One Acts Review!!

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Hi guys, Emily, here!

Well, after what has turned out to be a very interesting week, (read: major projects assigned, good grades reported, an illness, and a nice game of catch-up) I am finally able to give you guys my review of the One Acts performance by the GCC Forum Players!!

As I am sure that you have noticed by my extreme use of exclamation points so far in this blog post…..I loved this performance!!

One Acts consisted of six one-act plays, one after another. While all of the acts  were all simply fantastic; (depression, cross-dressing, foreplay, [while golfing, might I add] courtship, and popular literature where some of the themes which were discussed among the acts) what stood out to me as the best theatrical presentation was the very first presentation of the night, a fifteen minute production of the classic tale, Hamlet.

Now, I love Hamlet, it is far and away my favorite Shakespeare play of all time; and because of this fact, I was a little apprehensive of a condensed fifteen minute version. However, I was not left disappointed. The Forum Players did a great job of maintaining the integrity of the work while shortening the bits of the play that would not be missed by lovers of Shakespeare and also tend to bore people who are not as keen on plays as I. Through condensing the play, the Players got to the heart of what was really happening within the story, and they also made it humorous, something that many don’t necessarily see as a part of Hamlet.

Humor, in particular, was the driving theme of the One Acts production. The Players addressed some issues that are of a serious nature, (such as depression and mania) but the seriousness was softened by the superior comedic timing and willingness to go to the next level by the Forum Players.

All in all, One Acts was fantastic. Having been to a Forum Players production before I was expecting a great performance and was not disappointed. The cast works so well together, there is not a weak link in the bunch.

Having been to a couple of Forum Players productions now, I understand why so members of the Batavia and surrounding communities come to GCC to watch each performance. The Genesee Community College Forum Players are truly a bright spot in our community.

Until next time, theater lovers!!

Emily

The Library

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The other day, I was walking around the library with my friend Christina taking pictures for the contest that is being held in the library, and I just stopped at one point and closed my eyes. Have you ever really thought about what you are walking into when you walk into the library? You’re walking into the history of the world. It’s all in the books, from Christopher Columbus to Harry Potter, it’s all there just waiting for us to jump into it. So jump! Take a travel through time and read about what was going through Magellan’s mind or find out what mischieve your favorite character is getting into. Just sit down with a book one day and relax. Explore the possibilities!

Three cheers if you are in support of keeping real books and reading in the world… Say no to the Kindle and Nook!

Wait…..We have a Radio Station?!

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Hey Guys!!

As I have reminded you oh, so many times, I work in the Student Activities office in the Student Union. Well, our wonderful media specialists hear at the college have been doing some tinkering on the TV that is just outside my office door. As I sit here, at my work-study desk, typing this quick blog for you, I am listening to music from our campuses very own radio station WGCC 90.7 FM. The TV outside my door now broadcasts WGCC along with the campus

WGCC Logo

announcements that normally run on that monitor.

Did you know we have a radio station?!

Confession…. I’ve known about WGCC since my Freshman year so it’s not big news to me that it exhists. However, it could be big news for you…

I will also confess that I have never actually listened to WGCC until right this second. I have to say that I am enjoying it. WGCC is more or less a rock station, with hints of the new, contemporary music of today. Students who are majoring in media arts get the opportunity to do projects for WGCC and even broadcast on the air. It is a wonderful opportunity for those students who are looking to get into the broadcast field.

I think WGCC is just another reason why GCC is such a great campus. Our school really does give us students every opportunity to succeed it can. If you get bored one day, please hop on to 90.7 FM and give WGCC a listen… I know you’ll like what you hear. You can even listen online at wgcc-fm.com!

Love for Pubudu Benefit

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By: Genevieve Scholl

 

On Saturday, October 15th, from 6-8 at night there will be a benefit for Pubudu (a college village RA) in the forum. It is to help with his hospital bills and family hardship as he recovers from a life threatening brain hemmorage. Tickets are $8 for adults and $6 for children under 5. They can be purchased at GCC during lunch from 12-2 starting October 4th. Call CV at 585-343-0163 or purchase them at the door. The benefit will include a Chinese auction, spaghetti dinner, and monetary donations. Donations can be made by contacting Ellen Brokaw at ecbrokaw@genesee.edu or 585-343-0163.

