June 13, 2007 at 04:46 PM EDT
Monday, July 2, 2007, 07:51 AM
School.
Number 126 on list of life goals: complete sophomore year of college. Check. I finished my first year back at Skidmore College a few weeks ago. I'm probably only going to write briefly about it, not because I don't feel an enormous sense of pride and not because this accomplishment doesn't have a tremendous amount of meaning for me, but because I really want to get to writing about the final Sopranos episode. Before moving on to that though, let me give you the Cliff's Notes of the end of last semester.
I was busy as hell juggling time to do homework for all of my classes, be at every rehearsal and performance that I could for my a cappella group, and not miss an episode of American Idol, 24, Entourage, and, of course, the Sopranos. Not to mention partying with my friends. I struggled, but I persevered.
I guess it's a social taboo to let everyone know what one's specific grades were in their classes, but I think I can pull the special circumstances card here. I did very well. The people who supported me and helped me be able to live my life and go back to school in the first place should know how well I did. I got all A's and A-'s both semesters, except for one B+ second semester. The B+, funnily enough, was in the writing class from which I posted some essays. I loved that class, and I worked really hard. I probably didn't get an A or an A- because it was the last final that I had to do and by the time I started working on it I was overdrawn and exhausted and just wanted the *** thing to be done with. So I didn't do as well as I could have, I still got a B on the final exam. I'm fine with it.
Anna-Maija and I are still together. Thinking of ways to convey what our relationship is like, how it's going, and how much I love her leaves me speechless. We're very happy. We have a lot of fun together. I'm pretty sure she's still crazy about me. I'm crazy about her.
Graduation
Not mine, my little sister's. I know I said I was going to write about the Sopranos, I'm getting there. I just wanted to mention some of my thoughts on this subject first. Danielle graduated from Needham High School. She's going to be a freshman at Skidmore College in the fall. That's really cool. The school really is a great fit for her and I don't mind that she'll be around because I like hanging out with her. There won't be too much of that, though. I'm confident we'll be able to manage our social lives without having too many intersections of friends or parties.
Enough of that talk. I love you Danielle, but those weren't the thoughts that I wanted to share. I would like to share my thoughts on the idea of graduation ceremonies in general. I really didn't want to go to Danielle's graduation. Nothing personal against her; I think she should be congratulated for earning a diploma, I even said to her, "Congratulations!", but I just think that the graduation is one of the stupidest events ever conceived by human beings.
Think about it. Why do we go to these things? To watch someone we know dressed in a symbolic poncho pick up a piece of paper that we knew they were going to receive. It's not that exciting! The graduation is different than any other type of award show, contest, or performance I can think of. That's basically what it is, right? A structured presentation of awards, and everyone's a winner. We go out to see concerts, plays, speeches, lectures, movies, parades, to see what happens. There is drama involved. We don't know exactly what the outcome of our experience is going to be. At a graduation, we know: they graduated. The feat has already been accomplished.
At every graduation, before the presentation of diplomas, there are speeches. I actually have no problem with the speeches in principle. The speakers give advice. Fine. Listening to what someone has to say about how to live life isn't ever a bad thing. (Whether or not one decides to take the advice, another thing entirely). Speeches can be insightful, inspiring, and entertaining. If the ceremonial custom of graduation was for graduates to gather and listen to respected people give advice, I wouldn't have anything to rant about. There is one thing about the speeches, though. No matter how hard you try, giving blanket advice on life to a group of people who are one step closer to entering the "real world" eventually boils down to a few basic concepts: you are the future, you can make a difference, one person can change the world, don't be afraid to pursue your passions, go for it, Robert Frost went down a dirt road instead of a paved one.
Here's my idea. The one way I can think of to stop my eyes from rolling into the back of my head at the end of May and the beginning of June. To make graduation ceremonies a little more fun and a little more suspenseful, instead of reading everyone's name in alphabetical order, read the names in order of worst graduate to last. They are still getting the same degree, but now we get to know who barely scraped by and who really studied for their AP chemistry exams. Wouldn't that make the whole thing much more interesting and exciting?
