All posts by HPSH Plaid Line

Movies/TV/Theaters

‘Gilmore Girls’ season one review

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By: Priya Anderson & Ruby Anderson

Source: Screenshot from Ruby’s IPhone, Gilmore Girls opening credits

The 2000s TV show ‘Gilmore Girls’, created by Amy Sherman-Palladio, is a comedic drama set in the fictional Connecticut town Stars Hollow that is centered around the relationship between single mother Lorelei Gilmore and her teenage daughter Rory Gilmore.

Season one of Gilmore Girls introduces many important characters such as Lorelei and Rory. This mother-daughter duo sets the stage for this show as they have a quirky and loving relationship bringing together themes of family, relationships, and friendship. Lorelei, who is played by Lauren Graham, is the hard working single mother of Rory. Throughout the season Lorelei navigates the hardships of single motherhood, relationships, and the tough expectations of her wealthy parents. Rory, played by Alexis Bledel, is an intelligent and ambitious 16-year-old girl with dreams of going to Harvard. During season one we follow Rory’s journey after being accepted into the prestigious school, Chilton Academy.

Stars Hollow is the perfect setting for Gilmore Girls. With its eccentric but charming characters, the small New England town is full of personality and factors into the show’s comforting feel. Stars Hollow includes a variety of businesses and shops from Luke’s Diner to Ms. Patty’s dance studio. Residents of Stars Hollow are a big part of what makes the town so perfect. Luke Danes (Scott Patterson), the owner of Luke’s Diner, is a grumpy but lovable character we see often throughout the show. His diner is the town’s hangout spot and Lorelai and Rory’s favorite place to eat and relax. There is also the towns dance instructor, Ms. Patty (Liz Torres) who loves to gossip and involve herself in town events. Lorelai’s workplace, The Independence Inn, introduces us to her best friend Sookie St. James (Melissa McCarthy) who is a talented chef and an important character to the show. The many more amusing characters in this community help add a comedic relief to more serious aspects of Lorelai and Rory’s hectic lives.

The complex relationship between Lorelai, Rory, and Lorelai’s parents Emily (Kelly Bishop) and Richard Gilmore (Edward Herrmann) creates an important narrative throughout the show. After Lorelai seeks help from her parents to pay for Rory’s tuition she is, in return, forced to have dinner with her parents and Rory every week. Tension between Lorelai and her parents is common throughout the season from their wildly different lifestyles and lack of understanding of each other. Emily and Richard show what life was like for Lorelai before she became pregnant with Rory and left home to take care of her on her own. Lorelai’s difficult relationship with her parents is shown in conflict and are some of the most important moments throughout the season.

While ‘Gilmore Girls’ is mostly about family, the theme of love and romance also plays a big role. During season one we follow the love story between Rory and her first boyfriend, Dean Forester (Jared Padalecki). Early in the season the two meet at Stars Hollow High School shortly after Dean transfers there from Chicago. The two quickly start dating after Dean finds interest in Rory and they begin to get to know each other. The brief yet serious relationship between Lorelai and Max Medina (Scott Cohen) begins when Lorelai meets the Chilton teacher at a parent teacher meeting not long after Rory begins school there. The relationship between the two starts off slow as Lorelai is hesitant due to Max being her daughter’s teacher but quickly becomes serious throughout the season.

Rory’s acceptance into Chilton Academy created many new difficulties. The elite school is a big difference to the public school she attended with her best friend, Lane Kim (Keiko Ageno) who is a recurring character throughout the series, and is known for her love for rock music and her struggles with her strict mother. Chilton being a great way for Rory to be accepted into Harvard, is an academic challenge in Rory’s life bringing her piles of school work and introduces her intense classmate Paris Geller (Liza Weil) who quickly becomes a rival to Rory as she sees her as a student who wants to take her spot as top student in her class.

‘Gilmore Girls’ season one sets off the series to a great start introducing loveable and relatable characters, as well as offering a great atmosphere for a show that will be loved by many for years to come.

