Battle

BATTLE OF THE CLASSES!!!! Now, before I go into details about my opinions on battle, let me explain what it is in the first place, for those of you living under a rock. Battle of the classes is an event where each of the grade and faculty compete in various events such as hallway decorating and races. he grade with the most wins at the end wins Battle.  Let's just stop and think about this for a second, HOW CAN A LITTLE FRESHMAN BEAT A SENIOR. I mean, seriously. One time I think I saw one senior eat 3 freshmen for lunch! Aside from the fact that seniors win, or eat freshman trying, battle is a fun experience and an excuse for all of the kids in each grade to unite towards a common goal, winning. This describes my experience during battle. I became closer with my friends, reconnected with some old ones and made some new ones. I would like battle more than once a year but, hey, that's what makes it special.

I wonder what it would be like to have a STAC Battle?  We could have the grades compete against each other for a winner.  The competitions would consist of most liminal drawing, most sublime tug of pathos vs ethos and name that Yugoslavian director. Maybe next year.

Script Writing

In between my script writing, I wanted to share some thoughts. Script writing is very different from writing a short story, because you have to tell the story through actions and dialogue. With that said, you have to be very specific as to what the characters are feeling, doing, saying and even thinking just to get that perfect moment on film. In scripts, in addition to directing the actors, you have to direct the filmographers and say which shots you want them to film, and when you want the shots to be filmed. Further,  you have to edit the shots and add transitions to each of the scenes. This sound exhausting, because it is. I feel like at the beginning I was naive to think that the process would be so easy. Boy, how my world crumbled. Now I realize and appreciate how much time, effort and thought is put into movies. I still have a long way to go to complete my own movie, but now that I know what I am in for. The process will go much more smoothly from now on and you will see a movie, hopefully, by the end of this century!

NYSSMA

Whoever has done NYSSMA raise you hand.  Well, there are too many hands. How about this, who has never done NYSSMA raise your hand. Nope, no one, wait there is one hand in the back of the room. You, you in the back of the room. What is your name? Come on, don't be shy. Why have you never done NYSSMA? You mean to tell me that you have never played an instrument?  Oh, you have played an instrument but never did NYSSMA?  Is that true?  Is that possible?  How can that be?  You are first trumpet in band and you never performed a piece for NYSSMA?  Can you do that?  Is that allowed?  Is that even possible?  Do you know it is against the rules?  Aside from that, you miss out on practicing one piece for months to get it perfect, ignoring all other aspects of your instrument, for the goal of getting a good grade on  a pointless test.  Isn't that something you would like to experience?  No? Did you say no?  It doesn't matter what a NYSSMA judge thinks of you?  I am really sorry, but I  don't understand.  Succeeding without ever going to NYSSMA and getting a college scholarship to top it off?  I don't think the private tutors, music shops, and the NYSSMA association will appreciate that attitude.  Wait, where are you going?  Get back here! You can't leave.  Oh, you thought this was a DECA meting.  Well then, have a nice day.

THING

MAJOR

My major area of emphasis for Q4 is writing with some filming . That is where I am going to apply the majority of my time and energy.

I am working toward a finished product. I am exploring writing as an editor and editing as a writer.  I am also looking at my writings from a filmmakers point of view to see how the end product will actually be received.

I think an end result will be to make me totally hate my work but strive to continue on to make it better.

I am working alone on my writing but am looking forward to collaborating on a film or writing piece.

My community is STAC.  I am psyched to be working with a group of people as passionate about the arts as I am.

I am here and I will get to there, no matter how long it takes.

Five criteria that should be used to evaluate my work is?

1.     Quality- the most important aspect of the written work;

2.     Detail – without this element works would be deemed vanilla and somewhat boring;

3.     Message (have I conveyed a message clearly)- I always try and convey a clear message but what is clear to me is not always clear to the others who read my works;

4.     Is the work outside of my initial comfort zone-YES as this is what I am pushing myself to do;

5.     Is the work product entertaining and fun – not always but I try to make it so, like ITSA;

MINOR

My minor is filming.

I chose this as my minor because it goes hand in hand with writing and I find it fascinating.

It will be useful to me because the world revolves around all different aspects of film- from the serious to comedic, entertaining to informative.

It will be fun because film is a different form of expression.

I am starting think about the world through a lens and start to film

I hope to get to film very soon

I want to read the official biography of Douglass Adams;

http://www.amazon.com/Wish-You-Were-Here-Biography/dp/0345476514

COMMON CORE STANDARDS ASSIGNMENT

Austin Katz                                                                                                     4/11/13

STAC

COMMON CORE STANDARDS ASSIGNMENT

            Prior to the third quarter, I had a revelation.  My writing is mechanical, redundant, boring, lacks flow and organization.  This shocking eye opener was tough.  I was left with two choices, quit or get better.  I choose to try to get better.

