2 Vol. XXXI, Issue 2 | Wednesday, September 30, 2009 news Obama, Paterson, Makin’ War Not Love In a shock - tempt to verbally one up their opponent. ing turn of “So that’s how it’s going to be, huh? Brother against By Nick Statt events involv - brother?” Paterson said after being told that Obama ing the recent wouldn’t be opposed to “socking him once or twice in the controversy mouth.” Paterson finished out the surprisingly emotional over New York Governor David Paterson’s decision to run interview with NBC’s David Gregory by saying, “That for governor, President Obama called Gov. Paterson a “jack - grey-haired grandpa couldn’t touch me. I’m like Dare - ass on Monday, September 21. devil. My acute hearing would carry me all day.” “I mean, sometimes I just wonder what he’s doing up The back and forth from the President and New there. He’s certainly not winning any popularity awards and York’s heavily disliked governor has created an enormous then just decides to totally ignore my request for him to pull buzz on the commentator circuit. Jelly donut-human hy - out,” Obama said casually after the first portion of his inter - brid Rush Limbaugh, famous for getting his start on the view with Terry Moran of NBC. “So does that count as the Food Network by questioning Rachel Ray’s sexuality, has first question?” Moran responded. “I, I hear you – I agree called Paterson’s comments in the Gregory interview as with you. He’s a jackass. He’s also legally blind and in all hon - pulling the “competitive race/physical disability card.” The esty I just can’t have that anymore,” Obama whispered, term, recently coined by Limbaugh himself, accuses Pa - As the week wraps up, President Obama has voiced fur - thinking that his off the record comments would stay terson of feeling both that he has to compete with Obama ther frustration. amongst him, Moran and her camera crew. To his surprise, because they’re both African Americans in powerful polit - “Believe me, if I didn’t have to go arm-to-arm with Moran breached her journalistic integrity to tweet these ical positions and also that his physical disability is a subject Britain and France to accuse Iran of covertly producing nu - comments to the whole world. that shouldn’t be touched by insults. clear fuel underground and persuade the U.N. to keep the “Pres. Obama just called Gov. Paterson a ‘jackass’ for “The man thinks because he’s legally blind that that Honduran presidential controversy from turning violent, I’d his decision to still run for governor. Now THAT’S presi - means we can’t make fun of him for it. He’s got to realize this give Mr. West and Governor Paterson a taste of my their dential,” said Moran’s tweet. Moran has been subsequently is the real world and physical disabilities are not just funny, own medicine. But as former President Franklin Delano “Keith Oberlin-ed,” as they say in the business, by an infu - but deadly argument winners,” said Limbaugh on the Roosevelt once said, ‘I got a lot of shit to do.’” riated NBC. Expect to see her new commentator program Wednesday following Obama’s remarks. One can only hope that these juicy media insults will later this fall. In a rather expected turn of events, rapper and neo-Jesus curdle over before they get too out of hand. A number of Upon reading this comment while perusing his Twit - Kanye West has stepped out of his media exile to side with YouTube videos, blog posts and purposeless civilian tweets ter account, Paterson was outraged. “It’s on. Really I’m not Paterson after feeling equally victimized by the President’s have collected to amass a strong public opinion, but the playing. He thinks I’m going to pull out of the governor race fiery insults. question of whether or not it will be necessary to have the now. Fuck that. It’s all about spite now,” tweeted Paterson “It’s not every day that a mother fucking lyrical word - public weigh in on this brutal week-long argument will be early the next morning. smith backs you up, and against the President of all people. answered soon enough. A clue came in the form of Pater - Following the Governor’s infuriated tweet, one of the I’m the Gov.’s boxing gloves and Obama better prepare to son’s ominous statement early yesterday morning, “I’m most controversial arguments involving a U.S. President has duke it out with the voice of our generation. Jesus Walks,” swinging and I ain’t gonna stop. So he better fall back.” ensued. Throughout the week, both Obama and Paterson Kanye pronounced with an audacious confidence in a recent have both publicly and privately sent out attacks in an at - interview with MTV. The Stony Brook Press News 3

Hey, Dr. Stanleyman, Play A Songdo For Me

ernment will pay for the facilities for ap - tional recognition — as compared to, Malaysia. Haq later asked the Senate to proximately five years. After five years, for example, UC Berkeley, or consider the SUNY Songdo issue when by Natalie Crnosija SBU will take primary responsibility for UCLA. With a branch campus in Asia, the student representatives on the Sen - funding. SBU Songdo will not be the recognizability of an SBU degree ate of Arts and Sciences are picked. “All A University senator voiced her con - funded by New York State, but will re - will be expanded in an area of the world the information we are receiving here is cerns about the establishment of a Stony ceive funding from research, specific that is developing as a global economic hearsay,” said Haq. Brook University satellite in South grants, SBU Songdo tuition and the engine. Our desire is to provide stu - USG President Jasper Wilson said Korea at the Undergraduate Student South Korean government. Link ex - dents the same international cachet that a SBU Songdo committee will be Government Senate’s September 25 formed by faculty representatives meeting during open agenda. within the Senate of Arts and Sciences. University Senator Julia Link re - The Senate of Arts and Sciences is a leg - ceived information about SBU Songdo islative body composed of faculty and during a September 10 University Sen - students within the University Senate. ate presentation given by Deputy This committee will include student Provost W. Brent Lindquist. Link said representatives who have not yet been she has many concerns about what the nominated by Wilson. The Senate of plans entail, which include exporting Arts and Sciences nomination/confir - some SBU faculty to the South Korea mation process will begin next week’s campus. The purpose of her address USG Senate meeting. was to pass information about the “I am pretty sure that Provost Brian Songdo University plans on to SBU stu - Lindquist and President Stanley will be dents through the USG. Link added coming to talk to the Committee of Arts that professors had not been informed and Sciences to answer the faculty’s of the SBU Songdo plans, though they questions…so more information gets would be affected through proposed out there,” said Wilson. “I do not think staff movement to South Korea. it’s very helpful to continue this discus - “I didn’t bring this to you to make a sion any further.” decision because nobody did,” said Amid the debate, multiple USG Link. “I want the help of USG to edu - senators tried to communicate that they cate students, to give them a heads could not issue an opinion on the SBU up…Amid budget cuts and class cut - Songdo plans. “I want to make clear ting, to start sending teachers overseas that nothing has been approved yet by just doesn’t seem like a very good idea.” the university or the university presi - Lindquist presented to the Univer - pressed that the establishment of these with an SBU degree.” dent,” said USG Senator Keith Tilley. sity Senate because, unlike USG, the grants exclusively for SBU Songdo was Furthermore, Sheprow denied that Former USG Senator Adam Kent University Senate is a legislative group essentially diverting money that could there would be the loss of students and said that the SBU Songdo question had composed of faculty and students who be going to SBU proper instead. resources abroad. been deferred to the Undergraduate set university policy. The University Link said she had asked Lindquist “Market studies show that foreign Council, another legislative undergrad - Senate may express an opinion on the about the benefits of the SBU Songdo to students who want to come to the US uate policy committee, of which he was SBU Songdo proposal, but the ultimate resident SBU students. “He said, ‘I don’t are not going to change their minds,” part last year. Currently, Kent is sitting decision remains with SBU President know. I don’t know if it will or if it will Sheprow said. “Conversely, US students on the committee as an observer. Samuel L. Stanley, Jr. not’,” said Link. “He did not give any who want to study overseas are unlikely “Whatever information is given and According to Lindquist’s “Planning kind of valid answer.” to be currently at, or thinking of coming that is allowed to be shared, I will more Update SBU Songdo” PowerPoint, SBU Lindquist was unavailable for com - to, SBU. We expect Songdo to provide than happily share,” Kent said. “We were will provide the academic programs, the ment. increased study abroad semester pro - told to keep it quiet because they do not faculty, the students and will grant SBU Interim Media Relations Officer gram opportunities for our US stu - know what they are doing…it is being degrees. In exchange, South Korea is Lauren M. Sheprow said that SBU resi - dents.” sent into committee to look into it. One forming the Incheon Free Economic dent students would greatly benefit Similarly, USG Senator Syed Haq of many things, the feasibility and the Zone, where it will establish a “Global from SBU Songdo’s establishment. “The asserted that other universities, like pros and cons. I will be putting the stu - University Campus.” Within this zone, value of a Stony Brook degree will be SUNY Buffalo, have institutions abroad. dent’s best interests on this campus in SBU and 10 other universities will set enhanced,” said Sheprow. “Currently an SUNY Buffalo was the first SUNY to es - America in mind.” up satellites. The South Korean gov - SBU degree has very limited interna - tablish a satellite, which is located in 4 Vol. XXXI, Issue 2 | Wednesday, September 30, 2009 Editorial Board editorials Executive Editor Andrew Fraley Managing Editor Najib Aminy Don’t Widen the Donut Hole Associate Editor Natalie Crnosija On paper, the plan to build and sive budget deficits and cuts. This so far of the school, surrounded by large and Business Manager maintain an international campus in has meant increased tuition for the stu - extravagant buildings and campuses. Erin Mansfield South Korea seems like a pretty neat dents, with little to none of the tuition The fact that this project would poten - idea. It appeals to current and future hike actually going towards education. tially take away faculty from the cam - Production Manager Tia “Quark Ate My Soul” Mansouri students who may be thinking of study - Furthermore, the student-faculty ratio pus here, to export them to Songdo, is ing abroad. It will also gain Stony Brook has been on the rise for over a decade, even more disturbing. News Editors Raina Bedford University some international recogni - as the professors are stretched thinner Media Relations Officer Lauren To Be Decided tion, and that’s always a plus for stu - and thinner over a growing student Sheprow put the best spin on it, when dents’ resumes. It will also further forge body. she said that a new campus in South Features Editor Ross Barkan some of SBU’s international relations. In addition, the faculty here signed Korea would enhance the SBU degree This is a big undertaking, which re - a petition of no confidence against the in the international arena. UC Berkeley Arts Editor Doug Cion quires careful consideration. The uni - former president Shirley Strum Kenny. and UCLA are both internationally rec - versity has been given half a million Based on, among other things, her im - ognized, so why shouldn’t Stony Brook Sports Editor dollars from the South Korean govern - perialistic expansion of the university to be as well? That’s because California Jason Wirchin ment to research the feasibility of a the Southampton and Manhattan cam - state universities are all well-funded and Photo Editors satellite University on the Songdo puses, opening another campus on the have a high standard of academics— Eric DiGiovanni Liz Kaufman Global University Campus. And while other end of the world seems like an - most especially in Berkeley and LA’s in theory, this all sounds peachy keen, a other step in that direction. Former case. Maybe we should focus on those Copy Editors close scrutiny of the current situation SBU Sociology Professor Javier Auyero, two things first. Don’t sacrifice our ed - Kelly Yu Katie Knowlton will show an altogether different pic - who left the university in 2008 after a ucation for prestige and recognition. ture. decade of teaching, once described You’ll be left with a bunch of fancy Webmaster Roman Sheydvasser To start, SBU, and the rest of the Stony Brook as a donut university, in buildings, frustrated students and no SUNY system, are currently facing mas - which there is an empty, vacuous core substance. Audiomaster Josh Ginsberg Ombudsman James Laudano Iraq’s Failed History Lesson Minister of Archives Alex H. Nagler When the U.S. invaded Iraq, it was watched as senior analysts, journalists and evitable. “Will Iran be Next?”, from The At - under the false pretense that Saddam Hus - governing leaders denounced Iran for its in - lantic . “Is a U.S.-Iran War Inevitable?” TIME Layout Design by sein had stockpiled weapons of mass de - fraction of set guidelines. asks. Jowy Romano struction. Satellite images of hidden bunkers, “Iran’s decision to build yet another nu - But how can the U.S. accuse Iran of any yellowcake from Niger and the interception clear facility without notifying the Interna - wrongdoing if these wrongdoings never oc - Staff of aluminum tubes convinced the U.S. pub - tional Atomic Energy Agency represents a curred? Dr. Mohamed Elbaradei, head of the lic that war was necessary in Iraq. direct challenge to the basic compact at the IAEA, called the West’s allegations against Kotei Aoki Kenny Mahoney Vincent Barone Justin Meltzer Cheerleading every step of the way was center of the non-proliferation regime,” Pres - Iran “crazy”. Matt Braunstein James Messina the American media, from the 24-hour cable ident Barack Hussein Obama said at a press And as allegations arose that Iran had Tony Cai Steve McLinden J.C. Chan Samantha Monteleone news networks, the papers and the maga - conference during the G-20 economic sum - gone through some nuclear militarization, Whiskers T. Clown Roberto Moya Laura Cooper Frank Myles zines; they all soaked up the Bush adminis - mit in Pittsburgh. “These rules are clear: All Elbaradei has had his doubts. Caroline D’Agati Amyl Nitrate tration’s lies that Iraq was somehow linked to nations have the right to peaceful nuclear en - “I do not think, based on what we see, that Krystal DeJesus Chris Oliveri Joe Donato Ben van Overmeier the September 11, 2001 attacks. Watching ergy; those nations with nuclear weapons Iran has an on-going nuclear weapons pro - Brett Donnelly Laura Paesano Nick Eaton Grace Pak helplessly, the majority of the American pub - must move towards disarmament; those na - gramme. Whether they have done some Michael Felder Rob Pearsall lic bought it. tions without nuclear weapons must forsake weaponization studies as was claimed is still Caitlin Ferrell Jon Pu Vincent Michael Festa Aamer Qureshi Looking back at history, the leading up them.” an outstanding issue. But I have not seen any Joe Filippazzo Kristine Renigen Ilyssa Fuchs Dave Robin to the Iraq war highlighted a failure in field of Representing what many would con - credible evidence to suggest that Iran has an Rob Gilheany Jessica Rybak David Knockout Ginn Joe Safdia journalism that has left it vulnerable. Now, six sider the far right, Fox News commentator Bill on-going nuclear programme today. “ Joanna Goodman Natalie Schultz years after the invasion of Iraq, the media is at O’Reilly called Iran’s move troubling. “ Many Where are the journalists that seek to Jennifer Hand Jonathan Singer Stephanie Hayes Nick Statt it again, only this time, America will soon be believe the USA, Great Britain and France are find truth behind what President Obama and Andrew Jacob Rose Slupski Liz Kaempf John Tucker at war with Iran. not going to be able to stop the mullahs from other world leaders say? Where are the re - Elizabeth Kaplan Lena Tumasyan Turn on MSNBC , CNN and Fox News getting nukes,” he said on his September 29 porters that serve the people and protect the Jack Katsman Marcel Votlucka Yong Kim Alex Walsh and the message is the same: Iran poses a program. “Once again, the Iranians can cause integrity of the fourth estate? Where is the Rebecca Kleinhaut Brian Wasser Iris Lin Matt Willemain grave threat to the free world, their president trouble all over the place: in the Persian Gulf, truth? Frank Loiaccono Jie Jenny Zou denies the holocaust and Israel is going to be in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Lebanon and on Iran is a sensitive issue, but if history destroyed if America doesn’t do anything. and on.” proves to repeat itself, prepare for war, be - The Stony Brook Press is published fortnightly during the academic year and twice during summer session And when word came out that Iran was And before that, articles that date as early cause that’s what’s on the news. by The Stony Brook Press , a student run non-profit or - ganization funded by the Student Activity Fee. The opin - building a “secret nuclear facility”, the world as 2006 insinuate that war with Iran is in - ions expressed in letters, articles and viewpoints do not necessarily reflect those of The Stony Brook Press as a whole. Advertising policy does not necessarily reflect editorial policy. For more information on advertising and deadlines call (631)632-6451. Staff meetings are held Wednesdays at 1:00 pm. First copy free. Additional copies cost fifty cents, and possibly your integrity. The Stony Brook Press Suites 060 & 061 Student Union SUNY at Stony Brook Stony Brook, NY 11794-3200 Write for e P! (631) 632-6451 Voice (631) 632-4137 Fax Email: [email protected] Meetings Every Wednesday at 1PM, Union Building 060 The Stony Brook Press 5 E-mail your letters to [email protected] letters A Whale of a Tale

Hello, My name is Capt James Kevin, 50 Years Old from United Kingdom,resides in London United Kingdom and My contact address is 51 Caledon Road Tce,East Ham London, E6 3HB . I work with PRINCESS MARIANA - Luxury Motor Yacht in United Kingdom.We are seeking applicants to work on the new year-round UNITED KINGDOM flagged Passenger ship. Its a private own yacht,The monthly salary will be 4,000 sterling pound every month end for salaries and 300 pounds for your pocket fees every week end, accommodation will be provided by the company. Hope to hear from you soonest. Best Regards . Capt James Kevin

I will do everything in my power to help. What should i do?

We thank you so much for replying us back..Kindly send to us your C.V. Before we commence on your application ,we need to know the area of experience you have ..because we have various post available for you in 4 different department. such as Entertain - ment,Service and Hospitality,Personal care,Deck and Engine Room. In each Department below are their various post: Entertainment: These positions deal with anything related to passenger entertainment and are the most popular among job-seekers: host and hostesses, cruise directors and staff, disc jockeys, performers, swimming instructors, shore excursion staff. Service and Hospitality: These are positions in the restaurants, bars, passenger cabins and retail: waiters and waitresses, bar tenders, cabin stewardesses, cooks, bakers, cleaners, gift-shop assistants etc. Personal care: These employees deal with the spa facilities, and : , , , and fitness instructors. Deck and Engine Room: These departments are responsible for maintaining and running the ship: Chief Engineer Engineer Office Electricians Store Keeper Deck Officers Safety Officers. We still have some post which are not mention above..just incase you did not notice any of your field of specialization on the list above ..kindy inform us so that we can find the post suitable for you. Capt James Kevin CTG Group London 201-203 Regent Street London W1R 7DD United Kingdom.

Can i name the ship Alice ?

Go ahead and name them..

So who is going to be my skipper? And what exactly is it that you want me to do? I want to help but am confused.

What do you mean..

I mean I am very interested in joining you to sea. But before so, I want to know what type of responsibilities I will be given. Seeing how you would let me name the boat, I'm assuming I will be given a position of power. I would like to know how many people are going to work beneath me. This may seem like I am asking for too much, but I assure you that I am very productive when I have a lot of people working for me. With all this to consider, my willingness to apply or help just increases by the moment. I am eager to hear from you with further directions on how to obtain this job. PS: I feel like my first question about naming the boat was kind of ridiculous. I figured, how can I name the boat Alice if I haven't even seen it yet. Can you please send me a photo of the boat so I can give it a proper name?

Hello, Thanks for your mail,Here is the post are available ? Chief Engineer,Engineer Office,Electricians,Store Keeper,Deck Officers,Safety Of - ficers,they are many worker that work in the boat, 330,00 only so hope to hear from you.. Thanks James Request an ad packet: This epic tale will be continued in the next Issue of The Press . Unless, of course, we actually receive some actual letters from people! Send us things! Do it! [email protected] 6 News Vol. XXXI, Issue 2 | Wednesday, September 30, 2009 Resuscitating America: The Great Health Care Debate Universal Health Care, Everywhere But Here British newspapers tend to criticize the therapy for breast cancer or prostate French system is the rising cost of uni NHS. The spirit of the NHS is alive in cancer). Despite these waits, Canada versal health care. President Nicholas by Ross Barkan our country: the Veterans Health Ad - has lower incident and mortality rates Sarkozy has sought to address this issue ministration resembles the NHS. than the U.S. for all cancers combined, during his presidency. according to the U.S. Cancer Statistics The health care debate is quickly Canada- Health care is delivered for Working Group and the Canadian Can - Japan- All Japanese citizens must be en - becoming the great issue of our times. free like Britain through a publically- cer Society. Like Britain, Canada also rolled in a health insurance program. While virtually every other industrial - funded system. Canada, along with has a higher life expectancy rate than People without insurance provided ized nation in the world has a system in Australia, Taiwan, and Denmark, is an the U.S. through their employers participate in place to provide affordable (or free) a national health insurance program, healthcare to all of its citizens, the making Japan one of many industrial - United States of America leaves roughly ized nations that provide universal 40 million citizens uninsured every year health coverage. Japan has a hybrid sys - and many more unable to afford health tem funded by job-based insurance pre - coverage. miums and taxes. Unlike the U.S. Proponents of universal health care system (and like the French, Canadian, call this a moral outrage; detractors and British systems), no person is de - argue it is impractical to cover every - nied coverage because of a preexisting one and a universal healthcare system condition or faces unreasonable fees be - will only lead to inferior medical care. cause a family member gets sick. Japan’s The main problem with the actual dilemma is one of demographics. An health care debate is the amount of mis - aging population means health costs are information that is being spread daily. due to balloon, making reforms neces - Health care systems vary from coun - sary. However, there are no plans to try to country. In fact, President abandon a universal health care model. Obama’s proposed plan would not re - semble the “socialist” British National Switzerland- This health care system is Health Service. It would, in theory, look important to examine because the pro - like Switzerland’s health service. Here is posed Obama reform would look very a rundown of several industrialized na - Swiss. Like Germany, Swiss health care tions and the form their health services example of a single-payer health care relies on private insurance companies take: system. (One entity, the government, France- Citizens in the French Republic rather than on public funding. Every - funds healthcare). The delivery of receive universal health care through a one is required to buy health insurance Britain- The National Health Service, health care is left in private hands but system akin to Canada’s. The World and insurers can’t discriminate based on Britain’s provider of universal health - the government pays all of the bills. Health Organization named French medical history and pre-existing condi - care since 1948, runs all of the hospitals Canadians are overwhelmingly satisfied healthcare the best performing system tions. U.S. insurance companies cur - and employs all of the doctors. It is pub - with their coverage. A 2009 Harris/Dec - in the world in terms of availability and rently can. Lower-income Swiss citizens lically-funded and guarantees free ima poll found 82% of Canadians pre - organization of health care providers receive government help if they cannot healthcare to all citizens of the United ferred their health care system to the (the U.S. is ranked 37 th ). It is not a sin - pay for their policies. Massachusetts Kingdom (there are sometimes charges privatized system in the United States. gle-payer system but a mixture of pub - health reform follows the Swiss for dental care, eye tests, and aspects of Criticisms leveled against the Canadian lic and private services, allowing model—costs are high but most are in - personal care). 8% of the population system include the perceived long wait - healthcare to be delivered through pri - sured. Switzerland is one of the few in - uses private medical care, usually as an ing times for treatment. (For example, vate companies. 75% of the doctors in dustrialized nations without a public add-on to NHS services. While multi - there are instances in which a patient the national service provide free care to health care option. ple surveys reveal a majority of British can wait up to a month for radiation patients. The main concern with the are satisfied with their health coverage, Reconsidering Our Value System Our current time than their privately insured to the injustice and suffering we see tions that have implemented social - health care sys - counterparts. Add to that the thou - in our country and the world today. ized health care, all indicators of the tem is not work - sands of coverage denials every year Love him or hate him, I have to admit health of their populations suggest ing. A recent for real or perceived preexisting con - he has a habit of making good points. that they have actually surpassed us study out of Har - ditions and we have a system of pri - This mentality of “if it’s good for in their ability to care for and treat vard Medical vatization that tells people “if you business, it’s good for America” is the the ill, not the other way around (see by Tim School found that can’t pad our bottom line, you de - only reason we continue to have a the CIA World Factbook on issues Paules 45,000 Americans serve to die”. What is so problematic privatized health care industry at all. such as longevity). The second prob - die per year due about this health care issue, however, Perhaps the most coherent argu - lem with this argument is one which to a complete or isn’t just that it exists, but that it was ment I have heard against socialized is decidedly more uncomfortable to partial lack of health insurance. This inevitable. Michael Moore has stated health care is that it will inevitably address as a nation, as it questions staggering figure amounts to 122 with the upcoming release of his lat - lead to a slowing of innovation; that some of our most basic assumptions deaths per day. An individual with - est documentary, Capitalism: A Love it will result in fewer new drugs and and values. We tend to assume that out health insurance is 40 percent Story , that it is the larger economic medical procedures, and do so more innovation and progress is the ulti - more likely to die in this period of system itself, which inevitably leads slowly. First of all, if you look at na - mate end to all of our actions, but The Stony Brook Press News 7 Resuscitating America:The Great Health Care Debate When Lives At Stake, Capitalism Fails

