The Assignment Notebook

The Assignment Notebook is a podcast where you follow along with the assignments that are due in a week! These usually are simple things like watch a movie or listen to a CD, or actual activities like go to a museum or write a story. Use this Tumblr...

[dueinaweek]

Give Pop A Chance

Pop music is a difficult topic to approach if you're a snob like I am. When I listen to a new pop album I have to convince myself that it's worth my time and it always feels like I’m betraying my taste in music. Taylor Swift broke down that wall faster than any pop star I've ever tried to listen to and I'm so happy that she did. 1989, her latest album, is a perfect pop in that it gets the form of Pop Album absolutely right on every level and also distances herself from her previous country persona while giving her fanbase what they want.

I like all the songs on this album but after talking to different people about 1989, a lot of people have asked me which songs are my favorite. I’m pretty sure that this is my order of favorite songs on the album. Of course, I’m sure this will change over time, but as of right now I think this is accurate.

1) Shake It Off 2) Blank Space 3) Out of the Woods 4) Clean 5) I Know Places 6) I Wish You Would 7) Style 8) Wildest Dreams 9) Bad Blood 10) All You Had To Do Was Stay 11) How You Get The Girl 12) This Love 13) Welcome to New York

Keep following along with The Assignment Notebook every week on iTunes and on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram! If you subscribe on iTunes, you’ll get every episode the second it’s up on the internet.

Next week on The Assignment Notebook, your assignment is to take a look at the night sky and find your favorite summer constellation! I’ll be looking for Pegasus, but choose your favorite and that is due in a week!

[dueinaweek]

Sketching: Give Up Trying To Be Good

I’m always astounded that, when I ask people to be on The Assignment Notebook for an assignment that somehow includes drawing, I usually hear “I can’t draw.” I’m astounded because learning how to draw is sort of the point of the assignment, which is why I was happy when Nils volunteered to be the guest on the episode. Anyone can see from our drawing that neither of us are incredible artists.

If you did the assignment this week, you probably noticed a couple of things. You probably got more comfortable holding a pen or pencil after each sketch, you learned that 3D lines are more difficult than you’d think to translate to 2D. and, due to your sketches being quick, you probably eliminated detail in order to draw the most important, structural elements of your subject. I wanted the assignment to be specifically “quick sketches” so that you’d learn those things quickly. When drawing quickly, you start to learn to boil the subject down to the parts that most capture its likeness. If you want to expand on the drawing later, adding more shading or detail, it’s easy to go back and make it more detailed.

I also noticed how important it was to maintain a subjects proportions, and also how difficult that actually was. Like I said in the episode, I took a long time with my french press drawing, which sort of broke the rules of the assignment, but the thing I spent the most time on was getting my drawing to have the same ration of lid to body as the real thing had. I think that if I had made the body any shorter or longer, the drawing wouldn’t read as “french press.”

Ultimately giving up on being “good at drawing” will help you to learn what you need to do to make your drawings capture the likeness of your subject. Quickly getting down on paper the basic form of your subject before moving on to another subject forces you to get comfortable with your lines and proportions one quick sketch at a time. If you had fun doing this weeks assignment, keep drawing! You’ll only get better the more you draw.

Post your drawings here, or tag us on instagram! @dueinaweek. Listen to the episode and subscribe at https://itun.es/i6LW3wV and don’t forget to leave a review!

[dueinaweek]

Make A Playlist -- The Assignment Notebooks first lost episode

This last friday brought The Assignment Notebook its first “Lost Episode,” when my computer stopped working shortly after I recorded this weeks episode. Our assignment, which Chicago band and former guest Unplugged and Reborn joined me for, was to create a playlist on Spotify for someone who isn’t necessarily your best friend. Both of us took a different approach to our playlists. Unplugged and Reborn, Andres and Tony, split their playlist in half. “The playlist that we made for [this week] focused on a specific theme: Music that influenced the creative process of our newest album, Midnight Drive,” Andres told me, when I was preparing this blog post, “Tony and I each chose six tracks. The first six were [mine]; they were songs that influenced the way I approached writing music for the album. The second half were songs that my drummer, Tony, believed influenced his drumming style or songs that made him the drummer he is today.”

