Goertz Thoughts

As mentioned in a previous year , it is not time for Christmas music yet. Rather than to launch into a complaint about this, I will instead give a little longer list of songs that you can  listen to right now. You can switch to Christmas songs after your Thanksgiving meal. There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays - It doesn't mention Christmas at all. In fact, it highlights pumpkin pie: a traditional Thanksgiving  dessert Jingle Bells  - This was written as a Thanksgiving song Sleigh Ride - Some students tried to convince me yesterday that any song with a sleigh is a Christmas song since Santa has a sleigh. You know who else has a sleigh? Jadis, the White Witch from Narnia. It means nothing. That's how you travel in the snow.   I've Got Plenty to be Thankful For - From Holiday Inn , the same show that gave us White Christmas. I can't fully endorse the movie as it has some scenes that were considered appropriate by some people at the time (they were never approp...

NaNoWriMo is dead. It has a lot to do with their stance on AI (their website doesn't exist anymore, but here is an author that has their take on it). It really upset a lot of people, including members of Savio's Writer's Guild club. The use of AI is one of the few things that you can do to get removed from our club; it's in the bylaws (I included an AI generated image in a story pitch I presented last year before the rule was made and students were less than pleased). The Writer's Guild is continuing to celebrate November anyway. In the spirit of NaNoWriMo, many of our members (not all. Despite the name, the club is home to all sorts of creatives: artists, gamers, composers, as well as authors) will be attempting to write 50,000 word pieces during Novel November. It's a tough task. I've never done it before, but I will also give it a shot. The closest I ever got to a novel was in sophomore year English class. I wrote an 80 page novella. I don't remembe...

 It's been 8 years since my last Halloween post , so I guess it's time to update my complaint. To sum up: trick-or-treating is for children. If you're not a child, buy your own candy. To be clear, I'm not anti-fun and I'm not anti costume. Case in point: What I am against is co-opting something that is meant for children and taking it for adults/teens (Disney adults is a gray area. It's okay to like Disney, but taking up all the space in the lines at the parks is rude). For the record, I am also against: Adults sitting in costumed Santa laps Adult Easter egg hunts Adults playing on playgrounds during the day while children wait for their turn on the swings with tears in their eyes (most of these scenarios involve crying children in my imagination). I think Halloween is a great time for celebration. It's the nature of the celebrations that change. For my 40th birthday, did I rent a bounce house? No, I rented a movie theater and we watched Stardust. Is Christm...

You may have seen several students with enameled character pins on their blazers or backpacks. They may be from Brandon Sanderson's Dragonsteel website . Today, I'd like to convince you to read everything written by my favorite author, Brandon Sanderson. Here are 5 reasons. (Formatting is a little off. I don't know why) The print that I have was given to me by my friend Jesse Sky . You won't soon run out of things to read. While some authors make their fans wait years ( decades? ) for new books, Brandon cannot stop writing. During Covid, he secretly wrote 5 novels! Below is a sampling of some of his works. Cosmere - his main series of interconnected novels. They take place on different planets, but many characters cross over. Stormlight Archive - 5 novels, 2 novellas Mistborn - 7 novels, 3 novellas Elantris - 1 novel, 2 novellas 8 other assorted novels/novellas Here's my suggested reading order (to avoid spoilers). If you pick up a random book, you will be confuse...

This post is inspired by a listicle about 50 movies you should see before you die. I don't know who wrote the list, but every other movie was a "psychological thriller". No one needs  to see "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". This is my list. I really do think that you should see these movies (hopefully you already have). Some because they are just really enjoyable. Some because there are a lot of references that people will make in college/life that you might miss (the same reason we read Shakespeare ). I don't watch movies that are too sad, so you won't see many of those on this list. I am not a cinephile, so these won't necessarily be the "best" movies. A few notes: I found it impossible to rank these, so they're in alphabetical order. There are many movies that you should be aware  of, even if you don't see them. I suggest taking a look at AFI's list . This article started out 2 years ago as "25 Movies You Should ...

Nowadays, it's so easy to find music. You can just google any song (although it's probably better to use Spotify, YouTube Music, or another service. It can avoid some tricky copyright issues). However, it was not always so. Spotify didn't come to the US until 2011. Let me share with you some of the ways that I listened to music throughout my life. Older media: Vinyl records are making a comeback recently. I listened to them because they were cheap (I don't care about audio fidelity; I can't hear a difference). We also had some old 8 tracks laying around. Lots of John Denver and Peter, Paul, and Mary . My mom was a little young to be a hippie, but she liked their music. Tapes: Tapes were great: cheap (you would sometimes get them for free in Happy Meals), lightweight, portable, and most cars had a tape deck that you could play them in. You could also listen to them while exercising, thanks to Walkman . One cool feature was the ability to make mixtapes. Using a tape...