Rogan Shannon

Video: https://youtu.be/wOIaJxzw3To

Today’s post will be about several random things that aren’t related at all, but they’re not long enough to put in their own posts.

Hello and welcome to a very random post today. First, I’m still mad at myself for doing this. Ugh. As you probably know, I recently posted my March wrap up of books I read. I also forgot about something I was planning to do, so I filmed that. Then forgot about it again. Whoops. I’m going to give you that part here.

After I finished filming, I realized I completely forgot I wanted to do something new and include it in this. Right, so I’m doing that now. I first saw it on chelsadollingreads‘ channel. I like the idea, so I’m going to do it on mine too. She does a TBR jar, and she’ll draw three book names from it each month, and has to read at least two of those three. I put all of mine in a RIT mug. I have, I don’t know, 30 book names in it? I’m not sure. The names I drew are probably the most random you could get with the books in that mug. Upstream, first book I drew, the copy I have is an advance copy. It’s a story set in Alaska, should be interesting. We’ll see. The second book I drew is Profiles in Gay & Lesbian Courage, which is eight profiles of men and women who changed history for gay and lesbian people (from the book synopsis). Though I’d just say queer people (this book is an older book, so there’s that). Anyway. The third and final book is Lord of Snow and Shadows. Yeah, this is part of a series, so… I don’t know if I will commit to reading this one, since it’s a series. That’s my first three books from my mug. And we will see how that goes. That’s a thing that I will be doing from now on for my monthly wrap ups.

We’ll see how that new thing goes, since I already forgot about it for the first time! Okay, onto the next thing. Like I mentioned in one of my videos a while ago, I said I was going to the Seattle Deaf Film Festival. That was this past weekend. I enjoyed it, I had a lot of fun! I’ll tell you a bit of what I did that weekend. I arrived in the area really early, around noon, 1ish. I was planning to meet a friend, but plans were dropped. So instead, I went to a bookstore, Elliott Bay Book Company, in Capitol Hill. I ended up getting two books, A Nation of Nations: A Great American Immigration Story and The Interestings. But… *shrugs* They were both discounted so, sure! The Interestings was already on my TBR, so I thought why not buy it while I’m here. After that, I went and chilled in a coffee place, working for a little bit on video stuff for YouTube. At around 4pm, I went to my first block for films, which was UK films. There were several different ones, so I’ll tell you a bit about each one. One was a kind of comedy about a woman who suspects her husband of cheating on her, so she follows him. Drama happens. It was actually really good. I enjoyed that one. Another one was a music video. The director is someone I know, so that was cool. Nice to see someone I know! Third, if you’re familiar with The Limping Chicken, you will know the author of that, Charlie Swinbourne. He was the one who wrote most of this, I believe. It was several comedy sketches. Kind of like a deaf SNL, kind of. Next was about a deaf man and his struggle with a hearing family where no one signs. You know, the standard deaf struggle story. It was good, but just. I’m honestly tired of seeing films like this. I want to see more films that show authentic deaf lives, not “oh, I’m struggling with my family, blah blah.” Yes, I know, we do need to show that story, but also… I’m getting tired of it. Now, the final two that were shown at the end of that block are related. One was an interview with Rachel Shenton, the writer of The Silent Child, which won an Oscar recently. The interview was about her background, her history, why she got involved in the deaf community, and so on. A little bit more about her as a person. Then the second one was The Silent Child. It was SO good. It deserves that Oscar, absolutely deserves that Oscar. Yes. After the UK Films block finished, I had a little bit of time in-between the blocks I paid for, so I went and hung out with Jules Dameron and Josh Castille at their Airbnb for a while. The second block I went to was Reverse Polarity, which is a short TV show produced by DPAN and directed by Jules Dameron. I am SO excited for you to see it! You can see it by going to dpan.tv (You will have to sign up for an account, but it’s free!) It will come out on April 12th, and on every Thursday after that for six weeks. The show is about two different people who have their own struggles, they’re looking for love, and I’m not saying any more. It’s so good. Be warned, this is not for children. It’s mature. We desperately need more content like this in the deaf community, I said the same thing about This Close. We need more things like this. You have to see it, it’s worth it. When Reverse Polarity finished, they had a panel afterwards with the director (Jules Dameron) and the main actors (Josh Castille and Amelia Hensley). Tru Biz Entertainment needed a film person to shoot for them, so that was me. I was working for them after watching the show. I enjoyed that, it was really fun working with them. I will link that video when it’s uploaded. After Reverse Polarity and the panel, we went to an afterparty and had a lot of fun. That was all I went to for the festival, but really, it started on Friday night and went to Sunday afternoon, I believe. They had a whole list of different documentaries, narratives, music videos, and so on. A lot of different films, it’s great. I’m really looking forward to seeing this continue.

Next thing, my family recently went whale watching in the Everett area. That was really fun, about three hours on the water, going around and looking for whales. And we found them! We saw three or four whales. We saw 10 bald eagles, MANY harbor seals, saw a harbor porpoise, plenty of cormorants, and so on. It was really nice, a fun trip. (Go watch the video for clips of whales.) Pretty cool! We saw the whales surfacing over the water quite a few times. We did see a tail, but only twice. I was able to get only one very short clip. The other time we saw a tail was very clear, a full tail coming out, so that was cool!

Okay, one last thing I want to add that I’m SO excited about. On this past Monday, I bought a new camera, a Panasonic LUMIX G7. YES. I was able to get it for less than $500 on eBay, so that was very nice. It will be arriving next week, on Tuesday. I’m really excited for that, and finally having a nice camera that I can SEE MYSELF IN. I don’t know if I will continue using the same setup I’ve been using. Maybe I will occasionally, but… I will have to figure out a whole new setup with my new, beautiful camera. Yeah, that is a thing that is happening! (Editor’s note: As it happens, my camera actually arrived today! Much faster than I was expecting, but I’m not complaining at all.)

I will end for today, and I hope you enjoyed this kind of update? Let me know things in the comments!

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