Author: Sandy Mui

Sandy Mui is a Journalism and Media Studies major at Brooklyn College. She got her start in journalism by covering NBA basketball for two campus newspapers: Brooklyn College’s The Excelsior (where she is now Web Manager) and Macaulay Honors College’s The Macaulay Messenger (where she is now Co-Editor-in-Chief). Sandy is best known for her coverage of the Brooklyn Nets for various online publications, including: Nothin’ But Nets, The Brooklyn Game and Brook-Lin.com. Her endeavor in journalism has expanded to the industry as a whole, and she is most interested in examining how social media is used for journalistic purposes.

What is Love?

December 18, 2015 / Sandy Mui / 2 Comments

What is love?

Is it even a feeling at all?

And why is it always

Associated with tragedy?

What is love?

To me, it is sacrificing anything for someone,

The same way Tosca and Mario

Sacrificed for each other.

What is love?

Not to be confused with lust,

The physical attraction Scarpia

Had for Tosca.

What is love?

Is it the way Jack and Rose

Looked at each other

Moments before Jack let go?

What is love?

Is it what Juliet felt

When she found out

Romeo killed himself?

What is love?

Is it a weakness,

Or is it

What conquers all?

What is love?

That heavy feeling

In your heart

For the one.

What is love?

Something that can

Make one feel

Both pain and happiness.

Have I ever been in love?

The hopeful answer is yes,

And that I still am,

But I really don’t know.

The Big Band Performance Reflection

December 17, 2015 / Sandy Mui / 0 Comments

I didn’t think I would like jazz because I always thought of it as boring or soothing music and to be honest, I really thought I would fall asleep during the performance. I was so wrong because I really enjoyed the Big Band’s performance! Now, I have a completely different perception of Latin jazz.

My first impression of the conservatory was that the space was extremely small and didn’t really look that fancy. I didn’t expect the conservatory to be like an opera or something, but I did think it would be a lot grander than it actually was. However, the vibe of the overall performance made up for the fact that the performance took place in such a small setting.

What made the performance so enjoyable was that everyone on stage seemed to be having a lot of fun. I really liked the fun and casual atmosphere that the musicians and conductor created as they were playing. Much of the performance felt like it was spontaneous, but you could really see that the happy emotions of all the musicians were real. It was really cool how almost all of the musicians on stage got their own solo (Vaughn you were great), which isn’t seen a lot in other music performances. My favorite piece was the first one that was played (sorry I forgot the name). I couldn’t stop humming to it, kept tapping my feet, and really wanted to get up to dance! The second-to-last piece and Baby Jack were really great as well!

Outside Arts Event – Irish Heritage Memorial Reflection

December 17, 2015 / Sandy Mui / 0 Comments

On Thursday, December 10, I went with Adam, Katherine, Abraham, and Melissa to the Irish Heritage Memorial. We had wanted to go to the Museum of Feelings, but the line was insane – it would’ve been a two hour wait. Luckily, Melissa and Katherine found out that the Irish Heritage Memorial was only five minutes away and off we went!

It might’ve been because it was relatively late at night, but I thought the memorial gave off a really gloomy vibe. I really liked how the words were displayed on really bright stripes (see image below) because the brightness made the words seem much more important. The architecture of the memorial was also really appealing; I liked the stones and the pathway we could take really high up for one part of the memorial.

We didn’t stay for that long, but check out how cool the memorial looks!

Snapshot Exhibit Reflection

December 17, 2015 / Sandy Mui / 0 Comments

I signed up to be a student curator for the Snapshot Exhibit because I’ve always been obsessed with the logistics behind planning events and I thought planning the Snapshot Exhibit would be interesting. I particularly liked that we decided to use the theme time since all of the photos were taken on the same day, October 11th. It was also cool to use strange times like 9:58 or 11:12 rather than 11:00 or 12:30 because that made it much more intriguing.

