There is an obsession with the supernatural world in story telling as of late. Recently, it seems that most of the popular block buster hits has come from comic books or the paranormal world. The fascination with vampires has especially sky rocketed. The fight between good and evil is an old tale. It seems that there are very few stories that have not been done before. But, recently there is something that is compelling people to escape in the fantasy of romanticizing what traditionally has been the picture of evil.
Evil has a face for most of us, a face from a myth that has had a great American tradition. Vampires were a bit more wicked, but has recently softened in character. They have since, morphed in to visual versions of historical romance novels, which is where it all began. Since, historical romance novels has branched out into sub-genres: supernatural and paranormal romance novels. I am guilty for reading all sorts of books from romance novels to Kurt Vonnegut. I have a range because like television or film, I like to think of it like a buffet. I like to taste a little of everything, because I think it helps one to be well rounded.
Vampire movies are not what they used to be. They satisfy our craving to understand the dark side within us. In my opinion the romanticized version of vampire movies today is catching the attention of so many young adults and hell, people of all ages. It has morphed in to more than a trend, but a huge cult like wave, a following that is unbelievable. The fight that vampires must battle inside themselves to choose between killing to live and living an eternity finding ways to be good despite their nature to do what is considered "evil." This internal struggle is something most people can identify with. Also, comic book heroes and vampires can get away with doing things that we can't ordinarily do. Again, we as the audience are sucked into escaping within the vortex of the supernatural world. Why? Because the impossible is possible and because the rules of the universe change.
Although, the vampires today are not what they used to be when they first appeared in films. Humans have always been intrigued by the concept of eternal life. But, this modern day 21st century vampire has definitely filled our ordinary and dull lives with a new fantastical and romantic dance between love, lust, and yes... blood.
The most frustrating thing about health care today is that even if you do have health care, there is not enough Primary Care Physicians. When I moved to Upstate, New York getting a Primary Care Physician was next to impossible not to mention a specialist. I am not sure how health care is for other insurance holders, that is if you are lucky enough to be covered under an insurance at all. But, even if you do have insurance there is a wait list for everything. One deals with either being put on a 6 month wait list or being denied because the Physician is no longer taking new patients.
If you have a diagnosis and you need medication, one has to resort to waiting in the emergency room for hours and hours just to get a prescription refill. Recently, I had to do the whole "emergency room bit" just to get a prescription refill. Because some doctors have policies, they require a PCP to sign off on a referral in order to be seen. But, with a 6-month wait list for a Primary Care Physician, by the time one actually gets around to seeing the specialist that they need to see, it's practically a year later! Tri-Care which is the insurance for military people and their family tends to be a nightmarish situation of having supposedly great health care benefits, those of which some civilians envy. But, what most people do not realize is that the chances of being seen by a doctor in areas where there is a shortage of Primary Care Physicians is next to impossible. Who can wait 6 or even 9 months for medication that one is prescribed and one needs to take every day?!?! There has got to be a better solution for this.
My last ER visit (to just get simple prescription medication I must take daily in addition to a simple referral to finally get seen) was quite strange. I was put in a data base with my consent of course, in order to have my medical records accessible anywhere, in any city and in any hospital nation wide. One might question the ethics behind medical records being this accessible and how easy computer systems and data bases can be hacked in to. But, if you are someone such as myself that travels frequently and needs their medical records available readily, it feels like a new sense of freedom. Strange, how sharing more of your information- especially one such as medical records is becoming more and more the standard. For those of us that have disabilities and or need to take medication on a regular basis. To function in a learning environment or a work environment, medical records need to be accessible in order to provide proof. Having updated online medical record data bases can definitely feel like an invasion of privacy. But for someone that needs medical treatment on a regular basis and a hospital nearby, it is an equally necessary tool in today's world where we need information quickly and accessibly.