Wendell Pot - bring huge savings to health insurance refuse to insure “high risk” patients. In - tions. Though patients with medical ter is a renegade. companies. Unfortunately, they are can - surance companies all have lists of pre- problems do pose a great financial cost This former health celling the policies of their sickest clients existing conditions for which they will to insurance companies, some question insurance PR exec - to maintain their bottom line. deny coverage. There is no federal law a system that values patient’s lives based utive gave one hell Insurance companies do this delib - limiting the amount of pre-existing con - on how much of a financial liability they of a testimony erately to save money. This may seem ditions a company can list and no re - are. by Raina against his former obvious, that’s how capitalism works. strictions on the types of conditions The profit driven health insurance Bedford employer. Speak - But we have to ask ourselves if it’s really insurance companies can deny coverage system has far-reaching effects on ing in front of ethical that we allow the same business for. American lives. A Harvard study pub - Congress he got to principles that govern McDonalds to Pacific Care has a list of 128 pre-ex - lished in the American Journal of Public the bottom of why a capitalist system govern health care. isting conditions for which they will re - Health found that uninsured Americans doesn’t work when human lives are at Because health insurance compa - fuse coverage. The list includes under 64 years old have a 40 percent stake. nies are traded publicly, shareholders conditions like having a premature birth higher risk of death than those who have “To help meet Wall Street’s relent - and investors value insurance compa - within the past 12 months, acne, heart - insurance. They estimate that 45,000 less profit expectations, insurers rou - nies based on their earnings per share burn and being an expectant father. Americans die every year because they tinely dump policyholders who are less and their “medical-loss ratio.” This They’ve also taken the liberty to include are uninsured. profitable or who get sick,” Wendell said. medical-loss ratio is the ratio between a list of uninsurable occupations that in - These sobering numbers are unfor - For an example of this, look no fur - what the company pays out in claims clude being a police officer, firefighter, tunately expected to rise. Most Ameri - ther than health insurance giant Health and what it has left over to cover sales, carnival worker and war correspondent. cans receive their health insurance Net Inc. They rescinded an estimated marketing, underwriting, administrative Should you find yourself uninsured through their employer, and as more 1,600 policies between 2000 and 2006 expenses and whatever is left over as with a pre-existing condition, you have Americans lose their jobs they will also saving the company $35.5 million. In - profit. the option to either join an extremely lose their health insurance. Yes, capital - ternal documents released in 2007 indi - Insurance companies have found expensive state-funded high-risk plan or ism is a great economic system. It has cate that the company based employee numerous ways to cut costs and over face a pre-existing condition exclusion given Americans an unmatched stan - bonuses on the number of health care time have decreased the amount of period. During the exclusion period, dard of living and it works for most in - policies they were able to cancel. Em - money they actually spend on providing the insurance company will deny all dustries. But the health insurance ployees were evaluated based on care to please wall street investors. claims made that relate to your pre-ex - industry is not one of them and Wendell whether they exceeded, achieved, or did PricewaterhouseCoopers did a study last isting condition. Either way it will cost Potter knows this. not achieve annual targets for revoking year which found that the collective you a lot of money. “What we have today,” he said, “is a policies. medical-loss ratios of the seven largest Within a capitalist structure, it Wall Street-run system that has proven 1,600 policies may not seem like a for profit insurers fell from an average of makes sense for companies to manage itself an untrustworthy partner to its lot considering that Health Net Inc. in - 85.3 percent in 1998 to 81.6 percent in costs. Insurance companies want to dis - customers, to the doctors and hospitals sures millions of people, but since 10% 2008. This translates into billion dollar courage the practice of patients pur - who deliver care, and to the state and of the population accounts for two- savings for insurance companies at the chasing insurance only when they get ill. federal governments that attempt to reg - thirds of all health care spending, even a expense of patient care. This is the purpose of excluding cover - ulate it.” small percentage of cancellations can Another way to manage costs is to age for those with pre-existing condi -

lazy nor miscreants. The more trou - ing value in monetary and profit right; the capitalist, profit-driven VALUES continued from previous page bling aspect of that claim is the cool - terms that they have ceased to see ethic is the reason why we do not with the economic gap growing wider ness with which it treats the value of value in human terms. have universal health care for all every year for almost the last century human life. Many are so used to see - In the end Michael Moore is Americans. Universal Health Care is we must ask ourselves if un - decidedly unprofitable in the bridled progress forward is for traditional sense, but blaming the best if only a shrinking the current system alone is an number of privileged few can assessment only skin deep. It is reap the rewards. we who are to blame, as well. It This is where I tend to is our values and our will which split from others on the “far manifest as the economic sys - left” of things. Where they see tem, and it is these same values a need for a revolution of eco - which prop up a health care sys - nomics and institutions, I see tem that costs over 45,000 lives a need for a revolution of val - annually. Talk of cost has pol - ues. luted the discussion of health Some of the most vocal care reform in America, and so opposition to a single-payer long as this monetary concern system, outside of insurance exists true reform will be im - company self-preservation, possible. comes from average Ameri - Universal health care will cans who feel they ought not only be possible once Ameri - to have their hard-earned pay cans as a whole care a little less taxed and used to pay for the for their wallets and a little health of a bunch of lazy mis - more for their fellow man creants. The vast majority of The internet Wooh yeah protesting! the disadvantaged are neither 8 News Vol. XXXI, Issue 2 | Wednesday, September 30, 2009 Resuscitating America: The Great Health Care Debate The Truth About Obama’s Health Care Bill

volunteered the fact they only read book that would explain things as I misinterpretations due (in some part) certain parts. So really, three students went on. This absolutely was not the to 1) the desire to find things to be by Liz Kaufman claimed they read it. case if I wanted to understand what I against, 2) wording or 3) fear tactics Overwhelmingly, 66 percent said was reading correctly. used by the media. they very much cared about the issue, HR 3200 states, in Sec 133 (a) (2), Section 1173A: STANDARDIZE As of late, there has been much 18 percent stated they “kinda” care, “Plain language requirement: that plan ELECTRONIC ADMINISTRATIVE debate over President Obama’s Health and 16 percent said “no.” One student information be written in plain lan - TRANSACTION Care Reform, known officially as stuck out in my mind when he stated: guage; or “language that the intended Rumor: Government has access to “America’s Affordable Health Choices “I’ll care later. You know, when people audience, including individuals with your bank accounts and will take your Act of 2009 (HR money! 3200).” Reality: Doesn’t There are people quite specify if in our own com - that’s true. munity arguing This section that by Obama get - is tricky. It ap - ting his way, we’re pears the over - destroying a Chris - all goal is to tian nation and lower costs by publically funding increasing effi - abortions, spending ciency and re - weekends protest - ducing paper ing around the costs. Basically, most populated lo - electronic ac - cations. counts are set Some are going up much like e- on about how the filing for government will taxes…only now have access to you can’t opt your bank ac - out of getting counts, and force this electronic you to commit sui - account. cide at a certain There are no age. Even The New specific exam - York Post got in on ples of where it, publishing an ar - Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), President Barack Obama, and Senator Max Baucus (D-MO) that money ticle in mid-July comes from. claiming the plan Does it come will “create a tax rate of nearly 60 per - are really getting into it and the re - limited English proficiency, can read - directly from my bank account? The cent” and kill all the jobs and small ports [media] tell us what’s really ily understand and use because that details are to come. It’s just stated that businesses in New York. going on.” language is clean, concise, well-orga - there will be an electronic account and There are people on the news, re - When asked if they could describe nized, and follows other best practices health card connected to some ac - ferring to themselves as “The Tea the bill in their own words, almost of plain language writing.” count. Party,” using vulgar and offensive every person used the word “social - I think this is probably why so “(C) Enable electronic funds transfers, signs. Some of which insinuate that ism” in their answer, even if it were many people are interpreting this bill in order to allow automated reconcili - what Obama is doing is worse than the just a response such as “it’s socialist.” in so many interesting and colorful ation with the related health care pay - Holocaust. One sign depicted victims When asked to correctly define social - ways. Regardless of “plain language,” ment and remittance advice ” of the Holocaust being put into ovens. ism, only 8 percent were able to do so. the sheer number of pages lessens the The caption read “The American tax - CNN.com and CNN broadcast attention span of the average person “(D) “enable the real-time (or near real payers are the Jews for Obama’s ovens.” television were the number one source and the fact they have to read and time) determination of an individual’s You can find pictures of these signs of information about this topic, as well think doesn’t help either. Don’t get me financial responsibility at the point of online, effortlessly. These people both - as other important issues. Other top wrong-the people of America aren’t service and, to the extent possible, ered me the most. They were also the media sources for information in - necessarily stupid, but unless you are prior to service, including reason I decided to read the HR 3200 cluded Fox News, AOL.com, Google, made to read and cite long documents 9 whether the individual is eligible for bill. The Daily Show and The Colbert Re - like at a university on a regular basis, a specific service with a specific physi - I figured that if I haven’t read it, port. This result wasn’t surprising, tak - most people aren’t in the mode of cian at a specific facility, which may then it was probably the case that ing into consideration how much the thinking necessary to analyze this include utilization of a machine-read - many college students haven’t read it media affects our daily lives and com - document correctly. And even if you able health, plan beneficiary identifi - either. Plus, the Tea Party is disturbing munication. What is concerning is are at a university, like the poll I did, cation card” on many levels, influencing more peo - that most people said they cared about most students have not read it either. ple every day with scare tactics. So, I the issue to some extent, yet 86 per - The bill describes the goals and Facts: obtained the 1017 page copy of the HR cent of those polled go by media as op - agenda to achieve those goals to create The obvious interpretation is that 3200 bill to debunk some of the ru - posed to getting information directly a health care system that will be acces - the cards issued to patients (like your mors. This document is so long I from the source. This creates a great sible to everyone, making it so every - meal plan ID) that allow electronic couldn’t cover everything in a single opportunity to jump on the band - one has a form of health insurance. real-time transactions will also allow article. wagon. These goals are: coverage and choice, automatic reconciliation if there is I was curious as to how many peo - affordability, shared responsibility, something like an auto-draft for ple actually read the document. A sur - What’s it say, anyway? controlling cost, prevention and well - money paid out of pocket. vey was conducted on the Stony Brook The HR 3200 bill begins with defi - ness, and workforce investments. This is also one of the origins of the Campus, polling students. nitions and clarifications that will be Are the rumors true? “the government will have all your in - Out of a pool of 36 students, only used in the bill. Originally, I skipped It seems to be the case that most formation. Prepare for Orwell’s worst five had actually read the bill as a this part, figuring it was like a text - of the outrageous rumors are simply nightmare.” Yes, this section does state source of information about it. Three The Stony Brook Press News 9 Resuscitating America: The Great Health Care Debate

ARTICLE continued from page 8 it will “harmonize all common data el - age. Those who choose to not obtain part describes how there won’t be dis - places cannot afford their prescrip - ements.” But what does that mean? It coverage will pay a penalty of 2.5 per - crimination against peoples for health tions, even with “coverage.” Families seems to mean that all of your infor - cent of modified adjusted gross in - care; however it prohibits illegal im - with hardships caused by the econ - mation relevant to you paying what it come above a specified level.” So if you migrants from receiving government omy, many students fresh out of col - owed for services, etc. is available in a don’t go with the government, you pay health care. lege, people with unusual database connected to your personal circumstances, and seniors all need a a special tax. But at least you still have profile and your Health Card. But it Wait, just what will I get? bit of help. never states how a choice, Good question. It depends on What are the people who read the much information right? where you are, really. Richard Lipsky, a Bill arguing against? or what kind. It lobbyist for small stores and busi - One such argument is the taxes could just be billing nesses in New York City, stated in an employers and employees will face in and information that There will be article for the July 16 issue of The New order to fund this system. The prob - must go between publically York Post , “According to what we’ve lem is the amount of money that is es - provider and insurer. funded abor - read, the House health-insurance plan timated to bring in is not defined. It’s tions! would have a job-crippling impact on a sliding scale and is based on how the The year is 1984-the Section neighborhood stores and other small employer participates. If an employer government’s my 1713: The goal businesses because they put mandates elects not to participate, they will be only choice is to improve on these businesses that would prevent imposed a minimum 8 percent tax for Existing group health of chil - them from hiring people because of each of their employees’ wages paid plans from private dren and the cost of the plan.” that year, in addition to pre-existing insurance will be mothers so However, according to the plan, 97 taxes (depending on annual income). grandfathered for pregnancy percent of Americans will be covered The more employees an employer has, five years. During outcomes can as soon as the bill takes effect. the more tax is generated. This might this time, they must be more posi - In a single district in a single state, hurt businesses. If everything works as begin to comply tive. hundreds of millions of dollars worth the Obama administration hopes, with the standards of Some claim of uncompensated care puts a huge costs will go down. However, if em - health care coverage this also strain on hospitals having to provide ployers change their participation or the government will means that Big care. The bill would eliminate this enough money isn’t generated in total, now require. This is Brother is problem in many states. the government will be at a loss and to make insurance controlling In many places seniors are forced taxes will increase. companies have a your births to pay out of pocket for their drug cov - Certain sections appear to be defined set of stan - and maternal erage, even though they are covered copied and pasted from other docu - Obama’s health care proposal is as good as his care and hav - under “Part D.” The legislation would ments and speeches, put together in dards that can be witch doctory monitored. You will ing a govern - help them immediately. one long document. Many parts are be able to choose ment worker You wouldn’t be denied coverage vague and do not provide enough de - from options of public insurance, not come into your home and force you to because of a new agreement of renewal tail. Many people cannot understand one. raise your kids according to the gov - of insurance for a pre-existing condi - the Bill. Truth : While you are allowed to ernment because of a sentence that tion. The funding for this bill is mainly keep your private insurance (i.e. no says a nurse can provide a home- You will have more accuracy in imposed upon the wealthiest in the one is forcing the public to not use pri - health visit. your medical history and payments, country. There will be a surcharge on vate health insurance), it will be less This never states the word “abor - instead of fighting with a doctor over the 1.5 percent of the nation’s wealth - desirable because of the concept of tion.” An argument is that abor - iest people. “risk tion might possibly be covered as If a business is not correctly pooling.” part of an “essential benefits pack - complying, there are serious Risk Pooling : How you have insur - age.” The wording, as in many sec - fines and consequences. This ance. The people who buy into a tions is ambiguous and possibly goes for making a simple mis - health insurance package are called a intended to be. take. Section 321: An employer “pool.” The more people you have, the can be fined up to $500,000 if more the risk is spread around the Obama is going to push suicide they provide coverage they group, being distributed. Every month to cut Medicare spending! thought was “sufficient” but it you pay into it. You don’t get sick all No. This one was on a pamphlet wasn’t, according to govern - the time, but if you do, the money is the religious protesters in Lake ment standards. Additionally, there for you and everyone else to use. Grove handed to me one after - fines of $100 per employee per The more people who are in the pool, noon as I asked them questions day on employers will occur if the lower all your premiums will be. they couldn’t answer. Basically, they won’t offer health cover - This means that your pool within your their “interpretation” is from page age that has been approved. private insurance will shrink. You will 425 of the bill, which makes an The fines continue until the have more risk in the private insur - amendment to Title 18 of the So - problem is fixed. ance. Your premiums will go up. Ini - cial Security Act. The biggest criticism of all is tially, this plan will lower costs to the It’s simple-the bill makes it so that there is no backup plan to public pool. Medicare will pay for, not man - whether or not you paid them or the this bill if a part of it fails. If the situa - The opposition says the govern - date, “advance care planning consulta - insurance said everything was taken tion were to occur that not enough ment’s power of taxation, legislation tions,” which would occur every five care of. The electronic system would money was collected from businesses and inflation will drive private insur - years between patients and doctors. be more organized and efficient. and the other methods, taxes would ance out of business. But, once again, End-of-life options would be ex - Many people stick with a job they increase to make up for it. you have the power to stay with your plained and discussed, for the purpose don’t like just to get health insurance. Is this the solution? We’ll find out current provider. There is no 100 per - of the patient choosing a treatment This bill allows people more options. soon enough. It’s not like there is an - cent guarantee your premiums will be plan. Though it doesn’t prohibit eu - The current system ultimately fa - other plan that everyone can agree outrageous. thanasia explicitly, opposition to the vors the rich and abandons the poor in upon. There are pros and cons to con - Although, the document also says: plan argue that could be a potential many aspects. Those with health in - sider to this bill, but we have to keep option. “Except in cases of hardship, once surance, such as students and those in mind that the current situation with who work for a company that provides health care needs a drastic change. market reforms and affordability cred - Illegal immigrants will get free its are in effect, individuals will be re - it, might not see just how many peo - What we were doing obviously isn’t health care! ple lack coverage. The homeless still working. sponsible for obtaining and Absolutely not. This rumor is com - do not receive medical care that could maintaining health insurance cover - ing from page 50, section 152. This greatly help them. Seniors in many 10 Vol. XXXI, Issue 2 | Wednesday, September 30, 2009 features TThhee JJoouurrnnaalliissmm CCoonnuunnddrruumm

- School of Journalism Dean Howard Schneider lecturing a Thursday evening News Literacy class. By Najib Aminy Photo by Najib Aminy future, journalism schools across the tion. “I don’t think it’s a good thing all Gustavson said. p on the second floor of the Stu - country, including Stony Brook’s School these people are losing their jobs,” Kelly Udent Union, journalism major Jennifer of Journalism, are experiencing an in - said. “I think in terms of my situation My Office number is… Gustavson is reading off the concert crease in majors. Like the rest of the na - things aren’t as bad as it’s made out to On the desk of J-School graduate billboard on air on the university’s radio tion, the School of Journalism is be because they are going to be looking Rohma Abbas is Ray Bradbury’s station, WUSB . In the small cubicle are adapting to the dynamic field while for people my age to come in and work.” Fahrenheit 451 , a gift from her profes - albums of new music, posters and pic - wishing the best for its graduates. sors Harvey Aronson and Irene Virag, a tures of musicians, and reminders of the Graduating from a New School reminder for her to read the book. station’s policies. There is vintage equip - Stepping Into a Field of of Journalism She has yet to read it. ment that Gustavson controls to ma - Uncertainty Behind every polished resume, Resting aside Bradbury’s classic is nipulate the audio levels of her When Gustavson hears about her cover letter and connection is a worthy Intimate Journalism , a book used in her one-hour 9 to 10 a.m. Monday-morn - former classmates landing jobs, many in variable that influences employment: magazine writing class taught by Aron - ing broadcast. the metropolitan area and few beyond prestige. Stony Brook’s School of Jour - son and Virag, and another book titled, Today’s program of Esoteric Radio that, she says she becomes very excited nalism, turning four years old, is in its How to Write Funny . is empty of news but filled with music. and happy. “The reason why I think infancy when compared to journalism “I found that at a bargain sale for a “I am playing my husband’s playlist,” they are getting jobs is because they are programs such as those of Syracuse dollar,” Abbas, the former editor-in- Gustavson said. “I didn’t have any time persistent,” she said. “The people who University, Northwestern University chief of The Independent , said. to prepare news to talk about.” don’t have jobs is not because they are and the University of Missouri. And beside that was a mundane As AC/DC rocked the airwaves not good journalists,” she paused, “it’s a Calling it a “catch-22”, Kelly said he black hard-covered book titled in gold from the 80-gigabyte-iPod encased in a game.” believes that while the school’s youth text, Penal Code . It is a textbook that black and interior red velvet case, Gus - Having interned with a reporter lacks in prestige, it is given the advan - helps Abbas understand police jargon tavson searched for public service an - from the National Public Radio , The tage of adapting to the changes occur - when typing up the police blotter for nouncements to play while explaining Daily News , News 12 , and currently at ring in the field of journalism. The Southampton Press , her employer. that she needed to record another Newsday , Gustavson said she is hoping “It might be a little tougher initially “It’s still going on right now,” Abbas promo for her show. to cast her net as wide as possible hop - to get a job because the school doesn’t said. “The transition from not having a Gustavson is in her final semester ing to land an entry-level position. have the prestige, say, of other journal - job to having the most intensive job I’ve at Stony Brook and looking to enter “the “Whatever will hire me first,” she ism or communications schools have,” ever had.” real world” in hopes of landing a career quickly answered about where she said Kelly, who switched from a math Abbas said she was fortunate in her in radio or print journalism. “I wanted wanted to work. major to majors in history and journal - job search taking up every opportunity to get more internships under my belt Senior Michael Kelly, editor-in- ism. “Because it’s new, it’s almost more that came her way, from the courses, so I am more prepared to get a job,” said chief of The Stony Brook Independent, well adapted to give me the skills I need connections, and her involvement with Gustavson, who said she could have said he is concerned but no more than to go out in the current journalism cli - The Independent . But like many gradu - graduated in the spring. any other student about to graduate. “I mate.” ates, her time from graduating to land - Gustavson said she is worried about think the jobs are changing but that the The program mandates that stu - ing a job was what she called a landing a job in the media market, a field isn’t dying,” said Kelly on journal - dents majoring in journalism complete depressing time in her life. field that is undergoing rapid reforma - ism. “I think that there is still going to courses in all forms of media including “I was losing it,” Abbas said. “I was tion, and planning to start job search - be journalism being done, it’s just a an online course, a field thought to be getting really upset. Nobody was getting ing in October. matter of figuring out how it’s going to the future of the profession. back to me. Here I spent four years of It’s one thing to graduate during a be done.” “They’ve been lagging with innova - my life getting this degree, four years of time of economic grief when unem - Kelly has interned as a reporter for tion and ideas,” Gustavson said about my life, and two of those years were in - ployment for young adults is over 50 the Albany Times Union and for News - the media. “They really need to take this tensive journalism years. I packed my percent, according to the U.S. Labor day ’s website, despite his expectations to serious,” she said talking about media schedule, got a job, was editor of The In - Department’s most recent report. But see the newspaper industry die and owners who say they are smart and ex - dependent . It meant nothing.” pursuing a job in the field of journalism other opportunities arise. perienced to know what is best. “They But after freelancing for a short is like adding salt to a wounded dream. One opportunity comes with news - have to stop that attitude and really sit time, setting up job interviews, and hav - Despite the gloomy outlook for the room lay-offs spreading all over the na - and think of ideas to get out of the hole,” ing professor Julia Mead, who Abbas The Stony Brook Press 11 features said got her the job, vouch for her, Intent on finding a job, Serignese Abbas’ fear of being jobless forever has not thrown out the idea of graduate ceased. school and is grateful for her time as a “I think it’s really important for J- journalism student despite her career school kids to make friends with their status. professors,” Abbas said. “They will re - “It was an experience I wouldn’t ally help you out, don’t underestimate take back for a second,” she said. that. I can’t stress that enough.” Recent graduate Adrian Car - Unpaid Experiences rasquillo took another approach, he up - A three-month unpaid summer in - dated his linked-in profile, started using ternship only fills up a couple lines on a Twitter, created a blog that he would page-long resume but professors argue update twice a day and like Abbas, they are crucial in landing a job. made it his job to find a job. “We still need to be convincing stu - “You feel like you are getting beat dents how important it is for them to down because you know how daunting have these off campus internships,” said it is, the worst job market in 26 years, Barbara Selvin, a professor and intern - journalism is dying, papers are dying, ship coordinator for the journalism you picture the scenario of fire and school. “Your resume is going to go to brimstone coming down to the city,” the bottom of the pile if you don’t have Carrasquillo described the job search internships.” process. With the school still in its infancy, Najib Aminy But the hail of fiery rejections Selvin said that media organizations Senior journalism major Jennifer Gustavson on the university’s radio station, 90.1 FM WUSB ended when Carrasquillo landed not have contacted her about internship one, but two jobs in journalism, one as opportunities for Stony Brook students. the social media editor at The Queens As the school of journalism grows, ficient enough to prepare their majors eration of journalists the ones that will Ledger and the other as a weekend web both in size and in majors, so do in - in competing in a professional yet dy - fill the expectations of using new tech - producer for Fox 5 NY . ternships. namic job market? nologies. “It’s a tough market and people are “I haven’t had to do all that much “The most important thing we can “I think that the revolution we are starting to get lucky,” Carrasquillo said. because people have to come to me with do is teach students the fundamentals, going through is going to provide enor - good internships,” Selvin said. “I think how to get to the bottom of stories, how mous new opportunities for young Still Searching its word of mouth, I don’t know what they can report, report, report to get to journalists,” Schneider said. “I think we While some J-School graduates are else to attribute it to.” the bottom of the story,” said former are going to see more online newspa - fortunate, others are still searching for The relationships the J-school has editor of Newsday and Dean of the pers, alternative magazines, we are careers in journalism. Some have gone also created have proven useful for School of Journalism Howard Schnei - going to see a lot of new experiments.” off to law school, graduate school in dif - many students including Gustavson der. ferent fields, or taken time off. A few and Kelly, who have taken advantage of “The second job after teaching fun - The “Other” Future of even turned down jobs. But for gradu - Stony Brook’s connections, such as damentals is to teach them skills and at - Journalism ate Katie Serignese, one of the first Newsday , The Daily News , News 12 and titudes that will enable them to be very Freshman Louis Rosenfield is sit - seven students to graduate from the NPR . valuable employees. To that end they ting in Javits 110 on a Wednesday School of Journalism in 2008, her But Selvin says the program is still need to think how to add value across morning waiting for Schneider’s JRN search for a job is still an ongoing one. trying to grasp what’s best for their stu - platforms.” 101 lecture for his News Literacy class. “The most discouraging thing that dents in addition to internship oppor - This is implemented through the It fills a D.E.C. G requirement for I find is that they are looking for people tunities. program’s 65-credit course, which in - Rosenfield, who sits near the back on with experience,” said Serignese, who “We are ramping up our job train - cludes multidisciplinary studies, where the right side of the lecture hall. works as a skybox guest attendant in ing and career efforts particularly in the students must take courses in varying It is seven minutes past eight, and Citifield. “How am I supposed to get a internships programs which are going fields of journalism such as print, Schneider begins his lecture. Cans of job if no one is giving me the opportu - to have a stronger focus on resume broadcast and online. Red Bulls, Green Mountain Coffee nity to work three to five years,” she writing this semester,” said Selvin, who Since the program opened in 2006, cups, and orange juice bottles lined up said. teaches a course on the current state of the school’s growth has significantly in - the tables of the lecture hall, the class Serignese, who concentrated in journalism. creased from zero to more than 225 was surprisingly attentive that early in print journalism, has freelanced for Four months since the class of majors, Schneider said. The expansion the morning. Newsday while searching for a job. 2009 graduated, Selvin said the number doesn’t stop there: the school has added “He makes it entertaining,” Rosen - “I’m kind of jealous of the ones that of her students finding jobs is on pace a $1.3 million two-level newsroom, a field said of Schneider. “I enjoy what he did get jobs,” Serignese said. “Maybe with what she expected. Ultimately, she recycled broadcast studio from local tel - is talking about.” they were more of go getters, I wonder said she hoped all her graduates would evision station WLNY-55 , and is devel - As the class continues, Schneider what they did different. I am optimistic have found jobs by the end of nine oping a graduate program where converges a history lesson with his les - nonetheless, I am not convinced that I months. students can earn an MBA and an un - son of freedom of the press. His left am never going to get a job as a jour - “It’s the economy, it’s the changes dergraduate degree in journalism in five hand clenches on the clicker to move nalist.” in the news industry, it’s the problems, years. from slide to slide, his right arm moves Serignese still has options available. the recession in the news industry But with a limited staff of former up and down with each syllable he pro - She is debating whether to pursue a alone, Internet news sites are not really editors, producers, and editors, Schnei - nounces, all while walking from one freelance position at Anton Newspa - making a lot of money yet,” she said. der said the growth of the journalism side of the classroom to the other. pers, a hyper-local group of local town “Everything is still up in the air.” school is something that raises concern. “Is Jon Stewart a journalist?” publications in Hicksville where she “We are going to have to balance Schneider asks, who then proceeds to gets paid $30 dollars an article and is Building a Major Around growth and quality,” Schneider said. playing a clip of legendary journalist taxed. Uncertainty “Numbers are great but at some point Bill Moyers interviewing Jon Stewart “It cost me $30 dollars to get there As the number of students around we think that quality needs to be a key and asking the very same question. so is it really worth the drive?” she the nation that pursue journalism in - factor.” Stewart said he is not a journalist in asked. “I’m still on the fence about it,” creases, how does a new school, such as Schneider said he is optimistic the April 27, 2007 interview but a polit - said the Miller Place resident. the J-school, develop a curriculum suf - about the future calling the current gen - ical cartoonist. 12 Features Vol. XXXI, Issue 2 | Wednesday, September 30, 2009