Show your love for Pubudu!!!!

Sponsored by College Village

Follow up to Emily’s “Happiness” Blog

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By: Genevieve Scholl

 

My fellow blogger wrote about what makes her happy, so I decided to show you guys a little something about me. Instead of just saying what makes me happy, I am going to list my 10 Guilty Pleasures and 10 Things That Bother Me That Really Shouldn’t.

10 Guilty Pleasures

  • Rock Climbing
  • Disney Channel
  • Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream
  • Ratetouille (The Food, not the movie)
  • Irish/ Native American/ Jazz Music
  • CSI/ Criminal Minds
  • CASTLE
  • Blowing a Whole Day to Read a Book From Cover to Cover
  • Heels with Jeans
  • Coconut Rum

10 Things That Bother Me That Really Shouldn’t

  • Uneven Numbers
  • Motorcycles
  • Re-makes of Classic Movies (The Original Dirty Dancing will always be the ONLY Dirty Dancing!)
  • Jiff Peanut-Butter Commercial: “Well you’re making this for me!”
  • Mono-toned Voices
  • Facebook Changes (Though I think that bothers all of us)
  • People Eating Sushi
  • The Smell of Vanilla
  • Packing
  • When People Concentrate More on the Details of a Wedding, Rather Than the Person They are Marrying.

And that’s me in a nutshell! I hope you don’t think me too weird…

Happiness?

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Goodmorning, GCC!!

I must confess that every time I see the word “happy” I either hear the Cheerios slogan “Bee Happy, Be Healthy” (No, that is not misspelled. See, the honey bee pun?) or the opening shot of Elle Woods, spritzing Clinique’s popular fragrance Happy on her wrist while she is getting ready, in the fantastic (yes, I love this movie) film, Legally Blonde (you know, deep, deep down, that you love this movie too). 

Why am I going on about the word “happy,” you may ask? Well, a good friend of mine informed me this morning that my blog is sad. Not sad, in a pathetic sort of way, but sad as in emotion. Now, I know that he was kidding, however, it got me thinking. I have been posting about alot of introspective, sad stories.

I have decided that it is time for me to lighten it up a bit!!

During the second half of my senior year of highschool, a few of my close friends and I ended up in a study hall together during the last block of the day. This study hall was run by one of my favorite teachers, Mr. Watterson, and basically consisted of joking, gossiping, serious talks about wordly issues (seriously, we talked through a bunch of different topics with Mr. Watterson), complaining about a highschool that we all secretly love, a bit of school work, (done mostly by me) and the exchanging of wisdom between friends.  

During one of these study halls, one of my friends came up with the idea to make “happy lists.” Simply put, happy lists ended up being very, very, very long lists of anything and everything that we could think of that made us happy. We would spend about half a block laughing and coming up with the lists, while spending the rest of the block reading them outloud to each other. “Happy lists” are one of my favorite memories of my senior year; I still have my list in a keepsake box, safely tucked away in my bedroom.

I would like to share a bit of my list with you today, and encourage you to make one of your own. Creating my happy list forced me to see all the blessings I have in my life, and sharing it out loud brought me closer to my friends.

So, here are 50 things that make me happy, in no particular order. Maybe, some of these make you happy as well, or maybe they will just help brighten your day a little. Enjoy 🙂

1. dancing on a cold, hardwood floor

2. watching the sun rise through the wind shield of my car

3. eating popcorn

4. my family

5. shopping

6. watching my brother win a 100 hurdles race

7. Ryan Reynolds

8. black Starbucks coffee

9. teaching dance

10. watching a Buffalo Bills football game (no matter the outcome)

