Surviving The Concrete Jungle - Reunion?

So I was informed this morning that I might be going on the troop's trip this year to NYC. Four years ago (Before I started this blog) I went to New York as a sixth grader and told of my adventures.

It's been four years, and I'm a lot taller and adventurous than I was then. Though I will admit that New York City is a place that I fell in love with the first time I went, I still like Pittsburgh more. Perhaps it's mainly because this is home, but at the same time, I can't wait to go back.

The Christmas before I had gotten this little orange video camera, and I packed that along for the ride and videotaped it. If you want to see the (man is it bad, but it was my first) video, you can look at the annoying-voiced me take you through New York City: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9zb3s_nyc-surviving-the-concrete-jungle_travel

It's so weird looking back and realizing that that was four years ago, but as I skim through the long video, all of it comes back. I remember what it was like, waving around that orange camera like an idiot, calling my mother on Liberty Island, spending four hours in Times Square, getting lost on the Subway system, it all just comes back.

I'm curious to see what it will look like again, and what we'll do there. It's like I'm 11 all over again, a small city boy getting ready to adventure to the Biggest City.

And you better believe I'm planning on blogging about this one. Not live of course, but yeah.

Rivalries, and some FOOBALL!

No, I didn't make a typo in that title (no promises about this post, but that title is right). It seems that when people get really excited about football (American, that is... Je suis de Pittsburgh, je ne suis pas de Europe.) that they get lazy and drop the t.

Take for example, my brother who (as of the time of this post) plays for the 7/8th grade team at Carlynton. He gets really pumped before a game and sometimes just stares at me and screams FOOOOOOBALLL! I look at him, being the strange articulate dude I am, thinking wow, we as a generation are seriously digressing here...

Nevertheless, we are met on an interesting day. Tonight is the beginning of a rivalry, that between the Carlynton School District and Bishop Canevin. Now, I think it's not as much a rivalry in the classic sense as it is in the geographic sense.

You see, the Carlynton School District's geographical location overlaps with Bishop Canevin's because Canvein is a private Catholic school. Carlynton as a district provides transportation to those district students going to Canevin.

I highly doubt that there will be a huge rivalry here, but it'll certainly be something interesting tonight.

[Insert 38C Downtown Bit Here]

So back a year and a half, I did this project called the CarLynTon project. (I'm working on a 2013 update to it...) on the history of the district. In the four months of research, one venture stuck out in my mind. I interviewed Mrs. Sandra Hugan (I believe she's on our school board) for information on the merger. The pivotal point in the project as it was to finally give an answer to how we became a district. There seemed to be a disconnect between the towns being founded and Carlynton existing.

During this phone interview, I was informed of two interesting points: 1) it was legislation that forced the current system (which I ran with... and if you've seen the project, fills in the gap) and 2)We could have had another town in Carlynton.

Carlynton had the option to add Scott Township to Carlynton, but due to a rivalry with Carnegie High, the district decided against it. Now, this isn't a huge deal... we just could have had more land for a high school and stadium, the site of the current Bottom Dollar plaza in Scott Twp.

A part I omitted from the project was the extent of this rivalry. During this interview, Mrs. Hugan told me about how every time there was a football game between Carnegie High and Scott Twp High, they would have to have Pennsylvania State Troopers on hand.

Speeches

STAT: This blog is fast approaching 3800 pageviews! Amazing! Thanks to everyone!

In English class over the past two days, we presented speeches about what we thought were important to us. I picked three rather cliched topics - My writings (This site, WYEP Stuff, newspaper fails), the outdoors (scouting, the summit, biking), and videography (eugh... you lost me).

I gave my (horrid) speech, and then proceeded to listen to my classmates' speeches. I learned a lot about the people whom I pass in the hallways everyday. Granted, this was a scholars class that had grown close due to the smallness of our class and our school, but still we learned of each other.

There were gamers, dancers, indie music (TALLY HALL) lovers, travelers, cheerleaders, basketball players, baseball players, card trick wizard/relgionesque dude, and there was even an actress/artist/figure skater. It occurred to me that the true meaning to high school is CERTAINLY not learning something academically, but to learn about the people and relationships and interactions with those around us. It is only when one walks 10,000 steps in one's shoes that one can begin to comprehend the complexities behind that individual (and WOW is that cliched).

Anyway, I learned things about my class that quite frankly surprised me. I was told once that you are a person who is either creative or intellectual. There is the very small few who are both. She told me that I was both, but I constantly question how creative I am (Considering I come up with ideas that have already been done) and exactly how smart I am (Umm, I still can't find theme in most written pieces... forget finding one in my own). Regardless of my personal situation, there are definitely people in my class who posses the gift of both. Take the actress/artist/figure skater for example. She is perhaps the best novel interpreter (finds crazy literary stuff I can only hope to catch on to) that I know behind, like, professional novelists (shoutout to JayScribble!) and people who read Greg's comics (No Andrew you CANT Read "Carrot"). She also can draw quite well.

