O.R 15

I changed my mind about reading the Gossip Girl series again when some books cought my eye in the library. I picked up two, It's Kind of a Funny Story and The Barcode Tattoo. I have already started reading It's Kind of a Funny Story. It is about a teenage boy who is having some problems. I know everyone has problems being a teenager, but this boy, named Craig Gilner, has some serious ones. So far, Craig has gone to his phychiatrist. In the meeting, Craig expressed how everything was so hard. One of the only things he takes joy in is... I know it's weird...going to the bathroom because it is so easy. Craig dreams about how easy it was the last time he was happy.... when he was four. So far, this book seems pretty cool. However, I'm hoping it will get a little more interesting.

O.R 14

GOOD NEWS! Summit can proceed with the New Moon movie! I am already super exited! Robert Pattinson <3 says that although he won't be in it all that much ): it is his favorite and he is really looking forward to it. He says he can't wait to do the scene towards the end where he attempts to reveal himself, which is pretty much suicide for him. For those of you who perfer Jacob to Edward, you should be pretty happy, Taylor Lautner(Jacob) will have a much larger role in this movie than the last. New Moon has werewolves, motorcycles, vampires and so much more. I just have one question, WHEN WILL IT COME???

O.R 13

I have read the Gossip Girl series before, but I wasn't aware they were in a certain order. So I have decided to read them again. I just started with the first one and so far, the story has just been introducing characters left and right. Blaire, Nate, Chuck, Serena. These teens live in New York with pretty much everything they could want in their reach. As long as they keep their public image, they can have anything. Money, booze ect.. But when you can have everything, there is bound to be drama. Serena has returned from a far off school, much to the dismay of her former bff, Blaire who had Nate all to herself while Serena was gone. But now that she's back, who will he choose, Blaire or Serena?

O.R 12

Over Thanksgiving break, I went down to Iowa ( where EVERYONE goes to party) and continued reading Twilight. After finishing it in one day, I moved onto the fourth one because one of my friends was borrowing it and I had left the third one at home. I also finished that one in one day. Since I don't want to ruin anything for people who have not read the book or seen the movie, I'll just tell you about why I think so many teenage girls are being attracted to the Twilight phenomenon. The obvious reason is: Edward Cullen. In case you didn't know, Edward is a vampire. What draws people to Edward is that they seem to know that it is wrong to love a vampire, you know the saying:the forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest. Another reason is that I think some people long for someone like Edward is because they want someone, outside of their family, to love them as Edward loves Bella, and to protect them at all costs.

O.R 11

I've seen the movie, as so many have, I loved it... But what did others think? I decided to check out some reviews for Twilight. Author for USA TODAY, Claudia Puig, says that Twilight had"questionable casting, wooden acting, laughable dialogue and truly awful makeup". I think I can agree a bit with the laughable diolougue. There were some very..um...interesting quotes. But for the rest I disagree. There was one thing however that I didn't particularly enjoy. The music. Something about it just didn't appeal to me. Funnily enough, Puig didn't mention it. Overall, Claudia thought it was a bad movie. Although I disagree, one part of her review stuck out. She said that "Director Catherine Hardwicke (The Nativity Story) relies heavily on extreme close-ups to make up for her lead actors' lack of emotional range. When the camera isn't trained tightly on their eyes and mouths, it's swirling around them.". I began to think about that and I seem to remember alot of close ups, or if not, crazed twirling. If anyone is thinking of going, GO! And come up with your own opinion.

O.R.10

When I found this site, I was completely blown away. The website is called ODDEE, it is about some of the weird things that happen in our world. Anyways, I was looking around the website and found this page called "The 9 Coolest Aquariums". Unsure of what was there, I started to read. What I found out amazed me. There was one aquarium, in Berlin. It can hold 900,000 liters of water!!! Then, there was another one, I thought it was really cruel, it is called an iPond, it's just a little bigger than the iPod video. I felt awful when I read it, the fish does not even have enough room to turn. There was also what is called the Fish'n'Flush, instead of having the big whit thing behind the toilet, it is an aquarium. When you flush, it looks like all the water is draining out of the tank and the fish are going down, but it's an optical illusion. Besides all of these weird things, there was a car aquarium, a tv aquarium and a telephone booth aquarium.

O.R

After seeing the new Twilight movie, I decided it would be a good time to reread the series for the fourth time. The story starts off with a young woman, Bella, who is leaving her sunny hometown of Pheonix, Texas and moving to a cloudy and rainy town called Forks. Even though I have only just started to reread the book, I have already noticed differences between the book and the movie, which is to be expected because otherwise the movie would be extremely long.

O.R 8

Unless you've been living on the outskirts of pop culture, or at least within earshot of a teenage girl, you probably know about Twilight. On Friday, it comes out in theaters. I have to tell you, I AM SO EXITED!!!! I read an article about the movie. Some of it talked about how hard production was because Kristen Stewart didn't turn 18 until quite a ways into the filming. The reason it was so tough was because minorities can only work 5 hours a day. So for her birthday, there was a cake in the shape of a clock and it said "get ready for longer hours!" Maybe that was why it took so long for the movie to come out!

O.R

I read an article about how on LOST (one of my favorite TV shows), they have a new character. Her name will be Amy, she will be played by Reiko Aylesworth. Apparentally, she was one of the original Dharma Initiative members in the seventies. For those of you who don't watch LOST, I advise you not to read it, you will be extremely confused! So anyways, that seems to confirm the theory that Ben moved the island back to the 70s. I am so exited to see how everyone on the island will react to the 'time warp'. Amy is an emotional character, and there is supposedly alot of romance around her. I am so exited for the new season. For the people who don't know, LOST starts on January 21 on ABC.

