I’m exhausted. That’s a pretty good way to explain it.

The fall semester has (finally) come to an end, and I could not be happier to have a month off from school to focus on being a lazy son-of-a-gun.

It is finally time for me to sit at home for hours on end and do nothing but watch every season of Family Guy on Netflix, each McDonalds, and mastu…. I’ll stop there.

Of course, I joke. I would never watch one season of Family Guy, let alone all of them.

In all honesty, I have a lot planned for this break, especially for CFDD. I finally have time to write creatively where I don’t have to abide to strict academic guidelines to get papers done. Isn’t that the worst? I am waiting for the one day where I have a professor who says, “Alright class, I want you to write about the history of abortion cases in America. Just have at it. I’m not going to give guidelines, just do what you want and be graded on it.”

Of course, everyone would say either “I like whoring myself out there.” or “BABY KILLERS BURN IN HELL!!!” But you get my point: these guidelines that professors put in their assignments can be a little ridiculous? “You want 15 pages? Ok, I’ll give you 5 pages of substance and the rest will just be a bunch of filler and BS.” Can I just write what I think is sufficient and know that I have a solid essay? Of course not, that would be too easy.

Also, what is up with these MLA, APA, ASS formats? In the real world, how often do we actually use these formats? I work with a bunch of journalists and people who write for a living, not once have I seen someone use “proper MLA  format” for anything. So what’s the point? I’m dying to know.

How about a little creativity and uniqueness for us to explore while writing academic papers? Are we completely devoid of individual identity to the point where everyone has to abide by the same guidelines. That’s not what life is about. I think it’s important to dig deep inside ourselves to find where our creativity truly lies. Writing papers in college seems to be the perfect place to express that. However, when I get an assignment that says “15 pages, MLA, 20 sources, must be in the 3rd person, and be written while taking a shower” doesn’t it seem a little too, I don’t know… generic? Do I need to make the obvious Robert Frost poem reference here?

Creativity is where one shows his or her identity, as I hit on before. That’s where true learning and growth occurs. It also makes papers more enjoyable to write. Isn’t enjoying life and loving what you do the true essence of life? I know, you can only be so creative when talking about abortion and Civil Liberties without offending you reader (I almost regret making the reference earlier) but you can put your own little ‘spice’ into your paper. You then can appreciate your work more, because it is truly yours. You didn’t need to abide by strict guidelines that deter you from going off the designated path. Because that makes all the difference.

Anyway, that’s my little soapbox for now. As I studied and wrote papers for Finals Week, (yes, it’s such a big event that it needs capitalization) that’s what was on my mind a lot. I guess it’s because I picked a more creative major along with a very academic minor (electronic media and broadcasting major with a Political Science minor.) Maybe I’m in the minority with this based off of my choice of education or maybe I’m not, that’s not the point. College is about building your identity, writing papers seems to be the perfect place to build that identity. Who knew that political science could be so technical? I thought politics was pretty cut and dry.

Wrapping up, I’ll continue to write about whatever comes to mind for the next month that I have on break. Got a couple miscellaneous projects to work on, work two jobs, and celebrate Christmas with the family. Life is short, people, go out and live it! Don’t be that guy to sit on the couch, watch every season of Family Guy on Netflix, eat McDonalds and mastu… you get my point.

Take some time this holiday to reflect on the year you’ve had, where you’ve been, where you’re going, and what you’ve done. A lot of the time we tend to lose track of the important things in life and the holidays are the perfect time to reflect on what’s really important. Whatever happens, happens for a reason. It’s how we grow.

Whoa, I just got real deep there. I guess I’ll end it there.

More posts to come soon, be sure to follow me on Twitter to be up to date with Cheap Five Dollar Dress, current events, and stupid diatribes. @ryanfinfrock

Signing off.

 

 

You know, I’ve been off and on with this blog. Things get crazy and sometimes, I just don’t have anything to write about. How about a little update on things?

Frock Talk is no more. I recently got a second job (a really good job) and had to make some sacrifices and Frock Talk was unfortunately at the top of the list. Frock Talk was  a blast. I got to argue with people and able to feed my ego for a couple hours a week. What’s better than that? An unintended but inevitable consequence of this second job is my lack of sleep and time. College is freakin’ stressful sometimes. I always seem to make it harder on myself too. I picked a Political Science minor with a Pre-Law focus. Holy crap. It’s awesome, don’t get me wrong, but damn, the workload is intense. Finding the time to sleep is hard enough, let alone keeping up to date with CFDD.

