Manny Scott & Dr. Frankenstein

Post Written By: Chris Stein

     This week Dunbar had an assembly for guest speaker Manny Scott and in our AP Lit class, we started reading Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. As a result, this week was very focused on life and death and gave us time to think critically about ourselves. As a matter of opinion, there were a few things I personally disliked about his speech. Keep in mind, this is me being very critical and I do, in fact, think Mr. Scott is an amazing speaker as well as an inspirational person, and he conveyed his message in a powerful way. But frankly, I have a problem with the way people talk about suicide. Call it lack of sympathy or tolerance or whatever you may, but where I'm from, suicide is the biggest f*** you to your family, your friends, to your community and to God. It's you telling everyone around you that you're too good for the life you were given, so as opposed to putting in the effort to change it, you're just giving up. There are people out there who would give anything to be in the position you are in right now. As a matter of personal integrity, suicide is the biggest display of weakness a person can have. Seeing as the only person you're smart enough to kill is yourself, suicide is not a strength. If you want to be strong, reach out for the help you need, or better yet, become an example of how other people can overcome the situations they are in. Where I'm from, people don't die from suicide, they die because life was taken away from them. Glendale, my old highschool had the mascot of a falcon and our student body was often referred to as "the flock" and when tragic events occurred, the flock flew together. As a smaller school, we were all family. Just before I moved here, I lost a classmate and very close friend of mine Grayson in a plane crash. Grayson Lambert star soccer player, Josh Lambert 10 years old, McKinley Lambert 15, along with parents John and Robin were all killed on their way back from a baseball game. Their small 6-seater Piper didn't make it back from the game that Saturday morning.

A few months later, another tennis partner and close friend of mine, Paul Nahon, Glendale graduate, died in a climbing accident Long's Peak in the Rocky Mountain National Park. Paul was attending Richmond University and planned to go pro in tennis after college. 

When news of the deaths reached Glendale, our remaining 1198 students wore orange and held a vigil around the flagpole in memory of our lost students. That day was different because the flock was missing a few, and it hurt. 

Where I'm from, life isn't something we give away freely. We cherish our lives and the lives of others around us. For me, this only strengthens Mary Shelly's message that life is not ours to give or take. 

the flock flies together

Marshall Bruce Mathers III

Post Written By: Chris Stein

     In class this week we watched a movie about Long Beach students who, with the help of a teacher Erin Gruwell, achieved something they could've never achieved before. The students of Woodrow Wilson High School transitioned from disobedient gang members to loquacious erudite students who journaled and documented their life on the streets in order to give themselves a better chance at success in life. In America, we have seen a parallel to this in the modern music culture, most prominently in hip-hop and rap. I personally see the movie 8 Mile as a relative parallel to Freedom Writers. Mathers's home life as a high schooler was seldom stable, and he wrote his own lyrics to rap songs on the radio while spending three years in ninth grade due to truancy and poor grades even though he was extremely interested in English.

Taking to the streets, Marshall Bruce Mathers III showed off his rap skills in open mic contests in a west 8 Mile hip-hop shop and caught the attention of various rap groups. Eventually after gaining a reputation in the underground rap world, Eminem went official, signing with the Bass brothers, recording his debut album Infinite. Following this, Eminem released his debut EP, the Slim Shady EP, which fought the attention of Dr. Dre, one of the most prominent figures in music at the time. Just like Erin Gruwell helped her students become the "Freedom Writers," Dr. Dre took in white rapper Eminem, helping him produce his first major-label album The Slim Shady LP, which went triple platinum by the end of the year. Gaining momentum, Eminem released The Marshall Mathers LP and the Eminem Show, both of which have been certified 10x platinum since their release.

Finishing Wuthering Heights

Post Written By: Chris Stein

     In class this week, we have finally finished reading Wuthering Heights and now we're moving on to (hopefully) better things. It's similar to sitting in a car and listing to someone else's horrible music because you're too nice to tell them they have poor taste in music. I'm neither implying that Wuthering Heights is only chosen by people with poor taste, nor that we shouldn't have read it. Reading different novels outside your typical genre only makes you more experienced and more intelligent in the world of literature. The same can be said of music. People have different tastes in music and although music beings up together, it also can set us apart. One could, for example, be a folk music aficionado yet the only reason they may or may not like other genres is because they have listened to them before. Fortunately, music is much easier to judge. We can often times listen to a few seconds of a song before we find out that we really done enjoy that type of music. Brontë's novel is heavily layered into the sub-genre of gothic romance yet it draws people out from their typical genre to read. This is because of the quality and artistic merit the book demands. It isn't a book you read then don't have an opinion about. If you actually read Wuthering Heights, you will have some type of feeling about it, and chances are, it's a rather strongly opinionated one. It is the factor of provoking emotion that earns this book the title of a classic. Similarly, music needs to have some describable quality to be considered "good." Classic music, like classic literature, has a quality that provokes feeling or some type of thought. Classical music is called "classic" music for a reason. Sure, it's boring and it's old but thats not what makes it a classic. In the same way literature speaks to us personally through the letters of a novel or the pages of text in a biography, classical music reaches out from the strings of the violin, deep within our mental self to provoke some kind of thought that speaks to, and relates to us personally.