Sopranos
There have been countless numbers of articles, conversations, and blogs about the final episode of the Sopranos. Here's mine. First off, I have been watching the show since the start of the second season and have seen every episode in the series at least twice. I have had a complicated relationship with the Sopranos and HBO for years. I was bored and thought the whole thing was going downhill in season four until the season finale when Carmela throws Tony out of the house. Edie Falco's acting in that episode is the best acting I have ever seen. She's phenomenal. She restored my hope. Then I thought the whole thing was going downhill again in season five until the final two episodes. The most upset I've ever been over something fake on television was when Adriana was killed by Silvio. Then Tony kills his cousin with a shotgun and Johnny Sack is arrested by the FBI. Faith restored!
Then season six came along. Tony getting shot by Junior was shocking, brilliant, riveting, the first episode set up so much good stuff. Then there was that utterly pointless dream sequence that Tony kept lapsing into when he was in the hospital. Vito Spatafore gets found out for being a homosexual, runs away, and spends way too many episodes developing a relationship with a volunteer fireman/cook. In one episode, the dramatic climax was an almost fight between Bobby and Paulie over a kids ride at a parade. Ugh. It wasn't all bad though. I did recognize that the writers of the show, slowly but surely, were chipping away at everything important and meaningful in Tony Soprano's life. Things were starting to come crashing down and Tony, especially in the final eight episodes, was starting to lose it. The three episodes preceding the series finale were masterful. Tony killing Christopher after the car wreck, admitting his relief to Dr. Melfi in a dream, and having a freak out in Vegas on a peyote trip. AJ tries to kill himself and we end that episode with a shot of father and son poetically standing together inside the doors of an inpatient mental health facility. The penultimate episode got me fired up for the finale. I was pissed that they decided to kill off Silvio, my favorite character, but happy that it looked like the Sopranos masterminds had chosen a path and had done it in such a way that no one could venture a guess with any degree of certainty as to what that path would be. Death to Tony? Gang wars? Kill one of Tony's family members? Witness protection?
I have to give it to David Chase, no one saw this one coming. Nothing. Anyone who's interested in reading this has probably seen the episode or heard about it and heard about the various reactions viewers have had. The first words uttered in my house after the screen snapped to black were mine, about 10 seconds into the credits, "Did I miss something?"
Chase chose to have Tony's immediate troubles basically resolve themselves and end with an excruciatingly normal scene at a random diner. He is showing the viewer that Tony's life, now that he has fended off the potential threats on his mode of existence, will continue on in the fashion that we have seen, we just won't be there to see it. At least, I think that's what he was going for. He didn't go about it very well, though.
Okay, if he wants Tony's life to fall into a state of relative equilibrium, I get that. He decidedly went against popular dramatic theory and demand and did not choose a course of action that condemned or redeemed Tony. I think that's an incredibly insightful way to end the series. "The Sopranos" has never judged its characters for their actions and has never shown a direct cause-and-effect between what they do, what happens to them, and its relevance to good and evil. Cool. But, seriously, that ending sucked.
Three things. The first is that the war with New York ended far too easily. All Tony needed was a 10 minute sitdown with two of the New York guys and, bada bing, the killing will stop? It needed to be much harder than that for Tony to get a cease-fire. If he had to work at it, fight for it, and get lucky with a hit on one of New York's lower level men before a sitdown was even a possibility, then I would have had an easier time accepting that New York was willing to lay off. The second thing is that the FBI agent needed more reason to give Tony the information about Phil's whereabouts. I don't know if it's because he thought Tony would start giving him more information, or if it was part of some sort of sting operation, or if he is having a major life crisis and is acting out by taking huge risks. I can't say for sure, so I deduct points from the episode for that.