So how about my take on some of the recent news to come out?

Let me start out by asking a question: What do Rob Ford and healthcare.gov have in common?

Rob Ford is Canadian, and, allegedly, the healthcare.gov was developed by a Canadian group. Both are equally dysfunctional.

I actually take pride that cheapfivedollardress.com works much better than healthcare.gov.

New gaming consoles are coming out and are expected to be in extreme demand this holiday season. Have you preordered one? Or are you waiting? Let me know.

Apple released new iPads: the Air and Mini with Retina Display. I got one of the Airs and am extremely pleased with it so far. However, I feel “An Apple Adventure Part 3” is inevitable. I will speak about my experience when I picked up my new iPad… on launch day.

Black Friday is quickly approaching and becoming a thing of the past just as quickly. Stores are now opening up on Thanksgiving night. Yeah, it’s crazy, there’s no other way to put it.

CFDD is back! I’m working on some new things. This was just a very quick (and obviously, very rough) post to get things back up and running.

As always, follow me on Twitter @ryanfinfrock to stay up to date with my take on news and other crap.

Signing off.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can already imagine what people are going to say: “That’s what you get when you go Apple!” “Android is better and always will be!” “Hippie!” But let me speak, because this time, I had a much better experience.

First it was my Mac, and now my iPhone. The ‘Sleep/wake’ button (the lock button) on my iPhone was not working properly. So, with the phone being under warranty, I took it to the Apple Store. My dad quickly called it my home away from home and told me not to forget to genuflect before the genius bar and offer a sacrifice to Mr. Jobs. My dad is having way too much fun with my struggles.

I got to the mall where the Apple store is located a little early. So I decided to get the full ‘hipster’ experience and get a cup of coffee at Starbucks beforehand. Why not? Don’t judge.

I then headed into the Apple Store and I fit right in (other than the fact I was in sweatpants and a hoodie. Not the normal American Eagle attire that you see way too much of in the Apple Store.) I was extremely skeptical about what might happen once I received help (I mean, who wouldn’t if they went through what I did before?) But all of those were put to rest within the first couple of minutes meeting with my genius.

But before I get into that, I have a proud moment to share. As I sat at my table awaiting help, a gentleman was sitting next to me, fiddling with his iPhone. “What brings you in here today?” He started the conversation.

“The lock button on my iPhone isn’t working.”

“Same here, do you know what they are gonna do?”

“I’m having the same problem with my (iPhone) 4. Do you know what they’ll do?”

“If the phone’s under warranty, they’ll replace it on the spot. But if it’s not, I’m not so sure.”

He knew his phone wasn’t under warranty. It was also a company phone and they weren’t going to cover the cost of repair. So, being the kind and generous person that I am, I showed him a way to get a virtual lock bottom, he hadn’t been serviced yet by his Genius. He guy didn’t want to fork over the money for a replacement so he just took the virtual lock button, and left the Apple Store. I had done my good deed for the day.

Back on track, my genius approached me, asked what the problem was. I told him about my lock button and he said that it was no problem and replaced the phone on the spot.

Why couldn’t my mac experience be that good? While we waited for my new phone to update, I asked questions about cases and talked about media for a little bit. It was quite an enjoyable experience. Complete 180 from my Macbook incident. Maybe a phone is just less complex than a laptop, but everything went a lot smoother.

So I decided to post about this to show fairness on both sides here. My opinion on Apple customer service has definitely changed.

There are certain people who might read this and think that I’m back to living the stereotype that my dad believes I fall under. No, not in the least bit. I’m extremely happy with my Apple products and that’s just what I want.

Now, if something happens after my warranty is up… who knows what will happen…

Quick follow-up:

My mac is still working perfectly after the fix that  I wrote about before. No complaints. For some reason, the screen even looks better than what it used to.. not sure why or even if it’s actually true, but it seems like it.

I’m a fan of Apple products. I’m man enough to admit it. Although I may not be as hardcore as a lot of others, I still pay attention to see what Apple has in the works.

I am the owner of a Macbook Pro and an iPhone 5. Both of which are awesome products. However, I did run into some problems with my Macbook Pro (MBP) recently. The costumer service experience was anything but enjoyable.

