Cultural Opportunity - Play: Rumors

Last night I went to Corn Stock Theatre and watched a play called Rumors. I had never been to Corn Stock Theatre before and did not know what to expect. The Corn Stock Theatre is outside under a big tent. There are chairs set up in a semi-circle around the stage. It was nice. The bad thing about the play being outside was that it was hot and then one time the wind blew really hard and the lights that were hanging at the top of the tent shook. It did not look very safe, but nothing fell so apparently it was safe enough. The majority of the people there to see the play were fifty years old or older, but there were some younger people there too.
I liked the play. The setting was a house in New York at present time. Four couples go to their friends' tenth anniversary party. When the first couple gets there, they realize that something is not right. The other couples start arriving a little while later, and some of them realize right away that something is wrong. So throughout the play there is a lot of arguing and yelling and at a lot of rumors get started or spread. By the end of the play all the characters are drunk and cops end up at the party.
The actors and actresses all did a great job. The costumes and hair and make-up all looked really good. The set looked really nice, and the sound and lighting was good.
Our cultural opportunity sheet says we are supposed to provide analysis. I don't really think there was anything to analysis. I think the moral behind the play might be that people shouldn't start or spread rumors because a lot of the time they aren't true and people end up getting hurt or angry.
I thought the play was good. It was really funny. I would recommend it to anyone that still needs to find a play to go to for their cultural opportunity or anyone that just wants something to do. However, I would not recommend that you take young children with you because there is quite a bit of cussing and there is a gun fired during the play. You don't actually see the gun, but you hear it.

Last Group of Short Stories

I did my mini book club on "A Rose for Emily." I thought the story was good, but Emily definitely had some problems. I do not know why anyone would want to keep a dead body in their house. I thought my mini book club went really well. Everyone did a good job participating and answering the questions that I came up with.
The other stories we had to read were good too. "Roman Fever" was a little hard to follow at some points. At first, I could not figure out who was married to Delphin and who was married to Horace. "Gryphon" was funny. I think the substitute teacher was a little crazy. I liked that the kids asked her questions, and told her that six times eleven was not sixty-eight. "The Girl With the Blackened Eye" was sad. I thought it was well written, but it was hard to read. I liked "Irish Girl." I liked that it was set in a more present time. The end of the story was sad. I did not really like "A & P." Nothing really exciting ever happened. It was pretty much just three girls walking around a store in their swimming suits. I thought "Woman Hollering Creek" was boring. I could not get into it. "Mother Savage" was good, but I do not know why the mother killed the four men that were staying with her. They were nice to her and did things for her. I know she was upset that her son got killed in the war, but the four men at her house didn't kill him.

T.V. Show: Scrubs

For my out of class reading for this week, I decided to watch two episodes of Scrubs. Scrubs is one of my favorite shows. For anyone who has never seen Scrubs before, it takes place in a hospital and the main characters are all doctors, surgeons, interns, or nurses. I think the show is more about the main characters and their lives than it is about the patients and their problems although these are included. I would say that the main characters are JD, Turk, Carla, Elliot, Dr. Cox, Jordan, Dr. Kelso, and Jordan. I would say that JD is the narrator of the show. It seems like most of the show is told from his point-of-view.
In the first episode that I watched of this assignment Turk and Carla were fighting and Carla moved out and stayed at Elliot's apartment for a little while. While Carla was staying with Elliot, they talked about the past. In the end Carla and Turk made up and Carla moved back in with Turk. In this episode there seemed to be a lot of flashbacks. Dr. Cox likes to give advice, but in this episode Dr. Kelso gave the advice. He said "Nothing in this world that is worth having comes easy." I think that is good advice.
In the second episode, Carla is having issues with trusting Turk. In this episode, Jack (Dr. Cox and Jordan's baby) has to get stitches on his forehead because he fell off the jungle gym at the park. The janitor is mean to everyone, but in this episode he targets Jordan and Dr. Cox. He follows Dr. Cox around and takes pictures of him letting the baby do things that Jordan would not like. Then he follows Jordan around taking pictures of her letting people hold and hug the baby, and Dr. Cox does not like this.
In the show in general, there is a lot of smiling, laughing, crying, advice giving, and sarcasm. The characters use a lot of facial expressions and hand gestures. There is a lot of joke telling and high-fiving.

