Carnegie Hall/ East Coast Trip Spring 2010

I know this topic expired so I'll make it brief.

After I oriented myself with the Big Apple, my first impression was "Dang. $20 mac and cheese??" My advice for nomming in NYC: take advantage of $5 foot-longs.

^Tall tall buildings everywheree

The first night in the hotel sharing a suite with three girls was much like the following nights: I'd jam plugs into my ears and attempt to sleep in vain while my roomies (one soph, one jr, one sr) loved nothing better to do than talk about boys and random topics until 2, 3am- thus the drenching of coffee in the morning for me. Jet lag didn't help either.
-I loved their company though; we bonded like sisters and they were totally hilarious.

Nothing fancy until you step inside
The first full day consisted of Juilliard visits. My goodness, Julliard was gorgeous- in a very modern sense. The main entrance doesn't look flattering, but the interior is very elegantly and interestingly designed.

My first impression of Juilliard was their automatic swivelling entrance-bar thingys. It was very cool.
I had a masterclass with one of their flute teachers (Wincenc), and she was WIN. I also attended one of my violin teacher's former student's workshops which was pretty interesting, as I got to watch 2 Juilliard violinists perform. I can't say I was impressed by their level of playing, however.

Practice and rehearsals took place in the hotel rooms, and in the Rehearsal Studios for pianists. The Rehearsal Studios were just a cluster of rooms with pianos in the rear of this sketchy building a block away from Carnegie Hall. We rented the rooms a few hours each day to rehearse with our groups, and had additional rehearsals in Steinway Hall and Carnegie Hall too.

Saw this in Times Sqr... lolrandom

As for leisure, my trio and I took strolls in Times Sqr, had a picnic in Central Park and watched the Broadway musical Ave. Q. Avenue Q is basically an adult version of Sesame Street, with lots of witty jokes and dirty themes (One of the songs is called "The Internet is for Porn"). Compared to the only other musical I've seen (Les Mis), I can't really say that it deserved a Tony Award, but I'm not one to judge.

The epitome of trip was, needless to say, a blast. The hours I spent practicing and rehearsing my piece totally paid off, because when I went on stage in Weill Recital Hall, I felt very much at ease and simply let go. It seems that the audience only has fun when the performer does.

Hxc.

I felt that all I wanted to do was sleep after New York, and that's actually all I did the following week in Philly at my sister's place (unwisely though- I had a recital the day after I came back and was quite unprepared). When I didn't sleep, I had some excellent burgers, looked at flowers, and saw some top notch classical performers.

^Pretty much sums up my Philly experience

If you ever visit Philly, make Bobby's Burger Palace your priority. I am dead serious. They make burgers and fries like nobody's business.

I attended a concert by the Philadelphia Orchestra, with Emanuel Ax (piano equivalent of Itzhak). My goodness, their sound was gorgeous. Everything was crisply articulated and sooo beautiful. And Ax. omg. Best symphonic concert I've ever attended.

Tulip explosion adfasd

Longwood Gardens was pretty, but it wasn't a shocker if you've been to Huntington Gardens, or the Arboretum. The only highlight for me was the Meadow- the type you'd read about in fairy tales but never see in densely populated LA. It was just a wide open grassy area surrounded by a regiment of trees on all sides, but pretty breath-taking if you've never seen one in person..

A FREAKING FROLIC-ABLE MEADOW!!!

The Curtis Institute of Music happened to be my sister's neighbor. Although not as renowned as Juilliard (probably due to its petite size and lack of marketing), Curtis is more prestigious and exclusive than Juilliard. What is really exceptional about this conservatory, is that all Curtis students are covered by a full scholarship, and receive loads of attention from the staff. The average Curtis professor has 2-3 students. Perlman (who teaches at Juilliard), has 15 students.

The only downside? They only admit around 5 incoming violinists a year from the international community.

