Happy Monday, everyone! It’s actually a happy one, because
this is the last official day of classes for the fall 2015 semester! We made
it, kids. Pat yourself on the back, and then look forward onto finals and try
not to cry.
Seriously, though, if you need some last-minute assistance,
we at 3416 Boylan have regular hours today, and then special finals week hours
on Thursday the 17th and Tuesday the 22nd. Not the 18th,
because that’s when Star Wars comes
out, but that’s beside the point.
who the hell drew this
Over winter break, make sure to take it easy, even if just
for a little while. I know most of us are either doing intersession classes or
working through the holiday – I’m definitely one of them – but it’s important
to seize some time to relax. Marathon something silly on Netflix, eat a box of
chocolates, listen to an album and enter a new phase in your life, take a
bubble bath, look at the stars, write something! Next semester we’re publishing
The Junction and we want your
submissions: prose, poetry, art, photography, anything. The deadline is in
March, but it’s never too early to send off your work to
bczinesubmissions@gmail.com.
On a more personal note, this is my last semester as an
intern, and I’m actually glad I get to do these greetings one last time.
Working at the office, writing these blog posts, meeting some of the best
people I’ve met in my entire college career…it’s been nothing less than
amazing. So thank you, dear readers and friends.
Happy holidays, no matter what you celebrate. I hope you can
spend this season with somebody you care for; every moment you spend smiling in
the company of someone who brings you comfort is precious. May those moments be
many.
Here are some cute Christmas-themed animals for the road.
I like living in New York because, as a person who
approaches most social situations with all the ease and confidence of a newborn
deer, I can appreciate New York’s unique brand of generalized apathy. Nobody
really cares to look twice at you, no matter what you’re doing or how you’re
dressed. This is why we have to have a conversation about mobs of drunk people
dressed like Santa Claus taking over neighborhoods for bar crawls.
Full disclosure: I don’t drink and I don’t get the appeal,
so maybe it’s my problem that I don’t “get” SantaCon. I had to do quite a bit
of research into this, but all my research merely validated my first impression
of the event. A bunch of adults dress up in Christmas-themed outfits and drink
a lot, and some people find them annoying. Shocking, huh? The organizers insist
SantaCon is a positive experience, that most of their participants are
upstanding citizens asserting their creativity, and that their event is simply one
way to get into the holiday spirit. Or maybe just the holiday spirits.
This interview with an anonymous organizer basically boils
down to “haters to the left” and is also hilarious:
We see a lot of
behavior from people who—which granted, could be anybody, any time, at any
weekend—but when you put everybody in a uniform like that, and then you see
them puking on street corners and having sex outside of Duane Reade…
Inside, actually. And
it wasn’t sex, it was a handjob.
I’ve been to a few
office parties in my day, but I don’t think I’ve ever given anyone a handjob in
a Duane Reade.
You might not have.
Yeah. This dude literally just suggested that most holiday
parties include routine handjobs. Hilarious.
I hate to be “that guy” here, but I’m gonna be. As much as
SantaCon organizers insist they’re just spreading holiday cheer, and as much as
Christmas has been commercialized and turned into a secular pageant, to some
people, Christmas is still a legitimate religious holiday. I
go to church on Christmas. At my house we’ve been lighting our Advent candles
and reading from the Old Testament before dinner all month. To claim an event
dedicated to getting drunk in public, especially when there’s a recorded history of bad behavior, is just innocent holiday fun is misguided at best, and
insulting at worst.
The event is proceeding as planned for now, with a loose
estimate of the route of the bar crawl provided for public viewing. Some bars
have declared they won’t be serving Santas, while others stand in solidarity. I
won’t be participating – I’ll be doing all in my power to avoid crossing paths
with drunk Santas, in all honesty – and I just hope everything proceeds without
incident. Or handjobs outside Duane Reade.
The best outcome here is that the SantaCon crowd has a fight
to the death with competing SantanaCon, because at least that would be funny.
No, Chante, SantanaCon is not about Naya Rivera. Unfortunately.