Listen along at http://open.spotify.com/user/129770727/playlist/4jrsSDsIxq6xMc858mggXH

From Here To Eternity Giorgio Moroder Nightcall Kavinsky Street Hawk (feat. Jane Elizabeth) Futurecop! He’s The Greatest Dancer Sister Sledge Open Rhye Break of Dawn Breakbot Always blink-182 Two More Years Bloc Party Gecko (Overdrive) Oliver Heldens Song for No One Miike Snow Shooting Stars Bag Raiders Thin Line Between Love And Hate The Persuaders

My playlist was mostly just songs that were stuck in my head, but at the end I tacked on a few songs that I had just that morning decided that I wanted to recommend to Andres and Tony.

Listen along at http://open.spotify.com/user/12467748/playlist/6pCcpv7pski4uZ30PXHQYY

Genesis Grimes Helicopter Bloc Party Air War Crystal Castles Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) Journey Everything Nine Inch Nails All Day Kanye West Heel Turn 2 The Mountain Goats A-Punk Vampire Weekend Unpronounceable They Might Be Giants A Better Son/Daughter Rilo Kiley Subterranean Homesick Alien Radiohead Sing Like A Wire Sleigh Bells Covered In Chrome Violent Soho Demon Dance Surfer Blood

The back half of my playlist are less songs that I’ve been obsessed with lately and more songs that I wanted to recommend. Both A Better Son/Daughter and Covered in Chrome are on my playlist because they came up in my discussion with Andres for last weeks podcast, “The Album That Changed Your Life.” If I’m sharing a playlist, the subtext is usually “Have you heard this song? You need to hear this song.” Andres felt similarly, “We’re sharing something that caught our ear with someone else to potentially open them to a whole new world that they’ve never been a part of.” Historically, my playlists have been mostly been collections of songs that were stuck in my head for entire days at a time that I had to put together into one place, but making a playlist specifically for some else is a much different experience. “I’ve always found the idea of making a playlist or a mix CD for someone else to be such an intimate act…Sometimes without knowing it we also put a big personal touch on it.”

Ultimately the playlist says to your friends “I trust you with my personality.” Your playlists will sound to you like the rest of your library, things you are quite familiar with. But to someone else, your playlist will be a bridge to fill in the parts of your personality that they don’t know about you yet, without you having to say a word. Even if your playlist is like mine, songs that were stuck in your head at a certain time, that playlist will show your friend a snapshot of who you are at a specific time. Use a playlist as a powerful friendship tool!

Hopefully The Assignment Notebook will be back in action in no time but while I’m working on my computer issues, keep following the show at facebook.com/dueinaweek, on Twitter @dueinaweek and subscribe on iTunes at https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/assignment-notebook-assignment/id934945376?mt=2, and if you liked Unplugged and Reborn’s playlist, support these great guys! Their new album Midnight Drive is available now at http://www.cdbaby.com/m/cd/unpluggedandreborn2 and you can follow them on Twitter, @weareUAR.

In our little downtime, though, we can keep having assignments! Every monday, my blog Assignment Notebook: Synthesis will have a new episode. Next week, your assignment is to watch John Wick, the 2014 Keanu Reeves action thriller. You can stream it on HBO GO or purchase it on iTunes. Watch John Wick, and that is due in a week!

[dueinaweek]

Rapping...Quite Impressive

The list of requirements to be a good rapper is a lot denser than you'd think. Beyond the obvious requirements like sticking to a beat, a rapper has to have an incredible vocabulary, an encyclopedic memory of cultural references that they can refer to, make effective use of the handful of syllables they have per verse, and be able to match puns with rhymes in a way that makes sense, among other things including insane musical knowledge. All of that goes double for rappers who regularly freestyle. For freestyle rappers, they have to be good at the entire list above, but also be able to do that concurrently without any editing.

