1.Documentary
I had my first meeting for post-production of last semester’s documentary. now titled “The Committee”. Only a handful of us students are continuing with the project, and this week we talked about starting another Kickstarter campaign to cover the cost of submitting the film to festivals, which we’re in the process of doing. It’s already been submitted for the College Television Awards and another whose name I can’t recall. We’re also working on getting screenings, so I’ll keep you up to date!

2.The world
What’s happening? Seriously. Website blackouts, protests, the circus that is the Presidential primary. I feel so distanced from these things, but they’re actually all quite close to home. Surrounded by opinions, I feel like I don’t have a good grasp of my own feelings about these things. I’ll figure it out with time. Sometimes I miss the days when I never paid attention to the news!

3.CFF
Here are some photos from this week…

Improv UKnighted performing at Natura. Here’s the article.

Improv UKnighted at Natura

Improv UKnighted at Natura

This guy is a professor at UCF and co-founder of Men’s Health Initiative. Here’s the article.

Michael Rovito

This article didn’t end up getting published for some reason, but this girl is a women’s studies minor who will be presenting her research about the importance of heritage in the world of Harry Potter, particularly how the magical genes tend to come from the women in Ms. Rowling’s work. Cool, right?

Rebecca Miles

4.Some beautiful music
It’s Tuesday! Keep on truckin!

Desktop/Internet Publishing: I’m not going to lie, my very first class of the semester was a disappointment. I was looking forward to this, since it is my final journalism class, but I found out that it contains students from a wide variety of majors and specialties, so what we are learning won’t always apply to me or be beneficial to my future career. I’ll learn how to use Microsoft Publisher, but it looks so similar to all the other Office software. Our professor has had a lot of jobs, but none of them have been desktop/Internet publishing. On Wednesday, we learned how to open a new document. And then we learn that text goes in text boxes. I feel this might be an infuriating class!

Cinematic Expression: Apparently, there was a sort of intro to cinematic expression that everyone in my class has taken…except me. This made me a little nervous, but I’m sure I’ll be able to handle it. The professor posted some notes from that class online for us, so I’ll be able to catch up and learn the vocabulary I’ll need. The part that makes me even more nervous is that we’ll all be put in groups, and throughout the semester, each group has to make three films: a 20 second film, a 30 second film, and a minute-long film. Those time constraints should make things interesting. I’ve been trying to come up with ways to tell a story in such a small amount of time. Luckily, I’ll be working with a friend from last semester’s Documentary class, and I know he’s awesome at shooting and not a lazy pants! Group projects are always better when you know you’ve got a good team.

Advanced Poetry Workshop: I considered taking Advanced Fiction instead of Poetry as my final creative writing workshop, but I’m glad I picked this. Poetry isn’t my greatest skill, but it is something that I would like to get better at, and it’s a great outlet for stories and ideas. It offers a different kind of freedom than fiction and nonfiction. The class is very small, and I like the professor, who taught my first poetry class. He’s a nice old man. My first poem is due on Tuesday, so I might share it if I like it enough!

Art of the Cinema: What I enjoy most about studying film is that it teaches me to use my brain while watching movies. That’s what this class is all about. On the first day, we watched a scene from Juno (great movie), and then went frame by frame through it, talking about the techniques used to create tension and reveal emotion. I noticed things in the scene that I hadn’t noticed before, and it made me appreciate the film and its creators all the more. Our professor said he would have us watch movies we aren’t likely to have seen in other film classes. Unfortunately, he didn’t give us a list of all the movies we’ll be watching (I want to know right now!), but I’m definitely looking forward to breaking down some cool films.

2.Losing Teeth
Abel drove me down to West Palm on Thursday night and I got my wisdom teeth ripped out of my face the next morning! It’s so strange to simply not remember any of it. The last thing I know, I was watching the Today Show’s 60 year anniversary and the surgeon was poking a needle into me. Then I don’t remember anything until I got home, and even that is groggy. Apparently, I was pretty loopy and Mom and Abel made fun of me! All in all, it hasn’t been a terrible experience. The anticipation was worse than the actual event. I got a little swollen and sore, but nothing I can’t live through. Abel was helpful to me — I felt very doted upon! I will admit that these days made me realize how much I like food that crunches!

