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By Drew Millard
Some of you are reading this in the newspaper. Some of you are reading this online. If you are reading the newspaper, congratulations. You are clinging to the old world that I so dearly love, and kind of wish that I was a retrospective part of. That's one of the disadvantages of being young – I want to see what life was like when it was harder, but I literally can't comprehend the universe as any different than it is right now. I can't imagine what a world without shampoo must have been like; conversely, I cannot even begin to fathom what a world with a living Kurt Cobain, a celebrity who died no more than twelve years ago, was like. There is a part of me that wants to experience that old life, but unfortunately, that me is being jettisoned in the name of technology.
Now let us assume that you are reading this on the web, more specifically, on my Tryon Daily Bulletin blog. (for those of you who are not, but do have access to a computer with an internet connection, kindly use your internet browser to
navigate to http://tdbmodernage.blogspot.com, so that my point can be more effectively made). Congratulations. You are officially participating in Web 2.0.
What is Web 2.0, you ask? It is what it is, and "what it is" is simply the idea that the internet should be interactive rather than reactive. Pioneers in this field are websites such as www.myspace.com, the world's most popular social networking site (for those of you wondering what a social networking website is, I'll explain
in a couple paragraphs.); www.wikipedia.com (the world's largest online encyclopedia), and www.blogger.com, the website with which you are reading my words, assuming that you did what I asked and went to my blog.
Now, blogger.com is not just a website where content is posted by a select number of people.
Blogger.com is a web site where one can, through just a couple of easy steps, publish their writing, usually in the form of a journal. However, if someone were so inclined, they could literally publish anything, from pictures to videos to their thoughts on how Kafka would be interpreted had he been known to touch children.
The second website that I should discuss is Wikipedia. This web site is essentially an online encyclopedia, available to be read by anyone in the world, free of charge. The cool part is that in addition to being read by anyone in the world, it can also be edited by anyone in the world.
Now does this work? Yes. More importantly, how does this work-what guarantees that some hack with an opinion won't just fabricate information and pass it off as true?
The answer is this: Wikipedia is founded upon the belief that all people are inherently good, and that if somebody doesn't know what they're talking about in regards to a subject, then they won't post something about it. Of course, Wikipedia is not perfect. Those who are inclined to post on Wikipedia tend to be more interested in the history of Star Trek than, say, the life and times of Millard Fillmore.
And last but certainly not least, I shall discuss the beast. MySpace. If you are not familiar, www.myspace.com is a website that allows its users – usually teenagers – to create their own personal web page, and share information with the world about who they feel like they are.
Many, I think, consider their MySpace as an extension of their own physical bodies, and treat them as such, providing them with routine maintenance, giving them aesthetic changes, etc. In addition to making their own profiles, the site's users can comment upon other users' profiles.
Many times, I have seen the accretion of comments turn into an unspoken contest, a test in fake human interaction.
As of this writing, MySpace has approximately one hundred million people using it – that's not an exaggeration. MySpace is the biggest web site in the world (I think), and those who do use it need to remember that what they post there can be viewed by everyone in the entire universe, assuming the aliens now have access to the Internet.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go check my Myspace.
By Drew Millard
It seems like the older I get, the more I realize that I'm not a kid anymore. Yeah, I know that in and of itself, this expository sentence is deeply simplistic and redundant, but that doesn't make it any less true. Right now, I'm a senior in high school. I have no idea how I got this way. It honestly feels like no time has passed since my freshman year ended.
There are guys on the school soccer team, my fellow seniors, who I look at, and think, "Oh my goodness. This dude is in no way similar to me; he's practically graduated – he shaves four times a week, for cripes' sake!" And you know what? If I don't shave for a week, I end up having a homeless-man beard, just like him. We're all alike.
I have to go to college in a year. I really can't wait. But I'm afraid of the whole "growing up" thing, I think. The way I see it, you turn eighteen, then you graduate, then you go to college, then you graduate again, and then that's where it gets fuzzy. What am I supposed to do after that?
As morbid at it seems, I really wouldn't mind spontaneously combusting the day after my college graduation. At least I'd have a definite goal in life.