            The first thing I noticed about my writing was that I usually expand my sentences with unnecessary words and my essays with unnecessary sentences. While thinking about this, I sought out in the third quarter to write more minimally. It was hard at first. I was always taught to expand and add.  What I thought of as additional insight or descriptive adjectives was just fluff and filler.  Quality over quantity should be the prevailing concept with word minimum or maximums as a guideline rather than a rubric.  But alas, this is high school and this is a learning experience for me, and I am striving to be the best writer that I can be.  Short, sweet, to the point, while still getting the point across to my audience, is what I strive for. 

            Surprisingly, blogging has helped in this writing endeavor.  At first glance, blogs appear to be a bit rambling, non grammatical, and open ended.  In actuality, they are fun and educational.  The issue with blogs, for me, is that it is not easy to come up with something different to blog about numerous times a week.  It is not so hard to write about things I like, such as food, all the time. “I am finished with my homework and such, but before I make myself a victory peanut butter and jelly sandwich (food of the g-ds) I have to blog. I can hear my stomach grumbling so I will do this quickly  (I promise stomach). I finished my homework (we established that) I practiced drums and I put finishing touches on my questions. That is pretty much it....... bon appetite!!!” (Katz 1/29/13) After this blog I was told, not so gently, to move along and blog about other topics.  “This is a waste of my time. I don't care about your sandwiches. I care about what you are working on.”

            I had to stop writing about what I ordered, "Ok, what kind of cookie do you really want?” she asked.  "Chocolate chip, no wait, white chocolate chip", I answered”, (Katz 1/19/13) based upon this forceful nudge.  I had to learn to expand my blogs. 

            Slowly I stepped out of my comfort zone.  Writing about food led to writing about people I met or just saw on a billboard.  “Today I will be taking about the theme good vs evil or villain or a saint. The above is a billboard that I saw in the city a while back. I thought it was interesting, so I took a picture. It got me thinking about how history is written and based upon that, who we think of as good or bad. We all know that history is written in the perspective of the victors.   But what about our modern leaders?  How will they be portrayed and will they be portrayed differently by different groups who have different perspectives?” (Katz 3/11/13)

            Sometimes I blogged about the weather and other times about colors of clouds or what I thought of a television sitcom.  I even blogged about cartoons.  “Adventure Time as a silly cartoon about a boy and his magical talking dog who go on adventures in the land of Ooo. What you are thinking is what I also thought at first, so I started watching it. As I really got into the show, I started noticing weird objects around Ooo.” (Katz 12/5/12)

            It is at this point I must make a confession.  As I have hinted in the prior paragraphs, I wrote blogs that I did not publish.  In trying to write about other topics, I was so out of my comfort zone that publishing the “new me” was just too difficult.  I acknowledge that part of me is afraid of getting laughed at or receiving negative criticism, but I also had to come to the very grown up realization that I can’t learn if I don’t try and personal growth comes from trying many different things. One blog that I did not post was about the magic of snow.  “It is snowing like crazy outside.  The snowflakes are coming down like magical cotton candy at a summer street fair.  I am watching the snow thinking about when I was younger.  Snow meant no school (which I still like) and friends sliding down the huge “mountain” at the high school.  I loved that time with my friends.  Everyone always came to my house for hot chocolate and cookies and playing video games.  I don’t get to see those guys anymore as we have all moved in different directions.  It’s sad how things have to change.”  I started to publish this blog but felt it was too emotionally revealing so I wimped out.  I won’t make the same mistake this quarter. I promised myself that I would start opening up this final quarter of the year, and I have. “I love to write. Period end of story. Now I am happy. I can end right here, but no, I have not said anything yet. I have not expressed my feeling of the first warm breeze after a cold winter, or the first bite of fresh sushi, when I am hungry or being a part of cheering fans, at a Yankee game. Without words to describe critique or vent, I would have to resort to drawing or fighting. And given my unique artistic ability, I would have to fight, as my art may be interpreted as insulting.’  ( Katz 4/7/13) Sometimes sharing takes a bit of time to get used to, but without writing, experimenting and expressing, myself, I know I can never grow as a writer.

            Getting back to the “filler, I have thought of various ways to cope with this problem. One obvious way is to cut out the filler and expand the meat. This is extremely difficult, because most of the time it is difficult to tell filler from meat, (just ask McDonalds, I further apologize for the food metaphors).  For example, in the blog Its that time again, I wrote”  Time to dream about bread and watching matzo crumble between your fingertips. If you find yourself in a Seder follow this Jew's guide to Passover.... the more you suffer the better.”  (Katz 3/26/13) The blog went on from here but it could have stopped right there.  The filler was ok but not needed. 

