#pohs

"𝙸 𝚑𝚘𝚙𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞'𝚛𝚎 𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚙𝚢 𝚗𝚘𝚠 𝙸'𝚟𝚎 𝚛𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚊𝚕𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚝𝚛𝚞𝚝𝚑" - 𝚃𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚢 𝙷𝚊𝚕𝚕 • 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚆𝚑𝚘𝚕𝚎 𝚆𝚘𝚛𝚕𝚍 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚈𝚘𝚞

Project Object Head Society..?

:(

My eye is bleeding again. Going to a specialist tomorrow to try and get it stopped before it causes even more vision loss. At least, based on the tests, it seems like I caught it early this time. Looks like I am in for more eye-stabbing and fun dye testing. I hope she doesn't want to do surgery. Oh please no. :\

Why do I always get the weird shit happening to me? I don't get chicken pox, I get the Fifth Disease. I don't exhibit a boring allergy, I develop dermatographic urticaria. I don't get pinkeye or something similarly normal, I get weird fungal disease bullshit that can ruin your lungs and your eyes at the same time.

By Ian Williams and Matthew Watowich

Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938 and Memories of a Voyage: The Late Work of René Magritte are both intriguing art exhibits at the Menil Collection. These exhibits combined contain over 80 paintings by the surrealist artist. It features many of his famous paintings such as The Treachery of Images, The Healer, and The Human Condition, as well as some of his not as famous works such as ads or early sketches and paintings like The Menaced Assassin and Attempting the Impossible. The works in Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938 are beautifully arranged in chronological order and also thematically, with some sketches or pictures of him painting scattered throughout the exhibit. In Memories of a Voyage: The Late Work of René Magritte, there is one sculpture of a coffin that looks to be sitting on a therapist couch, however, I am slightly disappointed that they do not have the sculpture, The Healer, to go along with its painting. As strange as some may find them, Magritte's paintings have a philosophical and hidden beauty.

René Magritte's art challenges the mind with philosophical questions and past memories of his life by incorporating people and events that planted themselves in his mind. His art discusses the unusual in relation with every day life and the mixture of reality and imagination. In 1927, Magritte became a leading member of the Surrealist art movement shortly after he left Belgium to go to Paris. Following that, he moved to America to escape World War II. Here he met Dominique and John de Menil, two established art collectors. The de Menils became very interested in his artistic talents because they were huge fans of the Surrealist movement. They introduced Magritte to American culture by taking him to popular events such as the rodeo. They continued collecting his artwork and maintained a good friendship until Magritte passed away in 1967, leaving his creative and thought-provoking masterpieces behind for the world to forever enjoy.

Magritte with the de Menils at the rodeo.

A painting some may find a bit disturbing or odd, The Lovers, is an image of two people, one male and the other female, kissing, with a white layer of fabric shrouding their faces. The real truth behind the picture though, is dark, personal, and sort of upsetting. Magritte's mother drowned herself when he was only 14 years old.  When her body was found and taken from the water, the white and wet skirts of her dress were draped over her face. This memory of his deceased mother reveals itself through other works by him that include mysterious figures with white cloth draped across their faces.

  The Lovers

Clairvoyance is a painting that really stands out to me. It combines Magritte's graphic style of painting with some extremely detailed work. In this painting, there is a man who is looking at a bird egg and painting a flying bird. The easel that he is painting on is simple with just plain mahogany pieces of wood. However, the man's face is detailed with a great deal of shadows and highlights; his eyes even have reflections in them as if light is hitting them. However, the thing that really ties this painting together is its name. Clairvoyance refers to the ability of someone to be able to see into the future. The man in this painting is looking at an egg, but is also looking into the future and seeing the bird that it will become. I think that this concept is interesting, and he captures it so well.