But we're in the now. I'm kind of astonished that I'm in the class of the oldest students in Polk County High School – I feel like I shouldn't be this old. When I was a freshman, the seniors were terrifying. They were an unknown danger, lurking in the shadows, just waiting for a freshman to yell at for being in their way. I remember that a lot of the seniors smoked cigarettes – I don't think that I know any of my fellow seniors who smoke – and drove fast cars and ate fast food and had jobs and tried to generally avoid being at home as much as possible. Well, I've got four out of five down. Oh my... it seems that I'm as old as I thought I was after all.
It's just that, in a few years, I'm going to have to get a job, you know? And not just a job waiting tables or doing grunt work – like a "real job" job, one in the outside world, not Polk County. The thought of leaving Polk County terrifies me. What do people do for money when they grow up? I dunno, maybe paint stuff? Dance? Remember to put the right cover sheet on TPS reports? Bowl? All I know is that rug really tied the room together. Will I be saying this kind of things at the age of thirty? I sure hope not.
I guess that I don't really know what to do with my life. But the good news is I don't have to know. I'm 17 and clueless, and I just might be content with staying that way a little longer.
By Drew Millard
Has society gone completely bonkers? Are we out of ideas already? Pop culture has only existed for essentially maybe four hundred years, and in the last twenty-five years, it seems that we’ve been starved for new ideas, especially in the realms of both music and movies.
In regards to popular music, the most groundbreaking band of the millennium has probably been The Stokes, who sound exactly like The Velvet Underground, a band from 1967 who nobody liked at the time and everybody loves now, even though they’re only marginally listenable to, unless you’ve just shot up some heroin. Point is, no new musical ground has been broken since 1991, when N.W.A. introduced gangsta rap to the world with their opus “Straight Outta Compton.” I doubt the majority of my readers have heard of anything in the preceding paragraph, because The Strokes pander to those who smoke cigarettes behind rock clubs, and N.W.A.’s target audience happens to actually live in Compton.
The movie industry has not fared any better. At all. Every movie ever made is indiscriminately getting the remake treatment, from The Longest Yard to The Omen to Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, sadly enough, and it seems like Adam Sandler is starring in a good half of them. Even our best ideas for horror flicks are lifted from foreign culture—the recent horror hit The Ring is just a rip-off of a Japanese film entitled Ringu, which was wholly original. It seems that the Japanese people are making good use of that no-war clause in their constitution.
What the lexicon of movies really needs is a fresh, groundbreaking idea involving something that has never been thought of before.
Which brings me to Snakes on a Plane, a recent film starring the latently transcendent Samuel L. Jackson. Its plot, simply, is as follows: There are snakes on the plane. Samuel L. Jackson must get the snakes off of the plane. That is the plot. Never before have deadly animals and travel mixed so deliciously, and that’s even assuming that the dogs in Homeward Bound were in any way dangerous.
Of course, the movie contains countless nuances, such as in the way the movie’s star disposes of said snakes (whipping, stun-gunning, stabbing, burning, microwaving, to name a few) and the locations in which the snakes bite their victims (such wholesome locations such as private parts, throats, posteriors, eyeballs, etc.) and the varied and colorful vocabulary that its characters employ (I’ll spare you the actual language, but let me promise you: The movie works very hard to earn its “R” rating.).
All in all, the movie adds up to an unbelievably awesome ride best enjoyed in the company of others. The audience in the screening I went to clapped whenever Samuel L. Jackson appeared on screen, killed a snake, said the “f” word, or did almost anything at all. At the climax of the movie, Jackson’s character resolves to shoot out the airplane’s windows by saying his most popular line, containing not one but two instances of a certain twelve-letter modifier. A line that, if one has paid attention to the buzz surrounding this movie, one should be intimately familiar with.
Now, is Snakes on a Plane (or as it is known in some circles, SoaP) a truly great movie? No. It is, however, wildly entertaining. I predict that this movie will reach a cult status similar to that of Rocky Horror Picture Show, complete with people dressing in character—as flight attendants, Samuel L. Jackson, a gigantic snake, et al—and reciting lines from the movie to boot. And I will be at every showing I can slither to.
By Drew Millard