9-11 Truthers, and why they're total [kensored]

First, a few facts about conspiracy theorists:

1) The average conspiracy theorist argues with NASA, the government, Nobel-prize winners, JAXA, Mythbusters, every scientist since the beginning of time, people who can read, and pretty much any expert on any subject they've decided to dispute despite having less qualifications in the area than an equally average fry cook.
2) For which aspect of rational logic they'll take a steaming [kensored] on next, conspiracy theorists either secretly meet and vote (making them the same as the organizations they hate) or they wait to see which one Dan Brown writes about next, no one's really sure.
3) Conspiracy theorists will make so many jumps in logic based on unrelated facts it's like they're playing the world's longest game of hopscotch every time they open their mouths (see: http://vigilantcitizen.com/?p=1676).
4) Conspiracy theorists are also [kensored] annoying and will alienate everyone they've ever met except on the internet (see above link, then read the comments section).
5) Like child porn and tentacle rape fetishes, conspiracy theories are horrible issues made much worse by the internet.
6) Conspiracy theorists view logical argument as cheating
7) Conspiracy theorists like to divide the world into "Everyone qualified/remotely related to the topic vs. Me". So like Rambo with [kensored] instead of bullets.
8) At the last count the world was secretly being run by the Illuminati, Knights Templar, Freemasons, Trilateral commission, New World Order, Skull & Bones society, Bilderberg group, Nine Unknown Men and the ever-popular Jews. Conspiracy theorists honestly believe that these invisible elites have run thousands of years of history but are incapable of killing someone who lives in a basement and shouts on street corners.
9) Conspiracy theorists display incredible attention to detail, an even more incredible ability to ignore details they don't like, in addition to obsessive focus and an irritating sense of self-righteousness. In other words, every time another person devotes his/her life to proving the moon landing was a hoax, we lose a potential powerful Pokemon Master.
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On to the topic that inspired me to write this post, 9/11:
For a very long amount of time, people have been claiming 9/11 was a total hoax/a government inside job/completely documented by a 20 dollar bill folded in a certain way. For that, we can all thank a teenager named Dylan Avery and his fictional-screenplay-turned-Spinal-Tap documentary, Loose Change.











The film is a rapid-fire collection of video clips set to techno music, attempting to prove that:
No plane hit the Pentagon - it was a cruise missile; the hijacked planes didn't bring down the World Trade Center, the buildings were wired with explosives ahead of time; flight 93 didn't crash in Pennsylvania and in fact landed safely elsewhere, and the passengers were in on the conspiracy.

But is it [kensored]? You decide (the answer is yes).
Here's how it all began:

Once upon a time, Dylan Avery was a gigantic attention whore minus the attention. His life's ambition was to become a famous director, so he sat down and started writing A FICTIONAL SCREENPLAY about 9/11, something he mentions in every interview he does (by the way, if you read page one of that article, he says "would love for someone to come to him and say he's full of [kensored]", something which the ENTIRE RATIONAL WORLD has been doing since he released his Spinal-Tap-esque "documentary", proving he follows Rule 9 above, and he also says "I have scientists on my side... and the government has none." I call major [kensored]).

So since he had no money whatsoever, he decided to cut up [kensored] of multimedia surrounding the subject until he raped enough of everything out of context until he got something that sounded scary enough. For example, he sifted through dozens of pictures showing hunks of airplane everywhere:









Until he got a picture with no wreckage anywhere and stuck it in his video: NO PHOTOS SHOW ANY EVIDENCE OF A PLANE CRASH










Now obviously, hundreds of people were in the Pentagon that day, dozens of witnesses saw a plane crash, hundreds of people cleaned up airplane parts and charred bodies, air traffic controllers saw the plane fly in on radar, pairs of light poles more than 20 feet apart were knocked over when the massive wings of the airliner mowed them down like grass. But that's okay. He's just making a fictional movie, it's all in fun.So he does the whole video like that. He cuts sound bites in half, saving the part where a flight instructor says something like, "I met the hijacker and he was a bad pilot," and deleting the part where the same guy says, "but you don't exactly have to be [kensored] Chuck Yeager to crash a plane into a building." Without that second part, it sounds like the guy is saying the hijacker couldn't have done the flying. He has literally edited the words to make the guy say the opposite of what he said. But then again, it was supposed to be a student film, his resume for the world, a viral video that would get his name out there. I have to admit, it was a great idea.

Until one day:

Phillip Jayhan ambles into Avery's life, waving around a wad of cash. Jayhan, who believes in a massive satanic cult that controls the world's politicians by sending them little boys to molest. Which could be true, but the point is, Jayhan paid Avery to market his fictional screenplay as a real documentary. Shortly afterward, Avery had a miraculous transformation that made him realize that holy [kensored], his fictional screenplay was real.