CONUNDRUM continued from previous page

Deciding who is a journalist, ex - and turn out good journalism plaining the freedom of the press, es - but the audience doesn’t appre - tablishing the difference between ciate it or recognize it then it propaganda and information are just wont help,” Schneider said of the few of the lesson topics students learn program’s goals. during the semester that Schneider says establishes a better future of news con - The Kicker sumers. Though the J-school is still “We have not one mission but very young, its students, both two,” Schneider said of the journalism current and former, shared their program. “One mission is to train next concerns. “It needs to be more generation of journalist—that and the intensive and deadline orien - next generation of news consumers.” tated,” said Abbas, who wrote And since taking the class one five stories including a 1,400 month ago, Rosenfield said he is more plus word article for The critical of the news he takes in. “It Southampton Press in one week. makes me decide whether the journal - “That’s the biggest issue I’ve had ists are giving me reliable information since I’ve gotten here—time or if they are trying to just promote management.” ideas or if they are independent from “The online program has to Najib Aminy the companies they are talking about,” improve,” Carrasquillo said, that Recent J-school graduate Rohma Abbas in her office at The Southampton Press. Rosenfield said. “When people don’t di - and “practicing more on your it happens so fast, there are going to be tion of the school,” Schneider said. “If rectly tell you that they are working for stories and reporting.” bumps along the way.” we turn out terrific people the word will a company and they make it look like “I guess what I would say is that In spite of the market, Serignese is spread where you go to school and if we they’re being objective and they’re not, they should do a better job in advocat - still hopeful of finding a job. “I just turn out graduates and they are disap - I don’t like it because they are trying to ing for people to get involved with stu - want to do the best I can because I knew pointing and cant live up to what we ex - trick me,” he said. dent media than they do,” Kelly said. they did the best they could for us,” she pect, the reputation of the school It is Stony Brook University’s News “They should really be pushing that be - said of her professors. deservedly will not grow.” Literacy program that has Schneider re - cause you learn more from joining one Serignese was recently assigned a For Gustavson, that pressure begins ceiving phone calls from different uni - of the campus papers than you do from freelance story on a meeting discussing after December. “I think I can make a versities looking to implement the sitting in one of your classes reporting neighborhood crimes in Levittown for good impression,” she said. “The hard - program at their school creating a lot of on four stories for one semester.” the Hicksville Illustrated News . est thing is getting your foot in the buzz and giving the school a lot atten - As the school continues to grow, it “Ultimately, it will be the graduates door.” tion. will have to match that growth with in - who are going to determine the reputa - “If you just focus on supply side frastructure, Schneider said. “But when The Unsung Heroes

Go ahead and nalist is killed. freedom of the press in our society al - close your eyes According to CPJ.org, there were lows us to maintain democracy and and picture some - thirty confirmed deaths of journalists in strong social, political, and economic one you consider 2009. The fall of the Soviet Union in the development. CPJ’s main goal is to pre - to be a hero. Who late 1980s caused a tidal wave of jour - serve this freedom and democracy comes to mind? nalistic freedom, but recently this free - through protecting the journalists that Do you see a fire - dom has been abolished. The War on heroically risk their lives for these prin - by Lauren fighter in all his Terror causes autocratic governments to ciples. CPJ protects journalists by alert - Dubinksy glory as he’s put - crack down on the flow of information ing them where the attacks on freedom ting out a massive by imprisoning and killing journalists. of the press are occuring. They make ef - fire that erupted in a five-story build - One of the hundreds of cases of jour - forts to promote change including pub - ing? A police officer dressed in blue and nalists being unjustly treated dated back lishing articles and organizing public white as she’s chasing a criminal down a to March 2009 when two American TV protests all around the world. Program dark alley with a gun clenched in her journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, coordinators in Africa, Asia, the Amer - hand? Or, maybe a soldier over in Iraq were held in North Korea. Ling and Lee icas, Europe, Central Asia, the Middle firing a machine gun as countless com - crossed over the border from the Chi - The true unsung heroes East and North Africa are watching rades are dying all around him? I think nese to the North Korean side for one over the press to track journalists in we can all come to the conclusion that a minute and were immediately sen - trouble. When a journalist is in trouble, hero is someone who puts their life on tenced to twelve years of hard labor for “It was startling to read about jour - CPJ notifies news organizations, gov - the line on a daily basis to ensure the trespassing and “hostile acts.” Fortu - nalists from different regions of the ernment officials, and human rights or - safety of the public and to serve their nately, they found a happy ending after world that commonly shared negative ganization. If it wasn’t for journalists, we country. If that’s the definition of a hero, former President Bill Clinton negoti - experiences in an attempt to inform the would be in the dark as to what is going wouldn’t you agree that the people who ated their release. Many journalists were public,” said Zenna Solomon, Stony on in our world. There are ways in are risking their lives to obtain the in - not able to find the happy ending that Brook University freshman. “The ex - which we can help by becoming a mem - formation that fills the pages of news - both Ling and Lee did but there are treme measures taken by adversaries of ber of CPJ and donating $45 ($20 for papers, magazines and web pages fit measures that are being taken to put an these journalists were ghastly unfore - students) to the organization. Instead of that description? Countless journalists end to this injustice. . seen. I commend the CPJ website for buying those new sneakers you’ve been are dying all over the world as they are The Committee to Protect Journal - providing an outlet for the stories of drooling over for the past month, reporting breaking news stories and ists (CPJ) was created by a group of U.S. these journalists.” maybe you should donate to this organ - most of the cases go unknown. foreign correspondents to put an end to Freedom of press is such a vital part ization and aid in making a change in I was shocked to learn that approxi - the harsh treatment of their colleagues of our society because without it, we our world instead. mately three times every month a jour - by authoritarian governments. lack important human rights. Having The Stony Brook Press Features 13

How We Save the Newspapers

By now the ad revenue that drove newspapers for papers can be funded through dona - sick newspaper. public has heard much of the 20 th century. Rather than tions from readers and endowments In March 2009, Senator Benjamin this story too fight the daunting battle of making In - from wealthy philanthropists. In the Cardin of Maryland introduced the many times. ternet news profitable, newspapers New Yorker , Steve Coll said quite sagely, Newspaper Revitalization Act , a bill that Newspapers die should realize that they can survive in “Not to pick on any one institution, but, would treat newspapers as educational every month, the paper format or not by simply going the from a constitutional perspective, how nonprofit entities with a kind of tax sta - victims of too little way of National Public Radio (NPR) did we end up in a society where tus similar to churches, hospitals and by Ross Barkan revenue and public broadcasters. In exchange for changing times. that status, newspapers could no longer The days of the endorse candidates for public office. profitable newspaper are dead. Back in The bill is a good start. While making 2008, the New York Times had an oper - private newspapers partially public ating profit of $78 million. Now it has might terrify purists who fear the in - $17 million to play with. We live in the tegrity of the free press is at stake, re - Age of Newspaper Doom which has member that both NPR and PBS are been accelerated by a brutal recession. hardly mouthpieces and propaganda In nary twenty years, a majority of machines of the U.S. government. A American newspapers might be fin - 2005 Harris Poll revealed that NPR is ished. The problem, simply, is money. the most trusted news source in the The solution, simply, is to take away the United States, beating out CNN, Fox profits. It is time for a radical change in News, the New York Times, etc. The the newspaper industry: newspapers public spoke. Those non-profits might need to become non-profit organiza - not be so bad after all. tions. Imagine a world in which newspa - The hunger for news and good pers no longer have to cater to base, journalism has not abated. People, de - sensationalist urges and are finally freed spite stereotypes heaped on them by from a competitive frenzy that seems to older generations, are attentive as ever result in newspapers appealing to the in their news consumption. Newspaper lowest common denominator. With websites are successful from a non- strong revenue funding guaranteed, profit standpoint: people are visiting newspapers would not have to fret any and people are reading. The New York longer that the rag across town is get - Times website continues to receive more ting more subscribers because their hits and unique visitors each month. pages are choked with bloody murder The internet is replacing paper as the and celebrity detritus. And newspapers, primary medium to convey news. Is this both local and national, would be liber - even a bad thing? Journalism professors and the Public Broadcasting Service Williams College has an endowment ated from the burden of searching for might scream, “ Yes,” but the non-paper (PBS). well in excess of one billion dollars, advertising. The big newsrooms of the media will certainly save a lot of trees What does “going the way” of these while the Washington Post , a fountain - golden age could actually return. and build some carbon sinks to reverse services mean? Both NPR and PBS stay head of Watergate and so much other So let’s save journalism. A thousand climate change. We all need to accept afloat through a combination of public skeptical and investigative reporting NPRs might not be feasible by tomor - this evolution. and private donations, with NPR earn - critical to the republic’s health, is in row but soon they will have to be. The The problem is obviously that In - ing about half its money from dues and jeopardy?” Coll, by the way, figured out business model isn’t there so let’s di - ternet news isn’t a big money-maker fees it charges its member stations to re - that the total cost of news-gathering op - vorce journalism from business. Since yet. Sure, advertisers can buy ad space ceive programming. (This method of erations at the Washington Post is when was getting the scoop as impor - on the Wall Street Journal or Times web - funding makes less sense for newspa - around $120 million. If universities can tant as making money? They used to sites. Why pay exorbitant fees there pers because there will not be one cen - receive such exhorbitant endowments, call the Ottoman Empire the “old, sick when there are other heavily-trafficked tralized newspaper earning much of its why not newspapers? And why not hold man of Europe.” Newspapers are the sites asking for far less? The Internet of - money through the export of articles to newspaper fund-raisers a la public old, sick men of America. Let’s make fers an absurd amount of competition. smaller newspapers.) What does make broadcasting? I’m sure some nice gents them healthy again. Craigslist has taken away the classified sense is that like NPR and PBS, news - and dames can spare a dime for the old 14 Features Vol. XXXI, Issue 2 | Wednesday, September 30, 2009

A Southern Belle Sets Y’all Straight charming thing they have to utter is their disappoint - places to want to hire me within the first week of ap - ment that you are not a freshman, because then they plying (and trust me, I’m not overqualified), the econ - By Andi Greene could have gotten $160 to “bang” you, even though omy is doing fine. Also, when nearly every person that you would not even venture to touch that person with owns a car has one no older than ten years old, on oc - Moving to Long Island was a giant change from a ten-foot pole. casion fifteen, the economy is just swell. I know, it’s a Chattanooga, Tennessee, to say the least. Sure, there In fact, it’s even hard to have a normal conversa - shock, but somehow you’ll survive. are some things I miss about the South…like biscuits tion with any guy here without every word becoming Everyone in New York hates cats. What’s the motive and gravy, real country cooking, and friendly smiles, a sarcastic anecdote. Maybe it’s the whole 21 st century here? but there are a plethora of things I adore about New thing. Perhaps men today are too used to entertaining I really don’t see the big problem. Cats are super York. The people challenge me because they’re all the masses by being a jackass. Maybe they just need cool. They can be cute and cuddly and good for tons freaking crazy (usually it’s just me), everyone knows that attention, and getting a girl to despise them is bet - of things…like, uh, staring at a pesky spider and then how to give a proper handshake, and there are things ter than not being noticed. Who knows? They could walking away, or pretending to care about you just to to actually do at night, aside from stumbling around be compensating for something, but eh, what do I get the kitty food in your hand, or throwing up a nice Wal-Mart, sometimes drunkenly, at three in the morn - know anyway? The best part is when you ask a serious hairball on your favorite sweater, and okay – I suppose ing. That’s right – 24 hour Wal-Mart supercenters are question and they have this dumbfounded look of they can be a smidge apathetic at times. But seriously everyone’s safe haven in the South. And no, Maryland confusion as to why you’re even attempting to speak people, cats are great for cuddling when you really doesn’t count as the South. So, to serve as a guide for with them, like you’re “breaking the code” or some - need it, and they are smart as a whip most of the time. your personal pleasure, I’ve taken the time to make thing ridiculous. Gentlemen don’t exist in New York as I think people in New York are just intimidated by you a list of the many wondrous differences between far as I’ve seen, save a few. And if chivalry isn’t dead anyone or anything that has the possibility to turn my beloved Tennessee and newfound love New York. here, it’s pretty damn close. their back on them once or not be unfailingly loyal to Polite and/or friendly gestures. Nuisance or no? them. Take a risk, people! Become a cat owner! Casual dating. Does it exist? While some kids in the South are too busy getting What the hell is up with casual dating here? I married at the ripe age of 18 or having children All of this being said, I really like my new home at asked a few girls from work, and after they wiped the (mostly because they only teach abstinence in schools Stony Brook. I’m clearly still adjusting, but the idea of look of shock off their faces, they replied with a gri - and say nothing about using birth control) to even living here for a while isn’t too far-fetched. Plus, once mace and a simple, “guys don’t really ask you to do want to explore more than their backyards, at least if all of New York sees that I can be trusted and have a anything unless they just want to hook-up.” Now you smile politely toward them, they return the favor. sense of dog-like loyalty, some might say, they’ll warm there’s something to look forward to. Who would ac - Although who am I to judge, really? Maybe it really up to me I think. There are quite a few things I fancy tually want to get to know a person in the first place would kill some of the people in New York to give a here already, in fact, like Friendly’s, on-campus activ - anyway? That’s completely overrated. This is the best tiny, quite possibly awkward smile back. In fact, I’m ities, the Press , and my roommate. It’s all good. So the way. You can just forego all the boring stuff and hop to sure it’s far too much to ask for someone to thank you last thing I’ll bitch about is the fact that a grand total it! when you hold the door open for an entire stampede of 4 New Yorkers or less actually know where Ten - Now I definitely miss my male friends back home of people before, during and after lunch. nessee is geographically. I’ll give you a hint. It’s not on who tried to pay for me so many a time. It’s fascinat - The economy. Let’s just pretend this topic hasn’t the Gulf. Thus, I leave you with a map of the United ing how your perspectives can alter so dramatically in been beaten to death already. States. Use it, study it, and love it. And remember, it’s a new place. However, I am determined to bring back Despite what you may believe, the economy is not okay to venture out West sometimes. California isn’t the fine art of casual dating, or at least find some peo - suffering on Long Island. In fact, it quite possibly the only state out there, and Florida isn’t the best place ple who do. After all, you know what they say –those never does. When I can manage to get three different on Earth. who don’t date, wed…really early. Greetings. Hug, kiss, handshake, or glance and in - stantly look away? It seems that most, if not all, New Yorkers are completely and totally averted to hugs of any kind. They can kiss you on the cheek to welcome you, but you reach out for a friendly hug and they act like you’re trying to feed them poison. However, a major plus is that every person you meet shakes your hand, whereas in the South some men may feel awkward shaking a woman’s hand. I’ve learned not to expect that kind of gesture, so I was pleasantly surprised about that instance when I journeyed northeast. In general, women in the South suck at hand - shakes. If you reach your hand out, they look confused and give you some half-assed, flimsy, two-finger shake, which I view as a disgrace to women everywhere. Even so, it seems like those women are the ones who only go to college to find a husband, if they go at all. That’s right- some women actually strive to be housewives. Women’s rights movement- who needs it? That for - eign concept goes completely down the toilet once a girl only wants a man so she has someone to support her. Men. I suppose it had to be covered at some point. Men here must really respect women because they all shake your hand and hardly talk to you. That must just mean they’re upstanding people, right? That is, until they finally open their mouths and the one The Stony Brook Press Features15