First 13 Short Stories

The first thirteen short stories we had to read for class were interesting. I liked "Last Requests." I thought it was easy to read, and it was interesting to see what different people wanted to eat for their last meal. "Nipple Jesus" was different, but I kind of liked it too. I am not sure how I would feel if I saw a picture of Jesus made out of breast, but I probably would not like it. "Party Down at the Square" was sad, but there was a lot of action in it and I liked that. I really liked "Orientation." It was entertaining, and I think that it is probably really like that in a lot of offices. "Interpreter of Maladies" was good, but I think it was a little too long. I did not like "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried." I had no clue what the story was about when I read it the first time. Talking about it in the mini book club helped me understand it a little better, but I still did not like the story. I thought "The Best of Betty" was funny. It was really easy for me to read. I did not like "I Know What I'm Doing About all the Attention I've Been Getting." Pretty much all the story talked about was the narrator getting dressed. What was the purpose of the story? I also did not like "Hills Like White Elephants." The whole story was two people sitting at a table drinking and talking about abortion. "The Lady with the Pet Dog" was good, but I think it was to long too. I think the author could have left out some of the very specific details and it wouldn't have changed the story too much. I thought "Everyday Use" was good, but in some places it was difficult to follow along with. "People Like That are the Only People Here" was a really sad story. No one should have to go through pain like that especially babies. I did not like the way it ended. I wanted to know if the baby was ok or if the cancer came back. I also wanted to know what happened to the other kids that were in the story. "Catskin" was weird. It wasn't bad. It was just really weird.
I liked going to the mini book clubs. I thought most of the facilitators did a really good job leading their book clubs. I thought the mini book clubs were good because they let us talk about the different ideas we all had about the stories, and some of the mini books helped me understand some of the stories better.

Out of class reading

For my out of class reading for this week, I read chapter one in my introduction to geology text book. I found the first chapter interesting. It talked about the history of geology, scientific methods, the Earth, and rocks. The chapter has pictures and charts that I thought were really helpful. The pictures and charts also made it more interesting because they gave you something to look at that went along with what was being said in each section of the chapter. The charts gave additional information that was not in the actual reading, and the pictures had captions explaining what the picture was. By reading this chapter I learned some things that I did not know before. For example, I learned more about the theory of plate tectonics and the rock cycle. There was one part of the chapter that I really did not like reading. It was about the Big Bang Theory. I think the reason why I did not like reading this section was because I do not believe that the world was created that way. There was something else in the chapter that I am not sure if I agree with. It says that the Earth is about fourteen billion years old. I do not know. It might be that old, but that does not really seem like a reasonable number to me. There are little grey boxes throughout the chapter with the question "Did you know?" above them. Inside the boxes there are interesting facts. I liked that these boxes were included in the chapter.

Reading p. 7-25

When I first started reading this section, I thought I was going to enjoy reading it. I really liked how it started, but as I continued to read I started to get bored. There were too many vocabulary words and too many names of authors and their stories. I think it was good that these things were included, but I think it would have been just as good if some of them had been left out or if they had been spread out a little bit more than they were. I liked how the author included pieces of the story "Reunion" by John Cheever to help explain some of the different vocabulary words. I think this helped me understand the meanings of the words better, and it made this section of the book more interesting. I learned a lot from reading these pages. While I have heard most of the words before and already knew what they meant, there were a few new vocabulary words in the reading. It took me a long time to read this section because there was a lot of information in it, and I was not sure which things were really important and which things were not. I liked that this section explained what plot, setting, theme, and point of view are. These are all words that most of us have heard before and probably already knew what they meant, but I think it was a good thing to review before we actually start reading stories. I know first and third person points of view are the most commonly used, but what is second person point of view and why isn't it used very often?