The thing that I indirectly stated in my speech is the fact that I absolutely loathe English Class writing assignments. I am one of those bratty writers who want to be completely freeform. You tell me to write a third person story about a magic toaster or something, and I can do it. Tell me that I need four paragraphs, the toaster is unpersonified, and I must use at least seven vocabulary words, then you take the story and squash it.

Finally, never are we given prompts about alpacas or toasters or anything good. It all must have a tie in to what we are doing, use some mechanism of the mind control that education has been instilling into us (umm, when am I going to be given a list of completely impractical vocabulary words and need to work them into, say, a blog post?) and then it gets sent off to be judged by someone.

I digress. Bottom line, I have learned more from my fellow classmates about life and reality in the short 60 minutes of speechifying than I have doing proofs in Geometry, or finding a specific theme in a short story written hundreds of years before I was born.

Literature only becomes irrelevant when one tries to look at it from a modern perspective and try and find modern aspects to it. If you'll excuse me now I am going to memorize some literary terms revolving around literary techniques for a midterm test.

Questioned Mentality

So a while back I was wondering where I was going to try and lead my friends into for the next video project. We started with a variety show (JSVH) which demanded 4 hours realtime to film and 15 minutes of a viewer's time. Then we stopped for a while and invented a series that required little effort (The Total Randomness Series) and that kind of worked for us, but it wasn't ideal. Then we invented BBC 2 1/2 which kind of worked again, but it is a relatively repetitive format. Then I met a few creative people, and we created the idea I'd like to call "Questioned Mentality".

Screenshot from Possible QMentality Filming

This idea is modeled after our bizarre lives (Write and Film What You Know) and its ups and downs. My friend Alex (xanderqwerty123 on youtube) and Dan (MrXigbar22 on youtube) as well as Clay Bodnar (JSVH, TR series, Lapsing Reality) and David Wovchko are helping bring to life a youtube channel bent on one mission: The most random and Creative short videos all posted to one channel. Thus, we are starting this project within the next two months.

Yes, I did that just to use "thus" in a sentence. For the record, I am optimistic about this. As Isabella  once said "Negative Attitudes Lead To Negative Outcomes." Granted, she was talking about a relationship with a girl, but it still applies here.

My Questioned Mentality

Sanity is defined by what? Some say its an average of everyone else. Others say its staying out of an asylum. Others say sanity is staying out of love, some in. The issue I personally have is that sanity is almost always defined by comparing to someone else.

Do I not like other people? No, I like people... why else would I be writing to people through the internet. I just don't like how the definition of mentality depends on what others think. If I let them be their own person, who are they to call me insane? 

I am questionably mental because of three main things: the way I interact with people, the way I think, and the way I express myself. What would the world be like without Self Expression?

The name Questioned Mentality is derived from the reactions that we (Project Contributors) get when we tell someone ideas. We want the channel to make people wonder if they are sane, if we are sane, and more importantly, we want to try and redefine entertainment.

And, just to throw this in... NO the Kardashians aren't my idea of entertainment. Try Wheezywaiter or Smosh or RayWilliamJohnson or even Meekakitty on for size.

And because this is running through my head right now, check out Paradise by Coldplay from their new album Mylo Xyloto

Off The Internet Stuffs

Okay, so lately I have been working on a lot off the internets, and I am considering starting vlogging (yay, I've tried that all last year!) and I have also been working on the Channel. When I talk about the Channel, I mean two things. The first being WCHS AM (Morning Announcements) and Verizon Channel Local 28. I have tried my hand at designing stuff for both of these. See examples to the sides of these words.

Also, I have attempted to do some philosophical thinking. In other words, thinking great thoughts. Where has that gotten me? Well, literally nowhere. But it does occupy my time.

In completely irrelevant news, I have been watching this vlogger WheezyWaiter. He is one of the John Green clan, and has this (almost)thing called EXPLOSION WEDNESDAY! He's a fun guy, if you want to check him out.

I promise to post about the MVB Contest via a blog or vlog on September 10th (the contest ends the 9th) until then, check out something I have done recently, SUPERMAN III Lapsed!

#TheBabyIsMakingOctopusSounds and A Little Bit Of OCD

Okay, first off, I would like to say this is post 94. For post 100 (If I can last that long) I will probably make a vlog. It will be unsuccessful, but it will be here nevertheless. It is kind of a long-running thing with me. First the journalism, then websites, then videos, and now into this mode of not really caring where things go anymore.

