Mathew Shepard Rough Draft

Jason Fishel

Ms. Menough

SLCC

November 17, 2014

Matthew Shepard Rough Draft

The Laramie Project by Moisés Kaufman is a book about the events that led up to Matthew Shepard’s murder committed by Aaron McKinney and the after effects of the murder. This book takes a bias saying that the murder was a hate crime; Aaron killed Matt because Matt was gay. The media has attempted to find answers to why Matt was killed, but there is such wide spread of theories surrounding this topic at hand that it’s difficult to find the absolute truth.  Matthew Shepard's past is not certain; was his death caused by hate, meth, Aaron McKinney’s insecurities or a combination of them all? There is a lot of evidence we need to consider within The Laramie Project by Moisés Kaufman, ABC News 20/20 Report, and The Book of Matt and in life there is usually more that one reason for something like murder, so it has to be a mixture of them all.

One theory of why Matt was killed was because Aaron was involved with meth. It is believed that Matt was beat to death by Aaron because he owed Aaron money for meth and or wanted to rob Matt so that he could have money for meth. “Aaron beat up someone else over drugs before beating Matt to death” (ABC News 20/20 Report). This could mean that Aaron was involved in a drug ring, maybe he was just a meth addict, or maybe it’s both. It’s believed that during the time that Matt was tied up and beat to death by Aaron McKinney, Aaron was in a meth-induced rage.  “Yes, I knew that Aaron didn’t kill him because he was gay, he killed him because he wanted money for meth and he was probably going through withdrawal” (ABC News 20/20 Report).

But then again the bias from 20/20 is that the murder had nothing to do with Matt being gay, because it’s believed that Aaron is bisexual. 20/20 sat down with people that knew Aaron well. They knew him so well that one of the men they interviewed admitted to having a three way with Aaron, and a woman admitted to Aaron asking her to have a three way with him and another man. “Yes, I most definitely believe that Aaron was bisexual” ABC News 20/20 Report. This could mean that Aaron McKinney was insecure about his sexuality and decided to take it out on someone who he may have saw himself in.

            Many sources turn to Matt being killed because he was gay, that not just the bias in the book The Laramie Project but it’s also the bias in the HBO film adaptation of the book and The Book of Matt. 

            Larger societal influences and human complexities played a role in the search of why Matthew Shepard was killed. For example, there is no saying that the people who were interviewed about Matthew’s death and the event that led up to it were telling the truth. For all one knows, the whole book The Laramie Project by Moisés Kaufman could be completely mythologized. It’s ok that Moisés Kaufman kept out some of the evidence of why Matt was killed and kept a bias in the book. This brought attention to the issues that people who are gay go through on a daily basis, a constant fear of hate because of people like Aaron. Kaufman may have made Matthew into a myth that really publicized this issue, but the story is still misleading for someone looking for the whole story. If someone came from a cultural background involving Christianity read The Laramie Project by Moisés Kaufman, it may be easy for them to accept that Matt was killed because he was gay because a part of a some Christian culture is that being gay is a sin. I think that Matt’s murder was out of hate, but I also believe that there was more than just hate that caused Aaron to kill him.

Matthew Shepard

Watching Willi's Presentation... (told from the third person)

Several blogs are presented in Senior Literature and Composition. Jason watches as a child wraps up their presentation. Willi is next up to present and he looks a little nervous. He stares at his notes extensively as he mouths each enticing line to himself. Willi goes up to present. As he stands up all of his nerves and fears seem to wash away. He walks to the front of the room with a swagger in his step. He seems like he is ready. There's no doubt in Jason's mind that he won't nail this presentation.


                                     Willi starts his presentation and states that his presentation is based on a book titled Jay-Z American Gangster Decoded.  He explains how Jay-Z grew up in a small apartment complex in a tough side of his neighborhood. After Willi shows a video where Jay-Z explains that rap is poetry and lets you express your emotion through it. Once the video finishes Willi moves to the next slide where he tells the audience the depths of the relationship between Jay-Z and Biggie Smalls. Jason learned from Will's presentation that Jay-Z and Biggie Smalls were competitors in the rap industry. Overall Willi's presentation went smoothly and Jason hoped he got a good grade on his presentation. Several other people presented that day and everyone did a great job, but Willi's presentation held Jason's attention above the rest.              
                                                                                 

Presentations and Presenting

This week in Senior Literature and Composition we had to have a presentation about our memoirs ready to present. It was the second day of presenting. Two other people have presented and there is about 15 minutes of class left. This leaves just enough time for Ms. Menough to call on one more person. She does. "EEhhEhehEh" said "the deer in headlights" aka the scared child she called on. "Are you not ready?" said "the Audi r10 coming strait for the deer" aka Ms. Menough "Naww sorry." said the scared child She subtracts a couple points and picks on another child. I think to myself "oh please don't be me." She picks on another child that agrees to present, and as their preparing their powerpoint they decide they aren't ready to present as well. This is where I started to get anxious, I thought to myself "what are the odds she picks me next, slim to none right?" Wrong. "Uhhhhmm Jason" Ms. Menough announces "Alriiiiight" I announce with subtle distaste I go up and present and it goes pretty well. I feel I nailed all of the key points I wanted to. I wound up to get a high A as a grade and was happy.

