The Vigilant Monkey

THE VIGILANT MONKEY

CALLING ALL WRITERS, ARTISTS, PHOTOGRAPHERS!!

We think outside the box. We ask the questions. We break the rules. We cross that line.

It's a crazy world, from the mundane to the monumental, from the small towns to the urban cities. Bombarded every day with news, images, stories, ideas, music, politics, noise, religion, love, violence, hate, peace, and war, our culture is caught up in a whirlwind of change. Every day more barriers, more red tape, more political correctness, more fear, and more silence make it harder for anyone to speak without being shouted down.

There is no standard, never a given. We've fallen off the spectrum. Left to our own devices, we are ever watchful of what goes on around us, realizing that everything is connected, everything is meaningful, and everything has room for improvement.

The Vigilant Monkey is a forum for people to voice their opinions and their stories, their thoughts and their discontent. We report on the strange, rant about the everyday, question what we see, talk about our passions and interests, and strive to make a positive change.

When everyone seems to be talking, we seek to speak, listen, and respond.

The Vigilant Monkey . . .

Watch closely. You might learn something.

So what are we looking for?

You!! We're looking for people interested in being part of a start-up online magazine with a lot of creativity and potential, but a lot of work ahead of us.

Nothing is set in stone, so now is the time to tell us, based on what you've read, where you see the magazine going, what content you'd like to see, and how you'd like to contribute.

Most of all, we want interaction!! We want people who come to the site to find out something new every time. We’d love to post local events, news, comments, suggestions, and ideas. The more focused we start out, the faster we can branch out.

Right now, we are especially interested in columnists, bloggers, contributing writers, photographers, and artists.

Some of the departments we are looking to cover are as follows:

- Entertainment (Film/Radio/TV/Theatre)
- Politics (National/International)
- Art
- Mind, Body, Soul
- Fashion
- Technology (Gadgets/Cars/Internet/Latest Inventions)
- Adventure (Travel, Extreme, Local)
- Health, Environment, Culture, Human Rights
- Absurd News Stories/Legislation/Celebrities/Etc.

And the list goes on . . .

Also, website development, graphic design, researching content, advertising, marketing and promotions, and photography. hehe - so really, we're interested in everyone.

While The Vigilant Monkey is still in the process of taking shape, our current goal is to have monthly features, blogs, columns, and an active ongoing message board.

More than anything, we want to be a place where the interesting, the informative, the funny, the absurd, the scary, the unbelievable, and the everyday converge.

Do you get paid?

As soon as we get paid, we'll pay you =P We love you all - which is why you are receiving this - but right now there is no monetary compensation. There is, however, the always important exposure and recognition. This is a great way to get clips and get your name out there. We will also feature contributor, columnist, and blogger bios.

Last, but not least. . . . get on our mailing list!! Reply to this posting to let us know that you have read it and thoroughly care to find out more. Please send all submissions, ideas, and queries to vigilantmonkeymag@gmail.com.

Looking forward to hearing from all of you!!

my partner in crime

He's cute, smart, funny, witty, and Greek. . . and now he even has his own blog, aptly titled, "Blog is a silly word."

Check out Alex's brand spankin' new blog -

http://alexanderkblog.blogspot.com

Read! Comment!

Enjoy =)

e-mails and my health

The act of writing is an act of optimism. You would not take the trouble to do it if you felt it didn't matter.
- Edward Albee

Contrary to what some people might think, I don’t write e-mails for my own enjoyment, I don’t write them because I am bored, and I most certainly do not write them because they make me feel better.

Rather, I write e-mails because there is something that I am trying to convey to another person, and in that respect, I expect to get e-mails in response.

Does it happen? Sometimes – but considering the simplicity of sending e-mails, that’s not often enough.

The worst is when you send someone an e-mail for work-related matters, for instance, and you don’t get a response. So maybe you’ll give it a few days, factor in that they’re probably busy with other pressing matters, but by the third day, you need to call to find out what happened.

Sure enough, not only did the person read the e-mail, but they also knew the answer to your question, answered it, and took the e-mail off their to-do list… only problem is they never told you!!

Or let’s see you e-mail a friend, and two – three weeks go by without a response. Maybe something happened, maybe they don’t want to talk, maybe your e-mail insulted their mother.

All these things go through your head, and then one day, you see them, and you mention The E-mail.

What does said person say? “Oh yeah, I read it… that’s sounds like a good idea.”

