LIFE & STYLEPAGE 10Omaha Bryan High School

THE ORATOROctober 9, 2015

Christmas in July takes literal meaning

Preparing for the holiday season, Hobby Lobby puts out their holiday merchandise. On an Aug. 11 trip to get some craft supplies an Orator staff member was caught off guard by the display.

Before holiday seasons even start, Halloween and Christmas fanatics begin looking for decorations for the best prices, even though it’s three or more months until the actual holiday. They stock up on costumes all the way to fake ten feet tall Christ-mas trees. Retailers have real-ized the impatience of these shoppers and have taken advantage of their eagerness. Stores across America have started to sell holiday products months ahead of time. Stores including Walmart, Target, K-Mart and Hobby Lobby have already kicked off holiday

‘Watchman’ shocks ‘Mockingbird’ fans leaving them with questions

Nearly 55 years after the publication of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” bestsell-ing author Harper Lee comes back with her rivet-ing masterpiece, “Go Set a Watchman.” In “Mockingbird,” readers fell in love with its main character, Scout, now better known as Jean Lou-ise Finch, and the return of many other characters. “Watchman” dives into the 1950’s civil rights era showing readers the views of the South during this time. Penned as neither a pre-quel nor sequel, “Watch-man” kicks off with Finch visiting her fictional home-

town, Maycomb, Ala. She decides to visit her father, Atticus Finch, now 72 and hit with severe arthritis. Readers will be sur-prised to learn that the Atticus they left behind in “Mockingbird,” is in no way the Atticus readers meet in “Watchman.” He is no longer a hero and his controversial beliefs on race make him seem nar-row minded. Jean Louise coming to this realization makes up much of the plot. She stops picturing Maycomb as a perfect town and sees it as a town that isn’t ready for change. In the book, we see the cold truth about her town, her father and society as a whole. There are many flash-backs that transport us

King of hip-hop, matter of opinion

Tupac Shakur revo-lutionized the streets of America through his in-novations in music, poetry, acting and by impacting lives with his words and actions. Shakur was raised in N.Y. and went to the Bal-timore School of The Arts as a teenager taking acting and dance classes until he and his family moved to the west of California. There he discovered the Oakland Calif. based hip-hop group “Digital Under-ground” and was involved in rapping ever since. Christopher Wallace (Biggie Smalls), was also raised in N.Y. and was a drug dealer at an early age. As a teenager Smalls

experimented with rap and soon made his own album “Ready to Die,” that blew up afterwards. The feud between East and West side gangs in California had always been current but was flared up when a rap battle feud started. Shakur and Smalls had no actual reason to hate each other than their gang differences. They were only pegged against each other when rumors spread that random disses in Tu-pac’s songs were towards Smalls and Smalls’ song’s disses were about Shakur as well. The greatest diss song on track was “Hittem’ Up,” by Tupac and was di-rected towards Smalls, and the song “Who Shot Ya,” by Smalls was directed towards Tupac.

Most of Shakur’s music has meaning, he spoke about things that others couldn’t say and spoke for those who had no words and no voice. “Even though you’re fed up. You gotta keep your head up,” and “No one knows my struggle they only see the trouble, not knowing it’s hard to carry on when no one loves you,” are two of many great quotes rapped by Shakur. Smalls did speak for the streets and produced some pretty great lyrics back to-wards Shakur, but he didn’t really speak for society and everyone, like Shakur did in his songs and wasn’t as emotional. The answer is obvious of who made the biggest impact, yet the debate on who’s superior lives on.

back into the 30’s, showing how Jean Louise has ma-tured and finally became her own person with her own set of ideas. This book can be read as a one piece novel, or a story that gives some closure to “Mockingbird.” Either way, this book is definitely worth the read.

merchandise sales. Christ-mas products are stocked up high on shelves. With Halloween still on its way, releasing Christmas mechandise seems like an act of greed from retailers. According to nrf.com, Americans spent an aver-age of $730 on gifts and seasonal items during the holiday season. Last year on Halloween alone, a total of $6.9 billion were spent. But this figure does not even come close to the grand numbers Christmas racks up, a whopping $602 billion are spent yearly. Walking into a store now, it’s obvious Christ-mas products overshadow those of Halloween. Cus-tomers have shown their dislike toward these facts. It has become some-

what of a custom to kick off the holiday Christmas sales with Black Friday, but this rule has long been forgotten. “To me, it seems logical to come out with the next holiday products after the last holiday passes,” sophomore Kara Brown said. Although selling these products early is more than helping companies, customers can benefit from getting popular items that might sell out the closer the holiday gets. Also, it’s easier to put items on layaway and make small payments. Walmart has recently released their holiday layaway. Although some customers disapprove of this, many admit that they

Lost in a realm of imagination, junior Cashari Frazier recollects herself and gets back to her work. Stacking ideas of concepts, characters, plots and stories, Frazier loses herself in her world of creativity. Her notebooks covering all subjects, have drawings scattered inside each and every page. The only limit is the size of her paper. Honing her skills and talent since the age of seven, Frazier has added new concepts to her abili-ties. She has been creating her own stories for nearly four years. They consist of teenagers in fantasy worlds. Basing the stories off of current events, Frazier has been drawing her own comics for years. She began to make comics due to her father’s inspiration. Watching him draw her whole life, she just loved the idea of art. Her freshman year she discovered the late Bob Ross, an American painter, art instructor and host of “The Joy of Painting” television show on PBS. He immediately became an artist she looks up to. Looking up to her father and Ross, Frazier frequently gets asked why she draws.

Photo by: Ranae Duncan

Life in Cartoons no longer fiction

Photo courtesy of : blogspot.com

“I just love it,” she said, “it’s very interesting, beautiful.” Her immense passion for drawing and making cartoons pushes her to pursue a career in art. She wants to make a profession out of it someday. Frazier's plan for her future is to bring her stories to life and develop graphic novels and cartoons for the big screen. She'd love to do tutorials on television, something like Ross did. Though Frazier is not alone in the world of art, she is but one person in the void of imagination. She feels bewildered to find and hear about others, just like her. Before meeting other artists who wish to create cartoons and comics, she felt very alone, as if she was the only one in the world of art, but, she is not alone. There are numerous students that aspire to achieve the same goals.

IAN JORDAN-CHOWNINGReporter

GELSEY TIMILSINAReporter

like to get their holiday shopping out of the way early. Many people find advertising Christmas ages before the big date makes

it all less special. It causes people to become desensi-tized to it. In the end, it’s all up to the customer’s opin-ion, whether they choose

to binge shop months in advance or to relish in the world of chaos that is in the world of last minute shopping.

GELSEY TIMILSINAReporter

NICOLE FISCHERReporter

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