Now, you might scoff, thinking there's no rational reason for someone to knowingly market total [kensored] as fact, but then I ask you: Why do auditioners line up for American Idol (Lookin' like a fool with your pants on the ground!)? Where do Japanese game shows get all their contestants?

Why, in 7th grade, did Kathleen and I create this blog?

Because they want attention, and lots of it.

Now, since everyone reading this blog is in 9th grade at AHS (Edit: I forgot about Tanya, my bad. Three people left, then), they've probably spent a load of time learning about the Holocaust, right? Night, The Book Thief, World War II, The Angel of Bergen-Belsen, the Pianist, etc.?


Well, that seems to be a common theme amongst 9/11 truthers too. Dylan Avery and his [kensored] brigade aren't Holocaust deniers, no (in fact, here's them getting attacked by fellow 9/11 truthers for being Holocaust Promoters), but they'd certainly shift sides pretty quick if it meant getting more attention. After all, Dylan Avery, now 22-ish, is pretty much famous for marketing Loose Change, something he wrote as a fictional screenplay, as fact. If you don't believe me, pretty much every screen grab of a newspaper on Loose Change is from the American Free Press. Take one good look at it and tell me it's a legitimate newsletter that adheres to ethical journalism. It also has a legacy of anti-semitism. Like I mentioned earlier, ever-popular Jews.

And the credits of Loose Change feature research by Killtown:







Killtown, who should be noted, considers the Holocaust no big deal.
Those credits also include Christopher Bollyn, who should be noted that he was fired from American Free Press, the fucking nuts newsletter, for being too [kensored].
Oh, and here's Avery sympathizing with the passengers on the planes that got hijacked and blown the [kensored] up (not really).

Now there's my "based on hard research of the people who first claimed 9/11 was a hoax, 9/11 conspiracy theories are [kensored]" argument. Next, I'll post a "logical deduction of why 9/11 conspiracy theories are [kensored]" argument. And if I start now, the post should be released sometime around the rapture.

Remember how people keep citing lists of scientists that don't believe in global warming?

Well one of the more famous ones is the Heartland Institute one, that you can read about here:
http://www.desmogblog.com/500-scientists-with-documented-doubts-about-the-heartland-institute

Well, tl;dr forty five of them basically said they had no idea what the fuck the Institute was talking about.

Further Googling leads to: Heartland Institute is headed by executives of ExxonMobile and Phillip Morris (their other causes include convincing everyone that ciggarette smoke isn't dangerous), a handful of the people on the list are either dead or made-up, and one of them is an astrologist (if you're wondering, that's the horoscope kind, not the universe-studying kind), whose credentials on the subject can probably be doubted a little.

tl;dr of tl;dr Jason's procrastinating on hw and Googling stuff.

"oh, scientists changed uranus' name ages ago to end that stupid joke once and for all"

"really? what's is called now?"
"Urectum"

more filler

Because no one can ever bash Twilight enough:
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I just realized that if you removed the vampires from Twilight, you get shit that sounds alot like

Because I couldn't possibly get any more racist.

Okay, so a boring twitchy teenage girl named Bella falls in love with a sparkly vampire named Edward, and for some reason never clarified in the book, he loves her back. Now take the "vampire" part out of my last sentence (but leave the "sparkly" in, because I'm trying to prove Twilight is ridiculous) and you basically have this:

Edward: I've killed people before

Bella: K.

Edward: I wanted to kill you at first, your blood is tasty.

Bella: K.

Anybody with the self-esteem of a spoonful of pudding would have jumped out the window, run for the hills, and called it a day right there. Instead, we get Edward stomping around and telling his love interest to piss off, and since Bella is into forbidden fruit (hey, i just got the whole apple thing), she stands around taking it, because everyone knows that if you're skinny enough, someone exotic will fall in love with you for being you:

Hell, the shiny guy even confessess to a couple of murders, but the boring one just raises his murderous lust with a vacant stare and strange assurance that the effeminate Nosferatus would never hurt HER.

"I fell down the stairs, then out the fourth floor windows."- Twilight, circa 1970s

Filler

Sick, have a post 1/3 written (looong nerdy post), going to nap now, so have fun staring at this picture until I get up.