Do you remember earlier generation plasma TVs? If you had something on it for too long or were playing video games, you would run into the problem of image persistence (image ghosting, image burn are also synonymous.) A co-worker of mine told me that this happened to a friend of his and the Cartoon Network logo was burnt into his screen and would not go away. This is essentially what happened to my MBP.

I was under the impression that technology has come to the point where we don’t have to worry about this problem anymore, but it seems that I am wrong. The retina screen on my MBP (should have mentioned that earlier) runs at such a high resolution and has a wide viewing angle that I was told that “some ghosting will happen.” (This was mentioned to me after the fact.)

I first noticed the problem while typing a few papers one night. As I finished the papers, I turned on Netflix to take a little break. I noticed that what I had recently typed was still vaguely noticeable while watching President Bartlett talk about his 2nd Inaugural Address. So I paused the show, and looked at my wallpaper, same problem. That’s when I decided to schedule a visit to the nearest Apple store and get it looked at.

The first visit to the Apple store was an interesting one. To add a little bit of entertainment, I decided to tell my dad to come with me. He has his opinion of Apple, and I thought it’d be a little fun to let him experience it with me (best decision ever.) As we entered the store, my dad let his opinions known. Although he kept them between him and me, if he had the chance and the balls, he would have definitely yelled them. He thought he was royalty amongst peasants. “I’m smart enough to stay away from Apple, all of you low-lives are pathetic.” Although he probably wouldn’t admit it, that was his mentality. If he’s reading this, oh well.

As we met with out ‘Genius’ (don’t get me started on my dad and his opinion of the Geniuses) he ran an image persistence test to see if there was, in fact, a problem. There was. So he told me that they would take the laptop in and replace the display; a repair that could take 3-5 days (other factors permitting.) So we went about our way and left the Apple store. On our way out, we caught glimpse of the Microsoft store. There was something about that place that seemed similar to a place that I had been recently: the Apple Store. It was uncanny. I laughed, my dad was on the defense. “If Apple is so bad, why does it look like Microsoft took a play out of their playbook?” He did his normal head shake and shrug and we went back home.

I was punished by having to use the laptop that we recently bought my mom until my laptop was fixed. It was running Windows 8 and it was ‘different.’ It is true about what they say: “Once you go Mac, you never go back.” The experience on that laptop was short live, thankfully.

I received an email the next day saying that my repair was done. “Sweet! Early! I like that!” That meant I could  step away from the contagious disease of a laptop that they call a PC. I had my dad pick it up on his way home from work, a task that he was probably adamant about doing, but reluctantly agreed to.

He can home, and I met him at the door. It was like seeing a family member that had been lost and recently was found. (Ok, now I’m kind of sounding pathetic, but stay with me.) I turned it on and browsed the web for a couple minutes and was greeted with the same problem! This is when frustration set in and a quickly scheduled another Genius Bar appointment to see what was up.

That day came and I decided not to bring my dad with me this time. He had his fun, but with the circumstances, I needed to figure out what was wrong. It turned out that they did not do what they originally set out to do: replace the display. Apparently they ran the same test they did in front of us last week once we left and it passed. So there was no need to do the repair. So they said that they would definitely fix it this time and it would be another 3-5 for the fix. “Ok, as long as it gets fixed.” (May I remind you that this was Superbowl Sunday.) So I went home and went about the rest of my day, or as much as I could before I got another email from Apple saying that my laptop was ready. This was only about an hour and a half after I got home. So the first thing that came to my mind was that the same thing that happened last week, just happened again. So I went back up to the Apple story (about a 30 minute drive each way) and it seemed like the walk from the entrance to the mall to the Apple store took forever. It seemed as with every step I got that much closer to becoming extremely frustrated. Luckily, it was fixed. According to the Genius, the employee who does the repairs on retina screens was in that day and was able to get it done that day. Although I was extremely happy to get my MBP the same day, I couldn’t help but wonder if there could have been a little better communication between employees to better help me. Gas isn’t cheap and the drive isn’t short. I could have easily have killed time browsing the various stores in the mall and wait to get notified that my repair was completed. With all of the technology that Apple embraces, I think that this could have easily of happened. But no.