The hardest part of curating the exhibit was figuring out whose photos were whose. It was even more difficult since smaller photos (4×6) were ordered first, but we decided we wanted them blown up even larger (8×10). Once the larger-sized photos came, we had to match them with the smaller photos so that we wouldn’t separate the groups of photos that were already created. I remember having a stack of photos next to me and me scrolling through the whole submission page to try to figure out who took those photos – what a pain!

Overall, I thought we did the best we could with the space that we were allotted. It would have been a lot cooler if the photos were displayed like an actual exhibit (actually on walls and not on panels). Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case, but nonetheless, I thought we still did a good job.

Here’s my photo. The Nets’ open practice just happened to be the same day!

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St. Ann’s Warehouse: Henry IV Review

November 17, 2015 / Sandy Mui / 0 Comments

I knew something was different about this performance that we were going to once I saw that St. Ann’s Warehouse was so hidden and didn’t look that fancy for a venue. While walking down Water Street, Mark and I actually thought that 60 Water Street was St. Ann’s Warehouse because it looked particularly nice. Perhaps the gloominess of the day because of the rain made St. Ann’s Warehouse appear even more obscure.

Watching the play may have been the weirdest experience of my life. I did not expect the performance to be so casual and the seating was like the seating at a book signing event. Once I walked into the play’s performance area to take a seat, I knew that this would be an interesting experience, to say the least.

Overall, I found the performance entertaining and fun. The casualness of the play made the mood light and upbeat. I thought the toy props, especially the chairs in the beginning, were really funny. I do think that they tried a little too hard to make the play more relatable and modern though. Additionally, at times it was hard to understand what the actresses were saying, making the play difficult to follow. The acting and events unfolding on stage kept me engaged, but I was really confused for most of the performance. My favorite actress was the one who played Hotspur. She was really energetic and her acting was amazing. It was incredible how she was able to actually do all those push-ups and pull-ups while saying her lines.

I doubt I’ll ever see anything again as weird as that (in a good way), so yay for experience!

Tosca Opera Reflection

November 4, 2015 / Sandy Mui / 0 Comments

I thought I would like the opera a lot more than I actually did, which was disappointing. I really didn’t like it until the end of Act II when Tosca killed Scarpia. Even then, Tosca had an extremely long, dragging scene when she took forever to leave Scarpia’s apartment by contemplating about what to do or something. Although the opera had an interesting storyline, I found it really slow and the intermissions were way too long.

I didn’t really like Tosca during Act I because as we discussed in class, the whole jealousy thing over the woman Mario painted was so irrelevant. Tosca was just annoying during the whole first act because of her jealousy, although I did find it a bit funny when she said to Mario to make the woman in the painting’s eyes black. Her jealousy didn’t contribute to the plot at all except when Scarpia came to their house and lied to Tosca saying that Mario was with another woman in the cottage just so the lieutenants could follow Tosca to the cottage. Either way, Tosca ended up finding out what was really going on since Mario told her the truth about him hiding a fugitive (away from the scene), but the jealousy took up so much of Act I and it barely contributed to the plot.

I started to catch the hint that Mario was going to die when Scarpia was telling the lieutenant to do a fake execution just like -insert name here- since that was suspicious. Tosca’s death wasn’t necessarily obvious but I had a feeling she would die as well since there was so much time between when she killed Scarpia and Mario’s “fake” execution. I just thought there was no way she would be able to get away with that; there would be some way the lieutenants would find out about Scarpia’s death.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the whole art being singing either which is ironic since that is what an opera’s supposed to be. There wasn’t that much going on onstage for me to get lost in the subtitles and miss the action on stage, so that was good. Maybe I would’ve liked it more if the words were simply spoken instead of sung though. I thought the singing made it a little too dramatic at times, which contributed to making the opera a lot slower. Oh well, maybe operas are just not my thing!

Ballet Review – Sandy Mui

October 27, 2015 / Sandy Mui / 1 Comment

I’ve never been to a ballet before so I didn’t really expect much. To be honest, I thought I would hate it. Boy, was I wrong!

