Campus Transformation Plan

I was pleasantly surprised last week when the concerns for Cerritos's Master Plan were addressed by Roger Ernest, English instructor.

I'm not sure what the Campus Transformation Committee feels about Ernest's plan, but I like it better than its plan.

The current Master Plan is good but needs some work done on it.

Ernest put the tennis courts back.

That was the main concern I had. The school has plenty of parking and the tennis team shouldn't suffer for more parking.

The Burnight Theatre is moved to the corner of campus. I don't think it's a big deal that the Burnight Center is being moved to the back of campus.

At first, I thought the Hill being moved to Falcon Square would've been a great idea.

That was before I talked to Holly Bogdanovich, director of Student Activities.

Where Ernest put the Hill, it's too close to the Student Center.

If someone wanted to put on an event at the Hill and someone else wanted to put on an event on the Student Center stage, it couldn't happen.

The noise would conflict with each other.

It's good that ideas are being thrown around for the Hill. It shouldn't interfere with other events though.

MySpace revisited

Faculty Senate Liaison James Lee said at the Senate meeting yesterday that the Faculty Senate discussed a block on MySpace in the computer labs.

I thought this was a great idea. The signs obviously aren't enough to keep people from browsing the Internet when other students need to do their work.

However, I went into the computer lab today and saw a few people on MySpace.

I bumped into Lee at the food court and asked him about it. He said that was just what he heard and didn't confirm whether it's true or not.

One senator at the meeting mentioned a Web site that can override a block onto another site.

It's possible that these students I saw did this. I'm not sure.

However, if the block isn't there, there needs to be one.

Though there are school-related MySpace pages such as Talon Marks, other clubs and an ASCC one (coming soon?), these are not the pages students are going to.

Students are looking at their friends' pictures while other students are waiting for open computers to write their term papers on.

A block on MySpace would be important, as well as YouTube and Facebook while the Faculty Senate is at it.

Concrete Underground

Today at 11 a.m., Concrete Underground featured an experimental band, Cosa Nostra, and hip hop artist, Young Blaze.

I enjoyed the whole concert, even Young Blaze. I am not a rap or hip hop fan, as anyone who knows me knows.

What I thought was cool about Cosa Nostra is that since the drummer wasn't able to make it to the concert, the band wrote all new music the night before and experimented with a couple different key things to make up for the lack of percussions.

What I thought sounded particularly good was how one guitarist was patting on his guitar. It let out a really good sound.

It was also the first time the band used vocals. It was just the prolonged "Yeah" the entire time, but it works with some music.

Also, this story gave me the opportunity to play around with audio editing a little. Due to an appointment (and one story turning into three this week), I couldn't do enough with it.

I hope it gets done though. A lot of page design is coming up for me, so I can't spend too much more time on the audio.

JACC Conference

The conference was fun as always.

While I was waiting to go into the critical review writing lab, I was talking to some people from San Francisco City College about what kind of things it runs on its Arts page.

One person said he writes short comic book reviews.

I had been thinking about that idea for a while now.

My two main concerns for that were:
- Do many students care? Let's face it, the comic book crowd isn't what it used to be.
- Will they be of sufficient length? A comic book is maybe about 300 words. How long can the review be?

I think it might be something interesting to experiment with.

I checked out San Francisco's online site now, TheGuardsman.com, and it sometimes runs one section that has two to three-paragraph reviews.

In other news, TalonMarks.com won general excellence and the "Heroes" ad won second place. I'm proud of that.

I'm happy for Werner Gomez, former staff member, for winning first place in the on-the-spot sports photo contest.

As for myself, I didn't win anything in the on-the-spot competitions.

However, for mail-ins, I got some good feedback.

For my "Hollywood Revisited" review, it said that I needed a little more description of what the event is.

I remember when I was writing it, I was trying to not give too much "plot" in it. I guess I went overboard there.

And my page design for the floats on Oct. 31, 2007 issue, which I was very proud of, needed a clearer explanation of what the numbers mean on the photos. Good advice.

I hope next semester I'll win something. I'm not in this to win anything, but I'd like to next time.

Harland Williams

Source: The Channel Guide

The morning before we left for the JACC conference, Editor-in-Chief Scott Watkins told me to check out TalonMarks.com.

Apparently, Harland Williams himself posted a comment thanking me for my "Bachelor Party 2" review.

If this was a real comment, that is really cool. It might be true.

He was on Love Line on KROQ before the movie came out. He might be checking out promotions in the SoCal area.

So I ask, what if it's just a joke somebody's playing on me or on the Talon Marks?

If that's the case, it's not a funny joke.

In any case, it's cool if it's true.

Harland Williams is an extremely funny and underrated actor and it's an honor for me to get that comment.

JACC coming up, advertisement being made, Arts page

There's a spring concert coming up this week but I cannot attend due to the JACC conference this weekend.

I'm excited about it. I always have fun at those and I feel like I learn a lot.

We at the Talon Marks have been working on an ad to submit to JACC but it's up in the air on whether or not it'll get done.

I want to compete in a lot of competitions this semester. I'm crossing my fingers that I might get at least honorable mention in one of them.

If not, it's no big deal. I always learn something from them.

In other news, I keep getting flack about the Arts page this week.

I have reasons for setting it up like I did though. I needed photos for the piano story and I didn't have them.

I wasn't going to make the main package be a movie review though, even though it had the biggest picture on the page.

I also think it's funny how we have the big movie review running and after it is my "Bachelor Party 2" review, which I wouldn't have reviewed if I didn't get the press copy of it.