Soccer

                This past weekend there was a small soccer tournament between my school and a few other schools in nearby districts. It was a tournament for girls’ soccer and boys’ basketball. The tournament consisted of high school and middle school students. There were only four girls’ soccer teams in the high school division, but it was only 6 a side when normally soccer is 11 a side.

My schools girls soccer team was split up into an A and B team.  The first game that we played happened to be against the other half of our normal team (A vs. B). I was playing for the A team, and after a while and many goals our coach told us to stop scoring and take it easy on the B team. For the rest of that game we tried just passing the ball around to the other players on our team, but the B team did put up a good fight. The second game for the A team was against the team hosting the tournament. That team was very feisty, and since I was playing defense I got some hard blows. One of the opposing teams’ giant forwards came running at me at full speed and then knocked me to the ground. I felt sort of like one of those movies where a person waking up looks above them and sees people standing around them swirl and fog up and then eventually clear up. I never got knocked out, but things definitely were spinning for a while.

On the second day of the tournament there were 2 or 3 players who didn’t show up. My coach came up to me 2 minutes before the B teams game started and informed me that I would be playing for the B team as well as the A team. All the games I played with the B team we lost, and all the games with the A team we won. So it all seemed to work out pretty well. In the end our two teams got 1st place and 4^th, the boys basketball team got 1^st as well, and the two middle school teams received 2^nd in their divisions. Overall it was a successful tournament, and I have the bruises and turf burns to prove it. 

PIRATE-ed

I have lived all but 3 years of my life in the U.S.  A fraction of that time was spent living in the biggest movie producing city in the world, Los Angeles. I was raised being told that copyright laws were serious and strict. Anyone who makes a pirated movie is stealing. Every time I think about someone copying a movie a flash of a commercial comes into my head saying that movie plagiarism is illegal. The ad states that “you wouldn’t steal a car” and “you wouldn’t steal a handbag” then “you wouldn’t steal a movie.”  This all adds up to the fact that buying or making a pirated movie is stealing and “Stealing is against the law!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmZm8vNHBSU

                My dad worked in the movie business for a few years and many of our family friends are still very successful writers/directors and such. The way that these people make their money is through other people going to the theater and or purchasing the movie which they have created. It seems unfair that all the hundreds of people who spend their whole life creating movies will not be compensated for their works just because some people won’t bother to pay $5 at the theater or $10 at a movie store. It’s not just the actors, writers and directors who are affected, but anyone who has a job relating to movies. All the janitors and custodians at the theaters, the camera crew, the costume and makeup artists and basically everyone on the never-ending credit role at the end of a movie want to be paid for their job.  

Until moving overseas I never saw a stand selling pirated movies.  In many countries, it’s almost impossible to find a movie that is NOT pirated. I remember being in the Cook Islands the day that a law was passed banning all pirated movies.  It’s just harder for places far bigger to make laws that will raise such protest. The Internet is another way to watch movies illegally. Sometimes there are legitimate sites that aren’t seen as illegal to watch movies or T.V. shows, but then there’s the 3 million other sites that will play a movie online that came out in theaters the day before.

                I have gone to a few movie premieres, and during all of them I was asked to have my bag checked before entering the theater; now I know why. People will film the movies with video cameras and post them online.  Occasionally there is an audience member who stands up and is able to be seen walking towards the aisle (kind of ruins the movie experience).

Some people say piracy isn’t bad when its legal in the country, however,  it is Illegal everywhere, but some places aren’t as strict on the rules. No percent of pirated movies goes to those that made the movie. Do the movie makers a favor by going to the theater or purchasing their movie, and do yourself a favor by watching a high quality picture. 

City of Bones

                There are so many teen fiction novels that are being read nowadays. I have tried to stay away from the addiction of all the vampire and dead zombie cheerleader princesses that all books seem to be about. Yes, I did read all the Twilight books, but I didn’t become obsessed with them, and as for whether I’m team Edward or team Jacob, I could care less…there both secretly vicious killing-capable beasts right? After all the Twilight drama I decided that I didn’t really like those types of books; I started reading classic novels like Catcher in the Rye and Jane Eyre, until I ran out.

                I was looking for a book to read when a friend recommended reading a new series called “The Mortal Instruments”. The  first book is called City of Bones.  When reading the beginning of the book I realized that it seemed like a little clichéd teen love story with the magical characters thrown in.  I kept reading but I tried not to become attached to it; that didn’t last long.

                The Mortal Instruments ended up being NOTHING like what I was expecting it to be, and I’m glad that I kept reading. It may have vampires, werewolves, and demons, but it’s not really centered on that sort of thing. This book, along with being very descriptive (sometimes overly descriptive) incorporates a greater meaning of humanity. Whether or not what we all know is real, or whether we humans are just weak animals that need protection.

                Clarissa Fray is the main character in the book. She lives in a small apartment in New York with her mother and has been told that her father died before she was born. She’s a normal person (or at least as normal as people seem to start out in books) until she’s at a party and she witnesses a murder that nobody else can see. No one would believe her if she went to the police, because she was the only person who could see the murderer.  The only person she can convey her trust to is her friend Simon.  Clarissa is sucked into a world of shadowhunters and demons, and now that she’s in, there’s no way to get back out….dun dun duuun.

                It does sound kind of lame, and that’s what I thought when my friend explained the plot line to me before I read it, but books can grow on you. This one isn’t part of the “teen madness program,”  Maybe that’s why I hadn’t heard of it before, but so far it’s a good start to a new series.