Post- Dec. 3, 2015

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upfront

Editor-in-Chief Yidi Wu Managing Editor of Arts & Culture Abby Muller Managing Editor of Features Monica Chin Managing Editor of Lifestyle Cissy Yu Managing Editor of Online Amy Andrews Arts & Culture Editors Liz Studlick Mollie Forman Features Editors Lauren Sukin Nate Shames Lifestyle Editor Corinne Sejourne Copy Chiefs Lena Bohman Alicia DeVos Serif Sheriffs Logan Dreher Kate Webb Her Grey Eminence Clara Beyer Head Illustratrix Katie Cafaro

contents 3 upfront

winter (break) is coming Post- Editorial Staff

4 features

carving narratives Claribel Wu

5 lifestyle

pandora’s box Tushar Bhargava moves like jäger Liz Studlick

6 arts & culture adele, by the numbers Joshua Lu

my heart pooped its pants Gabrielle Hick

7 arts & culture beauty in the bestial Devika Girish

8 lifestyle

editor’s note Dear Readers,

Happy holidays! Well, almost. Sure, we have two days of class, five days of reading period, and all of finals left to go, but if this semester’s proven anything, it’s that time can go by more quickly than we ever would have thought. Over the course of the semester, the Ratty’s gotten worse, the weather’s gotten colder, the reason-to-bullshit ratio of the papers we’ve been writing for class has bottomed out, and the sun has decided to leave the sky before it’s even evening yet. It’s happened fast.

Surely finals will carry through just as quickly, and then we’ll be home free.

But honestly, though, it’s been a pretty good semester. There have been fun weekends, genuinely exciting lectures, latenight conversations—the stuff of college brochures. And every Wednesday night for the past 11 weeks, the Post- staff has gathered to put together a magazine for you. This week, we’ve opened the wine and brought out the Christmas music. We’re bringing you celebrations: of holidays, of traditions, of weird TV. Of this semester of Post-. It’s been a good one; we hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as we have.

We’ll see you in 2016! Whatever you’re celebrating this winter, even if it’s just the end of finals, we wish you all the best.

Sincerely,

Post- Editorial Staff

top ten overheard at brown feelin’ 22 Amy Andrews

Staff Writers Sara Al-Salem Tushar Bhargava Kalie Boyne Katherine Chavez Loren Dowd Rebecca Forman Joseph Frankel Devika Girish Gabrielle Hick Lucia Iglesias Anne-Marie Kommers Joshua Lu Hannah Maier-Katkin Caitlin Meuser Emma Murray Jacyln Torres Ryan Walsh Staff Illustrators Yoo Jin Shin Alice Cao Emily Reif Beverly Johnson Michelle Ng Peter Herrara Mary O’Connor Emma Margulies Jason Hu Jenice Kim Cover Katie Cafaro

From right to left: Yidi Wu ‘17, Abby Muller ‘16, Monica Chin ‘17, Cissy Yu ‘17, Amy Andrews ‘16, Liz Studlick ‘16, Mollie For- man ‘16, Lauren Sukin ‘16, Nate Shames ‘17, Corinne Sejourne ‘16, Lena Bohman ‘18, Alicia Devos ‘18, Logan Dreher ‘19, Ellen Taylor ‘16, Kate Webb ‘19, Katie Cafaro ‘17 (Please send us a photo at post.magazine.bdh@gmail.com)

upfront

3

winter (break) is coming post- editors discuss tradition post- editorial staff

As the holiday season approaches, we the Post- editors bring you our thoughts on traditions—any noteworthy traditions we and our families and friends might keep, how we feel about them, and the roles they play in our lives. Here’s to a festive and restful holiday season, and we’ll see you in 2016! —Monica Chin, Managing Editor of Features

I got asked recently by a well-meaning (but very befuddled) online friend what the fuck I actually celebrate. I am, after all, Jewish, and I can understand that my blog’s explosion of candy canes and peppermint and pine might be a little confusing.

