The Amanda Knox Story

The Story of Amanda Knox, one of the craziest and most mysterious murders of the twenty first century across the pond of America in the beautiful sights of Italy. Amanda is originally a resident of Seattle, Washington where her father is a very wealthy man excelling in business and trade. Amanda got very good grades as a high school student and with her family's wealth she was given the opportunity to study abroad for her first year of college in the amazing country of Italy. When she first arrived there it was everything she hoped it would be, she met an amazing boyfriend who had a nice apartment she could crash at whenever, the drinking age here was only 18 making it completely legal for her to go to a bar for a few drinks, and even marijuana is nearly decriminalized there making her college experiment a pretty good one. She moved in with three other roommates in a place known as the flats, kind of a townhouse that houses a pretty large amount of college students. Everything is going well until one day Amanda arrives home and it appears as though her apartment has been broken in to. She is frightened by this so she decides not to enter and goes to find her boyfriend who is much more fluent in Italian and they end up calling the police to report the break in. Once the police arrive things become much more serious, her roommates door is locked which seems unusual as she never does that. The police end up forcing their way into the Italian girls room and they are horrified at what they find, a young girl, extremely bloody, and dead laying in the middle of her room. At first, Amanda seemed very innocent but then things began to change, she seemed to have little remorse and was almost past the death of her roommate within days of the tragic event. She was going out shopping and joking around with her boyfriend. The police also found it strange that the attacker had time to clean up and they uncovered that the break in was actual staged, as they had to of had a key to get in the front door. Amanda kept changing her story and eventually her boyfriend even flipped on her completely contradicting her former alibi, forcing her to change her story again. To this day the murder is completely unsolved as there is no physical evidence to prove that Amanda was not there at the time of the killing leaving her out of reach from the police. (433)

Jesus Camp

The other night I was looking up some documentaries on the internet to try and find something new and interesting to watch to spice up my Friday night as I was sitting at home. Even though I don't really have any sort of opinion or practice any sort of religion, as I took AP Human Geography my freshman year and we had a whole unit on different religions around the world from different groups of Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, and many more. I saw one specific documentary that caught my eye called Jesus Camp, a film that follows a week long Angelical Christian church camp and what goes on within their time there. It starts off following a specific group of kids that are almost all homeschooled and how their life differs from the normal, public school going kid. One of the most interesting parts of the entire film is a mother having a talk with not even middle school age child about how ridiculous evolutionism is and how there really is no other answer to the creation of this Earth other than God himself and the idea of creationism. Being in public school my entire life ever since middle school science we have learned the idea of humans evolving from similar creatures, not the idea that God created our entire beings with one swift move of divinity. Things get even crazier once they actually get to the camp itself. They have some very extreme beliefs as they talk about how the devil is around us at every moment and how if Harry Potter was a real person, he should be sentenced to death by the hand of god as all forms of warlock and wizardry are forms of the devil. I think possibly the most ridiculous part of this entire camp is at one prayer they end up getting on the topic of George W. Bush, an Angelical Christian himself, also president at the time of this being made. They have a cardboard cutout of the man himself and they are practically praying to him as if he were the second coming of Jesus or something even though he is so well known for his mistakes while in office and putting the United States into its most recent war. With this film exposing the ridiculous practices of this church and basically making a joke out of the camp, it would be shut down and not return the year after the documentary premiered. (413)

8 Mile

8 mile is loosely based on the life story of Marshall Mathers known is the rap world as Eminem, and his troubles growing up in the streets of Detroit, Michigan the capital of car manufacturing at the time. The movie starts off with a young white man in an underground rap competition where rappers go to diss and battle each other and earn themselves some respect in the underground Detroit rap game and possibly pursue their lifetime dream of being signed to a label which will really get their career to the next level. His nick name in the movie is B Rabbit and in the opening competition he can't seem to get himself to compete on stage and ends up choking, in turn being booed off the stage. For the rest of the movie it follows this young man's struggle as he has to move back home with his alcoholic mom who has a boyfriend the same age of her very own son. He then has to get himself to his job at a factory with a rundown car that breaks down more often than not. Throughout the way him and his friends get into a bit of trouble as they shoot paintball guns at cop cars and try and run away from them until their car dies, try and do some good and burn down a rundown building in order to keep rapists from taking their pray to them except they have one problem, they forget that B Rabbit is upstairs in the house and he almost gets burnt up with it. The crew then gets into it with a cross town rival known as the free world, guns end up getting pulled, and one of B Rabbit's best friend's Cheddar Bob ends up shooting himself in the leg as he is not the smartest guy in the world. For the climax of the movie B Rabbit returns to the underground rap battle scene to try his luck yet again against his rivals of the Free World. He ends up destroying the competition gaining a huge amount of respect and even ends up getting the girl he truly wants throughout the entire movie. As many know Eminem is known as the most popular white rapper of all time coming out of the Detroit area in a side of town known as 8 mile He know has numerous hit singles and topped the charts with multiple albums touring across the world. (412)