  Clairvoyance

Like The Lovers, Black Magic has a familiar face in it as well. Not of Magritte's mother, but of his wife, who is easily recognizable in most of his paintings because of her burgundy hair pulled back into an elegantly braided bun behind her head. He paints her completely nude, with this odd sort of majesty in her poses, facial expressions, and overall beauty. In this piece, Black Magic, she is seen flamboyantly relaxed on a rock that appears to be out somewhere in the midst of a vast ocean. At the same time, she is in a room with caramel-colored, wooden walls. These two scenes are separated with what appears to be a rip out of the wall, like one would rip a piece of paper, with the beautiful, blue ocean on the left side of the canvas where she is seated so calmly and the wooden wall on the right. Her body has also been split into the two realms as well, the lower half of her body consists of the typical, peach flesh tones he illustrates her with in all of the other paintings, but, the upper half of her body camouflages into the blue ocean background as simplistically as a chameleon would to a green leaf. Though the bottom half of her body appears to be human, the upper half is like a statue. This isn’t because of shape of her shoulders or breasts, but her eyes. Upon closer inspection, I found that her pupils and irises are missing. They are the same shade of blue as the ocean sky. To complete the image, there is a white dove perching on her right shoulder. This painting reminds me of making a decision. You can make one unique decision that will draw attention, like the wooden side of the canvas, or you can be like everyone else and blend into the background, like the plain and steady statue she becomes that matches the ocean which may be beautiful, but, in all, is a plain, flat, and blue body of water that looks the same no matter how far you travel on it.

  Black Magic

The painting, Golconda, plays on Magritte's theme of replacing the ordinary with the unordinary. In this painting, he replaces normal raindrops with men is suits and bowler hats. I love this painting because it is very structured but then provides so much detail. All of the men in the painting are equally spaced apart and are in perfect rows. Rain obviously doesn't fall this way, but I assume he was playing with the mixture of reality and non-reality. He puts a lot of detail into this painting by making all of the men turned different ways. They are all upright, but some of them are turned with their backs towards us, while others are turned sideways and even facing forward. Even the men in the far background are turned different ways, which is surprising given the fact that they are so small. Also, each of the men's faces have different emotions. Some of them are smiling, while others are frowning or just serious. There are even some that are smirking or giving a guilty look.

  Golconda

By Shiraz Ghauri and Grace Langenkamp

Inversion Coffee Shop is located where the famous Inversion sculpture used to be, hence the name. It was a 2005 artwork by Dan Havel and Dean Ruck. The building was owned by the Art League of Houston and is located on the corner of Montrose and Willard Street. The exterior skins of the house were torn off and used to create a vortex that went through the house and had a small opening on the other side. Later the coffee shop was built with Art League classrooms in the back.

Screen of the Inversion sculpture outside the coffee house

The exterior of the building gives off an urban vibe and looks huge. There is a large screen picture of the Inversion sculpture on the outside by the door. The interior of the coffee shop has an industrial sort of look. The air-conditioning vents are fabricated with metal and run along the high ceiling. Huge windows fill with room with ample natural light. The art work on one of the walls stretches from the ground to the ceiling, which balances the neutral colored room. I would consider Inversion as a perfect place to study or read. The seats along the window are my favorite but it can be hard to score one. Even though it can get crowded, it doesn’t get loud, which allowed me to focus on my work. The environment is laid-back and chill with relaxing reggae music playing in the background. There is a wall where people can put up advertisements and leave business cards, and the art gallery in the back is free and features local artists.

The wall of art inside Inversion Coffee House

People can put up ads and business cards.

Compared to the other coffee shops that we have been to, the service was particularly impressive. They were really nice and didn’t dismiss us for being a large group of high school students. They answered questions pleasantly, even the ones that were answered on the menu board already. They did an amazing job helping us out with what we were looking for and explaining the menu. The order was big, but they were professional about it and brought it out pretty quick.

The Potato and Black Bean Pocket Pie was cold when we got it, but they had a microwave available for us to heat it up. The outside of it was a golden color and was soft. The whole thing was actually kind of spicy, which I wasn’t expecting, but it was also flavorful. The Couch Potato was a blend of salty and sweet, but it was made yesterday and was a little stale. I think that it would’ve been better if it had been fresh. The Chocolate Twist was like a donut. I was afraid it would be too sweet, but since the dough was not sweet, it complimented the chocolate icing on top well. The Homemade Oreo was a dark chocolate cookie with an Oreo filling. It was not as sweet as an Oreo cookie, and the cookie part was crunchy like the cookie crust of a cheesecake. The filling was creamy and not as grainy as an Oreo filling.

