Journal 3: Tuesdays With Morrie

For Death and Dying, we have to read Tuesdays With Morrie, Mitch Albom's first hit book before he got even more money from The Five People You Meet In Heaven. Ok, ok, perhaps that's a bit accusatory; the reality is, Tuesdays With Morrie sounds very sincere, and the lessons the dying Morrie Schwartz had to give Albom are very though-provoking and inspirational. Of course, I think the highlight of my experience reading it so far has to be realizing that it is, in fact, a book, and that I could write a journal about it. Reading one book for two classes? Now that is efficiency!

Joking aside, this is another book that is brilliant in its simplicity. Mitch Albom is a great writer because he isn't a 'great' writer - or, at least, he isn't pretentious. A more obnoxious writer may have overloaded the very emotional material with existential banter and pseudo-intellectual observations, but instead, Albom takes a far more approachable stance. The book is told like a novel, which certainly works towards its advantage. Instead of just telling us what happened, Albom ends up being his own main character with legitimate depth. Morrie is magical, intelligent, and endearing, and his personality and dialogue seem almost too good to be true. The kicker, of course, is that they are true, or at least they certainly seem that way. I'm not going to bother researching how sincere Albom is actually being in this book because it really doesn't matter; the fact is, you can't help but be hooked in by the story. It tugs at all the heartstrings you have, even on someone as cynical as myself. I wish my writing was as gripping as this!

I still have quite a ways to go in the novel, but I think it's saying something that a book like this is wildly more interesting and readable to me than anything we've covered in class so far. I don't get caught up in books often, but Albom's got me wanting to know more. Perhaps we should re-evaluate what makes a great writer so great... Tolstoy, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and Albom? Somehow I don't think the Art Police would like that one.

Journal 2: 1984 I Guess

I like how 1984 starts because it doesn't make an effort to be within the realm of possibility. It's pretty hilarious to me how obnoxiously Orwell portrays his world, using names like "Two Minutes Hate" and slogans like "War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength." I don't want to sound like I'm criticizing it, though - as ridiculous as some of those things are (I don't think the world would ever be in a position anywhere near as oppressed as 1984's is), it's certainly an interesting thing to consider what it would be like if it was. It's exaggeration for the purpose of satire, and it's pretty awesome.

Most people like to use 1984 as an example of literature that in some way predicted the 21st century, and while I can definitely see why, I'm not entirely sure if that's the frame of mind I want to be in while reading it. Obviously it'll impossible for me to not imagine telescreens as televisions or the propaganda on them as being similar to today's news media, but whether or not Orwell predicted these things is irrelevant to me. I think I'm going to be more interested in how the characters act.

The first chapter already has me hooked, so I guess I'll have to keep reading to see where it goes!

Journal 1: Animal Farm is Great Literature

"Mr. Jones, of Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the popholes." 

George Orwell is probably my favorite high school-required writer. I've read a lot of "great" novels over the course of high school and hated them, but when it comes to George Orwell, I don't think I've ever had that reaction. It's pretty clear to me why - Orwell doesn't waste my time.

Take this opening line from Animal Farm, for example. This sentence is unbelievably simple in structure - it tells you exactly what happened and why. Mr. Jones was drunk and forgot to shut the popholes. Got it, moving on. The rest of the novel is written in a similar way, and it never feels like it's dragging on. As a result, it is never boring.

Maybe this is an unconventional belief, but I don't think the point of literature is to be brilliant or masterfully written or whatever. People tell me the Great Gatsby is the Great American Novel, but I found it unbelievably boring, to the point where I just couldn't finish it. I don't care if it has some of the most brilliantly placed motifs in the universe or says so much about America in the 20s - it's just not particularly interesting or readable to me. Maybe if the story was adapted well it would be... but in its current form I can't take it. A novel with completely unsympathetic characters written in the most pretentious possible way isn't my idea of great literature.

I refuse to advocate any novel written by a man with this haircut.

Animal Farm, on the other hand, is a similarly praised novel that I actually very much enjoyed. While there are a ton of factors at play here, I can't ignore the fact that the writing style of the story is extremely approachable. I shouldn't be surprised; after all, George Orwell wrote "Politics and the English Language", which completely destroys padded writing styles. It seems to me that Orwell knew what he was doing - his job as a writer was the stimulate thought in the reader and give them an engaging piece of work, and he accomplished this by writing a story that was not only interesting but also very easy to read. Personally, I don't think being easy to read is something that should be reserved to kids/teenager literature. A boring book is a bad book, plain and simple.

Great Music: Boston - Hitch a Ride

Everybody likes music right? Well, I do too! So I'm gonna spend some time talking about songs I think are Really Good. Good? Good.

