Wednesday, March 21, 2007

art class

I seem to be enjoying this class more than I thought I would. I can't say that I'm a great artist, but it's a relaxing and easy class. It's interesting how I can spend a day stressing out about so many different things and after doing something simple like sketching a picture, it seems to be a lot less of a worry than it was before. Maybe because it's easy and rewarding or uncomplicated. In other classes, it seems you have to motivate yourself to do homework or to study. In art, I seem a lot more motivated to just pick up the pencil and draw. I also like how you can talk to your friends thoughout the entire class, while still drawing (at least I can). My teacher doesn't mind me and the time seems to go very fast. I kind of regret leaving art of my timetable next year, (my options are Photography, C.A.L.M, French and Journalism) but hopefully I'm still motivated to pick it up outside of school.

I also just read Lullabies For Little Criminals, the latest book to win the top prize on CBC's "Canada Reads". It was a very interesting, and engaging read. It's also very tragic, one of those stories with adult characters who are not good role models (I've been reading a lot lately, ex. The Glass Castle). Definitely one of the best books I've picked up in a while.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

buttons.

This weekend I went across the border to BC, and on the way back we stopped in a town called Nanton for lunch. If you live in Calgary, you'd know Nanton because of it's antiques. So I'm not exactly an antique shopper, but I appreciate the mystery of looking for something on a whim and the sense of discovery associated with this. We went into the candy store (having two teenage boys in the vehicle almost magnetically attracts us to candy stores), I got sour mango flavoured Altoids and also visited the little antique/weird stuff room in the back. They had some neat stuff, I wanted to get a Coca-Cola sign that would've gone well in my room but I already have enough signs and pictures. But there was a big pickle jar with 15 dollars worth of buttons in it (that's 70 buttons!), so it sounds kind of weird, but buttons are kinda neat. And very funny accessories when taken out of their original context. So I bought these buttons, and brought them home with me. At this point I'm beginning to sound like an old person who buys lots of weird things in old stores, but some of these buttons looked really cool. So I sorted them (good, bad or mediocre) and now I have some nice buttons to wear. If anyone wants free buttons feel free to have some from my bad pile. And if I really like you I could give you some free from the better pile!

ps. I filled out an application to volunteer for the folk fest. Finally I am here in the summer for it. Hopefully they'll be some good artists coming this way.

Sunday, March 04, 2007

basketball, the oscars, patti smith and stuff like that.

Our basketball season just finished and we unfortunately lost the final game.
It's always so disappointing to lose something you've been so confident about, but even more important was the entire season and how well we did as a team.
Which sounds really corny.
But I really liked playing the games and cheering people on. I'm definitely more of a team sport
person. I enjoy that interaction aspect of it. I think basketball made me rethink gym class too. My mark went up around 8% from last reporting period, which probably means I'm trying harder. We did ping-pong last, which is always pretty fun. It's sounds like a pretty lame sport, but I find it engaging (probably cause I have a really horrible attention span, it keeps me interested I guess).

And the Oscars were a week ago. I love talking to people about them afterwards, it's my favourite part. Like who I thought deserved to win, what I thought of the host, the show itself, the speeches, the dresses. Everybody has a different opinion. I'm glad Scorsese won for best director (even though I haven't seen the Departed, I shouldn't judge it) but I think he should've won it before, in perhaps one of his more remarkable movies. Clint Eastwood sounded like he did a good job and Stephen Frears is always good too. Best picture made sense, although I really liked the Queen and Little Miss Sunshine (probably the funniest comedy I've seen in a long time, excluding Borat). I'm also one of those people who fills out the Oscar ballot with who they want to win (I always lose by two or three). I thought Ellen Degeneres was alright, but not that edgy, she should've poked more fun at the celebrity audience. She was a good facilitator though (as my mum puts it) and she got through it fine. I loved Cate Blanchett's dress, it was probably my fav. That and Penelope Cruz's (she always looks stunning, she was gorgeous in Volver). Gwenyth Paltrow had a very nice dress too.

So in school, we have this pretty worthless class called "Enrichment". It's something to do with Enriching our curriculm, I dunno to me it seems like a bunch of bullshit (although we have a couple weeks of health, which isn't completely worthless). For the past couple months we've had to work on this presentation about something we're passionate about. I thought it was lame, and I didn't really do anything. Why would you research something that's a huge part of your life? And then make it some boring power point presentation nobody listens to. So, I didn't do it (yeah okay, so I wasn't trying to be a rebel or anything, I just didn't want to waste my time). But I kinda wanted to get it over with. So the day it was supposed to be due, I got up, picked a random topic (punk rock) and took some kids guitar (he'd just finished guitar class). Then I made up an entire 7 minute presentation incorporating the guitar. I started talking about why this type of music started, and I mocked some lame 70's pop song on guitar, then I talked about people being pissed off at the music industry, so they made music of their own. Then I played some power chords (harder on acoustic guitar with no pick). I talked about Patti Smith and stuff in New York, then moved to England, then to what people think of punk rock today, because of crap like Good Charlotte and Simple Plan. So it wasn't exactly correct, but I made the time limit and the class were somewhat interested. I'm not sure the teacher was though, because I asked her how I did, and she said something like "excellent, you were very enthusiastic". It was loud, random and unconventional (I had to check with my friend to make sure I hadn't dropped any f-bombs), but at least I got it done. This is probably not a good lesson to people who actually want to work hard, but it made me laugh after it was all over.

Now I have to go and write a rubric/self evaluation for it.
farewell!