What's Your Favorite Scary Movie?

    

    Since I have moved back to Phoenix I've been hearing radio advertisements for 13th Floor, a local haunted house looking for people to play zombies and monsters for their Halloween season (starting up September 21st).  To make sure that I am fully prepared for the haunted house I have decided to brush up on my scary movies and have been watching them by myself.  Yes I am one of those few people that enjoys watching scary movies by themselves.  This doesn't mean that I don't get super freaked out,  I jump at everything, scream and make sure that none of my appendages are hanging off the side of the bed to get grabbed and pulled under.  My one rule though is that the lights have to be turned off, if they're on it ruins the effect.  I have watched quite a lot of different horror movies.  There are horror movies on demonic possession, ghosts, haunted houses, monsters, mutations, serial killers, the supernatural and slashers.  Slashers would probably be on the bottom of my list, they aren't really scary, it's more just gore and being freaked out by people holding their guts in their hands (yes, I'm calling out Saw as being weak sauce).  My other least favorite type of horror movies are zombie movies, those effect me the most and I just can't handle them, I only got through 28 Days Later by inviting one of my guy friends over to make fun of it while we were watching.

     When I tell people that I like watching horror films they always ask me "What's your favorite scary movie?", it kinda makes me laugh when they say that because they're quoting the killer from my favorite scary movie.  Yes that would be Ghostface from the Scream series and yes I do realize that the movie Scream is a slasher movie and contradicts what I just said about them being at the bottom of my list.  This movie though actually keeps you guessing, it's a scary movie where the characters make choices based on the scary movies they have seen in order to escape Ghostface.  This movie contradicts the rules of scary movies to keep you freaked out, you think that you are safe because you are the exception to the rule but Ghostface pops out of no where and rams his knife in your gut.  The first movie keeps with the rules for the most part, sluts die off pretty fast, boyfriends can't protect you and virgins are safe (until *SPOILER ALERT*, they lose their virginity and seal their fate).  The 2nd movie switches things up a bit when not all the black guys die...well they still have a black guy die first but that is besides the point.

    Outside of the Scream series my favorite scary movies are Halloween (not the whole series, only the first two are acceptable, after that they get ridiculous), Friday the 13th, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, the first Paranormal Activity, Psycho, The Birds, Devil, and Poltergeist.  I guess I enjoy the older scary movies, every Halloween I watch the first Halloween movie (probably my 2nd favorite scary movie).  American Horror Story is an entertaining scary T.V. show that I watch, I even watch International Ghost Hunters from time to time.  Yes I realize that it is a super hokey show but I like hearing the history of the supposedly haunted places.  I've always had a fascination with the "supernatural"; urban legends and ghost stories are absolutely fascinating to me.  When I was younger and we could check out a book from the school library, I for some reason would get a book on Big Foot, ghosts, aliens or the Loch Ness Monster.  Even when my family traveled back to Boston when I was 12, I wanted to go to Salem and see the Salem Witch Museum.  If I ever go to Louisiana I want to do a haunted cemetery/plantation tour.  Now you all probably think I am super weird, I just want to emphasize that I do not believe that these things are real, I just find the histories interesting.

    Before I sign off today, I do want to ask you this question, "What's Your Favorite Scary Movie?" (and why:).  Later!

Leaving Utah

When you left home for the first time do you remember everything about that day?  For me, this happened five years ago around this same time.  I was an incoming Freshman at BYU looking to study French and International Relations.  I was going to live in Africa and change the world through Educational Humanitarianism.  Things seemed so clear in my mind and it was just a matter of time before I'd be embarking on my life's mission.  That first day I was in Provo I went to a BBQ that my best friend, Alicia Reynolds was having with her family and new roommates over at Wyview.  Looking back on it now, I realize how much I have changed since then and how grateful I am for the different things that have come into my life. 
I spent four full and exhausting years studying Interdisciplinary Humanities, French and Art History.  It sounds like a lot but they all supplement each other.  Even though many people say that you can't do anything with a Humanities degree I am determined to prove them wrong by getting my Masters, perhaps even a PhD and fulfilling my goal of working in a museum's Education Department or becoming a professor.