Pudding and a smashed banana for lunch...mmm...

3.CFF
This week, I shot for two articles. One was at an alumnus’ business, where he and his crew fix broken smartphones and such. The other was with a theater student who has been nominated for awards through the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. It was a fun portrait session, and I have to say that theater students are much easier to shoot than non-theatrical students! Here’s the article. We had a good time, but unfortunately, none of the portraits made it to print. I’m bummed about it, but I’ll post them here so at least someone will be able to enjoy them.

Bryant Hernandez

Bryant Hernandez

Bryant Hernandez

4.Listening is an Act of Love
Finished it this week. The stories were great reads, and I felt an array of emotions while reading each one. I think the StoryCorps project is simply wonderful. Enough said. My next book is David Foster Wallace’s A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, which is a collection of his essays. I haven’t gotten into it yet, but I’m looking forward to it. His only work that I’ve read is the essay “Consider the Lobster,” so I don’t quite know what to expect, but he’s a big enough name in nonfiction to pique my curiosity.

Until next week!

By Amy Nucera

By Amy Nucera

2.Reading Lolita in Tehran
Finished the book this week. It was pretty enjoyable, and I’ve always found it good to read first-hand accounts from people who are native to cultures I hear a lot about. Iran is a bit of a hot topic these days, although I’d say that most of us know little of the country’s history. The book was a mixture of memoir and literary criticism, relating the real world of Iran’s political unrest and the characters’ personal struggles to the fictional worlds and characters in Lolita, The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, etc. I think one of the most interesting aspects of the book is how the narrator’s literature classes showed the foolishness of political extremism. A lot of her students were against the books she taught because they were “Western” and “decadent,” and they promoted a lack of morality that the Islamic Revolution in Iran denounced. But when you really read these books, you can see that just because the protagonist acts in a certain way doesn’t mean the author is promoting it. In fact, in many stories, the hero’s flaws cause his/her downfall, unless he/she overcomes them.

Basically, the book stressed the importance of fiction in our nonfictional world. Nafisi reflected that sometimes these fictional worlds seemed more real than her own. As I was reading this book back home in West Palm, I overheard someone say that they didn’t like to read fiction, because “you aren’t learning anything” when doing so. They said that in order to read fiction, they had to learn to be OK with not learning. Of course, I wanted to throw my book at them, but I’m not all that aggressive! Certainly, many frivolous books exist, and there is nothing to be learned from them. But I can’t imagine someone reading classic literature and NOT learning. I understand that everyone has different taste and such, but if you’re not learning from fiction, you’re not reading it right. /rant

Now I’m reading Listening is an Act of Love, which is a compilation of interviews done by the StoryCorps project. This project began in 2003, and it provides people with a place to talk to or interview people they love (or people they find interesting), records the conversation and gives one copy to the participants and one to the Library of Congress. The purpose is to get the stories of everyday Americans from the 20th and 21st centuries. It’s a neat project, and a neat book, but I’m going through it very quickly! Definitely check out the StoryCorps website, or listen to some of the stories on NPR’s Morning Edition.

3.Central Florida Future
This week I started as the CFF’s senior staff photographer, so I got to go to new places and see interesting things. Here are some of my first photos of the semester. This is what I get paid the big bucks for!

Chewy Boba Company (boba still makes me want to vomit).

Toubab Krewe at Plaza Live.

Galactic Funk at Plaza Live.

SkyWatch at Orlando Science Center. I saw the moon, Orion nebula, AND Jupiter!

The OSC Observatory.

***

Ready or not, my final semester is here! It’s true what they say: these things fly by too quickly. I’m hoping to make the most of my last little bit of time here at UCF, and of course my dear readers will get to hear all about it!

February

Miss UCF 2011, one of my shining moments as a Central Florida Future photographer, if I may say so myself! It was an interesting and scary experience in itself.

