Falling America and the rise of Urban Exploring

In the last few years, America has changed towns and cities that were once rich with commerce now stand as silent reminders of what use to be. This has left many homes and businesses empty and abandoned slowly waiting for Mother Nature to reclaim them and given rise to a new kind of of pastime urban exploring. This is the pass time of exploring abandoned amusement parks, grain elevators,factories, power plants, missile silos, fallout shelters, hospitals, asylums, schools, poor houses, and sanatoriums. For some people this usually involves Illegal and dangerous activity and can mean going into places that have owners or filled with asbestos or black mold.

However there is another way. Sites like http://americanurbex.com/ have appeared in recent years to promote legal and safe exploring and even add places to see in your region to explore. Even setting up guidelines and tips that will help you get the most out of your adventure. There are many amazing places to see before they are forgotten. Many wonderful and astonishing sites. So, please go explore, enjoy and take lots of photos but most importantly takes this new pastime seriously, be safe and legal.

Is satirization a lost art?

Todays post will be short because everything I could ask has been asked before and I think his words should be heard so, today I will ask the question and then leave a video below.

Going back over things I watched and listened to as a child made me realize there was a lot of satirization growing up. Not just Mad Magazine or Naked Gun but there was satirization everywhere. You had Weird Al, Ray Stevens, even country joined in the act with Cledus T. Judd. However, it also went beyond that as well. The Tick, which may of you, will remember from the Fox Lineup satirized what it meant to be a super hero. This was a guy with no name, no riches, or dead parents just a man in a bad apartment wanting to do what is right and for that we loved it. I think we loved it so much because it is something we had not seen before and that is what satirization is a new take on what is popular and we feel we have already connected to in the past. Therefore, what happened, when did it all go wrong? For that answer I think it can’t be said better by anyone than Doug Walker.

Film how has it changed and is it better than what it use to be

With the recent success of the Avengers 2, Antman and Minions I thought it was time to ask the question, are these movies any good? Sure, they are high grossing and many people love them but does that make them good films? Lot’s of people loved Star wars Episode 1 until they stopped to think about what they had just watched and Twilight was one of the biggest movie series ever and at the same time one of the worst. Therefore, it is safe to say that even the worst things can get lucky from time to time.

So, what makes a good movie? Is it the cinematography, the special effects or the character development or is it something more? Surely all these things have there importance when it comes to make a quality movie. You also need the effort and joy that goes into making a movie and lately that seems to be missing. The love and care that went into movies like Jurassic Park which gave us some of the most mind blowing effects wasn’t felt in Jurassic world where the effects was subpar from the original movie some 20 years later.

Another growing issue is rushed or lazy writing that gives no Character Development and rushes into the main plot. So what happened? How did we go from movies like Citizen Cain and E.T., which were mostly Character Development to Movies like Pearl Harbor, which had no Development at all. Perhaps there is no right answer or it was not just one thing. Even Ernest saves Christmas had more Character Development than Pearl Harbor.

So what happened? Why have films changed so much? Perhaps it was not just one thing maybe it was a bunch of things. My theory is what I call the Blue light Theory. The Blue light is a reused effect that you see in every alien movie made be Sony. Same blue and same grinding loud noise. This shows not a willingness to create but to profit and there is where the problem is. When film started to change art to something that was only good for profit we started to see many rushed cookie cutter films. Does this mean Film is no longer art? No film will always be a product of the times and that in itself makes it art. It is just because controlled and sadly of a lower quality. That does not mean that movies like Citizen Cain and the day the earth stood still are gone forever it just means we have to want them again and that we have to make ourselves heard.

Failing expectations in modern literature,

It’s no secret to anyone who knows me that I believe that all forms of media, especially literature, have taken a decline over the years. What has been a thriving and evolving form of storytelling for centuries has started to decay and lose the sophistication and wonder that makes literature amazing in the first place.  Before anyone say’s “We have great books today.  Look at Twilight or 50 shades of grey.” Just stop.  Much in the way that people growing up with cell phones don’t know what it’s like to live without them like, so many people don’t realize what they are missing when it comes to literature.

Books like Twilight feel right because novels of that nature are all around us today. By of that nature I mean “Cash Grabbers”, books whose only purpose is to make money. These types of books do not have to be good, clever, well written or even grammatically correct just as long as they appeal to enough of a demographic to sell copies. Here are some prime examples of the decline in literature over the last century alone.

This is a passage from The Great Gatsby in 1925,

“Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.”

And Gone with the Wind written in 1937,

“I wish to Heaven I was married,” she said resentfully as she attacked the yams with loathing. “I’m tired of everlastingly being unnatural and never doing anything I want to do. I’m tired of acting like I don’t eat more than a bird, and walking when I want to run and saying I feel faint after a waltz, when I could dance for two days and never get tired. I’m tired of saying, ‘How wonderful you are!’ to fool men who haven’t got one-half the sense I’ve got, and I’m tired of pretending I don’t know anything, so men can tell me things and feel important while they’re doing it… I can’t eat another bite.” 

To Kill a Mockingbird written in 1960.

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.
Let us move ahead today

Twilight

“I tried to concentrate on the angel’s voice instead.

“Bella, please! Bella, listen to me, please, please, please, Bella, please!” he begged.

Yes, I wanted to say. Anything. But I couldn’t find my lips. 
“Carlisle!” the angel called, agony in his perfect voice. “Bella, Bella, no, oh please, no, no!” And the angel was sobbing tearless, broken sobs.
The angel shouldn’t weep, it was wrong. I tried to find him, to tell him everything was fine, but the water was so deep, it was pressing on me, and I couldn’t breathe.” 

And finally Insurgent,

SHAUNA LIES ON the ground, facedown, blood pooling on her shirt. Lynn crouches at her side. Staring. Doing nothing. “It’s my fault,” Lynn mumbles. “I shouldn’t have shot him. I shouldn’t have …” I stare at the patch of blood.

Surely, we have lost something and it is hard to say why. It could be greed, the formation of mass marketing, the non-existent checks and editing of amazons easy publishing. However, it does not mean we cannot get it back. Stories that that captured the heart, inspires the soul and taught us a little more about ourselves were what writers strived for back then and they aren’t gone they are just waiting. Waiting to be written and shared with a world that does not realize what they are missing.

Troubles with Media today

As a writer, I am contently trying to understand media and culture as a whole. What we laugh at, what we cry at and what upsets us are very important to understand. Not just, because it shows who we are but it shows what we find acceptable now as appose to what we maybe acceptable in the future. Even Mel Brooks has said his famous film blazing saddles would not be socially acceptable if it was made today.  So it’s important to take a look back and a look at now to see where we are head. After listening to Doug Walker’s editorials on movies and film I am convinced he may have a better understanding about Media and culture then anyone else.