Stony Brook’s Eden Lies in Southampton

will still get to say they graduated from SBU, but many will never have By Colleen Harrington to worry about parking in South P, or wonder if it’s pronounced “Wang” or Looking to get away from the “Wong.” hustle and bustle of the Academic “People are much friendlier Mall? Like hanging out at the beach? here—they actually hold doors for Is green your favorite color? Stony you,” said Lacey Kucerak, a 20-year- Brook University’s Southampton old Southampton junior. She was a campus, the small, eco-enthused main campus student for two years, satellite campus that was recently dorming in Mendelsohn and Roth added to the SBU empire, is nothing quads before transferring to the new like SBU’s main campus. eastern SBU branch. “It’s just totally It’s got DECs and SINC sites, but different from main campus. You that’s about where the similarities know just about everyone.” end.“I did three semesters at main Although it’s only about an campus,” said Junior Raphael hour’s drive from SBU, the Bergman, who spoke as if he were Southampton campus might as well describing prison time as he played be in a different universe with its an intense game of ping-pong in the eco-friendly fixation and petite pop - Southampton Student Center game ulation. Most students there seem to room. “When I came here, I noticed appreciate the school’s tight-knit, in - my workload went way down. It’s not timate atmosphere, while at the same really like college, it’s more like time acknowledging that it can be sleep-away summer camp.” limiting. After Stony Brook purchased the “Southampton is very unique, property from a financially-choked and very tiny,” said Billy Swezey, Long Island University in 2006 for president of the scuba club and jun - Colleen Harrington $35 million, renovations and con - ior at Southampton. Swezey, who Southampton has cool windmills? Where is this magical land and how do we get there? struction soon began. Nestled in a lives just off campus, transferred to comparison to the seemingly endless dents at Southampton, size doesn’t piece of Hamptons waterfront prop - Southampton from Binghamton Uni - amount of classes that the main cam - matter. They enjoy the much mel - erty, the new campus now offers versity. pus offers for DEC K alone. But lower atmosphere, the sense of close eight undergraduate majors which all “There’s this great, laid-back at - there’s a shuttle bus that runs be - community and the proximity to involve environmental studies or ma - mosphere… I just wish there was a tween campuses all day, every couple spectacular Hamptons shores. rine sciences. There are currently wider range of classes. Here it’s like, of hours, allowing Southampton stu - “I like to bike down to the beach about 220 students dorming there, there’s one class for one DEC, and dents to take main campus courses a lot. Sometimes I’ll go kayaking be - up from 160 residents last fall. This that’s it.” One class per DEC pales in bite-sized portion of SBU students and vice versa. fore class,” said Bergman, the ping- Southampton’s small size pong player, as he served a shot. can also limit students in “Yea, on really nice, sunny days, terms of dining options. everyone skips class and goes to the There’s no Wendy’s, Starbucks, beach,” said Bergman’s opponent delis or pizzerias at Senior Amauwa Igwe. The campus Southampton- just one dining has something else going for it: hall called the Student Café “greeniosity,” and plenty of it. While Center. It closes most days at many of the buildings on campus are 7pm and on weekends it does - still architectural remnants of Long n’t open until 11am. When the Island University’s ownership, new Café is closed, students have construction and renovations that re - their pick of vending machine flect SBU Southampton’s eco-friendly fare or going off-campus for image have begun to crop up. You food, despite having pur - can find solar-powered street-lamps, chased one of the mandatory the brand new library that opened meal plans that cost upwards this year is geo-thermally heated and of $1700. a greenhouse on campus grows veg - “I miss dinner all the etables that are gobbled in the Café. time,” said freshman Deanna An old windmill has sat on the prop - Lally, an Environmental Stud - erty since the 1890’s, but with a wind ies major. “I’ve had to have turbine behind it. pizza delivered.” Dining serv - So, if you’re into SBU but hate the ices representatives have said crowds, if you like super-fresh pro - that financial challenges com - duce at reasonable hours, if you’re a bined with few employees and self-described beach bum, or if your a small student body are what ultimate goal is a teensy-tiny carbon limits the cafeteria’s operating footprint, SBU Southampton might Colleen Harrington Southampton’s formidable fleet of ships hours. But to most of the stu - be the campus for you. 16 Features Vol. XXXI, Issue 2 | Wednesday, September 30, 2009

for a block or so. They all waited with and called up all of her sexy girlfriends the final stage of the competition. It was their hands shoved deep inside their to help countdown the New Year. Soon, referred to as “Best On-Screen Sex By Chris Mellides pockets to fight the chill as best they the clock struck midnight and everyone Scene.” So here was this big, plastic, in - could. It was natural then to hear some went ape shit, naturally. flatable doll and I was expected to fuck The six train subway was operating of them complain and mutter curses as About 30 minutes later Joanna an - it. Sure. Why not? at full capacity that night. I was shoul - I brushed past them to get to the front nounced that she would be hosting a The drunk girl tried her hands at der to shoulder with a mob of eager of the line. A beady-eyed, lanky man contest on stage and she needed some screwing the thing and fell hard on her travelers who, like me, were presumably with no hair stopped me at the door and volunteers. She requested two guys and ass in the process. How embarrassing, I attempting to reach various New Year’s asked for my name. He scanned several two gals to take part in a competition thought. When it was my turn I kissed Eve parties littered across Manhattan. on his list before he was able to find she dubbed “America’s Next Top Porn the doll sensually, because I’m a gentle - I was supposed to stop at Spring mine. Then he said, “Welcome to Don Star.” I was still pushed up against the man, then I bent it over and threw it to Street and walk a short distance to Don Hill’s, Chris. Enjoy your stay.” stage taking photographs when Jessie the ground. I was railing my plastic date Hill’s for the annual Burning Angel New I walked in to find a punk band Lee saw me and yanked me up there so hard that I would’ve gotten a high- Year’s Bash. For those in need of clarifi - performing on a large stage. The venue with her. I was instantly and involun - five out of Ron Jeremy had he been in cation, Burning Angel is a pornographic had a good sounding PA, which was tarily in the contest. attendance that night. website that features a score of modified nice. As I started pushing my way in, I The crowd of 500 went silent as “Well, I think we all know who girls who grease up their tattoos, adjust Joanna began tonight’s winner is,” said Joanna. “Who their piercings and fuck one another on the show. “First, thinks she should win?” Nothing but camera willy nilly. If you’re into alt porn I’d like our con - crickets could be heard as Joanna mo - and can get away with ponying up 20 testants to tioned to the drunk mess on stage. “And bucks a month, I strongly suggest you choose their what about Dick Delicious?” said our give the site a whirl. Yet, I digress. best porn hot host. At that, the crowd erupted into I had just wrapped up an interview names and an - yells and cheers and I, ladies and germs, for publication with a Burning Angel nounce them to was victorious. film and photo starlet named Jessie Lee, the rest of you As a reward for my efforts I was and Burning Angel film director Mitch lovely people,” given five official Burning Angel adult Fontaine was kind enough to put me on said Joanna. DVDs, lap dances from Joanna, Jessie his guest list for the party. The dude Lee and a few of the other Angels and As it happened, getting to the venue next to me said top-shelf booze courtesy of a Ziggy proved to be problematic. Without a something stu - Stardust-looking motherfucker who moment’s notice, the Terror Alert scale pid, both chicks happened to be the owner of Don Hill’s. jumped from neon yellow to a lovely were drunk and Once I stepped foot off the stage, I shade of flu phlegm green that night. As incoherent and was getting hugs and shaking hands like a result, the subway lines became then I was I was the fucking Mayor’s wife. Every - handed the mi - one was shouting ‘Dick Delicious’ as I jammed and I was forced to exit well be - Sexy Panda, for the kiddies fore my desired stop. Armed with only crophone so passed by and two dudes who had got - a stainless steel flask of Johnny Walker that I could re - ten hold of the rubber sex toy I fellated Red, a pack of smokes and a GPS-capa - noticed that there were a few hundred veal my porn name. Without a mo - earlier wanted me to sign it with a ble smart phone, I roamed about New people inside. Almost immediately, I ment’s hesitation, I uttered, “Dick Sharpie. York City in search of my destination. was told that I had to check in my coat. Delicious.” And the crowd went nuts. I was quite literally treated like a The drink kicked like a mule and So, I headed down to the basement of So, the first round of the competi - God for the rest of my stay there. I left the cigarettes complimented it nicely. the club and waited in line. It was a long tion was “Best Orgasm.” The guy next early. And by early, I mean three in the Thanks to overconsumption, however, one but it beat the shit out of having to to me overacted his part and was the morning, so that I could catch a train it wasn’t long before I was completely wait on the streets outside. first to be eliminated. That left the two back home. Later, I found out that the out of liquor. After shuffling the streets At first I was greeted by a gay black drunk girls and me. party hadn’t quite ended after I left and in the biting cold for about an hour or man wearing white gloves, a bowtie and The second round was “Best Oral that there were live sex acts unfolding so, the effects of the whiskey began to a gold hat crowed with feathers. He Sex.” The one girl who gave perhaps the throughout the club well until the wee fade. The strong winter winds chilled would’ve been completely naked had it greatest fake orgasm ever turned out to hours of the morning. My gay black me to the bone and there was no way to not been for a lone gym sock covering be a fucking prude, got upset and leapt friend probably got lucky, now that I fight the dry and frigid air. up his cock. After posing for a photo - off the stage, leaving just me standing think about it. So, I decided to stop off at some graph, he went on to tell me about the next to the sloppiest drunk girl you’ve I was totally crushed when I found kitschy coffee house to warm up and good ole days at Don Hill’s when peo - ever seen. You’ve EVER seen! out the news and I wished I would’ve ask for directions to Don Hill’s. I could ple both gay and straight were permit - So, a dildo was given to little miss stayed longer. What a shame. Would I barely hear the barista over my mi - ted to do just about anything, safe from shitfaced and she slobbered on it, do it all over again if I were given the graine and the shitty trumpet music fucking a farm animal or two, I’m spanked her ass with the fake veiny bas - chance to? You bet your sweet asses I that was pissing out of the shop’s sur - guessing. tard and that was it; her efforts were would, readers! round sound system didn’t help, so I Anyway, after finally checking in miserable. I was given a rubber mold of Goddamn it, what a fun time. left. Luckily, my phone found a signal my leather motorcycle jacket, I made Joanna’s vagina and was instructed to Hands down one of the best nights of after exiting the coffee house and I was my way upstairs. I decided to order “eat it, as best I could.” My tongue ex - my life. able to run my GPS program. After a some scotch at the bar and I took it plored the contours of the plastic sex toy Tune in next time when I take you while, I happened across a building that ‘neat’ to feel more at ease. Then, I began and it took all of my concentration to on a written tour of a Long Island sex shook with the sound of raucous rock photographing the punk band that was keep from drooling all over it. club! For serious. music. still tearing through the rest of their set Joanna giggled and tossed the thing I found Don Hill’s. list onstage. They were pretty good. out to the audience once I was through A line of people snaked around it Once they finished, Burning Angel with it. Since sloshed girl and I were the founder Joanna Angel took the stage only two contestants left, we moved to The Stony Brook Press Features 17

Album of the Fortnight – Madlib - Shades of Blue Movie of the Fortnight – Joe Dirt fornia who samples jazz music from By Daniel Offner artists as famous as Herbie Hancock By Andrew Fraley What happens when you take and Horace Silver to create an incom - Joe Dirt is quite a mind-blowing hip-hop producer parable remix album. possibly the best and give him free access to a major The album came out in 2003 movie ever made. It’s record company’s archives? You get and exploded on the hip-hop scene. one of the few Shades of Blue . Like most jazz, there aren’t too many movies I can watch Madlib is a critically ac - lyrics, but don’t let that deter you away over and over again, claimed hip-hop producer from Cali - from some of Madlib’s sickest beats and I still do, all the and remixes. time. It has a perfect Shades of ensemble of charac - Blue is the album ters, ranging from of the week be - the innocent but cause is the best of misguided Joe Dirt, both worlds. It has played brilliantly by the relaxing ele - David Spade, to the ments of jazz and jealous and mean the adrenaline- town bully, played by filled hip-hop Kid Rock. It even has Christopher played by the great Dennis Miller. The beats to get you Walken making an appearance, with movie is both a genius parody of the through the first his famous line, “You do it again, and odyssey genre and another excellent couple weeks here I’ll stab you in the face with a sodering entry into the genre’s annals, that it at Stony Brook iron.” I dare you to name a bad movie transcends it altogether. But don’t take University. with Christopher Walken in it. my word for it; watch the damn movie The story revolves around Joe for yourself, ya dummy. Dirt, as he narrates his quest to find his parents to a smarmy radio DJ,

Comic of the Fortnight – M.O.D.O.K.: Reign Delay Video Game of the Fortnight – Tetris

mind, such as… Eating pancakes! There’s no multiplayer mode, no By Kenny Mahoney Attending his high-school reunion! By Andrew Fraley saving a piece for later, no watching a Ring, ring, ring, goes Norman Os - Trying to pick up women! Getting Have you ever wondered if a game ghost of the piece showing you where born’s telephone. Who could it be? teased by bullies! And dishing out could have been perfected on the first it’s going to land. All of that bullshit Oh, it’s just M.O.D.O.K. leaving an - highly unnecessary, albeit hilarious, try, with no need for sequels or re - fluff is thankfully missing from the other voicemail feverishly demanding mind-blasts! These are just a few of makes? The game nobly withstands original, and that’s why the game is (or helplessly begging) for a super-vil - the things M.O.D.O.K. will do in Ryan the tests of time, and can never be perfect. All these additions to the for - lain gig. It seems that all the big-time Dunlavey’s tribute/parody to every - topped by the numerous pretenders to mula throw off the equation, and kill players in the Marvel universe have one’s favorite stubby-limbed the throne. That game is Tetris for the the balance of the game. There’s sim - forgotten about old M.O.D.O.K., leav - scoundrel. NES. There are countless sequels, up - ply no need to improve upon perfec - ing his freakishly large head dates, spinoffs and derivatives to this tion. and ironically tiny limbs with 1989 masterpiece, but nothing will As an aside, I hold the Press of - nothing to do. No superheroes ever come close to the perfect formula fice’s high score in Tetris. I’m putting to fight, no worlds to conquer, achieved with the original. It is 8 bits an open challenge out to anybody and most importantly – no of stunning flawlessness, pure and willing to accept it. 320,335 is the cash to pay for your minion’s simple. magic number to beat. Show me health insurance. And this formula is so easy, too. whatcha got, bitches. So what’s George Tartle - ton, aka - Mobile Organism Designed Only for Killing going to do during these tough times? Well there’s only one thing an overweight super-genius turned over - weight super-villain can do. Move back in with your par - ents, of course! Cower in fear as the all- powerful M.O.D.O.K. per - forms amazing feats of the 18 Arts & Entertainment Vol. XXXI, Issue 2 | Wednesday, September 30, 2009 arts&entertainment Other Hollywoods-Hollywood and its Others

Richardson. The camera fol - viewers readily accept these stereotypes by Mari Elba Wright-Schmidt lows Cheryl on her search for and incorporate them into their think - information about Faye in the li - ing. We cannot allow Hollywood to brary and exposes Faye´s secret dictate to us who is good looking and Cheryl Dunye, featured director in love affair with a white female what is acceptable in society. the Other Hollywoods—Hollywood and film director. The viewer is also In her lecture, Dunye explained its others film lecture series given a glimpse of Cheryl´s love that before she was able to join the How many black film directors can life that parallels that of Faye. Black Queer film movement, she felt in - you name off the top of your head? Bet - Cheryl is involved with a white visible. This allowed me to realize how ter yet, try naming a black female direc - woman, Diana, who is accused many other groups of people are left tor who directed and starred in a film of “trying to act black” by feeling invisible because of the stereo - that acknowledged the existence of Cheryl´s friends. The film has a types imposed on them or simply be - black lesbian filmmakers. If you´ve surprising ending, which makes cause they are excluded from given up, then you obviously did not at - it even more revolutionary. Hollywood films. Many subgroups are tend Cheryl Dunye´s September 16 lec - The question this film raises, poorly represented in the mass media. ture, titled Seeing in the Dark: An Insight which most people fail to recog - Asians, Eastern European Jews, and gay into Cinema by Queers of Color , hosted nize, is why must black women men all have small quotas for major fea - by the Humanities Department. Prior directors be invisible? Most im - ture films. It is important to note that to viewing Dunye´s film, I can honestly portantly, why do black ac - Dunye´s The Watermelon Woman was state that I was previously unaware of tresses appear in such a small not created solely for the black lesbian the existence black queer film move - number of well-known films? community. Rather, it was created for ment. Cheryl´s lecture brought to people of all races and sexual prefer - 1996 marked the year in which mind all the stereotypical im - ences in the hopes that it would inform Dunye directed and starred in the film follows Cheryl´s attempt to create a ages Hollywood tries to empha - the world of this Other Hollywood of The Watermelon Woman. The film documentary of an African American size in movies that feature black black queer cinema. contains several storylines and basically actress of the 30´s and 40´s named Faye women. It is despicable that so many John Dies in the End...

funky shoes of a modern girl in a 19 th Century world, Cornish plays by Natalie Crnosija Brawne honestly and as a girl in love with a man she knows she Knowing that John Keats famously will never be able to marry. died at 25 may dim Bright Star for film - Whishaw remains more reserved, goers who hope for a short, cinematic but rightly so as the poet who sonnet of love satisfied. Also disap - conjures Brawne’s character into pointed will be the literary mavens who the Western Canon. Both feel the flock to the film with the anticipation of press of time and the turn of the tubercular tragedy and passionate scrib - seasons, enjoying the develop - bling. In this convergence of expecta - ment of their love while watching tion, Bright Star outshines many a it fall from autumn-affected trees. literary biopic focused on those blessed The story does dip into melo - by the muse and made to bare the drama when Keats develops tu - damning yoke of creativity. berculosis and his life becomes a Director Jane Campion navigates string of coughs, bloody handker - around narrating Keats: the Man, the chiefs and being found uncon - Genius by fixing her camera not on scious in the bushes. But that Keats, but on his muse and their short, can’t really be eradicated from the albeit simple romance. Keats’ “Belle story, even if the viewer wants to Dame Sans Merci,” Fanny Brawne excise tragedy from what is (Abbie Cornish), is not a Byronic emerging as a seasonal, quiet cel - groupie or an unattainable goddess, but luloid ode to young love. an earthy girl who likes to sew clothes The gentle glow of candlelight more than ruminate on the poetic “Is it fate or this wall that keeps us apart?” and halos of sun enliven the tragic stylings of the day. arc that becomes increasingly un - Browne (Paul Schneider), the romance of adoration woven thickly throughout The film follows the meandering avoidable as Brawne falls increasingly in blossoms with time’s passing. Keats’ work. When poetry is spoken, it growth of their mutual affection as love with the increasingly doomed The film’s elegant structure pre - is not stilted or declarative. It is the Brawne transforms from the sharp- Keats. What this light illuminates is not vents Keats’ poetry from becoming a purest form of affection in a period tongued girl-next-door into the “Bright the death and the unfortunate standard footnote. Instead, poetry infuses every when people could not engage in PDA. Star” of Keats’ verse. of medical care of the Romantic era, but frame. Whether voiced in verse or not, Both Cornish and Whishaw play Though the pound-less Keats (Ben how love can sweeten even the most un - Campion captures the choral quality of their characters chastely, but convey Whishaw) is dissuaded from pursuing fortunate and untimely ends. Brawne by his friend and keeper, Mr. nature, the tangibility and violent pull their deep sensuality. Walking in the The Stony Brook Press Arts & Entertainment 19 arts&entertainment Hell is a High School Girl...

(and they gave her an Ocscar!). The plot consists of a relatively lame pathos con - by Doug Cion sisting of Adam Brody from The O.C . as an indie-rock band singer who will do … Or it is a podgy former stripper whatever it takes to make it big. Intro - who thinks she actually has the skill, duce Megan Fox’s character, Jennifer craft and potential to write the script for and now we have a warm body to sacri - a box office smash? Jennifer’s Body , Di - fice to the devil. However, little do our ablo Cody’s sophomore film after her witch-rockers know that Jennifer is not lightning strike on a gold mine on a a virgin and everybody knows that planet where there exists intelligent life when you try to sacrifice a not so pure, forms (in other words, lucky) first box mediocre acting, exploitation of rabid office and critically acclaimed success high school hormones, you get a suc - Juno was released nation wide on Sep - cubus-like demon who must now feast tember 18, bringing in a whopping $7 on human flesh for sustenance. Yup, million at the box office, coming in that is basically what you have left for fourth place for gross profits for that the next hour and fifteen minutes. weekend. Although it is not worth the hassle Okay Diablo, we get it… you’re hip of buying a ticket to Cloudy With a and edgy. You break the norms of con - Chance of Meatballs and then sneaking vention and your dialogue is supposed into this genre hybrid, R-rated film, I to be the spoken language of the people. would like to say that this movie is not May I just point out here that I have a complete bust for filmmaker Karyn never heard someone reference a preg - Kusama. First off, Amanda Seyfried is Can you say, “World’s Hottest Woman?” nancy by saying “Your eggo is prego one of the top rising actresses and has a home skillet.” Now I know the attempts great future ahead of her. She actually at being clever and witty are supposed gave one hell (look… a pun) of a per - the narrative, considering this is the script that contains lines like, “I’m Xing to reflect the language of the school - formance. It is quite sad to see the “star” best acting you see. The film is also shot you out,” “you’re being lesbigay” and yard, but in the end, it possesses little to of a film get sandbagged by the sup - very well so thanks are bestowed onto “you’re so salty,” this was just too much no substance and is overall juvenile. It porting cast, but then again it is Megan the cinematographer. for one man to save, even if it is Jay is utterly shocking that this is perceived Fox, so who really went to see this for Finally, and probably most impor - Jonah Jameson. Diablo Cody stated as the way high school kids talk, but her acting? It is fun to watch the tant, J.K. Simmons is in this movie! He that this film is not a horror movie and then again with her stripping career shenanigans Amanda’s character Needy has a minor role as a biology teacher/life I couldn’t agree more; it is a horr ible being so successful, I will just assume gets into as well as witnessing her coach. Usually, the presence of J.K. movie. Diablo Cody never graduated from it growth from beginning to the end of Simmons can fix anything, but with a How Not to Mess Up the “Deadpool” Movie

tertaining movie, so here are some in, he dresses up as a stereotypical gay about keeping the upcoming movie true things to keep in mind: man. Then he decides he’s going to join to the comics. Which is probably why by Eric DiGiovanni 1. The Fourth Wall Must Not Be Al - the X-men after beating the crap out of he didn’t play that… thing in the end. lowed to Stand! some sailors. Plus, there is no way the same I, like all smart people, saw X-Men: One of the main charms of Dead - This is par for the course. “Noooo” (pan out) shots would be Origins via a leaked copy. Someone was pool is that he frequently breaks the 2. Ignore X-Men: Origins Like You Deadpool with a straight face. nice enough to burn it on a DVD and fourth wall (the boundary between a Ignored the First Hulk Movie. 3. Have a Good Reason for Why He is play it on an Xbox in the Commuter piece of fiction and it’s audience) and is I’ll give the writers the first scene Called Deadpool. Lounge. That way, 20 of us avoided pay - very aware that he’s in a comic book. right off the bat: It opens with Deadpool The movie implies it was because ing for a movie that spent millions of For example, when one character asks stuffing a severed head inside a duffel that he had all the powers from the Pool dollars to make us all go “Ehhh… No”. It the last time he’s seen him, his response bag. He throws the bag into the river, of Dead mutants. Interesting take, but was also more or less the first time I was is “Issue 16”. and as we cut to another angle, the bag this led to a ridiculous final scene, exposed to the Marvel character Dead - It’s funny and reminds us that reads “Everything about me from X- where “he” teleports, shoots eye lasers, pool. comics are supposed to be entertaining Men: Origins ”. As the bag sinks into the and has swords come out of his hands, I heard his portrayal in the movie and not serious business . One of the pit, you hear a voice go “Shhh…” making it seem more like a boss battle was the least accurate, so I read the main problems of Origins was that it Wade Wilson was spot on. For the rather than a natural conclusion of a books. As I was reading them and heard was a standard, clichéd popcorn flick uninitiated, Wade Wilson is Deadpool’s story. Needless to say, take out the eye the news of the eventual movie adapta - that took itself way too seriously. real name. He was a mercenary until he lasers and keep his swords on his back. tion, I had two thoughts: “Wow, this is Let me bring up the latest issue: got the worst kind of cancer: Incurable He does teleport, but it’s due to a device awesome” and “Wow, they’re going to Hungry and stranded at sea after failing Plot Device Cancer! So he joined up built by his friend and arms dealer, mess this up.” Nerd rage isn’t my thing, at being a pirate, he shoots a shark in with Weapon X, a program to create su - Weasel, rather than an innate ability. so I figured it’d be better to write this as the face to serve as dinner with Death, perheroes, hoping for a cure. For all the The comics say that he was in a a way to get you all to check out the portrayed as a curvy skeleton woman. pre-experimentation stuff, they got Dead Pool at Weapon X, after an exper - comics in the mean time. Trust me, it’s He passes out and has a coma fantasy things right. iment to give him Wolverine’s healing like nothing you’ve ever read before. based on The Love Boat . He somehow Ryan Reynolds did a good job, and factor backfired, covering him in There is potential to make a good, en - ends up in San Francisco and to blend from the looks of things he’s excited painful tumors. The resident doctor, Dr. 20 Arts & Entertainment Vol. XXXI, Issue 2 | Wednesday, September 30, 2009