Oh my god!!

E-mails aren’t phone calls, people. I admit, my phone etiquette is not winning any awards, but I've never, ever enjoyed talking on the phone. When I was in middle school, I remember my best friend calling me one day after school "to talk" - a concept that baffled me considering I had seen him only a few hours earlier and would see him the next day. Unless friends were calling me with specific questions, plans, agendas, answers, I didn't see the point.

Many years later, I've learn to adapt somewhat socially, and now I can talk on the phone with relatively feigned ease. I've been known to return phone calls now and then. Imagine that.

Just about the only people I call back on a consistent basis are Alex, my sisters, and my parents.

Those also happen to be the same people that I don’t usually send pressing e-mails, too. So therefore, I have to speak with them on the phone. They're also the only people who would probably erupt in a panic if they didn't hear from me for more than a day. So necessity dictates, for everyone's well-being, that I have to call them back. Plus, I like them, so that helps.

Conclusion – if you don’t e-mail me back within an acceptable timeframe (one week is generous, but I’ll give you two weeks at most), you’re going on my list.

pirates of the caribbean – at world’s end. . . if only we could forget

* spoiler alert - kind of *

Of all the people that would have tried the hardest to really like Pirates III, I would have been top on the list.

When people tried to step on Pirates II, I stood up for it, explaining that much of what we didn’t get would be explained in Pirates III.

I, of all people, who scoff at critics and shun film-going pessimists, was fully expecting to have a ridiculously, inexplicably, undeniably good time at Pirates III.

That, my friends, even such a simple expectation, was a stretch.

Besides the fact that my allergies decided to wage full-scale war on my sinuses from the moment I sat down in the theater, I thought I would be okay. If my health had to suffer through a great movie, so be it – the pain would be worth it.

Or so I thought.

Thirty minutes into the movie, I was confused. One hour into the movie, I was bewildered. And when the only steady female in the movie was named a captain because of no logical reason whatsoever, I threw my hands up in desperation.

Not to mention that she was named captain by the pirate captain played by Chow Yun-Fat. You know, the guy on the movie poster. The newcomer. The added star power. Yeah – he didn’t even survive to see any major battles. His death scene wasn’t even memorable. In a movie where everybody escapes near-death moments about twenty times before getting even nicked, it was downright ridiculous.

So yeah, then there were the plot lines that everyone laughed at in Pirates II. Remember all those unexplained explanations and semi-completed trains-of-thought that we were so sure would be neatly wrapped up in Pirates III?

They kind of explained 1/3 of them, further complicated the rest of them, and added on about 50 more!! Just to prove to you how much of a letdown it was – remember the whole Davy Jones love affair that was hinted at with the voodoo jungle lady? That never, ever reached any sort of closure, except for the fact that now we know that the voodoo jungle lady – who, despite the fact that I couldn’t catch half of her lines, I thought was a nice touch – was actually the goddess Calypso. That’s it!!

Then there was Jack Sparrow. Captain Jack Sparrow. The man whose image I have immortalized on one wall of my room. The guy who reawakened the love for pirates that I had when I was a child and used to watch Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance over and over and over again. I used to listen to the soundtrack a lot, too. (Yes, I was a dork, but at least I was a dork well-versed in operettas.)

No doubt about it, Captain Jack Sparrow was in the movie. And so was Jack Sparrow. And Jack Sparrow. And Jack Sparrow again. And again.

At several points in the movie there were 15 Jack Sparrows onscreen at once. And when it first happened, I went along with it – but when Jack Sparrow popped out of Jack Sparrow’s dreadlocks, that’s when my amusement started to wane.

It was kind of like the following (quoting Alex): You just saw a really great boxing match. You go back for another one, promised that it will be just as great. What do you find? A boxing match – with more boxers, fighting with bigger boxing gloves.

It doesn’t work.

One also couldn’t help but notice that a lot of characters were a lot of things. If you were a British soldier in the first one, you were a soldier-turned-pirate now. If you were a pirate then, you could be one of the barnacle pirates from Davey Jones’ ship now. If you were a bad guy then, you were a good guy now. If you were a damsel in distress then, you were suddenly this amazingly skilled pirate warrior – with no real explanation as to how that happened.

Did I mention Keira Knightley was made a pirate captain?

