Author Archives: John Lee

small americano please

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The event last week was a pleasant and brief getaway from doing end-of-the-semester work. The rainy walk over from the bus stop was appropriate for our afternoon coffee. Our group had some nice conversations during our stay at the Gimme! Coffee, but I didn’t participate too much by saying anything, so I’ll write about my small americano.

I understand the appeal of espresso, but I can’t really enjoy one without reminding myself that this is what real connoisseurs do. I think this is where the americano comes in, as it appeals (not only) to people like me (wannabe connoisseurs). I took the top off my coffee, as it came in a disposable cup; I enjoy looking at the small layer of foam from a just-prepared americano. Also, I think the small slit on the plastic top takes away from the experience of enjoying a coffee.

From my initial taste, a nutty flavor stood out most, blanketing my mouth with a creamy texture. Beyond that, I don’t know what else to take away from my drink, other than that I really enjoyed it.

happy coffee

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From Mr. Lemnios’ picture of him spooning some coffee on the advert for this event, I thought he’d be speaking about how to approach tasting coffee. The talk turned out to be about his coffee company and how it operates with good intentions. His presentation was pleasant and I think he did a great job of conveying his experience as an entrepreneur.

Mr. Lemnios had a presentation of pictures for us of one of the South American coffee plantations that Sun Coffee Roasters sources from. It was nice to see that all the workers seemed happy; he really emphasized how much his company takes this into account when sourcing coffee beans.

Although we were mostly given the bright side of the story, the talk made me realize how bad some of these plantations could be, in terms of the worker’s well-being. I may take this into consideration the next time I buy some beans.

schizophrenia

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It often seems that a generic explanation of schizophrenia is the symptom of seeing or hearing imaginary people. I always wondered how vivid such hallucinations were, as people who experience them must have a heavily distorted perception of what is and isn’t real. As I’m writing this, I’m wondering how cognizant of my symptoms I’d be if I were to develop schizophrenia. If someone were to walk in to my room right now and introduce himself as someone on my floor, I likely wouldn’t think twice of whether or not he was real. However, I can’t imagine that if this was a hallucination, it would be too realistic if it was the first time I was experiencing one. So maybe my mental state would’ve gradually gotten worse before I first experienced my imaginary floor-mate, enough so that I’d be convinced that he was real when I first met him.

I vaguely recall watching ‘A Beautiful Mind’ in one of my high school classes, so I remembered most of the scenes as I re-watched it. As I thought about the film and it’s depiction of Nash’s schizophrenia, I appreciated how his condition is revealed to the viewer as the people around him discover it. I can’t remember my reaction when I first watched it, but I wish I could re-experience my realization that Nash was hallucinating certain people in his life. As this revelation was unfolding, I had a feeling that I was watching some kind of psychological horror film. There wasn’t actually a horror element (beyond maybe the hallucinations), so I think the fact that these imaginary people and events seemed so real to Nash was what was slightly frightening.

definitely not ip man

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There was one Summer when my father and I watched a bunch of Tai Chi related films, for some reason. We watched “Ip Man” 1, 2, and 3, “Man of Tai Chi” (I don’t recommend this one), and “The Grandmaster”. Since then, I’ve been mildly interested in Tai Chi.

Seeing the poster for this film, I had assumed it was about Ip Man (I should really read the descriptions) and decided to watch it. It turned out to be a documentary about Tai Chi master Cheng Man-Ching coming from Taiwan to New York City in the 1960’s and teaching a variety of people, notably hippies. It was interesting to see this man and his teaching create a microcosm of Americans learning Tai Chi in New York City. From the footage in the film, it seemed that their community was tightly-knit and everyone appeared so care-free (maybe a symptom of being in the 60’s).

As I’m thinking of what to write, I’m reminded of a short clip I saw this week from a new Netflix show hosted by Bill Nye. I’m not entirely sure what the show is about, but the segment I saw was a brief rant about “cultural appropriation”. From what I understand, this phrase apparently describes how someone of one culture adopts certain elements or lifestyles of another culture. An example given in the clip was what “[white people] have done to yoga”, presumably making yoga look bad by practicing it. I think this is ridiculous, and goes against the idea of America as a melting pot, however cliche that phrase may be. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of “cultural appropriation”, and it seems to me that some people understand it as a form of racism. If people weren’t morally permitted to embrace and/or practice aspects of other cultures, I think that should be considered more racist than “cultural appropriation”. The people who chose to learn from Cheng Man-Ching certainly weren’t being racist, but today they would be considered perpetrators of “cultural appropriation” by some, which is absurd.

As you know, the Premier loves surprises.