The third thing is what everyone has been talking about. That final scene in the diner. I watched it a second time and realized what the problem was. It wasn't what most people have been saying, that the scene was just so normal with a few hints at possible dangers from ordinary citizens. It was the opposite, it was very surreal. I watched it a second time On Demand and figured out what the problem was. Tony walks into the restaurant, then a shot of the restaurant from his point of view is shown, then a shot of his face looking at the restaurant is shown again, then the same shot at the restaurant from the same point of view is shown but with Tony in the middle of the screen sitting at a booth. I actually doubt that it was intentionally ambiguous as to whether or not this was a dream sequence. That sequence of shots made it seem like Tony was looking at himself in the diner, probably in another famous Sopranos dream sequence. I think it was a mistake in editing that made it seem like Tony was looking at himself, when it was really just supposed to show that he was sitting in the restaurant, nothing more. Then there's the other aspect of the scene that made it seem so surreal. "Don't stop believing", by the band Journey, was playing too loudly. I can't tell what purpose this was for, because I think that David Chase wanted it to be just normal, with a few shots of the other customers to get the viewers thinking about whether or not he's going to kill Tony. The song was way too loud, making the experience feels surreal. If the editing at the very beginning of the scene was done a little differently, and the music was played at normal volume, I think that people would have understood the theme of life returning to normal.
I'm probably wrong, and David Chase probably intended everything to be the way that it was and to get the reaction that it did. I'm sure he didn't want as many people to be angry about the ending as there are, but maybe he was intentionally ambiguous. If that's the case, then I say shame on him. People make the wrong assumption when they think that being ambiguous and downright confusing is a positive thing because it makes people think. It doesn't make people think, it makes people confused. Confused people get angry and opinionated and judgmental and don't stop to think and consider options. More clearly displaying the action that is actually taking place, and more clearly developing the possible reasons why, would get people to think. He definitely got everyone talking, but talking about whether or not the entire thing is bullsh*t gets off the topic of the content of the show and moves to the validity of the content itself.
Too bad, because I really f*cking love The Sopranos.
--Zack
PS A fair number of people have told me that they don't receive stuff from care pages anymore and I know that some people's e-mail addresses have changed. I would really appreciate it if some of you sent some mass e-mails out to your address books or something to let people know that I'm writing again. If they have to sign up for care pages again, the care page name to find my stuff on is ZackWeinstein. No spaces between Zack and Weinstein. Thank you very much.
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March 03, 2007 at 05:30 PM EST
Monday, July 2, 2007, 07:49 AM
I have this thing about eating in restaurants. I never like ordering the exact same thing as someone else. It upsets my sensibilities somehow. Strange, because when I eat at home I always have the same meal as everyone else. There has never been meatloaf for my dad, salmon for my mom, spaghetti with meatballs for me, and chicken fingers for Danielle. That would be ridiculous. So what's the difference with restaurants?
Anna-Maija and I had lunch and dinner together yesterday. We had the same meal each time. Yesterday was rough.
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February 05, 2007 at 12:12 PM EST
Monday, February 5, 2007, 01:24 PM
This is another essay that I did for my writing class. The assignment was to write about place.
What I hate about it is that I feel a sort of affection for that room. It's not like I look back fondly on my days in rehab but at the same time there's a sense of nostalgia attached to the hospital. I returned to the Shepherd Center in Atlanta almost a year after I was first injured and when I passed by my old room I almost wanted to go in and see who was occupying my bed like a sophomore college student would want to know who was occupying his dorm room the semester after his freshman year. I didn't go in because the situation had so much potential to go wrong and I had no idea what would happen to my emotions if I saw it again.
It was the best bed in the hospital to have. Most of the rooms had four people in them and mine was only a double. The bed spaces were separated by a curtain and my side of the curtain had a window and about 50% more space. It wasn't fair to the two roommates that I had during my stay, but it wasn't up to me so I couldn't apologize for it. I had a Bureau with my clothes in it, the bed, a hospital table, a television that I never watched, and a window ledge that was big enough for all of the cards and balloons and flowers that people sent to me. My view out the window was of beautiful trees that were in bloom with purple flowers on them and the garden of the hospital that was only two floors down. I was closest to the nurse's station and closest to the elevators and the rehab gym where I had my therapy sessions. It was also the easiest to direct visitors to; the first room on the right.