March

Visiting my Big Sister in the Big Apple

Doing a fashion shoot on the roof of the Math and Physics Building...and getting called into the Office of Student Conduct for it

May

Beautiful room mates!

My first photo published in the Observer. It helped me pass portfolio review!

June

One year with Abel!!

World Ballet Competition, one of my favorite Observer assignments

July

New glasses, new hairstyle, and feathers with Em and Kels

August

Elias and Bethany's wedding

October

Capoeira, and all my lovely and stressful Converged projects

Abel's birthday with Kirby

Making a documentary

November

Orlando Calling

December

A year and a half with Abel

Christmas in St. Augustine

Salt dough crafts with Uncle Joe (Em made all the tantalizing but fake desserts)

Uncle Joe

May you always face worthy challenges. Happy New Year!

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 7,000 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Cover image

A page from "Hugo Earheart," by Jake Parker

2.Cookies
I made up a recipe loosely based on another one, but I had to wing it a little for lack of certain ingredients. Here it is:

Amy’s vague recipe for vegan-ish coffee, almond, fudge cookies
Ingredients:
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup or so cocoa powder. I just dumped in what I had left .
1/4 cup instant coffee
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup canola or vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup almond milk, soy milk, water, whatever. I used half a can of Seattle’s Best vanilla latte, so the cookies weren’t vegan.
1/4 cup or more hot fudge
Some almonds and chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. In a large bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt, and cocoa powder. I used self-rising flour instead of using baking powder and salt. I do not recommend this. When mixed, make a little volcano in the middle, where you’ll pour the wet stuff.
3. In a small bowl, mix the sugar, oil, vanilla, milk, and instant coffee.
4. Pour the wet stuff into the volcano. Mix a little. Don’t overwork.
5. Add some chocolate and whatnot. Mix a little more.
6. Get a cookie sheet. Don’t grease it (really). Put 1 tbsp balls of dough about 1/2 inch apart. Squish them flat, because they won’t spread.
7. Stick the pan in the oven for about 5 minutes. After that, turn the pan 180 degrees. Let bake for about 4 minutes more.
8. Transfer to a wire cooling rack or wooden cutting board.
9. EAT.

3.The Office
For the past couple months, I’ve been rewatching The Office, just because it’s been a long time since I saw the first few seasons. I realized that 1)The first season isn’t as good as I remember, and 2)It starts going downhill around season 5. I love the show (or seasons 2-5 I guess), but I have to admit that the most recent season is incredibly disappointing. I don’t think I laughed at all during the newest episode I watched (“Mrs. California”). So, I hate to say it, but I’m probably done with the show now. I just watched the episode in season 6 when Jim and Pam finally get married, and I think that’s the best place to leave it. Of course, I’m curious about their second baby and all, but most likely not curious enough to watch any more new episodes. And after that unfortunate note, I’ll end this week with something nicer: the wedding scene in terrible quality!

A little background

Reading and writing played an important part of Jane Austen’s life from an early age. She collected some of her own childhood works, written sometime between the ages of 12 and 18, in what is now known as Juvenilia. The satire in these stories show that even at a young age, she had a good time poking fun at the culture of her time. Her first sophisticated early work was Lady Susan, a dark story that stands apart from her other novels. After that came Elinor and Marianne (Sense and Sensibility), First Impressions (Pride and Prejudice), and Susan (Northanger Abbey). None of these works were published until over a decade after they she wrote them, beginning with Sense and Sensibility in 1811. As far as writers go, she was very productive throughout the majority of her life. Unfortunately, due to her family’s tenuous financial circumstances and illness in the last year of her life, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were not published until after her death in 1817. It was also not until this time that Jane Austen’s identity as the author was revealed to readers. It’s been a while since my last bit of research into Austen’s life, so this was a nice refresher for me. I’d completely forgotten about her earliest works. Reading about her death makes me quite sad, but I am glad we have all her work available to us.