-Maggie
***
Google's Quantum Computer is Pretty Cool
Recently Google, in collaboration with NASA, revealed that they have a commercial quantum computer and it's actually pretty awesome. Now, you may be asking, "what's a quantum computer? Why's it so awesome?" Well to put it simply, a quantum computer uses quantum mechanics to store memory and functions, meaning that instead of using the digital bits of normal computers these computers are dealing with quantum bits (aka qubits). Qubits, as opposed to bits who are either on or off, can be in one of three different states: on, off, or suspended in a state of both (think Schrodinger's cat), and when I say on or off, I'm talking about the binary 1 or 0. This extra state allows Google's quantum computer, the D-Wave 2X to complete calculations 100 million times faster than any of today's machines.
In perspective, this doesn't mean too much for the average computer user. How much faster do you need to open up Microsoft Word? I mean your computer already executes a couple billion instructions every second, you don't need more to write that paper. Quantum computers can be used to calculate the trajectory of a spaceship in future missions further out into space, or to crack codes by brute force for the military, or optimize air traffic. They allow for more variables to be taken to account and make problems that would take a digital computer 10,000 years to calculate only take seconds.
Optimization seems to be the big word here, and finding the best possible way to do things is very important, but very soon it seems that we'll have more important questions to answer and will already have the tools to answer them.
-Christian
***
The Geminids and the Rose Planetarium
A group of meteors called the Geminids reached their peak viewing conditions this weekend from Thursday to Sunday morning. The source of the comets wasn't a comet but an asteroid, 3200 Phaethon, and this is what makes the meteor shower so unique. The asteroid was captured by a satellite in 1983, and now its residue is making its way through the sky in a show of color visible from Canada from Dec. 10th.
Geminids are meteors fall through the constellation Gemini. I didn't get to see the shower this year, but here is an image of a similar phenomenon from 2013:
It seems that each year the Geminids increase in amount by hourly rate: 253 in 2014, 134 in 2013, 109 in 2012. But I wonder if this is a matter of how many we are able to see, due to our sharpening technology and exponential advances. The Geminid meteor stream is also a very new one; or, perhaps simply newly observed. Sometimes, a whooshing sound can be heard as they fall, as they can set up an electrophonic feedback loop reflected off of poles and buildings.
Why is this so fascinating to me? Like many disenchanted New Yorkers who visit the Rose Center for Earth and Space, I was unassumingly smitten with the planetarium and the revelation (spoilers!!) that the span of human history and art only spans about a hair's width relative to the gigantic vortex of stellar evolution. After entering the planetarium you are led over billions of years from the big bang to the present day, and leave not without the sensation of a very breathtaking and relieving smallness. I think I have found my new favorite place: an atrium in the center of the city secretly full of peace and silence.
At the center of the planetarium, at the top of the spiral and at the starting point of the Big Bang, instead of looking up at the sky you look down at the glowing outline of the city as it would be visible from an airplane, and this is one of the most calming sights to me.
[To the tune of the fifth day down of "On the First Day of Christmas"]
By the last week of winter break I will plan to read The Undercommons Do-o-o-o-on Quixote Barf Diaries Coyote Blue
and The Average American Male.
-The Undercommons by
Stefano Harney and Fred Moten - because of Lisa.
-Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes - because I read it first in Spanish which isn't my first language, so I totally missed some of the nuances.
-Barf Diaries by Dodie Bellamy - because Ramsey Scott.
-Coyote Blue by Christopher Moore - because he's fun and Vonnegut-esque and meta and funny and I love this writer
-The Average American Male by Chad Kultgen - because Chante.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Maggie ~ World War Z by Max Brooks
Courtney input: It's good [not great] but SUCH a zombie staple
Renee ~ Towelhead by Alicia Erian; The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips
THIS BOOK IS SO GOOD FUCK
Christian ~ The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Tell me how it is!
Chante ~ Chelsea Girls by Eileen Myles; The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures by Phoebe Gloeckner
Lisa ~ A travel guide to a safari; Solibo Magnificent by Patrick Chamoiseau
Anna ~ Middlemarch by George Eliot; Rilke
Cat ~ In a Glass Darkly (The posthumous papers of the occult detective Dr. Martin Hesselius) by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
Props for best title!