Soon, we may even restore the "VeriChip" which was discontinued in 2010. It was also called "VeriMed." It was made up of a 16 digit number and transmitted as it was scanned. 80 hospitals and 232 doctor's agreed to this having medical records accessible via an imbedded micro-chip. And although it was discontinued in 2010, it may come back new and improved. Who knows? As of now, I am awaiting my own medical records to be mailed old-school from Colorado where I once lived. Having a copy of our medical records are always an important thing to have. But soon, my medical records will be updated over the web and available anywhere, nationwide. This is both good and bad depending upon whom utilizes such a powerful tool. And soon, people like me will not have to wait a week or more for medical records to be mailed to us. It will all be available via the internet, as it already is I am sure.
Look around and observe your surroundings, be interested in what other people have to say. Often when we are trying to find our way in this world, carve out a path for our lives we spend more time assuming than actually fully recognizing a message in its entirety. Observation is the key to growing as an individual because it causes us to become aware of what is going on around us. Observation forces us to take notice of national and international affairs, awakening our senses to other people's reality even if it is for one brief moment. You'll be amazed at how much you grow when you stop to try and gain perspective from expanding your ability to empathize with people you don't know.
When we are consumed with our own world or even our own thoughts, we do a disservice to the real lesson's people teach us. That is why it is always better to learn how to be a stronger listener and not just be an active listener, but one that is sincere. Being honest in your work; being an honest writer and filmmaker is that sensitive balance that comes from healthy objectivity and regulating your emotions. It is surprising how easy it is to get offended. It is surprising how easy it is to misunderstand one another. We live in a society full of "entitlement" thinking and egos that get in the way of healthy bi-partisanship.
The more the wave of technology brings new media and new changes, it is still just as important to know the power behind them. We must not allow technology to numb our sensibilities and cause us to forget how to simply be genuine and have a sincere conversation with another human being. No texting. No IMing. No phone calls. Take a moment out of your busy day, when you are talking to someone- learn to be a better listener. When you are having a good conversation or when someone is speaking and really teaching you something, embrace the lesson with both ears and a sincere hunger to want to understand their perspective even if you may not agree.
If you happen to have a good conversation with someone, count yourself lucky. The basis to any story, good writing or film begins with experiences. Embrace the inspiration that is around you and experience a good old fashion face-to-face.
Time is short. People have less and less time to read their e-mails let alone the news or a blog. So, I will keep this short and simple. Success hinges on keeping our lives simple. It goes beyond who we are, our connections, our age, our gender, our race, and our environment. If we need to find an answer, it is usually within ourselves. We have the ability to understand what it is we have to do, sometimes we are blessed with people to help guide us there. We are blessed to have been inspired by people like Steve Jobs who left this world a better place, a more advanced world that was not so without him. He conquered his fears with his actions.
He made no excuses, he just executed his vision and he powered through his fears with constant invention. He did this having tasted failure, having tasted defeat but he never let it get to him. A successful man like Jobs managed his life simply. Everything in our lives are connected and our ability to manage our time is the key. If we can manage our time, we can manage our tasks and if we manage our tasks we can cross them out as we complete them. If we manage our tasks we can get to our goals and if we get to our goals we become closer to succeeding. Do you see how things connect? How simple it can be if one thing is thrown off, how our entire day can be? So, do not let this happen. Seize control of your life by the tiniest steps. It is amazing how the simple tweaks in the way we do things can make a huge difference. Going to bed a half an hour early. Saying yes to new opportunities you would normally say no to. Not complaining instead of opening your mouth and muttering your usual grumble. Being thankful instead of taking the things you do have for granted. Counting your blessings especially when you feel you have hit rock-bottom. Knowing that it can always be worse. Knowing when you are spread too thin. Knowing when to let things role off your back. Knowing when to not take things personal. Stopping yourself first before you speak, letting others talk and being more interested in what they have to say.
Simple. It is all very simple.
There are simple ways to become brilliant. Sometimes brilliance begins with the most simple steps, the ones that people forget. To create, to achieve, to succeed we must master the smallest of things before we can tackle the larger tasks. I say this to myself as much as I say this to others that we can get a lot done in our lives by examining the tiniest things. Here are the things that I feel the "Steve Jobs" of this world did well and excelled.