I see it like this: I celebrate religious Chanukah and secular Christmas. For those eight nights every December, I light the candles, say the prayers—but, I also love Christmas movies. And peppermint hot chocolate, and ugly sweaters, and pine trees lining the dirty New York streets, littering the litter with little spikes of green. And I know to some extent this is cultural appropriation (can you appropriate something that even those meant to celebrate it have appropriated? That’s a question I’m working on), but I can’t help loving it.

Maybe it’s coming from a dysfunctional family that’s primed my holiday spirit for the escapism of Will Ferrell soaring above a cheering Central Park, or the romance of Colin Firth learning another language to propose to the woman he loves, or the simple goodwill of Meg Ryan hanging ornaments and remembering the mother she misses; or maybe I’m just a disillusioned millennial looking for something to believe in.

Whatever it is, I’m too jolly to question it. So jingle bell me up, motherfucker; Santa’s coming whether you like it or not. —MF My holidays are subnormally tradition-filled. We put up a tree, we go to a roast-beef-and-champagne Christmas Eve dinner, we open a single midnight present. Increasingly, we’ve stopped waking up for early morning Christmas mass. Before college, we would fly to Baltimore and drive three hours north on December 26th to visit my paternal grandmother in Pennsylvania; three days later, we would fly to Denver to see my mother’s family. As we’ve let these traditions lapse after my move to Providence, my winter break has devolved into the tradition of doing whatever I want, typically Netflix, lying around with my cats, and occasionally grabbing a meal or two with high school friends.

This is either my parents’ last or second-to-last Christmas in the house I grew up in, depending on when they finally decide to retire and begin the monthslong process of boxing up the accumulated piles of lives lived. With that will come my last Christmas in Houston and all the things that come with it: drives on the concentric loops of freeway, nostalgic lunches at La Madeleine and hole-

in-the-wall Mexican places, the neighbors and friends I’ve taken for granted.

Though some of my favorite traditions will surely prove portable, I’m expecting to spend a little more time off the couch experiencing that this December.

My boyfriend’s also visiting my hometown for the first time (or will be if he gets his shit together and picks flights).

Instead of visiting my favorite restaurants, I have to show them off. Instead of taking copious naps, I need to schedule Activities and Experiences to prove that Houston has something going for it.

Somehow I don’t think NASA is going to be as exciting to 22-year-old him as it was to 12-year-old me. But hopefully this break will be both a satisfying ending to old traditions and maybe the start to a few new ones. —LS My mom is from Rhode Island, so I’ve spent part of Christmas here ever since I was little. We used to celebrate Christmas at home and then drive up to Woonsocket on December 26th, allowing us to see faraway relatives but meaning we missed the whole family Christmas celebration. One year, my brother and I woke up Christmas Eve morning and found a sign taped to the banister outside our rooms, saying that Santa had come early. Thrilled (who knew Santa had such a flexible schedule?), we rushed downstairs and opened our presents, then piled in the car and made the sixhour trek to my grandparents’ house in time for Christmas Eve festivities and to celebrate with the rest of the family in Massachusetts on Christmas Day. Over time, we’ve got this tradition down to a science. Now we have our Christmas celebration on December 23rd, making it an entire day of festivities and leisure: opening presents in the morning and then enjoying them—and each other’s company—for the rest of the day. (One highlight: the year we got Rock Band and my mom, brother, and I made a band and played it all day) Then we drive up to Rhode Island on Christmas Eve and spend the whole evening and Christmas Day with various groupings of relatives. This summer we sold my grandparents’ house (my mom’s childhood home), which means for the first time we won’t be gathering there on Christmas Eve. It’s going to be strange, but we’ll adapt, because sometimes traditions have to change. After all, my family actually changed the date of our Christmas, and it’s my favorite tradition we’ve ever had. —AA My parents are holiday tradition people. Every year since before I can remember, around the advent of December, they’ve loaded us all up into their van, hauled us and our angsty teenaged demeanors to Angevine Tree Farm, and strolled between row upon row of identical Christmas trees, weighing meticulously the pros and cons of each specimen before finally settling on one, seemingly (to me, at least) at random.

Every year I dutifully take it upon myself to point out the existence of the plastic Christmas trees that are sold at Target, and the overwhelming comparative ease with which we could obtain these trees.

