Mike's submission is series of photos he took of his Cadillac this summer! Absolutely beautiful.

|

Our next submission is from Aaron!


If you talk to me for more than 10 minutes (admittedly, this can sometimes be difficult, as I'm a bit of a weird duck), it becomes quite apparent that I am startlingly fond of movies. I would use the word love, but this word has also been applied to breakfast food and watching that barefoot homeless guy obstruct traffic and then flip off cars that honk at him, and thus it feels as though it cannot convey the full enjoyment I get from cinema. I'm far from an expert, the whole of my film education being a french film class in undergrad, in which I got a B- (though in fairness to me, I did have to write my papers in french), but I have viewed and enjoyed a great many movies in my 26 years. From Jackie Chan before he got U.S. fame, to La Marie Etait en Noir (for the language stickler, I know I'm missing the accents, I don't care), to any of a dozen awesome and insane explosion fests, to various and sundry horror films of varying quality (but not the Saw films, or Hostel, because if you want to scare someone, use some goddamn subtlety, instead of strapping someone to a precision engineered death machine, or cutting off toes), I have absorbed them in particularly sponge like fashion. So, I am usually looking forward to summer with a level of excitement that makes me squeal with noises most commonly associated with excited school children who have forgotten their ritalin. This summer, however, has felt more like Hollywood felt like I needed an extended 2 month disappointment-and-punch-in-the-dick-athon.

For several summers now, my face has been consistently rocked off so hard I've spent a week finding the damn thing. 2005 gave me Batman Begins, Madagascar, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, War of the Worlds (I consider it high praise for the movie that it made me forget how completely shit-flingingly out there Tom Cruise is at the time when he initially snapped and started peddling his crazy to anyone who would stand still), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (which I will say only that I greatly enjoyed it, as anyone who knows me knows I am overwhelmingly biased in favor of anything which Douglas Adams was in the least involved in), Madagascar, and even Fantastic Four (not brilliance, but it had fun moments).

2006 had Pirates of the Caribbean 2, Superman Returns (shut up, I liked it), Clerks II (which I found to be so good I almost completely forgot about nearly being run over on the southside by some jerk in an SUV, in a rare moment of me not jaywalking or otherwise daring the less than sane to run me down), Lady in the Water (again, I'm one of about 5 people who liked it, but it's my face being rocked off here) and myriad others which I've heard good things about, but haven't seen yet.

2007 had The Bourne Ultimatum (no other move has made as amazingly brutal use of Kali as a fighting art, and such utterly brilliant improvised weapons, and then there was actually a decent movie under all this Matt Damon death machine action), another Pirates of the Caribbean movie (not as good, but still awfully fun), and Harry Potter of the Order of the Phoenix.

Unfortunately, this was also a summer in which some atrocious piles came out. Spider-Man 3 landed during 2007, which I dearly hope Sam Raimi regrets, because there was a single redeeming moment in the entire film, Eddie Brock praying for God to kill Peter Parker. It was not enough to redeem the epic-fail otherwise contained in the film. Alvin and the Chipmunks and Transformers also came around at this time. This is to say nothing of whatever crap Uwe Boll may have been up to at this time (looking at his filmography, it doesn't seem anyone has trusted him with a summer release, in a glorious moment of uncharacteristic intelligence for Hollywood).

Summer 2008 landed. I had Iron Man to start it off, which immediately kicked my ass so hard it required medical intervention to remove the cheeks from around my ears. It had the Dark Knight, which proved that a comic book movie can succeed as an actual movie, not to mention gave everyone with a fear of clowns some of the most horrid nightmares imaginable. Wall-E was utterly fantastic, being cute, fun, and startlingly socially conscious, and poking some impressive fun at Bush the 2nd. Hancock came out of nowhere to surprise me, and be much better than I expected (I'm sorry, but the initial ad campaign felt like "we made a black superhero...and your very first image of him is in hobo clothes drinking liquor on a bench threatening children." Great work guys. But it did grow up as a film by the end, and I was quite happy with it. It had it's short comings, but all in all, I was blown away.

