iPhone Skin Ideas

I'm making a custom vinyl skin for my iPhone. Since I am not sure which one to get, I've compiled a list of the ones I'd like to make for future reference:

Last Week of Winter Break

I hardly ever update this blog as often as I'd like (though I should, because it would mean actually taking the time to write a whole entry and include complete thoughts.)

Also, I just realized that a few posts ago I criticized Jason Schwartzman for putting his own music on his own show, while I went on about a tumblr I had (for like, 2 days) in which I just posted photo booth pictures of myself. I'm fucking ridiculous.

I've started taking pictures (using good old 35mm film) on my mother's old Nikon camera. So far I've only developed one roll, out of which there's one pretty decent photo of a book sitting next to a window. (Yeah, I'm not looking to take over the world of art photography anytime soon.)

Working on ideas for my zine (no, I never denied that I'm an art student.) I think I'm just going to give a detailed description of places, moments, and moods I'd specifically like to experience. But I'm not quite sure yet. A friend of mine sent me a copy of hers to my Chicago address a few weeks ago, so I suppose I'll take a look at hers when I get back and get inspired.

I'm also really inspired to go to Scandinavia, again. The one MAJOR problem that might keep me from ever going, though, is my freakish aversion to seafood. If I ever go, I'd be tortured by the natives. But their countries are so beautiful in their somewhat stark commonness.

Stockholm, Sweden


I'm led to believe that this is Norway...


Swedish countryside

Prisencolinensinainciusol

Adriano Celetano, an Italian singer/songwriter, wrote and performed this song to sound like fake English back in the 70's:



Let me just say, I love my heritage.

And we're pretty badass dancers.

Dancing

Nobody dances in this country - I mean, really dances. And when they do, it's always about something else - something else besides the pure notion of enjoying and moving your body to the music.

There's the awkward, "ironic" dancing, which many people do either because they want to make fun of the music or contain some belief that letting loose breaks their "cool" somehow. Most of the SAIC parties I attend consist of this kind of dancing, if any dancing occurs at all. Even then, it only seems to be a brief segment during the party, after which most of the attendees continue on drinking and chain-smoking.

That, and the ever-so-popular "grinding." All attention to the beat or the rhthym of the music is thrown out the window, all in exchange to see how long two people can rub up against each other fully clothed before the guy gets a boner. Basically, it's dry-humping in public, but with music in the background. It's not much of an annoyance after high school, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are people who still "grind" well into their 20's.

Lately, I've noticed that, when the rare occasion arises and people actually do begin dancing, I'll often try to dance for real along with them. However, since they're not into it, I always end up looking and feeling incredibly awkward and uncomfortable. So then that makes me an "ironic" dancer, which kind of, indeed, annoys me.

Two Insane, Comedic Performances and New Layout

In case you haven't seen my actual blog in some time, the layout, color scheme, and the banner have changed. No more obnoxiously large photo booth picture of me eating bread in a time warp.

Dressed as a beatnik for Halloween, since my Alex DeLarge costume fell through. (Note: Duct-taping two white belts to the inside of your pants and calling them suspenders isn't as easy as it seems.) We went trick-or-treating for, like, a half hour in Pilsen before we decided to head to this party over in Lakeview. Pretty good fun overall.

Tomorrow we're having another class shoot, this time with a dolly, inside a studio. Hopefully I didn't annoy anyone with my decision to switch from the "homemaker" role to the "pissed off worker" role. Actually, if I did, whatevah.

New favorite movie scene of the moment: Daniel Brühl's performance in 2 Days in Paris. Unfortunately, there is no clip on youtube I could gladly show you, so I'll leave you with a, no doubt, beautiful picture of him as "Lukas" in what was overall kind of a meh film in terms of story:

"I'm a fairy..."

Also saw Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) for the first time on the big screen at the Gene Siskel Film Center. It's better and more appetizing than I remembered.

Two entertaining, comical performances of insane people.

Murderous Children and a Rant about Non-Subversive, Sexist Comedy

Just saw ¿Quíen puede matar a un niño? (1976) or, Who Can Kill a Child?, in English. It's insane, I recommend you watch it to see Spanish children kill adults.



Also had a conversation I've been wanting to have for quite a long time in film class. B (I feel weird using full names in my blog now... for some reason) brought up how someone in his painting class brought in this really exploitative, gratuitous painting of a naked woman bending over, along with a random tit in the corner. He, the painter, apparently wanted to present the naked female figure as "decoration". B was pretty adamant about how he (and, thankfully the rest of the class AND the teacher) disagreed with this student's depiction of women in the painting. Thank gawd -- this gave me hope.

This reminded me of the time someone brought in a drawing for critique in the "comedy" Research Studio last semester. The drawing was as follows: a line drawing of a naked, faceless woman, holding her legs up in the air, with a coin slot for a vagina. Chee-ya. So I expressed my discontent during the critique, and the teacher asks if I think the guy who drew it thinks a woman's vagina is literally a coin slot. My response should have been:

-"Gee, I don't know, has he ever even seen one?"

or,

-What the girl in my film class (the one, who I believe wrote for Second City, or was affiliated with them in one way or another) said. She mentioned how what we laugh at reveals what we truly think in our subconcious...

...Thus, if someone laughs at a drawing of a faceless, naked woman with a coin slot for a vagina, there's a kernel of truth, and sadly enough, odds are, that person subconsciously feels that women can be bought. The "it's funny because it's true" doesn't work in this case because it's not true -- they're stereotypes, and they're certainly not anything new and subversive WHICH IS WHAT COMEDY WAS AND IS MEANT TO BE.

The whole thing kind of distanced me from some people in the Research class, and I definitely felt silenced and a little isolated for the rest of the term, simply for saying I was offended by a line drawing. So it was quite the relief to hear like-mindedness on the situation, instead of the half-witted, apathetic, hipster response on how we shouldn't take sexist jokes and such so seriously because it's supposed to be "ironic". I got a whole 'nother rant on that, but I'll withdraw that and save it for a rainy day.

I also wrote a Feministing article about the line drawing incident, but someone from my class left a comment on it defending the guy who drew it. Weak defense, of course -- s/he said it wasn't a final project and it was supposed to be "lame, bad, ugly" art and we're supposed to laugh at the piece because of that. However, laughing at someone like this, something that degrades half the population using old clichés and stereotypes because you think it's bad is the same as laughing at it because you think it's true.
Rant: done.

Though I feel like I have much more to say...