“Where the Wild Things Rock”

like they were expecting a boy and I Yet, with actual examination of the lyri - easily relatable at any age, given the very gave birth to a girl,” says Jonze. cal content, one can see these are not standard motif of love, but more so with by Kelly Pivarvnik The same can be said for most of necessarily songs that children are fully songs like that contributed by Arcade Fire. The movie’s trailer includes “Wake Up,” by chamber-pop heavyweights the The Yeah Yeah Yeahs were in the Arcade Fire. The song was originally spotlight once again this year with their part of the band’s debut album, Funeral. release of the critically acclaimed It’s The trailer only features the slow three Blitz making it onto Spin’s Top Twenty minute build up during the beginning Albums of 2009 List. Yet front woman of the song. Yes it sounds uplifting and Karen O (who was recently pho - overall can be construed that way, but tographed with longer hair instead of the message is bound to go right over her notorious, ultra-trendy bob) re - young viewers’ heads. mains busy, contributing tracks to the Fitting the movie’s tone, the song is Where the Wild Things Are sound - very somber yet almost cathartic. track. She teams up with members from “Something filled up/ My heart with Deerhunter, The Bird and the Bee and nothing/ Someone told me not to cry/ The Raconteurs for the recently released But now that I’m older My heart’s single, “All is Love,” which also features colder/ And I can see that it’s a lie.” a children’s choir. The social context for this song is The song starts out slow with dis - pretty blatant, tritely calling upon the tant sad piano playing, then quickens youth to challenge authority, think for when the vocals kick in. The presence themselves and just in general be honest of the children’s choir helps set the tone with themselves. The concept has been of innocence and a weak, yet hopeful heard before over and over, but the de - outlook. The choir also ends the songs livery is something unique and special. with their repeated yelling of ‘it’s love,” The lyrics read like poetry, and though accompanied by Karen whimpering the they are off kilter, much like the scenery same broad sentiment. and plot of the movie, it is still some - The director of the movie, Spike thing noteworthy and memorable. Jonze, a rumored ex-lover of Karen O, the soundtrack. With the children’s going to wrap their heads around. The claims this movie really was intended choir and the upbeat music, the song se - themes are significantly deeper. Not for four-year-olds in an interview with lection may very well appeal to kids. necessarily with “All is Love,” which is New York Entertainment. “It’s sort of DEATHPOOL continued from previous page Killbrew (which is slightly more creative light and funny, but that bjkLSdvr - movie people won’t do something do, like … not be dead. than Dr. Evilvillian), continues to ex - gadfbg. stupid like sew my mouth shut. And wear women’s clothing. periment on him, keeping him alive, Sorry about that. Yeah, so I am ANway, I have photo editor stuff to Because I’m into that. thus raising his odds. He eventually Dea—I mean, Eric DiJoDiMaggio with busts out and became the man we all more suggestions! know and love to hate today. 1. I guess Reynolds did an OK job, but In his original conception, Dead - you know who should really play me, pool was a result of the Rob Liefeld 90’s I mean Deadpool? Batman. Batman is Anti-Hero Naming Process, where you the only guy on Earth badass start with a word that has to do with enough to accurately render how death or gore, and then add something awesome I am. Maybe Boba Fett if else on the end (Bloodshot, Deathmate, he’s available. Deathblood). Yeah, writing isn’t his 2. I want the eye lasers and sword strong suit… speaking of which… arms back. Screw canon! Lasers and 4. Get Fabian Niceza and Joe Kelly in weapons for arms make everything that Writer’s Room Now! better. Evil Dead , anyone? I’ll get Niceza is the one who co-created Weasel on it … the character with Liefeld, and Joe Kelly 3. Death should be played by Angelina was the first writer in Deadpool’s pre - Jolie, if we get to have a love scene. mier ongoing series. Both established Bea Arthur if I don’t. Either way, we the two themes that make the character all win. more than a joke: Trying to get back on 4. “Demolition Rickshaw” by the the good path despite your misfortunes, Aquabats should be in there, just by and being haunted by the past. Both name alone. ‘Cause I likes my dem - themes would make for a legitimately olition, and I hate rickshaws! good movie, that uses plot as something So anyway, those are just some more than a device just to string to - Eric DiGiovanni reasons as to why Deadpool is awe - Ladies, he’s single. And he’s dead. gether a few action pieces. It can still be some and to make sure that the The Stony Brook Press Arts & Entertainment 21

Rock ‘n’ Roll Legend Roger Love Talks to SB Press

pretzels. never allowed to vote. The entire misrepresentation of my blatant, flaming heterosexuality came from the time I made by Ross Barkan SBP: Fans and music critics still regard Love Microchip , your out with a Paul McCartney look-alike in a Milwaukee Mar - third album, as Compassion’s masterpiece. Why do you riot back in ’75. I saw Paul in the lobby and I waved. I don’t Soft rock superstar Roger Love, lead bassist and think the album appeals to so many listeners? personally like the Beatles or whatever they’re called these vocalist of the band Compassion, has been making best-sell - days. They aren’t soft enough for me. But I admire Paul for ing albums since his riotous 1969 debut, Love Handles You. RL: Wa-wa pedal. That’s all. In 1977, no one had heard of the the way he wears light blue suits. No one pulled off the light Millions around the world adore Love for his slippery vocals, wa-wa or even electric guitar. No one was going electric, blue suit like Paul. I invite him up to my room and we have sweet bass line, and flair for the dramatic. Richard Nixon, Michael. Remember when Dylan played Lollapalooza in a drink. I became suspicious because Paul had an Austrian an admirer of the emerging 70’s soft rock movement, called 1969 and freaked everyone out by playing “Paperback accent and not an English one. To determine if it was the Love “a herald of avant-garde faggotry.” Now, after years of Writer” with an electric accordion? The world couldn’t take real Paul, I did a lip inspection. Common thing really, every - singing, touring, loving, and everything in between, Love it. Love Microchip had all the electro-hits. I still listen to it one knows lips have unique prints. After our lips touched, I agreed to an exclusive interview with the Stony Brook Press twelve times a day. Twelve exactly. On the thirteenth play I knew it wasn’t Paul. I called room service and had him to discuss his latest release, Comet Urethra, and the lessons grow bored. “Baby Baby (Doll I need you) Baby Baby Baby” thrown off the balcony. learned along the way. is still my favorite. No one thought to sample a fucking trac - tor but I did. SBP: Good story. So what about your newest album Comet Stony Brook Press: Mr. Love, it’s a pleasure to finally be in - Urethra? What can the music world expect? terviewing you. We’re huge fans of your revolutionary work. SBP: What’s really impressive is that you anticipated the in - vention of the microchip. RL: It will be our twenty-sixth compilation album. That bas - Roger Love: Thanks Jack, great to be here. tard Eddie Guitar wanted to write a song so I had to do RL: Technically untrue, Brett. Technically untrue. Though I what’s best. The man is as talented as AIDS. There will be re - Stony Brook Press: My name is Ross. Anyway, fans and did in fact anticipate the invention of the microchip in my mastered versions of our hits “Drench My Pie” and “Make music critics continue to be awed by Compassion’s prolific best-selling poetry collection, the story behind love mi - Love (To Everything Inside of Me).” Our controversial, nature. The band has released thirty-five albums— Kwanzaa-themed love ballad “Chocolate Teddy” will also be featured on the album with guest sample vocals by Elton RL: Thirty-six actually, Mitchell. Our actual first album John. Kisses for Jesus was limited to nine copies due to violations of the puritanical 1970’s obscenity laws. Apparently you can’t SBP: Sample vocals? sing about Hiroshima child porn. Color me tittified, Mitch. RL: We play the entirety of “Honky Cat” and have extra SBP: Ok, my name is Ross and I don’t know what that ex - horns in the background. It’s good stuff. pression means. SBP: So once again the fans of Compassion will not be given RL: You had to live in 1974. You had to live. original songs?

SBP: Fans always wonder why the lineup of Compassion is RL: The fans of Compassion are leeches. They don’t under - so unconventional. You were the first and only band that stand what it’s like to suffer. Do you know what it’s like to be used six bassists. What was the reason for such a decision? a tortured soft rock genius, Reggie? Everything I hear is never soft enough. Even my own music, the greatest of all, RL: Music lacks bass, Lionel. Bass lines are essential to every - is never soft enough to be soft rock in its purest form. It is the thing. The original lineup of Compassion had one bassist cross I bear. Like Lakatwa, the Finnish god of icebergs, I am and two guitarists. After our first practice I fired both gui - a crying sun, alone, heaving the erection of a golden falcon. tarists because I realized our bass line wasn’t sick enough. No one will ever know. It’s never soft enough. Never. Soft rock is nothing but sick bass line after sick bass line. The first two albums had four bassists and finally I learned the SBP: What do you think of the rock ‘n roll scene today? bass, upping the number to five. Our sixth bassist, Eddie Guitar, joined the band and the rest is history. Beautiful his - RL: Dreadful. I tried listening to that band Radioheater or tory. whatever they’re called last week. Bunch of Swiss fags, I think. They would be better if they stopped the whole elec - SBP: So you don’t think six bassists is at all excessive? tronica and playing guitar thing and just didn’t make noise. I met their lead noise-maker, Timmy Yorke, and he just RL: (laughs) I’m going to fuck your mom. struck me as a human bananafish. You know the old say - ing, “You can’t tickle an angel.” SBP: That’s wonderful. What about your public feud with Roger Love made out with a man he thought was sixth bassist Eddie Guitar? From the early to mid 80’s you Paul McCartney in 1978. SBP: No, I don’t. What’s next for Compassion? Do you plan weren’t on speaking terms. crochip lies in a tryst I had one Saturday night with an on launching another international tour? RL: We still aren’t. Eddie and I have been touring together for African. African female to be precise. We were eating cook - ies, soft-baked chocolate chip my absolute favorite, and one RL: We’re playing Andorra fourteen times then heading over thirty years and I still don’t know what the man’s voice home. Europe smells, Chuck. I can’t stand the Swedes, the sounds like. One time he tried to write a song for our sev - chip came dislodged during coitus. The chip was perched upon her dark, cocoa, aphotic nipple. Perched perilously Slavs, the Micks, the French and the dark ones. None of enteenth album, Vagina Railroad, so I just made the entire them. I honestly plan to write another album within the album a compilation of my songs from other albums in there for me to eat. And I did. I thought “this chip is small.” Micro is small. I made love. Voi-fucking-la. confines of my mansion and launch all of the vinyls into the order to prevent that cunt Eddie Guitar from writing a song. sun. Catharsis. He never will write or sing anything as long as Compassion SBP: Brian Eno called Love Microchip the work of a “gay, fu - is active. rious genius.” Was this offensive to you or did you like being SBP: You’re insane. called a “gay genius?” SBP: Why? What the public still doesn’t understand is why RL: Kiss me. you loathe Eddie Guitar. RL: I don’t understand. SBP: No. RL: In 1976, we were playing a show in Boise and he reached SBP: Well, do you want to be indentified as a gay man? into my pretzel jar. My pretzel jar. I had it marked “Roger RL: It was worth a shot. Love” in day-glo marker. I’m the best. No one touches my RL: No, of course not, the gays are revolting. I hope they’re 22 Arts & Entertainment Vol. XXXI, Issue 2 | Wednesday, September 30, 2009

2D Platformer Madness!

ination. Also disappointing is the physics. By Raina Bedford Given the simplistic nature of the con - trols- tap somewhere to run to it, tap an Innovative and challenging, Scribblenauts will test object to use it, tap, tap, tap- it is not sur - the limits of your imagination. This 2D platform prising that the game sometimes con - game asks you to conjure up objects using its built-in fuses your input. However, the controls keyboard to solve hundreds of puzzles. Want to use can sometimes be frustrating. He falls the large hadron collider to summon a black hole? through a gap instead of jumping over it, Then this is the game for you. or jumps on top of a helicopter instead of When you start playing Scribblenauts , your first going inside of it. Fortunately, the game instinct will be to find objects that the game doesn’t is enjoyable enough that these small con - have. The developers haven’t included items that are trol issues don’t ruin the experience trademarked (Twinkies, Hershey Bars), alcoholic though they may irritate the seasoned (Beer, Wine), drug-related (sorry, no bongs) or curse gamer. words (they sadly exclude even poop, so no you can - In addition to the built-in puzzles Grab that donut you copper, you fat lunch box you. not throw feces at enemies). Other than that the ob - there is also a level editor. The game al - ject library of the game is immense. It is a hard task to lows you to use levels you’ve already completed as A cute extra in the game is the inclusion of find items the developers have left out, and believe me, templates. You can then share your level with friends avatars. At the ollar store (Yes, ollars are the currency I have spent hours trying to. online using WiFi, or share it locally through DS di - in Scribblenauts ) you can buy different avatars to stand Once you get past the initial concept, it’s time to rect connect. The level editor is surprisingly versatile. in for Maxwell. So if you feel more comfortable play - actually start solving the puzzles. Unfortunately, most You can program people to defend objects, attack ing as a zombie or a ninja, you have that option. of the puzzles don’t test the limits of your imagination. Maxwell, steal things, or desire food. You can make Overall, Scribblenauts is an incredibly unique and Several items will be used routinely such as the jet - your own hints and choose which musical track from enjoyable game. If I had to rate it on its concept alone pack, shovel, and gun. Consider these your meat and the game will accompany your level. You can use any - I would give it 5 stars. Unfortunately, there are some potatoes. Despite the fact that some of the puzzles are thing you can think of, you can stack objects, hang ob - gameplay issues that are too large to ignore, so I’m repetitious, some are actually very challenging. It is jects from ropes, place objects inside other objects the going to give it 4.5 starites. very gratifying to finally solve a puzzle that has possibilities are nearly endless. Scribblenauts stumped you for hours, using nothing but your imag - Every Time I Die - New Junk Aesthetic Back to Their Relentless Roots in Fifth LP

Dirty , was a healthy change of pace that gurgling low-end rhythms they’ve be - Leger plays with easily as much fluidity slowed down their sound and let them come famous for. and punch as his predecessor, and the By Nick Statt experiment with a slightly different The real driving force of the band’s gap is only recognizable to fans who style. Their latest LP, New Junk Aesthetic unique sound is Keith Buckley, older held a personal appreciation of Novak’s Buffalo four-piece Every Time I Die is an absolute powerhouse that smashes brother to guitarist Jordan. It’s easy to personality and role in the band’s com - is well-known in a wide variety of its predecessor to pieces. Fans of the see from album to album that it’s Keith’s ical and carefree image. scenes, mainly due to their unique mix band’s original intensity will be more range and readiness for extremity that Every Time I Die has truly come of metal and punk with a dash of south - than happy to know that this album make him the fuel for the fire. From full circle with this new release in that it ern rock thrown in. While it’s not un - goes above and beyond their apparent brutal screams to his distinctly south - feels much like their debut of eight years usual to see them blend into Warped capabilities in delivering the heaviest, ern and lofty singing voice, Keith does a ago, Last Night In Town , but with a Tour lineups or share the stage with most blood-pumping trip possible. number on his vocal chords this time highly satisfying maturity. While that tamer acts, it’s very easy to identify the Despite coming in at a mere 37 around by refusing to lower himself to debut and the sophomore release, Hot role they feel most comfortable filling: minutes, New Junk Aesthetic is exhaust - the more comfortable vocal ranges. Damn , were arguably heavier, they were a heavy-as-hell self-indulgent metal ing in its exultant brutality. The album’s “Wanderlust” has quickly sung verses sucked in by the clichés of hardcore and band. Their previous release, The Big first single, “The Marvelous Slut,” is a that transition blisteringly fast to wail - metal: the seemingly unregulated out - minute and 47 sec - ing screams to help complement the bursts and excessive deliveries from the onds and yet one lis - ever-changing instrumental parts. vocal and guitar sections that were split ten feels like you’ve “Roman Holiday,” easily one of the best down the middle by systematic break - been dragged ten tracks on the album, exhibits Keith in downs that eventually got repetitive and times around a track his most unrelenting form with growl - bland. New Junk Aesthetic throws those off one of their pre - ing vocals plastered over a humming out in favor of doing it their own way, vious albums. Andy backing vocal track and surprisingly something they’ve no doubt learned to Williams and Jor - slow and menacing guitars. do well in their long years together. dan Buckley slow The album as a whole is very suc - They’ve fully created their own sound, down their guitar cinct and each track wraps itself up with vocalist Keith Buckley the integral playing only to send neatly before you get bored of any of the pushing force, to help them stand above out scathingly ca - patterns. New drummer Ryan Leger re - the sea of bands that misrepresent the cophonous chords. places Mike “Ratboy” Novak, who left genre. By trying to stand out by being With a few notes for personal reasons according to the heavier, more technical, and faster than away from regular - band’s website, and as it is with most the rest, many names fade in failure, but ity, they rush head - hardcore and metal bands, its hard to not these guys. first back into the discern the difference between the two. The Stony Brook Press Arts & Entertainment 23

Alice in Wonderland for the American South Review of Zuda Comics’ Bayou , Volume 1 her mother having died when Lee was from trees with nooses around their expect a lot more of his backstory, and younger. After diving into the bayou, necks. Both these images are very pow - for Bayou to become the most complex By Katie Knowlton she is almost taken by a creature of the erful, and the evil in Dixie acts a good character within the Bayou universe. water, but is rescued by a relatively metaphor for the evils that take place in Jeremy Love has done an amazing What do you think would happen friendly giant, Bayou. Bayou serves as Charon. job not only with the story, but the art - if you mixed Alice in Wonderland, Lee’s guide and protector though Dixie, Dixie is a very American wonder - work as well. It’s a unique style that’s American folklore, and early twentieth a dangerous land filled with talking an - land. The monster that consumes Lily rough around the edges (literally, there century racial politics? The combina - imals, giants and large, insect-like crea - goes by the name Cotton-Eyed Joe and are a lot of sketch lines left in) with tion has the vast potential to be god ture that want nothing more than to resembles in some ways Lennie Small enough exaggeration that it, like awful, or, in the case of Jeremy Love’s consume Lee. from Of Mice and Men. He is mentally Charon and the bayou, is connected to Bayou, one of the best comics of the Bayou is beautifully written and slow, large and incredibly strong, and he reality. But there’s something surreal year. and a little off about it. It fits per - The first volume of Bayou is fectly with the tone of the story, the first trade paperback from which is a relief. This comic DC’s webcomic division, Zuda could’ve easily been done with a Comics. Zuda allows writers and much more realistic hand, but artists to submit comics, which that would’ve caused some dis - are voted on by the readership. joint with the tale. Winners of these competitions Patrick Morgan’s colors are a are allowed to continue their beautiful compliment to the art. comics on the website. Every so Both Charon and Dixie are al - often, a creator is given a con - most muted on the surface, be - tract without having to go cause his focus is first on the through this competition. Bayou characters, who dress in the was one of those comics, and it’s rather drab clothing of the pe - easy to see why. riod. Most of the characters are Bayou takes place in the fic - within the normal range of tional town of Charon, Missis - human skin tone, except for sippi in 1933, the height of the Bayou, who is gray-green. But the Great Depression. Mississippi backgrounds are stunning, full of was historically one of the most color and life. The skies are par - racist and segregated states, and ticularly amazing, whether it’s the this provides an interesting deep orange-red of a sunset, or backdrop for Love’s story. The the bright blue of a cloudless day. comic revolves around Lee Wagstaff, a drawn. Jeremy Love has done a fantastic hurts people without really understand - The contrast to the characters is a little nine year-old African American kid job of creating both Charon and Dixie, ing the consequences, although the con - jarring once its noticed, but without it, who is the daughter of a sharecropper. one grounded in the very real life of sequences – unlike Lennie, do not seem the comic would’ve been too drab, and The story opens with Lee having to help African Americans in the 1930s Amer - to bother Joe. In this first volume, we would not have given the life necessary pull up a boy’s body from the bayou that ican South, the other a world that takes don’t see too much of Dixie; a lot is held for a comic with such a mystic element resides within the town borders. The its cues from Lewis Caroll’s Alice in in the unknown. Love gives many hints to it. boy, Billy Glass, was lynched after Wonderland , as well as uniquely Amer - of the expanse of Dixie, but much like Bayou is one of the best comics of whistling at a white woman, a case ican myth. One could say that this tale Lee, the reader is privy to only a bit at a the year, hands down. The melding of nearly identical to that of Emmett Till is, in its essence, a more modern inter - time. There are brief glimpses of the hi - the surreal with the real politics and sit - in the 1950s. While underwater, Lee pretation of Caroll’s famous tale, but erarchy that rules the land, and a few uations of the day is not a new concept, sees something that looks like Billy Love works hard to make it more than a references to “The Bossman,” the pre - but with Jeremy Love, it feels that way. Glass, but with butterfly wings and mere rip-off. What really sets it apart is sumed leader of Dixie of whom even Not enough comics take on American glowing yellow eyes. Little does Lee not just the world of Dixie, but the the intimidating Bayou is scared. folklore, and few have done it as well. know that she isn’t hallucinating, but world of Charon, which is in some ways The character of Bayou is perhaps This first volume collects the first four that the bayou acts as a sort of door to more surreal than the parallel universe. the most interesting within the comic. chapters of the comic, but the Zuda the parallel, surreal world of Dixie. In our modern age, racism of the type He is a menacing presence, but with a comics website has, as of the writing of Lee is forced into this world after a displayed in this comic is rarely seen, seemingly good heart. He has a complex this review, two more chapters available. white friend of hers, Lily Westmore - which makes it somewhat of a shock in relationship with “The Bossman” and All of Bayou can be accessed from the land, is taken by one of the monsters of scenes such as Lee’s father Calvin being his henchmen, hence his fear, but we website for free, so there’s really no rea - Dixie, and her father is charged with the taken away, Lee being hit hard on the aren’t given much more than that in this son for you not be reading one of the crime. She is determined to find Lily head by the butt of a rifle, or during a volume. On the surface, Bayou is fairly best comics being created right now. and clear her father’s name because he is supposed dream sequence where she simple, a giant who lives with his dog on the only immediate family she has left, happens upon multiple bodies dangling the bayou. But as the comic goes on, I 24 Arts & Entertainment Vol. XXXI, Issue 2 | Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Napple Napple Napple Apples

are always good for a laugh. Far too essary. many comics these days neglect the im - But the biggest issue By Evan Goldaper portance of visual humor, and thank - is that, when all is said fully Applegeeks does not. However, and done, Applegeeks is a I’ll admit something now; I’m a we - Haque often experiments with different webcomic. This means bcomic junkie. Every morning, the first styles, and though his alternate designs every last strip in this fif - thing I do is roll out of bed and catch up do not display any less skill, the switch teen-dollar book is avail - on about ten different series. Then I between them can often be jarring. able—legally—for free at worry about lesser matters like food and As for the writing, the series tries to www.applegeeks.com. classes. So it was pretty exciting for me balance comedy strips with serious, sci- Weird Science does con - to read Weird Science, the recently-pub - fi action. The humor is clever, but prob - tain some quick com - lished second book of the webcomic ably funnier for those who love Apple. mentary from the author, Applegeeks . For the uninitiated (like my - Some jokes were probably better when a few quotes from the self), the series concerns Hawk, a nerdy they were written; though this book was artist, additional artwork inventor, and his android “girlfriend,” just released, it contains the strips from and a brief behind-the- Eve. Applegeeks is clever, but the book 2005 and 2006. But not every strip is scenes look at the making has some issues that may make readers funny—despite occasional wit, the dia - of the Eve figurine, but think twice before picking it up. logue sometimes becomes boring or that’s nothing essential. To begin, the comic has some ter - confusing, especially near important Fans might be interested rific artwork. Mohammad F. Haque is a plot events. With that said, it is worth in the book and the ap - great digital artist and his skill with noting the plot-based action strips oc - peal of a nicely bound Photoshop is apparent throughout. The casionally get bogged down by Ap - copy of a decent comic is colors are bold and bright and there are plegeeks ’ strip format. As each segment certainly compelling. many interesting lighting and gradient is intended not only to be part of a story However, I definitely rec - effects that create consistently attractive but also to stand alone, the pacing can ommend newcomers backgrounds. The designs of the char - be awkward. There is an advantage to check out the website be - acters, particularly Hawk, show a great this—it allows readers to enter the se - fore buying and consider deal of personality, and their manga-in - ries at any time, which means reading if the allure of paper is spired, over-the-top facial expressions Applegeeks 1: Freshman Year is not nec - worth the cost. The Goon : Be Brutal. Kick Ass. Repeat.