Rap has a lot to do with punchlines, jokes, and puns, all to a beat. I have a lot of respect for people who construct effective jokes by itself, but rappers have to be comedians whose jokes are effective using specific timing and beat structure. After this weeks episode, I have even more respect for rappers than I ever have. I didn't know where to start writing my rap and once it was done, I still wasn't happy with what I got. If you listen to this weeks episode, too, you can tell that I am utterly ineffective at sticking to a beat. None of my assignments I’ve done so far have had me freeze up as much as rap did, and I think it’s because I assumed it would be easier since rappers that you hear are so effective at their craft. Little did I know that a few hours after choosing this topic I’d be staring at a blank page without a clue where to start.

[dueinaweek]

Why Running is my Favorite Activity.

I've heard that humans are as built for distance running as dolphins are built for swimming. Apparently there is a good amount of proof that running is a big part of human's evolutionary strategy. Given this, it's surprising to hear most people around me complaining about how bad running feels. It also surprises me, since running makes me feel incredible.

I started running for vain reasons. In college I wanted visible abdominal muscles and I remember one of my dorm-mates telling me that cardio would help them show up, since "you can do all the crunches you want, but if you don't do workouts that burn fat, your abs will never be visible." I couldn't run much more than a mile when I started, but the more I ran, the farther I went; I've gotten up to 10 miles recently.

A 10 mile run was unthinkable just one month ago, but I built up to it slowly and it feels like a major accomplishment. Looking at a map, I know how long a train trip would take to go the same distance that I achieved using my own two feet. I can see a half marathon in my future, and I can't wait for that day.

In January, I discovered on The Assignment Notebook that the mental state I achieve during running is similar to the goal in zen meditation. Since then, I've actively sought a meditative mental state during my runs. My recent runs have been in pursuit of a healthy mental state.

Of course, running makes me a healthier person, but in the process I accomplish unbelievable physical feats and a more stable mental state. Running feels good! The first few days are sometimes tough to get through, but with only a little bit of practice, you’ll feel like a better human being in no time.

[dueinaweek]

Guest Blog

Anyone can podcast. With the success of shows like Serial and Comedy Bang Bang, podcasting is as big as it’s ever been. Podcasts are a form of entertainment that, on one hand, harken back to old timey radio reporting, but on the other hand, have a strong foothold in the future. I was once told by one of my guests that podcasts are a hard sell, since it’s hard to even get people to click on articles, and in a way he’s right. It’s hard to imagine that anyone would gravitate towards an audio only medium that can be upwards of 3+ hours per episode. For me, my love of podcasts stems from NPR shows like This American Life. My dad would listen to NPR in the car to and from school every day, so the sound of Ira Glass and friends voices telling stories always left me fascinated. The intimacy involved with listening to just a voice and letting your imagination paint the picture is simply stunning. When I discovered, in college, that I could keep up with This American Life every week, for free, without having a car, I jumped on the opportunity. Every sunday I would have a brand new hour of stories to listen to on my way to and from class. This American Life lead me to Radiolab, Radiolab lead me towards friends who were into podcasts, and those friends recommended a world of new radio shows to listen to. My own podcast library has 24 weekly podcasts that I’m subscribed to, and every week I have at least 24 hours of audio entertainment to keep me busy.

Anyone can podcast in 2015. Every computer has a microphone built in, and every cell phone allows you to record audio notes. Professional equipment is cheap; you can get everything you need to have a high quality audio recording for around $50-$250. The editing software that I use, Audacity, is free and very easy to use. Web hosting can cost less than $10 a month. The most difficult step in getting your podcast up and running is writing the RSS feed that iTunes references in order to send your listeners your fresh podcast every week, but there are plugins for Wordpress or sections on SquareSpace to do that for you automatically. I also know podcasters who don’t even bother with iTunes and post their podcasts on SoundCloud. Technically, podcasts are simple to produce

The hard part with producing a podcast is the format. I’ve never liked podcasts that are just friends having an unstructured conversation about what’s going on in their lives or what things they’re into that week. I’ve always thought that makes for uninteresting radio and can only possibly be interesting if the listener has some sort of emotional attachment to the host. You and your friends are probably funny people and probably have some incredible conversations, but it will almost always stems from some sort of inside joke which will alienate your listeners. My recommendation: Find ONE thing that you and/or your co hosts love and find a new way to discuss it.

