I haven't written here in a while because I, Blair W. Martin, have been busy. During the twelve weeks that I've been away I have traveled for a journalism conference, started my first job, fallen out of friendship with somebody that I once held dear, started running again, consumed ice cream on a nightly basis, lost a loved one, and experienced a million of memorable moments in between. I've always had a complex relationship with the summertime simply because the season lacks the buzziness that excites me during the other nine months of the year. Summer is slow, shimmery, deliberate. It's pacing gives people time to really sit with themselves and I think that I've always felt a bit warily about that. Time to sit means time to think and time to think means time to worry---and I have a history of always taking advantage of that time. In the past, summer has always gone a similar way: I'd get let out of school, excited about all of the time that lay ahead of me, o...
Marc Webb’s 500 days of summer starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel was incredibly popular when it was released in 2009. One of the most memorable scenes from the film happens at the end when protagonist Tom goes to a party at his ex’s apartment with hopes that his expectations will finally align with his reality. Audiences watched with intrigue and later on horror as the two scenes on the screen that represent what Tom thinks is going to happen and what actually does diverge further and further away from each other. As the two scenes unfold themselves to the thunderous tone of a Regina Spektor Song, it becomes increasingly obvious that Tom can imagine and expect this alternate reality with as much clarity as he wants to, but will still be forced to live in the real one where he doesn’t have the charm, doesn’t have the job, and doesn’t have the girl at the of the day. This scene garnered acclaim from audiences and critics alike because it portrayed a universal exper...