Even the undead fear The Labrazio. His right hand man is tempting peek into a much Goon. And they have every rea - Franky, a smaller, spunkier gang - longer arc that takes The Goon By Alex H. Nagler son to. Eric Powell’s hulking title ster. Franky isn’t the toughest to places he wishes he didn’t have protagonist, The Goon, is back fighter or smartest underling, to return and makes him face in the bound trade Those That Is but his spastic nature and signa - characters he thought he had Damned , which collects issues ture move of “knife to the eye” dealt with already. The trade also 24 through 27 in a single volume provides much comic relief be - features short stories inked and of the five time Eisner Award tween The Goon simply killing colored by fans of The Goon winning series. The Goon is a everything. who are in the comic industry title spawned from the Pulp tra - This volume begins with themselves. One of them, “Dr. dition of kicking ass and being major changes for The Goon. He Alloy in For The Benefit of Un - bloody. Published on the Dark learns for the first time that his derprivileged Inmates” deals Horse label, The Goon is a joy to town, which always seemed to with a mad scientist in debt to look at as he wields whatever draw the worst elements out of The Goon as he’s never been weapon he can use, be it his people, is in fact haunted by a quite evil enough to hack it, Dr. hands, his axe, or a stray pipe curse placed on the area by a Hieronymous Alloy. This comic, that just lying around on the doomed group of travelers who wordless save for a few 60s style floor. had succumbed to cannibalism Batman “buzz” and “clicks”, This story is set in a genera - to survive. This curse would ex - shows the good Doctors latest tion when the gangsters all still plain things like not only why attempt to help his fellow in - wore dapper hats and the artistic the Zombie Priest had taken mates: a machine that turns style reflects this gone-by era. over portions of town, but also paper into porno rags and ciga - Half the fun of The Goon is the why he was able to raise some - rettes. sheer violence. The rest lies in thing called Mother. Mother, as The Goon is a great read for the storytelling. The Goon isn’t its name implies, has the power anyone who doesn’t have a thing content to have its titular charac - to spawn baby zombies that do against gratuitous violence. If ter be a two-dimensional figure its bidding. In the hands of the you’re a fan of pulp style comics, as in pulps of old. He has to deal Zombie Priest, things wouldn’t spastic people who jump and with more than just zombies. In be so bad, but the Zombie Priest scream “KNIFE TO THE EYE”, Those That Is Damned he even has lost control to Labrazio, the or just like to see things get has to deal with fear of failure. same Labrazio of whom The stabbed and bloody, pick up The Goon himself is the Goon was believed to be the Dark Horse’s The Goon . muscle-bound enforcer of the chief enforcer. major unseen mob boss Those That Is Damned is a The Stony Brook Press Arts & Entertainment 25

Killer Plush Dolls and Pop-Culture Overload Review of Buffy the Vampire Slayer – Vol.5: Predators and Prey

series, it was really the only direction they could go in. and writer Steven S. DeKnight come through for a re - Predators and Prey ’s greatest accomplishment, markably delightful tale. By David K. Ginn however, is that it tells a complete story in five loosely The eponymous chapter, “Predators and Prey,” is connected one-shots. Fans looking for a cowboy Buffy ’s first return to the usual format. Buffy is once hanging at the edge of a cliff will be disappointed five again the main protagonist, and her wise-cracking, consecutive times, as each chapter of the story is a pop-culture-spouting circle of friends is with her to wildly imaginative “Tales of the Buffyverse” entry that keep up the levels of sass and fun in the face of danger somehow manages to progress the narrative and add that fans have come to expect. The tale acts as a countless layers in the process. This fun, loose-but- bowtie for the rest of the volume, telling a one-shot focused method of storytelling is the best of its kind story but also progressing the main plot in a way that since, well, the early days of the Buffy TV series. the other entries are simply not equipped to pull off. It Quirky Buffy veteran Jane Espenson delivers the is in this chapter that Buffy ’s trademark library of pop outrageous debut of the ‘New World Order’ with the culture references explodes in ways that will make one-shot “Harmonic Divergence.” Anyone wonder - nerds everywhere drool in amazement. Two facing ing what Buffy would be like if it were infused with a pages are devoted entirely to a nerd monologue of hint of Betty & Veronica , you can look no further. Es - such epic proportions that it cannot justly be de - penson gleefully blends her B-horror dry wit with her scribed. Buffy vet Drew Z. Greenberg has penned a unabashed love for up-to-date pop culture. She writes script that will be hard to top by other writers later in Buffy as if she were writing for a fashion magazine, the series. which is why it comes as no surprise that this volume “Safe,” the volume’s fourth chapter, is a perfect comes complete with a fake, in-universe magazine fea - drop into the darker side of the Buffy universe. Many turing the issue’s titular character. Always ditsy and episodes of the show – and its spinoff series Angel – stuck in a high school mindset, Harmony is a constant dealt with the moral ambiguity of a world where de - reminder of what the show used to be, and her role in monic evil exists, and “Safe” is a refreshingly mature the comics serves that purpose effectively. Previously, reprise of that theme. Coupled with Faith’s return to a running gag on the show consisted of her unsuc - the spotlight, the issue most closely resembles the cessful attempts to be Buffy’s main nemesis. Now, as Brian K. Vaughn Buffy arc, which was compiled in the she brings the existence of vampires into public aware - second volume, No Future for You . It’s short, and it’s ness – and posh – she inadvertently succeeds where clear that there should have been much more to the As the back description of the volume reads, she had failed so many times. story, but as a one-shot, it does the most with space “Predators and Prey collects a series of one-shots es - The strongest chapter of the lot, or at least the one allotted to it. The highest testament to quality writ - tablishing the new world order – where vampires that lends itself most beautifully to the comic medium, ing is when the reader is left wanting more. reign supreme and Slayers are public enemy number is “Swell.” In it, the public’s adoration of vampires has Scriptwriter Jim Krueger artfully constrains himself, one.” For those familiar with the series, this is a sur - awakened an unholy demon – merchandising. Vampy and while less may not be more in this example, it’s prising but satisfying turn that, like the volumes be - Cats are the new cuddly plush dolls that are slated to hard to find a flaw in the penmanship. fore it, rejuvenates the story with a fresh spin. reassure children everywhere that vampires are their The volume gets quirky and cute again with the The story thus far is that Buffy and pals were run - friends. In typical Buffy fashion, the dolls are actually final entry, Doug Petrie’s “Living Doll.” Throughout ning a worldwide Slayer organization – an almost in - evil, and are seeking to infiltrate the Slayer organiza - the series, a running gag included Buffy’s sister, Dawn, evitable result of a magic spell that made all potential tion with a foothold. “Swell” is hands-down one of the being transformed into various creatures. First she Slayers into real ones. Over the past year or so, they’ve funniest and most entertaining issue of any comic to was a giant, then a centaur, and now a porcelain doll. crossed paths with a shadowy nemesis known as Twi - be released in years. Georges Jeanty demonstrates a Once again, the issue’s major flaw is the brevity with light, whose main goals have yet to be revealed. Pred - mastery of his craft, showing that even he and his pen - which it handles a great concept and even better story. ators and Prey shows how, due to the sheer enormity cil have a great sense of humor. Maybe some of the Just as with “Safe,” “Living Doll” could have been of their operation, the world of vampires, demons, and great visual details were planned from the beginning, made into its own graphic novel without losing any of things that go bump in the night can’t stay a secret for - or maybe they were his little touches; either way, he its quality or impact. Still, the end feeling is more of ever. In a clear jab at the “sparkly vampire” frenzy of excitement than frustration, as Buffy Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series and HBO’s True shows how much it can do in so lit - Blood , the world falls in love with vampires and deems tle space. the Slayers to be evil. Bottom line: Predators and What’s particularly great about Predators and Prey Prey is a great breather from the typ - is that it exemplifies producer Joss Whedon’s unfal - ically chaotic plot, but its firm es - teringly honest approach to long-term storytelling. tablishment of a new dynamic – and Only recently has Walking Dead writer Robert Kirk - its fearless ability to make those man beat him for the title of “Character Genocidist,” changes – secure its place as a nec - and more writers are stepping up to take the throne. essary and riveting volume for fans. Contrary to long-held views on the matter, killing Alternately, the stories are fun and major characters shows more heart – and loyalty to loose enough to pull in new readers, the story – than the weak fanboy attachment that has which is an easy quality to lose with made so many other stories stale. The big change in serialized genre fiction. Predators and Prey doesn’t involve death, but a new, irrevocable step forward for the entire fictional uni - Buffy the Vampire Slayer is verse (dubbed by fans as the ‘Buffyverse’). The writ - published regularly by Dark Horse ers have traded the comfort of secrecy and anonymity Comics, and can be found at major for the chaos of global affairs, and at this point in the book retailers. 26 Arts & Entertainment Vol. XXXI, Issue 2 | Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Girls Wednesday, having half-written this re - cool guitar, and a bag of marijuana, again. This album is really bringing out Let’s start here with a quote from view, I got the seemingly cryptic text man!” with the surf-rock harmonic vo - the worst in me, as you can see. Diplo’s Twitter: “How iz there a band from my friend: xfd at p4k girls 9.1 bnm . cals and a Johnny B. Goode kind of riff “Summertime” kicks it like a total calld “girls” with dudes in it?” Yes, I’m That’s nerd/snob shorthand for, “Hahaha tearing shit up. Yeah, it’s not exactly chill-wave tune with heavily-fuzzed (but sure hundreds of bands have called oh wow, indie-hegemonic website Pitch - ground-breaking stuff. The New York not all too heavy) guitars, while Owens themselves [The] Girls since the advent fork Media has awarded the album Times called it “raw” and a “template” off waxes nostalgic about smoking weed in of shitty rock and roll band names. This Album by the dudes in girls a review of which others might base their future the park. It gets to the least minimal- one is the recent product of one San score of 9.1 and furthermore, they’ve de - songs. Yeah, okay. Let’s go in that direc - sounding point on the album, while lo-fi Franciscan Christopher Owens and a clared it some of the Best New Music.” tion, rather than refer back to the history fuzzed up guitar work wanders around in couple of his dudes. The title of the album They blew up my spot! Sure, they’d al - of rock and roll from which Album is all space before coming back down to an is not too complicated, it’s just Album . ready named “Hellhole Ratrace” one of drawn. Oh, I mean, again, not like that’s acoustic repetition of the first verse. The CD case and the disc itself are ever- the best hundred songs of the decade a bad thing. It’s kind of a simple exercise “Morning Light” does the same. Without so-modestly printed on white with black (like, I was totally going to wait 3 months in rock and roll songwriting. By this time shame, it recalls some Daydream Nation - capital sans-serif GIRLS ALBUM , almost to start that.) But I was supposed to be next year, you’re going to be annoyed that -era Sonic Youth and then it kind of ap - as if it’s daring you to ask, “What, you the one to tell you how much I love we all tripped all over ourselves to talk proaches as close to black metal guitar want more? This isn’t good enough?” Album , and the Internet beat print media about how great this album was, when it distortion as much as beach-punk-folk And it is simply that good. once again! What was I to do? Scrap my was never actually novel in the first place. will ever get, I suppose. This was one of the most-anticipated review, run an errand to Target, pick up But it is fun. “Curls” is an almost haunting little sleepers in a long while (pardon the du - laundry detergent, some zany melon- So perhaps I’m being a bitter downer instrumental number, with sunshine- ality). The seven-minute existential tear - green picture frames and the exclusive because “Hellhole Ratrace” just came on powered folk guitar just passing through, jerker “Hellhole Ratrace” had the blogs new Pearl Jam CD? (aside: the sheer ad - and I was sitting at home alone on a Fri - like Duane Allman and George Harrison ablaze for the last several months and a equacy of Pearl Jam’s Backspacer truly day night, drinking tea while I concluded were just chillin’ on a porch in Heaven number of demos were all over the Inter - made me depressed that my childhood is that paragraph. He doesn’t want to cry and you were hearing it through the net for a while. All I know is that Google- gone). No, no, the review must go on. without doing some laughing too, basi - clouds. And then we close with another ing the band got progressively less That would be reactionary and the indie cally. He wants to live a little. That’s all garage-pop anthem-could-be, “Darling.” difficult as the summer went on, espe - thing to do is to soldier on. “Sometimes repeated for the seven minutes. The slow I’m sure you could play a few of the three- cially after they made the cover of Fader you just gotta make it for yourself,” and drawn-out song, when I first heard it minute numbers for the oldest of your Magazine. They were signed by indie Owens calls out on “Hellhole Ratrace,” on satellite radio – no, I’m not going to baby-boomer aunts and uncles, asking if giant Matador Records – well, not exactly. and gosh-darn it, that’s what I’m doing. admit to crying over a song, I refused to they remembered this from the summer They got signed under imprint/associate So though the album comes to us in admit that The Antlers’ masterpiece Hos - of ’65 and you just might trick them. label True Panther, which has thus far late September, it feels exactly like noon - pice made me cry when we discussed it Is Album an instant classic? Or, is it been known only to queercore trash time on a San Francisco spring day, when on the radio recently. I’m not going to so derivative that it makes you want to lo - Hunx And His Punx, but it’s close the haze has just burned off, when you admit to such behavior in any sphere of botomize yourself just to fill it back up enough. know it’s not warm enough for short media – but this song can strike that very with a bunch of obscure garage-rock So, other than it being some slacker sleeves but you just feel the need to do it special chord in your heart if you’re in a compilations of the mid-‘60’s like girls guy from San Francisco who sounded anyway. The first track, “Lust For Life,” certain mood. Maybe wait until you never made this attempt? Can it be both? like a whine-affected Elvis Costello, we is a great upbeat surf-y kind of song from wasted a whole afternoon playing Far - For now, I’m just going to have fun lis - were just waiting to see if all these tracks girls’ perspective, a theme that seems to mVille on Facebook before you listen to tening to Album , and when inevitably tire we heard would wind up making for a go back and forth between the role of a this song, and then you’ll realize what a of it, I’ll make a note to break out the CD good album. Not that having such a girl and being a guy heartbroken by a few waste of life you’ve been and how you re - again just before the summer season sound is a bad thing. It was like hearing of them. “Oh, I wish I had a boyfriend, I ally should call up an old friend and have opens. the spot-on vocal manifestation of a dis - wish I had a loving man in my life,” some innocent adolescent fun outside contented and uncomfortable young Owens plays not-so-coyly. The hand - man as he begged, “So come on, come claps come in and you feel like it’s open - on, come on, and dance with me.” The ing right up to you, like it was being other half of the duo is [male] Producer demo’d in your very own bedroom, while Chet Jr. White, who seemed to put an in - the guitars tool around like a backbeat tense amount of work into the nuances of pop song circa 1959. And then we go giving each track its own individual into “Laura,” a Beach Boys-like pestering super-warm lo-fi summery vibe. Or of a young lass for a second chance maybe they just played it to an 8-track backed by simple jangly chords. Later, tape and put it on the album as is. I don’t the mostly-instrumental “Lauren Marie” know. The liner notes make sure you’re has a similar Pet Sounds’ psych-pop feel aware that no songs were recorded in the concluded by a melodramatic ‘goodbye.’ studio, and were mostly the output of The liner notes also include ‘70’s-stylized playing the songs in various friends’ bed - photographs of various girls with a title rooms and practice sessions in the Bay written below each. I’m not sure if the Area over the past couple of years. girls cute candle-lit blonde is actually Lauren (lower-case g) was a long time coming to Marie. the Indie World Wide Web. So of course, “God Damned” is another hippy-ass I had to pre-order this CD and get on throwback song, with bongo drumming, girls before the shitstorm. the acoustic guitar and then switches it And then it hit bigger than I ever up with “Big Bad Motherfucker,” a tune could have predicted. I got the album in you might expect to come from The the mail on Monday, the street date was Black Lips—“I’ve got a high school crush Tuesday, September 22, and then on on a California girl, oh yeah, I’ve got a The Stony Brook Press Arts & Entertainment 27 Differing Perspectives : Yo La Tengo @ Roseland Ballroom 9/25

Reservedly Anti-Yo La Tengo By Jonathan Singer With the Museum of Modern Art offering free admission on Friday evenings business trip to the G-20 summit. (courtesy of Target), it’s easy for a New York City hipster to find something to do But putting aside all the secondary entertainment, the evening’s headliners on the weekend. But what about aging hipsters? Enter the Roseland Ballroom on put on a rocking performance, which at times was literally rocking, and at other Friday night (September 25), and get the chance to see Yo La Tengo, the Hobo - points featured signature Yo La Tengo acoustic slow songs. ken based independent rock and roll band who returned to the NYC area to play The band’s repertoire was obviously diverse on Friday night, and band mem - in front of a packed house. ber Ira Kaplan could be seen at times molesting a number of electric guitars, all A packed house, complete with a number of balding patrons. But that did - in the name of avant garde noise rock. In fact, when the band took the stage for n’t stop members of the three-piece band from wearing brightly colored Chuck it’s obligatory encore, Kaplan remarked that he might not have had a guitar that Taylors. It also didn’t stop the mostly middle-aged audience from cheering loudly was still in tune. after each song, although mosh pitting was kept to a bare minimum. Still, the crowd seemed to thoroughly enjoy the performance, which was en - That was not the case during the opening act, Black Lips, who are making hanced by a Wizard of Oz-esque light show, a secondary stage performance that their second appearance in a Stony Brook Press concert review. Appearing signif - pitted a crack team of visual artists behind a large screen. The result was a series icantly younger and playing significantly louder than the headliners, Black Lips’ of psychedelic images being projected behind Yo La Tengo, all of them synching set of catchy garage rock songs made some kids dance, albeit for a short while. up to the band’s music, from their slow jams/ballads to rockin’ tracks. In addition, the Atlanta based Black Lips seemed to be far away from home, The conclusion was a solid night of independent style rock and roll – the addressing the crowd with “y’all” in between their songs. band even gave a shout out to indie radio station WFMU, thanking them for In between sets, a crack team of stage technicians set up Yo La Tengo’s equip - making the Yo La Tengo song “Mr. Tough” such a hit. While the band’s perform - ment, a collection of guitars, bass, drums, effects pedals and a collection of retro ance was a far cry from an arena rock concert, for one night both Yo La Tengo and looking keyboards. The Daily Show’s John Oliver played the role of “MC John their fans enjoyed having the band perform, and the volume was plenty loud re - Oliver” for the evening, providing jokes about his British heritage and a recent gardless of the venue.

Unabashedly Pro-Yo La Tengo By James Laudano Okay. Let me clear this up before I even get started. I group has the ability to both mesmerize or electrify you with gish let-downs that sometimes accompany such set lists. As love Yo La Tengo. They could have stood up there at the the flick of a switch. Their set list, which featured most of is their want to do, they played different spins on some of Roseland Ballroom on September 25, cracked some bad their more popular hits such as “Autumn Sweater”, “Stock - their more distinct songs. A lilting, acoustic version of the jokes, tripped over the wires on the stage and angrily holm Syndrome” and “This Is The Day” brought the crowd normally Kaplan-driven, feedback song “Tom Courtenay” stomped off, shouting “There will be no encore” and I still to both a pulsating, excited mob and settled them down into sung this time by Hubley, was perhaps the evening’s most would have applauded giddily. So, yes, I’m pretty biased. But a relaxed, easy mood. Unlike many shows, though, these beautiful and contemplative moment. Conversely, they everything I’m about to say is also right, dammit! So, with - transitions were handled seamlessly and without the slug - closed (pre-encore) with a ten-plus minute version of “Blue out further disclaimer…here’s a concert review. Line Swinger”, which slowly built up to an absolutely ex - Let’s get the superfluous stuff out of the way, first. The plosive performance. I’m not exaggerating when I state that opening band was The Black Lips. They kinda sucked. I was literally shaking a little after that song. That’s how good Whatever. There was also this olde-timey sort of 1930’s it was at Roseland on September 25. band, known as the Susquehanna Industrial Tool & Die Co., Honestly, I can go on about these guys for thousands of playing in the lobby before the opening act. That was pretty words, so I’m just going to wrap this up for now. cool. Also, in what turned out to be a pretty delicious sur - I’ve been to a few Yo La Tengo performances and prise, the show’s emcee was The Daily Show’s John Oliver. they’ve always been a joy to watch. The way they conduct Yeah. Random. But no one except for the Black Lips’ parents themselves and interact with fans is refreshing in today’s cares about that stuff. Yo La Tengo took the stage at around impersonal, celebrity driven entertainment business. I’ve 9:45 pm. Rock! watched Yo La Tengo do an entire encore of requests from They opened with “From A Motel 6.” That’s, like, one the audience. I’ve seen them sit down on the stage, tell sto - of my favorite songs! The band members, James McNew, Ira ries, and take questions from the fans, basing their set list on Kaplan and Georgia Hubley took turns swapping instru - wherever their conversations went. I’ve hung out with them ments and lead vocals throughout the show without miss - in the lobby of New Jersey’s Wellmont Theater on New ing a beat. The show was, in part, intended to go Years Eve before a show. They honestly make you feel like hand-in-hand with their latest album release, Popular Songs . they are doing this for you . And while I know most enter - A half hour into the set, the band brought out a little string tainers make claims along those lines, it rarely shows like it section to accompany them through a few of Popular Songs does with Kaplan, Hubley and McNew. more notable numbers – namely “Here to Fall” and “Peri - Yo La Tengo is a band that’s so good, I almost hate odically Double or Triple”. Fuckin’ sweet! them. I mean that in the best way too. Even though I’m not I’m going to ditch the phoned in fanboy tone for the in the music business, I’m still jealous of them. I’m jealous rest of this review. It was getting stale, anyway. of their creativity, their talent, their consistency and, per - Getting back to it: even though Yo La Tengo has been haps above all, the incredibly affable, warm and humble trying new things with each subsequent album for over two manner in which they conduct themselves. If you ever get decades now, they still – somehow – managed to bring the chance to see Yo La Tengo live, take it. Or, at the very something fresh to the table again with this latest release. least, pick up a few albums. I don’t want to use a clichéd They put this on in full display at Roseland. Their pacing is phrase like ‘You won’t regret it!’ so…just do it. downright magnificent. It seems that each member of the 28 Comics Vol. XXXI, Issue 2 | Wednesday, September 30, 2009

I’m so depressed, I don’t know what to do... Go for it, Man! The Go club meets this semester every Tuesday and Tursday, 8:00pm at the Library Commuter Lounge. Check it out!

