Rachel Marie Jarlsberg

I went to see the Jazz Show last Wednesday, and I was presently surprised by the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed it.  At first when I showed up it was pouring rain and I almost ran right into David looking for the building number.  I wasn’t expecting it to be a plain door without a sign or even an inkling that shows go on inside.  I found this intriguing to begin with; made me wonder how many doors that I’ve walked by in the city that looked plain or shady but were really thriving with creativity inside.

To be completely honest my first thoughts once entering were we went from the Philadelphia Orchestra to a garage band, very offensive I know, but I think I actually enjoyed this show more than I would enjoyed sitting in a impersonal theatre far from the stage.  I liked how we got to ask them questions and learn about why they got into jazz.  They were also very honest during the questions.  Many admitted that at times during the songs they were lost and made a lot of mistakes but would eventually get back to the same spots on their music sheets.  This was the part I liked the most, the honestly of the whole thing.  In an orchestra the music is straight forward it doesn’t go on unplanned runs with solo pieces that exemplify each musician.  But that is how Jazz works, or at least that’s how the show we went to worked.

I would say that I hope this band gets noticed, but the four of them had never all played together before, it was more about the Saxophonists original work.  Overall, I wish I could have went and saw Thursday nights show as well, I heard there was a guitarist which would have been neat.

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For my first PEX event, I decided to go to the Franklin Institute and see the Animal Inside Out exhibit since I have only ever been there on a field trip in elementary school.  I found it to be very interesting; they had underwater and land animals on display and for each one they showed you something different in relations to their “insides”.  For example for some of the animals you only saw their skeletal structure, for others they split the entire animal in half so you could see all of their insides, and for others they dissected them somehow so that you could see all of their veins.  A few of my favorites were the skeletal structure of a very tiny frog, I was surprised that his little bones didn’t break while they dissected him; I also liked the one huge giraffe display which was cut in half, I forgot how huge they were.  They also had one male human body set up which was pretty interesting, we’re pretty ugly on the insides.

Another thing that was pretty cool was they had different brains, lungs, and hearts from all different species in different glass boxes that you could look at and compare/contrast them.  Apparently a bull’s heart is huge, it looked about five times the size of the human heart.  For the human pair of lungs that they had on display, they were mostly gray, AKA probably a smoker, which I found odd that they chose those specific ones.

I’m very curious as to how they were able to do some of the things with their insides such as showing you all of the veins, they claim that they are the real veins in the animal, but it just seems impossible to me.  That was one of the main things that intrigued about the exhibit in the first place and why I decided to choose this particular one.  It’s amazing what science can do nowadays, but the thought of people actually cutting into these animals and looking at their insides makes my skin crawl.

I brought one of my friends with me and when we got to the end there was this dog with his insides showing, and she said “wow that’s so sad thank god that isn’t real.”  Had to break the news to the animal lover that every animal in the exhibit was alive at one point, she thought they built all of them.  Wishing I would have video taped her minor panic attack after that…didn’t stay in there for very long after.

Some photos I took at the exhibit….forgot to take a selfie for more proof, but the picture of the skeletal chicken shows my iPhone/hand in the background!

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