Sons of Anarchy

Sons of Anarchy has been an FX Original show since around the start of 2008. It follows a no good biker gang within Charming, a made up town within central California dealing in the distribution of weapons, drugs, and killing their rival competitors. The main characters name is Jax, he is the vice president of the motor cycle club known as the Sons of Anarchy tries to balance his new life of a dad with his junky baby momma who would much rather feed her addiction to meth than focus on her new life as a mother and a provider. But, as Jax grows as a father he begins to question exactly what the club is doing with all of the gun trafficking and really wonders if it's the right thing to do and if he really wants his son to partake in the same activity once he gets to be of age to join the motorcycle club himself. Jax's father began the club at its origin but later was killed in action in honor of his clubs problems, his widowed mother than shacked up with the new president, a cofounder of the group and since then has had a few younger kids of their own. The Sons biggest competitors and rivals are the cross town Mexican gang where they battle for territory and business to try and be able to feed their families. One of the most interesting characters is a family man within the gang that is very good with pyrotechnics and does most of the fire and destruction work for the Sons of Anarchy. The problem is he just got out of jail after doing a long stint in the slammer for taking the charge on a big arson case that someone in the club was going to have to do the time for. After he got out he hoped to change his life and get on the right track but with his family struggling to pay their bills he ends up having to revert to his old ways and pick up some overtime work from the biker club. This is one of FX's most famous television shows of all time surpassing star shows such as Nip Tuck and Rescue Me. I think it will be very interesting where they take this show as I'm really starting to catch up on the entire series on Netflix TV. (400)

Beyond Scared Straight

A&E known for its famous mystery and murder shows has come out with a new series based around troubles teenagers whose parents hope to intervene and change their children’s behavior before they end up in jail, in the streets, or dead later on in life. From episode to episode the camera crew will follow a jail’s scared straight or straighten up program they run for young troubled kids in the hopes to straighten up their behavior before they are old enough to do real harm to themselves, other people, or more importantly their lives. Often times they will first go through the booking process that normal criminal would go through such as finger prints, an initial pat down, and then even switching into normal prisoner garb. The kids will then usually get a tour of the jail, and I mean the entire jail visiting some of the worst prisoners including killers, rapists, and big drug dealers many of which are in jail for the rest of their lives. In my opinion this is the portion of the show that really gets to and scares the kids the most, as they see all of these cold hearted criminals in jail who really will show no mercy to anyone if they actually ended up inside of that jail. In some cases the police officers really will get in the children’s face, scream at them, and even make them cry, anything to get through to these adolescents that this really is not the type of life they want to pursue and go through. Some of these people have been in and out of jail since they were just as young as the kids there to visit them. Physical discipline, running and endurance are often forced upon the teens by the officers to try and break them down before they build them back up. Usually towards the end of the tour the officers will bring in some of the prisoners who have been terrorizing the kids the entire time to talk one on one with the kids and show them some of their own experiences from within jail and showing these kids this is really not a place they want to go. After the tours and usually about a month after the visits the camera crews will follow up with the teens and see how they have changed or sometimes not changed from their criminal ways. Most times though the kids have tried to straighten up, stop doing drugs, and respect their parents to pursue a better life. (424)

Game Of Thrones

Game of Thrones is one of the hottest shows on television right now; airing on HBO now has four exciting and incredible seasons under its belt. This was first a very popular book series that has now turned into a show. I personally have not read any of the books but reading other blogs and through social media I found out that many of the book fanatics and readers were very concerned on how the show was going to end up portraying the book series. But, the show has actual little relevance and doesn’t follow much of the storyline that the book lays out, only the characters names, faces, and problems occur in both versions of the story. My outright favorite character would have to be Tyrion Lannister, who is a midget or also known as an imp in the show who is from the Lannister family, the wealthiest family in all of the seven kingdoms of Westeros, which is the sort of Earth of world that these made up families live on. All of the conflicts arise in a sort of medieval way with sorts of affairs, scandal, killing, and marrying between families. Almost all of the conflicts are settled in a medieval sort of way, war and killing. There are many people across the land who believes they have a right to the iron throne, or royalty across this massive area of land. Within Westeros the seasons last much longer than our seasons last here on Earth, sometimes for years and years a grueling winter will wage on, leaving many people with little to eat and many people to die. To the North is the great wall which keeps all crazier northerners from the more civilized South. Rangers are known as the protectors of the north where a man named John Snow resides, another big character of the show. From his point of view you will find out the struggle between man and nature every day that the people of the North face. The man who writes these novels, George Martin, usually come out with these novels every two years or so, but surprisingly it has been almost 6 years since the last novel was published. Many other comedy shows have taken own their own episodes of this show with famous cartoons like South Park, Family Guy, and even the Simpsons which is currently the longest running television show (401)

Iowa State Basketball

Iowa State Basketball, plays at one of the most electrifying and exciting gymnasium’s to step foot inside of in the entire country, formally known as Hilton Coliseum. Iowa State University is located in Ames, Iowa, a large campus but a small enough city almost dead center in the middle of Iowa to have a small and tight community feel about it. The Cyclones have been ranked in the top 25 college basketball teams for almost the entire year with a record of 16-4 on the year, playing against some of the top teams in the nation as they have big wins against Kansas and Kansas State this year. Heading into the final month of the regular season the Cyclones hope to only grow and improve their team chemistry as many of the starting players will return next year as long as they don’t declare for the NBA draft after the end of the season in March. Hilton Coliseum is such a crazy and enthusiastic place to play the players and fans have come up with an equally absurd reason, a thing known as Hilton Magic in Ames. The coliseum really only gets louder as the game progresses and the team warms up. It was on ESPN on a special feature known as the House of Hoops, a show that shows the greatest places to play in all of college basketball. As long as the Clones are able to avoid a disaster at the end of one of the best regular seasons this team has seen in a very long time, they will easily be put into the NCAA National Tournament and at a pretty high seed or ranking as well. Ever since Coach Fred Hoiberg, who as a former Cyclone player himself came to be the head coach of this team 3 years ago, has taken this program to completely new heights, making a name for himself with many transfers coming in from all of the country, players such as DeAndre Kane, Royce White who is now traveling around the NBA’s D League, and UNLV transfer Bryce- Dejean Jones. Coach Hoiberg is known as the “mayor” of Ames, a nickname he was given back when he played for the Cyclones a while back. In between that time and now he had a long stint in the NBA both as a player and in the front office for the Minnesota Timberwolves. (400)