In All Seriousness

So I'm running, its only been about a mile and I've got a mile to go. I'm being careful because I'm wearing new shoes. In fact its my first run in my new shoes. I'm not really sure which building at Penn plays chimes, but at 6pm they go off in a ruckus. Every time I hear them they are a different song. Tuesday last week was All God's Creatures Great and Small. Wednesday America the Beautiful. Thursday, the theme from Chariots of Fire. 

Here I am running down hill through Penn's campus with a bunch of summer students and Professors walking past, and what song has to come on? Choriots of Fire. A huge part of me wanted to start running in slow motion. Instead I was laughing so hard I almost had to stop running. All I could think about what everyone suddenly breaking out in slow motion. I got scowled at my some Older Man, who obviously did not get the joke.

Saturday I go to a 5k race with some friends. 5k means 3.1 miles. First of all it was a small race and I find it funny that I was the first lady across the finish line. Second the only person who actually ran the full race was the leader, because the rest of us got lost. And perhaps the weirdest thing was that the leader, ran in 16mins and was barefoot. And what am I thinking about the whole race? Chariots of Fire of course.

Yesterday I take a long run, 6miles to the Art museum and back. The whole time I'm concentrating on my running and my new shoes. I'm trying to pace myself and not get hit by cars. It was actually a great run (even through I had to walk about a mile of it in the middle, and my legs felt like rubber for the last 2 miles). I'm not even thinking about Chariots of Fire. It has not crossed my mind for 2/3s of the run. And then I pass this couple (college age), and what do they start singing? Yep, you got it.

So this morning while I'm planning out my running schedule for the next week, leading up to a 10mile run this Saturday. I'm really hoping that I don't hear Chariots of Fire again for a while. Then I check my email, and guess what's coming via Netflix...

Movies

I like Movies. I like watching them, watching trailers, reading about them, and mostly just enjoying them. However, I also like reading, I like novels, manga, comics, and short stories. Why is it that everything that is written must some how end up as a Movie?

I just read on Wired that they releasing Tin-tin, in movie format (in 3D of course). I'm not actually sure when I first learned about Tin-Tin, its a Comic Strip by a Belgian Artist. Its got my sense of humor (dry and sarcastic), has interesting characters and has a long history. So the fact that they are making it into a movie makes me a little sad and a little excited. Sure somethings are amazing on film. Yet most of my favorite films were not books beforehand. Star Wars, might have a lot of novels attached to the franchise but all of them were written after to movies came out, or are not related directly to the movies.

TinTin should be interesting free of its short comic strip beginnings. But I'm worried that we have somehow lost the ability to create new movies that are free of the constraints of a book. Well good movies. There are some things that do not translate well into film, and somethings that just don't have the same impact in written word. There are very few film writers/directors able to create something new and interesting, like J.J. Abrams.

There are three books that I am sure will never be made into a movies. C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy. There are several reasons for this. First until there was probably not the ability to do it in any live action way. Second there is no way that they could do the second book without really messing up the story or without getting a XXX rating (something about the characters being naked for most of the story because their are in a new Eden). And Thirdly because it is so strongly Christian.

Of course I should finish up this rant by stating that even though I am completely annoyed and elated by the number of super hero movies coming out this summer, I'm still going to see most of them. I may not see them in the movie theater, but Netflix makes sure I watch all the ones I missed. If only I had the ability to finish the stories I've started, maybe one of my novels will end up as a movie...Then I could make sure they did it right.

Everyone Wants a Romance

(sometimes I really wish that I could write music, or at least play the piano to go along with the things I write. This started as a poem, but it is obviously meant to be a song. I kind of thing of it as slow and bluesy.)

Everyone wants a romance
Everyone wants an easy love
Everyone wants the feeling
no one wants the work

Every girl wants someone handsome
every boy wants someone beautiful
Every one wants the feeling
no one wants the work

Chorus:
If love was easy,
oh then love, what would be the point?
If love was easy,
oh, would we still be in love?

All I wanted was a romance
All I needed was love
all I wanted was that feeling
But no one told me to work

All you were was perfect
all you were was mine
all we had was a feeling
but no one told us to work

Chorus:

Bridge:
Lets bunker down, do the hard work
maybe baby you and me can last
maybe baby you and me will kick the norm
and end up with something that lasts

Still everyone wants a romance
And No one wants to work
Everyone wants an easy love
And its easy to love and leave
oh ya, its easy to love and leave

Chorus

School Reports to Company Reports

Alright so your in middle school. You have to do a report on a country, a person, or a book. First step, how do you present the idea? Poster Board? Check. Binder with clear protective sheets and colorful tabs? Check. Report? Check, but it could have actually been written better. Who cares, you have really nice pictures, a great timeline, well organized binder with tons of little extra facts. Hopefully your teacher will over look all the writing part.

Yes I had to do a lot of reports all through out school. College was filled with research papers (one 20 plus pages). Nice looking Poster Boards replaced by Power Points. Wonderfully organized binders with lots of pictures replaced with a scene dressing of what a Sanskrit play would look like. (Yes I did a report on movement in Sanskrit plays, and yes I actually enjoyed it). Of course by college my writing had gotten a lot better.

Skip forward to today. I'm creating 5 binders containing all the reports of the company (and more). The reports are ones that I have been putting together over the last few weeks. Part of me has probably reverted back to the Elementary or Middle school kid who wanted to make everything very colorful with lots of pretty pictures. The other part of me is wondering how a 20 page paper on Sanskrit theatre turned into Marketing analysis. Three of my fingures have paper cuts, two of which bled, one on a paper, which I then had to reprint. Talk about killing trees...

I'm sure all of my teachers and my mother would get a kick out of telling me that school is suppose to be a practice for real life, real grown-up life. And its not that I don't realize the importance of the reports that I'm organizing, nor their need to be organized. I guess it just reminds me of all the reports, done at last minute on the kitchen table of my parent's house. My mother telling me sternly that I should have gotten this done earlier, while she fixes my spelling. My father is helping me glue down pictures and my sister is coloring in a map that I would finish on the bus the next morning.

Wow do I feel grown up.