This isn’t a story of me turning away from Apple and going back to the dark side. This is simply a story of my customer service experience. I still love Apple products. But like every other piece of technology, they have problems. But Apple, I’ll admit, tends to be a little full of themselves when you enter their story and need help with your products. With the type of money we have to spend to get something from Apple, you would think that their customer service experience would be a little better. I’m not expecting free caviar with every visit or a free lap dog, I just want a good customer experience where I can be confident that I will be able to walk away and know that my product will be fixed and working the way it should be. Is that so much to ask?

This has been an interesting week to be looking at Facebook. I think you and I can agree on that fully. The Presidential election provided people the great opportunity to be able to post their thoughts, opinions, disgrace, approval, jubilation, etc. Being the diverse country we are, full of varying races, ethnicities, language, opinions, and lifestyles, I find social mediums such as Facebook to be great outlets for everyone to voice what they may have to say, even if I do find myself in disagreement with them. However, I find myself in the very, very small minority here it seems like.

As much as I did not like the results of the election this past week, I was even more disgruntled at the type of things people were posting on Facebook. There were certain people (and I can guarantee you saw these people too) that wanted people to quit posting their political opinions onto a social network. I can hear those people reading this post right now: “Well, that’s my own opinion! You are preaching about how you like seeing varying opinions on Facebook, I am voicing mine.” To them I say, try Cuba, that country will be perfect for you, no really, go.

I have been in love with social media ever since High School. It is a great way to interact with people you do not see on a daily basis, get to know new people, and stay in touch with family from out of town. However, as I began to grow, in both mind and spirit, I found social media to be a great medium to voice my opinions and have spirited debate to those who may not see eye to eye with me… and there are quite a few who don’t, I found out (shocking!) But there are always those people who say certain opinions should stay off of Facebook. “Politics should stay off of Facebook!” is what they normally say. I just normally laugh and go about my day. A social medium should never be censored by anyone. If you don’t like what someone may be posting on Facebook, I refer you to the second paragraph. Really, I heard it’s nice there.

As a side note: there are certain things I will never post on Facebook because it becomes too controversial and my Facebook will end up being blown up by people who disagree. Some of these topics include: abortion, gay marriage, and marijuana just to name a few. These topics are different in the fact that I feel like people are too passionate about their position and will fight hard if you happen to disagree. I have my opinions on these, and talk about some of them on my blog, but not as a Facebook post. It’s a personal preference of mine.

The point that I’m trying to make here is that someone’s thought on Facebook should be there. It’s one of the most powerful things of social media: being able to voice your opinion, connect with those who agree, and have spirited debate with those who do not agree with you. Don’t go onto Facebook thinking your demand to limit someone’s free speech will get you anywhere. It won’t. I guarantee it.

Just a disclaimer. I am not complaining about the results of tonight. I am merely giving my insights onto what won Obama the re-election and what will happen now, not only to our country, but to the Republican Party as well.

__________________________________

Entitlements. If you’ve read this blog or listen to my talk show in the past, it’s a real issue for me. Entitlements are what won Obama this election, I have no doubt about it. Fact of the matter is that there are a strong percentage of Americans (some may say 47%) who rely on the government. It’s how they’ve been raised and it’s the only way that they know, which may prove to be quite dangerous. I’m not going to go on and on about entitlements again, because I’ve talked about it enough, and it’s just beating the dead horse.

Perhaps something that may get some attention here down the road is what happens to the Republican party? This has me more concerned than the presidential race. Quite frankly, many conservatives now have lost faith in the Republican party. So look for many, many Tea Party Patriots to come out and call for their own party now because they are fed up with the two party system. Some people may argue that the Tea Party has been dead. They’re wrong, and I feel as if the Tea Party will get even stronger now because of the results. As a guy who falls in line with main Tea Party principles, I find this very likely.

In terms of the Senate, it was a bigger blow to Republicans (if that is even possible.) Many senate seats were given to their Democratic opponents. Included Elizabeth (Fauxcahontis) Warren over Scott Brown, Sherrod Brown over Josh Mandel in my home state of Ohio (Mandel was a candidate I really rallied behind.) Mourdock and Akin lost in Indiana and Missouri because they like rape, apparently. The Senate was a lost opportunity for Republicans but still maintain the House, with even a bigger margin now.

