Sunday

My grandma's dog died today. I'm not sad for the dog. I loved her but she had been weakening for a while. My grandma is depressed, she had been long before Chela died. She takes medication and used to say that after chela died then she'd wanna leave too. I'm not afraid that she'd kill herself, her religious beliefs would keep her away from something like that. I'm afraid that she'll lose the reason to live that we all have. Chela meant more to her than anything else. Imagine living out your elderly life just waiting to die. I think we want to send her back to Ecuador. She likes it there, and Chela would only ever let her visit for a couple of weeks at a time. 

What amazes me is how strong my grandmother pretends to be. When she called yesterday saying that She needed to bring Chela to the hospital there wasn't even the slightest crack in her voice when she said that she'd probably have to put her down. I know that she cried and it was very public, but that was only after. Sadness in our family is frowned upon. We can't afford to be sad for longer than is allowed. And what is allowed is a couple of minutes after someone dies. Any other sadness you feel is meant for bedroom pillow after everyone else has gone to bed. The illusion of being strong is more important than having actual strength. I didn't cry yet. I'm still waiting for the whole event to hit me. The fact that the only animal that I ever knew at a personal level was dead still doesn't feel real yet. I wonder if they'll be a funeral. We wouldn't waste our money on a funeral. Not when the dog's hospital bills are already in the hundreds. But if there was, would I cry there? Would we follow our tradition of throwing a party around the open casket as we celebrate the dog's life? Would that be weird? Now that I think about, my family is heartless. We saw Chela as therapy for my grandmother. Give the old lady a companion so she won't bother us about how lonely she is. So would the funeral just be my aunts and uncles huddled around my grandmother as she burst into tears as everyone in the back would think to themselves that they saw this coming. Chela didn't mean anything to my mother and father. They hated her because she would bring fur into the house when she'd visit. To me and my sister and my cousin, that dog was our childhood. We'd beg to see grandma just so that we could play with Chela. 

Chela is dead now. My grandmother's mental state is still unknown to me and probably will stay that way for a while because we don't talk about our feeling very much in our family. That was basically my Sunday. That and a cartoon superman movie. Those always seem to make me feel better. 

French

I love everything French. Even French shit sounds nice right now. There is something about the language that I can't help but love. English is wonderful too. The issue with English is that it is familiar. I guess what attracts me to French is that it is so foreign. But it's more than foreign, it's exclusive. There is a pride when you speak a language like French. It's a similar pride you get if you were to learn Latin. It's a luxury language. To know English, Spanish or Chinese is a language that you need to know. In the future, when the U.S. because conquered by China, and when most people are part Hispanic, knowing English, Spanish and Chinese would normal, if not mandatory. But the exclusivity of French stays.

I changed the settings on my computer to have the computer work in French. I've gotten stuck quite a couple number of times, like at the beginning I didn't know which button to click when i wanted to cancel, but now I'll forever know that annuler means to cancel.
I've been growing a love for French music. It's odd because some of the songs I like in French aren't my style of music at all. There is an artist called Stromae that I'm becoming obsessed with. He is huge in France. I even like a rap group called Sexion D'Assault. I think I just like the way the words sound because I normally avoid any type of rap. 