So, I attended my first "End Of The Year" Party. It basically was this: going to a friends house, swimming, listening to music, beating each other with plastic things, and then watching a terrible old movie. Honestly, what better do we have to do on a Thursday in June? This party was attended by all of my creative friends (DavidWov, Mistaecco, Clay!), (Minus Youtube's MrXigbar22) and we talked about a little bit of everything. That is where the "#TheBabyIsMakingOctopusSounds" tag came from. It was really a combination of two ideas: hashtagging, and naming folders.

On an almost unrelated note, I have been scrolling the YouTubes Lately with the obsessive VlogBrothering thing and I have also discovered "Elmify". She is a person from a place that is mildly entertaining. She rants about stuff in a way that is slightly boring yet entertaining at the same time. Well, I will be back eventually.
Yours,
Alex.
PS: I shouldn't sign blog posts.

Complete and Unadulterated Randomness

I have been listening more recently to a song called "Iridescent" by Linkin Park. Besides the minor fact that it is used for the Transformers Franchise, it is quite good. Hmm, to think about it, I don't know much about the Transformers Franchise to rant about it *googles, Clicks Wikipedia*.

So it turns out the Film Franchise is directed/produced/made awesome by Stephen Speilberg, and distributed by, you guessed it, Dreamworks and Paramount (VIACOM companies).

As my quick Wikipedia sums up, we can basically link everything to something else. We can all find some sort of origin, a common thread. Almost every Wikipedia article has at least one link. From my brief but extensive experience with wiki-ing (word?) that is quite easy to find a common thread, and to link from one place to another.

So recently I was able to take a ride on a bike trail literally five miles away from my house. I never knew it was there, but I soon learned that it existed, and learned the story of a railroad converted into a walk/bike trail. Every quarter mile or so, there was a bench. On a good percentage of those benches within the first four miles of trail had a plaque from an eagle project. Just going to show how everything is connected.

It seems that if we stop for thirty seconds and smell the flowers growing beside a highway, or the railroad that became a bike trail, we can learn so much more, and make our test of humanity almost studied for. I leave you with the commencement speech that new CBS anchor gave last year:

Pont Champlain, Light Boxes, and My New Life.

In my own new fashion, I will start with a quote from Adrianna Flack:

Life= live it fricking epicly

It is an interesting way of putting it, but it is true. I am now addicted to music. I have recently been listening to this song Your Ex-Lover Is Dead by Stars. Now, my ex-lover (do I even have one?) isn't dead, but its a great song. It mentions capturing a taxi and driving across Pont Champlain. I decided to look into this Pont Champlain, and was disappointed to realize that my limited French couldn't tell me that "Pont" really means "bridge". So, Pont Champlain is just the Champlain Bridge in Montreal Canada (yeah!)

I believe that life is kind of like an interstate (Oh, here he goes again), and our adventures are like bridges. I decided to take the one that goes to Canada, and meet some awesome people (See The List) and did some interesting things. In the past month I have:

  - Operated Sound for a talent show
  - Ran for SPL in a boy scouting troop
  - Went to a dance
  - Slow Danced with Two Girls
  - Listened to music
  - Got a combined total of about 20 service hours
  - Decided who I am
  - created The Carlynton Project (In Crystal Clear 1080p High Def!)
  - Ticked some people off (ha)
  - operated lights for a choral concert
  - went at least 10 miles on a track and on a bike
  - Rode a trolley
  - got commended by my superintendent
  - and turned 14.

Now, what have you done? Heck, I have done about 90 times that, but that is what I put in.

Someone once told me to join the band. I did. A year later I quit. That was probably what got me where I am. I love music, I just can't play an instrument worth my life. I got into journalism, web design, video production, people, and high school.

And this is just the beginning. Well, Good luck. I am crossing my bridge, find yours.

Why a Vlog Fails and the Carlynton Project.

I begin with a quote from myself....

It seems that the story of Carlynton's creation hasn't been told. With the proposed consolidation of the two elementary schools, may be a generation that does not see a Crafton Elementary and a Carnegie Elementary.

That is why I did the Carlynton Project, to look at the one unified district that the three towns had in mind. A simple 5-minute video project detailing the general history that everyone knows. Easy project right?

I should know by now that nothing is easy. Relationships, Politics, Baseball, and Carlynton Project all have at least one thing in common: It's Complicated. In order to pull off something as simple as a video project I fought off speed limit signs, woods, black-draped posters, and the web that is the streets of Crafton and Rosslyn Farms. It took months of research, planning, and scripting and at least three hours of editing to get to where it ended up. In the end, I have a 7-minute DVD in HD (So I can't watch it myself) and apparently a GATE project.

