My Final Speaking Exam

https://www.dropbox.com/s/s2sqgsdom61qqgv/Three%20Tickets.mov

Close Encounters with Music - An interview with Brent Dinsdale

Brent Dinsdale looks much younger than his age - 40. A friendly smile is always on his round, unlined face. When he sat in McDonald’s and drank a cola, he has such an amiable demeanor that you can’t believe he is the manager of Amoeba, the most successful music store in San Francisco.

As the manager of Amoeba, Brent Dinsdale is quite competent. He is a  “walking encyclopedia” of music, and has a good mind for music management. He manages two branches of Amoeba - the one in San Francisco, and the other in Berkeley. Even with the two stores to overlook, he still has time to organize his own band - Brent James.

If  you want to meet Brent, Thursday or Friday is a good time, as he might be in the Amoeba store on 1855 Haight St. With his caring smile, he will ask you about the current music you are listening to and try to give recommendations something you are going to like. Later, you can get free samples of his recommendations or download samples from the Amoeba website.

Brent may tell you some other interesting things like which bands will do live shows in the store. He said the Amoeba store welcomes all kinds of bands and musicians to play there. All you need to do is follow the updated news on the website and come to enjoy these free shows. “We have shows that not a lot of people show up to and we have shows where the line coming to my store is all the way around the block. ” he said. Some bands come to tour  the Bay Area and submit their album and information, and Amoeba fits them into the schedule. “I have discovered so many acts that I had never knew existed by seeing them in my store... and they have gone on to be huge, huge stars...” the White Stripes is a good example. “He played in my store. We have everybody come through the place. It is really, really, really fun. ” There was a big smile on his face when he mentioned this.

Amoeba has been a cultural symbol of San Francisco. Brent feels very proud of the store. However as an independent store, Amoeba has to do its best by its own. Brent said “there is no outside distribution; we do all of our own mailing, all of our own staffing, and so independent for us, it is us against the world. It is just us. We are in our own little niche... ” and like all of the music stores, Amoeba is in the age where people can download the music and movies anytime. It is not a good situation for the music business, if the stores don’t have enough turnover, it is impossible to hire many employees. “We used to have two hundred people that worked here, now we are down to maybe a hundred, Berkley is down even less than that,” Brent said.  Even if the situation isn’t ideal,  so far as there are music men like Brent, music stores like Amoeba will be there.

“I'm a music dork. I like everything about it, I love holding a record, I love how it sounds when you put the needle on, the cover, like you not get these little tiny book from online, I need to open up these things and find up the books and stickers, that is how I was, that is how I will be.”

Titles Sequences

1. The title sequence I have not seen - 21 Jump Street

The title sequence of 21 Jump Street is so American and creative. It expresses the main idea of the movie clearly. First of all, there are many popular cultural signs of American - the Stars and Stripes, Statue of Liberty National Monument, American Dollar - that we could guess this is a story which happened in America. Second, this story must be about the teenagers because I saw the shooting of sex, drug and violence. I guess the style of this movie is "loony tone" because all teenagers appear in the title sequence look like nuts.

2. The title sequence I have seen - Vertigo

Vertigo was directed by Hitchcock. The movie is very famous, I like it, and the title sequence of this movie matches the main idea that Hitchcock wants to express very much. First of all, the title sequence do the color correction so most of scenes are brown and red. I think they adjusted the color to brown because the heroine in the film - the true Madeleine was already dead before the hero met her, so her brown colored face looks like in the memory or  in a dream. Second, the rolling lines make the audiences feel vertigo just like the hero in the film - he has acrophobia. Even at that time, the after effect for the movie is not so advanced, the title sequence is useful for the audience that they could understand the movie and catch the feeling of the movie.

Three Beginnings

Learn From “The Long, Lawless Ride of Sheriff Joe Arpaio”

Brent Dinsdale, the 40-year-old who brands himself a "cyclopedia

"of music looks much younger that he is. When he sat in McDonald and drank the cola, he has the common touch that you can’t believe he is the manager of Amoeba, the most successful music store in San Francisco.

Learn From “Pearls Before Breakfast”

By most measures, Brent Dinsdale was nondescript: friendly smile always on his round unlined face, so  you may guess his silvery hair was colored. His dark green jacket is army style that a little difference with the fashionable casual style in San Francisco. On the other hand, as a manager of Amoeba which is the most successful music store in San Francisco, his image and manners doesn’t fit his position very much.

Learn From “How JK changed the face of literature”

As the manager of the most famous music store in san francisco, Brent Dinsdale is competent.

He is an expert of music, and has clear-minded for music management, so he could manage two branches of Amoeba - one in SF, the other in Berkeley - at the same time, and he still has time to organize his own band.

