Editor's Note: By giving donors complete creative control over gifts geared towards high-need K-12 students, The Generation Project hopes to facilitate personal connection between donors and the kids they are helping. As part of that effort, we let some of the students that we hope to affect to use this blog to write about their lives, their schools, and anything else they find interesting. Our hope is that by posting kids' own words, we can give you, the donor, some insight into the interests and passions of the students you would be affecting with your gifts. To highlight the kids' own words, their posts are uncensored and unedited and represent the views of the kids and adolescents that authored them, NOT The Generation Project.
Last year, we featured a series of posts by Ivan Guzman, a 15-year-old from the Bronx. Read more about Ivan (now 16 years old) here, and see his archives here. Today, we are pleased to welcome Ivan back from an extended hiatus.
Boy, it's great to be blogging again. But before I wax poetic about how much I missed blogging, I want get right back into the swing of things and talk about some stuff that's been on my mind.
First off, I
recently read a post on this blog by Mr. Savit regarding
The Office, a show that I (still) find very funny. His post was about how (in his opinion), The Office has become un-funny, and how un-funny
one episode in particular was. Now, I agree that The Office has become Jim and Pam-centric lately. Really, I didn't care about them going to pick out their kid's daycare, though I do agree with the day care manager ("maybe you're not as cute and charming as you think you are"). However, I still find the show better than a lot of comedies out right now. I'm talking to you,
Accidentally On Purpose.
In his post, I think Mr. Savit takes a way too serious of a tone with his argument. I don't care about a lot of things that go on television, because they're
not real. A lot of things that I watch on television are not going to affect my life except for that half an hour or hour (or, when it comes to sports, 3 hours). I wasn't sitting down watching this going, "man I feel really bad for these kids" because I was too busy laughing. If you want to feel sad about a show you're watching, go watch "
Grey's Anatomy". Plus, what else would you expect a guy like Michael Scott to do? His character is the moron of morons or, to borrow a phrase from Seinfeld: Lord Of The Idiots. Instead of getting so offended, Mr. Savit should have just said that Michael's character has grown stale (something I would disagree with, but that's a subjective matter). By the way, the actors playing those poor black kids who were just "bamboozled" went home to probably pretty nice homes when they were done filming. It's a TV show, not reality, Mr. Savit.
Onto another thing: Now that I'm blogging again, I'm going to be discussing music a lot more. I'm mostly going to talk about whatever music I'm impressed by, or music I'm looking forward to hearing. One thing I regretted was that after I went on a blogging hiatus, I discovered a band that a lot of other people have already discovered: a band by the name of
Green Day. I always liked three particular songs from Green Day: "
Boulevard Of Broken Dreams", "
Holiday", and "
Wake Me Up When September Ends". All three of these songs were being from one of the best albums I've ever heard (and I don't listen to full albums often), "
American Idiot". I decided to look up some of their older albums such as "
Dookie" and "
Nimrod". I was instantly hooked on the awesome songwriting and great singing of
Billie Joe Armstrong. I haven't even listened to most of their latest album (and winner of a Best Rock Album Grammy) "
21st Century Breakdown," although I've heard the singles like "
East Jesus Nowhere"(never thought I'd like a song denouncing religion so much) and "
Know Your Enemy"(great guitar work). So, in conclusion Green Day is my favorite band of all time.
Finally, I'm not writing about Washington this time because my mind and body just aren't up for it. (Editor's Note: Ivan's posts are usually focused on his insightful--and hilarious--take on current events). I do want to talk about how much I missed doing this. I'm not very good at talking in person. As Kevin Malone once said "I'm a textbook overthinker". That very statement nearly defines me. So I'm glad to be doing this again where I can just sit down and hammer out all of my thoughts. I look forward to writing a lot more of these.