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I often heard Stanley Kubrick’s name when I spoke with friends who are film buffs. I had read ‘A Clockwork Orange’ in high school, and then learned that there was an acclaimed film adaptation directed by Kubrick, although I never got to watch it. Then, during my Freshman year at Cornell, I watched ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ at the Cornell Cinema, which I again learned was directed by Kubrick. After finishing the film, I was curious how he went from directing that to directing something like ‘A Clockwork Orange’. In my mind, they must be immensely different styles (again, I haven’t watched the latter, but I can imagine what it must be like from the book). This was just a thought, and I didn’t think to really research (Google) any further about Kubrick. And then this past Friday, lo and behold, I learned of another stylistically distinct film by Kubrick, ‘Dr. Strangelove’. If I had looked into this Kubrick at all, I probably wouldn’t have been surprised, but I think it was an interesting experience to one-by-one discover these films. I like to imagine that I am reliving what people might’ve experienced back when these movies were being released (although, maybe not in chronological order).

Anyhow, the movie is great.

drango, the d is silent

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To be honest, I thought this movie was weird. I came away with this impression likely from a combination of not having seen the prequels (apparently, this Mad Max was third in the original series) and not being able to discern the dialogue at times. However, I appreciated some parts.

I don’t think I could contribute any meaningful comments on the plot or its role in the series as a whole, so I’ll discuss what I thought about the aesthetic of the movie. As I was watching it, I was reminded of ‘Rango’, the 2011 western-esque animation starring Jack Sparrow as a chameleon. Back when I first saw it, I absolutely enjoyed it, maybe partly because I was going through a spaghetti-western phase at the time. A distinct memory I have is the discussion about the movie with a close friend. For him, he said he hated the movie because it was ‘ugly’. I argued that it was an intentional ugliness that was central to the movie’s identity, as the movie wouldn’t be as effective with ‘Finding Nemo’ textures and palettes. Anyhow, I was reminded of his point throughout the Bartertown scenes in ‘Beyond Thunderdome’, as everything about the town was ugly. It felt stifling at times, and although this was definitely intentional, I can understand how my friend might have felt when he watched ‘Rango’. Although, the rusty steampunk (?) look of the vehicles in the chase scenes towards the end of ‘Beyond Thunderdome’ was pretty great, and I can see why they stuck with that look in the most recent Mad Max film (I haven’t seen it, but similar chase scenes with similar vehicles were shown in the trailers for it).

Now that I think about it, ‘Beyond Thunderdome’ and ‘Rango’ share a theme: an outsider shows up in some established community, he’s mistaken for someone else, he’s expected to save the day, he disappoints everyone, and then he ends up saving the day. Interesting~

band

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I find that it’s always nice to attend a CU Winds performance. I think most people who were in high school band look back on it fondly, so it’s become a nostalgic experience I indulge in once in a while.

Notably, the music department had arranged for a guest composer, David Maslanka, to write an original piece for the CU Winds in memory of a past music professor at Cornell. Mr. Maslanka had apparently been at Cornell for several days leading up to the concert, holding workshops with CU Winds in order to provide feedback on their interpretation of his compositions, as well as to attend the performance. Between two songs, Mr. Maslanka was invited up to the stage to speak.

He struck me as an odd guy. According to Wikipedia, he’s 73 years old, which surprised me right now; I thought he looked to be in his 60’s. Once he was on the stage, he kept his eyes on the ground and spoke quietly about his collaboration with the CU Winds. He then started going into some details behind his thought process and his inspiration for composing lately. He presented the idea that the world is chaos and music is peace, although this is a very rough TL;DR. I think this is almost definitely a cliche, but considering that Mr. Maslanka is pretty old, maybe all the time he’s spent thinking has revealed to him that this cliche actually is the truth. I enjoyed the image he described afterwards, of music being water flowing from the Earth. I think this kind of visualization, especially when it’s provided by the composer of the piece being performed, is nice to have in mind when performing music. Back when I used to (try to) play piano, I found it helped me be more expressive when I read what the composer was thinking or what they were inspired by when they wrote the piece I was playing. It must have been an invaluable experience for everyone in CU Winds to have Mr. Maslanka come work with them.

the good, the bad, the bad, the ugly, the ugly and the ugly

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Before the movie began, I had wondered if it was based on true events. At the end (or was it the beginning?) there was that familiar line of text, “Based on a true story” or some variant of that. Doing a quick Wikipedia search right now reveals that the film is loosely based on true events. However, if the depiction of the level of violence is accurate, I’d be unpleasantly surprised. As the violence began ramping up in the film, I was reminded of reading online about the violence in Brazil (I’ve read grisly mentions of LiveLeak videos from Brazil, I’d recommend not Googling them). I couldn’t imagine living happily in a place like the film depicts.

One thing I found very interesting is how the most powerful gang leader in the city (Little Z) was depicted as being respected and even liked by the locals. Even though him and his gang peddled drugs and murdered, it seemed the people in the city gave more weight to the fact that he seemingly beneficently established rules that rape and robbery would not be tolerated in his “territory”. Perhaps because this kind of semi-organized crime is so normalized at this point in places like the city depicted in the film, people in these places just accept these crime lords and learn to look at them somewhat favorably.

