www.MarkMushakian.com - Blog

When I hit 30, I patted myself on the back, but at 60, I figured I'd blog about it. So what am I talking about?

Today is the 61st day in a row that I've worked out - I check off every morning on Joe's Goals. Yeah, it's not huge deal, but it's a great thing for me. See, it's not just working out (that I've been doing fairly consistently for awhile now), it's more than that... and it's become routine. It all started when I woke up really early to go on a hike with my friends. I'd forgotten how nice it is to be up so early: to be out in the crisp morning air, few people are out and about, and the day is just that much longer. I decided to start a new routine, and I've stuck with it. There were a few lapses in the beginning, and some of my mornings have started with a little less energy than the others, but for 61 days I've done pretty much the same thing:

-At 6am my alarm goes off.
-I get out of bed right away and go down to grab one of my tasty nutritional supplement drinks.
-Quickly finishing that, I go out for a 30 minute walk around my neighborhood block.
-Back home I workout and stretch.
-Finally I take a shower, and I'm out and done with my routine by 8am.

Like I said, it's not a huge deal, but I've been proud of myself for getting into this little morning habit over the past couple of months. With my creative endeavors and my aim for Chapman, I've really been working hard on a number areas of my life, and it's even nicer to start each day with a healthy productive morning

I know my blogging has been a little absent lately, and I apologize - but it's not my fault... I've been busy working out
 

I had an idea for a blog that I wanted to write, but I forgot what it was, so instead I am writing a blog about how I forgot a blog idea.

The End
 

This morning I went to an open house at Chapman University. I've already sold myself on the idea of applying there, and if I don't get it - I'm just going to pursue acting professionally full-force. As I've previously said, I'd rather take this time to learn the technical aspects and really explore the craft of making movies in an environment like Chapman, so I went to check out the school and find out some more answers about transferring. I'll give you a hint: it was a good day

I've heard quite a bit about Old Towne Orange, where the Chapman campus is located, but I'd never been there before today. It's a great place - old shops dating from the beginning of the 1900's in construction, a pedestrian friendly atmosphere, and an overall sense of an early century small town. Even a usually annoying round-a-bout felt rather quaint here. Heck - there's even a classic barber directly across from the main campus. It's all really even nicer than I had imagined. But that's just the beginning.

These events are generally for incoming freshman and their families, so I skipped the opening introduction in the auditorium, and walked straight over to the film school building. It's not on the main campus, so it was interesting walking the 5 minutes or so to get there through the neighborhoods - but a good interesting. When I walked into the empty 500 seat movie theater for the upcoming informational session, I said "Wow." It was really nice, and I settled into one of the chairs to happily wait. Then they started playing some background music, and I smiled - it was the original Superman theme song. I laughed at how fitting it all was. After the crowd from the auditorium had piled in with me, they played a promotional clip on the screen - and that's when it really hit me.

It wasn't the most amazing cinematic piece I've ever seen, but I almost teared up watching it - not because of what it was, but because of what it meant to me. I know I've mentioned my crying in quite a few blogs, but I'm really not THAT weepy a guy. Just like with the movie Wall-E (which I'll be watching tonight on DVD for the first time since I saw it in theaters), when something hits that emotional chord for me it's strong. So today I sat there, in this giant theater, watching a clip that talked about the importance of telling a story, in a school I just might be attending this Fall, focusing on the only subject that I've ever really wanted to study, about the only thing I've ever wanted to do with my life - movies. They really do mean the world to me, and sitting there I thought about the tagline for Wall-E:

"After 700 years of doing what he was built for, he'll discover what he was meant for"

I'm 674 years shy of making that statement completely true myself, but I can't explain how happy I am to finally be pursuing this dream, in whatever capacity it may be, because this is what I was meant for.

Annnnnd... end sappy blog entry
 

This past Sunday I was over in Torrance for our first day of shooting Get Back. Before we left a friend's house to go exploring the city for locations, I noticed a man pulling things out to his curb - no doubt a growing collection of unwanted crap that he would thoughtfully place a "For Free" onto. Of course, I'm a sucker for these collections of unwanted crap, and there are two reasons for that: 1. sometimes another person's trash truly is my treasure (I get that from my mom's dad) and 2. you never know when you'll find something that could make a great movie prop one day. For example, before we moved, I had amassed a pretty good collection of lost/forgotten street cones and barriers I'd found in unwanted condition- things the city was no longer interested in, but that a young movie making kid would love! So, back to Torrance.

After we finished our daytime shooting, we returned to the friend's house, and I perused the pile of "For Free" goods. I use the term 'goods' very loosely, because most of it was trash - but then I found treasure.



No, that is not Photoshop trickery... those posters are nearly as tall as I am. Now, I'm not a tall man by any means (roughly 5'6), but that still makes those things pretty darn big. So, why did I want them? LOOK AT THEM! Obviously, having posters of attractive women is nice, but these are much more than that - they are potential prop material. Think about it: A sleazy, creepy ladies man lives in an apartment alone. What would he have on his walls? Pictures exactly like this! I didn't need to argue with myself about it, though... I was sold on taking them the moment I saw them. Of course, then I had to get them home.