11. the moment immediatly following finishing a big project

12. unexpected smiles

13. late night hangouts at Coffee Culture

14. a fantastic pair of high heels

15. John Wayne movies

16. dreading the last page of a great book

17. men in white t-shirts and blue jeans

18. the last day of the semester

19. blasting the music in my car

20. church on sunday morning, immediatly followed by the NFL pregame show

21. posing for pictures

22. accents (English, Australian, Southern….love them all)

23. Johnny Depp

24. riding an ATV through a cornfield

25. the smell of fall

26. surprises

27. writing

28. work boots

29. hearing from someone you havent seen in a while

30. walking through the halls of my highschool (making lots of noise in my high heels)

31. Friday night football games, cheering on my brother

32. a great pair of jeans

33. the color black

34. going out to dinner

35. music from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s

36. 90’s alt. rock

37. Friends

38. diamond jewlery

39. finishing a test with 40 minutes left in free class time

40. the smell of vanilla

41. The Office

42. Aerosmith

43. Any movie/TV show produced by Lorne Michaels

43. vacations

44. tail-gating

45. the colors red, white, and blue (multiple reasons)

46. crazy jingles that get stuck in your head

47. That 70’s Show

48. chocolate

49. thunderstorms

50. cheesy disaster movies

There are over 300 items on my original list, 50 is just a drop in the bucket. Please think about writing a list of your own, it really does help to put your life in perspective.

Until next time,

Emily

Darien Lake

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By: Genevieve Scholl

Hello Everyone on this beautiful day we have off of classes! You will have to bare with me today, as I am blogging from a Mac Computer and have not used one in quite some time.Here is my experience at Darien Lake on Saturday!

Thanks to the generosity of Kevin Manne, we got free tickets to Darien Lake and went to Frightfest on Saturday afternoon. It was a great day and a very exciting event. After parking right by the entrance (lucky us) we walked into the park and did some shopping. We didn’t buy much, except way too much rock candy, but there were a lot of great things that were for sale. The best thing I saw was baby stuffed animals wrapped in blankets. They were sooo adorable (unfortunately no picture) and I wanted to get one for my sister in law, but couldn’t afford it 😦 . Then, we walked into the park and jumped right into lunch :). We ate at Beaver Brothers Restaurant and let me tell you the food was delicious! I had a “ceasar salad” (I put it in quotes, because I got ranch dressing instead of the ceasar dressing) and my best friend had a Bucky’s Bacon Burger. It smelled heavenly and I know that the bacon, since I stole a piece, was good at least.

After lunch, we proceeded to the rides for the day. A lot of things were closed, being this late in the season and it being Frightfest and all, but we were able to right five different rides; four for me. We started off with the Haymaker, which was basically a seat that you spun around in, and that was fun but we were kind of dizzy afterward. Then, we headed over to the carousel to relax a bit before we went to another thrilling ride. The next ride happened to be the Fright Night Bus Tour. Basically, we got onto a bus and the driver took us around the campgrounds where various Halloween themed things were set up. There were clowns, decapitated heads, zombies, etc. There were moments when the “monsters” got on the bus, there was fog, scary sounds, and even times when we almost hit someone with the bus. (It was all choreographed of course so don’t worry, no one got hurt; though a few kids did cry). It was a lot of fun and actually more funny than scary. We did it in the day time so, I am not sure what the difference would have been at night, but it was very well done. I mean, we thought we were on a ride instead of bus because the bus driver was so good at taking turns fast and everything. A lot of fun. Check it out next Fright fest. After that, we sat down and had a drink before heading to the last ride (mine anyway) of the night. The Raging Seas (another sit and spin type ride). My best friend also went on a roller coaster (I do not like roller coasters at all) called the Motocoster. It is a roller coaster where you sit on a motorcycle instead of in a bench seat like most roller coasters. I’ll admit, it is scary for me, because I feel like I am going to fall out even though there are plenty of restraints. She had a blast though, so I didn’t mind waiting the forty minutes for her to be done waiting and riding the coaster.