One thing that also really stood out to me was the passage of many marijuana and same sex marriage laws in certain states. This points to a certain change in America (whether if it’s good or bad is up to you.) But look back a few years, these type of issues would have no chance of passing. America truly is being fundamentally transformed, which can be both harmful and beneficial. No doubt ‘Occupy Mentality’ helped out with the passage of these. Don’t get me started on Occupy. For your own good, don’t get me started on Occupy.

I’m trying to stay optimistic here. I still love my country, always have and always will. Things may not have gone the way that I might have liked, but I have believe that God truly will help out in our time of need. Now we wait to see who will run in 2016 (Rubio 2016!) Look for a Biden run against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic seat, I feel like that is inevitable.

A final note to my fellow Americans, don’t get all whiney and bitchy about the results, you are fueling the fire. You also don’t get anything accomplished in doing so (I’m talking to you, Donald Trump.)

PS If you are pissed off about all of the political posts on Facebook, saying that ‘politics shouldn’t be on Facebook.’ Please, deactivate your account. These people have me more upset than the results last night. Facebook is a Social medium. People have the right to post what’s on their mind (hence why it says ‘what’s on your mind’ before you post.) If you can’t take all of the posts that you may like, you don’t believe in free speech. I could go on and get more derogatory, but I think I got the point across. But I may focus a separate post devoted to it.

You know, I tip my hat to whoever finds the time to post to their blogs on a very consistent basis. I am extremely busy all the time, so sitting down and writing a blog post is real hard to do. But I finally have some time (during midterm week of all weeks) to sit down and write about what’s on my mind. This post is going to be all over the place, so please bear with me.

Did you see the ad that Team Obama just put out concerning Big Bird. Yeah, the candidate who epically failed during the first debate (more about debate #1 in a bit) is now reminding people about said debate. Seems kind of backwards. Well the ad has had an immense amount of negative criticism (even from many MSNBC ‘journalists’) to the point that I don’t think that the ad will be getting much air time. But it’s official, the Obama Campaign has jumped the shark and is now in desperation mode. Want to watch the video? Well I was a good boy and posted it, right below. Think about this while watching it: “If you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run away from. You make a big election about small things.”

I’ve been noticeably quite during the past couple weeks of the election. I think what I would say would just be echoed from others. You’ve heard it all, so I won’t repeat it. If you know my stance on thing, I think you know what I would say. However, I’ll sum it all up in one picture:

One thing that has kept me occupied is MLB Postseason Baseball. Yeah, it’s a pretty big deal here in Cincinnati. Reds are going for the sweep of the San Francisco Giants tonight. So yeah, I’m kind of excited. However, there is one issue that many Cincy fans have become increasingly frustrated with (me included.)

It’s not every year when we have something to celebrate here in the Queen City. So the Reds being on the fringe of heading to the NLCS, we expect to be noticed. However, it doesn’t seem to be the case. Take this past Monday: a Reds fan would have to wait till the end of that edition of SportsCenter to even see the highlights of their 9-2 victory where Bronson Arroyo tossed a 1-hitter through 7 innings. To us here in Cincy, that seems to be a pretty big story. However, the Broncos and Patriots game was shown at the top of the hour followed by other NFL games and even NASCAR were shown before the Reds game was highlighted.

The reasoning for this is easy: money. I have studied media markets a little bit and understand what media outlets do to help ensure the greatest profit. I’ll spare you all the details, but I’ll do a simple sum up. Cincinnati is not a huge sports market. If you live in Cincy, I think you can agree with that. So when it comes to ESPN, they want to show games and highlights of those teams who are in a big market. This is why you always see the Red Sox and Yankees play on Sunday night. So put yourself in their shoes. In the end, it’s all about the $$$. So we get screwed and it doesn’t seem like it will end. It’s rough being a Cincy Reds fan, but we’ll let our play on the field do all the talking and bring home the World Series crown this year.

If you haven’t known by now, I am off of Norse Code Radio. It was a hard decision to make, but in the end, sacrifices needed to be made. Still trying to get a weekly podcast together in one form or another. We’ll see where that takes me. But until then, CFDD and Twitter are where you will hear me.

This is a short post, but I just want to post something while I had the time. Not the best looking post on the web, but I got everything off of my mind. Got suggestions for topics? Send me a tweet @ryanfinfrock. I’m on fall break starting Friday, and I’ll see if I can get some more posts in, no promises, just a goal. Although, expect something after the Comedy Hour known as the VP Debate on Thursday. Paul Ryan will be going up against the gift to the GOP that keeps on giving in Joe Biden.

