Excerpt from Working Story: Disillusion

Charles decided at the last moment to ride the elevator to the 24th floor with the sad creature. When the doors closed he glanced down at the sobbing person curled in the corner and saw a long dark ponytail hanging over, what he assumed was a girl’s shoulder, shaking as she convulsed. Curiosity permeated Charles as he stared down at her. A feeling rose in his chest that was something he had never experienced before. By the fifth floor, he was still trying to decipher what he felt in his stomach – there was a fluttering of spasms that were…not unpleasant. An odd thought crossed his mind that he shook off; it was completely and utterly implausible for that to be what was happening to him. Ignoring his racing mind, he bent down and gently tapped the girl on her shoulder.

The girl looked up and peered into Charles’ face. Her almond shaped brown eyes glittered with tears on the verge of cascading. Her face was devoid of imperfections, aside from the streaks of unhappiness that trailed from her eyes. Charles felt as though he could gaze upon her face for all of eternity. Silently he sat down next to her, pulling his legs up to his chest and continuing to stare at her. Feeling uncomfortable the girl blinked her long dark lashes, spilling more tears down her cheeks and looked away.

“Uh…sorry,” said in an unnaturally high voice. He cleared his throat and asked: “If you don’t mind me asking…um –?”

“Why am I hiding in an elevator, crying my eyes out?” she supplied, with a hint of sarcasm.

“Uh…yeah,” he replied uncomfortably, shifting a bit on the carpeted elevator floor. He looked over at the numbered wall and saw that they were now on the 11th floor.

“Well…I just got a phone call from my father, before I headed over here. My brother died.”

“Um…”

“Now you’re wondering why I’d still come to this place after getting such horrible news, right?”

“Something like that. Why didn’t you go home?”

“My family lives in Delaware. I can hardly just jump on a plane and head for the east coast. Do you know how much a trans-continental ticket costs last minute?”

“No, sorry I don’t. But that still doesn’t answer why you came here.”

“I thought I would come to keep my head clear, have some fun to drown the pain, I thought I could handle it,” she finished, shrugging.

“Really?”

The girl paused for a moment before answering. She looked backed over at him, apparently sizing him up, deciding whether or not she should continue to talk to a stranger about such personal matters. She must have decided that she could share with him when she replied:

“No, not really. I just didn’t want to be alone.”

“But you’re here in this elevator alone.”

“Not anymore,” she said with a flicker of a smile.

Superheroes: For Kids or Adults?

Look up in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's a guy wearing spandex that comes to life in our imaginations. Superman first hit the comic book pages in the early 1930's. His popularity led to the Golden Age of Comics and the time of the costumed hero. Along with his peers, Superman thrilled children who saved their dimes and nickels for when the next comic hit the stands. What was most appealing about the costumed hero in that era was the offer of escape from the depressive times that were all around. A fantasy world - where men could fly; where aliens were friendly; where villains were ruthless; where ordinary people could become extraordinary - was just what the kids needed, an escape.

Today many of these heroes still exist. Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman from the DC comic world are still very popular. In the Marvel Universe, Spider-Man, the X-Men, Captain America and the Avengers still inspire many readers of this century. But funnily enough, these characters that were once so innocently depicted in newspapers and in their own features have become a lot more graphic. Yes, the medium that superheroes are most often drawn in this day and age is the magical graphic novel, but when did the exploits of the men, and women, who don spandex, that we are suppose to look up to become the precursors of pornographic drawings. Women are always scantily clad, parts of them are over-emphasized and they are almost always drawn in proportions that would not support them if they were real. Men are drawn with more muscles than even a person doped up on steroids could possibly have, expanding the chest to large abnormal proportions. The content of most graphic novels is darker than what it used to be back in the Golden Age. Superman must decide whether or not to kill another in order to save the lives of millions or even billions. Peter Parker is infected with a disease that could impair his abilities as Spider-Man. Along with a long stream of story lines that are quite PG-13, the violent battles that ensue between heroes and bad guys, looks like a bare-knuckle boxing bout reminiscent of Fight Club. It seems to me that Superheroes have reached a new benchmark, they are now geared more towards adults.

You may be wondering why would the writers of graphic novels intentionally make the content more mature? The answer is simple. While there are children who have become enraptured with capes, many of the fans that remain are in their 20s, 30s, 40s or 50s now. They are the target audience for such a genre. Large movie companies also seem to have come to this consensus as the majority of all superhero movies that have hit the silver screen in the past 10 years have been rated PG-13. Even animated attempts on these characters have toppled over the safe PG rating. The animators of the DC Universe series have created animated features rated PG-13. And their animated Superman, Batman and Justice League series, pushed the boundaries of their TV ratings.