Alana ~ Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
THIS IS AWESOME AND PROPS FOR TACKLING IT IN FRENCH
Alex ~ Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
I’ve been waging an internal war with myself over this post
all week and the arguments go a little something like this:
No Maggie you can’t
write about Hamilton again.
NO ONE CAN STOP ME
FROM WRITING ABOUT HAMILTON AGAIN!
And repeat. But you know what? It’s my last blog post (I’m
retiring and I’m sad about it, honestly), it’s the end of the semester, Hamilton is amazing, and Lin-Manuel
Miranda’s verses are the sweetest poetry I can think of. Besides, he did
initially perform an early version of the opening number from Hamilton at a poetry jam at the White
House back in 2009.
That performance is actually the crux of my post. So many
artists I’ve studied are removed from me by generations. Don’t get me wrong; we
do have stuff to learn from the canon, from the old masters who walked the path
ahead of us. But the side effect is we get this warped view of art. The Great
American Novels we’ve studied only exist in our head as the final draft. We don’t
see revisions. We don’t see long nights sobbing through edits. We don’t see the
rewrites, the sleep lost, the destroyed prototypes. Sure, if you study authors
you see glimpses of the frustration that plagues the craft of writing, and of
any creative endeavor, for that matter. But when you’re sitting up past bedtime
glaring at a Microsoft Word document that just won’t work and you’ve got a copy
of Lolita or Tender is the Night or Mrs.
Dalloway grinning at you from your bookshelf, it almost feels like the
greatest books descended from the heavens, not that an actual human being with
thoughts and feelings and writer’s block created it.
Which is why you need to pay attention to your
contemporaries. This Puerto Rican dude playing Alexander Hamilton on Broadway
right now is my contemporary, despite the fame, and if you check out his
Twitter, he talks about his writing process all the time. He sends out a
message claiming he’s gonna get some writing done, and then two hours later he’s
posting pictures of his dog and bemoaning his lack of progress. We’ve all been
there. I’ve been there like twelve times this week. He’s also divulged endless
factoids about Hamilton and his own
idols and inspirations, answering fan questions and annotating the lyrics with
his own asides. Learning about his sources, his struggles, and his approaches
to writing a piece of work that I regard with such esteem has only enriched it
for me.
It’s such a reality check when you remember the idols you
put on pedestals are real people, because guess what? You’re a real person too,
and that means you can do it just as well if you have enough drive.
For all intents and purposes, the 2009 White House
performance is a first draft that will live on the Internet forever. Back then,
the musical was merely a gleam in Miranda’s eye; his initial project was a
collection of songs he referred to as The
Hamilton Mixtape, and as I said earlier, this song became the opening
number, eponymously titled “Alexander Hamilton.”The lyrics are, actually, remarkably similar. The most notable
difference is while the stage version incorporates all the major characters as
they discuss Hamilton, as well as Hamilton himself, the White House version is
a solo track sung by Aaron Burr, Hamilton’s rival and eventual killer. Burr
functions as an antagonistic narrator throughout the musical proper, in a way
Miranda describes as similar to Judas’s role in Jesus Christ Superstar.
The other thing that’s fantastic about the White House
version is the crowd reaction. “I’m working on a hip-hop album about the life
of someone I think embodies hip-hop: Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton,”
Miranda introduces himself. And the crowd laughs. And he retorts, “You laugh! But it’s true!” He goes on to
describe Hamilton’s background, how he clawed his way up from poverty as a
bastard orphan in the Caribbean to be a Founding Father, with nothing but his
quick wit and writing skill. “I think he embodies the word’s ability to make a
difference,” Miranda explains, with this obvious earnestness that’s impossible
to refute. Honestly, isn’t that what we’re all trying to do as writers? Make
some sort of difference with our words and our wits?
