Jimmy Corrigan The Smartest Kid on Earth

   Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth is about a man who  is socially inept and always sad.  Jimmy goes to visit his father, who he hasn’t seen in years.  The story goes back in time and Jimmy becomes his grandfather(I think…)  This is a very complex story that jumps all over the place.  It goes from the Jimmy that the story starts out with to a Jimmy from 100 years ago in Chicago.  Jimmy and his grandfather have very similar moods and characteristics, so it is hard to figure out who is who.  The easiest way to figure out who is who is to look at their surroundings.  If the sourondings look mordern than it is probably the Jimmy from today.  If the soundings look like they are from 100 years ago, than it is his grandfather.  The use of the pictures in the graphic novel help with this.  There is also a small superman hero that follows the storyline and appears sometimes.  It seems to cause destruction or sadness somehow.

The story is very sad.  I was expecting more of a happy story because it is a graphic novel, but I was wrong.  Its ending is sad as well as its beginning, and everything in between.   This graphic novel was very hard to follow. Its switched scenes quickly and didn’t give you a good flow through the pages. You had to reread almost every page to understand them and to get the flow of the story through them. There was a general flow, but sometimes it was interrupted by a bigger panel, or a big AND, OR, or BESIDES. These intereuptions do help move the story along.  The pages usually consisted of two rows. Each row would have two rows of multiple small panes in it. Sometimes these flowed from top to bottom, and sometimes they flowed across the page. There are also pages in this book that are cut out crafts. You cut out the paper drawings and make a 3d model. These allow the reader to visualize the scenery better than a flat two dimensional drawing.

The use of the graphic novel medium was very effective in this instance. It helped to show what was happening, since much of the book is unspoken.  In this book there are many disturbing things that need to be shown to be best conveyed.  The glum scenes helped to show the sad mood that was going on in the book.  Without the pictures, it would not have been as effective.  As stated above, the pictures help you to figure out which Jimmy is being talked about.

The use of the graphic novel medium also has a couple disadvantages.  As I said, it can get very hard to follow.  It also limits your imagination.  When reading a normal novel, everyones idea of the environment and the characters will be slightly different.  When reading a graphic novel, the environment is given for you, so it will not vary from person to person.   All of the characters will look as the author intended. This creates some lack of interest on my part because I have always loved to use the imagery in the novel to think up my own environments.

Top 5 movies

There have always been certain things I have liked about movies. My top five movies would be Office Space, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Italian job, the first Matrix, and Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift.

Office space is an amazing movie. It always gets better the more times you watch it. I have always loved the comic Dilbert, so this kinda falls into the same category. I also like the score. The whole movie flows really well, and the main character is hilarious.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail, is a classic, ‘nuf said. The movie is just hilarious, and has some of the best quotable lines in it. “What? African or European?” “How do we know she is a witch?” “…and then we leap out of the rabbit, and take the French by surprise! We what? We leap out of th…and take th…oh*hits head* Well I did have this idea for a large wooden badger.”

The Italian Job has been one of my top five since I saw it the first time. First off, I love Mini’s. I love the way they set up the job, and the plot is great. I also like the score.

The first Matrix movie was by far the best of the three. The second was just one long action scene, and the third was just the ending of a Christ story. The first one had a wonderful plot, and the score was also well done. The action scenes in the movie were well done, and the characters played the parts very well.

The Fast and the Furious, Tokyo Drift is the last of my top five movies. Yeah let it out, make fun of me now. You know what?  I don’t care, I liked it. I liked the cars, the girls, and even the plot. I think that the actors could have done a better job, but overall it was pretty good.  The main character had way to heavy of an accent, but the fact that he drove an evo made up for it.  I have also always liked drifting.  The ending was pretty good, too.   Honestly, I liked the score.
With movies, I mainly like the plot, the score, and  the actors.

Streetwise, and “Postcards from the Edge” present some of the same issues in different ways. They both examine the inner workings of a culture not usually brought to the forefront. “Postcards from the Edge” shows the culture with an outsiders viewpoint. It does not go very deeply into what the youth think, or what they experience everyday. Streetwise shows the more of the youth’s perspective.

In Streetwise, the youth are given a name, and an identity. You start to associate with them, and you start to feel bad for them. You see how they live their life, and why they live the way they do. You see parts of their families, and learn why they let them live the way they do. You don’t see much of this in “Postcards from the Edge”. It is much more about the numbers, and not as much about the people.

Streetwise lets the reader determine his or her own opinion about what is going on. There is little biased narration, or editing. “Postcards from the Edge” is different in this aspect. It talks about how bad this is, and how we need to help change it.

I think the documentary and the photo essay are much more effective than “Postcards from the Edge”. They go more in depth, and show you whats actually going on in that culture. the documentary does a better job than the photo essay, though, because it allows you to develop some knowledge about the characters.