Comic books have pretty much died as a genre, graphic novels pick up the slack in the publishing world for that diminishing sub-culture. I believe that is safe to say that Superheroes are, for now at least, for adults.

A New Superhero Tandum: Superman/Batman: Public Enemies Review

I love comic books and superheroes. It's a side-effect of having two nerdy older brothers. I'm so fortunate to have been immersed in this fantasy world of metahumans and costumed crusaders for justice and peace.

When I heard first heard that the creators of my favorite animated features and shows based on the DC Comics Universe were bringing the first installment of the Superman/Batman graphic novel series to the screen, I became "super-excited". Producer Bruce Timm and his creative team are the visionaries behind the Justice League Series, Superman:Doomsday, Wonder Woman and Justice League:New Frontier animated shows/movies. Timm and the DC Universe team have proved their worth in the past and I am excited to say they have far surpassed their previous quality with this adaptation.

The character designs in this showing are quite varied from the previous streamlined presentations by the Warner Bros. Animation team, the extra musclar definition is definitely much more appealing to the feminie eye and I imagine that it inspires the young boys who see the buffed up characterizations of their favorite heroes. As far as the story goes, the themes from the action-packed graphic novel made their way to the screen accompanied by recent events in the economy.

The plot is spicy. Lex Luthor, after his years of trying to bring down Superman and his string of high-profile crimes is elected as the leader of the free world: president of the United States. Superman is plagued by this development. He is very aware of what type of person Lex Luthor is and he plans to expose Luthor's supposed evil plot before it is too late. Teaming up with Batman, they work hard to stop Luthor's mania while at the same time, working to stop a large Kryptonite meteor that is headed for Earth. However, Superman and Batman are detained from their mission by their former allies, Superheroes that have gone to work for Luthor's government. Batman and Superman's journey shows the strides they have made in their tolerance of each other and their ideas. In this gripping story, the true measure of their friendship is observed and the viewers find what lengths Superman will go to in order to save the world and a friend.

I give this two thumbs up!

Hectic Days are Far Behind, But Looming in the Future

There is a time in your life when everything feels like too much. A time when you wish that everything that you have to get done would take a break so you could catch your breath. But most often it's not the case. And then there's that moment when you finally find time to yourself, time to do whatever you want: catch up on your favorite T.V. shows, finish reading the book you started a month ago, take a walk pausing to smell the roses and embrace your surroundings or continue your hobby that was postponed months ago because you were too busy to finish. Yet when the time to yourself comes, most often it takes a bigger toll than you think. This free time, the time you've been wishing for, for days, weeks, months, years has finally arrived and pretty soon you have nothing left to do. When there's no deadlines to rush towards, you finish the tasks that you've been waiting to complete in record time. All the free time you wished for becomes too much, because you don't have enough activities to fill it with, while still maintaining sanity. When you applied to colleges, there was a stress on your shoulders. Being a high school student, waiting for decisions based on your achievements and your triumphs, is the most nerve wracking experience. And the time leading up to those submissions is filled with, club meetings, sports games, homework, community service, studying, applications, all along with the social pressures that come along with the high school moniker. Then college comes and while its still challenging academically, socially it becomes easier to adapt. In college your next phase of life isn't dependent on all of the A's you get and the difficulty of your courses. In college, the clubs you join are just for your own satisfaction instead of using them as resume fillers. In college, unless you are a truly gifted athlete, sports no longer dominate most of your time. College gives large pockets of free time, time to unwind and find happiness in things outside of school work. But there comes a point when the monotony of your life becomes a bleak existence and nothing else can fill the void, no matter what you would love to do. It's played out. Free time after awhile can become boring, practically begging your body to give up its needed break to find something to occupy time. Stress is cyclical. If you've been stressed before, you'll be stressed again. And stress causes the desire for a little bit of a breather to constantly float through the mind, pleading its case of being overworked. And once there is free time, it begs to once again to rejoin the stressful environment from whence it came, and once it returns there it longs for the freedom from the damaging effects of stress. Yes, it's true, there is a need for a hectic schedule. The crazy days that were a constant part of high school life are in the past, but somewhere in the future you'll long for the break again, and when you do, enjoy it while it lasts.

Poem

INSPIRED BY A DREAM
Phenomenal, sensational, inspirational change.
Change that can hinder, change that can thrive;
Change in the sense of change of things as they were before our time.
The alteration of things that have always been the same.
But today is for us, tomorrow for the generations who will feed off
our inspiration, our prospects, our new future that awaits as we look forward.