I could annotate all the lyrics to mark all the
foreshadowing present in “Alexander Hamilton” but we’d all be here all day. I’ll
touch on the most important ones. The melodic structure of the first few lines
recurs constantly (“How does a…” and
onward; the words following the initial question change each time they show up, in “A Winter’s
Ball,” “Guns and Ships,” “What’d I Miss,” “The Adams Administration,” and “Your Obedient
Servant,” all with Burr narrating). Hamilton’s repetitions of “just you wait”
foreshadow Burr’s first solo song that doubles as a statement of his personal
philosophies, “Wait for It.” The melody of the company singing Hamilton’s name
crops up in “Non-Stop,” “The Room Where It Happens” and “The Reynolds Pamphlet,”
all with ominous intonations, almost as though his name is warped into a curse.
It does everything an opening number should do: it sets the tone and brings us
into the world we’re about to experience.
So here, for your viewing pleasure, are both the White House version and
the Broadway version, and I linked to the annotated lyrics, because it’s better when
you know them. The first draft and the final, available for public consumption
until the end of the Internet. Ron Chernow, author of the Hamilton biography
that Miranda used as a primary source, describes the song as perfectly
condensing the first forty pages of his book into a four-minute song. And Lin-Manuel
Miranda is a joy to watch, so you’re welcome. Poetry in speech, poetry in motion.
Congrats to all of us for making it through the semester,
and have a wonderful winter break!
Has anyone heard of Marianne Williamson? Neither had I, until I accidentally found myself watching this video about a month ago. I had wanted to post about it as soon as I found it but didn't get the chance to.
I have the bad habit of tending to approach most media with skepticism instead of curiosity, so before she began speaking I have to say, I was not anticipating some of the things she had to say.
Questions that I have about this video are probably more illuminating than writing to try and say more than what she has said. One of these questions is whether you believe, given her glaring privilege, that what she is saying somehow has less merit. Another is whether you think that this is simply an anomaly in the world of religion, or if this is the way in which religion is evolving, given the fact that this speech was given earlier in 2015. I'm really curious to hear what people think.
I think that a good way to cope with suffering is to remember that the more one goes through, the greater weight their words can have and the more people can be reached. In this case Marianne is reaching out to everyone by channeling the spirit and wisdom of womanhood in order to redeem a system which is corrupt.
So: without further ado here is Marianne Williamson's speech at the Parliament of World Religions this year.
Ghost Stories by WATERMEDOWN, "an album composed of demos written, recorded, and rehashed throughout the loneliest year of my life."
This album, despite being one of the most depressing in my library, is my go to album when I need to give myself some time to not think. It's no longer than twenty minutes and if it ever comes close to ending, it's always on repeat.
I can't say exactly why I'm so attracted to this album; I mean the production value is low, none of the tracks are named, and it doesn't really try to put you in a good mood, but it's 3AM on a Saturday night where I don't plan on sleeping anytime soon and this is what I choose to drown out the maddening ticking of the clock and droning of the Staten Island Railway. There's just something about this collection of songs that keeps me level headed. In a way, when I listen to the album I feel like I have a friend next to me, telling me personal stories that they wouldn't normally tell any one else; it feels real, almost visceral.
I almost decided on writing about how the ticking of a clock scares me, how the roaring of trains remind me too much of time, and how the singing of birds along with the rising sun is what I dread the most, but it's 3AM right now, not 5, and I have this album to keep me company. Three in the morning is the loneliest time but with these songs it feels anything but.
What am I currently eating? You guessed it - breakfast. More specifically, cereal - French Toast Crunch to be exact. Let me tell you what French Toast Crunch means to me...let me tell you my story. When I was four years old, my family moved from a roach-infested apartment building in the projects to a two story house a few blocks from the projects (in a different hood). Living in a household of seven, I grew up across the street from actual middle class people while still being working class - tenants among homeowners - thanks to my parents and their budgeting skills. My mother was, and still is, a coupon wizard (Shop Rite has owed my mom money on two carts of groceries on multiple occasions), and both of my parents knew that off-brand and sales were the way to go for everything. Instead of Rice Krispies I ate Malt-o-Meal Crispy Rice ( the former went "snap crackle pop", the latter went "snep crickle pup"), Tootie Fruities and Cinnamon Toasters.
