MMM MANLY MAN

These are pictures of French Connections A/W 2010 collection. In short, I love them as well as this most recent collection. It's just great because of what it embodies, manliness, ruggedness, dare I say it, it radiates a sort of He-Man feel . The pictures of the collection, with a bit of help from the model, do a great job of portraying a sort of relaxed ruggedness that is starting to resurface quite a bit in fashion nowadays (see Umit Benan's Day 77 Collection). In looking at these pictures there are a few things I can tell you about the man that would wear these clothes: He likes to cut stuff with axes, he uses his beard to strike matches, he shaves with a Bowie knife, but most importantly he eats bacon for breakfast, as most ALL people should. Basically what I'm trying to say is that this is a great collection, that is all.

TECHNOLOGIC

I'm not 100% sure which photographer took these pictures, though preliminary research leads me to believe it was editorial photographer Mathias Alan, regardless, these images are amazing. The juxtaposition of the deceivingly simple outfits and the simple setting, most likely the photographer's apartment/house, makes for a set of visually stunning images. Many people believe that for something to be beautiful it has to be complicated, complex, or extremely intricate, I believe that beauty can come in various forms, from the extremely simple feeling emanating from these images (that by the way have a sort of "Bladerunner" cyberpunk feel to them), or from the complex work of Gustav Klimt, it really doesn't matter. Anyway, I really like these pictures hopefully you'll enjoy them as well.

(more pictures after the jump)

I am speechless. (Here I Stand)

My friend and I often have conversations about our school, and how much we hated it, not for childish reasons, but because at times it just seemed that the school as a whole was clueless to what its students need. Valedictorian Erica Goldson, in the valedictorian speech she gave in June, says this and so much more. I have so much respect for her, not just for voicing her opinions of the American school, but also for having the balls to do it at her own graduation. This doesn't really have to do with media, but this is something incredibly thought provoking, it's a little long, but definitely worth reading if you have the time.

Here I stand

There is a story of a young, but earnest Zen student who approached his teacher, and asked the Master, "If I work very hard and diligently, how long will it take for me to find Zen? The Master thought about this, then replied, "Ten years . ." The student then said, "But what if I work very, very hard and really apply myself to learn fast -- How long then?" Replied the Master, "Well, twenty years." "But, if I really, really work at it, how long then?" asked the student. "Thirty years," replied the Master. "But, I do not understand," said the disappointed student. "At each time that I say I will work harder, you say it will take me longer. Why do you say that?" Replied the Master, "When you have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye on the path." 

This is the dilemma I've faced within the American education system. We are so focused on a goal, whether it be passing a test, or graduating as first in the class. However, in this way, we do not really learn. We do whatever it takes to achieve our original objective.

Some of you may be thinking, "Well, if you pass a test, or become valedictorian, didn't you learn something? Well, yes, you learned something, but not all that you could have. Perhaps, you only learned how to memorize names, places, and dates to later on forget in order to clear your mind for the next test. School is not all that it can be. Right now, it is a place for most people to determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible.

I am now accomplishing that goal. I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contest that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer - not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition - a slave of the system set up before him.But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed it. So, I wonder, why did I even want this position? Sure, I earned it, but what will come of it? When I leave educational institutionalism, will I be successful or forever lost? I have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I'm scared.

John Taylor Gatto, a retired school teacher and activist critical of compulsory schooling, asserts, "We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness - curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids into truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then. But we don't do that." Between these cinderblock walls, we are all expected to be the same. We are trained to ace every standardized test, and those who deviate and see light through a different lens are worthless to the scheme of public education, and therefore viewed with contempt.

H. L. Mencken wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not "to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. ... Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim ... is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States."

To illustrate this idea, doesn't it perturb you to learn about the idea of "critical thinking." Is there really such a thing as "uncritically thinking?" To think is to process information in order to form an opinion. But if we are not critical when processing this information, are we really thinking? Or are we mindlessly accepting other opinions as truth?

This was happening to me, and if it wasn't for the rare occurrence of an avant-garde tenth grade English teacher, Donna Bryan, who allowed me to open my mind and ask questions before accepting textbook doctrine, I would have been doomed. I am now enlightened, but my mind still feels disabled. I must retrain myself and constantly remember how insane this ostensibly sane place really is.

And now here I am in a world guided by fear, a world suppressing the uniqueness that lies inside each of us, a world where we can either acquiesce to the inhuman nonsense of corporatism and materialism or insist on change. We are not enlivened by an educational system that clandestinely sets us up for jobs that could be automated, for work that need not be done, for enslavement without fervency for meaningful achievement. We have no choices in life when money is our motivational force. Our motivational force ought to be passion, but this is lost from the moment we step into a system that trains us, rather than inspires us.

We are more than robotic bookshelves, conditioned to blurt out facts we were taught in school. We are all very special, every human on this planet is so special, so aren't we all deserving of something better, of using our minds for innovation, rather than memorization, for creativity, rather than futile activity, for rumination rather than stagnation? We are not here to get a degree, to then get a job, so we can consume industry-approved placation after placation. There is more, and more still.

The saddest part is that the majority of students don't have the opportunity to reflect as I did. The majority of students are put through the same brainwashing techniques in order to create a complacent labor force working in the interests of large corporations and secretive government, and worst of all, they are completely unaware of it. I will never be able to turn back these 18 years. I can't run away to another country with an education system meant to enlighten rather than condition. This part of my life is over, and I want to make sure that no other child will have his or her potential suppressed by powers meant to exploit and control. We are human beings. We are thinkers, dreamers, explorers, artists, writers, engineers. We are anything we want to be - but only if we have an educational system that supports us rather than holds us down. A tree can grow, but only if its roots are given a healthy foundation.