In the mid 70s, guitarist and mechanical engineer Tom Scholz began developing an album in his home recording studio. He had songs, he had original guitar tones, and he had instrumentation - what he needed were vocals. To do the job, he turned to his friend Brad Delp, a singer with an outstanding vocal range that fit Scholz's sound perfectly. Slowly, the project grew, and in 1976, the 8 finished songs were released as a record. Under the band name Boston, Scholz and Delp ended up creating the best-selling debut album (at the time) in the United States. Not bad for a project that was thrown together pretty crudely.

Boston was certainly a one-of-a-kind band; after all, they weren't really a band at all, they were just a couple of guys Scholz brought together to work on some songs. It wasn't until the album was released that they got together and started touring; perhaps this is why Boston's lineup changed over and over again as they went on. However, Scholz and Delp always remained - that is, until 2007, when Delp tragically committed suicide. According to pretty much all accounts, Delp was an incredible guy - clearly, however, he was troubled.

So, with this context, I can talk about Hitch A Ride. This isn't a very well-known Boston song - it was on side 2, away from the hits like More Than A Feeling and Foreplay/Longtime.  To be honest, though, there isn't a single bad song on the album - I just think Hitch a Ride is especially notable. Musically the song is more than solid - an infectious guitar riff in the verses, an insane keyboard solo, an incredibly chill chorus, and what I think is probably the best guitar solo outro I have ever heard. Best way to describe it is a kind of catharsis, I guess.

Why does Freud always look furious in pictures? I wouldn't want him as a therapist.

Lyrically the song seems to be about moving on, getting away from a bad environment, or maybe even death. The latter becomes especially profound after you've heard about Delp's death; it makes the song almost sound like foreshadowing for what was to come. At the same time, though, it doesn't seem Delp had any hand in writing Hitch a Ride, so I'm probably just making up a bunch of nonsense. But uh, that's what I do. Deal with it.

So there's not much more to say here - Hitch a Ride is just a really great song! I'd have to recommend the whole album, though - like I said, not a single bad song on it. It's probably the best example of hard, distortion-based rock music done incredibly right (whereas something like, say... Bon Jovi is done horribly, horribly wrong... but that's a rant for another day).

Do I need any more proof that the 80s was the worst decade than this picture of Bon Jovi? Yeah, I didn't think so.

oh yeah, I have to talk about AP Lit!

To be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure what I want from AP Lit at the moment. Last year I thought it would be a good idea to take it since I had done pretty well in English classes throughout high school and I do enjoy writing, but technically that doesn't mean that AP Lit itself is any better of a class for me than Creative and Critical or World Lit. I suppose the main reason I took it was because Mrs. Reilly said I should, and I definitely respect her opinion, so here I am! Currently I have yet to see how AP Lit is going to affect me, help me improve as a writer or a reader, etc, but I'm sure it will. We'll just have to wait and see!

Also, I don't expect reading in particular to help give the class meaning - I'm not much of a reader, though I am definitely glad that AP Lit requires me to read since there are plenty of good books I've neglected in the past. If anything I expect reading to give me the same kind of feeling that watching a good movie would - while AP Lit is certainly more based in written literature, much, if not most, of what we learn is also going to be completely applicable to movies, which is probably what will give me the most enjoyment. Either way the class has been fun so far and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

THIS IS A BLOG POST

WELP. Looks like I have a blog now. And I tried so hard not to... I thought it would be a nightmare for me to have a blog and not come off as unbelievably pretentious, so I really didn't want that to happen. But now I actually have to have one, so I guess I'll make the most of it!

First, the name. To avoid the aforementioned pretentiousness I feel I am contractually obligated to explain why I called this blog "Simple Tricks and Nonsense." It works in many ways - first, it sounds like a typical blog name, one that rolls off the tongue well and gives off a sense that the person writing said blog is at least somewhat creative. Second, it effectively implies that everything I post here could very well be completely nonsensical - whether it is or not is irrelevant, because its main function is to give me the freedom to say whatever I want (as long as it's appropriate for a teacher to view, of course). Most importantly, however, the name comes from something Han Solo said in Star Wars, which is objectively the greatest movie ever made.

Less important but still relevant is the background I chose - it's the album cover to Tommy, also known as the greatest album ever made by the best rock band ever formed, the Who (you'll find most of my opinions are facts). I highly recommend everyone in the universe check it out, but this blog is probably only reaching about 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% of that universe so maybe that's a bit of a ridiculous statement. It's still true though.

Lastly, I am actually expecting this to be a fun little project for English class and I'm very interested to see how it turns out - despite being hesitant to get a blog at first, I think I owe that more to my own insecurities/nervousness about blogging and not so much to the pretentiousness of others, so I'm sure that once I get into the groove I'll have a lot to say. Oh well, what can I do? Here's a picture of a penguin playing a saxophone.