Throughout the course of the week we saw several powerpoints presented. One of my favorite powerpoints had to be the one done on the book Fab Five. What makes this book so astounding is that you learn that there will never be a team like this again because of how much they impacted the game. Another Thing I found amusing about the Fab Five was that they were the first basketball team to use Hip-Hop music during their games. It was also interesting to find out that what ruined them as a team was what ruins most bands and teams that become popular, of course I'm talking about money. I hope to read this book in the near future because it sounds like quite a wonderful read.

The War Essay

In the movie "The War" a war veteran named Stephen is suffering because he can't obtain a job dude to his post traumatic stress causing him to spend time in a mental institution. He wants to prevent all violence, in and around his life because all violence has done for Stephen is caused him pain and long term suffering. For example, when Stephen left a fellow injured soldier on the battlefield, while he and the rest of his unit flew away in a helicopter. Trauma is later shown in the film effecting his son Stu. After this incident all he felt was pain, regret, and was also very traumatized. Violence is a recurring theme throughout the movie because a lot of the violence in this film was caused by anger which resulted in bullying and in turn backlash and anger and so on and so forth. Violence continues to plague the world, but it can be stopped and this film proves this statement through several events and examples.

One example of violence caused in this film starts with Mr. Lipnicki. Mr. Lipnicki abuses his kids and don't show them love. As a result of this Mr. Lipnicki's kids take out all their anger on the Mr. Simmon's kids. The Lipnicki kids are not bad kids, they are just troubled. Mr. Simmons sees this, so he decides to take part in a small act of kindness and gives cotton candy to a couple of the Lipnicki kids because "They look like they haven't been given anything in quite some time". Towards the end of the movie when the Simmons kids save Billy Lipnicki's life their was a beam of light shining in on them, symbolizing hope.

Stu Simmons suffers from post traumatic stress after his dad dies and they show this by Stu trying to distract himself by working hard on building his fort. Later in the movie he is more traumatized during the scene where there is an all out war at the fort. In the movie from Stu's point of view everything slows down, he observes the battle taking place, and he starts to hear helicopter propellors at full speed. This is the same sound Stu's father heard while taking off in a helicopter when he leaving a fellow soldier on the field. At which point they were both traumatized. Standing up for others is also a large theme in this film as well. An example of this is when Lidia Simmons stands up for Elvadine.

One can see how violence can really impact someones life. This movie through it's memoirs reveals this notion and goes into depth with it. We learn that violence doesn't solve anything and it can change people.

College Essay and LL Cool J's Developing Career

Last week in the class American Literature and Composition I created my first draft of my college essay. Since I'm going to a community college instead of a traditional four year college I created my essay by the standards of commonapp.org. I wrote about my passion for music and how I love to collect and share it. To my surprise my teacher, Ms. Mano (hopefully didn't butcher your name) said it was actually pretty good. Later on that week, we teamed up with a friend so that we could leave comments on each others essays. The comments were very helpful in expanding and revising my paper. I'm thinking about adding my experiences from camp and how music has effected everything else I do in life. I'm also thinking about revising my language with more "hey look I read" type language.

Last week I also read more of my book, where the main character LL Cool J talked about his developing career. This chapter was more basic compared to the last couple chapters I read. There were no surprises except for a brawl he got into, where it was him and his dad against a pro fighter. Cool James mainly talked about how his dad stated to manage his career and his view on drug culture. He believed that drugs just cause pain in the long run, whether you use them and or sell them. He keeps himself distanced from drugs, so today you won't see one alcoholic beverage in his house.

Applications and LL Cool J's Teen Years

This week we focused on filling out our college applications. After high school I'm going to community college for a year or two so that I can receive several credits needed to get a bachelors degree without having to pay ridiculous costs for these classes at a non-community college. After I get these credits for my bachelors, and even during, I will be trying to learn as much as I can about audio production, sound design, digital art and design, and marketing. So this week I created an account for the common application and started to fill out a common application form. This form is accepted by several community colleges, but it's really in depth information and it's a pain to fill out. I also found an application form for Front Range Community College that I will be filling out very soon.

I also got through the second part of my book, LL Cool J's "I Make My Own Rules". Through these chapters he talked about his teenage years. I found out he had the same dream I have right now, which is to hear my own song on the radio. I want to get known and make a living doing something I love and Cool James felt the same. In this chapter we also see the struggle it took James to get his first gig, he had to beg his only connection to get this gig until his connection finally broke down and said he could perform during his dj set. This is why I'm going to get involved in a program after college called Recording Connection that teaches you everything you need to know about producing and recording music while making several connections with people in the business.

Appreciating the little things.