So, I submit three copies: One to my adviser, one to my supervisor, and the third to my uncle. My supervisor watched it a week after I submitted it with her daughter (who is a film major) and "loved it".  My adviser, well it took him about three weeks to figure out what it was.

Then, in front of the 7th grade teaching staff, he decides then to premier it. It received the best reviews for a video that I have ever made. He decided the next day to deliver it to the PR director for the district... who is also the secretary for the school district.

She decides to premier the project in front of the whole school board the next day. I have no knowledge there was even a board meeting. The following day, today, the superintendent walks over to me at lunch and asks for a copy for the district. He apparently liked it... a lot.

So this is how a project snowballs. Not through YouTube, but through word-of-mouth. Not through 99 cents per click, but through giving a DVD to your world cultures teacher (yes, the marine) and seeing what happens. Vlogging fails because the story gets told but never gets seen. This is the story, the story to be continued.

The Legend of Mr. Blue Sky

The idea of creating a video is simple: a one-take possibly scripted capture of time. The idea of a movie for the internet is complex: an organized collection of videos, graphics, and music. It is, as Remi Gailliard says, what we do that makes us who we are. Now, Remi does semi-illegal things, but get beat up for them.

Where am I going with this? I have a plea for Nerdfighers, Pittsburghers, and Youtubers. It is because of claims by Sony, EMI, Viacom(Columbia), and Epic Records that videos on Youtube get removed. Now, I got the following Message from Sony:

It basically says "Sony decided that 20+ countries including Sweden, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe can't view your hard work". How special.

I am asking for someone, anyone, to record a song, give me permission to basically promote you. I am really desperate here. I have great concepts, great actors, actresses, writers, but I need a score. If you want a break, consider this your golden ticket.

It is because of great songs like Mr. Blue Sky being written to large companies that the agents of these groups don't want to give permission for a mere youtube that maybe fourteen people will see. If you want to actually give me permission, or an MP3, or even want to be recorded by us in our studios, shoot Easysites an e-mail: easysitesmultimedia@gmail.com.

2011, Communications, and Yelling

Ok, welcome to the 2011 year! Wow, I haven't posted here in a while.
What has changed? Well, not much. I am in the midst of the CarLynTon, BBC, and Project 559 projects. I am also in the midst of redoing ESMP. I am also in the midst of midterms, a confusing ideology, and a troop communications nightmare.
Communications is an interesting concept. It is the idea of communicating ideas, information, and thoughts to a broad group. In other words, broadcasting with text and pictures rather than words, sounds, and a camera. When I signed up to be e-mail guy for Troop 831, I had no idea what I was getting into. At least now they have a working calendar (which I need to update now) and website.
However, information needs to be kept up-to-date, and ideas are ever-changing. A schedule one minute can be changed in fractions of that. Oh well, there is the trade I am in.

One of my new favorite catch phrases is "If I do something, I will get yelled at for it!" Which really holds true for most things. Take today for example:
Troop calendar needs updated, and e-mailed NOW! I don't have my computer on, I get yelled at.
Girl named Cathryn starts a texting conversation (which I am not good at to start with) and apparently her boyfriend gets angry with me... Heck, I am getting Indianonians angry with me!
I am on the computer too long updating my blog... goodnight universe!

Polio, CarLynTon, Halloween, and other stuff

Please note: this post will be written over a period of time!

I'd like to thank all of you for your continued support with everything. My blog is a mishmash of me ranting abou everyday things. My next question: Why must High School come with some much drama?

I was recently approached by my pretty good friend about a video contest. It is concerning Polio, and how it affected life as we know it. I am going into this as my first real video project. I am going to start over. That DnC Show was a great concept, the JSVH a great temporary success, and Total Randomness: COME ON! I only have so many blooper reels. So, with my good friend, I am going into this. I prefer not to talk about it, but I can give only some information. However, I am going to have people with music, stories, and a not-so-professional writer!

Halloween. One of my least favorite holidays. Sure, I put on that whole, "I love Halloween" act. Honestly, it is the one day out of the year where people are given an excuse to act something that they aren't. So, you are telling me that you want to portray SNOOKIE or something like FREDDY CROUTON! Anyway, people, myself included, act like something that they are not all of the time. I can quite frankly be schizophrenic... angry at one point, and break down laughing the next.

CarLynTon: a story of how things became what they are today. My next great project, and the one that may have any potential this year. Yes, I contemplated going onto the "BBC 2 1/2 Forever" mode, but that is just illogical. Much like Disney, I can only hold onto an audience for long. Well, more details to come.