SLA Media

SLAMedia is a publication of the news for the Science Leadership Academy community. Writers come from the student body in 10th, 11th, and 12th grades. We work in unison to create a functioning paper with biweekly postings on a variety of events.

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Damages: The Most Ruthless Woman on Television aka your next Netflix binge

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Sean Morris

Staff Writer

Before Francis Underwood killed a dog in cold blood, before Annalise Keating manipulated law trainees, before Walter White did illegal acts in the name of a good cause there was one woman who did all of this, and more, but never with quite the cold heartedness and grace that exists inside of Glenn Close’s Multi-Wmmy winning and critically acclaimed role as Patricia “Patty” Hewes.

The series first begins with the young lawyer Ellen Parsons (played by Rose Byrne- who was nominated for the series multiple times). We find her wandering the streets of Manhattan covered in blood. The show then cuts back to a few months earlier as she first gets a job at Patty Hewes prestigious law firm, where Patty is trying a case against ruthless billionaire Arthur Frobisher (played Ted Danson- who was twice nominated for an Emmy in the series) and his secretive lawyer Ray Fiske (Željko Ivanek- who won an Wmmy for his role).  Ellen soon realizes that this case is more closely connected to her than she thought and gets pulled into Patty’s web of lies, secrets and murder.

Each season tackles a new case for Patty and her firm, and each one with layers of intrigue, deception and even personal connections to Patty and Ellen. Many of the cases reference real life events like the Iraq war and the Bernie Madoff scam. Throughout the series one, of the most interesting dynamics to see is the complex relationship between Ellen and Patty.  Together they’ve  been  teacher and student, enemies, friends, and more, but what cannot be denied is that they bring out the best, and worst in each other and for Ellen she see’s a glimpse into her potential future and for Patty she see’s a younger version of herself- and neither of them are certain if that’s a good or bad thing.

Glenn Close is consistently stellar in the series. and she alone makes it worth watching  In bringing to life Patty Hewes, she brought to life one of the most formidable characters to, in my opinion, ever come onto any media format: whose craving for victory and power over all aspects seemingly holds no bounds and has resorted acts that are just shy of eating her own children.

But another great piece of acting comes from Rose Byrne, whose character goes through some of the most interesting developments of Walter White/ Peggy Olson type character evolution I’ve ever seen. She and Close bounce off each other like rubber to cement and are electric in every scene.

However, I would be remiss  if I didn’t mention some of the stellar co-stars, most noticeably Ted Danson’s corrupt CEO manages to be the complete antithesis of what one would imagine a corrupt CEO- hardly wears a suit, seems to have some genuine feelings of remorse and care for his employees, sort of buffoonish- but manages to make you feel both hatred and sympathy for him, thought mostly the former. The Show also has a stellar supporting cast which includes several A-listers lending their talent: : Tate Donovan, who plays Patty’s right hand man, John Goodman, John Doman, Ryan Phillippe, Timothy Plyphant, Noah bean,  Zachary Booth, Martin Short, Marcia Grey Holden, Lily Tomlin, William Hurt, Tom Noonan M, John Hannah, Campbell Scott, Clarke Peters, Glenn Fleshler and many more.

The show’s nonlinear storylines and compelling characters make Damages  exactly like the kind of show that many people at SLA enjoy, but done much better than a lot of them. All episodes are on Netflix and thus should be your Thanksgiving viewing pleasure!

It Will Be Alright Cry Baby, So Please Don’t Cry Again

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Vilma Martinez

Staff Writer

 

 

 

I know you had a rough time Cry Baby, but please don’t cry your eyes out.

“Someone’s turning the handle to that faucet in your eyes they’re pouring out where everyone can see” – Cry Baby, Melanie Martinez

 

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Credit to Melanie Martinez

 

This album has been out since September and I never really got into it. It seemed like just another album that mixed pop with punk. But then, after listening to the album countless times I realized that the album is not your average Pop Punk, but a new take on Alternative music. I also realize that every song tells a different story– both from Cry Baby’s perspective and about her. Not everyone’s life is a picture perfect world, and those whose world seems like that on the outside is hiding something on the inside.

 

So what’s so special about this album?Let’s take a deeper look into some of the songs.

 

 

Cry Baby is the introduction to the entire album and the character Cry Baby. A girl who wears her heart on her sleeve. She has had a lot of losses in her life and has carried them for as long as she can remember. She takes everything to heart and this is what makes her emotional and her crying is all you see. Which is why they call her Cry Baby. Dollhouse introduces Cry Baby’s family and all of the problems that family has. This song along with a lot of the others that follow, hint at the story that the next song will tell. Dollhouse tells the story on how their family pretends they are perfect in front of others, but when they are home, behind all closed doors and curtains everything is not so perfect. Parents fight and lie to one another, their son smokes, and Cry Baby tries her best to remain uninvolved.

