Day: April 9, 2002

Internship update

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

I have been offered an internship at the Shelby Star in Shelby, N.C., as part of the Institute for Humane Studies’ journalism internship program. The Star has a circulation of 18,000 and is owned by Freedom Communications, which has a proud history of concern for individual liberty.

Shelby is located in the southwestern corner of North Carolina, near the border with South Carolina and about 50 miles away from Charlotte. As of 1997, 19,953 people lived in Shelby, and 90,650 people lived in Cleveland County (which encompasses Shelby). I’d get a $1,500 stipend and a housing allowance.

I don’t know yet when they want a decision, but I would like to find out first if I will be offered Reason magazine’s Burton C. Gray Memorial Internship, to be done in Reason’s Los Angeles offices. Editor-in-chief Nick Gillespie said he’d get back to the finalists some time this week.

I’ve already been offered an unpaid proofreading/editorial assistant internship at Chicago’s Heartland Institute , as well as a writing/PR internship at the Reason Public Policy Institute. For the latter, the stipend would be about $1,500 and I would telecommute from Chicago.

Lastly, I’ve been accepted to The Fund for American Studies‘ Institute on Political Journalism, which incorporates six credits of course work at Georgetown and a journalism internship in Washington, D.C. A few snags: the cost, whether the credits will be accepted by Columbia for graduation and the quality of the internship I’d actually wind up getting placed in.

Of all these, I don’t have a clear first choice just yet. They each have their advantages and drawbacks. Balancing the quality of the publication, the amount of published writing I’d come away with, the proximity to home, and finances is a tall order. I’ll have to confer with my team of advisers and weigh it all out before deciding.

In the meantime, wish me luck on the Reason internship. If I don’t get it, I hope Julian Sanchez — also a finalist — does.

A space mystery

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

My dad and I went to see the 70-millimeter re-release of "2001: A Space Odyssey" at the Music Box Theatre on Sunday. Of course, the Music Box — recently defeated rat infestation and all — is a Chicago cinema treasure, and it was great to see the "2001" on a big screen for the first time.

I had only seen it on video previously, and I must admit it took me several attempts to do even that much. The critics who originally panned the movie as too slow, boring and abstract were not entirely wrong. The movie’s pace is definitely deliberate, and it makes you draw the line from one plot point to another, instead of having it drawn for you.

If you’re not ready to invest that effort (or at least get high for "the ultimate trip") then you won’t enjoy "2001." In the end, however you interpret the film’s enigmatic ending — or even if you think Kubrick and Clarke‘s anti-technology alarmism is off the mark — either you let yourself be carried away by the vast stillnesses and glorious soundscapes of Kubrick’s creation or you endure a miserable 139 minutes.

Whatever else can be said of "2001," it is always challenging and provocative — how many of today’s movies can be similarly assessed?

Post script: As with "Citizen Kane," "Casablanca" and other cinematic classics, it’s hard for me to view them apart from the snippets of mental imagery that have been instilled in my brain through parody, advertising, etc.

And I know going in that they are supposed to be great, so my critical functioning gets turned off, or at least shifts into lower gear. It’s almost as though I need to forget about the movie’s "greatness" in order to discover its true artistic power. Of course, sometimes I find that its hidden so deeply that it’s nonexistent. I like to think that I do have an independent mind, after all.