Instructions Not Included

Last week it was my grandmother's birthday and she came over to the house and we had lunch. After, we went to see a movie. Instructions Not Included , or No se Aceptan Devoluciones, appears to be a cheesy comedy about a man who is forced to have to raise a child alone, after the mother leaves the little girl with the father. It reminded me of that Adam Sandler movie with Dylan and Cole Sprouse, and the IMDb ratings made me believe that it would be just as bad. BUT IT WASN'T. IMDb only had five critics’ reviews. At a glance, the 55 score that the movie got made me believe that the movie would be an awful Latino Hollywood movie, while in reality most critics liked it, and probably IMDb wouldn't put up the reviews that were in Spanish, because the majority of the film is in Spanish. 
            The first half is awful, but that's a necessary evil to set up the rest of the film. Once the mother comes back, shit starts to get real. You find yourself at the edge of your seat trying to figure out where everything started to get insane, and the cheesy comedy in the movie is all just a cruel joke to you, because the last five minutes you will cry so hard. Every cliché that you think would happen doesn't, and you find yourself spending hours after the film is over, trying to figure out what the movie was about, because the commercials advertise it as a heartwarming comedy for the whole family, when in reality it's a depressing story about a man who is facing what fear is.
            The director and co-writer of the film is a Mexican comedian named Eugenio Derbez. He is a very well known actor in Latin America, and this was his first venture into directing, and you can see that in his film, but you overlook tiny errors when you're left in tears. I know him from a film we watched in Spanish class, Under the Same Moon, where he moved away from comedy to try serious acting. He wasn't bad, though that movie wasn't good. He best known in Latin America for his television show La Familia P. Luche which ran for a decade.
            My advise to anyone who finds themselves watching Instructions Not Included is to stay until the end. You might want to kill yourself in the first half an hour, but it'll be worth once you see the end. Derbez knew exactly what is and isn't cliché because he has been in some awful films, like Jack and Jill, but he is smart enough to know how to make that cliché into something so original that you feel bad for ever calling his film cliché. 

Julieta Venegas

I think I've mentioned Julieta Venegas before in my blog, but I have an odd respect for her that I love to talk about. You love her in the same way that you love Andy Warhol. They're essentially sellouts, but they aren't because they know exactly what they're doing. Andy Warhol made pop art, and Julieta makes pop music. But Julieta didn't start off that way, her first two albums were considered the best in Latin American alternative music, but she gave all that up and released the biggest piece of bullshit she could make and she became a pop star. I love her music, her old music, and her new music. She is extremely talented, and very smart. The way to determine a singers intelligence is to watch interviews of them. Julieta is very smart. I like to think that she is manipulating the whole music industry and you can see that her newer albums are becoming more and more what she used to do in the 90's. This is my favourite song of hers, from her second album.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxhRuqgiFt0

And this is her hit from the next album, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PhcJP8uYf4

She became a Taylor Swift. I mean the music is better. In every album there are songs that must confuse the shit out of the common pop music fan, because they're weird as fuck, but I think that's her way of trying to keep to her true self. Her newest album has this fantastic song, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YnukFyScWQ

I am always looking for what she is going to do next, and I suggest you do as well.

Hips and Bios

I've been teaching myself how to shake my hips. I feel that as a homosexual Latino, I should know how to do this. The worst thing would be if one day I find myself at a gay salsa club in Latin America, and I'm awkwardly shaking in a corner, trying to be like the other guys. I've gotten pretty good, and that's thanks to a band I found called Chicha Libre. I realize that I enjoy Latin music, but I don't enjoy the latin popular music. For some reason my mind never thought to find any cool, hidden music of my people, but now that I have, which is in some part thanks to Ellen, I have this newfound love for latin music. I bought an exercise belt, and I'm in my room dancing with it on, as I hold my new weights. I feel the burn, but my hips are starting to move like my sister's. Twerking is an insult to the art of hip shaking. I refuse to learn that vile dance move. Call me traditional, but you're not supposed to move in that way. What's awesome about the Latin community is that children do the exact same dances as their parents did. This is probably because Latin dances are just as sexual as the modern dances that we see in clubs, and because as children we learn how to dance these dances.

I'll start the artist bio now.

Julian Vargas was born to immigrant parents in the year 1997. His life had always been a conflict between the traditional and modern. From a young age he had been confronted with the question of sexuality while being raised in a socially conservative house. This struggle has become Julian's life. What part of the old world must be kept? Which new ideas are valid, and which are just ridiculous? 