Follow me  on Twitter to get updates and quick thoughts on current events. It’s much easier and not as big of a time commitment as CFDD.

Most people my age love to talk about that one awesome party that they went to over the summer, a vacation that they went on, or all of the hours of work they put in to help pay their outrageous college tuition. For me, this summer was highlighted by a trip to Indianapolis to visit some family and partake in the 48 Hour film fest. This is a complete change of pace for me here on CFDD. However, I felt the need to write about it because it was an experience like any other.

Being an Electronic Media and Broadcasting major, making film is a key part of the major. Going into college last year, this is where I was most worried. I’d never made a film before in my life, nor did I really want to know how to make film. I was more preoccupied with the broadcasting elements of the major (obviously.) However, during my very first semester of college, I took a class called Introduction to Media Aesthetics. This was my one class that semester that I was worried about (We’ve all had them, don’t deny it.) This class consisted of aspects on filmmaking. Different types of lighting, white balancing, different types of shots, aspect ratios were all some of the points that we covered. Although these may seem like things that would be extremely boring to talk about, I seemed to be extremely interested in all of those. As the semester went on, so did my appreciation for film. As my professor said, I can never look at a movie the same way again. I’m always looking for various aspects of that film and if it works well or if it doesn’t. It has ruined my friends’ ability to watch movies with me. It’s funny how perfectly okay I am with that. Film has now become a passion for me, something I thought would never happen to me.

Then came the opportunity to put together a film over this past summer. This is where I realized my knowledge of film still has a long time to develop. I have some family members who are well-versed in film and have a strong passion for making film. They asked me to help with a project for a competition called the “48 Hour Film Festival.” So at the beginning of August, I traveled to Indianapolis to take part in said festival. Whoa, what a weekend it was.

It started on Friday August 3rd in an old Tire Discounters store turned into a creative center. If you like people watching, this place did not disappoint. People with all sense of style packed into this small building waiting for their chance to pick the genre of film that would be the basis of their entire film. Somehow, I was the one who stuck out like a sore thumb with a pair ok khaki shorts and a t-shirt. As we heard everyone’s team name called up to pick their genre from a hat, the one thing that went through our team’s mind was, “Not silent film! Not silent film.” Silent film was the only one that we didn’t want to pick. Of course, as I went to pick our genre from the hat, I picked silent film. My first 48 film fest with this team and I didn’t give off a good first impression. Maybe I was going to be a source of bad luck this weekend. We decided to throw away that genre and go for a ‘wild card’ pick. We ended up with ‘buddy film.’ Okay, that’s something we can go off of.

So we were now on the clock! 48 hours to make a film. Brainstorming, scheduling shots and actor schedules all took place during the first night, undoubtedly our longest night. All of this to get ready for the next day of shooting aaaalllll day long. Although the hours were long, the time spent didn’t seem to be as long. We all were having such a great time filming that we lost track of time (in the good way.) The actors, camera people, grips, audio guys were all so talented in what they were doing that I ended up learning more from them than they did from me. Yeah, and they all are in high school too. Mind. Blown.

I’m not going to give you a play-by-play of all of the action of that weekend, because then it just gets monotonous and you will lose your interest fast, more than likely. But all I will say is that I had never experienced the full production process before that weekend. Learning from kids who are younger than me but a million times more talented than me was not the way I thought I would get acquainted with the filmmaking process, but I am perfectly okay with that. I took so much away from that weekend and enjoyed it so much that my love of filmmaking only grew stronger.

At the conclusion, we had our film all finished. “Love, Your Son” was the title of our ‘buddy film.’ You can watch it here:

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/47403926″>Love, Your Son</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user4682968″>james leagre</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

The award ceremony took place the following weekend. Although I was unable to attend, I knew what the ceremony consisted of. All of the films were played in front of an audience (42 films in all.) At the end, they would gives out some awards for certain categories. Our team didn’t worry about awards, all we wanted was a fun weekend making film and learning something during it. We didn’t worry about awards, also, because we were going against some very top notch production teams. Being the youngest group out of all of the teams, our chances were pretty slim. However, I receive an email a couple days later saying that our team won TWO awards. The awards were for Best Acting and Best Musical Score. This speaks volume to the type of talent that I was surrounded by. Like I said before: Mind.Blown.