Summer 2009 came at last. Sadly, I can't count Watchmen in this, first for my overwhelming bias due to Alan Moore, and other obsessive reasons, but also that it wasn't in any way in the summer. That's really what screws it over. Because that alone could have made my summer. X-Men Origins: Wolverine had about 2 minutes total that made me not think of it as shiny crap, not to mention they took the cannon of Deadpool and completely trashed it. Star Trek was a notable exception, it was fucking brilliant, and JJ Abrams has once again made me the happiest girl in the world. I wasn't ever going within 50 feet of Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. Poor Rhona Mitra, constantly getting attached to/stuck in shitty films with vampires (or just shitty films. I'm looking at you Doomsday). Terminator Salvation made me hate the series. So far, you have made an endless run of convergent and divergent paradoxes (some which cause each other) to the point that an attempt to make a timeline for the terminator series would require you to make several mobius strips have some sort of bizarre mutant mobius strip child which defies any and all forms of logic and reason, and would probably give most people tension headaches if they looked at it to intently. Angels and Demons...I can't throw it down the proverbial stairs, but neither was it as awesome as it should have been for the overwhelming pile of great actors they had. Up was almost the highlight of my summer (like I said, Star Trek), proving once again that Pixar can make anything awesome, fun, believable, just utterly wonderful. Then came Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I personally feel we should be allowed, as a people, a nation, a collective victim, if you will, to roll up newspapers and smack Michael Bay like a naughty puppy that just pissed on every single carpet we own. Did we learn nothing from Jar Jar Binks? Honestly, the highlight of the entire film was the college girl robot seduction machine that goes all scorpion attack on Shia LaBeouf. But this did not break my summer. Until GI Joe. Thank you, Stephen Sommers, for clubbing my youth to death with a rock. You took one of my favorite actors (Christopher Eccleston) and somehow on screen you brought him across in such a way that he seems like a complete tool. Not as a character, but as an actor and person. You paid so little attention to the actual production of the film you managed to have, in the middle of a chase scene involving soldiers in robotic ninja super suits chasing a humvee with a cowcatcher on the front throwing cars down the streets of paris, exchanging gun and missile fire, and all this is happening on the streets of paris, which have enough trouble accomodating a Renault, and there are people in the street waiting for a bus with completely no reaction. You made a super advanced jet fighter capable of running down missiles that go at mach 5, but to use the weapons, you basically had to yell "BANG BANG BANG" like a 7 year old playing army, and not only that, but you put it in a foreign language, just to make it sound even dumber.

So this is my open invitation to Hollywood to stop making substance-free "he blowed up real good!" summer films. Star Trek, Iron Man, Dark Knight. Lots of stuff blew up, and I still managed to care about the characters. We're paying you enough, get it right.

|

Let's start with the results of a totally unscientific poll that I conducted just now regarding the seasons:

• "I am a summer person": 213,000
• "I am a spring person": 10,900
• "I am a winter person": 127,000
• "I am a fall/autumn person": 23,660

(Source: Google)

Point being, if voluntary internet accounts are even close to representative, summer is a more popular season than every other season put together. So you have to ask: why? Well, in the words of our esteemed hostess, because "summer is crazy awesome in general." Insightful and succinct as always, but somewhat lacking in specifics, yes?

So, really: why? Allow me to present my theory: because summer, at least for those of us in the good ol' U.S. of A., is the season of independence and rebellion. Don't believe me? Ask Ashley, for whom "summer vacation first and foremost meant no school. What you did with your time instead of school, of course, was up to you." Even under the ostensibly watchful eye of camp counselors, babysitters, or other so-called authority figures, it was never hard to be, in the words of The National, a glowing young ruffian. But as high school and college and (guh) real life roll around, we start our long trudge up the corporate ladder, every rung removing us one step further from the adventurous and life-affirming freedom we feel is our summertime right. I guess for some people this journey isn't so bad: it's fulfilling enough to collect closets full of pastel-colored button-up dress shirts. But I suspect that that kind of person won't be reading this blog, so let me address the rest of you.