Black to move, kill Whitey! Last issue’s solution This solution will gain you two eyes regardless of white’s move. if he connects the two white stones underneath, kill them for the second eye! Otherwise just kill the one white stone near the key move for the eye. The Stony Brook Press Comics 29 30 Comics Vol. XXXI, Issue 2 | Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Strokes of Genious with Pete and Chuck Written and drawn by Manil Arachchige

Yay, Misogyny! The Stony Brook Press 31 Poems

Chronos Cars It’s my needs that are to be Sun Man Ceng ~ Liz Kaempf catered to. “Do you need it too?” He laughs, and looks in my eyes, Are you ever still, Chronos? If I’m lost, it won’t show. I, “Do you really want to stay there?” Do you always move with Time? like most, know where I claim to be. Never. When I ask; your eyes glow red. But when I stop, it’s not what I want. And like a fire your silken robes do fly and flare. Would it ever be? Never. Never You have no voice but you demand, You say, “So we’ll drive to some - Anywhere For a ripple, so the ice may break. where?” I I say, “And we’ll refuse to stop too.” Want The ice around you will never break, To Even though you are Chronos. The stereo plays in time to Be. The snakes at your chin snap for your demand, suggestive glances between you and I. Agitated with my disrespect to the Master of Time. Your fury grows and your black beard flares, “A specific place, or anywhere?” “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Off from the ground your robes blaze red. You ask, but it’s me who needs to be You say, “You can’t run forever.” concerned. This ending will come I ask, “But what if I want to?” Poseidon’s robes flow blue, yours flow red. never. “You’re a child. You’ll end nowhere,” The silence will break, I’m the driver, I’ll go wherever I want. You tell me, I can’t always get what I The remains of your beings erupt like starburst flare. want. Bound onto him! Grab his robes tight, Kronos! Ultimately, I don’t care what you want. I say, “But I always get to look in your Win your victory this time! It’s apparent that you agree too. eyes.” “I have won, pull him away!” Your wish is my command. I’m aching for a place where we’ll never The drive is something I don’t seem to From the break of dawn you doth demand, For the fry that feed on warm thick red. get caught. We see eye to eye. want to be Your vigilant eyes never tire with the time, I always ask what you want to be, over. What you seem to want is a Your dark gaze never breaks. and you reply, “Doesn’t matter. We’ll quaint little never. When I come to see you, my lord Kronos, be nowhere.” A four-wheeled paradise is our any - Oh how your charcoal glare, burns joy into me like fire flare! where. You’ll always want this too. “Does your car want to drive some - Like the sun blazing through the clouds, your haughtiness flares. where?” With each of your petty demands, You ask, but it isn’t what she wants. Kronos, I feed you more, so grow more red! Your prison top is forever open, but only in death will your bonds break. But, better here than last October’s time. Senses of Temptation -Kimberly Bogler I would disagree with you about wasted time, At your own visage your gill beard flares. You are the fresh roses I smell, And still water breaks, the sweet cherries I taste, With empty demands, Now you leave me with a coldness I the colorful sunrise I see, You are Wild Red, wish I did not feel. the warm rivers I feel, Dear betta Chronos. Your silence is all I hear, the singing birds I hear, your sourness is all I smell, Yes, you are not Time nor Titan, Chronos. you are everything I so ardently and your distance is all I see. You have a small body that’s red and a black beard that flares. love. Dear love, I’ll feed you now…to break your hungry demand. I wish you did not have this tainted Oh, love- taste. An Ode to Debauchery I even love the way you smell, by Rabia Ghias the way you tell me things only I I know you are letting others taste Thou hast every young sentient mind ex - could hear, those secrets you told me were Debauchery: carnal force seeping into changing in the hallowed trade of the im - the way your lips taste, solely mine to hear. every mental crevice of thy most exclusive ports of opened textbooks and concealed and the way your strong arms feel. target: the college student. glass bottles, in between episodes of fervid Oh my dear love- I love you, don’t you see: sex. I thought they were only for my “lit - My heart is only for you to see, Thou hast been plaguing, and embellish - tle ears” to hear, for only you to love, ing, the many avenues of time since the Sex: intricate, easily destructible, emer - for only my “bright eyes” to see my affection is only for you to feel, formulation of thy most generous com - gence of mind, body, and spirit. and for only my “little nose” to my hair only for you to smell, panion: alcohol. smell. Thou hast been the vital cornerstone of and my lips only for you to taste- Alcohol: omnipresent beverage derived unions and divisions, alike, be it casual or you hear? You are the one I hate to love and straight from the most murky and covert not. the one I still want to taste. depths of the underworld. Lately you have been hard to hear You are the tempting scent I smell O’ debauchery, thou hast manifested thy - and difficult for my tender eyes to Thou hast laden the vulnerable blood - self in the pages of our classic literature, and the coldness I feel. see- stream of the adulterated masses from the frames of our beloved movies, the can - There is nothing left to hear, noth - you leave me with a bitter taste, coast to coast, for centuries, especially in vas of our enshrined artwork, and the ing left to see- but this problem you love- most hospitable haven: college. lyrics of our cherished songs. have given me. you have a scent I can no longer smell. College: abundantly enlightening environ - O’ debauchery, our youth still seek refuge ment harboring in impressionable, and in thy welcoming asylum, as a typical up - I miss the special way you used to slightly corrupted, minds. roar of rebellion, and thou shall continue make me feel. to do so in the further avenues of time. 32 Vol. XXXI, Issue 2 | Wednesday, September 30, 2009 Essay Ending Entropy

provocative pose. A trio of beautiful ironical is this? Everyone in this class Maybe, I started thinking to myself, girls, breasts afloat, pressing perkily up was supposed to be dedicating their life maybe whilst misspelling simple words By Josh Ginsberg against a warm sweater’s veneer, who to teaching English. And here’s a girl, she wasn’t even worried about from had been sitting in awe in the front row, next to me, who can’t distinguish be - whence the next paycheck would come. reach a climactic, dulcet note. I keep tween there and their and they’re and Maybe she never once thought about So much around me is steel or thinking of trying to sneak out, but the two and to and too and through and taking a teaching job but instead was stone. I’ve been making circles, digging ape behind the piano slides off the threw and your and you’re and beat and only appeasing the folks. And then I and dipping into the freshly dug…the bench and does a licentious curtsy in beet. Can you imagine her students think, suddenly electric: dung of a culture built on streaming the doorway. Between violent heart pal - breezing by, thrusting into academia THE BEST THING A UNIVER - foreheads and florid, sweaty brows. pitations I feel such apathy. The ape full on with a half-wit like that at the SITY DOES FOR THIS WORLD IS There are stretches of verdure which ex - looks proud. helm??? EMPLOY THE PEOPLE WHO MOP tend . I’ve seen them from aerial views The little puck beams. His nose And I ask myself why? THE FLOORS AND SERVE THE on Google maps…From the windows wrinkles, casting a spider web of deep And I begin to fantasize. FOOD. of trains and planes… From a smudged creases across his face. Distended She’s an artist, don’t you know. She’s That is something real. car window with a hand on the wheel cheeks blush. His dandruff fills the air been melting words, all misspelled from See this girl is looking for some - and a vigilant, bloodshot eye on the oil and peppers the clothes of everyone iron ore or something more tacky, and thing. So am I. gauge… around me. Coughing and wheezing, I then she’s been changing them into Me, I’m a painter. I draw more or I’ve been in boxes and have long try to look away. He is trembling furi - these sexy, lilting melodies. She’s been less exclusively beached manatees. I’ve ago given up on eying my watch. Has ously, tearing up with joy and his yellow playing them naked in her room since just only emerged from my “blue pe - the battery died? Or has time only riod” which wasn’t so much blue as slowed? Is that why that narrow, red chartreuse and a cheeky excuse to iron - hand has lingered this long between the ically draw multi-colored haystacks, emboldened four and five? which exist in my work on a plane of re - I sit in this particular box. It is lux - ality wherein gravity weighs upon the urious. The pedagogical cues are in world not from top to bottom but from place. The language is English, spoken left to right. And this girl, she’s blowing in some haughty, esteemed way. I am and sucking these revelatory, psychical surrounded by the apparently like melodies from her harmonica! And minded. “Words” are what we cherish. they are so sweet I just want to tackle The voices shout. From the din of mur - them to the ground and get brainless murs a single chirping voice rises high - and let my body shudder and thrust. est. At the top of the room there stands And if she’d seen the things that I can a man, his feet planted on a desk. His draw, flowers suspended on not stems, legs are spread as widely apart as he can but get this! lightning rods , coming out manage and he is failing at subtly dis - of skyscrapers planted in the ground! lodging his briefs from where they are They are guiltless, trembling only uncomfortably bunched up between his slightly with a frank Midwestern breeze. buttocks. He stands at three feet tall and If she could see this she’d know that we is dressed in a polo shirt and khakis. His are not alone. Our spelling doesn’t mat - mouth agape and stuttering, his eyes ter—‘Cause don’t you see????? race, flicking again and again from the Don’tcha??????? We are artists!!!!!!! flagpole to the crucifix, mounted on op - But what is to become of us? posing walls. A large, bucktoothed They made me crowd in all this ce - woman, her skin freckled and scarred ment. And yes. I see fly honeys. And with pock marks lifts a dusky, blue vel - Illustration by Craig Heed yes. I chuckle along with the curly Two columns, resize with baseline grid (option F7) photo caption tk vet curtain from where it is draped over haired and the large eyed. But why am I a bird cage. From the cage emerges a here ? bonobo chimpanzee, with a gap be - teeth exposed in a grin nearly identical her pre-pubescent years, seeing her dis - Better question to ask: tween his front teeth. Wearing a fez to the chimp’s, he starts to drool. torted reflection in the polished, black - Why am I? crooked on his skull and a scientific cal - As he stumbles back to an arm ened eyes of the stuffed animals strewn Well. I know. Some kids don’t. I’ve culator on a string around his neck, the chair, his shoulders weighed down with across her comforter. The melodies of seen ‘em as they flounder around look - chimp plunks down on a creaking laurels and the buxom gals from before, her harmonica were glancing efferves - ing for some sure-shot path to some - bench and plaintively plods out notes I take a short peak at this girl next to cent off the walls. She watched her body thing that their own insides don’t upon an out-of-tune piano. He smiles me. In her sprawling lap there is a blue grow from string-bean thin to lus - provide. But I know why I am. It is to over at the midget, his eyes closed, and folder with spiky edges of yellowed ciously curvaceous in the tiny, mirror draw a portrait of a Southern belle, a nods. After a few pastoral measures the paper sticking out. It was immediately eyes of her mauve confidant Mister bee squatting firmly on her lips per - midget begins to sing in some strange reminiscent of the third grade. Stark in Walrus. She watched the breasts on forming a dental exam and quoting an meter to some strange tune. an easy hand, was printed: which my gaze would one day rest ef - obscure disciple of Christ, but all with - “Words, words, too few o’erheard! “Life isn’t always easy. But if you re - floresce…from tiny bulbs to nascent out any text and with infinitesimal am - O! Let us sing them lithely. O! I’m member your special and never get to icons of femininity. And she occupied biguity! That’s how come I ruined aware that here or there there’s always sad you will get threw anything. Their this interstellar plane where there was mom’s taut figure and made gradual fun in writing. Inimitable poets should is nothing that a good attitude can’t nothing around her but melodic pas - once sweeping curves! And that’s how be quoted as denoted in the textbooks beet! ” sages which looked like the Milky Way come I got dad to holler and steam his that we read in school with neckties for (Wouldn’t want to omit the emoti - and tasted like one too. They grew more way off to the west coast! That is why I soaking up our drool. O! I could never con, :P) and more complex, switching keys and am. That is why I always was. leave the place which institution does And I start convulsing. I feel nau - leaping octaves. Somehow they became But I start to chip away, absurdity embrace! These hallowed walls are dear seas. I feel deranged. And I don’t give polyphonic. They grew too complex for comes off me like flakes of paint. I am to me, the walls of university!” two shits about grammar or spelling or her to play alone and she spent the rational again and the grey and white, When his tune’s climax is met the even hypocrisy. But I’m getting tickled times she wasn’t stewing in some class - the metal and stone don’t seem all that midget gauchely topples from his make- now, metaphorical peacock plume room or working a menial job arrang - bad. For a split second I don’t think of shift stage onto the dusty, carpeted dragging back and forth against my un - ing them with an independent verdure. floor, whereupon he strikes a coy, derarm. I’m thinking to myself of how marching band. Gabe transverses the country every The Stony Brook Press 33

ENTROPY continued from previous page summer. And he reads the obscure cooped up inside and we’re being stifled   who can’t spell, with an onyx sparkle in works of Miller and Hesse. And he rests where we sit. How many of my master -  her eyes? She’s someone all right. But I his head beneath leaking sky on splin - pieces have been ruined by the oppres -  don’t care. tering bench. And his doe eyes roll back sive built-in blue lines of my notebooks  I know I’m an artist in the murky and bee-stung lips curl. And he worries pages???? How many melodies lived  depths of my corroded little heart. No not what to eat or who to fuck or where their lives in brevity in some pallid  one makes it to the end. But the Gate - to shit or how to earn. Not yet. Maybe classroom when they could have been  keeper implores you all. He stands in an never. Because Gabe is young and the recorded on thirty six tracks and be  alley way in Bushwick. His skin is black world is his oyster. And the world is his changing people’s lives????  as tar. His eyes are opaque as gauze. super market. And the world is his ori - I know that there are handsome  And his tongue is dry and cracked. And fice. And the world is his toilet. And the men, with bold cleft chins and blue  he passes like a reverie. He cackles as world is his piggy bank. And every mas - eyes, who jump out windows because of  lightning strikes the altar, whereupon sive tree, coniferous and deciduous alike numbers, of money, abstract institu -  some crazy little children are sacrificing comes together to be the arms to pro - tions of human thought. They weren’t  a calico cat. vide the only warm embrace he’ll ever jumping out of windows in Papua New  Barack Obama’s handsome in a need! And he is American and free. Guinea when we found them there. No.  magazine. His life is so ordered, from And he is happy most of the time. They were happy. And don’t give me no  the work outs to the biweekly love-mak - Barack Obama would like to sweep shit about how they didn’t have win -  ing sessions with a secretary or wife or people like Gabe under the rug. I mean dows to jump out of. The American  whoever. He is a testament to the well- this girl I kissed once didn’t even grad - Dream once involved being independ -  ordered lifestyle that will take one or uate high school but wants to be an as - ent, being intrepid. Where’d that go?  two of our generation of millions to the tronaut. She and Gabe are the last thing The American Dream. Let’s define  very top. There are creases frothing that a society that runs on supposed ‘round his eyes. certainty wants to show to the neigh - There’s a student slumped in a hall. bors. They embody entropy. They exude She has a vast volume open and she lifts red, white and blue. her eyes from the page. They are a radi - Obama broke some mold ‘cause of ant blue but they are also a slow-sim - the color of his skin. But he is just like mering honey brown. They are thick everyone else in this century with their and choke me like gauze. And she and stiffness, which seems itself inherently the Gatekeeper in Bushwick and some anti-American. Gabe and that astronaut Aboriginal fellow in Papua New Guinea gal are what America as an institution speak the same words in different lan - doesn’t want. They are awful. No exam - guages. The midget skips on by. He ple to be set. But they are happier. weeps for he has lost his wallet. The Gabe is not a part of a system of holy three speak without God’s assur - ideas. He doesn’t read the masterpieces. ances or blessings. They speak to a There has never been a sign in the tan - choir. Some athletes, some eunuchs, gle of paths he walks reading, “You can’t some beauty queens, all the future. All get there from here.” He’s slipped be - of them kids who never read. tween broad red and white prison bars Their hearts beat in threes. and he’s made his way out west. And En. there he lies. In the outstretched em - Tro. brace of the pines, beneath a navy sky, Py. with too many glowing white stars to Barack Obama speaks in a lion count in a glance! And that girl is some - tamer’s guise. He is mustached and an - where on Long Island maybe high, and cient. He is lost. A starry blue figure she is higher than NASA could ever from some celestial dream brushes him help her get. Gabe is stretching out. See - that.  aside, off the edge of a rainbow. His eyes ing sprawling pink deserts. Feeling raw. I no longer know what it denotes, This girl and me, she and I. We’re are cloudy. He is ambiguous. He sends I’m sitting still in another box. what it connotes or where it can be ap - wasting away. One day I’ll be arthritic me an email in tongues. I don’t know a What is wrong with America? They propriately writ. But I think it might be or have carpal tunnel’s on the account word, but when I type the message ver - might tell you it is the economy. But I something like: of some safe, well balanced office job. batim into the little white bar of Google got no stocks. And I got no moneys.  And I will be unable to create except Translator this is what I get: So…what’s keeping me in this system,  from some guilty, oozing sap that’s shot “Make your dreams come true. Live huh?  from in my loins. And she’ll lose even a valiant life. Drop out of college. I can Fear of entropy. Fear of absolute  more melodies when she starts working make feeble excuses for why I’m sitting freedom. We were all sixteen, some of  from nine to five, ‘stead a going to around in stone and steel but I know it’ll us read it in Sartre. We are terrified of  school from ten to two. never get me a truly fulfilling life. Life the unknown. It’s the same reason peo -  That gross little fellow from before, might be all right. Earth is governed by ple buy warrantees as often as they buy  he’ll be employed. And the vixens he people who knew what they wanted and other products. Me, I did it when I  wore like sleeves, they’ll be wrapped up had the cash and charisma to get there.” bought my palm pilot. Shoulda known  in their fleece nice and warm. And Maybe I’ll get to see one of my pic - when I called the toll free number and  they’ll buzz around and spend. And tures on a high, alabaster wall. told them it wouldn’t charge anymore  they won’t even know they‘re suffering It goes on: ‘cause I cemented up the charging hole  ‘til the little gauge on their bank account “Amidst routine and white-washed with marmalade, that I’d be tossing that  starts dropping down or someone tells it strife, I wade through many sleepless extra twenty bucks away. And even  on the news. nights. On expectations’ balance beam, though I knew that fateful day that I left  But as I gaze upon the mocha skin I weaken at my knobby knees. I feel my Circuit City that all I really wanted was  of the beautiful women beside me, who body slip, careen and I swim in salty, to jam as much orange in that tiny hole  I will never talk to—Who if I talked to, soft esteem. I wonder, can it be, entirely as I could and that it was most definitely  I probably wouldn’t like—She is no exclusively, the artists who still seek the probably not covered by the guarantee,  artist. She is another person who does - green and vagrants who brush closest to I still shelled out the extra twenty bucks!  n’t belong in a system which has be - the dream?” There are no guarantees. Cope.  come mechanized on a colossal national This girl and me, we’re sitting  scale. Who is she more than a woman 34 Vol. XXXI, Issue 2 | Wednesday, September 30, 2009 Essay Please, World, Laugh at Everything

them. Most people in your play will feel yet when the Olympics or World War I might as well feel loyalty to the Roman hate for one another because they are III come around they’ll be singing the Empire. by Ross Barkan different. Of course, they are all biolog - same songs and waving the same flags “God Bless America.” Really? We ically the same. Same blood, circulatory as you. And they’d probably hate you if actually know who the hell God wants Laugh at everything. This will be system, everything. Laugh! they spent even a minute with you. to bless? Same for “God Save the my advice to my future children if they Wait, have you forgotten. Laugh At Laugh! Queen.” When anyone comes back to ask someday. Laugh at all that comes Everything! I don’t think you under - Nations aren’t really different from me with a verified transcript of a God your way. What is worth taking seri - stand because I assume that while read - one another. This is why a joke about phone conversation between Himself, ously? Your work, maybe. Make fun of ing these words you aren’t smiling like a 9/11 or any great disaster can be funny. the Queen and America, specifying your work. Make fun of the news. Make coked-up neon gargoyle. Smile smile We like to call people in the Middle East who is chosen, then I’ll stifle my chortle. fun of tragedy. smile. 99 percent of everything is a joke. terrorists. In turn, they call us terrorists. For now, I crack up every time they play Tragedy especially. On September Nationalism, for example. Kurt Von - They knock down our buildings and we those tunes. A reminder: laugh at na - 10th a visionary chum of mine made a negut in Cat’s Cradle aptly called the kill their innocents when we send tional anthems. quip during a dinner soiree: “Hey United States and all countries in the drones to bomb “enemy areas”. Between Humor will get us through all of everyone, could we stop for a minute? world a granfalloon, a funny nonsense January 2006 and April 2009, 60 drone our days. When the next horrific event Let’s have nine minutes of silence, fol - word that denotes a proud and mean - strikes killed 14 al-Qaeda men...and 687 occurs on our soil or any other, take a lowed by eleven minutes of silence.” The ingless association of human beings. civilians. Oops. Speaking of death, moment to be solemn. Take a few if you absurdity! People were agape, gasping, want. Pray. Talk to God if you so please. voice boxes reduced to a punctured hiss. Then—and this lesson is very impor - This chum trod on sacred ground and tant—start living again. You can’t dwell spat on it. 9/11 jokes aren’t supposed to in reverence, cloaked in morbidity, be made, not in that setting, not in that bowed on your knees, choked in sobs, convention, and if you asked a Man or and mired in whisper. You can’t hold Woman of High Social And Moral anything above laughter. Nothing. Standing when they should be made, Mock it all. Laugh at God, laugh at the they would boom Never. Our country living, laugh at the dead. was attacked eight years ago. Planes If any of you ever attend my fu - killed our brothers, scorched our pros - neral, please laugh at me. Silence can be perity. The blood hasn’t dried. The stultifying. smoke still hisses. The tears are still The point of this all is not to offend. being shed. Now I’d like to take a mo - Provincial minds will seethe, decrying ment to punch that maudlin American this and that. They’ll scream that this clown in the face. little piece doesn’t have respect for any - Let me say it one more time: Laugh thing. What these people might not un - At Everything! Howl deliriously. An - derstand is that if you didn’t laugh at other line from another friend, a la everything you would probably have to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: “Saying you cry about it. It’s hard to have it both lost your family in the Holocaust is like ways. Let’s review world affairs for one saying you lost your family when At - minute: lantis sunk.” I’m Jewish. I cackled. I The Americaneconomyiscollaps - laughed until the seams of my soul split, ingmillionsoutofworknohealthinsur - until I was an explosion of energy and ancejobsaren’theremost sound. For days I walked the world as a peoplehatetheirjobsanyway - jovial banshee, frightening my dim moretroopsinAfghanistanmorekids - spectral onlookers. I think they were deadmorekidswhonevergotagood afraid because I felt startlingly alive. chancetolaughnoonelaughinginIsrael - But…but…that joke was offensive. Hey PalestinebombsinthestreetsSudanis - Hillel, start writing your letters. Now let This kid’s laughing so hard, he stretched himself bleedingJanjaweed me grab those pens and shatter them. rapingkillingtheyoungtheoldR - Thank-you. You’ll understand in a para - Wait—the United States of America is roughly 90,000 to 100,000 Iraqi civilians wanadaandtheCongokillingraping - graph or two from now. meaningless? The French Republic is have been killed in America’s glorious masspovertyinChinaIndiaAfricalifesos Treat your day as a play. A comedic meaningless? Of course, as are all other Iraq War which, thankfully, has saved hortetceteraetceteraetcetera.... enterprise. Everyone you talk to is a counties. They are also very, very funny. the world from evil and breathed hope Ah, the world is a grim place. One character. They are imperfect of course, Please laugh when any national an - and light into our insidious universe. should ruminate and comprehend the wrought with the flaws, vices, jealousies them is played. Pick one, any one. Bene - Getting touchy about national pride gravity. Once the gravity is absorbed, and sicknesses that make them human. dict Anderson in the ground-breaking is hilarious when you think about how the enlightened individual will take the They will want things from you. Some work Imagined Communties destroys it is all tragically arbitrary. Men in next step. Laugh . Live joyously. Find the may be your friends, some your ene - the idea of the national state being any power some time ago thought it best to light in the dark. Never take yourself se - mies, but most indifferent to your fate. sort of real community, arguing that na - unite a bunch of random people to - riously and never, ever assume anything We are a unique species. We are aware tions are imagined “because the mem - gether so wars would be easier to fight is above almighty mockery. Vonnegut of a community and world greater than bers of even the smallest nation will and wealth easier to gain. Voila—the might have said it best: “ Laughter and our own yet care very little about the never know most of their fellow-mem - nation state! In the span of a few hun - tears are both responses to frustration pests outside our own proverbial gar - bers, meet them, or even hear of them, dred years, boundaries have been and exhaustion. I myself prefer to dens. We like to cultivate our little yet in the minds of each lives the image drawn up, destroyed, and drawn up laugh, since there is less cleaning up to patches of earth, make them pretty, of their communion.” You hear that? again. You guys remember Prussia? The do afterward.” build fences, and get defensive about Your pals in Idaho don’t even know you Kingdom of Piedmont? Didn’t think so. We live in absurd times. Smile. The Stony Brook Press 35 Literary Corner “Forrest Avenue of the Thirteenth Congression District” by Alexander Cardozo