For those of you out there that must continue to sit in desks and yield to the authoritarian ideologies of instructors, do not be disheartened. You still have the opportunity to stand up, ask questions, be critical, and create your own perspective. Demand a setting that will provide you with intellectual capabilities that allow you to expand your mind instead of directing it. Demand that you be interested in class. Demand that the excuse, "You have to learn this for the test" is not good enough for you.Education is an excellent tool, if used properly, but focus more on learning rather than getting good grades.

For those of you that work within the system that I am condemning, I do not mean to insult; I intend to motivate. You have the power to change the incompetencies of this system. I know that you did not become a teacher or administrator to see your students bored. You cannot accept the authority of the governing bodies that tell you what to teach, how to teach it, and that you will be punished if you do not comply. Our potential is at stake.

For those of you that are now leaving this establishment, I say, do not forget what went on in these classrooms. Do not abandon those that come after you. We are the new future and we are not going to let tradition stand. We will break down the walls of corruption to let a garden of knowledge grow throughout America. Once educated properly, we will have the power to do anything, and best of all, we will only use that power for good, for we will be cultivated and wise. We will not accept anything at face value. We will ask questions, and we will demand truth.

So, here I stand. I am not standing here as valedictorian by myself. I was molded by my environment, by all of my peers who are sitting here watching me. I couldn't have accomplished this without all of you. It was all of you who truly made me the person I am today. It was all of you who were my competition, yet my backbone. In that way, we are all valedictorians.

I am now supposed to say farewell to this institution, those who maintain it, and those who stand with me and behind me, but I hope this farewell is more of a "see you later" when we are all working together to rear a pedagogic movement. But first, let's go get those pieces of paper that tell us that we're smart enough to do so!

-JollyOldDro

I grew up different...

Will & Grace, Friends, Dharma & Greg, and Seinfeld, all of these shows are fantastic sitcoms each of which began its run at some point in the 1990's, and each of which detailed the everyday problems of different groups of friends and/or lovers, all of whom were adults. 

Growing up, apart from playing GameBoy and hating school, I spent the majority of my time watching all these shows, immersing myself into the lives of these inhabitants of TV Land. For a half an hour at a time I befriended and/or fell in love with all these wonderful characters even though I had no true understanding of the situations they found themselves being pulled into, but I wanted to, I wanted to understand so bad, so I did what I could, I started acting like an adult. I figured maybe if I hung around adults more if I payed more attention to their conversations, their reactions, their beliefs, that maybe I'd be able to understand what was going on better. All the exposure into the world of adults led to a change in me, in fact, it led to one of the two biggest changes that occurred in me over the years. 

By the time I was 12, I was beginning to understand life better, I was beginning to understand people better, I was going through a sort of intellectual puberty that wouldnt hit most people I knew for another six or seven years, an intellectual puberty that still hasn't arrived for some 20+ year olds I know today. It was strange because from that point on I started analyzing most people I met in order to better understand people as a whole, in order to, going back to the original story, better understand the problems of all the people I met in my favorite sitcoms.Unfortunately once I finally understood, I also came to understand that these new intellectual and analytical skills I had acquired, basically, for the sole purpose of understanding my favorite sitcoms, were complete and utter overkill, it hit me that these were just sitcoms, just a form of entertainment for those who wanted to escape to a place much like the place they were trying to escape from, except that the new place was a lot funnier. 

Basically what I'm saying is that the pseudo-intellectual, über-critical, cynical, apathetic, understanding, kind-of knowledgeable person I am today is partly due to the need to understand the antics of my "friends": Will, Grace, Jack, Karen, Ross, Joey, Chandler, Phoebe, Monica, Rachel, Dharma, Greag, Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine. Thank you all, though it may seem a bit too strong of a feeling for fictional characters, I love you all, dearly.

-JollyOldDro

The Twilight Movies are so bad they are now killing people...

Police are treating the death of a 23-year-old man at a Wellington cinema last night as unexplained but not suspicious.

The body of the man was found in a movie theatre at the Reading complex on Courtenay Place by a staff member shortly before 8.30pm last night, said police. The theatre had been screening The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.

[Continue Reading]

___ Books in a Year Challenge

While I was surfing GoodReads the other day I saw people talking about something called the 50 Books in a Year challenge. I'm not really going to explain the challenge because it's pretty self explanatory but I say that I decided to participate, though I'm going to try for more than 50 books, considering I started two days ago and have already read two books, even though the are a bit on the short side, as I'm writing this I'm actually more than halfway through the third book. The first book I read was Phillip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" which, to say the least, was fucking amazing, so I decided to just read, at least, a few more of Dick's stories. The second book I read was "Minority Report" which, although I loved the film, I thought was better than the film. Now I'm on my third book which I'll finish really soon, and I'm reading yet another Dick book, "Paycheck" which, just like "Minority Report", I'm enjoying more than the film. I think I'll read "A Scanner Darkly" next, and then, who knows?

-JollyOldDro

Pigalle SS 2011 Collection

PIGALLE MEN'S COLLECTION SHOW SS11 from Roucreation on Vimeo.

There are a few things I love about this show, the first being that the collection itself is fantastic. Other than the actual collection being great I love most aspects of how everything is presented in the show, specifically the music, the "runway". Both the music and the "runway" remind me of pictures I have seen, of Paris in the 1940's and 1950's, minus the Nazi paraphernalia of course. I think i like this even more after having seen "Les Vacances de M. Hulot" because, even though the film was set in a beach side area, the Pigalle show seems to portray the same time period, a time period which seems a bit more awesome than the present, stylistically speaking though, the 40's and '50s sucked quite a bit for black people.

-JollyOldDro