When I leave, I feel like it is going to be a very surreal experience.  It still hasn’t hit me that I’m leaving my college past behind and moving on to a place where I no longer will be considered a college kid but a full functioning adult…well maybe not full functioning but you know what I mean.  I’ll soon get my own apartment that isn’t BYU contracted, that’s when you know you are a real adult, when the world trusts you enough to not have a curfew, a chastity line and your whole ward staring you down when you are saying goodbye to a date. 

I will of course miss all of my friends, but nerdily enough the MOA is the next thing that I will miss dearly.  If you didn’t go to any of the openings or see me at work then let me explain to you how much I love that place.  I went to the MOA at least twice a week as a Freshman and Sophomore to walk around and look at the art, study and meditate.  Then I got the internship there which turned into a job helping out for Carl Bloch in which me and every other student worker basically lived there and had Bloch on the brain 24/7.  Then last summer I became an Assistant to the Head Curator, Cheryll May, quite possibly the most intimidating, kindest, genuine and genial woman I have ever met.  Alongside Amanda Slater, I got to do exhibition development research and was in charge of “The Book”.  Yes “The Book” is just about the same as the one they have in “The Devil Wears Prada”, it holds every single consideration for the exhibition, transcripts of meetings, full color images of all of the paintings, the gallery layout mockup, QR code plans, educational material and the draft for the exhibition’s book.  And I was in charge of cataloging all of thatJ  Amanda and I slaved over going through the Dorothy Weir Papers finding things to include in the exhibition, I got to translate drunken letters of a French speaking Finn.  That was probably my favorite thing, reading a description where one of the Weir brothers woke up on the 4^th of July to his drunken Finn roommate singing “Yankee Doodle” with the flag draped around him.  However the hand writing was rough to read through, the pages were delicate and at times I had to read disturbing descriptions of going to art school in Paris where they took convicts that were killed and then had their bodies used in class nailed to a crucifix in order for the students to properly learn how to sketch out the Christ figure on the Cross.  So yes, when I see an older religious painting it usually makes me think where they initially learned how the blood coagulated, the skin bruised and the muscles tighten in pain.  This sounds like I’m completely disgusted but it brings a whole new way of thinking to art and the creative process.

Back on track, I will miss you all and hope for the best.  I will visit eventually, just give me some time to growJ

Moods

If you are reading this then you obviously know me....hopefully pretty well and understand that I'm a quirky person. Not one of those people where you are like "UGH! She is really weird!" but more or less that I march to the beat of my own drum.

Well if I don't talk much during the day (basically at my job) it rolls over to the night time where I just don't feel like talking. Yes, I know. There is a time in space that exists where Jenna is silent. It's not that I'm mad, I just don't want to talk...so I don't. So since I'm saving so much time right now from blathering to my roommates I took Michelle J. to school, went to the library and got Andrew Hussey's "Paris: The Secret History" and Lieutenant-General Roméo Antonius Dallaire's book "Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda". I absolutely find books on Rwanda fascinating, I don't even know what it is about it. Then when I got home from the library I decided I wanted to have Swedish food for dinner. So I made Swedish meatballs, homemade garlic mashed potatoes with a side of lingonberries and lingonberry juice. It's actually pretty good. Yea I don't really have too much to say other than I have had an interesting night. I'll let you know how my books go later in the week.

What makes me who I am

One of my favorite things about studying Humanities was figuring out what the origin of things was, where did some social norm come from and what nurtured it. Thinking about this constantly with different day to day actions/gestures/conversations, it is obviously constantly on my mind. The past few days though I have been trying to bring it home and genuinely figure out how did I become the way I am?

I will say this to you teaching majors out there if your mind jumped to nature vs. nurture. I believe that me becoming who I am was definitely a mixture of both. As a child I had a very free spirit, I liked to take my picture books as a toddler behind the couch and sit there for a few hours quietly flipping through the pages and stacking the books once I had finished each one. I taught myself how to roll my eyes at my dad by nearly the age of two. Strange to say but these things were just inherently my personality. I marched to the beat of my own drum. There are things though that I was blessed enough to have in my life to make me who I am today.

