10...... eh.

From what we saw during class, as well as some of parts I managed to find on YouTube, the movie 10 is one that I just cannot seem to connect with. The film was made well before my time, and before this class period I had never even heard of it before. Dudley Moore played the character George Webber, who was actually quite comical in the film. However, during some midlife crisis that took place, he decided that he needed to be with a certain woman, his perfect “10” if you will. What troubles me, and remember I’ve only seen what was shown in class, what is up with Samantha Taylor (played by Julie Andrews)? From the outside looking in, it looks lie they are in a relationship in which she is committed to him and she has no problems with him seeking sexual experiences with other women. She is more than the average person, she is beautiful and very smart, and so what is she doing with this guy? She is waiting for him, in bed, to have sex while he goes off to the next-door neighbors house trying to get any form of action he can. It is not until the whole “broads” conversation that she seems to get any clue about how sleazy this guy really is. She finally gives him the choice of herself, or the “broads”, leaving her with nothing else but to get her belongings and get out. She is even intruding in his sexual relation with his fantasy girl. I think she has more of a power over him then he cares or admit to himself.

Did anyone notice this, so-called, “fantasy girl”? In the movie she was Jenny Hanley, played by Bo Derek. Whose fantasy was she? She was way taller than he was (I guess if you’re into that…), and she had beads in her hair. Not just a cute accent of beading, it was almost as if a necklace exploded and wrapped into each little group of hair it could find. That would have to be the most annoying sound by your ears, and no guy could rub their fingers in your hair without getting stuck or ripping out chunks of locks. I don’t know.. if you ask me Julie Andrews would have been a better fantasy girl.. I think she is so beautiful.

I’m not sure if I would consider this a “romantic comedy”. To me this whole movie was slightly offensive to women. I think that is why I couldn’t get into it.. It was almost a movie made for men, with subtle hints that would seem like it is likeable to women. The women acted stupid. I hate when they downplay on intelligence because it kills the whole movie for me. Even the character of Sam, she was considered an educated woman, who let a man walk all over her virtually. It just did not make any sense to me.

Homework Wednesday March 14th

Recently, I had an awful experience. A friend of mine drank a lot of alcohol and decided to drive home. He hit and killed two innocent young men who were on their way home from the night shift at Wal-Mart. Days later, a coworker of mine told me that she knew someone who was hit by a drunk drive recently and died as well. I think that this is such a pressing problem in our society, more so lately than ever. This issue is killing innocent people, tearing innocent families apart, and destroying lives of people who will have to live with their decisions and the effects of it for the rest of their lives. And there is such a simple solution to this, which is very obvious, which is to not drive after consuming alcohol, PERIOD. For such a simple and breathlessly easy solution, there is more and more of this epidemic happening all around us.
It bothers me as to how I would go about solving this issue and teaching it to students. I honestly would show them videos of the devastating affect, not just wreckage of accidents, but videos of the families effected by this tragic issue. These videos will really show the long lasting and devastating aftermath of this problem, long after the event is over and done with.

Below are a couple videos I found that I think would be greatly helpful to teach students that this problem is something that is so preventable. All the lives that are destroyed are not worth it, and I think these videos will help see these things.

how ROMANTIC

So now we are done with James Bond, and it looks like we are going into Romantic Comedies. I am more for that than I am for Bond, however, the whole romantic movie thing is not for me either. I’m not sure what it is.. maybe I just don’t like anything anymore! Anyways, in trying to prepare for this section of the class, I watched “Pretty Woman” just to get a gist of the typical (and modern) romantic comedy. As hard as it could be to believe, I had never seen “Pretty Woman” before, and now I realize why. It seems as though every romantic comedy is set up in the same way (as we read in our readings):
1. Boy meets girl
2. Boy falls in love with girl
3. Boy looses girl
4. Boy regains girl
I thought maybe this was just a coincidence, or maybe we just haven’t really noticed it before, but nope… this is the SAME formula for every romantic comedy that I have seen.