Outside Reading

I started reading one of the books that Mrs. Roehl read in class, The Pilot's Wife. So far, it has been pretty good. After waking up to a knock on the door at about three in the morning, Kathryn Lyons learns thata plane, flown by her husband, Jack,exploded while in flight and everyone died. So far, the book has talked about how she is dealing with it: basically how she is going through the 5 stages of grief. Denial, anger, barganing, depression and finally acceptance. Thus far, she has only gone through denial and anger. I think that soon, she will need to tell her daughter.

O.R 6

I am a huge fan of Johnny Depp's. In fact this year for Halloween I am going to be him so I decided that I would do a little(more) reasearch about him. So I reread a book about him. John Christopher Depp Jr. was born on June 9th, 1963. When he was 12, his mom gave him a guitar and Johnny began to play in several garage bands. He eventually quit high school so he could become a rock star. However, that didn't turn out to be the greatest. Years later Johnny was introduced to a man named Nicholas Cage who advised Depp to try an acting career. Johnny's career started with an offbeat movie called "A Nightmare on Elmstreet" and things took off from there. Johnny was cast as a cop in the show 21 Jumpstreet. But he quickly grew tired of the constant attention he got. He disliked seeing his face on every magazine, so he promised himself that after the contract expired, he would only do movies that felt right for him.

Hero in a Box

I have decided to base my Hero in a Box on 'character actors'. Here is the definition from http://www.dictionary.reference.com/ :
noun
an actor who specializes in playing supporting roles



It also states on Wikepedia( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_actor ) that character actors usually 'play a particular type of role'It also says that: ' Some character actors have eventually gained star status and have become widely known, or perhaps even become lead actors'.

Ex: Johnny Depp, Dustin Hoffman, Gary Oldman and Leonardo DiCaprio.



TIME even did a photo essay on character actors : http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/2006/in_character/

You may recognize some of them from popular movies like 'Spiderman' and 'Back to the Future'.
For me, I hear the name and I have no idea who this person is and then I see a picture and I remember.

For example, have you ever heard of J.K. Simmons? No? (click on the link)
http://www.filmnet.dk/UserFiles/image/Bjarke%20Kristensen/jk_simmons.jpg
Now do you remember him? He was recently in Juno, playing her dad and Spiderman playing the head of "The Daily Bugle".

O.R. 5

I continued reading little bits of the book, Forensics, and I learned some new info. For instance,
Dactyloscopy is the scientific study of fingerprints and it was developed nearly a hundred years ago. I also learned that SoleMate is a data base of almost all shoe patterns and can narrow a shoe print down to specific brands and models of shoes. I also found out that forensic sculptors are able to reconstruct faces using clay or computer modeling programs, and a portion of a skull. I think this stuff is so cool and amazing. Some may think its weird but it really draws me.

FORENSICS

This week, I was reading a book called Forensics. It was all about, you guessed it: Forensic science. I really like that kind of stuff. When I grow up I would LOVE to be a forensic scientist. I learned that the average adult has 10 to 12 pints of blood in their body. If you have ever watched CSI or a show like that, you know that they refer to something called IAFIS (sounds like a-fis) I never knew what they meant by it but apparentally, IAFIS(Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System) is where fingerprints are processed. I also learned that a single strand of human hair can tell race, body area, length, root type (naturally shed/forcibly removed), and any artificial treatment, damage, or disease of the person whom it belongs to. I just find all this extremely fascinating.

O.R 3

This week I read an article for Economics. It was titled: The Power of Incentives- How Seat Belt Kills. I found this article extremely interesting and it brings up a very interesting point. The article wonders, when people have safer cars, do they drive more recklessly? When they have unsafe cars, do they drive more carefully? So if that is true, would safer cars increase or decrease the number of accidents? One man even suggeste, that, to make young drivers more careful while driving to place a spear pointing directly at their heart. I think this is a little extreme. It would probably end in an accident, even if it wasn't the driver's fault. Another car could have bumped into them. The article then talked about the sign that is put in car windows that says: BABY ON BOARD. It pondered that if people drove more carefully around the cars with the signs, more people would probably buy them, whether or not they had a baby. In that case people might not pay any attention to the sign. Hmmm...What I really liked about this article is that it REALLY makes you think. It can go around in circles for ever. I enjoyed that... for some really odd reason.

Week 2

Ok, I know I've already written about a TV show but... it's one of the things that I really like. This week, I read an article about Dr. House... No, not the one from TV. But he was talking about the Dr. House from TV. Dr. John House specializes in ears and who created and implanted the first FDA-approved cochlear implant. Ever since "House M.D." has come on, John has been worried. It wasn't about House's attitude, it was about his addiction. If you watch House MD, you know that he is addicted to Vicodin. Although Dr. Greg House seems to show no symptoms from his addiction, that doesn't mean that there aren't any. In fact, you can even become deaf. Even though Vicodin temporarily gotten rid of the pain, it starts to kill sensory neural hair cells in the inner ear, which in turn can cause deafness in as little as 6 months. I really enjoyed the article because I really like science and I enjoy watching tv. House is one of my favorites. So it kept me interested.

CSI Replacement

This week, I read an article about how this season, on CSI, Gil Grissom played by William Peterson is leaving in the middle of the season and is being replaced with a new head of forensics. Laurence Fishburne will be in charge of the Las Vegas Crime Lab (on TV at least). His character will " have the same genetic profile as a serial killer, but hasn’t previously acted on any homicidal impulses". It seems like us CSI fans are up for an interesting season.