A Summer-y of the Summer (Haha...)

I consider this summer a summer of discovery. Not a discovery of land, electricity, or mathematic formulas (well I didn't discover them). This summer - the hot and humid summer of 2010 - was, indeed, a summer of discovery. I discovered myself. Now before you laugh at the corniness of that statement, let me explain. I will begin by outlining what I discovered about myself:
-Music
-Communication
-Preference
The awesome part is that they are all connected. (Side note: If you don't want to read the worst and most dragging blog ever, please skip to the 2nd to last paragraph. I was distracted while writing this, so it's a terrible blog post.)

I suppose I'll start with music. As you may or may not know, I go to FSU every summer for their summer music camps. Choral camp, specifically. While there, I roomed with a kid I met at last year's All-County choir. He and I both played guitar and took the guitar class at the camp. We shared our musical interests and gave advice on playing, singing, etc. However, while there the men's choir sang an Irish folk song called "Fergus an' Molly". Also, while there, my roommate bought a CD by the Irish band Flogging Molly. This is where the communication portion will take over.

While I and all of my friends speak English, there are still many ways of using the language. All of my life, I have had an enormous fascination with accents, mainly English, Scottish, and Irish. Then a friend suggested the movie "Trainspotting" to me, and it was the spark to my obsession. If you read earlier post, you know the extent of these obsessions. Most recently I've distinguished the difference between the Irish and Scottish accent. One day as I was leaving Ross, I walked down the sidewalk and saw a store called A Touch of Tartan, which is filled with only Celtic/Gaelic products and other British goods. The owners are from Scotland themselves, so I spoke to them and I've decided to go to the store everyday for the rest of my life. (Exaggeration) But I also recently downloaded the complete discographies of Irish bands Flogging Molly and The Pogues (Still music related.). The accents are coming along alright, but the more exciting part is that I now have RosettaStone for Irish (Gaelic/Gaeilge), Tagalog, French, and Italian. I should probably learn Tagalog first because my mom's entire side of the family speak it. But I'm working most on Irish because it's a lesser-known language and I think it's more interesting. So we'll see how that goes...

I guess now it's time for the preference portion. As I'm sure you know, the English are famous for their tea traditions and whatnot. So recently I have taken a liking to all teas. I used to only enjoy sweet tea and flavored teas, but I actually decided that iced tea is best served unsweet and with a bit of lemon juice. But most recently (as in yesterday), I bought two boxes of Twinings of London tea. I got Irish Breakfast Tea and English Breakfast Tea. They are simply delicious. I have a pot of hot water and all I've been doing all night is pouring hot cups of water and putting bags of tea in them. (Or making tea if you wanna be a killjoy.) I think I'm on cups 11-12. I've been making them in pairs so I drink an even number of English and Irish teas.

On top of those three main things, I've been taking two online classes: Pre-Calculus and HOPE (Health Opportunities throught Physical Education). I recently finished only Pre-Calculus (today).

So here I sit. Naked on my living room floor. (I'm home alone for the weekend, so that's what I do when I'm home alone.) I rode my bike to Office Depot this afternoon to buy my school supplies and I had to bring a backpack to carry all of the stuff. I can't believe school starts next Tuesday. Less than a week. Ugh.

However, my summer will end perfectly. Tomorrow, I'm going to a Demetri Martin show. Then school starts. The second day of school I'm going to a Jack Johnson concert. The third day of school is my birthday. The first Saturday of the school year, I get my license.

This was a terrible blog post because I'm so distracted. I'm sitting naked on the carpet with my laptop on my right side, and my guitar on my lap, while watching Friends and getting up to make more tea every five minutes. I apologize. If you would like a better explanation, just hit me up I suppose haha.

P.S. I also got CPR Certified. I can save your life.

American-Born Scot, Update

So if you'll look below, you'll see a post that says "My Life as an American-Born Scot". This is because I'm trying to master an Edinburgh Scottish accent. I'd gotten pretty good at it up until about a week ago.

I came across an Irish folk choir song that my friend sang and I was a huge fan of. However they sang the song in an Irish accent. Now what's the problem, you may ask? I'll tell you: as I began to hum and whistle the song to myself, I also began to sing it to myself... IN AN IRISH ACCENT. Of course you're probably wondering why this is a problem.


Well if you're geographically advanced as I am, you know that Scotland and Ireland are both on the British Isles so they have somewhat similar accents. HOWEVER, they have some IMMENSE differences about other things.

For example: a Scotsman would pronounce the word "about" as 'aboot', or 'aboat'. An Irishman would say it 'abaht' or 'abut'.

Another example: Scotsmen say the world the letter "I" as 'ay'. So if you came across Gerard Butler or Ewan McGregor, he would say "Ay 'ave never meht yew bafore ehn may layfe." (I have never met you before in my life.) The Irishman next to him would say "Oi hahv nehver maht you bafore in me loife."

The letter "R" is also key in both accents. Scots roll their R's heavily. If they don't roll it, they flip it. On the other hand, Irish people don't roll the R, but they overuse the r sound. It's quite hard to remember .

Scottish people also tend to say the "i" in words like "lift" as "lehft". Irish say it more like "laft". Scottish also say "word" as 'werd', which Irish say "wahrd".


But anyway, the problem is that Oi'm star'en tae fahrgeht whech is whech (I'm starting to forget which is which) and I'm getting them mixed up. But I've decided from now until I master it, I'm going to stay away from all Irish influences and focus only on the Scottish culture. I even checked a book out from the library about Scotland. I'm very excited to read it. I've also become very fond of the Scottish national anthem, "Flower of Scotland". It's not the official national anthem, as Scotland is part of the UK (whose national anthem is technically "God Save the Queen" and oddly enough goes to the same tune as "My Country 'Tis of Thee").

