Thanksgiving for the homeless

My article on the El Camino College Circle K club's Thanksgiving service project had me scrambling to get any quotes I could get.

I was pretty nervous, because the club president didn't respond to the e-mails I sent to her. Thankfully, they read the e-mail before I arrived at the club meeting in the music building.

I had to make sure that I interviewed some of the members before they left the club meeting. Somehow, I just knew that many of them would leave as soon as the meeting was over.

The vice president, Daniel Valdivia, said that I should hold off my interviews until after the meeting. I really didn't know whether I'd get in all the quotes I needed for the story. Fortunately, I interviewed him and two other members before they left the room.

Valdivia had quite a lot to say about the upcoming event. He also told me about the weekend service project, where they would be helping at the Hermosa Beach Kiwanis Charity Tree Lot.

According to Valdivia, the members would mostly help move the trees around to sell them to people. Although the club members didn't have as much to say about the tree lot, I thought it was interesting enough to mention in a brief link.

The main conversation, however, was about their service project at the Los Angeles Regional Foodbank. The club members were going to organize canned holiday food into bags. The food bank workers would then distribute the bags to the homeless people.

It's a worthy cause. The only problem is that the food bank ended the registration period early, so not as many Circle K members were able to sign up. I would have liked to find out how many El Camino members were actually going to the food bank.

Anyhow, I pretty much worked with everything that I had.

Click here to see my full article on the Circle K club.

Boring leads, not-so-boring concert music

I've struggled to write good leads for my articles all throughout the semester. I had the toughest time writing the lead for one of my preview articles on a concert band performance.

I didn't have a problem writing the entire article. However, the lead was boring for a web article. It read: 

"The El Camino College Concert Band plans to offer a variety of music for everyone at their Nov. 21 concert, according to its director."

Since this was a preview article, I figured this would pass as a lead. However, my professor rightfully has issues with dull leads. She suggested that I could make the lead more interesting with an anecdote from an actual student.

To tell the truth, I wasn't in a very good mood at the time I wrote this article. I had to interview many of the students before they started their practice session. I had to try and listen to their responses over an incredibly noisy warm-up session with all the musicians trying out their instruments.

Looking back on it all, this assignment was a good experience to prepare me for the worst possible scenarios, where I'd have to interview people in awful situations. However, I have to remember those anecdotes when I write a lead.

I also probably should have started with the perfect anecdote from one of the students. My favorite quote comes from Lillian Hernandez, a 19-year-old trumpet player. She had a lot of good things to say about the upcoming performance.

"I think it’s going to be really fun and the crowd’s going to really enjoy it," Hernandez said. "There’s a lot of pieces that are very musical. It’s not easy music, so they’ll be able to appreciate it. And a lot of it is loud. Kind of in-your-face. And some of it is softer. It varies a lot."

That quote says it all about concert band. No matter who you are, all incoming freshmen students will always be surprised by the high quality of the instrumental music in college.

I also heard some interesting quotes came from the musicians. One of the percussion players, 20-year-old undeclared student Steven Davis, had some interesting things to say about his part in the performance.

"In 'Xerxes,' I have to play a part really quietly," Davis said. "It’s a percussion solo. It’s really, really gentle sounding and there’s an ambience, so it’s tough to keep the dynamics at a lower level, you know. It’s pretty hard strokes, but it makes it pretty interesting."

I always had a tough time handling all the dynamics, back when I played piano in college. My instructors had to lecture me over every single nuance of my performance. I can only imagine how tough it is to play a soft percussion solo.

Next time I write one of these concert articles, I'll get everything right. From now on, I have to remember to use anecdotes. Someone should slap a Post-it on my head which says "Anecdote!" Then maybe I'll remember.

The Art of Writing CD Reviews

November was a big month for hip-hop and R&B music. The first hot release was Cee-Lo Green's new album, "The Lady Killer."

In reviewing this album, I spent a lot of time listening to the album. I quickly uploaded all the music onto my iPod, so that I could listen to it while I was doing other things. I actually repeated it a few times, just to let the sound soak into my brain.

I liked the album, but I had a tough time putting those feelings into words. After writing everything to the end, I only had about 300 words. I then thought that there were quite a few things that I really wanted from the album.

Cee-Lo decided to go completely Motown for this album. Every song seemed to have a similar sound of soul music. However, Cee-Lo's solo performance still couldn't match the magic he had when he jammed in his side project band, Gnarls Barkley.

That band threw in every creative mish-mash imaginable. For instance, their song "Feng Shui," was a cool rap song to some funky mix of kung-fu-styled keyboards and string arrangements. To make matters even more interesting, Cee-Lo was rapping about how he perfected the art of Feng Shui whenever he produces music. It was the weirdest cross between Shaolin monk music and R&B. It was completely original.

I just didn't hear this funky influences in Cee-Lo's new album. Sure, the "F*** You" single on the album was pretty funny, but it just lacked that extra special spark. He needs his old partner in Gnarls Barkley. He needs DJ Danger Mouse.