A lovely collection of Austen's novels published by Richard Bentley in 1833. They were sold at a 2010 auction for 3,360 pounds (about $5,237). I would have paid a lot more for these babies!

The Good

1.Coralie Bickford-Smith
Bickford-Smith is the senior cover designer for Penguin Books, so I have to like her. Penguin classic covers are almost always fabulous, and hers are no exception. She designed clothbound covers for a number of classics, including the works of Dickens, the Brontës, Carroll, Shakespeare, and of course Austen. She uses lovely patterns on these clothbound hard covers with a clean, elegant, and simple design. I love the muted colors.

2.Ruben Toledo
The debonair Toledo is an artist in New York who has had illustrations published in The New Yorker, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and The New York Times. He’s also done work for retail, CD covers, etc. The only Austen book he’s done is Pride and Prejudice, and he’s also done The Scarlet Letter, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Dracula.

3.Jessica Hische
It took a mild amount of digging to find out who designed the beautiful Barnes & Noble leatherbound classic series. The fabulous Ms. Hische is a designer and illustrator whose has created quirky and typographically enchanting works for everything from GQ to Golf Digest to Target to Tiffany & Co. to NY Magazine to Maryland SPCA to O magazine to…well, you get it. Here are her gorgeous leatherbound Austens designed for Barnes & Noble.

4.Jillian Tamaki
I wasn’t sure if I liked this one on first sight, but when I saw the work put into it, I had to appreciate it. Tamaki is an illustrator and cartoonist who has done work for pretty much every major publication you can think of. This particular project was for Penguin, and is unique in that she embroidered three book covers, including Emma. She also did The Secret Garden and Black Beauty. The joyful, bright colors and stitchiness make me wish I’ve read Emma, and isn’t that the point? Of course, every individual book isn’t hand-stitched, but according to Tamaki’s blog, the books are printed using a “sculptural-embossing technique that will emphasize the stitches.”

The full cover spread

Tomaki working on Emma. I nabbed this photo from her blog. Click to visit her there.

The Bad

1.

With what I can only describe as Disney-Princess-Barbie-style ugliness, Penguin has just lost a lot of respect from me. From the seemly subhuman plastic faces to the creepy smile on Emma’s face, to the way the characters just kind of fade into the background, these covers amaze me. I don’t know whether I should look away in terror or delve deeper in search of the answer to my pressing question: Why? Why do this to perfectly good books? Granted, Penguin’s also bird-themed children’s book publisher, Puffin, published them, so they’re aimed at younger audiences, whom I suppose should be literate. But at what cost? Children can appreciate good design, too!

2.Greetings from Spain

As for this…either Lizzy has hypothermia or this is Spain’s spoof of the novel, aptly titled “Pride and Poltergeists.”

3.

Aside from what is aesthetically bad, classics tend to suffer from design that depends on generic images, such as those below.

Sure, some of the books end in everyone getting happily married, but if that’s all you got from it, I think you need to try out some books at a lower reading level.

4.Inspired by Vampires

The success of Stephenie Meyer’s books has certainly influenced today’s young adult books, but does it have to change the perception classics as well? The above image (Tribeca Books) references modern young adult style, but it really has nothing to do with Persuasion. In a discussion of modern treatments of Jane Eyre, a fellow blogger noted:

“… as a designer and observer it pains me to see a disregard for the content within on book cover designs, which could make a potentially iconic work into just another meaningless, dispensable thing. I’ve always aimed to follow the dictum that content dictates style and not vice versa.”

I can’t agree more. Check out her blog to see some more egregious young-adulty book designs. But this does lead to what is possibly my favorite bad cover…

Not only does it LOOK like New Moon, but for those of you who don’t read Spanish, the text on the bottom right says, “Bella and Edward’s favorite books.” Now, I haven’t read Meyer’s books, so this claim could be true…or some Spanish publisher could be making up stuff to get these dusty old classics off the shelves. But you know, Edward and Bella’s story is pretty much the same as Elizabeth and Darcy. Right?

The…comics?

