TV 156: Degrassi

Degrassi has found its way back to Teen Nick. Its on Monday through Thursday these days. It will have a 7 week run (29 episodes) to fulfill fans with its NOW OR NEVER summer.

The show is heating up with gang related storylines. Its also going places its never gone before. Of course, this teen show has a lot of stories to cover. This season, there will be a student and teacher relationship evolving, as well as lesbian stories to add to the mix. There is a teen mom and dad storyline. Another about being on antidepressants. Even a story about hooking up with the last person one would ever think about hooking up with. I guess you could say Degrassi has a story for everyone.

This show has some of the best bromances going on!

The show is getting more grit. Almost a flavor of SKINS, but not quite. One of the major stories is (Alicia Josipovic) Bianca and Drew(Luke Bilyk). The show opened with a concert. The funny thing is, what gangsta would show up at a Keke Palmer concert? Unfortunately, things go bad, Drew is suddenly thrown into B's old world of gangs. And it takes a lot out of the teenager. It even puts a damper on their sex life. So the writers give a lot to ponder, yet they let you use your imagination too.

Munro and Justin were on the Latest Buzz together.

This season Justin Kelly is a new player on the show. He shows up as the new guy, Jake Martin who is an old friend of (Alisnn Paul) Clare's. Of course, Clare is barely over Eli (Munro Chambers) who hardly notices Clare is even there. Eli is heavily medicated since his stalkerish attempt to win Clare over, last season. But Eli gets to meet someone new too. Her name is Imogene (Christine Prosperi) who is a bit of a quirky drama queen. Also Chloe Rose is Kaitlin who is transgender (Jordan Todosey) Adam's love interest.

Imogene quirky, nerdy and just what Eli needs

There is a lot to happen this season. Old favorites are back as well, for the most part. But some will be graduating soon. So if you've been needing a Degrassi fix... now is the time to get addicted to the show.

TEENNICK DEGRASSI

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Poetry 156: A Shadow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A Shadow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I said unto myself, if I were dead,
What would befall these children? What would be
Their fate, who now are looking up to me
For help and furtherance? Their lives, I said,
Would be a volume wherein I have read
But the first chapters, and no longer see
To read the rest of their dear history,
So full of beauty and so full of dread.
Be comforted; the world is very old,
And generations pass, as they have passed,
A troop of shadows moving with the sun;
Thousands of times has the old tale been told;
The world belongs to those who come the last,
They will find hope and strength as we have done.

Movie 155: Transformers 3

The official title of this movie is Transformers: Dark of the moon. ..which means get ready for some nifty flashbacks about the walk on the moon.

The movie runs 157 minutes which gives a lot of time to spend with Sam (Shia Lebuf) and his new love interest Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whitely). To some, this actress will make or break the movie for you. Yes, I hear from some that Megan Fox is the only girl for this movie. But out of respect, Rosie did hold her own in the action pack flick. And she was put through a lot.

Yes, it is full of mechanic mayhem. The autobots facing so much destruction, thanks to a Cybertronian spacecraft hidden on the moon. And who can Sam really trust?

ACTION OVERLOAD!

Seriously, I felt Josh Duhamel's character Lennox was wasted in this film while it was sort of cool to see Patrick Dempsey in a role he rarely plays. What saved the movie for me were the cameos. Especially, Allan Tudyk as Dutch. He's an awesome character actor. There is John Malkovich as the Sam's new mean boss. Hard nosed Francis McDormand in a role that would make most feminist proud as well as the wonderful John Turturro who has a lot to give to the fun of this film. Oh, and Sam's parents are back for parental support, maybe.

You may lose your faith in us, but never in yourselves.
From here..the fight will be your own.

Still, one wonders if its possible to give much character to a mechanical thing. I know some will decipher these Autobots and Cybertrons better than I ever would. But the action is pretty much nonstop. If that's what you are going for in a summer movie, well..better hurry before Captain America and Cowboys VS. Aliens come out. Not to mention, Harry Potter takes his last stand.

STORYLINE: The Autobots learn of a Cybertronian spacecraft hidden on the Moon, and race against the Decepticons to reach it and to learn its secrets.