I spent almost the entirety of my first two months post injury looking up at ceilings. Either from a bed or from an electric powered chair that was tilted backwards (for a long time, I couldn't sustain a high enough blood pressure to sit upright and keep from passing out) I got to know ceilings very well. One therapist years before I showed up on the scene taught a painting class to get her patients who started using their arms again to develop coordination and had them paint butterflies on the ceiling panels. Above my bed there were two butterflies. Other patients had more and a few unlucky souls didn't have any. They were in my line of vision constantly. I swear I don't suffer from obsessive-compulsive tendencies but I got sick and tired of looking at those fucking butterflies! Not because they were always there, but because whoever painted them did very shoddy, uneven work. I know it was made by someone who could probably barely use his arms but I couldn't help getting agitated by the paint overlapping and the pattern being about as non-symmetrical as one can get.
Most of my initial, explosive physical developments happened in that room as opposed to in the gym. I couldn't move much of anything below my lips for almost 3 weeks. Gradually I could shrug my shoulders but really nothing more. One morning I woke up in bed and my mother had already made it to the hospital and was getting ready to feed me my breakfast. All of a sudden I realized I was able to lift my arms below the elbow off of the bed almost 2 whole inches. My biceps had kicked in. A few weeks later, while lying in bed at night, I all of a sudden was able to pull back my left wrist. Even before all of that happened I was in my room when my doctor told me that I could take my neck brace off. Try chewing without being able to open your jaw all the way or sleeping without turning your neck and you'll become very irritable very fast.
I always had the curtain closed unless there were a bunch of people in the room. I knew I had the best nurse’s aide on the floor when she came around the curtain one morning early on and literally spun into the room. She was fun. When I picture my doctor, whom I hated, I picture him standing at the foot of the bed with his hands folded as they always were, neatly just below his belly, giving me the same god damn answer he gave to every single god damn question I asked him, "Well, that's sometimes a result of a spinal cord injury." Obviously it's a result of my fucking injury! I need something more specific here!
Why the hell would I enjoy this room?
Actually, I know why. It's funny, I remember all of the terrible, horrific experiences that I've had but for some reason the truly incredible experiences are stronger in my memory. I had so many visitors see me in that room and so many strangers come to give support. Some of those strangers became great friends to me and my family. Considering that I was in Atlanta, Georgia of all places the amount of friends that made the trip down is staggering. One girl came everyday. Every single day.
We had only been going out for three weeks before I hit my head. She even saw it happen. Through a round of crazy circumstances she was able to stay in Atlanta for weeks after the summer was over. Long story. How in gods name were we able to build a relationship in circumstances like that? I had lost 30 pounds, was ghostly pale, had a neck brace on, couldn't move anything, got around in a gargantuan mechanized wheelchair that I maneuvered by sucking and blowing on a straw, and we were just two people who were really into each other.
The scariest fear of all of the shit that comes with this injury is that you won't be able to have normal relationships. No one will be able to love you and see you just as a person instead of a guy in a wheelchair. She wiped that fear away as if it was never present. There was one thing she did that truly told me that things could be okay: she got in bed with me.
I don't mean sex--get your mind out of the gutter! That came later on. We wanted to watch a movie together and we wanted to be close. What amused me at the time and still amuses me is that she was hesitant to get in bed, but not for the reasons you would think. My neck brace was well off at this point and there was no real danger of me getting hurt if she lied down next to me. She was nervous because she didn't want a nurse or somebody to walk in and get us in trouble. How great is that?! Her only wariness was because of rules; it had nothing whatsoever to do with me. It wasn't against the rules at all, or at lease no nurse ever yelled at us for it.
