Shoot Promos on Race, Class, Gender, Etc

"All it takes is a beautiful fake smile to hide an injured soul and they will never notice how broken you really are." - Robin Williams I first remember watching Robin Williams in Hook where he played an adult Peter Pan, the child who never grew up (or in the case of the film an adult who rediscovers his inner child) that I associated with him going forward. His voice acting work in Aladdin where his boundless improvisation and riffing talents took 10-year old me on a virtual "acid trip", before I even knew what that meant. In Mrs. Doubtfire , where his transformation into the lovable Mrs. Euphegenia Doubtfire taught me how comedy could allow one to digest the more serious themes of divorce, separation, and the impact on the family. I watched  What Dreams May Come  at a sleepover with some of my church friends, where I was way too sober to enjoy the "creative" portrayals of death, suicide, and afterlife. As an aside, I witnessed my friends get stoned and...

"So called 'late-bloomers' get a bad rap. Sometimes the people with the greatest potential often take the longest to find their path because their sensitivity is a double edged sword - it lives at the heart of their brilliance, but it also makes them more susceptible to life's pains. Good thing we aren't being penalized for handing in our purpose late. The soul doesn't know a thing about deadlines." - Jeff Brown In August of 2000, I attended the freshmen orientation at UC Irvine. We spent a weekend in the dorm, took a tour of their donut shaped campus, played a few orientation games with other incoming freshmen, and met with our academic counselors. After being shy and very much a loner in high school, this was my opportunity to start over as a social being with a clean slate. Undoubtedly influenced by Scary Movie and American Pie , I took part in a skit where I walked out with my pants down holding a vacuum hose implying that I had masturbated with it. L...

"On a deeper level you are already complete. When you realize that, there is a playful, joyous energy behind what you do." - Eckhart Tolie "Life is meaningless".  In a room of 150 people (obviously pre-pandemic), I'm sitting among the back rows, toward the aisle, taking copious notes, even though the course instructor encouraged us not to take notes. That "bombshell" produced some looks of bewilderment, some people exhaled deeply like the weight of the world was removed from their shoulders, some began laughing at their own absurdities.  Landmark Worldwide is a personal and professional growth, training, and development company focusing on helping achieving success, fulfillment, and greatness. I signed up for "The Landmark Forum", their introductory course in April of 2018 after I made acquaintances with Juls, a woman I gave a Lyft ride to a month prior. I didn't have the disposable income to pay for the course and Juls offered to pay for...

  "Anyone can love a rose, but it takes a lot to love a leaf. It's ordinary to love the beautiful, but it's beautiful to love the ordinary." - MJ Korvan I view myself as a connoisseur of several things, whether it's music, movies, basketball, superhero movies, Top Chef, pro-wrestling or whatever nerdy fandom I've picked up over the years. Many of us who consider ourselves connoisseurs have this impulse to display our expertise to prove to others how refined our tastes are. To borrow a pro wrestling term, we are the mark , a fan who buys into the emotions and characteristics of characters and storylines. Yes, we know wrestling is fake, but it's still real to me damnit . You know a mark when you see them, we're the ones who's closets are full of merch t-shirts, dress up in cosplay to conventions and to the movies, and who spend way too much of our disposable (and sometimes not so disposable) income on memorabilia like action figures, Funko POPs, etc...