the broke asscereal holytrinity
Once in a blue moon, the brand name cereals were on a good enough sale that my parents would bring them home in bulk. Fruit Loops and French Toast Crunch were my favorites. But Froot Loops never got discontinued. When French Toast Crunch got discontinued in 2006, I didn't realize it. Eating the cereal was such an infrequent occurrence that I didn't notice until two years later, after I moved from a house back into an apartment in the projects, that it had completely disappeared from the shelves. Now, I wasn't too surprised, as my last memory of FTC was of some new formula that tasted like ass. I figured the cereal must have been discontinued because the new formula was so bad that sales plummeted - which was not a good combination with the millions they must have spent advertising the change. I looked the cereal up to see if they were bringing back the original - but they weren't. Then it hit me - I would never taste that original flavor again. I would never get that puffy texture, that syrupy, exciting (IT WAS NAME BRAND!!!) flavor from my childhood. I was googling profusely, trying to see if there was any way I could get this cereal - turns out it was still sold in Canada.
Good news: you could order it online.
Bad news: it was fucking expensive.
$13 for a box of cereal, plus shipping, WAS RIDICULOUS. I couldn't afford that. So instead I found my people, people who created petitions to bring it back. I signed, I campaigned for like five years. No change in sight. On March 24th, 2014, my jewel of a boyfriend gave me 3 boxes of French Toast Crunch for my birthday and I CRIED. It was ridiculous, but I cried. I ate those three boxes so slowly, so much like a delicacy you would have thought it was the finest of caviar.
The cereal was a luxury.
And people hated me because they didn't have it.
*hair flip*
Once, I left the box open and let my cereal get stale by accident...I immediately panicked, frantically searching for ways to make stale cereal crunchy again. I baked the cereal, as instructed by the Internet, and saved myself from doom. Then, on December 5th, 2014, I woke up to a beautiful article that my friend posted on my Facebook page. It was like waking up to presents under the Christmas tree: General Mills announced that they were bringing back the ORIGINAL formula French Toast Crunch!
My long lost friend...
FTC WAS NO LONGER A CANADIAN LUXURY.
People went out and bought, and still buy, this cereal in droves. It tastes like happy mornings, like nostalgia - of course the old fans would stock up. I know I sure did - I mean not only was the cereal back, it was on SALE!
So as this semester ends, and finals loom over my head, I'll be sure to partake in a little bowl of glee, of sweetness, of victory.
The Rise of The
Sneaker exhibit at The Brooklyn Museum was one of a kind.I am writing about in in retrospect (sorry)
but it was really incredible.Initially, I went to the museum to view the Basquiat Notebook series, but I saw that this exhibit was also
available.It also didn’t hurt that it’s
absolutely FREE FOR BROOKLYN COLLEGE STUDENTS (but I still donate something
because If the museum ever closes I will look just like my friend Pepe).
The most dynamic part of the show was an artistic
representation of the African-American tradition of stepping that was used at
the Rick Owens 2014 runway show in Paris. I was blown away because he used real
steppers from actual colleges to participate in the show. It is incredible to
see the passion and the skill that these women have.It was also refreshing to see a different body type on a high-fashion runway show. Peep the video below!
I love the fact that sneakers are being featured in a museum
and recognized as a work of art. I also
love the fact that the exhibit was situated within the context of Hip-Hop
culture referencing artist such as Missy Elliot (video is siiiicccccccck and she is wearing an outfit in the opening of the video designed by Adidas just for her highness).
RUN DMC are also a major part of the exhibit especially since they have a song titled
My Adidas.
and others for their
sneaker anthem songs, and their love of Adidas. What I also found interesting is how sneakers have come to represent social status (it's a big deal and a "true sneakerhead" knows the difference between Jordans, Lebrons, Foamposites and the like...So yeah I think I might be sneakerhead...even though I don't own any of those listed above and I can't afford anything in the images below #Struggles)
THE CHAMP IS HERE!!!
Coolest thing ever....
The gold ones though.....
I've always liked the black and grey Jordans, but they always sell out
and I'm too busy to sleep in front of Footlocker in order to get a pair
when they first arrive in stores. Alas.
Add caption
Coolest part of the night was watching everyone design the big sneaker on the wall.
Overall it was an incredible exhibit and I'm glad that I experienced it. I hope that they bring this exhibit not only back to New York but back to Brooklyn.