My parents have always laughed incredulously at this suggestion. “It’s a tradition,” they always respond. “It’s a family tradition.”

I’m one of those disgruntled 20-somethings who is cynical when it comes to imbuing abstract concepts with concrete value. The concept of tradition, and the way in which it seems to inevitably impede practicality, has always rubbed me the wrong way. Curricular innovations at my high school were shut down in the planning process because they wouldn’t fit with our “traditional” schedule. The debate that inevitably seems to come up around policy decisions, as one between progress and tradition, has always frustrated me to no end, given that it’s difficult for me to fathom how one factor could even come close to outweighing the other. It’s hard for me to keep the holiday season, a period of time when you can’t take two steps without trampling someone’s beloved traditions, from being a month-long eye-roll-fest. When I grow up, I have resolved, I will buy a plastic Christmas tree and burden it with minimal decorations. Presents will be from me, not from a fictional elderly man. I will only drag my children to church if they decide for themselves to be Christians. I will allow my Christmas celebrations to adapt the way that other things adapt--open-mindedly, shaped by the times and circumstances, and the preferences of my family.

And yet, somehow, I manage. Every year, my parents load our ancient CD player with various archives of Christmas music and pile over 100 ornaments from various cities and countries onto the poor tree’s branches. I often feel an urge to point out that with so many accoutrements heaped atop it, the tree will surely topple over. But when I see genuine smiles lighting up my parents’ faces, hear rare relaxed laughs as they relate memories (“Wow, I forgot about this one. Remember that stall in Chennai where we bought it? That must have been 20 years ago now...”), I can’t bring myself to. Instead I sit back on the couch, smile, and wait for the inevitable. —MC When I think of “the holidays” I think of family. There is no single outstanding tradition that we effectively uphold each year. We definitely eat turkey, cranberry sauce, and mashed potatoes every Thanksgiving. Sometime in the days leading up to the 25th, we decorate the Christmas tree with some array of ornaments collected over the years.

New Year’s morning has occasionally been punctuated by a road race. Of these changing and changeable traditions, I find that my family always finds a way to spend time with one another. Whether we’re traveling as group or passing a virtual FaceTime-face around the table at

Thanksgiving, the value of—and determination sometimes involved in achieving—together-ness is a reliable constant.

—CS The thing about Chanukah is that its date floats, so celebrations by nature change from year to year. Even before college, one year it could be over winter break with candles and presents and dreidel after dinner and a Chanukah party over the weekend, and another year my sister and I could be in school with midterms all week, and another year we could be with relatives or traveling. My freshman year of college I was at Brown for the whole holiday, and my sophomore year it was over Thanksgiving. One year of middle school, it overlapped with my mom’s birthday.

So our main winter tradition isn’t really tied to holidays at all. Every other year, we go skiing. My parents are both from the Northeast, and my immediate family lived in Wyoming when I was really young, so despite North Carolina’s relatively balmy Decembers, we’ve got snow in our blood (Or something). We always go to the same place in Colorado, Steamboat Springs. Even though I’m only there for four or five days every two years, it feels like a home away from home. I know the lodges and the downtown and even the map of the mountain—to the greatest degree that someone with a sense of direction as bad as mine can know a map. My sister and I get our favorite curly fries at lunch and in the evening, our gloves and masks drying on the radiator, we sit on the same couch in the same hotel in front of the same fire and read. Well, obviously not the same fire. That’s impossible.

We leave two days after I get home, three days after my last final. I can’t wait.

- AM

4

features

carving narratives

a taiwanese thanksgiving

CLARIBEL WU staff writer I was six years old, sitting in one of those soon-to-be-familiar dark navy plastic chairs, the ones that would hurt my butt for the entirety of my elementary school days. It was almost Thanksgiving, and my teacher read aloud for us a picture book that mapped out all the stereotypical requisites for this American holiday: a massive turkey, elaborate table settings, and picture-perfect family.

Afterwards, we had our own makeshift Thanksgiving feast during class, complete with archetypal American dishes like pumpkin pie and green bean casserole.