Even with the struggle, Julian still finds a deep love for life, and experiments with  religious and philosophical ideas to answer life's questions. Julian enjoy's all aspects of art, and has tried to experiment in as many as he can. Because his talents don't necessarily lean towards a certain discipline, Julian is able to switch between different mediums of art to express himself. Though mostly focused on writing, Julian has also directed film's and short scenes, and has sculpted with his free time.    He also plays the saxophone on occasion, though his interests have faded away from music at the moment. 

Film is an extremely important part of Julian's life, even though he still conceders himself a novice at film viewing and filmmaking. He likes odd stories, and enjoys equally the violent Tarantino films, and the softer, wittier films like those of Wes Anderson. He describes his favorite type of movie as "anything that is good".

His role models tend to be fictional people, especially from television shows. He admires Kevin Spacey’s character on “House of Cards”, Francis Underwood, for being a master at manipulation and smarter than everyone around him. He believes that by looking up to fictional people, rather than real people, he can be greater than anyone who already exists.

Them Heavy People New Verse 

When everything is against you

It is working for you.

Trying to figure out what's right and wrong.

But the world doesn't teach you that. 

Them heavy people hit me in a soft spot

Them heavy people help me

Them heavy people hit me in a soft spot

Exercise

               Exercise was never something that I enjoyed. I always hated it because of the immediate feeling of death after you go out for a jog, but ever since I started exercising again, I feel more alive. 

It's weird, the motivations that we have, if I didn't have a craving for cute, sexy, muscular twinks, then I'd probably not be trying to build myself. People always tell you that you should love whom you are, but then sells you things to make you "prettier". Whenever I'm faced with the question of "why are you trying to change yourself" I reply like on of my favourite characters would, Agrado from Todo Sobre mi Madre, the Pedro Almodovar film. She gave a speech about being authentic, and she said "Well, as I was saying, it costs a lot to be authentic, ma'am. And one can't be stingy with these things because you are more authentic the more you resemble what you've dreamed of being." She was defending her plastic surgeries but that mentality is true in everyone. I am not the cubby, weak kid that I look that. That person is a lie, and it's my job to bring out the real Julian, the authentic. I'm not changing who I am; I'm stopping the fakeness that I have been living. 

I gave a whole speech but in reality I'm just exercising because I've seen what the boy of my dreams look like, and he is skinny and drinks protein shakes. But all that stuff I said before is true too. I'm not what I look like now, and I have the ability to change that, so I will. 

I've been wearing my old children shirts. They're far too small for me, but they build my confidence. I hunch because it makes my chest not look as gross. I hate my man boobs. These tighter shirts force me to stand up straighter, and help a lot in my quest to become my real self. 