I don’t know how I feel about this. Actually, that’s not true, because at first glance I hate it. I love Austen, I love certain graphic novels…I’m not liking the combination. I mean, I love both peanut butter and eggplant parmesan, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna go put them together. These comics, adapted by Nancy Butler and published by Marvel, have gotten fairly decent reviews. My initial reaction is, how can one stay true to Austen while limiting her words to small squares of exposition and bubbles of dialogue? The beauty of Jane Austen’s work is in the voice. Reviewers have expressed issues with the art style of Pride and Prejudice in particular. Here are samples of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice:

Sense and Sensibility

Pride and Prejudice

The bit of Pride and Prejudice especially makes me feel that I would loathe the comic as a whole. Just look at the sisters. They look like comic book porn stars that got lost and accidentally wound up in Hertfordshire. One reviewer wrote that the art style can’t decide whether to be modern or 19th century, and I can see that conflict in the first couple pages. Plus, it looks nothing like the cover, which I find odd. Granted, the style of Northanger Abbey looks pretty cool, but I haven’t read the original, so I can’t properly judge it. If I see these in a book store, I’ll sit and test them out.

***

Whether or not I like how it’s presented, Jane Austen’s work has persisted some 200 years, and not for nothing. She was an amazing writer, both in her own time and ours. Her satire and comic perceptions of society remain relevant, and have found ways to impact generation after generation. The novels, stories, and letters she left for us to enjoy will always remain timeless.

I’ve signed up to continue working on the documentary as a zero-credit-hour independent study. A few other classmates will be doing this as well. This isn’t the last you’ll hear of the Johns Committee! What are the next steps for spring? We will be submitting the film to festivals and trying to make it more public. We will continue editing, and it will most likely grow larger. Something we wanted to include, but didn’t have time on the first cut, was more about present-day Florida teachers. We interviewed two homosexual teachers who haven’t been put into the film yet, as well as representatives from Broward County and Safe Schools. Stay on the lookout! You’ll hear more about this next semester.

Chuck Woods and Ruth Jensen (two Johns Committee survivors) meet for the first time.

Dr. Mills (professor/director) and Logan Kriete (producer)

2.Nonfiction Portfolio. It’s for real.
My final portfolio for nonfiction class ended up being 50-something pages! But that includes two drafts of two different stories, and a couple reflections, so it’s not a huge deal. I’m very pleased with how my two major pieces turned out, but several of the smaller stories I wrote for exercises and homework weren’t bad either. Overall, it was a successful semester as far as creative writing goes, and I’m glad. This was my second and final nonfiction class, and I’m sad to leave it behind. It’s definitely my genre of choice. I can’t post anything I wrote at the moment, because I’m in the process of submitting things to contests, and possibly some literary journals, and some of them get testy about a story being previously published, even if it is just on a blog. Maybe one day you’ll be able to read my stories…and in a real, published format!

3.Video project (again)
In case you missed it, here’s my final project for Converged Journalism:

Before my partner and I started the project, our professor told me that someone did a project on Pet Rescue by Judy every semester, and that he always had problems with them. There weren’t real stories or characters, too many sad dogs in cages, no adoption scenes, etc. I’m happy to report that Professor Speere was thrilled with our project, and told us it was the best Pet Rescue video he’d seen thus far. Huzzah! I couldn’t have done it without my partner, Lily, and Abel, who came out to the shelter one day and provided moral support, and is so chatty that he got the skittish volunteers to talk to us. Go team!

4.The obligatory “I think I’m not going to graduate” moment
It happened for about 20 minutes. After visiting an advisor (which is something you’re supposed to do throughout your college career…not just at the end), I learned that I need to get permission to substitute classes…I can’t just decide that it’s ok. Everything ended up working out, but there was a period of time when I was bad at searching for classes on UCF’s online scheduling program, and I thought there were either no journalism classes for me to take, or only Sports Reporting. I don’t know what would have been worse. Good thing Abel helped me realize my inept searching skills, and I found more classes!