PG-13 - even so, I definitely wouldn't let younger siblings watch it.

6/10

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Poetry 154: Photograph by Andrea Gibson

Photograph

By Andrea Gibson

I wish I was a photograph tucked into the corners of your wallet. I wish I was a photograph you carried like a future in your pocket. I wish I was that face you show to strangers when they ask you where you come from. I wish I was that someone that you come from every time you get there and when you get there I wish i was that someone who got phone calls and postcards saying “Wish you were here.”

I wish you were her. Autumn is the hardest season. The leaves are all falling and they’re falling like they’re falling in love with the ground, and the trees are naked and lonely, I keep trying to tell them new leaves will come around in the spring but you can’t tell trees those things. They’re like me. They just stand there and don’t listen. 

I wish you were here. I’ve been missing you like crazy. I’ve been hazy-eyed staring at the bottom of my glass again thinking of that time when it was so full it was like we were tapping the moon for moonshine or sticking straws in the center of the sun and sipping like icarus would forever kiss the bullets from our guns.

I never meant to fire, you know. I know you never meant to fire, lover. I know we never meant to hurt each other. Now the sky clicks from black to blue and dusk looks like a bruise. I’ve been wrapping one night stands around my body like wedding bands but none of them fit in the morning. They just slip off of my fingers and slip out the door and all that lingers is the scent of you. I once swore if I threw that scent into a wishing well all the wishes in the world would come true. Do you remember. 

Do you remember the night I told you I’ve never seen anything more perfect than snow falling in the glow of a street light, electricity bowing to nature. Mind bowing to heartbeat. This is going to hurt bowing to ‘I love you.’ I still love you like moons love the planets they circle around, like children love recess bells, I still hear the sound of you and thin of playgrounds where outcasts who stutter beneath braces and bruises and acne are finally learning that their rich handsome bullies are never gonna grow to be happy. I think of happy when i think of you.

So wherever you are, I hope you’re happy. I really do. I hope the stars are kissing your cheeks tonight. I hope you finally found a way to quit smoking. I hope your lungs are open and breathing your life. I hope there’s a kite in your hand that’s flying all the way up to Orion and you still got a thousand yards of string to let out. I hope you’re smiling like God is pulling at the corners of your mouth ‘cause I might be naked and lonely, shaking branches for bones but I’m still time zones away from who I was the day before we met. You were my first mile where my heart broke a sweat and I wish you were here. I wish you’d never left, but mostly I wish you well.

I wish you my very, very best.

Books 153: A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

"I listen to the tick of an unseen clock marking moments of time long passed. It takes me and it holds me and it carries and keeps me like the slow swing of a pendulum before the eyes of an idiot. The World has stopped not like before and not in a good way. It has stopped and is not going forward the same way my life has stopped and is not going forward. It is not going forward or backward or anywhere at all it has just stopped. It has just stopped. This moment and this chance they are the same and they are mine if I choose them and I do. I want them. Now and as long as I can have them they are both precious and fleeting and gone in the blink of an eye don’t waste them. A moment and an opportunity and a life, all in the unseen tick of the clock holding me nowhere. My heart is beating. The walls are pale and quiet. I am surviving."

 

A Million Little Pieces is a memoir of addiction and recovery, authored by James Frey, who records the time he spends in a Minnesota Rehabilitation Clinic at age twenty three. He wakes up on an airplane weak, thin, and malnourished, wielding a powerful dependency on alcohol and crack as well as a broken nose, a hole in his cheek, missing his four front teeth, but with no recollection of how he got there. After years of wrecking his body beyond repair, the doctors give James an ultimatum: either get clean, or die. The book is  raw and real, a detailed account of his struggles, from the painful detoxification process, the constant desire to do the one thing that will kill him, and a forbidden relationship with a fellow patient at the clinic. 

 

I should warn you that this book is pretty intense, with a lot of gruesome descriptions and crude language, but considering it's about a recovering addict you probably have guessed that already. Not exactly a lighthearted summer read. Nevertheless, it was a book that I thoroughly enjoyed reading, and would most definitely recommend.