Response to 'Bombin Brooklyn'

Gentrification is definately a shame. The prices of homes and apartments throughout all 5 boroughs have been steadily on the rise for as long as I can remember. My neighborhood, College Point in Queens, has experienced its own drastic changes. Growing up, grafitti was a popular thing amongst the youth of the neighborhood. Though, like you, I never took part in the art myself, I knew several kids who did. Now before you start thinking to yourself that I must have grown up with some thugs or troubled youths, know you're wrong. Most of the kids I knew that would tag up around CP were white, middle class, catholic school educated kids. College Point used to be an area inhabitted by German, Irish, Italian, and other Europeans. In the past 8-10 years, however, I have seen many of my friends' families sell their houses for small fortunes and move out to Long Island areas such as Masapequa. But they weren't selling their houses to other families, they were selling them to land developers who were eager to knock down historic victorians that had stood for in some cases more than 100 years only to be replaced by "houses" that could hold 6-8 families. Thus the demographic of the area has changed quite a bit over that time. A lot of the grafitti has dissapeared and as the neighborhood I up in fades away. Some of my friends from the old days that still either hang out in CP or still live here have tried to bring back taggin up. I say good for them because it makes me laugh everytime I see "WRD" on the stop sign on the corner of my house.

As for Miss 17 and Greenburg, I know someone who lives in Williamsburg and her parents are faced with the oppurtunity of selling their house, likely to developers who will probably try to use Banksy to drive the asking price up. Hopefully, both of our neighborhoods will retain some of their identity.

709 pages!?!

Please tell me you are not assigning a 709 page novel. In previous posts I have listed reasons why I do not enjoy reading. I would like to add to that list the length of most works of literature. After seeing that the novel we will next be dealing with in class is House of Leaves, I looked at the amazon page only to find that the book is 709 pages!!!!!!!!!!! So we are supposed to read a textbook in 2 weeks? I don't think there is a book I would be interested in enough of such a length to think that 709 pages could be anything less than a daunting task. To me, its kind of the same principle as when a teacher gives an assignment along with a length requirement. Why can't they just say, write as much as it takes you to fully explain your answer? I think books also fall into this trap. There is always so much extra material with little relavance to the story in most books, I am fearful of how much extra "stuff" there will be in the span of those 709 pages.
And just as we were doing so well with short plays and articles, what happened?

Why I haven't blogged until now...

In case you were asking yourself, "Matt hasn't posted any blogs since last week, and now it seems that he is posting all three of the required blogs on the Wednesday of the class that they are supposed to be done by. I wonder why that could be." Well, there are a few reasons. First, I am very lazy. Second, I have been busy with a few other things that have taken priority due to their time sensitivity (getting in last minute research to make sure I didn't vote myself to Iraq in a military uniform). Third because I have begun running my website. I have created a website dedicated completely to covering the Track and Field teams at St. Francis College. (Yes I know there is already a school athletics website. There are multiple sites for the same thing on the internet all the time so why not for the SFC Track and Field team?) Google is great because it lets you design and host your website for free using their Google Sites service. The only downside is that the url of the website is begins with sites.google.com/site which hardly rolls off the tongue as most traditional dot com names do. Check it out and let me know what you think if you want to. The first official story was posted last night and it dealt with the Northeast Conference Cross Country Championships this past weekend. I was on site in New Jersey to both cheer on my teammates as well as document the event for my site.
Now, you may be wondering what this has to do with the class so here is the connection. Blogger.com is owned by Google and my site is powered by Google Sites, there you go.

Pillowman again?

Do we really have to discuss this play again in class? Admittingly, I would rather we not discuss anything at all in class because I loathe over analyzing literature, but this play is ridiculous. I did enjoy reading through it, but talking about it just seems dull; probably because the stories in the play are so weird. I'm not sure exactly what Martin McDonagh was trying to express when he wrote The Pillowman, but I hope his intentions weren't to have it picked apart for hidden meanings about what he is really saying. I think that is the one major reason why I would never become a writer. I like to write for the most part and I think I can write well when I try to, but I would definately not in some secret code that would take an english professor and a class full of young minds to several hours to decipher. I write simply to tell a story or to convey a point, and as Katurian says in Pillowman, I think that stories should be taken as just that, stories. I would argue that this is the reason that many students hate reading so much in today's world. Here is an interesting link suggesting that I am wrong about people not liking to read.

Violence, death, and killing in the 21st Century

Maybe that should have been the title of this class. September 11th, Iraq and Afghanistan past and present, and now young children. I guess it just goes to show you how much of our modern culture is based on violence. I always love when people make the argument that people who play violent video games commit violent acts. I play the same games as these kids and I know plenty of other people who do the same and none of us shoot up our school or go on killing sprees.
This play was definately good though. As sick as it sounds to admit that, but its true. I don't think it would be half as entertaining as Blackwatch to see performed live. It definately read well on paper though. I can't wait to hear what people in the class have to say about it, oh look, I don't have to wait.

Analyze the short stories

I think we should only read short stories for this class and talk about them. Some of the stories in this play are quiet interesting. Particularly the one about the man locked in a jail cell; it is something of a riddle. He knows he is guilty for a crime but can't remember what for, and when people come by and see the dead rapist and the dying murderer, they show sympathy towards them but scowl at the protagonist. I wonder what he did... Katurian says its a puzzle without an answer but I think that with the combined knowledge of the class and 3 hours to spend on it, we can surely come up with an answer I can live with.
This play is just starting to get too weird, and I kind of don't want to read it anymore so I think I will continue later or tomorrow or something.

Good Cop Bad Cop

Picturing the beginning of this play is easy because of all of the scenes in tv shows and movies with interrogations. The good cop is always trying to be nice and make it seem like you can just tell him what he wants to hear and you won't have to deal with the bad cop. The bad cop is just waiting for you to mouth off or be resistant because then he gets to fulfill his sadistic fantasies. In Pillowman, Tupolski is the good cop and Ariel is the bad cop. It is a typical interrogation in which it seems like the cops don't necessarily have any hard evidance and are trying to get the prisoner to confess to something he may not have done.
I think its comical that these cops have no specific confession they are looking for. I think that if Kutarian confessed to assasinating president Lincoln they would be satisfied by having done their job. I'm going to keep reading to see what else they try to suggest he has done wrong other than writing some sick stories about little children choking to death or getting their toes chopped off.