At this age, I first discovered what Thanksgiving was “supposed” to look and taste like. I had lived through six years of my life without knowing about these traditions, but the school’s crafts, stories, and movie reinforced the images in my young, impressionable mind, planting the seed of expectation.

Later that week, I waited in anticipation for the extravagant, model Thanksgiving celebration that matched the image I’d formed in my mind. To my (temporary) dismay, it never came to be.

We didn’t have a massive turkey—we had Peking duck. We didn’t have elaborate table settings and fine china—it was set as it would have been for any a regu-

lar dinner. We didn’t have a picture-perfect family gathering either—it was just me, my mother, one set of grandparents, and my uncle and aunt.

Truthfully, I was disappointed that it wasn’t the standard American celebration that I thought everyone was supposed to have. I remember asking my mother, with eyes that sparkled with self-pity, why we didn’t have turkey or stuffing or casseroles (despite the fact that, to this day, I am still not clear on what a casserole is).

My grandparents grew up in Taiwan during the Japanese occupation, which took place between 1895 and 1945. As such, they were required to learn the Japanese language and adopt certain parts of the culture. My grandpa loves Japanese culture, especially the food. Homemade sushi has a special place in my heart; it’s a recurring favorite at my family gatherings. We set out plates full of “sushi guts,” which include tamagoyaki (sliced sweet omelet), cucumber, imitation crab, fish roe, and avocado. The seaweed is roasted on the stove before being cut into little squares for each person, and this would give our homemade sushi a phenomenally better taste and texture than pre-made sushi. It’s a unique and fun way to make your own food, a spe-

cial family tradition that I can’t get from a typified Thanksgiving celebration.

Each aspect of my family’s Thanksgiving reflects some aspect of our Asian roots, and our small gatherings create an intimacy that allows for an easy-going, unassuming atmosphere. Our culture and togetherness more than compensate for our lack of Thanksgiving’s conventional ornamentations.

My six-year-old mind demanded that everything fit into my preconceived image of a Thanksgiving celebration, but my will could not withstand the sights and smells of a Taiwanese family celebration. My disappointments dissolved like the steam that rose from the hot pot, a stainless-steel centerpiece of sorts that was both a source of food and entertainment—I would make silly faces at my reflection, which stretched itself into clownish images that smiled back at me. The hot pot sat on a bed of leftover newspapers (very aesthetically pleasing), a frothy concoction of vegetables and fish cake. My favorite part would be placing the raw meat into the bubbling stew, impatiently waiting for it to turn an acceptable shade of brown, and ladling it out for my family members.

Grandparents are served first, of course, because elders are always given prior-

ity based on Taiwanese table etiquette.

It gave me a sense of importance, and what child doesn’t love to play kitchen anyway?

When you are taught in school, from a young age, to glorify a certain image of celebration, it can be difficult to accept anything otherwise. You wonder why your family has ethnically different food, why more than half of your family is across the Pacific Ocean and cannot celebrate with you. It’s confusing for a six-year-old who does not necessarily understand the preciousness of her own cultural background. Nevertheless, it didn’t take long for me to appreciate my family’s “alternative” Thanksgivings—the sense of familiarity and intimacy lends itself to something infinitely more valuable and personable than what I originally wanted, which was a Thanksgiving that matched what I saw on TV and in books.

Of course, it is not my intention to disparage the archetypal Thanksgiving dinner. Each family has their own, valid form of celebration. As an Asian-American, I fully embrace the way that my Taiwanese culture influences and molds the way my family celebrates this American holiday.

My mother and uncle came here when they were 11 and 12, and they faced a lot of difficulties. First off, my grandparents told them they were coming to America for a Disneyland vacation. Once they were on the plane and about to take off, their parents revealed that this trip would not be temporary— they were moving to California at that very moment, and it was already too late to say goodbye properly to their friends back at home. They didn’t dress the same or talk the same as their other American peers, and they faced racial discrimination for that everyday. Their white classmates would make fun of them, and there was a distinct intention to ostracize them for being “different.” The girls at my mom’s school turned the lights off in the bathroom and locked her inside until a teacher had to come and let her out. At my uncle’s school, they would throw open ketchup packets at him during lunch. They didn’t fit the American definition of “normal.”