This may seem an odd thing to focus on, but it stuck out to me because of a memory I have from Spanish class in high school. I lived in the southern tip of Texas in a city that shares a border with Mexico, where the majority of the population is Hispanic. Nearly everyone spoke Spanish, so the Spanish classes were not taken seriously at all, by neither the students nor the teachers. I ended up with an A in Spanish 1, 2, and 3, and I somehow don’t know how to speak Spanish. One distinct memory I have from Spanish class is when one day our teacher was talking about some iconic drug lord who was still at large in Mexico at the time. She related stories she’d heard of how he would appear unannounced in restaurants to have a meal. His goons would go around and collect everyone’s phones so that no one could call the police, and no one could leave while he was eating. After he was finished, people’s phones were returned and he would reportedly pay for the meals of everyone in the restaurant before leaving. The way she spoke of him stuck in my head, and I think of it every now and then. To me it seemed that she was actually praising him, and it seemed that other students shared her sentiment as they chimed in with their own stories of how magnanimous this guy was. I was appalled, and I was reminded of this as I was watching the film. GRF Tyler shared a Facebook post of a quote from a Brazilian man who grew up in a city like the one in the film, and even that gave off the vibe that the people in his city actually seemed to respect their crime lord for the little good that he did.

to wear or not to wear (the hijab)

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To begin, I don’t have any intention of arguing a point, I just wish to discuss what I saw and what I thought. ‘They Call Me Muslim’ is a short documentary (directed by some UC graduate student studying journalism) that portrays what are suggested as two seemingly opposite situations concerning the hijab and it’s symbolism as either expression or oppression.

In the first half, the context provided is France and it’s ban on wearing religious symbols in public schools, and the focus is on a girl who chooses to wear the hijab in order to practice her religion. Although she chose to begin wearing it at an early age, I wondered if she would have been made to wear it at some appropriate age if she hadn’t chosen to. Although this half of the documentary only showed the perspective of this one girl’s family, I think it’d be safe to say that different Muslim families in France would have varying opinions on enforcing that women wear the hijab. I believe it was some university scholar or government official being interviewed, who said that the policy sought to accommodate those who might choose not to wear the hijab. The scenario he proposed was that if some Muslim women wore the hijab, conservative Muslims would use them as examples to encourage women in their lives, who might not wish to wear the hijab, to do so. Someone mentioned afterwards that it was also stated that no Muslim women were invited to discuss this policy when it was being made. However, I felt that whether there is a policy or not, some issue concerning the hijab would be present, since it seems to be somewhat controversial.

In the second half, the focus is on a woman living in Iran who loosely follows the religious law that requires women to wear hijabs, not because she subscribes to Islam but rather only to abide by the law. Witnessing her lifestyle, it seems she doesn’t follow the religious laws established in Iran simply because she doesn’t consider herself a Muslim. From the perspective provided by the documentary, it seems that her freedoms are being infringed upon because of Iran’s theocracy. This woman isn’t the only case where Iran’s theocracy could be considered oppressive to women, as was seen recently in the Women’s World Chess Championship held in Iran. Some of the top women chess players in the world chose not to attend in protest, as they would have had to wear hijabs in order to compete.

In any case, I feel that if one believes that France’s policy be retracted, one should also think it appropriate for Iran to stop enforcing the hijab. In both cases, it seems clear that arguments can be made that rights are being infringed upon, whether religious or social.

fight me

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I read three or four of Chuck Palahniuk’s fiction books during high school and whenever the subject came up between me and my friend, he would urge me to read Fight Club. After reading a couple of his books, there’s a pattern that you can discern and the different stories start blurring together. Each story starts somewhat normal, and then oddities are introduced and a series of ridiculous events happen until the story devolves into chaos (with variation in ideas and themes, of course). I think that’s why I didn’t want to read Fight Club, as I’d heard enough about it and expected a similar experience to reading Palahniuk’s other books. As I was watching the movie this past Friday, I was surprised to find myself settling in to the reading-a-Palahniuk-book mindset I’d experienced maybe five years ago.

As for the movie itself, it stirred up some primal sense inside me and made my testosterone pump, as I’m sure it did for other guys in the room (Robert Boehlert). At times, it made me feel like punching someone and starting a fight. I didn’t act on these feelings, obviously, but the fact that the movie elicited this response from me was impressive. The themes mentioned by Dr. Hill were pretty blatant, and I couldn’t help but think that showing this movie to the wrong people at a time like this might spur them to actually incite violence, given our country’s situation. Considering the riots going on right now, I don’t think that it’s far-fetched to think that some of those people rioting might have been influenced by watching this movie at some point in their lives.