 

 

Sippy Cup revolves around Cry Baby’s mother. Her mother is a drunk whose husband has a mistress and when she catches them together, she ties them up and kills them due to all of the alcohol in her system that riles up her anger. She tries to hide their bodies, but when Cry Baby wakes up and happens to walk to the kitchen she finds the dead bodies, but just to her luck, her mother knocks her out and takes her to her room where she awakens and her mom filled her sippy cup with a syrup that made her forget what she saw. So when Cry Baby woke up for the second time she did not remember what she saw in the kitchen.

 

 

Carousel tells the story of Cry Baby going around and around, trying her best to catch up to a boy she loves. As she plays catch up, he plays around with her heart. Stuck on a ride that goes in circles, she can’t seem to move forward and is glued in one place as he appears and disappears, moving on with himself, but she can no longer move as she goes through the same thing like a broken record, or more like a carousel. Which leads to the next song Alphabet boy, who involves another boy, a boy who thinks he is better and smarter than Cry Baby, but she proves him wrong with that one clever song.

 

 

Soap tells the story of Cry Baby letting her crush know that she has feelings for him, but she always lets her feelings consume her and she ends up saying too much. Her crush takes in everything she tells him and does not know what to do, but will do something once he sees something bad happen. Soon she starts to regret everything she says and has to “wash her mouth out with soap”.

 

 

In Training Wheels Cry Baby finally finds someone she can love and can go farther into a relationship with. She falls in love with him and every single little thing he does. She is not ready for certain things that are to come, but she is willing to risk it for him. Of course she is not asking for marriage, but all she wants is a strong relationship, but all she needs to do is confess to him and that is when Pity Party comes into play. When she invites him along with a bunch of other kids to her party, not one person shows up and she thinks everyone is playing a cruel joke on her so she throws herself a pity party.

 

 

In Tag, You’re It Cry Baby gets stalked by a stranger known as The Wolf and soon follows her until he captures her and takes her to his home and keeps her hostage for his own pleasures. Everything changes in Milk and Cookies when she goes crazy from being held hostage and is sick and tired of being held that way, so when The Wolf leaves the door unlocked, she sneaks out and makes cookies and gets a glass of milk for The Wolf. When The Wolf ate the cookies and drank the milk he did not realize that they were poisoned and he died. With his death, Cry Baby was able to escape.

 

 

At this point Cry Baby does not care anymore, so she when she crushes on someone and realizes that he has a girlfriend, she just takes him away from her. Though the girl starts to get annoying and Cry Baby tells the boy to shut her up. Cry Baby knows that he does not love that other girl and that she was able to take him away from her because he wanted Cry Baby anyways.

 

 

Cry Baby saw something appear on tv about a woman who has gotten plastic surgery and look amazing, but it is all fake. She thinks about it and wonders if plastic surgery is the only way for someone to actually love her and will that person stay with her is all that plastic in her starts to fall apart and she is no longer beautiful. Mad Hatter shows how crazy Cry Baby has gotten. She sees a Psychiatrist and think it is ok to be as mad as she is. Her imagination has gone wild and can not seem to control all of the crazy thoughts that run through her head.

 

 

These 3 songs are bonus songs in the deluxe version and are not included in the storybook that comes with the deluxe version, but I thought it would be fun to show you what they mean. In Play Date she is always chasing after a boy, and although he invited her over in the first place he never communicates with her. making her the one to put the effort in that relationship. Soon they do get together, but in Teddy Bear she loved to be with him cuddling with him and just being with him. Cry Baby starts to notice that when he talks in his sleep he says the bad things he does to her. She was not scared at first, but then she found odd things around their room and she started to fear him, so she ended up dumping him, but that did not stop him because he started to try and get her back to do her harm, but she manages to avoid it and meets someone else. In Cake the guy she met stopped loving her and treated her as if she were a piece of cake. He thought she was something that he could throw out. So she let him go and let him know that he should regret treating her the same way because she is not just a piece of cake, but the entire bakery.

 

The album goes as far to tell moments in Cry Baby’s life by using songs that seem innocent, but if you really listen to them, you will see the dark and evil things that the lyrics are trying to say. I do highly recommend this album, because once you will listen to it your heart just might warm up to Cry Baby, she truly has been through alot in her lifetime.

Filed Under: A&E

School Holidays You Could Have Had Off On.

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A chart showing the holidays the largest school district have off for. (Click the image for a bigger picture)

Dylan McKeon Staff Writer

While there were many days off in September for the Pope’s visit and several religious holidays, many other religious holidays are being forgotten by both Philadelphia and other school districts.

In the first month of school, there was a total of eleven days of school across a period of three and a half months. With all of the holidays and the arrival of the Pope, this September had weekends that anywhere lasted between two to six days. However not all holidays are being recognized by the school district.

Eid al-Adha, or Feast of the Sacrifice is one of the biggest Muslim holidays of the year. This year it was on Thursday, September 24 the same day of the Pope break, meaning that while it wasn’t mentioned we did have off on that day. The same thing happened last year, as the holiday took place on the fourth of October, a day that corresponded with a Saturday. However neither of the dates are listed on the school district calendar, making it quite clear that they are not recognized by the Philadelphia School District.