You want autonomy, the power to determine your own course (if not through life, at least through the day). That requires time. But you also have a strong sense of your own value, which means a life of easy freedoms will do more harm than good: it ain't hard to find the kind of part-time work that'll have you just scraping by, but who would want that life? So the kind of freedom you want requires both time and money, and quite possibly also a real job with real responsibility. But jobs, as we've learned from "Office Space" on, are the great freedom-slayers, malevolent, soul-crushing monstrosities that sustain our collective existence at the low, low cost of our individual lives. Which, then, do you give up? Do you sacrifice your potential to lead a life of relative liberty, or do you make the most of your adulthood and abandon your childhood?

The correct answer, obviously, is neither; the hard part is figuring out how. Here are some tricks that I've used to help allay the creeping unease that comes with a desk job in the suburbs, designed to work in all seasons*:

• Ignore posted closing times. Parks, trails, buildings, swimming pools, concert venues, outdoor ice rinks - all of these and more are only really closed when somebody kicks you out. You never know just what you'll find when you aren't being shepherded around.
• Make something. Whether it be practical or just cool, the experience of building something will leave you with (a) an item you didn't have before and (b) the knowledge of how to make an item that you didn't know how to make before. Who knows, you might even learn something.
  
• Lie for fun. People, surprisingly, are really credulous. If you're clever enough, you can get them to believe almost anything. My personal favorite is to tell people that "vacuum" is spelled that way because, when they first made up the word, they thought it was an element - y'know, as in "vack-you-um." You'll need some imagination, a good poker face, and a flagrant disregard for basic ethics, but it's a hell of a lot of fun when it works.
• Work on a non-work project at work. Learn magic tricks, write a novella, paint a mural on your sneakers, make a floor plan of your bedroom that's in accordance with feng shui principles - just do something not related to your job, with a defined endpoint, that you want to do but can never make yourself do in your free time. You're gonna waste the time anyway, you might as well put it to good use.
  
• Take a nap.
• Walk down the street and make eye contact with every single person you pass. Do your best not to be the one who looks away first - it takes some getting used to.

This list is only partial, of course, and you should feel free to use or tweak or add to or disregard any of the items thereon. But what you must remember is that the teenagers and twenty-somethings who couldn't fence you in as a kid are the same dull-eyed careerists who you think are in your way now. What's changed isn't anything fundamental to who you are - you're no less strong or creative or brave now than you were then, you're only taller and richer! The change is in how you've been taught to see the world: the teachers whose classes you dozed through are now the bosses in whose meetings you feel compelled to look attentive; your parents, whose rules you challenged at every step, have now been replaced by a million capital-lettered sans-serif signs that you obey without even thinking; and summer, rather than being the perfect opportunity to experiment, is a desperate rush to have all the fun you think you can't have in the other nine months.

Friends, I tell you that the solution is not to reclaim summer: one quarter of the year would be a paltry reward for any of us. The solution is to reclaim your life, all twelve months of it. Those bleak, imposing slabs you see all around you aren't walls, and they never were. They're dominoes, just waiting for the first push.

*Please note, though, that some or all of these may actually be illegal. In the case that any of these tricks might put you in legal jeopardy, I of course do not officially recommend it.

|

Ashley contributed too! And the blogs just keep rolling in. :)


One of the unfortunate truths of reality is that, as long as we are alive, we are growing up. When you're young, this doesn't seem all that bad. Turning another year older means that perhaps you can ride your bike past the corner stop sign, you can spend your allowance on penny candy, and you can go to that pool party with that girl or boy you have a crush on. It could mean going out and getting a job and being able to pay for things without your parents input, getting your license and driving around just because it's something to do, going out and experiencing your first bit of real freedom. As you get older, though, growing up means more responsibilities, more bills, and more troubles of sizes you didn't imagine when you were five. Even worse, growing up means the end of something that you valued so dear, perhaps more than life itself: summer vacation.

As kids, summer vacation first and foremost meant no school. What you did with your time instead of school, of course, was up to you (and your parents, who were probably paying for it). Sleepaway camp, day camp, summer sports, summer school (blech), and visits to far away lands (such as the playground, the park, and maybe even the ice cream parlor) were all grand staples of life. For those of us with a great deal of both energy and imagination, running around outside could be just the ticket to boarding a train to the magical. Some of us were lucky enough to seek solace in the air conditioning; others braved the heat of a thousand suns. Whatever the case, everybody got the same thing: a break from the monotony.