Tech/Games

Easy introduction to JavaScript

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By: Charlotte Bistodeau

Image created with Google AI

There are around 1300 programming languages in existence today but there are only a few that are most commonly used. I’m going to take you through the base languages of coding (HTML/CSS) and the most popular coding language (JavaScript) to give you a better understanding of something few stop to learn about.

HTML/CSS

HTML or HyperText Markup Language, is a markup language that’s used to give structure and meaning to web content and is the standard markup language for creating web pages. HTML consists of a series of elements that tell the browser, or a web page, how to display content. For example, defining paragraphs, headings, data tables, embedding images and videos into the web page. 

Example of HTML:

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html>

<head>

<title>Page Title</title>

Etc. etc.

CSS or Cascading Style Sheets, is a language of style rules that describe how HTML elements are going to be displayed on the web page or other media. Stated simply, CSS is a coding language used to style a Web page. CSS can also be used to control the layout of multiple web pages at once which saves the coder a lot of work. For example, CSS is used for setting background colors and fonts, and laying out content in multiple columns.

Example of CSS:

body {

    background-color: lightblue;

}

h1   {

    color:  white;

    text-align:  center;

}

Etc. etc.

JavaScript 

JavaScript is an easy programming language to learn, the most popular and the most used in the world. JavaScript is a scripting language that allows you to give web pages interactive elements and implement complex features such as dynamically updating content, control multimedia, animate images, timely content updates, interactive maps, pop-up menus, clickable buttons, and a lot more. JavaScript uses a combination of basic HTML and CSS to make the web page function.

JavaScript isn’t only good at making web pages but it’s also a great tool to start game development. Because Javascript is easy to learn and understand and can be used just about anywhere, it’s a great way to start game development of smaller games. JavaScript is not only used by beginners, but intermediates and also advanced coders, making it a great starter language for coding and programming. 

Example of JavaScript:

<!DOCTYPE  html>

<button type=”button”

onclick=”document.getElementById(‘demo’).innerHTML  =  Date()”>

Click me to display Date and Time.</button>

<p  id=”demo”></p>

Etc. etc.

Out of all 1300 coding languages, these three are the simplest and most basic programming languages to learn. There are plenty of better coding languages for specific things such as C++ being a much better option for developing an open world game than JavaScript because C++ was built exactly for that sort of thing. But if you’re looking to get into coding then I can wholeheartedly recommend JavaScript to you.

Getting To Know/History

Lawyer X

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By: Baarika Suresh

In an effort to try to bring certain legal cases to light, this is the 1st of a possible series of articles on cases that deal with legal ethics.

Cover of a book that was written about this case

A scandal like no other, Lawyer X was a royal commission in Victoria, Australia created to examine the actions of Nicola Gobbo and the Victorian police working as a lawyer and acting as a registered informer. The police fought hard to keep Gobbo’s identity a secret and she was a target for the clients she defended, but also did not want to jeopardize their high profile convictions. The scandal took many years to play out, and left the premier of the time, Daniel Andrews, with no choice but to call a royal commission into the events.

In response to the royal commission judgment by Ms. Margaret McMurdo it was revealed that Lawyer X received 3 million dollars plus other payments from Victoria Police for providing information about her clients whilst she was representing them. McMurdo found that police “tolerated bending the rules to help solve serious crime” and that the police claimed that the reason they waited to get legal advice on Gobbo was because “they did not want to be told they could not use Gobbo the way they intended”.

The fact that Gobbo was representing her clients while also informing about them clearly violates attorney client privilege, making most of the cases an unfair trial. She made a name for herself during the Melbourne gangland killings, but was first registered as an informer when she was just a law student, giving the police information about her drug dealer boyfriend/housemate. She was also a registered informer on a colleague who she claimed was laundering money.

This brings the question of ethics to mind: Where is the bar set that violating attorney client privilege is ok? In response to the royal commission, policies were discussed requiring those who might come into the possession of legally privileged information, to be approved by the Victoria Police ethics committee before being registered as an informer.

In total, the royal commission heard from 82 witnesses, including over 50 police officers during the 129 days of hearings. The full transcripts of the royal commission are available online.