New York, meanwhile, has decided to close public schools for both Eid al-Adha and Luna New Year which is a major holiday in Chinese and Korean culture. However, New York was unable to add Diwali to the school calendar as they needed 180 days of school.

This shows the biggest problem with implementing religious holidays as their can only be so many days off of school leading to many holidays not being represented. Another problem is that there usually aren’t enough student of the religious background to justify giving the day off.

Some districts have given students permission to miss classes that aren’t represented in order to give them the ability to celebrate the holiday without giving everyone the holiday doesn’t apply to off. This helps but doesn’t make a large enough change given that getting permission to skip school isn’t the same as having off on that day.

In my opinion the best way to ensure that student are able to celebrate their holidays would be to cut some days of summer break off. This would allow for students to celebrate some off the holidays without missing school, give other students an opportunity to learn more about the holiday, and would only be at a cost of a few summer days.

For a clearer picture of who has off when, the hyperlink below has a chart that shows the list of various holidays and which of the 25 largest school districts have off those days.

http://i1.wp.com/fusiondotnet.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/fusion_student-holiday-in-public-school-districts_1b-1.png?resize=1024%2C1833&quality=80&strip=all

 

Sources: http://fusion.net/story/156759/as-public-school-students-get-christmas-break-other-religions-ask-why-not-us/

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2015/0922/Should-public-schools-close-for-Muslim-holidays

Demons And Diversity And Fairy Tales, Oh My!

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POC representation and diversity of casts on Television is hard to come by, and even harder to do well. While it is becoming more and more common to see diverse casts, often times the diversity is the main selling point of the show. They tell us to focus on the token black female character, or the clueless asian comic relief. As a result, the attempt falls short.

Not with Fox’s Sleepy Hollow, because there are no token characters in this show.  Three of the main characters are women, two of whom are African American. The show’s cast includes POCs like Nicole Beharie, Orlando Jones, Lyndie Greenwood, and John Cho, alongside three of the main characters: Tom Mison, John Noble, and Katia Winters. And all of that is solely based on Season 1.

The plot of Sleepy Hollow revolves around Ichabod Crane, a soldier from the Revolutionary War who was pulled two and a half centuries into the future, and Abbie Mills, a black lieutenant in the Sleepy Hollow Sheriff’s department. The two of them are bound together in a fight against evil neither of them signed up for. It sounds a little corny, and it is. But it’s also funny and sarcastic and incredibly poignant from time to time, and bringing the story into the present day is what allows the cast to be so authentically diverse. Abbie and Ichabod’s character chemistry is electric, but other relationships aren’t ignored. Platonic and familial relationships are just as important as any kind of romantic one. In fact, romance is hardly a factor at all in the series. It’s there, but it’s never oppressive.

Of course, the show is not without its faults. Ichabod can be incredibly aggravating and he somehow knows about or has already met every monster or threat they face. The writing can be cliche at times, and several of the shifts in the storyline are awkward and forced at best. But the characters are compelling and three-dimensional. Every character has their flaws and faults and the contribute well to the story. All of the personalities are incredibly strong, and everyone’s sense of humor is different, but they flow well together. The villains are developed and coming from places you’d never expect, most of the time, anyway. The demons and challenges they face are terrifying and always keep you on your toes. When watching: be prepared to be scared.

Sleepy Hollow is written and created by the people who did the new Star Trek movies, Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who have both worked on several movies and shows that work to incorporate women as strong, well-developed characters. These include: Both Star Treks, The Amazing Spider 2, Scorpion, The Proposal, and Alias. This is one of the first projects that the two of them have worked on that really incorporates POCs in a big way. And they do it well. That could be because of the other two creators, Phillip Iscove and Len Wiseman, whose lists of projects are much shorter than Orci’s and Kurtzman’s; thus leaving them far more open to new ideas. Race and gender are never issues. Of course, Ichabod is confused by things like the fact that his being questioned by a black, female lieutenant in pants, but they touch upon it and move on. There are more important things that the characters need to be worried about, like that fact apparently it is their job to stop the Acropolis from destroying the Earth.

This new take on Washington Irving’s classic American fairy tale is strange, and often scary, but it’s funny and poignant and like nothing else I’ve seen. Lines like, “ I’ve lived on borrowed time; more than any man deserves. I’ve seen wonders beyond my wildest imaginings. And through these centuries, against the impossibility that we would find each other, we did. And I am most grateful for it,” can end up in the same episode as this: “You know, there are two things in life I believe a person should hold on to for as long as possible: virginity and skepticism. Surprisingly, I already lost the first thing so I’m going to hold on for the second one as long as possible.”
If you need a good show that will scare you, surprise you, and make you laugh, all in the same episode, this is just what the doctor ordered.

Filed Under: A&E