My mother and uncle used to be shamed for being different, and I don’t want to perpetuate that ethnic erasure by demanding a “more American” holiday. Looking back, I would never want to alter my Asian-American way of celebration to fit the standard, because it is a unique and special product of my family’s history and traditions. There’s a triumph in my family’s ability to assert a cultural presence in a fundamentally American holiday, to carve a space for ourselves and make our own narrative.

Illustration by Katie Cafaro

lifestyle

pandora’s box TUSHAR BHARGAVA

5

closing the lid on the internet staff writer

Black and grey. Cold metal and cold glass. My new phone feels unfamiliar. I try to mitigate the strangeness, slipping on a Super Mario cover that makes it bulkier, more colorful, more like my old phone. But it’s not enough. Something else is different. But I don’t spot it right away …

I am sitting in a Rock carrel when the phone beeps and a tiny green light blinks. I pick up the phone, swipe with my thumb to unlock the screen. At the top of the screen I see a mail icon. I click on it and the Gmail app opens, showing me three unread emails.

I am impressed by this—an embarrassing admission, particularly for a CS major—as my old phone never had working Wi-Fi and I always needed a laptop to check my

emails. I read the three emails and tap out responses to them. I then return to the proof I was writing. Ten minutes later my phone beeps again, and the green light winks at me. Glad for the excuse to take a break—the proof hasn’t been going well, I am entangled in number theory—I pick up the phone and browse through the new emails. From then on, whenever my phone beeps, I check my email. At midnight, when I pick up my backpack and get ready to leave, I glance at my laptop. I have written three paragraphs of the proof, but answered a lot of emails.

Before the new phone I was never “always on,” never permanently tethered to the Internet. I learned the dangers of this hyperconnectivity first hand: plummeting productivity, packaged bursts of emotions, both good (messages from friends) and bad (the CS department sends grades by email). I became impatient with boredom—every idle second an invitation to swipe, tap, and fly away.

Two weeks passed before I started to notice these symptoms.

And when I did, I started seeing them everywhere, affecting everyone. No matter what people were doing—studying, talking to friends, exercising, watching a play—the moment

their phones beeped they were pulled away.

It reminded me of walking my cousin’s dog: Whenever he would try to stray too far, I would tug at his leash. With the Internet, everyone is pulling our leashes, all the time.

Recently, I attended a talk by Tristan Harris, a product philosopher at Google. Harris talked about how we all live in an “attention economy,” where products and websites fight for people’s time. Facebook’s bottomless newsfeed, BuzzFeed’s endless recommendations, and Gmail’s constant refreshing were all designed to keep us on those sites. This is why a seemingly small action such as checking one’s email can result in so much wasted time and attention —the websites don’t want you to leave.

After hearing Harris’s talk and doing some reading on my own, I decided to fight back and reclaim my attention. One of the first things I learned is that technology is asynchronous: It has no notion of time. Our lives, however, have definite rhythms and patterns. By connecting our time-attuned selves to time-independent technology we disrupt those rhythms and patterns. Since technology isn’t time dependent, it can wait for us forever. Consequently, the first tactic I adopt is to turn off my phone’s notifications.

The messages aren’t going anywhere, and this way I get to decide when to turn my attention there, instead of the other way around.

But habits die hard, and even with the notifications off, I am checking my phone regularly. Next, I turn the Wi-Fi off; this way there are no new messages, and I give up my constant checking. However, sometimes even this isn’t enough. When procrastinating—nothing stokes this urge like problem sets—I take out my phone, turn on the Wi-

Fi, and check my messages. On such days, I’ve taken to leaving my phone behind in my dorm. It’s the only way to avoid the siren call of the Web. Occasionally, all of this feels like too much, and my friends have even accused me of being a Luddite. I tell them I am no Luddite. I appreciate all the benefits technology brings: instant access to information, connection with friends on the other side of the globe, future jobs for me. “Why all the fuss then?” they ask. I never reply aloud, but I remember everything I have learned about the world inside my phone and think that if I am going to open Pandora’s Box, I will open it gently. Very gently.