She moved me over in the bed, set up the movie, and got in close. It was totally normal and overwhelmingly exciting. We didn't talk about what we were doing or have a deep emotional moment attached to it. We spoke about how great The Talented Mr. Ripley was and how incredibly underrated Matt Damon is as an actor, especially in that film.
There was a nurse who walked in about three quarters of the way through the film to see if I needed anything before her shift ended. She was a bit startled to see Anna-Maija laying next to me but after a second flashed a knowing smile at us and disappeared behind the curtain. I thought the smile was meant as just a joke but maybe she saw what was really happening. Lying in that bed, in that room, in the heart of a rehab hospital for patients with severe spinal cord injuries, were two kids in their early twenties who were about to realize that they were very much in love.
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January 27, 2007 at 09:19 PM EST
Monday, January 29, 2007, 07:57 AM
I'm taking a writing class at Skidmore this semester titled Personal Experience And The Critical Voice. It's a creative writing class based on developing a student's skills in writing personal essays. When I read the course description I realized that it's basically a class on how to write these posts. The following is the result of an exercise that the class did on telling an important story from childhood through one of the five senses.
I've wanted to be an actor my entire life. Since I was four years old I've answered the question "what do you wanna be when you grow up?" with the same two words: an actor. Actually, sometimes I would say, "I wanna be an actor". So that's five words. It's funny though that the first time I performed in front of a big group of people I wasn't acting. I was dancing. In fact, as legend has it, I was dancing really fucking well considering I was only seven years old and had never been taught to dance in my life.
My family stayed on Martha's Vineyard for half of the summer when I was seven and to keep their children entertained my parents sent me and my little sister to day camp at the Chilmark Community Center five days a week. One day all the cool older kids were going around the camp asking the campers if they wanted to sign up for the talent show that night. They were giving a big sales pitch to my group saying that they could sing along to their favorite song, mouth the words to their favorite song, dance to their favorite song, and a few other suggestions that I don't remember because my mind snapped into focus when I heard that I could dance to my favorite song. My best friend and I were big Michael Jackson fans and we were playing around a few play dates before I went to Martha's Vineyard making up our own dance to Black or White. I signed myself right up.
This part of the day I don't remember, so it's hearsay from my parents. Apparently I told them that I was in the talent show and that I was going to dance and that I needed the song black or white because I was number four on the list. They had no idea what I was talking about, had never seen me dance, had never heard me say I like to dance, and had no idea that there was a talent show scheduled until one of my counselors said she was excited to see me in the show.
Flash to the very clear memory that I do have of that night. I sat with all the other performers on the floor of the gymnasium/auditorium right up close to the stage and right in front of an antsy, nervously chattering group of parents. The folding chairs that they were sitting on were old and every single one of them squeaked at the slightest movement. Little sisters in the audience were screaming to get their parents attention, getting yelled at by their parents for being inappropriate, crying because they wanted to be the one going onstage, and asking a million and one questions about who people were and what was going on.
I remember that the show started with a girl mouthing the words to "part of that world" from The Little Mermaid. I knew that song by heart and was so bored by what she was doing that I closed my eyes and started humming it to myself. When she was done everyone in the room put their hands together in polite appreciation. I think she might have been one of the kids whose mother yelled something obnoxious while everyone clapped like "Yaaaay Jessica!"
During each of the next two performances I zoned out while the kids danced to under the sea, again from the Little mermaid, and now the words to some pop song that was popular that summer. I was brought back into reality at the end of each song by the polite clapping, occasional cheers, and occasional whistles of the proud parents in their squeaky chairs and their restless children in their squeakier chairs. After the pop song my name was announced over the microphone by the coolest of the cool older kids. I ran onstage to the sound of polite parental pre-child performance clapping.