              Another method is to stop in the middle of writing, go back to a previous point and ask, what am I trying to say? This will lead to erasing what I said and adding the new, slimmed down material in. This is also difficult, however, because what if the new material that was added is bad and what I erased was actually good. I learned this lesson in the writer’s workshop.  The assignment was writing about an embarrassing moment.  I started to write about an embarrassing incident, I really did, but not one came to mind.  This was not the case of having a moment I refused to share, or being in denial of something horrible.  I truly had nothing.  That got me thinking about the fact that I was hungry and really wanted a burrito (back to “comfort food”).  The end product was a 7 page paper entitled An Embarrassing Day.  It was the story of me and in my quest for a burrito and how embarrassing things kept happening to me, like my pants splitting and my books falling all over the floor and getting mud splashed all over me from a speeding car.   I enjoyed the workshop but believe I singlehandedly convinced the graduate student not to go into teaching.   He did leave me with one criticism which was that I should name the paper “Search For the Burrito”.

            After the writing workshop, I decided to go back to really old school and not only outline but do a map of an essay before I write anything. I would then ask myself a series of difficult, very teacher-like questions such as, what is my purpose, what is the point of saying this or that , or not saying something else. The map would provide the skeleton of the essay, where the meat can sit later. Filler then becomes the skin to hold the essay together.  Interestingly, Twitter was helpful in this regard.

            Twitter was a new medium that I forced myself to start.  I was already blogging so did not want to do this as well, as I was not sure what the point was.  Despite my hesitation I went forward.  In my twitter narratives, it has to be just the meat, no filler (unlike KFC).  In contrast to blogs, and certainly essays, Tweets are very short, and to the point.   Tweets, therefore, are extremely difficult to write because the twitter narrative is line-by-line tweets of a story you write as you go along. Tweets are both good and bad in that respect.  I usually do not know what my tweet ideas will be until they pop into my head before, during or after I tweet them, thus making it hard to tell what is fluffy and what is not fluffy. For example, in the story I have been tweeting, the excitement of seeing what will pop into my head and come next overpowers my other thoughts of editing my words “Like a vacuum space sucked him out of the ship and into the emptiness of space
.No he felt the walls and pinched himself. It definitely was not. In a flash a window opened..”  (Katz Tweet) I know I can’t wait to see what happens next!

           

            The assignment that is the most fun for me is my writing of the Inside the Starving Artist (ITSA) articles.   Started by my brother Alex, ITSA is a really fun way of expressing an alternate ego voice created by me. Each quarter I am challenged to go to Chez Cheese and talk about anything from Chagall to Hitchcock.  The ITSA articles are meant to be funny, informative and provide incite about me.  Although I usually like the end product, the construction is very difficult at times.  Fluff and filler become one as fiction and reality are blurred.  For example, in my last ITSA, I was riding on a train to Mt. Rushmore as Mr.  Thornhill from North by Northwest.  Last quarter I gave a review of Chagall’s paintings and prior to that I was having lunch and looking at the inside/outside world of two STAC students, Michelle and Sarah. ITSA allows me (thankfully) to use my voice, but I am often concerned I use it to the point where the article becomes boring or without purpose or meaning. 

            I have also been working on my script, whose title has changed so many times that it is now just called script.  I would say that this project is essays, blogs, twitters and ITSA’s all rolled into one large…something, Scripts are really difficult, and underappreciated.  Actors go on stage and do their thing.  Either you love or hate their performance, but no one argues that a bad script leads to a bad show.  It all starts from the written word.  I find that I first have to have an idea of a plot, then the characters, setting, time period, location, and actors to play the parts. After that I start to write the script.  I then reread the masterpiece I have written, only to promptly delete it all and start again.  I could have a script bigger than Game of Thrones by now, but sadly, it seems to me more like Cat in the Hat.  I am really working on this!

            I want to end this retrospection, critique, and reflection, on a curious note.  In my last blog I ended with the immortal words, “the pen is mightier than the sword” (which few know was taken from Edward Bulwer-lytton’s play from the 1800’s, , Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy) .   In looking  into who has reviewed my blogs, I saw I had “hits” from Russia and Germany.  This would mean that  I single handedly united foreign countries through my blogs, so the answer is yes, the pen is mightier than the sword.  Maybe I should send my blogs to North Korea, but maybe it would just make them hungry.