Of course, Danger Mouse can't stay with him forever. After all, Danger Mouse often produces multiple albums for musicians. Right now, he's promoting an album with James Mercer in a new side band, Broken Bells. As much as I like Danger Mouse's projects, Broken Bells just isn't as interest as Gnarls Barkley. I wish Danger Mouse would stick with Gnarls Barkley, beccause they were the group that truly reinvented a new brand of hip-hop with Motown and psychedelic rock.

With all that said, it's been a while since I've listened to a good album. Cee-Lo Green always produces great music. I just hope that he gets together with Danger Mouse someday.

 Read my review here.

Soundslide journal: The Muslim Student Association (Part 2)

The soundslides for the Muslim Student Association's Hijab Day took longer than expected, because of frustrating technical issues with the Mac programs.

At first, the project seemed like a simple matter of editing sound files with Garage Band. When Risa and I first used the program, it would easily cut and paste all the portions of our sounds. It took some time to figure out how to properly add the recordings into iTunes, but from that point on, we easily cut our recordings down to two minutes and 30 seconds.

Then everything started to malfunction.

When I finished my edits on Nov. 3, I gave my Garage Band mp3 to Risa so that she could organize all the pictures to the sound file. I left campus for the day. Then Risa texted me.

"The soundslides won't open up!"

I drove back to the newsroom and tried to fix the file. Unfortunately, Garage Band had issues with the recording files we were trying to convert into a mp3. We didn't know if we had the recording files in the fight place, but nothing was working.

After what seemed to count up to one hundred program crashes, we decided to edit our recordings by using Audacity. I edited the sound files and sent them to Risa.

From that point on, we were unable to finish all our edits that week, because the newsroom closed much earlier than we expected. We had to budget our time wisely so that we could finish the presentation on time.

We finished almost everything on the Mac for Nov. 9. The next day, Risa had even more issues with the Mac.

"Im so mad!! The file i edited is longer there," Risa said in her text message. "And now im starting all over again with garage band."

Thankfully, she was able to find the file after hunting for it. We finished everything on Nov. 10. After all that aggravation with the Mac programs, we really didn't want to use a Mac anymore.

Overall, I really like how the soundslide turned out. However, Apple definitely should give their customers a free Garage Band update. The old version is riddled with bugs. Our program crashed almost every 10 seconds. It couldn't handle large audio files.

Even the Soundslides program is a trial-by-error process. Sometimes we had to rename our photo files. If we edited the photo, we had to rename it. Otherwise, it would only bring up the previous, unedited version. No matter what, we couldn't remove the previous photo with the same name from the program's memory.

I'm sure that an actual newsroom has a more up-to-date program lineup. However, even new programs cost thousands of dollars. Even if this is the way of the future, somebody should lower their prices to make matters easier. That's just my opinion, though.

Soundslide journal: The Muslim Student Association (part one)

For much of the last three weeks, I spent lots of time editing a Muslim Student Association soundslide with Risa Chuman. She dedicated plenty of time to work on the edits, so I really owe her for a lot of the work she did.

In this project, we took photo and audio recordings from the Muslim group's Hijab Day event. For this occasion, the group posted a desk with hijabs for women to wear on Tuesday, Oct. 26. The participants would borrow a hijab (head scarf) and wear it for the whole day on Oct. 27. Then they would talk about their experience at the Muslim Student Association's meeting on Oct. 28.

The photo shoots were the easiest part of the entire project. Risa was having some technical problems with her camera, so most of the photos were from my camera. I'm still nervous whenever I take photos, so I really have to get used to taking photos at public events.

I thought part of the project would end up as a photo journal of Risa's experience in taking the Hijab Day challenge, so I took some pretty funny photos of Risa. She smiles and laughs a lot, so she was very photogenic for the occasion.

By the time we were finishing the story, though, Risa wanted to focus more on the other students who participants. I would have liked to publish her photos, but the decision really helped us focus more on everyone else's perspective.

The last part of the soundslides project was a recording from the Muslim Student Association meeting. The recording actually was the least useful part our project for the entire week. I was upset that I couldn't include some of these interesting discussions about religious rights for women.

In many ways, the Muslims at the meeting were much more progressive than many other Americans were. The Muslim Student Association president, Zakiya Khalil, especially had some interesting discussions about how the hijab actually liberates women.

"When you're covered up, you don't have to please anyone else," Khalil said. "You are how you are. You don't have to please that person or that person, because you should be content with how your body is. You should respect yourself and honor yourself and be a dignified human being."

Khalil also spoke about how women without a hijab have to constantly worry about how their hair looks. In some ways, a hijab helps to teach women that they don't have to set themselves apart from everyone else just to be dignified.

"Today, we see people doing crazy things," Khalil said. "Like, they're wearing the worst clothes and they're being constantly uncovered. So I don't know if that means they're being liberated. In Islam, if you're covered up, you're liberated, because you don't have to please anyone else. You just do whatever you want because you want to do it."