In the fourth grade, I went to a picnic with one of my friends. We played with air-soft guns and after had a wonderful time drinking cool beverages in the sun. I stopped and thought to myself how much better it was to just relax in the sun, than it was to be at home just watching television. I enjoyed just watching some of the adults conversing with each other and laughing. I appreciated how well the park was kept up and how beautiful the flowers were that day. I appreciated how beautiful life was at that very moment, and was at peace as a human being; Then the day got even better. It turned out there was two boxes of pizza that weren't eaten. I ask a near by adult what was wrong with them, and they say that the pizza had gotten cold and not many people were interested. At this point in my life I was disgusted by pizza and really didn't have a taste for it. I didn't like going to birthday parties because that's all that they would have to eat, and they would usually have to order me something special. That day, I decided to take a chance. A lot of the other food had been eaten at the picnic and I was starving. I never had cold pizza before so I pulled off a piece of the pie and took a bite. To this day, I can say that that was the best darn bite of cold pizza to date. Today, any time is a good time for pizza. :)

Memoirs Ahoy!

This week in senior literature and composition we explored the world of memoirs. Dictionary.com describes a memoir as a historical account or biography written from personal knowledge or special sources. We were assigned to read a memoir of our choice by the end of september. When this was first launched on us earlier this week, I immediately knew I wanted to read a memoir about a musical artist I followed. I thought it would be interesting to see how artists like Biggie Smalls or Childish Gambino grew up. I asked one of the librarians if they had any memoirs that fit my interest but all they could come up with was a book LL Cool J wrote about his life called "I Make My Own Rules". I didn't know much about LL Cool J besides him being an old school rapper, having a very recognizable name, and that he is a well known actor. So I wasn't very interested in reading a book he wrote about his life. But after reading a couple sentences, I thought it would be a "hoot" to read.

Later that week I finished the first part of the book, but it wasn't exactly how I thought the book was going to read. The first couple sentences makes the book seem like it's going to be about how to get girls and become famous, but then as I read further into the book, I really got to know what Cool James life was like as a kid and it wasn't pretty. It turns out his mother along with his grandfather got shot by his own father as James watched. This was not the end of the messed up stories of his childhood though. As I read on in his book his mom started recovering from the bullet wounds even though her doctor said she would never walk again. Her body therapist believed that she could and she eventually did, later her body therapist became her boyfriend. They were together over a large span of years but the messed up thing was that during this time, this body therapist was constantly beating James.

All about me...

                  When I was in the third grade I was in a program after school called CCC, which took care of children while their parents were still at work. This one time when we were allowed to go outside, I saw an older kid who was listening to a CD player and I asked him if I could listen, he handed it to me and I started listening. That was the first time I heard the song "Without Me" by Eminem. There was a lot of messed up lyrics, but I was paying attention more to the rhythm and flow within the song. After that I was hooked, but my parents would never let me listen to such explicit music. So years later after seeing a commercial for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 which played one of Eminem's songs "Till I Collapse". I enjoyed listening to the commercial so much, since it played constantly on the t.v. no matter what channel you turned on, so I decided to download the whole album that it featured on. This eventually led to me finding and searching for more and more hip hop artists, which I still do with all my music today. Eminem is who really influenced me to be as much as I am into music. Even though this is true and Eminem is one of my favorite rappers of all time, as he got older he began to rap more as himself instead of his alter-ego Slim Shady which I mainly liked listening to. So I started to grow apart from Eminem's music, but I still have those experiences to thank Eminem for shaping how I go about my daily life because I'm pretty music oriented.

                  This picture relates to basically every part of my childhood and has shaped me as a person because of this. I always had a weird diverse group of friends when growing up in New York. The kid in the black shirt with the gold chain was one of my first best friends who I met in kindergarden and since I'm so close with him he's essentially my brother today. He's the only person I can talk to about everything and I mean anything and I stay in his apartment for the most part, whenever I come to visit my family and friends. The kid in the dark blue towards the front, and the kid in the black shirt behind him, are both childhood friends who have always been there for me and have introduced me to several things that have shaped me as a person. They introduced me to Xbox Live on the Xbox 360 and I got addicted fast. Instead of having to get the ok from your parents to have a bunch of my friends over, you could immediately get on xbox and talk to up to 8 of your friends and play videogames with up to 18 depending on the game. This made it easier to get to know many of my friends at once, and it was an easy way to ask friends questions that I had about homework. We had a lot of good times outside of gaming because of all of this. The kid in the blue shirt on the left, pointed me in the direction of electronic music and now it's my preference today. Since we both shared an interest in electronic music we would always talk to each other about the latest tracks. The kid hovering his hands over my head was my dad's girlfriend's son. Since he was my dad's girlfriend's son I saw him very often and we always played videogames and watched movies. He was and is really into movies and wrote movie reviews that I used to read. I think he got me into the types of movies I'm into today.

                   When I was about 9 years old my parents decided to get a divorce. When they broke the  news to my sister and I, all I had to say was "Really, ok." and when my parents asked if I had any thing else to say, like any questions, I said "No, I knew this was coming, with all the yelling, dad sleeping in the basement and all." So eventually my mom gained the custody of my sister and I, but my sister and my moms personality's didn't mix well when they're around each other for long periods of time. So my sister eventually ended up living with my dad till she went to college. Since I only saw my dad on every Tuesday, Thursday, and every other weekend, I felt kind of distanced from my sister. So we didn't really get to know more about who each of us have grown to become till this summer when we worked at the same summer camp together.