As you can tell, my life is a wreck right now...

My Life as an American-born Scot

Recently, I've been using a lot of this web application called "StumbleUpon". What StumbleUpon is is a website whose toolbar you download and check off boxes of your interests and based on your likes, every time you click "Stumble" on the toolbar, it redirects you to a random page it thinks you might like. Being somewhat a jack-of-all-trades (at least I'd like to think so), I use this toolbar quite frequently just to stay cultured with what's going on in the interwebs.

StumbleUpon

Anyway, so I found a video of a Scottish man imitating all the known accents of the English language. If you haven't gathered it already from my earlier posts, I have a lot of things that I'm into that people don't know about me. For as long as I can remember I've been, for lack of a better word, obsessed with being able to speak in several accents (in order of importance): Scottish, Irish, British, New Zealand/Australian, French, South African, Russian.


A while back, I checked out a book from the library called "Accents: An Actor's Manual". It comes with a CD of lessons that teach different accents of different regions of the general countries' accent. I ripped that CD on iTunes and returned it (obviously). I had forgotten about my accent obsession until recently I began watching the show "Flight of the Conchords", which used to be on HBO and only had two seasons with a total of 22 episodes. I'm very sad that the show was cancelled. But that's not the point.

The characters on the show are all from New Zealand both in real life and on the show. I quickly learned to imitate their accent. In order of how well I've mastered the accent besides my own, it goes Canadian, New Zealand/Australian, British, Scottish, and then WAY down the list, Irish, Russian, etc. But lately I've been getting into the Scottish culture after watching a Scottish comedian named Danny Bhoy and listening to him tell a joke about the Scottish national anthem. I developed a liking for said national anthem and YouTube'd it. That is how my vacation in Scottish culture began.


I went on YouTube and found a series of lessons on how to speak with Scottish accents from real Scots. However, one series was by a man from Edinburgh and the other was by a man from Glasgow. Glasgow is the rugged, brutish, man accent as heard by Gerard Butler, or the Edinburgh accent which is the smooth, sexy one heard by Sean Connery or Ewan McGregor. I've decided that it's easier to try Edinburgh because it's more enunciated as I'm used to with an American accent, then I will shift into the sloppier Glaswegian accent.

I've also found a website that teaches all about the Scots language and vocabulary and whatnot. I will post all of these links at the bottom.

To help me adapt to the Edinburgh accent, I saw a movie called Trainspotting which takes place in Edinburgh. It's not the plot of the movie I was watching for (which was twisted but awesome), but the accent and I think I picked it up rather well. I discovered this movie was based of a book by a Scottish author named Irvine Welsh. I went to the library and looked in his books to find to my delight that all of it is written phonetically as a Scotsman would say it. Thank you, Mr. Welsh (the writer not the physics teacher, though I'm sure I'll thank him too).

But one thing's for sure: next time I go to Disney, I'll be one of those Europeans pretending to be a tourist in America. But don't worry; I'll just be practicing my accent.

Edinburgh Accent Lesson Teacher's Page
This guy's crazy, but more informative.
Glaswegian (Glasgow) Accent Teacher's Page
This guy's hilarious, but more phrase oriented.
Scots Language Website
This website has about all the information one could need if curious as to the Scottish language, accent, culture, etc.

Lack of Blogs

Yo yo yo.
To all my reader(s) (a.k.a. Emily), I just wanted to apologize for the lack of blogs. I don't have time to do a blog now, but I thought'd I'd just post this update saying there WILL BE MORE TO COME soon. I've just been kinda lazy with my posting, but I'll definitely start doing it more.
Ciao.

Summer Movie Marathon '10

So we have Netflix. With a Netflix memberhsip, obviously you receive DVD's in the mail and mail them back to receive new ones off your queue (list). Along with the DVD queue, you have an Instant queue, which is a list of movies you have chosen to watch on your computer, TiVo, Xbox 360, Wii, or some other Instant viewing device. The movies that you can watch instantly is limited to mostly old movies, classics, foreign films, indie films, and short films.

Lately I've been going on a movie rampage of films. So far I've seen indies like: The Vicious Kind, A Clockwork Orange, Mr. Holland's Opus, and Les Miserables. I highly recommend all of them except The Vicious Kind which was average. And A Clockwork Orange is a book, so if you plan on reading that first, don't watch it. And it will mindrape you. You will finish it and wonder what you've just seen. My reasoning for watching indies is because they have lower budgets and less effects so they have to be more creative with their limited resources. Therefore, when the movie is good, it is that much better.


In terms of foreign films, I've watched: Paris, Je T'aime; Un Chien Andalou; and Mongol. Paris Je T'aime is a French film with English subtitles made up of 18 five-minute films by notable directors. All of them share the common theme of Parisian love. Un Chien Andalou is directed by Salvador Dalí. Dalí=enough said. Mongol is a movie about Genghis Khan's beginnings in life pre-reigning Khan. It is extremely historically accurate, and filmed like a movie, not a documentary. It was nominated for Best Foreign Film Academy Award. It is in Mongolian with English subtitles and is the first of a trilogy about Genghis Khan. The second movie comes out later this year (2010).

All of this has further motivated me to become a movie writer. I've noticed that movies have systems that are intricate and would probably take experience to develop. One thing in particular I've observed is the occasional screen shot of the film that doesn't further develop the plot. I think those shots' purposes are to further exaggerate emotional statuses. I can't think of an example right now, but if I ever watch a movie with you, ask me about it and I'll point those shots out to you.

American Film Institute Conservatory, here I come.