The first ballet piece was my least favorite. I didn’t hate it and it wasn’t actually that bad, but relative to all of the other ballet pieces, I definitely liked it the least. There was just so much going on with so many dancers on the stage, which made it difficult to focus. After the first piece, I thought, “hey, maybe this won’t actually be so bad” since it was far from what I expected and it only got better from there. I thought it was interesting how the audience applauded for particular dancers after the first act was over when each dancer bowed on stage. If I recall correctly, this only happened after the first ballet piece.

My favorite piece was the second one. I loved the costumes and how there were only three dancers on stage, so we could really focus on their individual movements and it wasn’t too overwhelming on stage. My favorite part of that piece was when the three dancers dressed in bright green were moving together on one leg. Sorry for my horrible description – I have no idea what this move is called. I also really loved the costumes because they were so bright and flashy – lime green is really not the color I would picture with ballet. However, the most interesting part of the piece was how the music started before the curtains were gone and I thought that was really helpful in setting the mood of the piece.

I was intrigued by the third piece since that was the only one that had more of a story. The gunshot noises made me flinch and I thought it was cool how they could incorporate sound from besides the music into the piece. The story also made it easier to understand what was going on, compared to the first piece. I really liked the use of characters, a story, and dance in this piece, but the second piece was still my favorite.

I never thought I’d say this, but I like ballet and I’m looking forward to the opera!

High Line Art

September 30, 2015 / Sandy Mui / 0 Comments

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When I saw the mini image of the graffiti art on the paper that Prof. Ugoretz handed out, it was hard to see that it was actually physical graffiti rather than graffiti on a wall. I chose this picture because the graffiti art was my favorite and it’s still a little hard to tell that this isn’t actually on the wall, besides the art being in front of the black sign on the upper left.

A Night at the Brooklyn Museum

September 13, 2015 / Sandy Mui / 0 Comments

Well, Wednesday was the worst day of my week. I started the day with a crazy bio lab class and on my way back to campus to meet with my friends so we could go to the Brooklyn Museum together, I got drenched in the rain that only lasted an hour (by the time I got off the bus that got me to campus, it already stopped raining). On the bright side, the Brooklyn Museum was a pretty fun experience.

I thought the questions on the screen (where we could text our answers in) was a fun idea. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to text any of my answers in because my phone has horrible reception, but that was a really good idea.

My group spent a lot of time wandering around the 3rd floor since we were already on it for the info session and it was really hard to choose the paintings we wanted to talk about. We only had to record conversations for one easy painting and one more difficult painting, but almost everything was difficult for me. I was never really a fan of art and that means I never really talked about art either.

Next, we went to the fifth floor and looked around. When we finally chose something, it was Bad Seeds Off On A Fast One by Invation Dream Club, which was pop art done over three panels. My groupmates were basically talking about the meaning of the artwork, but I was only pointing out my observations, which made me feel a little awkward. The same happened for the second work of art we discussed, which was the Web of Life by John Biggers. I found this painting a little easier to discuss because there was just so much going on.

Unfortunately, we later realized that the tape recorder didn’t record our two conversations. Maybe the person recording it didn’t press the right buttons or something – I don’t know, but we basically needed to redo it. Professor Ugoretz recommended that we just record one conversation so that we have something for the Creative Arts Workshop. This was actually pretty funny because we chose to redo the Web of Life conversation and it was basically as if we were scripted because we repeated the exact same things we said earlier when recording that conversation.

One of the last exhibits we visited was the sneaker exhibit – one of my groupmates and I were really excited to see it. I’m not a sneakerhead, but I’m a huge NBA basketball fan so the different sneakers was intriguing. I took more pictures of shoes than paintings at the museum.

One groupmate wanted more pictures so before we left, we checked out one exhibit on the first floor. I don’t know what it’s called, but it was the place past the sliding automatic doors. There was a giant sneaker in there. However, what I found interesting was that my group was wondering if the geometric chairs in there were actually chairs or works of art (we were questioning whether we could sit on them). This reminded me of our discussion in the last seminar, where we were discussing the definition of art.

Paintings I Liked