Being happy can be a serious downer. So says Ashley Schleeper, a happy ex-cheerleader art student. She starts off by saying that as a happy person, people assume that there's something wrong with them. Unfortunately, I assume the same when I see happy people, but Ashley clears those misconceptions about her. She is not on anything nor is there anything wrong with her head, she is just a happy person, which is why it's such a downer.
In today's society, depression and angst is common, which is why it is so hard for her to fit in. Instead of curing negativity , she wants to cure her positivity, which I find hilarious. The whole piece is hilarious, yet intelligent. Ashley uses quotes from Mark Twain and current day prescriptions to promote the fact that her happiness is something unusual.
With the narrator's upbeat personality and the piece's light hearted tone, it's hard not to like this piece or the narrator.
Whether you call it the "Hostess City of the South" or the "Creative Coast," Savannah, Georgia's nickname for some of the coolest stuff on public radio is SCAD.
For longer than I've been aware, Matthew Terrell and Jeff Gill, together with the Savannah College of Art and Design, have produced wonderfully offbeat graduate student-oriented pieces in their Commentary Corral series. Interstitals in this series feature such young writers as Megan Laguerella describing the perils of a student trying to rent an apartment, Paul Weinberg talking about the anxiety of an actor going on auditions, and Tandy Versyp sounding off about the plight of a food server hungering for customers' tips.
Ashley Schleeper does double duty in SCAD's latest installment of Commentary Corral pieces. Her monologue, "Whatever Happened to Manners?" deploring the lack of old-fashioned courtesy -- or, we could call it ante-bellum Southern gentility -- puts her right up there with Emily Post.
The piece under review here is consistent in its portrait of Schleeper as someone with an unflappably sunny disposition. Considering anti-depressants, psychotherapy, and the prevalence of a kind of fashionable despair in our culture, Schleeper's indefatigable grin is a many-splendored thing. Like the cheerleader she used to be, she's got the go/fight/win peppy (preppy?) attitude that once was extolled as "the power of positive thinking."
Yet if it's true that "the mass of men live lives of quiet desperation" [Thoreau], and "Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination" [Twain], Schleeper feels out of sync with her generation -- and indeed with the culture at large. Does anyone believe the old line, "Smile, and the world smiles with you"? Schleeper is not about to cry, much less cry alone, about being happy. But she's sheepish about her lack of angst, especially as a student in art school.
Five stars go to Schleeper -- and to SCAD for its scads of uncommonly good pieces, a veritable corral of thoroughbred commentaries.
Comments for Sometimes I'm just too gosh darn HAPPY!
This piece belongs to the series "Commentary Corral"
Produced by Matthew Terrell
Other pieces by SCAD Radio
Rating Summary
2 comments
Thao To
Posted on August 30, 2008 at 09:10 PM | Permalink
Review of Sometimes I'm just too gosh darn HAPPY!
Being happy can be a serious downer. So says Ashley Schleeper, a happy ex-cheerleader art student. She starts off by saying that as a happy person, people assume that there's something wrong with them. Unfortunately, I assume the same when I see happy people, but Ashley clears those misconceptions about her. She is not on anything nor is there anything wrong with her head, she is just a happy person, which is why it's such a downer.
In today's society, depression and angst is common, which is why it is so hard for her to fit in. Instead of curing negativity , she wants to cure her positivity, which I find hilarious. The whole piece is hilarious, yet intelligent. Ashley uses quotes from Mark Twain and current day prescriptions to promote the fact that her happiness is something unusual.
With the narrator's upbeat personality and the piece's light hearted tone, it's hard not to like this piece or the narrator.
James Reiss
Posted on July 04, 2007 at 03:40 AM | Permalink
Review of Sometimes I'm just too gosh darn HAPPY!
Whether you call it the "Hostess City of the South" or the "Creative Coast," Savannah, Georgia's nickname for some of the coolest stuff on public radio is SCAD.
For longer than I've been aware, Matthew Terrell and Jeff Gill, together with the Savannah College of Art and Design, have produced wonderfully offbeat graduate student-oriented pieces in their Commentary Corral series. Interstitals in this series feature such young writers as Megan Laguerella describing the perils of a student trying to rent an apartment, Paul Weinberg talking about the anxiety of an actor going on auditions, and Tandy Versyp sounding off about the plight of a food server hungering for customers' tips.
Ashley Schleeper does double duty in SCAD's latest installment of Commentary Corral pieces. Her monologue, "Whatever Happened to Manners?" deploring the lack of old-fashioned courtesy -- or, we could call it ante-bellum Southern gentility -- puts her right up there with Emily Post.
The piece under review here is consistent in its portrait of Schleeper as someone with an unflappably sunny disposition. Considering anti-depressants, psychotherapy, and the prevalence of a kind of fashionable despair in our culture, Schleeper's indefatigable grin is a many-splendored thing. Like the cheerleader she used to be, she's got the go/fight/win peppy (preppy?) attitude that once was extolled as "the power of positive thinking."
Yet if it's true that "the mass of men live lives of quiet desperation" [Thoreau], and "Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination" [Twain], Schleeper feels out of sync with her generation -- and indeed with the culture at large. Does anyone believe the old line, "Smile, and the world smiles with you"? Schleeper is not about to cry, much less cry alone, about being happy. But she's sheepish about her lack of angst, especially as a student in art school.
Five stars go to Schleeper -- and to SCAD for its scads of uncommonly good pieces, a veritable corral of thoroughbred commentaries.