Written by a member of the CS digital literacy group, DigLit (blogs.brown.edu/diglit), for a campaign about the effects of being always connected to the Internet.

Illustration by Katie Cafaro

moves like jäger

things i’ve learned from keeping a bar

LIZ STUDLICK section editor of a&c Growing up, my dad gave me sips of wine, teaching me to identify grapes and prompting me with the right adjectives: oaky, dry, balanced, peppery. I grew up surrounded by boxes of wine that he would trade with his friends or seal away in a corner of his office to age. Fifteen years later and he’s disappointed that my favorite wine comes in screw-top bottles and bags and could best be described as “fruity.”

My boyfriend tried to convert me to craft beer my sophomore year. Used to the soothing mediocrity of PBR and ’Gansett, my tongue winced when the bitterness of hops hit it. Despite his patience, he could never convince me to appreciate IPAs, so I’ve moved through the categories. Stouts taste like iron and blood, pumpkin and seasonal beers are too sickly sweet, and even Hefeweizens started to become too watery or too funky. I’ve decided to move on to imported lagers, less pisslike than American big beer but similarly inoffensive.

My first cocktails were quintessentially Brown: Eastside Mini mixed drinks. Ah, the good old days of rum and Coke, Fanta and Everclear, vodka and Vitamin Water. I lacked the corresponding stellar guides I’ve had in wine and beer, but I knew that there had to be more out there.

Adults willingly spent time and money in bars, and there must be more than alcoholism keeping them there.

This was confirmed when I turned 21 in New York this summer and the wide world of drinking opened to me. For the low, low price of $14 a cocktail, I found that I actually enjoyed mixed drinks that weren’t just ultra-sugared water and hard alcohol. But as the summer wore on, I realized that most of the seemingly complex cocktails probably cost less than $14 to make, and being fond of both hostessing and saving money, I decided to invest in a bar.

Though I haven’t yet worked my way through the catalogue of sazeracs and pisco sours and I have no idea how to express an orange peel, I would still venture to say I’ve learned a lot from my foray into home bartending. Here’s what I’ve learned.

— Barware is pretty but almost entirely unnecessary. You can get by with a muddler (big wooden stick), a cocktail shaker with a built-in strainer (big metal can), a bottle opener, a corkscrew, and a spoon. The rest will collect dust.

A miniature teacup is not the size of a shot and should probably not be treated accordingly.

Guides about stocking bars written for thirtysomethings will tell you to buy every base spirit: whiskey, rum, vodka, gin, and tequila. Also brandy and vermouth in the fancier guides. While this isn’t the worst idea, since these are the basis for most cocktails, frankly, if you don’t like bourbon,

don’t buy bourbon. Start small. You’re probably not making Manhattans tomorrow.

You’ll want to buy martini glasses to make fancy little drinks. Don’t. Just buy rocks glasses or tumblers; they’ll hold bigger drinks and be way easier to wash.

Spherical ice cubes instantly elevate the laziest drink.

Get a couple flavored liqueurs. I’m not talking cake vodka (though that may be a delightful addition to your bar); I’m talking about ginger, elderflower, orange, peach, mint, raspberry, all that good stuff. Pick a flavor that you ideally like in real life and could plausibly go with a bunch of different kinds of liquor; it makes it easier to experiment and do new things.

Don’t buy triple sec unless you intend to make margaritas every weekend.

A bar is an act of generosity. Don’t bother asking for tips because you will never recoup your costs and will always feel weird handing your friends drinks and immediately asking for money.

Store-bought sugars and syrups are totally unnecessary. Simple syrup is just three ingredients: water, sugar, and whatever flavoring you want (herbs or berries or tea). Two parts sugar to one part water and then dump as much flavor in as possible. Boil them all together. Keep it in a jar in your fridge and it’ll last weeks and cost you much less than the $12 rhubarb-thyme-whatever you’ve

been eyeing.

Always have lemon and lime juice in your fridge. They last forever.