So there is no point to my blog for this week, but I thought I would humor you with something I have heard recently. I was driving home from school on my hour commute late one Monday and I decided to listen to “Love Line” which comes on KROQ at 10pm. Well one girl called in with a troubling feeling that she just couldn’t take. After watching the movie “The Vow”, she just could not see how her relationship could make it. Her boyfriend of two months (that she lives with) does not have the same love for her that Channing Tatum had for Rachel McAdams in the move. He did not lust after her as Tatum did, have the passion for her as Tatum did, or even have the body that Tatum did (I threw that last one in for giggles). Anyways, there is a point to this story, I promise.
As Dr. Drew kindly replied to this young lady, “Nothing is as good as it is in the movies”. He, of course had some other sound words of advice. I think that is the main problem with some of the movies. They give people unrealistic expectations of what love is. In movies, you are only seeing the glamorous side of love, not the everyday love. Not everyday is a romantic adventure; there will always be some bad days along the way. I think that is something that all people need to realize before they see these movies, that not everything is as great as they portray it on the big screen.
And also… GAG! Who wastes their time watching these things? I guess romantic comedies are not as bad as some of the sappy movies out there, but still. I’d rather watch something else (but not James Bond).

On to the next one..

So after seeing everyone else’s presentations, I am happy to say that each one was unique and different from the rest. I cannot help it, my favorite part of the whole presentations (besides mine being over) was the video for the “sacred places” presentation. I think the whole class can agree that it was a great way of summarizing the myth without putting the class to sleep. Now I have to start to read the chapters for our new section of the digital humanities.

I have to say that this class is going a lot better than I thought it was going to go. It is very laid back and sort of a “do it yourself class”. The class is almost an independent study, which I really like because I actually like doing work on my own time and by my own rules. Lets see how the next section goes, and let’s hope it goes fast so we can enjoy our summer off from school! (For those of us who are continuing our education in the fall)!

Sacred Places

"Why do you have to come here?" asked the king in a deep voice which resembled the distant rumblings of thunder. The boy told the king his story, just as he had related it to the retainer on the shores of the lake.

Bond.... I'm glad you are over.

I would like to start off by saying how much I hope to never experience James Bond again. Possibly the movies are better than the book was, but I could hardly get through the book, let alone watch the movie. I guess there are handsome and manly men in the movies, so maybe I will give them a shot, but as far as the novels go I hope I never have to pick one up again.

The group that presented did such a good (and long) job. Who knew a group presentation could take up the whole class time! But other than the length, it was a really good presentation. I like the way that Dennis(?) started off the conversation, really engaging and working the audience. I felt bad when he asked me who my favorite Bond was.. But I think he felt even worse than I did when I said I had never seen any of the movies. But as the conversation continued, I couldn’t help but be confused by it all. I got the most basic information they were presenting on (namely on the novel we were to read), however, a lot of their discussion was based off of the movies. That really made me feels as if I had no idea how to follow the conversation, let alone engage in it since I have never seen the movies. I had to ask Holly to make sure that the movies were not part of our homework assignment as well, because if they were then I would have been way behind. I wish that the conversation was more about the book, but nonetheless, the presentation was a good one.

One of my favorite parts of the presentation was when it was brought to the classes attention of the outrageous names Ian Fleming called the women in his texts. I know that the guy was going through a divorce when he wrote this; we read that in one of the articles we were assigned. This divorce was obviously a bad one, Fleming using the oversexed James Bond as a distraction. Who knew that Fleming was so bitter that he named women ridiculous names such as Dr. Holly Goodhead, Pussy Galore, Mary Goodnight, Jenny Flex, Octopussy, and Honey Ryder. Very, very interesting names if you ask me.

One of the only things I could really follow about the presentation was the use of post-modernism used in the films as they continued to make them. As the years went buy, obviously the makers of these movies only cared about profit. They would take very popular movies at that time, and copy different scenes in them to help pull in an audience and make profit. Bravo to those people, because movies like Star Wars and Shaft are very iconic, more than helping to bring in profit. By doing this, the true meaning behind the Bond series is lost, but after all, who follows what the true meaning of the series really was? I know that I did not follow it. I still don’t know what the whole idea was about.

Amma, Nummo, Jackle…. Where do they come up with these names?

Well, the group presentation went well. I can honestly say it was one of the easiest and most simple presentations I’ve done with a group thus far. We all were able to come to an agreement the first day we were assigned the group, thus giving us roughly 2 weeks to do our part and present it. We decided what we were going to do, split the work, and combined it together using Google Docs. I’m glad it worked out the way it did because I was terrified of group work since the mishap with the pop culture class. I honestly do not like to do group presentations, or presentations at all for that matter.. so I’m looking forward to getting the next one over and done with so that I will be done with them for this semester.

I’ve been enjoying the other classmates’ presentations as well. It is always cool to see students use different avenues to teach people things. I’m glad that our class did not regurgitate the same presentation over and over. I enjoy the variety a great deal. I'm looking forward to the last group to do their presentation and then move on to the digital humanities. I'm still not exactly sure what that entails.. but I'm excited to move on to another subject.