People often lie about how great being in your 20s is, and one of the things they fail to tell you is how incredibly lousy summer can be. Rather than taking a break from the ordinary, you mow on with your daily business, trudging off to work, hoping you don't get stuck in the same traffic you're always stuck in, because your AC isn't working and you're going to sweat through your suit. You hop on a crowded bus in 100% humidity and make your way to every shop downtown, praying that someone will hire you. You tuck yourself behind your desk and calculate how many vacations days you have left and whether you can afford to go to the beach with your boyfriend or if you need to save them for your sister's birthday. And, if you do end up with the luxury of enjoying free time during the summer, it's probably because you're unemployed, and the rest of your friends are all too busy working to enjoy the days with you.

Knowing this, and realizing just what we've lost, why should we, the generation of the quarter life crisis, believe in the magic of summer?

Close your eyes. No really, once you finish reading this paragraph, close them. As they're closed, think about how many people you see in a day. Think about how well you know those people. Think about how many of those people are new to you, hold a new promise that you have yet to discover. Afterward, think about how many of those people you'll see six months from now. Think about how many people period you'll see six months from now. Finally, think about how many people you would've seen had you been ten years old. When you're done with that, continue reading.

I'm not a mind reader, but I'm going to guess that currently, you see a fair amount of people each day (assuming you leave the how) that you don't know, and, unless you're living with or near them, not as many people that you know. Six months from now, when it's cold and rainy/snowy/whatever Pittsburgh decides to be, those strangers that you saw will all but disappear. You may still see your friends, you may not; it depends on how busy they are and how able they are to get around in inclimate weather. As a child, however, you probably saw a lot of people. Every activity was a chance to meet new people. At the very least, you could hang out with a friend down the street and see them as much as you wanted to. Even if you were stuck alone, you had the promise of school to bring you back together. That promise doesn't exist anymore. This isn't grade school, we aren't all in the same home room, and I may never see you again.

At a time where confusion and uncertainly makes us lonely and scared, we have to remember the power that summer still has over us. The weather alone means exposure to the world and safety from a place that could literally kill us with an icicle. It means going out to bars after work and walking home because it's just that beautiful outside. It means playing football or kickball or baseball with friends because real life sucks and acting like you're a kid again keeps you connected to your youth. It's not the same as before, but it's the one time of year where you can remember where you came from and exploit it for all it's worth. The other three seasons just bring rain and seasonal depression.

Things may not be as awesome as they once were, but summer still happens, which means we still have a chance to do something about it. Take advantage of the extra long days. Walk through the woods on your day off. Throw your best friend into the pool. Dance to a bad pop song and make memories to it. Growing up sucks, but if you ain't dead yet, you still have a chance to make it glorious.

|

First in our series of summer related blogs from other people (because summer is nearly almost over and that's awful) is this contribution from Desiree! And it's WONDERFUL!


I watched The Universe on the History Channel (to referred to as H.C.) the other night. It was an episode concentrating first on time travel, and then redirecting the subject to anti-matter. I can't describe how it got from A to E, or the connection between the two made in the episode; i zoned out somewhere between B and D, thinking about how paradoxical time travel really is.

That, however, is not the point of this blog, the in-between. The subject I'm concerned with is anti-matter and its destructive relationship with its counterpart, matter.

Scientists, historians, pretentious genius' were called upon by the H.C. to explain this literally explosive, obliterating reaction. They postulate that, before Time began, before the Big Bang, anti-matter and particles of matter were all that made the universe. They were almost equal in proportion. Like an epic battle of yore (let's say, the Battle of 1066 when William the Conquerer defeated the saxons of england on Senlac Hill, six miles from Hastings. It was the definitive battle for the Norman's; it's also my favorite!), they met and, being complete opposites, negated each other. Matter won by a lone proton/electron/whatever (i'm no science major) and the stars (and later, we humans) were born! Huzzah!

SO: When anti-matter and matter come in contact with each other, they both are wiped from existence. Not even microscopic dust is left behind.