                                                            Works Cited

“ Cookies with Studying” Katz, Austin. "Life the Universe and Everything, With Austin Katz." Life       the Universe and Everything, With Austin Katz. N.p., 19 Jan. 2013. Web. 12 Apr. 2013.                       <http://lifetheuniverseandeverythingwith.blogspot.com/>.

“Dealing With being Jewish” Katz, Austin. "Life the Universe and Everything, With Austin Katz." Life the Universe and Everything, With Austin Katz. N.p., 3 March. 2013. Web. 12 Apr. 2013.              <http://lifetheuniverseandeverythingwith.blogspot.com/>.

Finished Katz, Austin. "Life the Universe and Everything, With Austin Katz." Life the Universe and                   Everything, With Austin Katz. N.p., 29 Jan. 2013. Web. 12 Apr. 2013.            <http://lifetheuniverseandeverythingwith.blogspot.com/>.

“Good vs Evil” Katz, Austin. "Life the Universe and Everything, With Austin Katz." Life the Universe and Everything, With Austin Katz. N.p., 11 March. 2013. Web. 12 Apr. 2013.          <http://lifetheuniverseandeverythingwith.blogspot.com/>.

“ My First New Post” Katz, Austin. "Life the Universe and Everything, With Austin Katz." Life the Universe and Everything, With Austin Katz. N.p.5 7 Dec. 2012. Web. 12 Apr. 2013.          http://lifetheuniverseandeverythingwith.blogspot.com/.

“Writing” Katz, Austin. "Life the Universe and Everything, With Austin Katz." Life the Universe and           Everything, With Austin Katz. N.p., 7 Jan. 2013. Web. 12 Apr. 2013.     <http://lifetheuniverseandeverythingwith.blogspot.com/>.

writing

I love to write. Period end of story. Now I am happy. I can end right here, but no, I have not said anything yet. I have not expressed my feeling of the first warm breeze after a cold winter, or the first bite of fresh sushi, when I am hungry or being a part of cheering fans, at a Yankee game. Without words to describe critique or vent, I would have to resort to drawing or fighting. And given my unique artistic ability, I would have to fight, as my art may be interpreted as insulting. Without art, we are not so different from animals. We would be fighting each other without any other outlet to fill our emotions with. And to end with a geeky quote "the pen is mighter than the sword".

To Read or Watch, That Is the Question

Should I read Game of Thrones or GoT?  I mean I like Lord of the Rings, Hunger Games, and Percy Jackson adventures.  They all have in common the idea of the protagonist going on a life changing journey.  I have the books in the house, as well as the episodes on HBO. I don't want to start, because I know I wont be able to stop. Then I will get to book 5, which I heard is a real cliff hanger ad have to wait at least another year for book 6 and who knows how long for book 7. I hate waiting for books. I had to wait for the Harry Potter books and the anticipation almost killed me. I wanted to know who lives and who dies. I already know many of the sayings from GoT like  "Winter is coming" and "What is dead can never die". But, do I really want to commit to another book series? I won't watch the HBO series until I read the books, but I really want to see them. So, there I my answer, GoT here I come.

a blog post #originaltitle

Eating Ralphs for the first time after the long, cold Russian/Arctic winter, gave me the idea that life is like Ralphs ices. You can get the good flavors or the bad ones, but it will always be cold and never filling, similar to the "cards" you get in life.
Here is what I mean.
I walked into the store and almost fell upon 3 guys sitting on the floor.  I thought that was odd, but, undaunted, proceeded forward.  There were three really cute girls asking me what I wanted.  Focus, I thought, ices, is what I am here for.  I said I wanted a big tub of ices for the weekend.  Then I was asked what flavors.  I could not decide.  I mean, how can I chose one flavor over another?  That would not be fair to the flavors I didn't choose and isn't that discrimination?
Now, the three random guys are off the floor asking for ices.  I waited until they were done, mostly to see if they were going to do another random act.  But, they ordered and paid, and left.  Boring.  Now back to me.  I had to make a decision.  No, I thought.  I will not make a decision, or a choice.  I will make many.  I asked if I was limited to a certain amount of flavors, and was told to go for as many would fit.  Great!  Stunned with my revelation of freedom I boldly said, "VANILLA"!  What? I said the most boring flavor of them all.  Why did that come to mind first?  Safety?  Habit?  All the girls started to laugh and then offered up all of their personal favorites, like peanut butter and birthday cake.  Not my personal favorites but how could I say no?  Tightly packed and full to the brim, my container sealed, I paid and left.
Now I thought about what I did.  I got great flavors, but many of them were not really what I wanted.  I also would probably not be able to tell them apart as they were all now mushed together.  This was a life lesson.  I will eat my ices, some spoonfuls of yummy deliciousness, and others not so much, but I will always have room for more, so I await my next adventure.