dependant, and soon to be corn-crazy. Ridiculous.

Where's tha party at?

So for this week's capstone blog, I have to decide who I want to invite to my capstone presentation on campus. Hm, I know that Dr. B. is on mine and everyone's list, so I knocked one out of the park with that. Secondly, I think I'll invite Eileen Hendrickson, the theatre professor because she always has a lot of encouraging things to say to me, and I find her so completely amusing anyway. Thirdly, I think I'll send an invite to Dr. Mitchell because in my screenwriting class, she's the one who gave me the balls to think that I can write, and I am forever thankful to her for that.

I hope that they would want to come see me...but as everyone knows, I am the BEST powerpoint presenter in the world, so I will rock my presentation HARD.

Oh Project

This project is the worst thing ever. Not really, but with everything else in my life going on it's just one more thing to add on the list. Luckily, I have a great team that tries really hard and does a great job. We're also really funny.

I started editing today. I've got a solid three minutes pieced together the way I like them, but...I need more diversity. Funny seeing as how that's what the entire thing is about. We're going to get more interviews next week and I'm hoping that will help eat some of the time and make it more compelling. Oh how I talk like a producer.

I may want to reshoot our interview with Joselyn, but I'm not sure yet seeing as how I like what she said and the way she said it, and I don't want to lose the sponteneity of her answers. Decisions, decisions...I guess I'll poll the group and see what they say since its their project too.

I'm really excited seeing as how I think I can put this together completely as a video essay...a feat I have always wanted to conquer before I left college...we'll see how it goes. I may cave by next week and voice tracj something, but we'll see how long I can hold out.

That's all that is going on with the project. Time to get back to relay for life.

What's Up Primetime?

Watching prime time television has never really appealed to me because as a younger person I was never home for prime time and then would be in bed by 10:30, so I never became accustomed to sitting in front of the TV for hours. The last time I looked forward to primetime television was whenever I was about eight years old and would rush home from the barn to watch T.G.I.F. on ABC. That’s back in the day when Full House, Family Matters, and Step by Step made up my favorite part of the block. I also had strong feelings for the Cosby show, but that’s a whole other story there.
I decided that the best prime time that I could stand to watch would be Sunday night on FOX. Starting out with the Simpsons at 8:00, I watched Lisa make up her own heritage as a Native American and then watch it wackily spin out of control as she spins a web of lies and is asked to do a presentation on “her people” at city hall. Then, Bart is granted a driver’s license because of a heroic act and then is romanced by a character voiced by Natalie Portman. Hilarity ensues. Obviously, with the outrageous satire on the America family that FOX does with all of its cartoons such as King of the Hill, Family Guy, and American Dad, there is a touch of something true in everything that is commented on, but it pushes the issue so far that it becomes humorous.
Looking at this viewing experience from Jean Baudrillard’s perspective with the “hyper reality” it’s not so much applicable to cartoons. Whereas with the bad animation and the outrageous plots going on under my nose, I know that this experience is not real and basically will never happen to me. Whereas watching a show like CSI or House, a viewer watches situations like that and then it affects their real life. For instance, prosecutors are finding it harder and harder to convict criminals because of the “CSI Effect” which points out that people think that DNA evidence should be used in all cases and by not using some of the tactics seen on TV, it plants reasonable doubt into the juror’s minds and then they do not convict the guilty people.
Going along with that, in an interview with Joshua Meyrowitz conducted by Barbara Osbourn, Meyrowitz says that “TV takes public events and transforms them into dramas that are played out in the privacy of our living rooms, kitchens and bedrooms.” This theory applies well to cartoons because social satires like South Park, The Simpsons, Family Guy, etc. take on world issues and comment on them mockingly which subjects children who may not have even known about them before to giving them a point of view on the situation without all the facts. However, I must say that I usually agree with what is said in the cartoons because they look at it from a bigger picture and place it into a situation where we can see the irony in the situations. Meyrowitz goes on to say that “[p]arents used to be the channel through which children learned about the outside world. They could decide what to tell their children and when to tell it to them. Since children learn to read in stages, books provide a kind of natural screening process, where adults can decide what to tell and not tell children of different reading abilities. Television destroyed the system that segregated adult from child knowledge and separated information into year-by-year slices for children of different ages. Instead, it presents the same information directly to children of all ages, without going through adult filters.”
By presenting a lot of issues through adult cartoons, many children are more prone to being exposed to them seeing as how they have an early timeslot starting at 8pm. Although television programs now come with rating systems, I must comment on the lack of parenting that goes into