After exhaustively explaining the analogy/metaphor I am about to make, here it is:

This summer has been, to use a MUCH over-used phrase, a "rollercoaster." So much good and so much bad, all colliding inside of me. Like anti-matter and matter (remember, kids?), the awful, wrenching, heart-breaking feelings collided, explosively, with the wonderful, crazy, happiness of the last few months and left nothing behind. (I could also make a connection to The Neverending Story II, in which The Emptiness takes over Fantasia and makes things hollow, even stupid Bastien, but it wouldn't make as much sense). And that nothing, that apathy, was like self-actualization. I've reached self-actualization through an explosive collision of every emotion i can possibly, humanly expect to feel. And The Living Is Easy. Or as easy as one can expect for a sentient being....

Apathy is looked down upon as a vile thing one doesn't ever want to achieve on a regular basis. I remember, a long time ago, Liz and I longed to be rid of our apathy and feel like other people felt. We made a pact, a countdown, to Valentine's Day, on which we would destroy, totally, our apathetic ways and become fully realized human beings. And then I became twenty years old and craved and cried and begged for apathy to come back to me. I would have bought it gifts! Gave money! Done anything to feel (or NOT feel) its cold, empty embrace. And when it finally skulked back to me at 5am one July morning while i was sitting on the stoop, dragging at a cigarette, staring at the lightening sky, I realized Myself.

I stood apart from myself and looked at everything i've done, and planned to do, and wished for, and loved....and found something that I still can't figure out... A weird new sense of self; a sense that where i go, and what i say, and what i do, is meant and I'm going the right way. Sort of. There is always a detour or two. And bad traffic. And messy metaphors to explain things i could never normally explain.

Maslow defined self-actualization, basically, as the realization of one's full potential. I've realized. And with realization comes a responsibility to get what i want.

World, watch out.... I am going to walk all over you.

(ps. self-actualization is exhausting)

|

One summer, during the disaffected teen era of my life, I felt an overwhelming desire to get out of my small hometown as soon as humanly possible and not come back until school resumed. However, being that I was a minor and consistently spent all my money on CDs, leaving wasn't an option.

Regardless of the fact that my wanderlust couldn't be satisfied, the urge remained.

So, I found a healthy outlet in reading as much of the local library's non-fiction section as I could.

It opened up realms of possibility for my bored and unsatisfied mind. And the unbearable need to leave became a little more bearable.

And the most apparent benefit was that AP Bio was so much easier than it should have been.

However, as the years have progressed, this healthy habit has turned the corner into unhealthy obsession. Now I'm the kid that wanders through the non-fiction stacks, finds a topic of interest, gets out four books on the subject, and reads them in a week.

Granted, during any given "normal" week, I'm usually healthily reading up on only one or two subjects from the non-fiction section and taking my time to complete them.

But every once in awhile, a day like today happens where I absolutely MUST leave whatever physical place I may be, but lack the means/time to do so. And so, instead of throwing away all my savings on a solitary Latin American vacation or moving to Oregon to live in the woods, I head straight for the library to make the feeling go away.

Why I need to leave may be attributed to any number of predicaments or sentiments, however, wanderlust is always the initiator. This time it was followed by life dissatisfaction/frustration (which is almost always somewhere in the mix), summer ending (this season is always involved in some capacity), jarring realizations (the kind you want to run away from because they lack solutions), and whores (that's a semi-new one).

As a result, I went directly to the library and up the two half-flights of stairs to the QB/QC section which is astronomy, astrophysics, quantum physics, and the like. I grabbed four books with compelling titles and will soon be underway.

Astronomy/Physics is my most commonly selected subject and so I know these aisles by heart. Stars do crazy things to my head. And the physics behind everything never ceases to BLOW MY MIND. So, during the worst of these crises, there's a 94% chance that these are the things I'm reading. And the awful thing is that I've read so much on the subject that usually only about half of what I'm reading is new material. However, it's so worth the time spent because that new material is ceaselessly extraordinary.

Aside from all that personal garbage which likely doesn't apply to you on any level, there are universal reasons why non-fiction may be beneficial to your life.