For more information, please visit:

Movies/TV/Theaters

‘It Ends With Us’

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By: Sophie Elmstrom & Lily Sheldon

‘It Ends with Us’ came out on August 9, 2024. This movie was based on the 2016 novel by Colleen Hoover, and the film was directed by Justin Baldoni. The film stars Jason Baldoni, Blake Lively, Jenny Slate, and Hasan Minhaj. The movie received mixed reviews, but it was a box office success, grossing 346.4 million worldwide against a production budget of 25 million. We wanted to give our thoughts on this movie, and compare it to the reviews of others.

Here’s a quick rundown of the movie. Lily Bloom (Blake Lively) moves to Boston to pursue her dream of opening her own business after the passing of her father. In Boston, she meets neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid, and they start to fall in love. As their relationship develops, Ryle starts to remind Lily of her parents’ relationship and the abusive tendencies of her father. Lily is at a dinner with Ryle, when she discovers that her high school sweetheart, Atlas, is the owner of the restaurant. Old feelings for Atlas begin to bubble up again, and Lily is stuck with an impossible choice to choose between Atlas and Ryle. Ryle hears about Atlas, and becomes enraged and jealous. He takes out his anger on Lily in forms of domesticated abuse. Lily reveals to Ryle about her father’s abuse to her mother and Lily escapes Ryle, and seeks out Atlas for help. She discovers she is pregnant, and moves out and lives with Atlas for a little. Lily asks for a divorce from Ryle, and he agrees after she asks Ryle how their daughter would react if she was abused by her partner. Lily hopes she has ended the cycle of abuse in her family, telling her daughter “It ends with Us”.

The movie also has a series of flashbacks where we go back in time to when Lily was in high school. One day, Lily is looking out her window and sees a boy her age coming out of the abandoned house next door. As she is walking to her bus she sees him at the stop as well. This sparks Lily to leave supplies at the door of this house in hope of helping this man out. Lily and this boy start talking to each other and Lily finds out his name is Atlas. These two end up falling in love with each other when suddenly Atlas moves away and they don’t continue to talk.

This movie received a 6.5/10 from IMDB and a 57% from Rotten Tomatoes. We believe that this ranking is just a little too low; we think this movie deserves an 8/10. Many reviews agree with the rating of 6.5/10, they believe that the story is very flat and not interesting. Many disagree with what we believed about how it is similar to the book, they said that it missed many book details.

As individuals who have read this book, we believe that movie did a very good job at portraying these characters and the story. Although there are controversies with this movie we believe that the movie was very good and interesting. The way that they portrayed Ryles’ character was very similar and the casting was very good in our opinion.

Overall, we believe that this movie deserves a 7/10 because although it wasn’t a perfect movie it was a very good book adaptation.

You can watch this movie on Prime Video.

Music/Concerts

Why ‘Plan A’ is one of the best albums this year

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By: Bailey Glime

‘Plan A’ by Lil Tecca is one of the best albums this year and here is why. ‘Plan A’ shows a more experimental Lil Tecca who uses different tones in his voice to make songs sound vocally different. The album has 18 songs and is 44 minutes long, so the album is not long but has a lot to offer.

‘Plan A’ doesn’t just have the same sounding songs like other albums. This album dives deeper into different sounds to attract the audience more. It also makes the songs more of a fun listen too. The album also has songs that are more chill, and others that hype you up more.

Personally, the song that sticks out the most and is my favorite is “HOMEBODY”. This is one of my favorite songs because of the way Tecca makes his voice go up and down. There is also a catchy chorus that is fun to not just listen to but dance to as well. This song is also not a long one to listen to, and it has the listener wanting to listen to it again.

Compared to other albums of the same genre, this album isn’t completely serious and it’s more fun. At the same time, it has that seriousness in it that the other albums do too. The effect that this has on the listener, is that they can understand the lyrics better but still groove to the beat. This makes it a replayable album.

A song that makes the album pop with its lyrics is “120”. In this song Lil Tecca is talking about how with his success now he has a lot. He sings about being able to own expensive things like a 120k necklace. This song also has a groovy beat that just makes the lyrics pop more.

