Originality is dead?

So Camp Hollywood – the annual swing dance camp I journey to every year for 3 non-stop days/nights of dancing – has come and gone….and there’s not much to say other than MAN, WHAT A GREAT TIME I HAD! 

Pretty sure I lost a couple pounds due to all the sweating (I sweated through 12 T-shirts) and a lot of people have said my form has improved since last weekend.  

Other than that, not much to say – but here’s a performance from the Showcase competition that I think you should all watch: 

Hard to believe they only placed 4^th in the contest (I guess it didn’t have as much actual ‘dancing’ as the other showcase performances did); but anyway…..! 

I hung out with my friend (and fellow ECLS major), Susan, the other day to catch up on what’s been going on in our lives.  I told her about Camp Hollywood & my trip to New York last month and she told me she was traveling to Italy soon for a friend’s wedding.  (Rich friends, amIrite?)  And while we initially planned to see a movie as our scheduled “friend activity” (aka ‘excuse to hang out’), we couldn’t decide on what to watch. 

(See, Susan was also a film major and has a huge pet peeve about movies being original – everything in the theatres was either a remake, a sequel, or based on some book / graphic novel franchise and she wasn’t about to pay good money to see those) 

So we ended up going to Barnes & Nobles and browsed their “summer & back to school reading” sections to see how many we’ve read /what we *really* thought of them.  It’s actually a pretty fun way for English Majors to pass the time! 

But getting back to Susan’s pet peeve:  I’ve heard this gripe before from a lot of other film buffs and I got to wondering when this started.  I mean, aren’t all stories derived from previous ones that came out before them?  And those that aren’t based on stories are based on real life experiences instead, so they’re not truly original either.  So were there ever any original ideas? 

If not, where did the idea of “there were original ideas before” come from? 

Maybe *that’s* the only true original idea……..! 

Or not.   

Sorry - it’s late and I’m rambling, trying to get ‘inspired’ to write a blog post.