The Homemade Oreo and the Potato and Black Bean Pot Pie

The drinks were all Monty Python themed, which was funny. The Big Top had salted caramel and toddy concentrate, which is an 24-hour iced coffee brew. It was very sweet for the first sip but after a little while it started to be really bitter, so it wasn’t mixed well. The Caramelot was sweet without being overpowering. The caramel was apparent, it was creamy, and the coffee wasn’t bitter. It had vanilla, caramel, and salted caramel in it, but it didn’t taste like it had too much caramel. The Salted Caramel Mocha was sweet but not overpowering either. There was just the right amount of caramel. The Holy Hand Grenade had vanilla and crème de menthe in it. The espresso wasn’t very strong so we could taste the vanilla. There was also a nice minty aftertaste. The White Librarian had chocolate Milano with toddy. It was very creamy. At first, it tasted like a regular chocolate mocha, but the aftertaste was like a smooth, chilled glass of chocolate milk.

By Amber Meghani and Grace Langenkamp

God’s Not Dead is a film by former Pastor Harold Cronk about Josh Wheaton, a Christian college student who battles his philosophy teacher, Professor Radisson, about whether God is dead. Professor Radisson is atheist, and is portrayed as a bitter, Christian-hater, whose purpose is to prove religion wrong. Josh has to convince the class that God is not dead in order to pass the class.

 It is very obvious that the movie is targeted towards a Christian audience and that the makers if this movie are Christian. Although the overall story as a drama is touching, there are parts of the movie and certain characters who are portrayed so stereotypically it almost comes off as ignorance on the writers' part. I think it's obvious that in reality, the vast majority of atheists are not vicious Christian-haters. There is also a female Muslim character who had secretly been practicing Christianity, and once her religious father, who had also been forcing her to wear a headscarf, found out, he ended up physically abusing her. The character and her experience couldn't have been more stereotypical and ignorant. Basically throughout the entirety of the movie, everyone except for the Christians are pinned as the "bad guys." There is not a single Christian character who does any wrong, making it seem like it is Christians versus everyone else. The "happy ending" consists of all the "misled" people, aka atheists, Muslims, and Humanists, converting to Christianity. That alone shows how biased this movie is.

 There are definitely some flaws in Josh’s (Shane Harper) arguments as to why God is not dead. His first argument is that because you can’t prove God doesn’t exist means that he does. That argument is just childish. I can’t prove for certain that fairies don’t exist, but that doesn’t mean that they do. He also debates Stephen Hawking’s statement that the universe created itself because it needed to create itself by saying that a philosopher, Gavin Jensen, pointed out that Hawking uses circular logic to explain his theory. After googling Gavin Jensen, I discovered that he has a blog, Gavitron, where he says that writing about philosophy is his primary hobby. He doesn’t appear to be an authority in the philosophical community. Another argument that Josh has is about evolution. Darwin said that, “Nature does not jump.” Josh claims that the fact that life started contradicts Darwin’s rule. This claim doesn’t make much sense. Life had been evolving for about 3.6 billion years, and the universe began 13.8 billion years ago. 3.6 billion out of 13.8 billion is over 25%, which, instead of being comparable to 90 seconds in a 24-hour day as Josh said, is more like about 6 hours. The philosophy professor, Mr. Radisson (Kevin Sorbo), doesn’t point out any of these flaws. Instead he says, “Most atheists are Christians who simply took off their blinders.” This isn’t true and it’s irrelevant to what Josh had said.

Josh standing in front of the class explaining why God is not dead.

 Josh’s last argument made the most sense to me, however he still doesn’t use a lot of logic to explain anything. He argues against what he says is atheists’ strongest argument, which is if God exists, why is there evil? He says that God allows us to have free will so that we can choose God by ourselves. He also says that God decided what is morally right and what is wrong, and that without God, there wouldn’t be morals. This argument doesn’t say anything about what makes something morally right or wrong, it just says God decided it.

 The acting is amazing. All of the actors are convincing and power their characters with emotion and intensity, making them seem believable and vulnerable. Josh Wheaton, played by Shane Harper, has so much passion for standing up for what he believes in; it is extremely touching, and makes you root for him. Kevin Sorbo, who plays the atheist, Professor Raddison, is crazy believable. Villains are often unconvincing and come off as corny, but Sorbo seems so passionately against Christianity that it feels real and makes you instantly hate him. Throughout the movie, the hate only grows as he is verbally abusive to his girlfriend for being a Christian.

Overall, the movie is too biased towards Christians. They make the characters that aren’t Christians into walking stereotypes, which makes the movie even less believable. There are serious flaws in Josh’s arguments and despite Sorbo’s excellent acting, Radisson as a teacher and philosopher is completely unrealistic. I wouldn’t recommend this movie because of all of the bias and lack of logic.