1. Be unafraid to follow your intuition and trust your instincts.
2. Never compare yourself to another person ever. Every circumstance is different. Every person is different.
3. Use your time wisely. Be on time and manage it. This means managing your time even when you suddenly find yourself with extra time or knowing how to turn around a negative situation such as when Steve Jobs got fired from Apple. Knowing how to use your extra time when an unfortunate event occurs.
4. Use your imagination, do not be afraid of exploring new ideas, you never know what your idea can develop into, so do not doubt yourself or your ability.
5. Never take your life and your health for granted and especially the people in your life that love you.
6. Do not hide behind your environment, your past, your childhood, your disabilities, your shortcomings, we all have something we wished we could change.
7. Have confidence that you have a purpose and a reason. It is your job to find the reason why you are here and your purpose.
8. Take care of yourself because if you are run ragged, you will soon burn out and being burnt out is unproductive.
9. Do not get discouraged by set backs, rejections, or failures. Everything happens for a reason. Set backs make you stronger and is a new reason to invent something new.
10. Love what you do.
And if you have not listened to this speech Steve Jobs did at Stanford in 2005, you should take the time to listen.
We all are facing our own battles. Daily, we deal with the reality of a 9.5 - 9.7 national unemployment rate, a national debt crisis that causes to question the government spending, our military influence globally. When bringing up the the national debt one cannot bring up the debt crisis without questions of our presence in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Reading several different sites from various sources streaming over the internet from reputable entertainment sources to news- I have surprisingly read some people reacting in a hostil fashion towards 9/11 rememberance. Some people feel that it was 10 years ago and to just "leave it alone already" and that "the economy is the important thing to be thinking about today."
Photography by Jimmy Sadler
And while, yes the economy and our own personal lives is wrought with our own personal tensions and stress. When I read negative comments from some people actually getting annoyed with any sort of tribute towards 9/11- I tried to stay objective and yet I was floored. 10 years ago the attack on our soils changed the course of history, destroyed lives, and caused so much suffering. It was a moment in history most of us will never forget.
Personal family photos of my husband & his father
It is a moment that made people like my husband feel the need to serve his country with his life. He was about to start making plans for Graduate school when the event changed his life forever and many others as well. The picture here is a young boy (my husband) standing with his father proudly posing before the twin towers, a moment in time that burned a deep desire in him to sacrifice his plans to go to Graduate school and live the comfortable, typical civilian life.
Since, he has deployed 27 months both to Iraq and Afghanistan in some of the worst places. He will be going again on a 3rd deployment to Afghanistan in the near future. Since, we have buried many, many friends- too many soldiers and all have sacrificed their lives for this great nation.
When we bring up 9/11 we cannot bring it up without remembering all of what has happened within the last 10 years, including the wars. Many, many people may not agree with the causes or reasons for being in Iraq or Afghanistan. Frankly, there have been too much division, disputes, and disagreements over this. I would rather not make this about a political debate over the wars.
Nonetheless, I will honestly say one thing about it and write what I do know based upon my very real and extremely personal experience. What I do know from having lived through 27 months of worrying whether or not my husband was coming home alive or not- is that those that have family, husbands, and fathers that have deployed to war and have gone and fought- our feedback should carry more weight over the war debate than those that have never understood the sacrifices. Those that have never gone to any of the funerals or do not know what it is like to worry or wait for a husband who is deployed to war. Those that have not lived in our shoes should not try to speak for us or attempt to banter on and on about anti-war this or pro-war that in an extremely politically divisive (right or left) way. Most of these opinions, as I have come to find, usually come from those that assume to know or think they know. Just because one is highly educated does not make them war strategists, economists or genuine experts in the field. They especially cannot speak for the sacrifices that our military makes if they do not have the first clue as to just how much we really sacrifice.
But, rather than divided, in a very bi-partisan way 10 years ago what started as a tragedy turned in to a moment of unity. It was a moment where everyone came together. Those that did not believe in God- prayed for the first time. Those that did not understand what real loss was- felt it for the first time and it was so heavy that no one could escape it. It was so deep in our hearts, the grief touched all of us. For those that feel annoyed by remembering 9/11 or feel that it is exploitive and may cause those that have lost loved ones on this national tragedy to have to "re-live" that moment.