I woke up this morning to a sound of thunder. My brother and I climbed up to the roof our childhood home. There the gutters were clogged with robins’ eggs and lost frisbees. We searched the sky for UFOs all through that dawn, through every stroke and beam of light. Down the block, the Mafiosi garbage trucks were already cleaning away my neighbours’ family heirlooms and Four Oh! One! Kays! We know none of our neighbor’s names and will never need to know them. The block never exists past our front door, where our mother still has a rocking chair against it to keep the darkies out. Her fear of the black children down the block is wet in the air of our living flags out of the garden, and then bore coholic Catholic high school teachers. lypse. He was surrounded by his imag - room, where the television is always on them upside down into the earth. The We preferred the cloudy skies. inary nigger adversaries as fear gripped to let the robbers always know, richer soil collected their fibers and outgrew a They’re free. No government leeches his eyes. people are home. Richer people are sit - forest of bamboo. The neighborhood have their hands in these clouds. We ate The nightclubs and bars that lit the ting below a shotgun and a pot of hot pandas love it there. They lurch to at a deli run by guinea scum, they make night expelled legions of orange oil. weekend mass only for a free meal and the best pizza in all the land, the greas - skinned, hair blown, twenty year olds. It never rains over West Brighton, a smack on the ass, always hoping for iest slice you can ever eat. Up and down They would drive their cheap Japanese not when delegates from Albany requi - that good old fashioned Catholic reach these blocks under overcast, we had a sports cars home after a long night of sition that the clouds retain their water around. My childhood friends and I slow gait, a thoughtful gait. Homes courtship. With accents thicker than pressure, to absolve them from marital walked these blocks for kilometers, with lined the side streets with massive front yellow jacket paste, they started fights infidelity. West Brighton takes all the only our bricked cell phones and Lucky yards. In winter, the snow piled like a and shouted at the cars driving by, the ash winds that blow across the harbour Strikes in our pockets. We were idiots in coat of dust on a work desk. In summer skin on their tanned cancerous skin from downtown. The smell of coca black, soaking up all the vertical rays of the scent of sweat and dying opossum cells always raising the tips of their leaves and nail polish fills the poor salt the sun, never in Vietnam, always on filled the corners of wooded patches hairs. They always creep home in more miner’s respirator by the Kill Van Kull. Shiaolin. and residential streets. I failed to catch fear than the night before. Behind their The miners stack piles of salt as tall as Here it rains only when the bureau - the seasons change. I could have heard glazed eyes there is always the same face the sky for the pissant New York winter crats let it. Here the sun shines through birds if I were not deaf. I could have of the schizophrenic racist only a mere snow-storms. The salt miner always our hearts only when the church bells smelled flowers if my cerebellum had block away, this time eating White Cas - curses the city folk before saying grace ring in counterpoint. The sun shines not filtered out all the sweet smells. I tle. over a micro waved Hungryman feast. like a good godly and giving US sniper could have tasted the snow if I had not It was a wonderful presence. Walk - Feast for a king and his queen. Feast for bullet, guided by the grace of Christ into been terrified of acid rain and carcino - ing home was strolling through Tintern all the angels and saints. an Iraqi schoolchild’s trapper-keeper. gens. I could have felt the pain of my abbey, it was meditating in the Vatican, The priest on Casteleton at Sacred Here we never watched the news. “Jour - schoolboy social class, if video games always to sprint home in the darkness Heart Church says, “live Jesus in our nalists are scum,” mused my comrade. and Al Qaeda had not desensitized the pass the drunkards and the lunatics hearts” by the lights of his candles and He’s got a history of purist atheism that tips of my nerves. green with dementia. rosary beads. His congregation taps im - comes from his father’s bookshelf. His Forrest Avenue was the block that Tomorrow will always be better that patiently for hope that his sermon will father owns only one spoon, one fork, held the ground below my ending ca - child pondered as he lay to sleep. be shorter, that his heavy Nigerian ac - one knife, and one plate. Mr. Reno sen - dences. There I met the girls, drank the Whether in a crib or a pile of rags, he cent could drown out the sounds of au - ior, who’s staircase is lined with paint - poisons and inhaled noxious fumes. knew his destiny as the room spun tomatic teller machines and iron lungs ings of Marylyn Monroe that he painted There it always took a village. On For - above. in their heads. The friar’s hands are himself. In the afternoons he will pass rest Avenue I remember the walks One night in summer I woke. made of plateglass and fiberoptics. His out in a haze of Xanax on his bed with home. Night after night, the walk that One night in summer a man woke to a lungs heave for the stench of nail-polish the television on full blast. My comrade was frightening, and exhilarating all at sound of thunder. He and his grown remover. He was born to a widow with hates his father as much as he hates the the same time. We had no cars, we al - brother climbed onto the roof, cutting a glass eye before his village was ethni - journalists, as much as he fears death, ways walked. their hands on shards of eggshells and cally cleansed by leftist guerrillas. and loves pussy. Some nights, by the supermarket, broken frisbees. They sat on roof tiling. The church had an ant line drawn My friends and I, we ignored the an insane josser would swing at the air They watched the garbage men in on its side, a string of star spangled ban - war, just like terrorism was a channel in a drunken stupor. Screaming racist tricked out Gaeta company trucks drag ners waving in the summer heat. Little that we changed to cartoons one Tues - epithets at invisible black people at two away the neighbors’ trash. They said American flags stuck into its garden day in September. We never hate the a.m. Sometimes he would spar with the prayers to I am who I am. They re - each year by a real-estate company, ad - president because his wars fuel the hu - concrete wall. On others he would sit membered when the streets were loud, vertising through patriotism. My mour. We never care but always laugh. eating a Big Mac, while mumbling to when they barely spoke, and together, friends and I, we once said prayers to I Hurricanes and white phosphorous are himself about how meat would be the they scanned the heavens for UFOs. am who I am, before we ripped those stand up vaudeville to teenagers and al - death of man, the reason for the apoca - 36 Sports Vol. XXXI, Issue 2 | Wednesday, September 30, 2009

If Stats Could Speak...

mean business. After missing the play - were founded. Subtract from this the count since 2007. by Jason Wirchin offs last season for the first time in 14 number of championships they’ve won Here comes the hard part. Calcu - years, several big name acquisitions and divide by the team’s tally of 2009 late the vector speed of every homerun have more than rejuvenated the dis - walk-off wins heading into last week - hit to right field after the All-Star break, We’ve all taken a math course at jointed locker room of campaigns’ past. end’s series against the Sawks. Add to taking into account wind speed and the some point in our lives – some as simple C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett bolstered that the square root of Jeter’s hit total slope of the wall. Next, find the inverse as first-grade arithmetic, others as te - a struggling rotation, Mark Teixeira re - relationship between A-Rod’s playoff dious as college calculus. We’ve split up placed Giambi’s feeble defense and lack performance and the size of his ego, all fractions, solved for x and even pon - of power at first and Nick Swisher’s before adding the number of ‘roid shots dered imaginary numbers. But for rocket arm in right has all but block - he took to his ass. Now, take out your what? Our teachers rambled year after aded runners’ path to the plate. Having rulers and draw an isosceles triangle. year that one day, when we’d least expect secured their first 100-win season since The length of each leg should roughly it, seemingly bogus equations would 2004, excitement is in the air with Oc - equate to the number of times New serve some miraculous purpose. Well, tober around the corner. York has beaten Kansas City over the my fellow readers, today is that day. Despite their juggernaut status, past decade, with the hypotenuse meas - For starters, the New York Yankees however, the Bombers aren’t perfect. uring fans’ perceived quality of Yankee are the team to beat in not only the With 82 errors on the season as of last Stadium hot dogs on a scale from one American League this season, but all of Saturday – a mark greater than Ana - to five. Given these stats, determine the Major League Baseball. The fact that heim’s, Boston’s, LA’s and Philadelphia’s average size of any two angles, and mul - they hold the best record in the game – – there’s certainly room for improve - tiply it by 1/16 of Melky Cabrera’s career and have for quite some time – is a tes - ment. Especially since all four of those RBI total. tament to their powerhouse lineup, teams are possible playoff opponents. Congratulations! You’ve reached gritty bench and above-par pitching. Joba’s inability to pitch through the the final step. Take the total number of You dare even think about getting in third inning, coupled with A-Rod’s people in the metropolitan area who these boys’ way, and you’ve already problems in the clutch could also spell sincerely miss Joe Torre, subtract it made a mistake. See, they won’t just trouble once the race gets underway. from the number of times any Yankee beat you; they’ll puree you, liquefy you, Yet as far as numbers go, George’s – Three whole innings, Joba? Excellent work. has ever appeared on a late-night talk whip you, crush you, grind you and do um, Hal’s – team has put up quite the re - show and divide by the total number of whatever else a blender does. Hell, sume. In many betting circles, they’re times Roger Clemens has lied in front they’ll mince you like raw onions at a the hands-down favorite to win the the night he broke Gehrig’s record for of Congress. If necessary, round to the South Carolina cook-off if they damn World Series. But ever wonder how most hits as a Yankee, then subtract the nearest tenth. well feel like it. If you’re lucky, they’ll odds makers make the odds? With a lit - highest price for a front-row seat at the The playoffs begin October 7. Call add a cherry on top or maybe one of tle bit of math – and a lot of imagina - Stadium. Still with me? Good. Now your bookies now! those tropical umbrellas, but don’t get tion – a rudimentary equation ought to multiply the first two digits of Tex’s your hopes up. do the trick. mega-contract, Andy Pettitte’s lifetime Simply put, these 2009 Yankees Start with 1903 – the year the Yanks ERA and Phil Hughes’ average innings The Stony Brook Press Sports 37

2009 Major League Baseball Playoff Spread

resting on his laurels for the three sea - show that he has had a whopping 1,922 That’s all there is. Much like the Tigers, by Josh Ginsberg sons between now and then. Taking ABs in his five years of Major League the Brewers had a historic year in 2008. him from invaluable dickhead to in - playing. I couldn’t tell you what the fuck Historic for the franchise that is, which valuable dickhead in a different sense of an AB is, but it makes his 66 home runs is to say that they made the post-season American League: the term, The Angels holy aura has and two measly World Series rings look for the first time in 26 years, before East: brought the best out of Abreu. It’s totally like kid’s stuff. being eliminated by the Phillies. Per - After a season which gradually feasible that Abreu will get his revenge haps the Brewers will go head to head heated up from tepid to hot-fire, the over his New York nemeses, but more National League: with the Phillies again. And maybe, just New York Yankees are closing in on an - as a result of the fact the West is fuck - East: Last year’s World Series maybe, this time, things will not not not other playoff season. Since the Indians’ ing weak than anything else. Champions, the Pittsburgh Phillies, are be different. If they do make it to the Se - 2009 season, a veritable trail of tears, the on a roll. After making the Mets their ries and happen to go up against the Yankees don’t risk elimination at their Yankees, it will be interesting to see ruddy hands as they did in the ’07 sea - tensions ablaze as catcher Mike son at the hands of ace pitcher and Rivera goes head to head with the AARP Representative Paul Byrd’s Mariano— his own brother . Of gloved hands, despite the fact he was course this would be the same des - wearing a tumor the size of a testicle on tiny met if Mike faced his other his pituitary gland. It’s totally possible brother, Juan, if the Angels faced off against the Brewers. that a lineup equipped with monikers as colorful as Swish-Dog, A-Rod and West: There would be nothing Hideki Matsui have that the Yankees more perfect than a showdown be - will make their first World Series ap - tween the New York Yankees and pearance in 215 years, when the Terror - the L.A. Dodgers. The Dodgers, ists won. who, little known fact, once hailed from New York (more specifically Central: The Detroit Tigers are one the Bronx) happen to be managed of the original eight franchises in the by former Yankees Master, Joe MLB that are still playing today. The Torre. Torre was fired by Yankees Motor City Kitties were the worst team owner George Hal Steinbrenner, in Major League Baseball in 2003 but who was famously voiced by Larry have steadily been rebuilding since David, after he failed to lead the then. In 2006, the Tigers managed to Yankees to the World Series (the make their way to the playoffs and playoffs were not good enough) in would have won the World Series, too! 2007. What could be more perfect If it weren’t for the fact that the Cardi - than a faceoff between Torre, lord of nals and basically all the other teams in the underappreciated and hand - the National League were way better. In some and his former squires, the 2007, morale was high and game atten - New York Yankees in the World Se - dance was through the roof. Alas, they ries? I guess, it being the year 2008. didn’t make it to the playoffs again. The It is also worth noting that Amer - 2008 season saw the Tigers proclaimed ica’s greatest person, Manny the Team of Destiny and many base- Ramirez, occasionally plays the out - bologists and sports analysts (who pub - field with the L.A. Dodgers when he lished these results in the form of a is not staring down the end of a fat Facebook group) predicted that they blunt, or coyly injecting steroids would win 117 games in the season, al - Wild Card: Yes, those fuckers the bitches (Pedro Martinez’s coming home into his jheri-curled ass. most as many as they lost five years be - Red Sox will make it again. Ever since story) like twenty times, they are poised fore. Many scientists wonder, “What the franchise was founded in 2004, the as the head runners in the National Wild Card: This year’s National does this cruel world hold in store for Red Sox have been the winningest team League. Anyone with the slightest League “Wild Card” is coming down those orange-pinstriped whores?” A in the fucking universe, let alone the knowledge of the Phillies knows that a the mountain from way up North. The safe bet is an elimination from the first American League, let alone Major lineup like the one they are boasting 2001 Toronto Raptors are the logical round of the playoffs and an eventual League Baseball. In all five years of their this season with 2006 National League choice for fourth slot. They may not be demolition of Comerica Park, and existence, the Red Sox have made it to MVPs. Ryan Howard is the 219 th best as good as the other teams in their divi - moreover, the destruction of Detroit as the playoffs. Considered to be a greatly homerun hitter of all time. And I as - sion, but their play is incomparable. The a city. charitable team due to their work with sume that means something. lineup boasts many stars, most notably the hideously deformed, the mentally Vince Carter, Antonio Davis and West: Anaheim’s Los Angeles An - disabled and the Jews (see: Kevin Youk - Central: Ah, the Brewers. It is a Charles Oakley. Carter won 2000’s Slam gels from Anaheim, Los Angeles, a.k.a. ilis) the Bo’Sox are a classic American shame the largely illiterate fan base of Dunk Contest, has led the NBA All-Star the Angels, are a sure shot for the West - franchise. When the Sox rescued Youk - the Milwaukee Brewers will never have Game three times, only eclipsed by ern division of the AL. “Crafty as a wiz - ilis from Narnia in 2004 so he could the chance to read the praise that I etch Michael Jordan and Dr. J, and appeared ard” is probably how one might play on the teams very first ever roster, with pure love into this slate of granite. in Fabolus’ 2002 video, “This is My describe the Angels in 2009. The Angels Youkilis proved that he was more than The Brewers are the greatest team to Party.” The Raptors will easily pull managed to use their magical elixir on just a satyr, but was in fact, excellent at ever walk the face of this earth. They ahead within the National League. The former Yankee and 2005 Home Derby gaining sympathy from pitchers. A have one of the funniest logos ever, or only question is how they’ll fare against Champion Bobby Abreu who had been quick glance at Youkilis’ record will at least did between 1970 and 1977. some of the AL’s titans. 38 Sports Vol. XXXI, Issue 2 | Wednesday, September 30, 2009

NHL Season Preview

The isles offense is probably Quick Picks going to be their strength with the ad - Anaheim Ducks – B By Daniel Offner dition of Tavares and other young tal - Atlanta Thrashers – D ent. Boston Bruins – B+ New York Rangers Also the Islanders now have Buffalo Sabres – C- three veteran goalies in Martin Biron, Calgary Flames - B Scott Gomez’s departure for Rick DiPietro, and Dwayne Roloson. Caroline Hurricanes – D Montreal left the Rangers in need of I predict the New York Is - Chicago Blackhawks – A changing the roster. landers have a serious shot if Tavares Colorado Avalanche – C During the off-season, the plays like the new Ovechkin or Crosby Columbus Blue Jackets – B- Rangers acquired Marion Gaborik, and if the team’s defense can keep up. Dallas Stars – B- Donald Brashear, Ales Kotalik, Vinny Detroit Red Wings – A Prospal and Smithtown’s own Christo - Grade: C+ Edmonton Oilers – B+ pher Higgins. Florida Panthers – B+ I predict that the New York New Jersey Devils Los Angeles Kings – F Rangers will have a good shot at mak - Minnesota Wild – D ing the playoffs with all the young tal - The Devils are always a force to Montreal Canadiens – A ent, new additions, and seasoned be reckoned with, even though their Nashville Predators – C- players. roster looks almost identical to that of Ottawa Senators – B- last season. Philadelphia Flyers – C Grade: A- I predict the Devils will have a Phoenix Coyotes – C good start to the 2009-2010 season but Pittsburgh Penguins – A+ New York Islanders will have to pick their game up in order San Jose Sharks – A to get further than the first round of the St. Louis Blues – B+ Ranked number one overall in playoffs. Tampa Bay Lightning – D the 2009 entry draft, John Tavares will Toronto Maple Leafs – B be a key factor in the Islanders’ quest for Grade: B+ Vancouver Canucks – B- the cup. Washington Capitals – A- Mile High Mighty Mice The Rockies Update, Number 3

rotation. We roll 40 deep (I don’t know how to read the By Andrew Fraley 40-man roster yet). We’ve got the number one stunner, Welcome to the third installment of Aaron Cook, back from about wildly popular Rockies update. Your a month of injury. He totally favorite mountaineers are rounding shut down the St. Louis Cardi - the last corner of the their regular sea - nals in his first game back, and son, gearing up for their potential by “shut down” I just mean postseason. I say “potential” because they scored less than us. After right now the Rockies are at the most that there’s Jason Marquis, the critical and dangerous moment of the former Chicago Cubbie. He’s season. They are in danger of being Jewish, so he’s like Sandy Ko - overtaken. Not by the Giants—so long, ufax, only not as good, but still losers—but by Ted Turner’s Terrible pretty good. Ubaldo Jimenez is Team, the Atlanta Braves. The lesser of also pretty good, and can be the racist American Indian-based great in the clutch. teams has been on a tear recently, win - There are two starters that ning 15 of the last 17, or some num - deserve extra attention ChiSox, but he’s been completely reju - when the Rockies are beating the ber. Apparently, their pitching has though, and they are the Latino Light - venated by his arrival in the mile high Cards in the first round of the playoffs, been the best in baseball right now. ning! Jorge De La Rosa has been un - city. Ozzie Guillen, manager of the and Todd Helton reaches the 30,000 They are two and a half games back at believable in the latter half of this more mediocre of the three teams doubles mark. Let me leave the Yankee the time of this column, and have to season. He started 0-7, and is now 16- named after underwear, was a total fans reading this column with a bit of finish off their season against the eas - 9. That means he’s been 16-2 in the dick to poor Jose, and stifled his cre - advice: don’t get too upset when they iest team in the history of baseball, the most recent 18 decisions, and has an ativity and growth. Expect him to lose to the Red Sox in the ALCS. It’s Washington Nattie Gnats. The Rocks ERA for those games of like 1.01. He come up big in the wild card race. And happened before, and it’ll happen are stuck facing the fucking Dodgers. is amazing. Next is our newest poster don’t give me that “NL cupcake” bull - again. Get used to it. Joba’s a douche. Yikes. boy from the White Sawks. Jose Con - shit. The AL can suck my dick. But consider the Rockies’ starting treras was terrible this season for the So that’s that. I’ll get back to you Editors Note: Our goal is to provide Sean Salisbury- 39 like analysis on the NFL. If none of this makes sense, then we have succeeded in honoring the great ESPN analyst. Here’s to you Mr. Salisbury.

North East North East

Baltimore Ravens New York Jets Minnesota Vikings New York Giants (3-0) (3-0) (3-0) (3-0)

For the first time in a long time, Still debating on what’s more Being old never looked so Big win against Dallas. Easy the Ravens have an offense to impressive. Mark Sanchez or young. They don’t call him win against Tampa Bay. Too balance their veteran defense. Rex Ryan’s gut. fourth-quarter-two-minute-warn - early to tell if they will be con - Ray Lewis is never too old. ing Brett Favre for nothing. sistent throughout the season.

Cincinnati Bengals New England Patriots Green Bay Packers Dallas Cowboys (2-1) (2-1) (2-1) (2-1)

Who would have guessed the Impregnating supermodels dur - Brett who? Aaron Rodgers is Tony Romo is overrated. Cool Bengals would have a record ing the offseason takes a toll on stepping up to be something stadium, but Romo is still over - above .500 at any point during your team and my fantasy Matt Hasselback never was, a rated. the season. league. quarterback.

Pittsburgh Steelers Buffalo Bills Chicago Bears Philadelphia Eagles (1-2) (1-2) (2-1) (2-1)

Attempting to become the worst Where’s the popcorn? Their only highlight of the sea - Who let the dogs out!? team since winning a Super Bowl, son will be defeating the Steel - the Steelers will try and rebound ers. They suck. And so do the from two dissapointing losses. Steelers.

Cleveland Browns Miami Dolphins Detroit Lions Washington Redskins (0-3) (0-3) (1-2) (1-2)

Someone should remind Derek New season. Same team. Pen - Watching the Detriot Lions is The worst thing to happen to a Anderson what team he plays nington still can’t pass the ball like watching the Special team other than going 0-18 is for. Three interceptions is three further than five yards and, oh Olympics. That’s it. losing to an 0-18 team. Way to too many. wait, he got injured! go losers! South West South West Indianopolis Colts Denver Broncos New Orleans Saints San Francisco 49ers (3-0) (3-0) (3-0) (2-1) They lost to Favre in the wind - They killed the Cardinals, Kyle Orton is a tool. They’ll Drew Brees doesn’t like black ing seconds of the fourth quar - though critics argue Peyton probably lose every other running backs on my fantasy ter. Pass defense needs to step Manning looks like a foetus. game. We miss Shanahan. team and is too busy scoring it up. TDs.

Houston Texans San Diego Chargers Atlanta Falcons Seattle Seahawks (1-2) (2-1) (2-1) (1-2)

Name five players on this team LT is a flop. Phillip Rivers lacks Heading into the bye this week Matt Hasselback is still the worst and I will be surprised. lame. talent. Their two wins came after a loss, the Falcons will franchise quarterback in the his - from Oakland and Miami. need to play their best this sea - tory of the NFL. No facts are son to keep up with the Saints. needed to back this up. He just is.

Jacksonville Jaguars Oakland Raiders Carolina Panthers Arizona Cardinals (1-2) (1-2) (0-3) (1-2)

Wasn’t this team supposed to If you like watching teams suck, Someone should call Jake Del - Just like the Steelers, a lousy be good? Bring back the leather then here you go. home and tell him to stop drop - start after playing in the Super jacket Del Rio! ping the ball. His team sucks Bowl. because he sucks.

Tenessee Titans Kansas City Chiefs Tampa Bay Buccaneers St. Louis Rams (0-3) (0-3) (0-3) (0-3)

Steve McNair died and so did Next week’s prediction: 0-4. One reason why I am happy I Insert comment here: any hope of them winning the They face the Giants. don’t live in Florida: old people. Super Bowl this year. The other: I don’t have to get stuck watching the Bucs. Death Egg Zone