Convince people that you’ll only make them a drink if they find two (three, four) more people to join their round. Saves time and unintentionally causes mingling.

Recipes are great when you have no idea what goes together (my Google search history includes “elderflower triple sec” and “kahlua ginger”) but here’s the secret: Most drinks that are palatable to human beings have the same basic proportion.

Two parts base alcohol, one part flavored alcohol, half a part simple syrup, half a part citrus, generous amount of seltzer or other bubbly thing.

Maybe a dash of bitters or some spices if you’re feeling frisky. Really. This drink is technically called a daisy, but you will soon notice how many cocktails are just variations on that.

Don’t be disappointed when, despite your mixing prowess, people still take tequila shots.

Illustration by Emily Reif

6

arts & culture

adele, by the numbers on the most successful artist of our generation

JOSHUA LU staff writer If we’re talking about Adele, we should talk about her sophomore album “21,” and if we’re talking about “21,” a number, we might as well talk about other numbers.

“21” has, for example, sold at least 28 million copies worldwide, with an estimated 12 million in the United States alone. This is remarkable for an album released in the 2010s; the music industry has been in a steady state of decline for about a decade, and album sales have dipped alongside the rise of services such as YouTube, Spotify, and The Pirate Bay: ways to enjoy your music without paying a nickel. For comparison, 100 albums went platinum (sold at least a million copies) in 2001; in 2012, only 10 albums did.

If you wanted to compare the sales of “21” to album sales from previous years, a fair way to do so is to compare market shares.

For example, in the year 2000, The Beatles’ “1,” a compilation album, had a market share of about 1 percent worldwide, which means that for every 100 albums sold, one of them was “1.” The market share of “21” in 2011 was 2.4 percent, the highest for any album ever. If adjusted to the year 1999, a year with a much healthier sales climate, it sold an equivalent of 78 million. The best-selling album of that year, Santana’s “Supernatural,” sold about 26 million.

So by the numbers, “21” is the biggest album of all time worldwide. This is not hyperbole; “21” is literally the biggest album of all time. And we’re not even taking into account its singles, the number one hits “Rolling in the Deep,” “Someone Like You,” and “Set Fire to the Rain,” all three of which dominated the radio, iTunes, and YouTube.

Even “Set Fire to the Rain,” which doesn’t have a music video, boasts the most-viewed fan-made lyric video ever, with over 300 million views.

Adele is well-aware of her impressive numbers: “I don’t think I’ll ever have more

success with an album than I did with ‘21,’” she said in an interview with USA Today on Nov. 20. “Every album I ever make will be following ‘21,’ because of the impact it made.” In retrospect, this view was clearly pessimistic, considering how her follow-up, “25,” is already faring. Lead single “Hello,” which you’ve likely heard if you’ve wandered within 10 feet of a radio this past month, has broken the records for most digital sales in a single week, fastest Vevo music video to hit 100 million views, most Spotify streams worldwide in a single day, and many, many more. It’s overshadowed comebacks from Drake, Justin Bieber, and Ariana Grande, and the list of names continues to grow.

“25” is also the most preordered album in history, with upwards of 500,000 sales before release. Now it’s been released; at the time of writing this, seven songs from the album are in the top 10 of the iTunes chart. Billboard predicts it will sell upwards of 2.5 million copies in its first week, which would make it the largest debut of all time. [Editor’s Note: “25” sold 3.4 million copies in its first week.]

This is a record that’s been held by *NSYNC, of all artists, since 2000, making it a record that generations of superstars, from Eminem to Beyoncé, have repeatedly failed to break.

Numbers aren’t all there is to Adele; she’s received impressive critical acclaim, from 10 Grammy awards to features on Pitchfork magazine. This begs many questions.

What’s different about Adele that’s made her the most successful artist of our generation?

How is she able to appeal to seemingly everybody, from the general public to music critics? Why is Adele able to sell a monstrous amount of music in a dying sales climate?