It's been coming for awhile, and all are awed
whether positively or negatively
by the moments in history that have stayed
relevantly prevalent in our minds,
that have bloomed into our memories of moments
that altered the lives we lead.

Try not to think of where we would be
without these people within the past
and in the now,
who take up the role of leader,
the role of leader to people who believe in quality.

Look around and see the different faces,
the different tints, different genders, different races;
sitting side by side,
learning that they can use today
to start their own path towards change:
That for all will be phenomenal, sensational and definitely inspirational.
(C) January.22.2009

Get a Real Bike!

Bike traffic is one of the most dangerous parts of living on a college campus. Living here has heightened my sense of awareness of approaching vehicles that could easily collide with me and inexperienced handlers. While I fear for my life at times when walking across the main street of campus to get to my afternoon class Mondays through Thursdays, my biggest problem with the vast sea of bikes is the fact that they aren’t even real bikes. Sure they have two wheels, a metal frame, handlebars and an uncomfortable seat packaged to look like it was made especially for your ass but in reality, these beach cruisers look like inexpensive pieces of crap that create an eyesore for the admissions tours. I know, I know: this is California, Southern California; of course there will be cruiser bikes. But why can’t they have real bikes? Besides the fact that it’s hard to differentiate between male and female bicycles, these cruisers don’t have gears or brakes; they might as well throw training wheels on all the bikes. Cruiser cyclists need to pedal backwards to come to a halt, isn’t that what we had to do when we first learned to ride our bikes? The whole thrill of mountain bikes was that they were big kid bikes with brakes for the front wheel and the back wheel. In addition to the wonderful braking system, mountain bikes had gears to switch and had the occasional chain pop out of place yearning for repair, yearning for its rider to get their hands dirty. But it seems that the mountain bike has all but faded in these parts of California. Aside from their elegant style, mountain bikes were obviously worth the money, beach cruisers are not. Bicycles are often a sign of maturity and aging. As toddlers we begin with our tricycles, zooming around the backyard with nowhere to go, content to just fly around in circles for the pure thrill of adventure. Next we get our first bicycle, complete with a set of training wheels and a parent or older sibling attached to the little seat helping us as we learn the principles and develop the muscle memory involved in learning to ride a two wheeler. Soon the wrench comes out, grinding against the nuts and bolts of the training wheels, willing them to come off, so that the bike is properly a ‘bi’-cycle. From there we learn balance and control, learning to detach our parents or older siblings from the back of our two-wheeler and ride off into the sunset, or the bushes, whichever comes first. And then when we reach that final stage of bicycle maturity, which most often correlates with our first foray into double digit ages, we get the piece de resistance, the mountain bike. The mountain bike is the final stage, even if there are no mountains in your general area. The mountain bike signifies the ability to use reasoning when biking, it helps find solutions to challenges – such as gear changing to climb a hill, or when racing down one. Bicycles are a key part of development and to revert back a stage, to the time before brakes attached to the handle bars, and where pedaling backwards is your safety net, is to disregard the steps taken to become an adult. So next time you go into a bicycle shop look past the shiny new beach cruisers and pick out the 18 gear mountain bike instead.