Photography by Jimmy Sadler
For those that feel that we have bigger problems to worry about like the economy and to just "get over it." To me, remembering soldiers that died for this country, fire fighters, police officers, and the victims of 9/11 is not exploitive- but our duty as citizens of this great country. It is our duty to remember them and to never forget. It is selfish of us to say " oh, get over it." I hope we never really get over it. There is no such thing as placing a number or a time table to a tragedy. There is no such thing as saying that if "X amount of time or years have gone by, then we should move on and forget it." Lives are forever changed. There are friends and family and children and people we are never going to be able to bring back. Ever.
Like the holocaust and slavery and moments like the tragedy that happened 10 years ago that marked history, they are moments that cannot be blown off with a number. That is not to say that we do not continue to become stronger and learn from our past as a country and fortify our international and national security. However, there are some things in life that no matter how many years and decades go by, the grief remains just as real as the very day that all of it happened. Today is a moment to selflessly put others in our thoughts above our selves. We have plenty of hours in the day to think about ourselves. Today, let us reflect on all of the sacrifices and the lives lost on this very day that felt more like yesterday and not a decade.
The invention of new applications for the smart phones has become more and more simple, yet these applications can do so much now. I am blown away by the amount of things we can do. I am especially impressed with the photo applications capability on the iPhone. Although, the iPhone's picture quality initially is not that good. The applications that you can add to your phone (free-$2.99 average, can be more) does so much, it simplifies what even Photoshop and those that are advanced Photoshop users can do.
There are some applications that are worthy to use and ones that I love, but they are not compatible or able to be shared easily. One of the most popular ones today and one of my personal favorite applications because it merges social media with photo sharing is Instagram. Instagram allows you to follow people like you would on twitter. They can like your comments the way that you can on Facebook and all of it is centered around sharing events or your lives with one another by way of photos. It is a brilliant and simply designed application. It is easy to use, easy to obtain viral friends and followers and is becoming the next social media trend in my book. My prediction is that social media is going to become more and more photo and video sharing related. The only thing about instagram that you can not do is share a slideshow of photos. They may have already come out with a new version, but the last I checked- you can only share one photo at a time.
On the other hand, there are other applications that will allow you to create slideshows and all from your phone. Take Mediastory- the photo slide presentations application for the smart phones: primarily targeting the Droid and iPhone. I used it to make a slide presentation- put it on Facebook and could not download it to my personal computer or e-mail it. The only way that I could share it was through Facebook. I had to recreate it in a program called PhotoSnack in order to show you here, what I was able to recreate using Mediastory on my iPhone. The downside to Mediastory, yes, it is a great application and a quick way to make slideshows of your photos on your smart phone. But, it doesn't allow you to share the slide show with anyone other than Facebook.
You can't e-mail your slide show picture presentation to your friends or family. You can't twitter it and you can't embed it because it doesn't give you the code to do so.
Whereas, PhotoSnack, although a web based only tool, does allow you to embed your slide show to your personal blog or websites as seen below. It also allows you to share it with a variety of social networks with a simple click of a widget/button they provide. I foresee them eventually turning their operation into mobile applications that will allow users to sign in to their account on their smart phone, create a slide show and save it. Then, the slide show can be accessed on your home computer as well as be twittered, e-mailed, or posted via Facebook. I am imaging that they will eventually cave in to creating a smart phone friendly version of their web based photo slide tool. As of right now, I have researched and found no smart phone version yet.
There is another favorite of mine called Befunky which has got to be the coolest photo application. It is simple to use and makes any photo no matter how awful the original- it makes it look a million times better after the effects.
As you can see, there are so many things that you can do with the iPhone now. This blog would be way too long if I went in to all of the applications that could possibly be placed on the iPhone. But, those that own iPhone's and Smart phones know the capability of the new wave of media using the smart phones as a platform of use. Most people are using their phones now to do more as tweets, facebook messages, and e-mail replies are all yesterday's news when it comes to using the smart phone as a media platform. The iPhone and most smart phones can do so much more now, as it practically thinks for us. From navigation, tip calculator, Skype, various types of instant messaging, photo manipulation capabilities. Why, there is even an application on "How to Tie a Tie" and apparently it works really well from my sources that have used it.