The Assignment Notebook is a product of my huge number of interests, and the format is borrowed directly from other podcasts I’ve listened to. Kumail Nanjiani’s X Files Files is a weekly podcast where the listener is expected to have watched the episode of the X Files that Kumail and his guest have watched. The format of the show is a discussion of that episode; sort of like a book club but for episodes of The X Files. On The Assignment Notebook, we have an easily accomplished assignment every week; something like watching a movie, writing an essay, or, to promote this weeks episode, to participate in a board game night (Due Friday April 24th!) This Friday’s episode is a departure in format, but essentially my show is like a book club for life experiences. The structure lets me talk about things I’m curious about, while keeping the attention of the listener.

If you’re thinking about starting a podcast, it’s the right time to do so. The barrier for entry is very low and the opportunity to have intimate conversations about your interests can’t have a value put on it. If you listen to podcasts, you already know how intense of a personal connection you can get with someone you don’t know, but who shares your interests. What are you waiting for? Interview someone on your iPhone --- You might enjoy it!

-Zach Weiss

facebook.com/dueinaweek | twitter.com/dueinaweek | instagram.com/dueinaweek | https://itun.es/i6LY2RD

[dueinaweek]

Week 22: “What Is Your Racial and Ethnic Identity?” Essay Rough Draft

I'm going to start out by stating the obvious. I'm a white guy. My parents are white and so are both my pairs of grandparents and presumably a long line of parents and grandparents going back for a long time. Ethnically, though, I have a little more trouble identifying with anything. As far as I can tell I'm some sort of mix of a lot of Western European ethnicities. As someone with the last name "Weiss," I've always assumed that I come from completely German heritage, but I don't know German and never heard many stories or information about many people beyond some of my great grandparents. I also more recently found out that my family somehow has ties to the mayflower and some of the founding fathers, so I must have some sort of English lineage, but I think my mom once mentioned that my grandmas side of the family is French.

I remember two things about going to school in a primarily white school, and I can't remember which one was the thing I thought more often. I remember being jealous of kids who strongly identified with racial and ethnic backgrounds, but also being confused as to why it was so important. I thought, "maybe I'm just still a kid; maybe it's a thing that grown ups care about and I'll care about later." That never happened to me though. In college, I had a roommate who strongly identified with his Irish background. We flew an Irish flag on our porch and drank Jameson and every time he made  a big deal about his heritage, I pretended to have the same level of pride in my german heritage. It always seemed meaningless at some level to me. From  what I could tell, we were all just people, and I thought that people should just focus on being people. I really appreciate that my school spent a good amount of time making sure that we understood that racism was bad and that slavery and the early Americans treatment of the native Americans was bad, but I don't think that they did much in the way of explaining that racism was still a huge issue or explaining white privilege. "Manifest destiny," when I learned about it, was more of "oh that makes sense" and less "that's inherently racist."

I never bragged about my ethnic background and I never have given it much of a thought. The thing that bugged me the most growing up was when kids would call me "Zach white" once they found out that Weiss means white in german, or that they'd call me Zach rice because rice rhymes with Weiss (and because rice is white). I think that kids calling me "Zach attack" bugged me even more. I came to realize in college though, how much my Western European background, while not a thing I closely identified with, was still a big part of who I was and why I was where I was. Mostly through listening to podcasts, reading essays, and definitely through my women's studies class in college, I realized that privilege is invisible and that the feeling of normalcy and thinking that people should just focus on being people had a lot to do with the fact that I have never had to confront or defend my racial or ethnic identity. I've always live in middle class neighborhoods in the suburbs where violence was low to non existent and where I had access to high quality education. I was able to go to college because of my parents and grandparents having access to high quality education and good jobs. Watching tv as a white male is easy because most characters on tv are white males. The biggest difference between my family and any family on tv was that I only have one brother I instead of a sister and a baby sibling. How I think about the effect my racial and ethnic background says a lot about the reality of how it affected me.