You learn something new and can share this knowledge with other people who may be interested. And subsequently, you become way more interesting to some people and broaden your group of friends. And non-fiction books come in every subject imaginable so whatever you want to read about, there is a book to satisfy your craving. It's not just dry science! Journals, biographies, historical accounts, travel-related things, some essays, memoirs, etc. are all considered non-fiction. Also, the more you know, the more you can get away with in the academic arena. Using outside knowledge can boost paper and exam scores like none other. I know from personal experience. Reading different types of things also gives you the ability to think in different kinds of ways, so grasping a difficult concept in a class or work environment can sometimes be much easier if you can compare it to something else or think differently about it. And if you need to bullshit your way through something, it's so much easier if you're in tip-top mental shape and can source all kinds of information to get your bullshitted point across in a way that makes it sound legitimate.

In short, there are no downsides to self-education. Minus the fact that sometimes non-fiction can be slower and more bland than fiction generally is. Let me emphasize the "generally" part (Can we toast to how awful anything written by Nathaniel Hawthorne is?). If you're worried about being bored to death, make sure you start out with something that interests you more than most things. If it's still bad, browse the aisle again until you find something on the subject that was intended for light reading until you get into the swing of things. Before you know it, you'll be on your way to becoming a treasure trove of useless information.

If reading just really isn't your thing, I recommend these television networks which can be obtained through most cable/satellite providers:
- Discovery... and all the affiliated Discovery channels (TLC, Animal Planet, The Science Channel, The Travel Channel, Discovery Health, etc.)
- National Geographic
- BBC affiliated channels
- The History Channel
- Biography

And if you only have a digital converter box, there's always PBS.

Speaking of educational television, it's relevant to point out that I'm also obsessed with Blue Planet, Planet Earth, and The Universe. And you can buy Blue Planet/Planet Earth TOGETHER (http://www.amazon.com/Planet-Earth-Blue-Special-Collectors/dp/B000TEUSQ8/ref=pd_cp_d_3). I would kill for that in HD.

|

That's how I feel whenever I fly into any city. No cities I've been to are nearly as bad in this capacity as Atlanta though. But this is a story for another time.

Moving on, life is entirely ironic most of the time.

As i strolled through the Philadelphia airport on my way to claim some baggage, I read an ad about how most people will read the entire ad in an airport instead of just briefly glancing at it and how you should advertise in the airport for this reason. It was advertising advertising, basically.

However, the irony is (I told you this was going to be ironic) is that it's probably the only airport ad I've ever read in its entirety for whatever reason. Maybe the people that are advertising for advertising are just so good at advertising that their ad is better than all the others.

Oh, yeah. And now they advertise on the baggage carousel apparently. And I have to admit that it's a damn good idea because it's wicked effective.

I know know more about Overstock.com than I ever cared to because I've seen the ad come around 20 or so times.

|

I apologize for my absence lately, but Summer can become crazy sometimes. I've spent a lot of time on the road over the course of this weekend, which has allowed me to congregate with my thoughts. One thing that I spent considerable time thinking about were friends, acquaintances and people who have passed through my life over the years. Which brings me to today's topic.

Every year, but more like every semester has brought new people into my life. Some have stayed in my life longer than that one semester but many have fallen into my memories as shadows of my past. What determines who gets forgotten? It could be that unless we have really made a connection, that I won't be making the effort to keep you in my life. I am by no means lazy, its just I don't want to be that guy that texts everybody just to check in. The time we spent next to each other in that History class were great, but do you really want to hear from me months after school has ended? Here is what determines who stays in my life and who doesn't.

I encounter a lot of people during the semester, which is probably do to my friendly personality, others would say flirtatious. Most of these people become class friends which leads to nothing more than having some people to goof around with in class and share what has happened over the weekend. Which is fine with me. We may not be the most compatible friends to hang with beyond class, but while we're in our seats, we are the best of friends.

The people who stay with me are the ones who have done lunch with me. Who have partied with me more than once and who I have made a strong connection with. I'm hoping, with the new semester quickly approaching, that I will meet more people like this and expand my network of friends.

It's hard to keep every single person you have ever met in your life. You sometimes have to choose and let some people go on their way. Maybe down the road our paths will cross again and that is a day to look forward to. Until that day however, be happy with the friends you have and enjoy the time you share.

Some food for thought. Until next time...

|