The dance itself is a total blur. The moment I finished dancing is as crystal-clear as anything else in my memory. I was hit and almost blown over by a shock wave of noise I had never heard in my life. The crowd erupted. They were out of their seats yelling, cheering, whistling, and clapping. The noise rose up out of the sea of people and the wave of applause crashed on the front of the stage and enveloped me with pure joy.
The cheers died down and I went back to my seat on the floor. The sound behind me was different now than what it was before I danced. Instead of squeaky chairs and complaining children there was a murmur of intrigue. I heard whispers through the murmur. "How old is he?" "What's his name again?" "Who are his parents?" "This one's got it!"
My mom signed me up for dance lessons that fall. Fucking hell I miss it so much.
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November 20, 2006 at 06:29 PM EST
Tuesday, November 21, 2006, 08:03 AM
Needless to say, it's been awhile. In the year that followed my injury, writing these posts and taking in the responses they generated helped me deal with, validate, and communicate the bizarre, surreal, and horrendous experiences I was having. I don't think I've used the word horrendous before but what else could it have been? Those moments when I'm alone and have nothing to think about except how different life was and how much of my body is gone: horrendous. Those moments when I'm doing something, anything, and the same thoughts and feelings take over: horrendous. I didn't write about those moments all the time because there's more to my life than the depths of despair. Everyone throughout his or her life experiences the existential thoughts and feelings of agonizing frustration, hopelessness, confusion, bewilderment, loneliness, and emptiness. Everyone. This happens to varying degrees at different points in time, but it happens nonetheless. If you're reading this and you haven't ever felt the desire to curl up into a ball and whisper or raise your arms to the heavens and shout, "What does it all mean!?", then don't stop taking whatever drugs you're on because it really sucks. Over this past summer there were new, exciting, and interesting experiences that I was having every day while I was in the beyond therapy program at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta. I wanted to let people know about all of it so that they could understand the day to dayness of my life there and respond to my thoughts about it. I couldn't write it all because I was simply too physically exhausted at the end of just about every day to even think about applying the mental energy it takes to write one of these. So my writing dropped off.
I then came to school, or "College" as they like to call it here, and oh my God so much is going on here. So much that is hilarious, ridiculous, fascinating, horrendous, you name it. I'm back in life and it's incredible. I get to worry about doing homework for class, being late for play rehearsal, what I'm going to do over the weekend, and other normal stuff. But I still want to keep writing these posts. So why haven't I been able to do it? I don't get to use the copout that I don't have enough time. If I want to make the time for something, I'll figure it out. Granted, I don't have tons of time and I do get very tired at the end of every day because I'm constantly on the go, but it's something else. It's because I am back in life and no longer on an adventure that I consider separate from what my life is. I feel like my major issues and problems are personal in a different way now than they were before. This isn't to say that I now have tons of dramatic personal problems that I can't talk about and won't share with anyone in person or in cyberspace but to say that I'm confused about where I want to draw the line. What do I put out there with the knowledge that more than just a few people are going to read it?
I'm working on it. There is something that I do want to put out to the community. Although you haven't read specifically about how successful school has been, take it on faith that it has been very successful. I've stayed healthy throughout the entire semester, I got cast in the main play that the theater department is producing, I have a room with a double bed, an electronics system that allows me to control every light in the room individually, all of the medical supplies that I need, a new computer, nice clothes, two women hired through an agency that serve as my personal care attendants, my standing frame, a new $15,000 electrical stimulation bicycle, a stronger singing voice since I've been practicing with my a cappella group, great classes, great professors, great friends, and a lot of struggle. I put that last one in there to emphasize that I am by no means breezing through this now. It's tough as shit and emotionally and physically draining. I don't do it alone and I could not have done it at all without all of your help. Not a day goes by that I don't recognize that my family and I would be nowhere near as functional and capable as we are today if it weren't for the emotional, organizational, creative, and monetary support we have received from everyone. When I'm out of those moments that slap me across the face with hard reality and am able to look at where I am from a different perspective I see that, all things considered, I'm doing pretty damn well.
Zack
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