They are most definitely something that once hung in a hip clothing store - they are on a thick, cardboard backing that keeps them sturdy and straight. It also keeps them from being conveniently rolled and placed in the car - so they had to go in as they were. It was windy that day, so just walking to the car with these two cardboard "sails" in my hands was hard enough, but getting them into Nick's back seat was a breeze. The real fun came later that night when I tried to transfer them into MY car. I was dead tired from walking through the city all day long, so that only added to my dysfunctionality. It's too bad it wasn't all caught on tape, because it was reminiscent of a Three Stooges short. The same hilarity followed me as I got them home and took them OUT of the car, and again when I tried to find a place to store them in my house. It was alot of work, but they are now safe and sound in my attic.

Besides, when it comes to moviemaking and enormous posters of hot babes... there's no such thing as too much work
 

On this eve of election day, and after the topic has come up twice in recent conversations with friends, I decided I would bring my paper on the Electoral College online. Like my previous essay, this comes from my prior English class. It was also the first paper I'd written in years, so I was still a little rusty... it's not quite as good as the others. However, the subject matter is still important, so I want to share it. Again, you can also view the full, cited paper in PDF form HERE. I have also created a new section for my papers that can be found under Miscellaneous in the main menu.



The Electoral College

I am 25 years old, and I have never voted. This piece of information makes my subject all the more interesting. The first time I found out about the Electoral College process in elementary school, I remember being very confused. As the innocent thoughts of a child can often be wiser than those of an adult, I simply felt, "If one person votes, why shouldn't that one vote count?" Today I am asking myself the very same question, followed by a slue of others: why does America use the Electoral College instead of a popular vote system, how did the Electoral College even come into existence, and am I the only one who thinks about this? Quite frankly, I do not see any reason America does not abolish the use of the Electoral College, because it seems like an unfair and confusing way to run elections.

In order to elect the President, each state is allowed a certain number of electoral votes, based on the number of members it has in Congress. If the majority of a state's population votes for a candidate, that state casts it's vote for said candidate. For example, if 67% of California's citizens vote for Candidate A then the remaining 33% of the votes, divided amongst Candidate B and Candidate C, are ignored and California's 55 electoral votes are put in for Candidate A. This system was originally conceived by the founding fathers of this country, as a means to keep power from any one person's hands, even the American public. These men felt that giving complete power to even just one misinformed voter would be unwise, so they developed our current system. The United States is a representative form of democracy, and the founding fathers believed giving complete democratic control to the people, without the check and balance system of representation, could easily erupt into tyrannical rule by the populace in mob form. Opponents of the Electoral College system will point out that in small states, Ohio for example, the ratio of voters to Electoral College votes is smaller, therefore winning votes in that state is more important than in a state like California, where the margin is wider and the amount of popular votes it takes to win an electoral vote is much higher.

There are, however, a number of different ideas to remedy the situation. One such idea follows my original contention, which is to allow presidential elections to be won by the popular vote - where every single vote would individually count on it's own. The problem with this, though, is that this is not how the Constitution is set up. The founding fathers gave the right to elect our president to the states, not the people. In order to amend this article in the Constitution two-thirds of both houses of Congress and three-fourths of the state legislatures must pass the bill, but that will more than likely never happen because a smaller amount of states still hold the majority of power, and why would they want to give up their elective powers? Since this is not a feasible solution, there are alternative ideas to get around the Electoral College. Individual states are allowed to allocate their electoral votes however they choose, which means that any state could pass legislation to apply it's electoral votes to whoever wins the popular vote nation wide. The problem with this method, critics say, is that it will not solve the problem - because it will still cause the candidates to ignore lesser populated areas. Since the states would be allocating their votes based on the national average, only the most populated areas, New York City or Los Angeles for example, would be visited, leaving middle America to watch their candidates visiting the big cities on TV.

A second idea opponents of the Electoral College have had, is another system that looks to modify, not eradicate, the current Electoral College process. Already employed by both Maine and Nebraska, this "district plan" is one in which the winner of the popular vote in each congressional district would be awarded one electoral vote, with the statewide popular vote winner being awarded a bonus two electoral votes. While this may be a step closer to having every individual vote count, the plan's opponents point out that it still leaves an unbalanced level of power in the hands of the same states that have the power under the current system.

The ultimate problem boils down to one simple fact - do we stick with the Electoral College system, which has served near perfectly since it's inception, or do we find an alternative? In all these years, the Electoral College system has only chosen a candidate that didn't win the popular vote a few times, but is that a few times too many? We also must ask the question, what about those voters from the losing party in any given state? California is known as a "blue" state, meaning that there are more votes for the Democratic Party than the Republican Party, so the electoral votes of this state generally will go to the Democratic candidate. In this case, though, if I were to vote for a Republican or, heaven forbid, an independent candidate, my vote would mean nothing under our current win-all electoral system. I am well aware of the intentions of the original Constitution, that it meant to keep this a representative country where no one group has complete power, but even as I've now learned much more about the Electoral College than I knew before, I can't say that I support it. I have never felt a compelling need to vote, because I have never had any reason to believe in any one candidate so strongly over another, but under the Electoral College system I'm tempted to ask myself, "What's the point, anyways?" The supporters of the Electoral College have no solid arguments that don't basically come down to the notions of "tradition" and "speed and simplicity," and I can't really get behind the idea of staying with a system simply because we're lazy. The only true answer, in my mind, is to abolish the system completely and convert to direct voting, where every vote will truly count. Sure, this direct count may be slower in achieving results, and it will definitely be harder work, but since when should this country be afraid of getting it's elbows dirty - when it means it's the right and fair thing to do.

-Mark Mushakian, 2008