5.Christmas!!!
Seriously, it’s my favorite holiday. It kicks other holiday’s butts. So, a couple roomies and I put up some decorations. It’s all very simple, but it’s also nice to see our house have a little Christmas cheer. I usually ger stressed out when I look around our house, because of its usual messiness, so this is a nice change!

Probably my favorite -- I wrapped up a painting!

We lad luau lanterns hanging up here for a very long time. I replaced them with ornaments.

The tree. It's in progress.

6.Coming soon…
Lots of fun stuff on the horizon, although at the moment I’m simply enjoying having nothing to do. I’ll be heading back home in a couple weeks, and then I’ll be spending Christmas in St. Augustine with the fam. I’m hoping to have lots of reading and crafting time during the break. Next semester (my last one!!!) I’m signed up for Online Publishing, Advanced Poetry Writing, Art of Cinema, and Cinematic Expression. I’ll be the Senior Staff Photographer at the Central Florida Future, and Vice President of Lambda Pi Eta (the communication honor society). I’m also going to try to be more social, so we’ll see how that turns out. I’m not much of a butterfly, socially speaking. I’m more like an awkward giraffe or something.

2.18 months!
Abel and I celebrated our 18-month anniversary this week. It was wonderful! As you can see in the photos below, we made a lovely gingerbread house, and then watched some funny episodes of The Simpsons together. On Saturday night, we tried out a new Italian restaurant (new for us), Anthony’s, in Downtown Orlando. I had the eggplant rollotini, and I found it pretty good, but nothing can compare with our all-time favorite Italian restaurant: Goodfellas. After that, we paid a visit to our favorite ice cream spot, 4Delights. Amazing as usual! We played Little Big Planet together when we got back to his house. Overall, it was a very lovely time!

3.Documentary
Editing is almost done! Our amazing editor, Aaron Hose will be completing the final touches on Monday, and then it’s premiere day on Tuesday night! Once again, here’s the Facebook event page. Everyone come! Seeing the editing process done by a professional has been enlightening. Aaron is truly a master of the craft, and he’s been able to take this film to the next level. I can’t wait to see the finished product!

4.A new recipe for this week
The Honors College staff Christmas party was this week, and I tried out a new recipe for the potluck: Curried Couscous with Vegetables. I’m happy to say that it’s delicious! I’m also happy to say that I got to bring home leftovers. The recipe is from Better Homes and Gardens. I had to use a gluten-free brown rice couscous, since it was the only curry-flavored boxed couscous I could find. I could have made my own, but…whatever. The sweetness of the raisins and onions is a good balance to the spiciness of the curry seasoning, and the almonds on top add a nice crunch to this hearty meal. Try it out and enjoy!

5.This week I’m listening to…
The Mountain Goats! No, I haven’t gotten their new album yet, BUT Life of the World to Come has been playing in my car for the past three days, and I have to say I was hit once again by how amazing it is. I hated the Goats when I first heard them, and even now I have to give each album a few listens before it sinks in. But after that point, I find I’m always in love with their music. Take a listen:

*note: The Mountain Goats aren’t a Christian band. They just thought the Bible was cool and made an album about it. Check out the lead singer’s interview on Colbert Report for more fun info.

2.Thanksgiving
It was great! The fam got together in Winter Garden, including my dearest Abel. I always have a wonderful time with my family, which is why I love Thanksgiving and Christmas so much. Telling stories, catching up, eating great food. Seriously, other holidays should just give up.

Emily Crocker

Em and I made pepper corn chowder and a veggie casserole that ended up being mostly polenta and beans.

Bonding over Skyrim

3.The Muppets
Abel and I saw The Muppets on Saturday. It was a fun watch, so I recommend it. Amy Adams always makes me smile, so it was nice to see her in this. The movie was self-referential and poked fun at itself enough to justify the random musical numbers and puppet-people. I give it an Amy Score of 8/10. We had a good time, so I think I’ll have Abel watch Muppet Treasure Island with me sometime. It’s a classic!

4.Zach Williams
Free Christmas album! I love him.