The discussion actually counteracts many American perceptions of Islam. American television is almost constantly obsessed with showing how the hijab imprisons women to live in impoverished communities under the scrutiny of all the men in the country. I've seen this awful misconception all the time on CNN and various other news networks, reported by people such as Christiane Amanpour.

Ironically, Amanpour held an even more racist debate on the October 24 program of "This Week" on ABC. It involved people who are presumably members of the Muslim community in New York. Her big question was probably the stupidest question: "Is Islam dangerous?"

Of course, it isn't a dangerous religion. It is focused on pleasing Allah, who cares for all living things. However, her panel consisted of a few moderate Muslims and lot of lunatic radical Muslims. The entire program was rigged to make us think that the Muslim community is divided by extreme tension between fundamentalists and moderates.

I couldn't help but wonder if these people were paid by ABC to act this way. Then again, the Muslim communities in other Southern California cities vary from place to place. For example, the Muslim Student Association at Cal State Long Beach often had guest speakers who spoke out in public about how the U.S. government is a bunch of hypocrites.

I wonder if it's even possible for anyone to act sane at a time when America is at war with the Middle East. Whatever the case, I'm glad that El Camino's Muslims are truly acting with the spirit of Allah.

War stinks.

Tired and busy

For most of the week, I was worried that I couldn't find all of the camera equipment to return to the journalism professors.

I had lost the SD card reader that came with the video camera. It was painted in a tacky silver color that made it look really cheap. It also looked very much like my card reader for my old Palm PDA device. Thankfully, I found everything.

The rest of the week was much more enlightening. I took pictures of the Muslim Student Association's Hijab Day. The club decided to hold an event where women could borrow one of the group's hijabs to wear all day on Wednesday. Me and my partner, Risa, were working to produce a soundslide out of all the pictures and audio recordings.

I wasn't sure how the event would turn out at first, but many people visited the club's desk in front of the Library. They were really interested in living life as a Muslim woman would.

The club meeting gave me and my partner a fascinating perspective on why they prefer to wear hijabs. The president, Zakiya, said that Muslim women don't have to worry as much about what they have to wear. They don't even need to think about styling their hair, because the hijab covers it up.

A hijab really makes women more modest. I just hope that everything will match up with the audio. I also have to find this old receipt on which I wrote some of the members' names. I hope I find the names soon. Otherwise, I won't be able to write quotes for those people.

Well, I'd better look for it.

Adjusting to tough changes

I'm a little afraid of writing this next post, mostly because of an argument I had with my partner on the soundslides project two weeks ago.

On a Thursday, my soundslides partner wanted me to meet at a child care center to help her interview a single mother for our project at 9:30 a.m. That night, I asked her whether to go to the Crossroads child care center across the street from El Camino. At the time she said yes.

On Friday, I arrived on campus and I was about to head to the Crossroads center. Then my partner started to send me text messages telling me to hurry up. At about 9:30 a.m., she sends me text messages telling me that I'm an f---ing idiot for missing her interview. I was furious, because the Crossroads center door was locked and she was getting angry at me for something I couldn't control.

It turns out that she wanted me to head to the child care center on the El Camino campus. I kept trying to call her, but she never picked up her cell phone, probably because she was fed up with me. Then she sends me a text messages which said, "Thanks for nothing." I was furious. I had no idea what I did wrong, but she was blaming the entire project on me.

On top of this, she kept blaming me for not showing up to her interview. I would have liked to get in contact with her, but she was terribly rude to me. I admit that I was cursing like a sailor, but really, she was getting upset at me for almost no reason at all.

As a result, I was scolded by the professor for cursing in the newsroom, among other things. For some reason, I ended up in some stupid mess that wasn't even under my control. I finished the project by myself, but I still feel like I was unfairly criticized for a whole slew of problems that were blamed on me.

To make matters worse, my iVideo partner informed me that I had to check out a video camera for his story. Unfortunately, he reminded me on Friday afternoon. The only time I could check it out was on Friday morning. And I couldn't check out the video camera on Monday, because my psychiatrist appointment was at the same time at 10:30 a.m.

It turns out that this was the last available time that the film department was using the camera equipment. I was frustrated with how everything turned out in the last two weeks. I haven't been able to concentrate. I'm afraid that my teacher's going to flunk me for my "bad" behavior and my scheduling issues with my iVideo partner.

Sometimes I feel like my life is a big train wreck. I've known a few girls I liked, who all blamed all their problems on me. I can't go very far into detail about all my personal problems, but I often end up as the victim of their strangely sinister entanglements.

Of course, my relationships don't get in the way of my work anymore. However, I still don't understand why these certain girls ended up bullying me around. I don't even know why this always has to happen because of a girl, either. I mean, am I doing something wrong to end up with all this bad luck with girls?

Whatever the case, I can't stop all my projects now. I have to overcome these strange events of happenstance. Maybe I'll end up with better luck this week.