Our annual family gathering on Christmas day has become one of the last remaining traditions that our extended family continues to honor each year. As our group has grown it's become more difficult to orchestrate these large gatherings, but I think we'd all agree that without the holiday we might go the entire year without ever seeing everyone. Growing up you start to realize just how few and far between moments like this really are.
Last Christmas I got a Flip Cam and had asked for it specifically because I wanted an easier way to capture home videos. In between dinner, energetic games of Pictionary, and one too many glasses of wine I managed to capture a nice sampling of our family gathering from that December 25, 2010. With my Flip Cam at the ready, I guess we'll see what pans out this year.
Earlier this week I finished reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky and wanted to talk a bit about my thoughts on the book and what the experience of reading it was like. I've kept this spoiler free so you can check it out for yourself.
Wallflower is an interesting read, saturated in all of the heavy coming of age experiences that you might expect a teenager to be privy to. The central character is Charlie, who shares his high school life in the form of letters addressed to the reader (us) - an anonymous person known through a friend of a friend. It's an interesting concept that gives the book a realism and casualness that makes you believe Charlie is real kid.
I'm 27, and although the book is bound to be a more profound read for those in high school, I found myself constantly reflecting on my own stories and the people I grew up with. That's the charm in Wallflower. High school is messy, you don't really know who you are yet, but you're so eager to grow up. Charlie is an outcast, who's awkwardness is continually cringe worthy. He's also a bit too heavy on the crying, which I felt was a bit disingenuous the more it seemed to happen.
The story takes place in the early nineties, which I found refreshing considering the lack of Internet and cell phone drama. I remember going home after school and feeling separated from what was going on - that's not really the case anymore. The letters Charlie writes help to create a blunt recollection of events that he either doesn't understand yet or that he's contextualizing for the first time. He befriends a couple of high school seniors who essentially give him a crash course in growing up. I liked the fact that reading the book felt like you were in on the thought process - a kind of behind the scenes treatment to the actual story that was inspiring the letters.
There's also some pretty heavy (if not a bit stereotypical) themes in terms of how family life, suicide, sex, and drugs are all weaved into the mix. The fact that Charlie is so passive in how deals with them actually make these themes biting enough to seem fresh. Charlie is always striving to give things more meaning or value, but still couldn't seem to overcome his lack of social awareness. It actually served to make the book a bit more poetic while endearing us to Charlie's circumstance.
Overall, the book was kind of messy and scattered; an every-teenager story dotted with heavy plot points left with open ends. And I think that's fitting. High school in retrospect is a blur and there are key defining moments that we all use to give it meaning after the fact. Even in the small window of a year that Wallflower takes place in I think that's still true. In high school we spend so much time trying to find out who we are, what we want to do, where we want to be and go, that part of the experience is just embracing the confusion for the sake of trying to be happy in the midst of everything.
I'm glad high school is behind me, frankly. But, if you want to be taken on your own nostalgia trip The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a great book to do it with.
On a side note, this book is also going to be released as a film in 2012 starring Logan Lerman and Emma Watson. I always love comparing books to the movies that follow them, and this one is going to provide some pretty interesting arcs if they can pull it off correctly. I'll have to write a follow-up in the new year.
It's really exciting to look back at the work you did in film school and think, "this is actually still pretty awesome". There are a handful of stop motion shorts that I made in the winter of 2004 in an animation class that I haven't ever thought too much about because I can't watch them. I don't have a projector for one, but the splicing and film is actually pretty rough and might get destroyed in a projector as it is.
One of the first posts I made on this blog was about my Lost Animation and the backgrounds that I'd created for it. It was in reference to this project, Over at Grandpa's which was the final short I made in that film class. After writing about and sharing the film strip that I left with Dave I thought that I could probably capture a lot of my old film strips in images to share what pieces of my past projects looked like.
The premise of this short was that the grandpa gets shocked when changing a light bulb, causing him to dance around his house, and then his wife catches him. It was only about 2 minutes long mind you, but it was meant to be pretty fast paced. Some of the frames below show him mid-dance move, including some quality voguing. It's fun to look at stuff like this even just to remind yourself that you actually did it. Despite the fact that it's remained tucked away in a box, I feel proud that I finally found a way to share a bit more of it.