While my ethnicity never stuck out to me in my brain, it’s impossible to talk about my racial and ethnic background without talking about holidays. My family went to an Episcopalian church growing up, so it always struck me as absolutely normal that we celebrated Christmas, Easter, and all the other major Christian holidays. As I mentioned in the last paragraph, however, I now realize that speaks a lot to the idea that I represent a majority in America, so the reason that my holiday and religious traditions struck me as very normal has a lot to do with the reinforcement that movies and TV provide. Every group of friends on TV have Christmas together, and if they don’t celebrate Christmas it’s treated as a plot point. It’s also reinforced in school and work. I had to do a google search to find out if Jewish people get Rosh Hashana off of school or work and found a lot of articles about how it was a deeply troubling decision that Jewish people had to make, whether or not to go into work on Rosh Hashana. School breaks in school  were always built around the Christian calendar, also. I found another article from Sun-Sentinal.com by Larry Barszewski about how excited Jewish students were that Hannukah coincided with the Christmas break in 1997, and that Jewish students can expect Christmas and Hannukah to line up “about once every seven years,” when I always knew that I’d be off of school on Christmas so that my family could travel to see family. I gladly participated in traditions like opening presents from underneath a Christmas tree and searching for Easter eggs on Easter morning. These are definitely traditions that speak to my racial and ethnic heritage, but when sitting down to write a paper about my heritage, they’re some of the last things that I thought about.

Ultimately, I logically know my racial and ethnic background. In my everyday life I don't notice a lot of it because of built in cultural defaults. "Whiteness," in a large part, seems to be a lack of culture. Even people who have a strong identity with specific countries of origin that still fall under the banner of "white" will tend to have a similarly cultures experience.

[wavemotiondan-blog]

The tree was squat, its gnarled branches spreading out into a kind of canopy, low-slung and burdened with clusters of hard, black berries. On the west side of the sierra it would hardly have seemed like a shrub, he thought. In this landscape it was the only relief, a bump against the sea of...

[dueinaweek]

Flash Fiction "Driving North" by Zach Weiss

"This wind," he said to no one. It was just after dark and he knew he still had a long ways to go. He was barely moving, pushing into the wind and the snow. There were taller, dark, and more ominous peaks than North Mountain but everyone knew which one was the most dangerous. He gnawed nervously on his beard, thinking about that common knowledge for the hundredth time. He was one of the few people in town who was crazy enough to ride his bike to the summit of North Mountain during a blizzard.

This wasn't his first trip up north mountain, though. Every night since early August he'd scale the summit for exercise. Tonight, he knew the risks; he'd listened to the weather before he had left, so he was as well prepared as he could be. He had on his windproof rain jacket, windproof snowpants, underarmor under both, his balaclava, earmuffs, helmet, scarf, two pairs of gloves, hand warmers in both, and hand warmers stuffed into his hiking socks underneath his bike clips. He knew that he would need power bars and Gatorade too, which he had plenty of. For as well off as he was, the wind was destroying his confidence.

He knew he couldn't be moving faster than one or two miles per hour. The slope and wind made sure of that. He wasn’t used to it being this windy and this cold, but even in the height of summer this was a tough climb. He certainly wasn’t used to the snowflakes stabbing his eyeballs.

Yet for as brutal as it was he knew that he had a self imposed mission to take care of. He didn’t have much of a choice whether or not he got to the summit. It wouldn’t count as a complete day if he didn’t make it to the top and back down again. He couldn’t back down, he couldn’t give up, and he definitely couldn’t go home until he touched the summit.

There was another set of tire tracks in front of him. From what he could tell, they belonged to a mountain bike, probably a little smaller than his own road bike. The tracks gave him something to chase through this whiteout. He thought about how his counterpart was probably a bit more prepared than him; this guy had a mountain bike, something with a little bit more tread than he had. He had to assume that they had all the same warm clothes as him, at least, and imagined that this mountain biker probably would have ski goggles. He laughed a little, suddenly more than a little jealous of those ski goggles. “I’ll pick some up in the morning,” he said out loud, laughing a little as he did, keeping his head down and pushing with his tired legs.