The worst part about it all was that it could have been great. It could have been excellent. The opening scene, for example, was awesome. I’ll watch that again. There were many scenes that were just brilliant – everything we loved about the first film and then some. Exciting. Creepy. Funny. Dark. Strange. Visually stunning. Everything you look for in a good pirate movie.

The rest of the movie did not live up to the opening scene. It wasn’t, silly as it sounds, believable. Even if I didn’t understand it, they could have at least made me care about it. Were there funny scenes? Yes. Were some scenes very enjoyable? Yes. Did the special effects work? Yes. Will Jack Sparrow remain on my wall? Yes.

Regardless, you can’t build a movie on good scenes. It really felt like 25 writers wrote the movie, then threw all their scripts into a big, fat Hollywood, creativity-sucking blender, and out poured Pirates III.

Will I pretend that Pirates III was worth it? No.

So for that reason I am petitioning that we forget II and III ever happened. As far as I’m concerned, Captain Barbossa is dead, Elizabeth and Will Turner are off getting married and retaining all the respect I had for them as pirates-in-training, and Captain Jack is sailing off into movie history.

Remember when it was all so simple – the search for cursed gold, undead pirate crews, epic battle scenes, and one adventurous, entertaining, and memorable Jack Sparrow?

Yeah, I remember. . .

a writer's irony

Every writer I know has trouble writing.
- Joseph Heller (author of Catch-22)

In the past several months, I have done a lot of writing.

Articles, letters, research papers, press releases, e-mails (yes, when done well, those count), proposals, and so on - the list continues.

I work best when I have deadlines, pressure, and the assurance that when the assignment has been completed, it will have been worth the effort.

That book? That screenplay? I haven't seriously looked at either in a while, even though every, 100 ideas come to mind, and when possible, I'll jot them down on slips of paper, but nothing more.

Why is it that so often we find ourselves unable to find time to do what we would most like to be doing?

The hardest part of writing is getting to the moment when you can firmly decide to just sit down and write. Even then, there is no guarantee that you will be able to produce anything of value - each attempt has you starting from scratch.

If only I had been given some other passion, like a strong desire to calculate numbers at an accounting firm, or some other talent, like being a studious and diligent violinist. Then I could just do it, without question or hesitation, not a chance that people might have come to watch a great performance in vain.

I would at least have liked a profession that held the possibility of being celebrated and turned into a reality tv show, hehe, ala Project Runway, Top Chef, Top Design, and other such Bravo gems.

Top Writer.

Boringest show ever.

P.S. I just wrote this twice. Why? Well, because autosave purposefully chose not to save my work. To extend the metaphor - violinists don't have to worry about autosave. Their violins aren't going to just disappear.

Five Boro Bike Tour

Two years in a row and counting, I participated in the Five Boro Bike Tour this past Sunday, and I think we all came to the conclusion that 32,000 cyclists is about 10,000 cyclists too many.

hehe - crowded, you ask? Just a bit.

I am very happy to say that we all made it over the entire length of the Verrazano Bridge without any stops, collapses, or breakdowns. Not surprisingly, that was one place where you had ample room to bike without any other cyclists in the way. It was like some crazy somber march where everyone was just trudging along very quietly and very intently. Nothing says fun like biking 4,000+ miles over a suspension bridge to none other than Staten Island - I don't care what anyonr says =P

Intense physical events to come - scuba diving in the Keys, surfing at Robert Moses, and the Urbanathlon in the fall.

Spelunking, anyone?

Congratulations to Monica and Sal!!

So yes, it’s been some time since I last wrote, but with good reason.

I haven’t had a moment’s rest!!

Back in March, I attended my first graduate-level conference (“Humor & Laughter in Literature & Film” at SUNY Binghamton) and presented a paper on the comedy of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

The Spring ’07 issue of Elements also came out in March – still time to pick it up on newsstands =)

Then April came around, and that’s when things got crazy. Articles were coming out, birthdays were being celebrated left and right, end-of-the-season snowboarding was done (12” of unexpected snow on Stratton – awesome), dance recitals were scheduled (that is, my little sister’s recitals), SAT classes needed to be taught, and scuba diving classes started.

Oh yeah, and there was Monica and Sal’s wedding =) We celebrated, we ate, we danced, we laughed, we danced some more, we posed for pictures, and we kept on dancing until the wee hours of the morning.

Pictures to come shortly. . .

The point is, things have been busy, so it might take a little time, but I’m going to ease back into blogging on a more regular basis.

I know, you’ve missed me =P