This Year

Being an upperclassman is beyond exciting. An excuse to reinvent yourself is something that should be appreciated. Last year was about discovering my sexuality, but this year I want to do more. I wanna do something more significant. I wanna build myself, both physically and mentally. I've starting running again, a task I stopped because of laziness, and I wanna work on my hobbies more. Because I'm not taking a science class, I'm sure that this year will be significantly more productive and also because I'm done trying to figure out who my new gayself is supposed to be. Im going to join a club. It's not something that I've ever enjoyed, but I think that a club like model un will be a great place to test my new knowledge after a summer of watching news. I've been watching less films which isn't helping my creative side, but the amount of news that I've been watching has done wonders for my intellectual self. And that's what I wanna be building this year. My brain. I've decided that law school is something that Im aiming to go to. Not much can be done with just a poli sci degree, which is my preferred field of study, but almost every influential person in politics and news has a law degree. I don't wanna be a lawyer though, or not aim to be a lawyer. I met a lady, in her late forties/ early fifties that study political science and is now a film director because her husband can support her economically as she ventures into a new stage in her life. The line between artist and intellectual is fine so so art career is still an option, but economically it can be tough. And I have a feeling I can make a more positive impact as a diplomat or something.
Blogging is something easy and quick to do with my time. And I know one day it'll help me. I don't know what STAC will be like, but as an upperclassman I know I can influence the program as a whole, much more than I could before. I'm friends with everyone in STAC, and I think that we'll have a sense of unity that STAC hasn't felt in a long time. The seniors aren't as stubborn and as critical as they were last year, and I don't see them starting a mini revolution like almost happened last year. I have always felt that STAC, as a force, is able to fix itself over time. People who harm the program eventually leave, and new ones replace them. Everyone that's left wants to be there. That's the most important part. Talent is a myth, and the more important part is having a class that is able to learn and function well. Breeding a STACie from their first high school year can make an artist just as good as someone who joined as a senior. Let's make a year that can be as powerful and as awesome as the years that we hear about from the alumnus. Every year starts off great, and from my perpective, the program has gotten better as the years went by. You see that in the students. I didn't have a table last year like i did my freshman year. I had preferences, but my seating in the class was based on how I felt that day. And since I like all the people in STAC, I'm sure it'll be the same this year, and other students will follow. There aren't any cliques anymore, or not any obvious cliques. Even my own STAC besties aren't so close that we only talk and work within ourselves. In fact, I actually think that we'd prefer to work with people outside of deek jaj (that's the name of our group, we are odd like that). Independence is important too. Someone like Shiana is a fairly independent STACie, but has made some of the best work I've seen, and most of my projects have never consisted of more than a couple of people. But what is going to make this great is that no one will have a fear to approach someone else to work with them. And when the announcement to make groups is put up, the whole group will get mixed up. Discipline is important. We are high school students, and don't totally understand what freedom is. I can't force myself to do anything on pure passion, besides the couple of hobbies I have, and that's where the authority comes in. Also, we need to do more drag stuff. I think that if we can, as a class, be more radical with the school, without breaking any rules, then we have a better chance of existing. Imagine if for a day every STACie was dressed as the opposite gender. I'm more brave in that sense than some other people, but still. If we get political, and let the rest of the school know that, then we'll attract more people. The majority of the school is already accepting of gays, i've seen that personally. So we need to push more. Transgender people get the short end of the stick when it comes to gay rights, and i didn't even fully understand what a transgender person was until I befriended this FTM guy on the Internet. Let's get people mad, and make art that'll start new talks. We should have events to protest injustice, and to support causes that we think are important. That's what has died in art, or in youth i should say. If a transgender gets killed in the street, we should have a funeral. The majority of the students in school now are politically unaffiliated, and don't care about politics, so there is a huge opportunity to make a change. And it isn't the protest of politics, we're not suggesting some socialist world, but something like civil rights, that get's overlooked in conservative minds. I have a fantasy that one day we could be seen on the Melissa Harris Perry show as her weekly foot soldiers, where she picks out an individual or group that has made significant positive change. I think that we can, and the new STAC gives me optimism that we could actually do something huge. The hatred for STAC is dying, and that might be a problem. Let them hate us, but because we are pushing boundaries, not because we're weird kids. Part of this desire to make a more activist STAC is because my passion has shifted away from art recently, but the line between activist and artist is blurred. And artist is an activist, and not every activist is an artist, but the mind of an artist and the mind of an activist isn't too different, only that one can draw better, or sing better. Not to be rude to some STACies, but we have member in our group that have a huge presence outside of STAC, and that should be utilized for something, I know that the majority of Grace's friends aren't in STAC, and I am friendly with quite a number of non STACies too. Our influence can go way beyond the art room door.
I'm done with laying on the outside of problems and of being scared. This year will be big.

Hands Project

I forgot this in the last post. I made hands. This was a lot of fun. I wanna work more on this in STAC. Maybe make a full body, maybe use them as props in a movie. Regardless, it's something that interests me artistically. One is wire, the other is wood. The wire i used was expensive but the hand came out really nice. The wood one didn't because I needed better tools. Bending wire requires at most a set of pliers, while wood work requires saws, glue, sandpaper and files, all of which have expensive alternatives that can produce better, more detailed results.