There wasn’t much else to focus on besides the cold and the wind and his phantom companion’s tracks. His headlight attached to his handlebars helped him see directly in front of him but the light was so bright that it was illuminating the snowflakes ahead of him. He had never seen snowflakes so white before. It was stunning how white they were when blasted with bright light. There were trees all around him that he knew were there but couldn’t see, and he couldn’t see the stars due to the cloud cover. His house and his town were both far behind him.

When the tracks in front of him disappeared, he almost didn’t notice it. They just disappeared and it registered to his brain as some nameless thing. It took him a while to connect the sense of panic he was feeling with the disappearance of his companion. He grabbed his breaks and tried not to fall off his bike as his front tire took him wherever it wanted to take him. He suddenly noticed once he was stopped that he was sweating even more than in the summer. His legs were more tired than usual, but his rescue mission made him way more focused.

Facing downhill this time, he began to search for the spot on the road where the tracks stopped. He didn’t have to do as much work now since the wind was behind him and the grade of the mountain pulled him forward. This time, stopping would be the challenge. There was too much snow on the ground to simply slam on his breaks without falling.

The tracks reappeared about a hundred feet down the mountain and they lead directly into the forest. He threw his weight to one side and pulled his rear break in order to fall in a way that he could control. He slid another 30 or 40 feet before he stopped moving. He pulled his bike up off the ground and walked it to the side of the road. He removed the headlight but flipped his bike upside down and pointed the tail light towards the road, towards traffic coming down from the peak.He figured someone was likelier to be leaving the mountain than driving to the summit.

The tree cover blocked a lot of the snow coming down, so the headlight was able to shine farther than when he was riding into the snow. The tracks finally lead him to a the wreck of a mountain bike, crashed and inoperable, next to a tree. The footprints and red snow next to the bike showed that the biker was injured.

The mountain bikers footsteps headed back towards the road, generally, but didn't follow the tire tracks. The bike itself didn't have any lights on it and without lights it would have been nearly impossible to find the road. He guessed that with the injury and the dark, it was just luck that the mountain biker picked the right direction.

The footprints and dripping blood wiggled through the snow in a pattern that demonstrated the injury as clearly as the crashed bike had. He followed the trail, not sure what he hoped to find. He still had all his supplies with him, but no first aid kit. If he found his crashed companion, there wasn't a lot that he could do to help.

At least the biker was moving. If he was moving, he was alive, and the farther the tracks went, the greater the chance was that he had gotten to the road. He thought about how jealous he was of the imaginary ski goggles and felt a twinge of realization that the imaginary goggles probably weren't even real.

The road began to come back into view and with it the heavy snow. He turned off his headlight so he wasn't blinded by the snowflakes and looked around. It was absolutely silent and dark, the only sound he could hear was the wind. Despite his situation, for a second, he got the feeling he always did in the winter, one of calm and solitude. He always loved winter, regardless of how miserable he would tell people he was when he told them the story of tonight.

His thoughts returned to the mountain biker and followed the footprints along the road for a few feet. He barely saw his own bike in the distance. The mountain biker obviously saw his bicycle too; the footprints walked their way to the blinking red light. He ran when he realized that the mountain biker was likely looking for rescue at his upside down road bike. With effort he got to his bike in a minute only to find that the blood drops stopped at his bike, and a different pair of footprints lead back towards the road.

His curiosity brought him to the side of the road, where the fresh white snow was cut through by a pair of thick treaded truck tires. What direction they headed wasn’t clear but in the time that he was searching for his mountain biker friend, someone had rescued him from his own road bike beacon. He never saw the mountain bikers face, but his tail light had likely saved his life. Relieved, he flipped his bike back onto its wheels, took a sip of his now ice cold Gatorade and pointed his way towards the summit of the mountain. This rescue mission was just a break; he still had his own journey to accomplish.