Overall, ‘Plan A’ shows many different sounds and makes it a very fun and interesting listen. It really dives into all the techniques Lil Tecca has under his sleeve, and draws the listeners to the album. This makes it one of the best albums this year. Having all these sounds mixed together makes this album a really enjoyable one.

Movies/TV/Theaters

‘Heartstopper’ Season 3 review

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By: Persephone Pond

‘Heartstopper’ is a Netflix original series based on the Webcomic written by Alice Oseman. Directed by Andy Newbery, season 3 of this show released all 8 episodes on Thursday, October 3rd, and received overwhelmingly positive reviews. This article is a quick, spoiler free review from the perspective of a long time fan.

Seasons 1 and 2 focused largely on building foundations of relationships between characters and expanding on the experiences of coming out as queer, while season 3 dives deeper into mental health issues that teens deal with and the experiences of moving further into a relationship. From the perspective of a queer teen who has been through much of the same things these characters in the show have, the writing deals with these heavier themes incredibly well.

Good representation of the lived experience of queer people is not an easy thing to find, luckily more and more writers have been incorporating these sorts of themes into media nowadays. In contrast, representation of mental health issues, especially eating disorders and obsessive compulsive disorder, are still largely stigmatized in today’s society. Charlie Spring, the protagonist of ‘Heartstopper’, deals with these issues in season 3, which changes the atmosphere of the show from lighthearted to kind of depressing. Although these heavy themes make the season more sad, it’s so important to spread awareness, especially in today’s society where these problems are not uncommon, they’re just repressed.

Charlie and Nick, the protagonists of the show, deal with the stress of mental illness, while side characters still get enough attention to grow an attachment to them. Season 3 also brings up more controversy about binary transgender teens, non-binary gender exploration, and asexuality, which weren’t elaborated much on the past 2 seasons.

Overall, these characters have a way of pulling on anyone and everyone’s heartstrings, and season 3 of this show is so powerful. I highly recommend sticking with ‘Heartstopper’, or starting from the beginning.

Getting To Know/History

The architecture of Clarence Wigington

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By: Karl Salkowski

Highland Water Tower

Clarence Wigington is one of the most beloved and respected architects in the Twin Cities area. He worked primarily between 1920-1940. During that time he designed over 60 buildings which still stand in Saint Paul. He designed a variety of buildings including: golf clubhouses, fire stations, park buildings, airports, and a majority of Saint Paul public schools. Some instances of his work you might recognize are the Highland Water Tower and the Harriet Island Pavilion. In 2000 after a restoration, the Harriet Island Pavilion was renamed the Clarence Wigington Pavilion in his honor.

Clarence Wigington was born in Lawrence, Kansas, but his family soon moved to Omaha, Nebraska where he grew up. He was born in 1888 and lived until 1967. After Clarence graduated from high school at the age of 15, he went to art school before ultimately working for the American Institute of Architects. In 1910, 2 years after he started his own office, Wigington was listed as one of only 59 African-American architects, artists, and draftsmen in the country. Wigington became the first African-American municipal architect, and served as Saint Paul’s senior architect for 34 years.

Wigington designed many buildings as senior architect. Some of the schools and famous places he designed include: Como Park Elementary, Randolph Heights Elementary, Como Park Zoo, and the Roy Wilkins Auditorium.

His most famous architectural design is undoubtedly the Highland Park Water Tower. Along with 3 other Wigington buildings, the Highland Water Tower is on the National Register of Historic Places. The Highland Water Tower was built in 1928 for only $69,483 which equates to around $1,281,173 today. The Highland Water tower could hold nearly 200,000 gallons of water, and has been left nearly unaltered since its construction. Although the Highland Water Tower is no longer in service, the tower is still open to the public 2 times a year during Highland Fest, and the second weekend in October.

Many of Clarence Wigington’s designs are still beloved by the public over a century after they were built. Wigington made a considerable contribution to the architecture of the Twin Cities area, and certainly to that of Highland Park. His architecture has continued to be adored by many throughout the city.

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Student Creative Art

Football drawing

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By: Pwe Doh Gay

This is a drawing of a football. I made the football because lots of people like football and I like sports; I am even on the football team. Football is one of the most famous sports in America.