First of all people have a huge influence on my life. Having the parents, grand parents and siblings that I had is probably one of the biggest blessings I could have ever hoped for. My mother is one of those insanely patient women that takes the time to explain things and truly help you figure things out. My dad who is quiet like my mom is probably the bravest man I know. When he needs to get something done he doesn't take his time, he goes out and he does it. This includes mowing the lawn when the sun is out in the middle of the summer in Phoenix. He does it because it needs to be done. Both of my parents live by very set rules and expectations. My siblings and I were brought up to know the rules and to live by them, there is only black and white, you do what you are expected without complaining. It is funny that when you are a kid the last person you want to be like is your mom or dad but when you get older you learn that you really do want to be like them and inevitably you do!

The next biggest influence in my life is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Growing up a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints I never doubted that I was a child of God and that I was not just placed on this Earth at random, but I had a Heavenly Father and Mother that loved me very much. We have a Prophet on the Earth today that directs us which way we should go. I guess I was lucky not to have to go through huge choices in my life like should I drink, smoke, etc. I had my mind set that I was going to live my life in a certain way and I have thus far.

I know that you all are expecting me to go into some nerdy long rant about French or Les Miserables and here it is....Les Miserables is quite possibly next to the Bible and Book of Mormon, the book that has changed my life for the better. I originally heard the story when I was 7 or 8 watching the PBS Special from a telethon with the 10th Anniversary. There was just something about the music that just spake to me and urged me to learn more about it. There were French words interspersed throughout the musical and so that of course made me thirst for even more. So when I entered into high school at Moon Valley in 2003, I signed up for French and stuck with it up until this last December. That would be a total of 8 years learning one language. I will not say that I am the greatest French speaker in the world. I still have a ton to learn and do not plan on stopping anytime soon. I first read Les Miserables in Mr. Bloom's AP English class my senior year of high school. We got to pick anything that we wanted to do a report on and I chose a 1500 page book. I read it in about a month, I dedicated myself to reading 75 pages a day. I find that an exceptionally fast amount of time to read a book that long. But with how Victor Hugo sees both his characters and people of mid 19th century France as more than who they are it resonates in my soul that everyone has a potential and that we need to stop being blinded of who they are now or the mistakes they made in the past but see them as the person they can become.

Lastly Carl Bloch: The Master's Hand had one of the most profound influences on my life as a young adult. I used to work at BYU's Museum of Art that had this exhibition of Carl Bloch's paintings and etchings of the life of Christ from November 17th 2010 to May 7th 2011. We had approximately 305,000 people go through that exhibition during it's time at the MOA. It truly was a living nightmare and dream. On the one hand I would be in charge of at least moving 300 people through the exhibit while also watching my volunteers, counting tickets, "patrolling" the gallery, etc. Ask any one of the Education girls that worked that exhibit, it was both a living Hell and one of the most peaceful things. I was constantly yelled at by angry patrons on the phone, email and in person because they wanted tickets when there were no tickets available. This really taught me how to have patience. Womem's Conference especially taught me to breath slowly and go with the flow. You literally could not move in the MOA, we had to listen to person after person of why they were not able to reserve tickets or why they should be able to get in. I'd just stand there and smile and tell them "I'm sorry we are not giving out standby tickets right now, if you'd like to check back once the crowds have died down in about 2-3 hours we might have a few available then. I would not trade that experience for anything though. I was able to meet some of the most amazing people in this world. I did meet a huge amount of General Authorities for the Church but my favorite visitor was a poor woman from Spain. She was visiting Utah because her son had submitted a film to the Sundance Film Festival. She spoke absolutely no English and had reservations about religion because of abuse she had from a priest as a child. I decided to skip class that day and walked around for 2-3 hours (with a security guard as my translator) and talk to her about the paintings. Once we were done she gave me a kiss on the cheek and expressed how grateful she was to the MOA for having that exhibit bring people closer to Christ.

All of these things have had a huge impact on who I am today and the person that I continually want to become in the future. I am grateful for all these things and want to have you ask yourself, "What makes me who I am"?