Interview

My interviewee is an American who was born in California.He has been learning Chinese one year.We met at a coffee shop in Ocean Beach.There were too noisy, so we went outside, because of the wind and I forgot to take my microphone., the audio isn't very clear.Anyway,I got enough interview tracks.

Transcription

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XgvgO5f0nSw
02:20 - 02:50

- Tell me first please, about the name Depp. Do you know what is origin?
- No, I don't really know the origin, but I do know it means in German.
- What does it mean ?
- Idiot.
- Now the question that is come up more frequently that I would expect it on this stage.
   Do you have any native American  ancestry ?
- Yes, apparently yes. My family comes from Kentucky, and have been there for many, you know, many many generations, and my great- grandmother was...had a .... Blood.

Response to an Article

The argument about the advantages and disadvantages of children watching TV appear on the media very often. I tend to agree that it do more harm than good.

Watching TV is a passive activity. When children watch TV, their brain accept the information passively, that means they don’t have enough brain activities that could help their brain develop. A clear evidence is when children watch TV they almost stop any movement expect watching. It is so different with other activities like talking or sporting. Some science study show that even the fingers’ movement is very important for children who are under 5. Even worse, children don’t need to have any feedback when they watch TV, even the programmers is educational, if they stop thinking by themself, it is not very useful for learning. For example, some parents want their child learn the knowledge from TV classes, but later they found that it is less effective than accepting education face to face, because the children focus on the picture but not what teach say.

Some experts like Dr. Christak, director of Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Research Institute believes that if watching TV is harm for children depends on the contents of the TV programmes, but I think the children shouldn’t watching TV very often whatever the contents are.

respond two videos

Is it possible that different ethnic or different religious people can understand each other ? I think the answer is “Yes”. Because we share much in common as human beings. The video that was showed in El Seddic’s blog is a good example. Two men who come from different race smash together when they were running. It was not cause a quarrel. Two men apologize to each other. Then they come home to see their family and go to the church/temple. Finally, when two men meet again, they shake hands and smile to each other. The director expressed his wish that different ethnic group could understand each other. Although, the two families use different languages to pray before dinner and two men went into different religious church/temple, they all love their family and eager the knowledge. I think that is the reason why they could understand each. I believe whatever race or religion, there are always something like love could help us communicate and understand others.

I don’t think google+ could be successful as Facebook. it is hard to do any more things than Facebook. For example, from the AD in Yali’s bloger we can see that the google+ is designed on our hobbies like cooking and our relationship, it could be used on the smartphone too, but all of these can’t over Facebook. Although maybe there are more people who use gmail than facebook’s mailbox, it won’t cause more and more people chose Google+ but not Facebook.

Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlvK-SRKdII

Six Questions

1)Since when you start use smartphone?

2)How many APPs do you have in your cellphone?

3)Which kind of APPs do you use most?

     reading:news,book,email,learn

     social:call,text,Facebook,

     watching and lesioning:TV,music,movie

     Game:electronic game

     Tools:map,clock,search,map,shop,paint

     Shoot:camra,record.

  4)What thing do you not carry anymore because your smartphone can do it?like map,clock... 

  5)Have you ever pay money for some APPs?What are they? or why not?

  6)What are the downsides to having a smartphone?

  7)How much time you spend on your smartphone per day?

  8)If your smartphone could do anything for you,what would you want it to do?

“A Little Local Difficulty”‘- summary

"A little Local Difficulty" is an article which was posted on The Economist July 7th 2011. the author compares the hard situation of American newspapers with the newspapers' expansion in other countries.

In America, the website like Graig Newmark,an almost free advertising website, was known as the chief culprit of "newspaper killer", but there are other reasons like the rise of television news and cable television which made readers and advertisers away lead to decline of newspapers,because newspapers rely on advertising very much.However, the newspapers in some other countries are developing. In Japan, the sales figures of newspapers grew up well,because of subscription. In Russia, the newspapers sell good too,because the government subsidizes all national television stations. Indian newspapers industry has been to become the leader in daily the consumption and grow fastest in the world.Although newspapers aren't popular in 30 crowd anymore, it is still develops quickly in some developing countries.

My Name is Liu Chen

Hello, my new classmates and Molly:) I am Alice. My Chinese name is Liu Chen. In Chinese, "Chen" means "Morning", I was born at 5AM, so my mother gave this name to me. I don't like it very much, because from infant school to the university, there are too many people who have the same name with me. When I was in the high school, our teacher had to call me "Female Liu Chen" to distinguish "Male Liu Chen" in our class.
My mother gave me a nickname too, she called me kitty when I was a child and almost all of my relatives call this nickname. I think maybe I really look like a little cat at that time.
I like my English name - Alice or Allie, although it is very common that meet a girl who has the same name with me in America.