After all the rides, we made our way to the field by the lake to get ready for the Laser Spooktacular! It is a laser light show that is put on everyday during the season, but for Halloween, it becomes the Spooktacular! It was a lot of fun. They played songs like Addams Family, Harry Potter, Monster Mash, This is Halloween, etc. That lasted about 15 minutes and we headed to the parking lot. By the time we left the park it was 10:30PM and we had at least a forty minute drive back to Brockport, so we had a relaxing ride with some music to wind down from the exciting day and go to sleep as soon as we got back.

The only downside to the whole day, was that there was a problem with the Ferris Wheel, so we were unable to ride it. But that’s okay, there’s always next year!

Kevin Manne

Thank you again to Kevin Manne for the tickets! Bye bye for now everyone! Enjoy your day off!

Forensic Anthropology/ “The Bone Woman”

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By: Genevieve Scholl

A while back I had planned to write a post about my Forensic Anthropology class, but had never found enough information to write a good lengthy blog that tells you all about the class in detail or about Forensic Anthropology in general. Now, I have enough information to do just that. The only Forensic Anthropology class on our campus is during Thursday nights from 6-9PM. It is taught by Guinevere Granite, the best professor ever!

Guinevere Granite

She has a masters in Forensic Science and a masters in Anthropology, so she is the tops! She is young, funny, and makes class enjoyable. But, more than all of those things, she enjoys her work and in turn we enjoy it as well. That good vibe coming off of her helps the class relax and take our time to get to understand the material. It is a respectful field and one that I hope to get into one day in my lifetime.

"Fred"

Meet “Fred”… We don’t know who he was for real, but that was the name he was granted with when the class first started working with the skeletons. He is a complex skeleton with sutures, vertebrae, carpals, tarsals, and fuses. However, he is a skeleton that has been helping us in the class since day one. We have learned every bone in the body, where they are, how to side them from left and right, and as of last night, we learned how to figure out the age of the skeleton. Skeletons can be a surprisingly good form of figuring out what happened to a person. Of course you know that bullets penetrate bone, objects can crack bone, and certain diseases can effect bone in different ways. However, bones can also help us to determine age (like I said before), race, sex, location (sometimes), and even lifestyle. Bones are a crazy and wonderful thing!

This class is teaching me a lot more than I was expecting. I thought I knew most of what I would be learning, but I was dead wrong. Haha, get it? Dead wrong… Anyway, enough with the corny puns. I hope this post has gotten you thinking, and maybe interested in the field of Forensic Anthropology.

Now, for the second part of my post. For my presentation at the end of the class, I am reading “The Bone Woman” by Clea Koff. Clea Koff is a famous Forensic Anthropologist. As the back of the book says, “In 1994, Rwanda was the scene of the first acts since World War 2 to be legally defined as genocide. Two years later, Clea Koff, a twenty-three year old forensic anthropologist, left the safe confines of a lab in Berkeley California, to serve as one of the sixteen scientists chosen by the United Nations to unearth the physical evidence of the Rwandan genocide.” That is the case she is most famous for, but the book talks about her experiences before that case and the wonderful doctors she worked with that inspired her. It is an enchanting book about the field of Forensic Anthropology and about the different aspects that anthropologists look for when they discover bones. Now, if you are not very savvy with scientific words (like sun-bleached or GSW or Maxillary), it is a little slow of a read. However, Clea defines most of the more difficult ones right in the reading. I suggest that anyone interested in this field or science in general pick up this book and read it at least once.

Clea Koff a Forensic Anthropologist

Clea is a brilliant woman and definitely someone I will remember throughout my career and strive to be like… Along with Guinevere Granite.

Roommates Only Night

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By: Genevieve Scholl

 

On Tuesday night, we had a roommates only night. All guests or friends or boyfriends, etc, left the room for two hours while the roommates hung out and watched movies, drank hot chocolate, and did makeup and hair.

Roommates

We watched Enchanted with Amy Adams and Patrick Dempsey and we watched Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest. It was a very girly night where we remembered our youth and relaxed. No homework was done, no stresses were present, and we stuffed our mouths full of food that we really didn’t need. It was a relaxing and enjoyable time that I believe everyone should allow themselves at least once a week to rid themselves of the stresses of classes and work.

