Cultural Events 1 and 2

I was able to attend 3 cultural events over the semester which were, a Philadelphia Phillies baseball game, the movie Paranormal Activity 3 and the Richard Dreyfuss Initiative (which was full but I watched it on CSPAN). First, the Phillies game was an exciting cultural event that I attended during their race to the playoffs that has been taking the city of Philadelphia by storm every fall since they made the playoffs in 2007 for the first time since 1993. Philadelphia takes their sports VERY seriously and their fans live and die with their teams year in and year out. This game was interesting in the fact that the Phillies had held the best record in the league for most of the year but ironically this game was arguably the beginning of a sort of complacency that ended up affecting their playoff performance, ultimately helping end their season. This game ended up being a 5-0 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals which preceded at 10-game losing streak that followed. Media outlets began to see the Phillies as settling into their enormous lead in the standings to which the Phillies argued was untrue. In Philadelphia, fans like me, had seen this before and already began preparing for the worst as Philadelphia fans do. Philadelphia sports fans went from 1983 to 2008 without having a championship in any of the 4 major sports in the city. Although the Phillies ended that drought in 2008, we don't forget that it's possible it could be another 25 years+ before another championship comes to town. We're cynical that way.

I also went to go see the movie Paranormal Activity 3 about a week before Halloween. This was the 3rd installment of the series. For some reason like many others, I get into the spirit of Halloween and like to go watch horror movies during the Halloween season. I've always done this since high school. My girlfriend went with me and she hates being scared and seeing scary movies but said she wanted see it only because it was Halloween. It seems like Halloween is this cultural phenomenon of a holiday that somehow makes people enjoy being scared. Obviously everyone likes dressing up for Halloween but Halloween and more specifically, scary movies around Halloween make people want to be scared. That's the whole reason people go to watch movies like Paranormal Activity is to be entertained and scared. Strange phenomenon.