If you are not careful, you can spend a lot of money and time in the Apple store application on your phone surfing through all of the different applications to place on your iPhone. All in all, my prediction is that these applications are going to become more and more user-friendly and yet have the capability to do high quality, professional level work with no need for the user to have formal training and all this will be achieved with a few simple clicks.
The funny thing about media is that rumor's can spread fast by just a few lines that you write. For the most part we have to censor what we say now or it can be taken out of context. Even if we do not censor what we write, in the real world people can still take a few things that we have said and spread the words around. Have you ever heard of the telephone game?
When I was a child we would play the telephone game. The game was relatively easy, you take a group people, lined them up and take a phrase. You whisper that phrase in to some ones ear and then that person whispered the phrase in to the next person's ear. By the time the message hits the very last person, it is an entirely new message. Media is the same exact way and this is the reason why it causes so much havoc in lives.
You may think that you set your privacy setting on your blog or Facebook, you write something only meant for your very close family to see and then suddenly in the wrong hands this message spreads. Once a rumor goes viral, forget it. There is no turning back. For the record and clarification- I have a sister Ipuna Estavillo Black who responded to one of my posts. She is a Professor in Las Vegas, Nevada. She teaches nursing and is currently a PHD nursing student. I said to her "Ipuna, thank you as a PHD student and a Professor I value your opinion." When read by others, this sounded like I was saying that I was a PHD student and a Professor, thus lying about myself. I was not speaking about myself. I was referring to my sister. There was confusion with phrasing from people that were reading and interpreting what I wrote wrong. Again, the telephone game- it is now viral.
People can think we are lying about ourselves when we are really being misunderstood and the interpretation of the media is incorrect. All it takes is one person to take what we write, say or do and spread it to other people and suddenly one word turns in to a totally different and twisted lie.
We can say- "I have got the best car in the world!" We can say this in an excited way, not meaning anything by it but simply delivering it with sheer enthusiasm. Then suddenly, the entire thing is taken out of context and spread around. All the sudden we are arrogant, stuck-up, and we think we have the best car in the world and we are materialistic. However, what we might have intended was to say the phrase more "tongue and cheek."
That is how easy misinterpretations can form. That is how easy media can be misunderstood, taken out of context, and spread viral for all to skew. You can have the best intentions, but if your audience interprets the media and film completely wrong then the end result is the only thing that matters to them and nothing else. Media can cause biases, allowing the audience to skew one way or another. In the same way, when a film is evaluated and interpreted by a critic that gives it a negative review. The audience reading the review will automatically have a negative bias of the film before even watching it or they may choose to not watch it at all. There is no right answer as to how to fix misinterpretations, misunderstandings, and prejudices based upon skewed media interpretations and readings. However, a thorough analysis of the media or speech prior to launching it out in to the viral world for all to see or read is necessary above all else. Without careful consideration of the words we are choosing to write or the message we are choosing to send to our audience, we might send an entirely different message to our audience- one that we regret and have a difficult time retracting once it is out in viral space.
But, one thing that is important to keep in mind just because some people in your world does not like something you've written or directed does not mean that a different audience might not respond differently. My short film that I recently directed over the summer for example, may not have won the hearts of its original audience when first shown, but it certainly won the heart of Comcast which will now be airing my short films in two different cities in Virginia. In my book, as long as I have impressed the connections that matter and those that will not only like my filmmaking, but air it on television. Then my goal is accomplished and everyone else that never cared for my film does not need to. We agree to disagree and part ways with the freedom to have our own taste of what is aesthetically "good" according to our own personal definition.
Media rumors, biases, judgmental critics and negative media interpretations based on either poorly interpreted information or the "telephone game" can be toxic to the actual message that is trying to be presented. In the wrong hands, a message can take on an entirely new meaning at the end of the day and that's how rumors are spread and falsehoods are created.