Now, while most of you know what Enchanted is or at least have heard of it, I bet a lot of you have never heard of Fern Gully. My roommates sure hadn’t before Tuesday night. I think that is a crying shame! Everyone should see Fern Gully at least once in their lifetime.

Fern Gully is the story of Crysta, a fairy in the rainforest, and her family. Their world is being destroyed by loggers and the trees are in pain, but Crysta won’t let that happen! When a human working on the site thinks she is a bug and tries to spray her with spray paint, he accidentally sprays an ancient tree that holds an evil spirit. In the process of this,  Crysta accidentally shrinks down the human, a creature that all the fairies fear thanks to their crazy friend Batty (a bat who escaped from a biology lap with a radio in his head), when she is trying to explore the logging areas and hatch out a plan. What happens? Well, you will just have to watch the movie and find out.

Now, that was just a little insight into my childhood. Unfortunately, it also shows my age in relation to about every other student on this campus haha, but that’s okay. I am just happy to share my wisdom and experiences with everyone in order for them to experience these moments and movies themselves. Next up to introduce to the roommates… We will just have to wait and see. 🙂

Thanks for listening!

“Jobs” for Technology Today

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Hey, guys, Emily here.

When someone dies, it’s often difficult to talk about. You often can’t find words to express what you are feeling, or the thoughts that are going through your mind. You find yourself sitting there, thinking that what you have just heard is crazy and can’t be true…trying to find a way to make it go away in your mind, or even just a way to compartmentalized the news into a neat package that is somehow easier to swallow.

However, it isn’t often that you get this reaction to hearing about the death of a person that you have never met.

If you have not already heard, (with our 24/7 media, I’m not sure how it’s possible to “not hear” anymore) Apple’s former CEO, Steve Jobs, passed away yesterday. When I heard the news, I was sitting in a classroom during my Wednesday night Horror in Films class , when suddenly my friend Carolyn looked up from her Mac laptop, and told me that Steve Jobs had just died. Now, I have an ear for irony, and it was not lost on me that this news had been delivered to my friend and I via a Mac and that I quickly looked down at my iPhone, trying to decide whether I wanted to investigate the news for myself.

It was a weird, sad feeling. Hearing about Steve’s death. I can only compare it to the night that my mother told me that Heath Ledger had died (I’m going to be honest and tell you that I cried when she told me, he was one of my favorite actors of all time…he always will be) and the day that I found out that Michael Jackson had died (every self-respecting dancer loves Michael Jackson, it’s part of our culture).

I will admit that I did not react as strongly to Steve’s death, as I did to the deaths of Heath Ledger and Michael Jackson. I believe this was because I had only just started building my “relationship” with Steve Jobs. I have only been the proud owner of my iPhone 4 for about 3 1/2 months now, (of course, I have had an iPod for years, but those are so common place now, that it almost doesn’t feel very “Apple” if you know what I mean) and of course I have fallen in love with it, but I had only just begun thinking about making the switch to all Apple products.

Lets face reality and recognize that Steve Jobs was a visionary. He changed technology during our generation at a far faster pace than had ever been seen before in our country, or in the world. However, he did pay a price.

For the most part, I believe that everyone knew that he was sick , which was the reason why he stepped down as the CEO of Apple in the first place, but we were never aware just how sick he was. Steve Jobs was a very secretive man, which was one of the reasons why the American public was so enamored with him.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, it is hard to talk about someone who has died. I found an article on foxnews.com that pays tribute to Steve Jobs, his successes, and his history, in a more eloquent and succinct way then I ever could. I will post the link to the article below. Please read it, if you get the chance. It does shed some light on a man, that we all knew, and respected in one way or another.

We will always remember Steve the way we loved him most: standing on a huge stage, black turtle-neck, jeans, sneakers… with a little smirk on his face, about to unveil a product that was sure to change our lives forever.

Until next time,

Emily

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/10/05/apple-says-founder-steve-jobs-is-dead/