Checkmate

Ever had those moments where you knew you just couldn't finish a project? After working extremely hard for hours upon hours, the stress and pressure finally hits you. And you begin to think that everything you've done so far is stupid or that there is no way you can possibly carry on. Well if that doen't happen to you, good for you. But sadly I am victim of the cruelest of all creations designed to discourage students from success: writer's block. In reality what i have is more than writer's block. It's a block that my mind creates, a wall of sorts, that enables me to keep from failing. It's my failsafe. I institute the wonderful barrier whenever I feel that I could embarass my self, when I feel I'm not good enough. The most notable examples were when I was an athlete. Not a star athlete, but an athlete who participated in more than one sport. My main sport however, was basketball. I had played basketball for almost 8 years by the time I had graduated from high school. I never was one to practice hard on my own, although I would from time to time. But when I was a basketball practice, no matter how crappy I felt I always went out and tried my best, worked the hardest that I was able to that day. I could play with the best of them but whenever I was put out on the court with a nice clean uniform and my high top sneakers, I internally panicked. I never let it show on my face that I was scared out of mind, mostly because I didn't even realize. I had my game face on and I was ready to take down my opponents, only I couldn't. Every single game during high school, every single one of the 70 or so games I played in, I would eventually screw up so bad that I would want to come off the court. The worst part is, I never realized I was doing this until my last season was over. It made absolutely no sense to me. I was able to play in pick-up games with guys who were twice my size, that were more athletic and more skilled at basketball than me and I could hold my own but put me on a court with girls my age with their uniforms on and I couldn't do anything right. I don't know why the dynamic mattered so much to me, I loved being able to sweat with guys, get close to them playing defense and then show them up by taking it to them but I could never gain that confidence when there was actual pressure on the line. The same barrier would happen in track and field, the other sport that I ended up with a varsity letter in. I won't digress from my writer's block as much as I did before, but in hindsight it is noticiable that I should have been better. I'm not saying that I should have been in first or second but I should have at least been competive with the others. I was a hurdler and a high jumper. I've never seen a video of me hurdling and truthfully I never would want to , but I know in my heart that I should have been able to beat the super slow times that I recorded my junior and senior years of high school. Now back to writer's block.
Writer's block is a horrible phenomena, especially when there is a paper due the next day. No matter how hard you try to convince yourself that you can write the paper in front of you, you can't. There I go generalizing again, I meant to imply that I can't. Once I wrote a five page rough draft that was excellent, it had a clear argument and a decisive tone but when I met with my teacher about the draft, she told me that my tone was too harsh for an academic paper. That comment, completely diminished my self-confidence. I began to worry about toning down the paper so much, that I found myself inable to work on it any further. Everytime I looked at my draft, I saw the words that scolded the reader come off the page and begin to to attack me. I panicked and I erased almost all of it. So there I was with just a paragraph, the paper due the next day at 8 am and I was stuck. No words that made sense were coming to me. I was completely and utterly lost, having no way to find the path that led back to the topic my mind had strayed so far from. I had no ideas and so come the next morning, I had nothing to turn in. I tried to treat the incomplete assignment as something to shrug off but it concerned me. How was I going to write the rest of the papers for class? Would I ever be able to write an academic paper? That night I went back to me room and just sucked it up and wrote the worst paper I had ever written. There was no flow, no organization, nothing that would make it at best an average paper. My teacher probably thinks I turned it in late because I am unprepared college student or a slacker but the truth to me is worse: I failed. I failed at what I love to do most: be the best I can be. That was truly frightening. And the worst is that I know this isn't the end. Writer's block is sure to strike again...

Nervous School Days

The first day of school always makes me nervous, no matter what level. When it was the first day of kindergarten, I was nervous because I wasn’t sure who would play with me (I wasn’t too keen on the fact that I was supposed to be learning). When it was the first day of elementary school, where I was in school for a full day, I was nervous that I wouldn’t be able to stay awake all day. When it was the first day of middle school, I was nervous that my classes would be too easy or too hard and I was also nervous about changing classes every hour and whether or not I would remember the combination to my locker. When it was the first day of high school, I was nervous that I wouldn’t make any friends, that I would be an outcast, that I would fail all my classes. When it was the first day of classes at boarding school, I was nervous that I would not be able to keep up with the course work. And now here I am, it’s the first day of classes at college and suddenly I’m not so nervous. It’s an odd phenomenon. The previous first days of school, the first days of new buildings, teachers, subjects and friends I had trivial reasons to be nervous. But now, as I approach this new setting, these new teachers, these harder classes, I find myself well prepared and not fearing what comes next. I attribute this new attitude towards school to have come from spending 2 years at boarding school. And while I feel like whenever I say I went to boarding school that people always have one of two thoughts enter their brains: 1). They think I’m a troubled student or persona and my parents sent me away or 2). They think I must be rich. Well I am neither, and I’m certainly not trying to brag that I went to such a prestigious school, but the fact remains I got the chance to experience what college is like (somewhat), I just had to endure the ups and downs of high school along with it.
As I expected I felt very comfortable in my Spanish class, this morning at 8 a.m. It has been almost a year since I last took a Spanish class but everything came flowing back to me. My past years of Spanish came back so ardently, in fact that after I began speaking for a little while I Spanish, I couldn’t help translating all of my thoughts into Spanish. Once I open the floodgate, it’s hard to close it back up.
But back to the first day of school. The first day of school, the entering into a new era of learning, no matter what the level is something we all go through. We may not all achieve the same levels but almost everyone has experienced the first day of school at least once. And once is all it takes to bring the barrage of butterflies into the stomach, churning the half-eaten breakfast and the summer’s worth of dreams and expectations for the new experience. I am a college freshman, I am entering a new world as of today, I am a student on the first day of school and I am not nervous. My expectations have been far exceeded and now I focus my attention on the task at hand, learning something new that I can take to the next level at keep the mariposas bonitas (beautiful butterflies) that usually storm my internal organs, at bay.