As a sixteen-year-old that’s fairly well liked in school (at least so I think…), I should have a generally rose-colored view of my surroundings. After all, who doesn’t want to be the eleventh grader whose French teacher reads their blog. Ahem. Yet as I’ve moved through the grades, the supposedly pink filter over my eyes has gotten a bit too saturated, and turned into a blood-red magnifier that points out everyone’s faults. It’s not a good thing, I recognize that – but it would be better if people didn’t give me so many causes to do so.

You see, there actually are reasons I hold the world in – shall we say – less than Puritanical regard. It was just earlier this year that one of my gossip-loving friends and I sat down to eat at Marco and Luca’s on the downtown mall. The dumplings filled me with joy – the conversation did not. For it was on that fateful Friday evening that I learned just how many of my peers (I’m going to be blatant here) smoked pot, had sex, and did drugs. Despite the delightful flavor sensation exploding in my mouth from the recently consumed morsels-from-God, the rest of my body became a bit disappointed. Several of the few remaining dregs of respect slipped from me like leaves out of an overturned tea cup (the respect I hold for chefs, however, remained strong).

Up until that point, I’d been living under the carefully constructed worldview which the Peabody School crammed into my head of happy schoolchildren on the downtown mall, there to eat pizza – not pot. Though of course, upon further examination, I realized not even the sheltered rich kids of private schools always escape the seemingly inevitable pitfall that used to be reserved for, “those urban, gay rave-kids.” Though, as a gay kid that occasionally listens to rave-style music, I’d always found that be a nasty stereotype. Over the next few weeks, I was filled in on the realities of teenage life for most, compared against the smiling, multiracial group of kids always shown in those science videos from middle school. People I had thought were pretty cool suddenly dropped a few rungs on my Ladder of Respect. By the way, if any one reading this falls into that particular category, I’d like to apologize – not all drug addicts are idiots, they just come off that way sometimes.

My realization reminded me of exactly how I was able to make it through the past few years of high school sanely. I’ve never really taken anyone seriously, including myself. However good of an aspect that might be in the Black Box acting like an idiot, it ends up being a wonderful blindfold to my surroundings, which I enjoyed for a very long time. But now as I start to think about my future, the blindfold is coming off and my overexposed eyes are reacting unhappily to the “light”. To me, it was just another discovery of people’s faults, with no attributes making it through the filter over my eyes.

I’m probably coming off as a bit of a snob right now, talking about how messed up some people’s lives are. Don’t get me wrong here, I have a lot of respect for anyone that’s able to get through the problems that many teenagers are facing – divorce, poverty, abuse. I can’t pretend to understand the stress they’re feeling or what they’re going through. But considering I’m an obsessed kid taking five AP classes and the only boy I know of at CHS that’s ‘out,’ I do have a slight understanding of stress. But I’m still sober (I got my sixteen-year chip last summer!).

Despite all the things that have disappointed me in people this year, I did see a glimmer of hope for humanity a few months ago. Coming out – typically a painful process that can get you kicked out of your house – was relatively simple for me. Maybe it was the cloudless, sunny day outside, but the first person I came out to actually scared me a bit with her enthusiasm.

“Oh my god, you’re gay?” She asked.
“Yeah…”
“AWW! I don’t know whether to have a celebration or just start talking about boys right now!”

For a minute there, I thought about giving the population as a whole a second chance. But then the weeks went by and I began to notice the [inadvertently?] homophobic conversations as I walked through the hallways between classes. Some of these people were even my friends. So much for that glimmer of hope.

I’d really like to think better of people – I really would! But before I can do that, I need to stop being disappointed in them (easier said than done). Sometimes I just wish I knew what went on inside people’s minds – how being a liberal suddenly means you can do illegal drugs, or being conservative gives you a right to hate gays. These are things I don’t understand, and may never understand. But I’ll keep trying, hoping that one day I can love the world for all its people – regardless of what goes on inside their heads.

So, I’m a bit predjudiced about Chris Daughtry, since my theatre teacher David Small (most awesome person in the world, by the way) tought him in high school. Gripe time: he lost on American Idol (I should note that I’ve never seen a single episode of the show, but I was still rooting for him). Though we in Virginia had a little chuckle, knowing that he was still by far the most popular contestant, and would be more sucessful than any of the others. But nevertheless, his first album came out today, and I was very impressed. First of all, I would have actually bought this thing even if I weren’t somehow familiar with the guy.

Since I’ve been kind of wondering what to do for my next music video, I’ve decided to “honor” him by making “Feels Like Tonight” my next project. I’ll have to figure out when to shoot it, though, since my parents are going out of town for about 20 days in a week…

So last weekend was essentially the biggest Nintendo and Sony have ever had. The PS3 was released on Friday, and the Wii on Sunday. Now admittedly, if I weren’t completely broke, I probably would have bought one. But I’m just amazed at how drastically the console business has changed in the past five years:

In 2001, brand new consoles cost between $200 and $300 - and $300 was expensive. So how is it than in five years - one generation of consoles - the acceptable price has doubled (the PS3 was $600)? Ever since Sony released the MSRP for the PS3 a few months ago, I’ve been wondering - Who in their right mind would spend $600 on a console? Today, after looking at how much PS3s are going for on eBay, I’m wondering who in any mind would spend over $2000 on a console. I’m sorry, I don’t care how much you love video games or how big a Sony fanboy you are - that’s a mind-numbingly stupid thing to do. Consoles have never cost that much. Ever! Even the CD-i back in the early ’90s was cheaper than that.

This brings up another thought - why is everyone so obsessed with having “killer graphics” in video games? Sure, it looks nice, I can understand that. But it becomes obsessive when you’re spending $350 more (or several thousand more, as the case may be) just to have superior graphics than the Wii or XBox 360. If you care that much about graphics, go spend your $3000 on a PC - you’ll get better graphics on that, anyway.

By the way, you could feed a family of four for almost a year on that amount of money…

P.S. - I hate being sick.

So I was on the downtown mall tonight, and of course I didn’t have a cell phone (since I lost mine about a week ago). How to call home…how to call- oh, a payphone! Great idea! But wait - there aren’t any on the downtown mall, at least that I was able to find walking up and down it for an hour and a half. Sure, the library has them, but it closes at five on Fridays! Charlottesville, the downtown mall is great, but have some common sense and put in a few payphones…

So, over the past few months I’ve been having a bit of fun with my video camera. Since my life isn’t hectic enough for someone taking five AP classes, I decided to spend hours making and editing music videos.

“My Happy Ending”
Avril Lavigne

“MMMBop”
Hanson

I’ve got a Westlife one in the works, but I think that’ll have to wait until after Thanksgiving. And just on a side note, I owe Adobe my life.