In this drawing, I used a pencil, then went over with a Sharpie. After that I used markers to color the football in. I put an American flag on the football to tell you that it is American football and not soccer. I also wrote football on it just for fun.

I like how cool the picture turned out because of the American flag on it. The flag makes the football look different. But I don’t like how the stars look because of how close they are together.

For my next drawing, I will draw a cap or something else.

Books/Art

Gotham: One of the worst comic cities

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By: Munira Ahmadad

The city that Batman resides and fights crime in was first given the name Gotham in the 1940 comic ‘Batman #4’. In real life, Gotham has been used as slang for New York City. Originally, the term Gotham comes from ‘The Merry Tales of the Mad Men of Gottam’,  a 16th century fictional English town. The residents of Gottam were incredibly stupid, and a potential translation of Gottam is “Goat town” as goats are associated with stupidity. Gotham became an insult for New Yorkers, and more modernly “Gotham” is more connected to New York’s nightlife or the darker side of the city.

Unlike Metropolis, who’s major threats are from space, Gotham is filled with street-level crime. Even without the Arkham supervillains, the city has several issues like political corruption and the Gotham City Police Department’s higher members being involved in drug trafficking and being bribed by crime groups.

Not only has Gotham’s economy been controlled by numerous crime families for generations, we see in the 468th issue of ‘Batman’ Vol. 1, (1991),  that by the 1990s Triads had managed to take a billion dollars out of Gotham annually. There’s gangs, mafia groups, and also there’s the Yakuza operating in Gotham, too. Gotham has always been cursed to suck since the city was apparently built on top of where an ancient evil dude was sealed and imprisoned. He later names himself Doctor Gotham.

The mayors are often either incompetent or also corrupt, and since its origin, Gotham has been structured so that those taking part in gang wars, drug smuggling, organized crime, etc. don’t have any real reason to fear the law or authority. That was until Batman.

After Batman’s rise as a vigilante, he quickly became something trigger-happy criminals on the streets learned to be afraid of. Because of this, political figures in Gotham were more interested in using the law enforcement for finding and bringing the Batman down due to him taking the city’s issues in his own hands and becoming pretty much the only effective direct role for taking criminals out. The reasoning presented is that Batman is a criminal himself and a threat, but as we know the police force and government take part and aid crime themselves. Batman is a threat to them too.

One good thing about Gotham is that the dark and eery vibe is great for Halloween.

National, News

About Hurricane Milton

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By: Siri David

Florida coast Photo credits: me

Hurricane Milton is affecting the environment and people all over the world. Hurricane Milton hit Florida’s central west coast on October 9th. It was marked as a category 3 hurricane. It had winds up to 120 mph. Earlier Wednesday morning the national weather service found at least around 4 tornados on the south west coast of Florida. This all led to a massive category 5 storm on October 7th with winds hitting speeds of 180 mph. Milton rained so much in areas of Floridas that it is qualified as a 1 in 1,000 year rainfall event.

Hurricane Milton has affected so many people. Over 3.2 million people have lost power in Florida. There have been at least 14 deaths confirmed since the storm has passed through Florida. Many people have lost their homes and all their belongings. Which leads to lots of people being homeless now. A lot of small companies were also destroyed which led to job losses, because not everyone can recover all of that damage. There were 1,200 people rescued by the National Guard. A total of around 6,500 troops were asked to come into work.

The hurricane also left a large effect on the environment. It killed many animals and destroyed a lot of their ecosystems. This causes them to not be able to repopulate as well because their environment has been ruined. Another thing that affects the environment is with all of the things being destroyed, all of that trash is being spread all over, so that isn’t good for the environment either.

This hurricane is something that will change our country forever, so here are some ways you can help. If you are someone who doesn’t live near states that were affected you can donate to foundations and help raise money. There are a lot of organizations that are taking donations, just make sure you do your research to make sure you don’t get scammed. If you do live near states that were affected you can sign up with the Red Cross to become a volunteer or could work to make meals and help get homes for people through other organizations.

To recover from a disaster like this everyone needs to participate to help the people and the environment. It takes all of us.