I’v always wondered why women wore so much makeup, and dressed up for the most casual of occasions.  Every guy I have talked to says that women are more attractive with less makeup on.  To me, a girl in jeans and a t shirt is much better than a girl all dolled up.  Yeah, I know, some guys like girls like that, but most don’t.  Is it really the guys that push this?  So help me out, what is it that makes you gals dress like that?  The author talks about girls on the Maury show.  There are no men pushing these little girls to dress like they are told to dress on this show.  It is only the women(Maury and their mothers) that tell them how to dress.  I’m not saying guys have nothing to do with it.  Yeah, us guys like to see an attractive girl walk past with a little glance, but its the same way that girls like to see cute guys.  Whenever I see a preteen girl walking around dressed like a prostitute, its kinda sickining, not sexy.  They look like preteen boys with less clothing. 

  I think the big issue here is seperating real life from fiction.  We all know that pictures of models are photoshoped.  Its the same way we all know that violence in video games isn’t the same as violence in real life.  We just need to learn to seperate the two, and realize they are different. 

Robotics

Robotics ruled the spring semester my senior year. I was part of a F.I.R.S.T robotics team. F.I.R.S.T is a program started by the inventor of the Segway to help high school students become more interested in Science and Technology. There are over 1300 teams all over the world. We have 6 weeks to design build and test a robot. Each year the task is different. This years game was similar to a giant tick tack toe game. At the end of the round we had to deploy ramps from the side of our robot so other robots could climb up them.

Every thing I thought about had something to do with robotics. Whenever I saw a digital clock form the sequence of numbers from a familar team, I wondered how their robot was doing. Whenever I got on the internet I looked up other teams design ideas. We went to two regional competitions and the Championship. One of the regionals was right here at home. It was being held in the Armory on the Purdue campus. This was our home regional, and I desperately wanted to win.

I was confident in our robot, and my driving performance. Our drive team had four members, Jorge, our coach, Will, the operator, Sean, the human player, and me, the driver. I knew our whole drive team working together could bring this beautiful machine to the winners platform. We started off average, winning a match and losing a match. we honed our skills as the matches went on, and we started winning more.

Friday rolled around, the second of three days. this was our time to show other teams what we could do. We got paired with some good teams and some bad teams. Overall, I was disappointed with our performance, but I was still confidant we could do well.

Saturday was finally there. This was it, the finals. We weren’t in the top eight, but I knew we would be picked. From the research I had done during the competition, I thought we would be picked by the seventh seed alliance. One through six picked their first of two picks. The seventh team Capitan hesitantly said, “Team 1023 would like to ask the assistance of team…1747.” My heart sank. I thought they would have picked my team, 461, but they picked our sister team instead. A guy behind me was yelling that we were next. The eighth team captain asked for another team. I was relived, but still hesitant to celebrate, because we hadn’t been picked yet. The seventh alliance got their chance to pick their third member next. They stepped forward and said, “Team 1023 and team 1747 would like to ask the assistance of team…461.” It took me about a second before I took it in. Even though I was expecting it, it still seemed surreal. I jogged onto the field, and said, “Team 461 graciously accepts!” I shock the hands of the captains from team 1747 and team 1023.

We had only a couple of minutes before the first match to formulate our strategy and get our robots in top shape. We went out on the field and dominated our competition. Match after Match we won. We got all the way to the final alliance. The winner was the won who won the best of 2 out of 3. We played our first match, and they won. We won the second one. Right before the third match started, our alliance shock the hands from the opposing alliance. This was it. We got back to our drivers stations, and I started to do my usual focus routine to shut out the crowd. Right before I started, I heard from our team, “Savvaiiannno…Savvaiiannno!” I just smiled to myself, and shut my eyes. The crowd was suddenly hushed. I could still hear them, but I was tuned into the field. I open my eyes, and felt the controls. I backed up, and the match started. The first 15 seconds are preprogrammed, so the drivers don’t do anything. I watched our robot do its usual routine. The buzzer went off, and I jumped forward, and started driving. I went around and put on a couple tubes. We had about 45 seconds left, so I drove back to the wall. I made sure I was clear, and then yelled at Will to deploy the ramps. Down one of the two went. One was stuck. I tried to get it down by shacking the robot a little, but to no avail. I looked at it closer and saw that it had gotten caught on itself. I looked up at our other alliance members. 1023 was trying to go up the ramps, but they were having trouble. 1747 took their turn, but there just wasn’t enough time left. The buzzer went off, and I knew we hadn’t won. My heart, along with my whole team’s, sank. It would have been the first regional we would have won in our eight years as a team. We got so close.

The picture attached is the back of the drivers stand just before the final match. My team is in yellow, team 1023 is in red, and team 1747 is in green.  I’m the only one with shorts on.

My name is Chris Savaiano. I’m in freshman engineering, and hope to go on to study Mechanical, Aero(not where my screen name came from, though), or Nuclear Engineering. I went to high school right here in West Lafayette, so I know the town and campus pretty well already. A misconception I had about college was that it would take some time for me to get into a group. I joined Formula SAE this last week, and have already spent my whole Saturday and half of Friday there. They really made me feel like part of the team already. I also didn’t realize that some teachers would be really strict when it came to attendance and other would be exactly the opposite. Both of my sisters went to Purdue, as well as my brother in law. This kinda gave me a pretty good idea what college would be like. My father has worked here for 12 years, so I also have a deep fondness for Purdue.