willrichardson:

Just wanted to share that next week while thousands of New Jersey school children will be subjected to the annual ASK standardized tests, my 12-year old son Tucker will not be among them. We made a formal request to opt out, which is our legal right in NJ, and he’ll be staying home during the…

nbadoppelgangers:

Ronny Turiaf | Genie

“CooOOOOkie Crisp!”

academiccoachtaylor:

Academic Coach Taylor knows what it takes to succeed. 

lareviewofbooks:

JONATHAN ZIMMERMAN

on the mythology of film school.
Steve Boman
Film School: The True Story of a Midwestern Family Man Who Went to the World’s Most Famous Film School, Fell Flat on His Face, Had a Stroke, and Sold a Television Series to CBS
Benbella Books, November 2011. 352 pp.

“Life … at 24 frames per second.”

— Tagline for Film School Confidential

OPEN ON: a smoldering, post-apocalyptic hellscape. The once great city sits desolate, its iconic landmarks reduced to rubble. A mysterious red carpet unwinds into the distance, indicating — I don’t know, some sort of dystopian Emmy party? The king of this land wields his standard issue Arri-S camera like a magic scepter. His power is mighty, evidenced by the throng of ladies grasping desperately at his bulbous calves. In the mid-ground, a villain in a beret and Che Guevera T-shirt scowls, the intensity of his ire matched only by the girth and heft of our hero’s rippling muscles, who is shedding his USC shirt in a Bruce Banner-esque manner…

I am trying not to judge, but the alarming cover of Steve Boman’s Film School: The True Story of a Midwestern Family Man Who Went to the World’s Most Famous Film School, Fell Flat on His Face, Had a Stroke, and Sold a Television Series to CBS demands comment. The book does manage to live up to the promise of its cover, but not in the way the author intends. The scorched earth and smoke clouds reveal themselves to be as portentous as they are pretentious. Set against the backdrop of the University of Southern California’s famous School of Cinematic Arts, Boman’s memoir is a tale of tribulation and triumph. Portraying himself as the prototypical Midwestern everyman-in-big-city-made-good, Boman shows off the crowd-pleasing story techniques practiced and preached as gospel at USC. Dealing in broad strokes and archetypes, Film School follows him from stumbling student to respected director and, finally, successful television producer. His USC is one of emerald towers to be scaled, gold to be mined, and bad guys — Simon Cowell-like professors and anonymous latte-chugging intellectuals — to be overcome. It is, in essence, mythology.

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saucy-sarah:

There’s more:

Students Teaching About Racism in Society is a Student Org at Ohio University. I’m the President, any questions… MESSAGE ME! :)

(via motherjones)

filmsdulosange:

lettertojane: Cahiers du Cinéma, May 1967, Download Here

(via filmsdulosange-deactivated20120)

lareviewofbooks:

REZA ASLAN

on the long-term effects of 9/11.

World on Fire © Donald Bracken http://bit.ly/r05Th3
The policewoman who confiscated the unlicensed produce stand of a young street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi in the tiny Tunisian village of Sidi Bouzid could not have known that her actions would light the fuse of revolution, not just in Tunisia, but across the Arab world. The twenty-six-year-old Bouazizi was one of millions of unemployed youth who make up the vast majority of the population of the Greater Middle East. This young, educated, and severely disenfranchised generation has come of age burdened by bone-crushing poverty and marginalized by corrupt, authoritarian regimes that have been funded and armed by western governments — most notably the United States — for decades.

The unemployment rate in Bouazizi’s hometown is upwards of 30%. Like most of his fellow Tunisians — those without personal connections to the country’s long running dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali — Bouazizi survived by doing odd jobs for a few dollars a day. Yet at every point in his young life, as he struggled to scrape a living out of the most menial and dehumanizing work, Bouazizi was confronted with the stark nepotism of Tunisian society, the rank corruption of government employees, and the hard fact that there wasn’t, and would never be, anything to do about it.

That final thought — that this was the way of the world, that it could not be otherwise — must have gone through Bouazizi’s mind when the policewoman approached him on the dusty streets of this impoverished town, 190 miles (300 km) south of the capital Tunis, and asked to see his license to operate the produce stand. In Tunisia, as in much of the Arab world, “license” is code for bakhsheesh. Bribe. What the policewoman meant was that she had not yet been paid to look the other way as young Bouazizi peddled his overripe fruits and vegetables for a few pennies each.

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nbadoppelgangers:

Eddy Curry | Puft Marshmallow Man

todaysdocument:

Celebrating V-J Day

The surrender of Japan during World War II was announced on August 14, 1945, effectively ending the war, although the official Instrument of Surrender would not  be signed until September 2, 1945.  Germany had surrendered 3 months earlier on May 7, 1945.

1. “American servicemen and women gather in front of ’Rainbow Corner’ Red Cross club in Paris to celebrate the unconditional surrender of the Japanese.” August 15, 1945, McNulty, Photographer, (111-SC-210241)
2. “Enlisted men aboard the U.S.S. Ticonderoga (CV-14) hear the news of Japan’s surrender.”, 08/14/1945 
3. New York City celebrating the surrender of Japan. They threw anything and kissed anybody in Times Square., 08/14/1945 
4. V-J Day in New York City. Crowds gather in Times Square to celebrate the surrender of Japan., 08/15/1945
5. GI’s at the Rainbow Corner Red Cross Club in Paris, France, whoop it up after buying the special edition of the Paris Post, which carried the banner headline, “JAPS QUIT.”