Over on Twitter,
Marlee Matlin is starting to make noise about close captioning everywhere. I've followed Marlee's career ever since her breakout role in
Children of a Lesser God. In fact, I remember sitting on my living floor when I was 9 watching her accept Hollywood's top nod for her performance and thought, "Wow, she's getting the highest award in her profession - that means I can do anything too." Fastforward 22 years and here I am defending my Ph.D. thesis next week (sidenote: EEEEEKKK!). Most folks know about Marlee with her on-screen roles. But honestly, asides from inspiring me to achieve any dream, I thank her more for her tireless efforts to have close captioning made a law in the television industry. About 10 years ago, my hearing deteriorated (I have progressive hearing loss) to the point that I can't enjoy watching TV without the captioning. So Mad Beaker award to Marlee for being a strong advocate for Deaf and hard-of-hearing rights.
However that was only one mountain to overcome and there's many more that lay in the path. One that I've mentioned before that has bugged me: movie captioning. It's true, in order for me to enjoy a movie fully, I have to wait for the
one theatre in this city with
RWC. Yes, that's right. There's only ONE theatre, in fact,
ONE RWC box in the entire city of over a million people that I live in. This means that in order to watch the latest blockbuster, I usually go twice. Once with my friends at the regular time in the evening or weekend. And another time, usually in the morning on a weekday, to (re)watch the flick to actually understand the dialogue. I try to see the movie with captioning first before watching it with my friends. It's not that they wouldn't watch the show with captioning with me, just that who can get off work at 11AM on a Tuesday? Yeah, I know it isn't right, not to mention expensive. So Marlee, I'm with you - you start a petition, my signature will be on it.
Other things... working on my seminar slides today. The defense is in a week. Feelings about it: restlessness (let's get it over with) and fear (OMG I'm soooo not prepared yet!!!!). My boss has been prepping for the aftermath party already. Apparently she believes that I'll actually pass this thing (apparently she isn't the only one as well... there's like a chorusline movement regarding me passing this thing). So let's get to it and hammer out impressive slides. It's always nice to put up one slide that represents 5 years of work (yeah, I actually do have one of those). Of course tunes are following me with this, but a nod to Jules who asked me yesterday (I quote) "WTF are you listening to??!" while doing some experimenting. See, being Deaf means that my mp3 player volume and headphones are cranked to the maxed so almost everyone can enjoy my music. The song she was inquiring about, Freddy Martin and
"H'ove got a lovely bunch of coconuts" (much more fun if you sing along with a Brit accent!). Of note, yes, Monty Python is often miscredited to this song, but they actually never sang it.
However that was only one mountain to overcome and there's many more that lay in the path. One that I've mentioned before that has bugged me: movie captioning. It's true, in order for me to enjoy a movie fully, I have to wait for the one theatre in this city with RWC. Yes, that's right. There's only ONE theatre, in fact, ONE RWC box in the entire city of over a million people that I live in. This means that in order to watch the latest blockbuster, I usually go twice. Once with my friends at the regular time in the evening or weekend. And another time, usually in the morning on a weekday, to (re)watch the flick to actually understand the dialogue. I try to see the movie with captioning first before watching it with my friends. It's not that they wouldn't watch the show with captioning with me, just that who can get off work at 11AM on a Tuesday? Yeah, I know it isn't right, not to mention expensive. So Marlee, I'm with you - you start a petition, my signature will be on it.
Other things... working on my seminar slides today. The defense is in a week. Feelings about it: restlessness (let's get it over with) and fear (OMG I'm soooo not prepared yet!!!!). My boss has been prepping for the aftermath party already. Apparently she believes that I'll actually pass this thing (apparently she isn't the only one as well... there's like a chorusline movement regarding me passing this thing). So let's get to it and hammer out impressive slides. It's always nice to put up one slide that represents 5 years of work (yeah, I actually do have one of those). Of course tunes are following me with this, but a nod to Jules who asked me yesterday (I quote) "WTF are you listening to??!" while doing some experimenting. See, being Deaf means that my mp3 player volume and headphones are cranked to the maxed so almost everyone can enjoy my music. The song she was inquiring about, Freddy Martin and "H'ove got a lovely bunch of coconuts" (much more fun if you sing along with a Brit accent!). Of note, yes, Monty Python is often miscredited to this song, but they actually never sang it.
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