Day 5: Restaurant Review

Ingredient Review

by Jason Y.

Ingredient: True Eatery…well, with a name like that, I had to try it out. And as it turns out, I may have found a new restaurant, or “eatery”, to go to.

The location, in particular, is in a good part of town, especially in the summer. The layout is sort of this hipster-esque style of somewhat old fashioned decorations with new style furnishings. It’s casual and open to all.

The food was made pretty fast. Almost exactly after I settled, down the food was being delivered. However, there was a small issue when the food was delivered that was most likely due to my unusual order. Plus, after that, I got a portion of my meal for free, so it wasn’t a hassle.

Now onto the food, specifically, the devilled eggs I ordered. The eggs were interesting because at one point they could have one flavor, but then it could change. However, each flavor is good, and you can definitely tell that genuine effort was put into it.

Despite its pretentious name, Ingredient did impress me. It’s clear that the owner, Bread and Butter Concepts, knew what they were doing when they bought the location.

My final rating for the food: 5 Devilled Eggs out of 6 (5/6)

My final rating for the service: 4 Misplaced Orders out of 6 (4/6)

I guess it is no surprise that people that work at a place called Ingredient are familiar with good food.    

Day 4: KCUR

Teacher’s note: On Thursday, students practiced reading weather, news, and advertisements for pretend radio broadcasts. They worked on monitoring their volume, pitch, and speed to optimize their vocal deliveries. After that, they wrote and recorded their own news, sports, and/or commercial features. Here are Jason's performances:

Later that day, students toured KCUR studios in Kansas City. As their kind and knowledgeable host, Stephen Steigman—chief of KCUR broadcast operations—provided background information on public radio and some of the technical details that allow the NPR affiliate to beam its news and entertainment programming to radios throughout the Kansas City area. Mr. Steigman then recorded the students as they had a conversation. 

Here is the full interview.

The students watched in wonder as Mr. Steigman then took an excerpt of audio from the proceedings and added it to a popular song. During the entire van ride back to the school, students laughed and sang along to the new hit song:

Day 3: KCPT

On Wednesday, students took a tour of the KCPT studios in Kansas City, learning about what distinguishes public television from its commercial counterpart. With those differences in mind, each student wrote and directed a public service announcement. Here is Jason's.

Day 2: KU School of Journalism

SUMMER GROUP GETS TRIP OF A LIFETIME AT KU

LAWRENCE, Kan. — On Tuesday, June 2, 11 students from Barstow’s Media Mania summer camp traveled to the University of Kansas’s School of Journalism in Lawrence, Kan., to learn more about the process of creating print, online, and television news.

KU school recruiter Ashley Anguiano led the campers, teacher assistant Matt Gannon, and teacher Mr. Guldin around the Stauffer-Flint and Dole buildings. Ms. Anguiano informed the group about the different aspects of a journalism and mass communications degree at KU. She encouraged anyone pursuing a career in media to write as much and as often as possible.

"The students are what really drives the journalism around here," Ms. Anguiano said. 

The tour concluded with a trip to the Media Crossroads, located within the Kansas Union building. Media Crossroads Director Cal Butcher introduced the campers to the “green screen” that KU students use to produce the student news show, Good Morning KU.

"Every day is chaos," said Mr. Butcher. "but every day is also unique."

Day 1: Tomorrowland Movie Review

Tomorrowland

By Jason Y.

Inspired by their own theme park and the desire to make millions of dollars, Disney made Tomorrow-land most likely hoping to recreate the popularity of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. However this movie has none of the Pirates of the Caribbean’s charm or delivery, instead choosing to focus itself on Heavy CGI and an actor who was probably more focused on planning his wedding. This movie is only really acceptable as a family movie, and even then it’s pretty stale.

The story follows Casey (Brittany Robertson), just your average teenager whose dad works at NASA, and we see as she destroys cranes that are taking down a NASA launch pad so her dad won’t lose her job, already a very relatable character as you can see. Her character never gets any more relatable as she has very strange reactions to the terrifying scenarios around her. Speaking of terrifying scenarios this movie focuses way too much on the bad and “scary” aspects of tomorrow land, and ultimately the ending isn’t nearly satisfying enough to warrant the middle of movie being so depressing. This isn’t helped by the melancholy performances by George Clooney and Hugh Laurie who both were obviously more interested in the check they get at the end then actually putting on a good performance. It doesn’t help that Hugh Laurie was cast as a stereotypical British villain. Actually this whole film feels stereotypical; it may be just that Damon Lindelof and Brad Bird are huge fans of literally every science fiction movie ever, but it seems more like they just copied a bunch of cool shots from other movies and wrote a script around it. Every scene plays out almost exactly as you expect it to. Does David Nix (Hugh Laurie) turn out to be a bad guy? Yes. Does Frank (George Clooney) turn around? Yes. However there is one silver lining. There’s one scene in particular where Casey picks up a mysterious pin, it’s in every trailer you’ve most likely already seen most of it; however this is the only moment in this movie that genuinely feels pleasant. The atmosphere is relaxed and you can finally see the sort of Disney magic this movie should’ve been. However that scene is quickly over and it’s back to the darkness and despair this movie wears like a glove.

Honestly this movie really should’ve been completely different then what it ended up being. It’s alright to have a dark kids movie, but the ending was completely anticlimactic. However there are some good things to be found. There is one well executed scene, and generally the score is pretty nice; but the rest of the movie just beats you over the head with seriousness. All the focus on sadness and depression is why I give this movie a 6/10. Maybe Hugh Laurie should’ve just stuck to curing diseases.