I know that this is a lot different from posts that you are used to see here on CFDD. There’s more to my mind than politics and pessimism. This was an experience unlike any other. The kids were extremely hard working and very relatable. It’s funny how I started dwelling on my high school days during that weekend. Funny how those days seem so far lost but only ended about a year ago.

This post isn’t supposed to give off the vibe that I’m bragging about a project I was a part of and how we got some awards for it as well. My part was minute compared to others. I was extremely honored to be asked to be a part of the production process. I only wish I could possess some of the talent that these kids had. I can’t wait for next year where hopefully I can give back a little more.

 

Watch this video, my closing remarks on Let’s Talk with Frock will be concerning this video, which aired a couple days after my last broadcast. Can you guess what I’m going to talk about? I know, it’s not that hard

For a college kid, you can tell when summer is coming to an end when you have tuition payments due, professors are starting to email you, and the realization that classes are less than two weeks away. Yeah, it’s coming. So what I thought I would do now since I haven’t had a show since the beginning of May, is to wrap up the top five stories from summer 2012. Looking back on it, it has definitely been an eventful summer. I’m almost depressed that I couldn’t rant about all of it on my show. But don’t worry, I’ll make the time to rant about it in one way or another.

So here it is:Frock’s Five stories from the summer of 2012!

5. President Barack Obama’s “Evolved” Stance on Gay Marriage

To be honest, I went back and forth on deciding on whether or not this story is even worth putting on the list. I say this because it had absolutely no effect on anything whatsoever. What this was, essentially, was an absolute desperate plea to strum up some votes come November. With the way the Obama re-election campaign is going, you can tell that he is trying to stray away from the economy as much as he possibly can. He knows that his record with the economy is less than stellar (and that’s putting it lightly.) So what does he do? He says that his stance on gay marriage has “evolved.” With this, nobody can accuse Romney of flip-flopping because their main guy is now guilty of this as well. As for the effect, it hasn’t shown. I guess the average voter knows where the true issues are. The ones that support the President’s new stance probably don’t even register to vote. A baseless accusation, I know, but I say it with confidence.

4. Mitt Romney’s VP Choice

As the news broke today about Mitt Romney’s choice of Vice President, I found myself with a smile on my face. His decision to pick Paul Ryan from Wisconsin is reason to celebrate. As a Tea Party favorite and man who knows how to assemble a budget and strong conservative values. It is now apparent that Mitt Romney has settled with many people who were a little on edge with his moderate tendencies (me included.) Also one of the first things to come to my mind is the Vice Presidential debate to happen in October. If you want to see entertainment, watch Joe Biden try to keep up with Ryan. It will be a slaughter. I can’t wait! Now, the Obama camp is in full attack mode trying to discredit Ryan and more than likely stretching the truth, as they are known to do. Game on, Obama. Things are about to get interesting.

3. Penn State’s Deadly, Non-Death Penalty.

-A five year probation period

-Post season bowl ban for five years

-$60 Million dollar fine to be used to fund a foundation for victim of sex abuse crimes

-Football scholarships reduced from 25 to 15

-Wins vacated from 1998 to 2011

It may not be the death penalty, but it may, in fact, be worse. The scholarships prohibit a team from growing, a bowl ban will keep recruits away, and also the fact that many people will no longer want to be associated with the University. It will be a very long time (if any) before Penn State can move on from this scandal.

2. Chic-Fil-A’s “Crazy” stance on marriage

I’ve written about this before, check out the post. But what many people don’t understand is that there is a big group of people who believe in free speech (crazy right?) Also, why do people believe that a company believing in traditional marriage is worthy of all of this ridicule? However, if you saw the appreciation of Chic-Fil-A day as anything more than people supporting free speech, you are completely missing the point.

1. Midnight Shooting in Aurora, Colorado

Everyone has heard about this story. Tragic. But using it as a way to put in more strict gun control laws is absolutely arrogant. That’s all I’ll say.

More on these topics to be talked about tomorrow (Tuesday 8/21) on the Fall premiere of Let’s Talk with Frock from 4-6 PM ET on norsecoderadio.com. Join the discussion on Twitter @ryanfinfrock. It will be a fun discussion and I am extremely excited to be back behind the mic.