The obvious answer is her voice. Soulful, emotive, and oh-so powerful, Adele’s voice is what first got her noticed by the general public, when she performed “Someone Like You” at the Brit Awards in 2011, launching

the single and her album to the top of the charts. With a voice like that, it’s easy to root for her; for those who care about talent, she’s a breath of fresh air for mainstream pop, and for those who don’t give a shit about that kind of thing, her songs, heavy on pianos and drums and little else, remain different enough to be interesting but not so obtuse as to be off-putting.

But Adele’s not the first singer to break through with her voice. Singers like Alanis Morissette and Norah Jones, known for their great voices and catchy songs, sold obscene amounts of albums back in the day. But those two fell off the radar quickly, arguably inexplicably, while “25” is shaping up to cement Adele as anything but a flash phenomenon.

Adele’s comeback defied expectations, logic even; a naturally private person, she’s been on the downlow for years, raising her child and recuperating from vocal cord surgery. And now she’s everywhere, performing on television, plastered on billboards, inundating the radio, charts, and Internet blogosphere. To answer those previous questions on why she’s so successful: I don’t really know. It’s a mixture of talent, likability, wellexecuted promotion, and luck. Adele’s not the first artist with this concoction, nor will she be the last, but her success is unmatched and inimitable.

It’s probably best to not overthink these things. After all, we finally have another Adele album, and the release is exciting even without the records it’s bound to break. I haven’t listened to it yet, but I have a long

car ride tomorrow, which is perfect for such an occasion. I’ve read some reviews, many of which are positive, and I know my suitemate finds it pleasant. There’s also comedy to be found; an image of Target selling tissue packs next to copies of “25” has been circulating the Twitterverse. Memes have been made, with one of her conversing with Lionel Richie reaching mild virality.

By the time you read this, we’ll have had a few weeks to take in the album. All those records are nice, but it’s still the music that we will remember her for. She’s already written herself into the history books, and with “25,” she’s just looking for a way into your heart once more. And with all those numbers out of the way, hello again, Adele. It’s great to finally have you back.

Illustration by Michelle Ng

my heart pooped its pants bob’s burgers’ lovable weirdos

GABRIELLE HICK staff writer It is only on “Bob’s Burgers” that a hamburger goes between two puns. My roommate first introduced me to the show because she thought I would appreciate its sense of

humor. I’m not sure what that says about me, but I’m always grateful she did. This is a show that celebrates weirdos, great and terrible jokes, and cheeseburgers: all things I hold close to my heart.

I say weirdos in the most loving way, because the characters on “Bob’s Burgers” are so distinctly hilarious that I would never be able to choose a favorite.

“Bob’s Burgers,” for those of you not yet in the club, is the name of a restaurant (more honestly, what Guy Fieri would probably call a “dive”) owned by Bob Belcher, hard-working patriarch of the Belcher family. H. Jon Benjamin, the same voice of the titular character on “Archer,” voices Bob. For those of you, myself included, who started watching “Archer” before the Belchers came to town, the voice of the suave and self-centered spy emanating from the chubby, hairy, and well-meaning Bob is an initial shock. But over the course of five sea-

sons, I’ve learned to love Bob and his burgers. And his puns: there’s an entire Tumblr devoted to Bob’s Burger of the Day, his own quest to celebrate the burger as an art form, writing a different name on the chalkboard of the restaurant each episode. My personal favourite: Let’s Give ‘Em Something Shiitake ‘Bout Burger.

Linda is Bob’s wife. She has an unabashed love for breaking out into song, Tom Selleck, and her family. Linda’s songs are some of the most consistently funny moments on the show, with her Thanksgiving song from the season 3 Thanksgiving episode—“kill, kill, kill, kill the turkey!”—becoming so popular that indie rock band The National did their own cover of it. Linda has some of the most amazing lines of the show, but even better she is unfailingly optimistic, and revels in the oddballs who make up her family.

Gene, Louise, and Tina are the three Belcher kids, and the three of them committing shenanigans together is “Bob’s Burgers”

at its best. Gene, middle child, lover of all food, somehow manages to be both naive and full of wisdom: “Why would I be horny? I’m not an antelope!” Louise is diabolical and hilarious, and usually the cause of the problem in a given episode: In the first episode of the series, Louise convinces the town that Bob is serving human meat in his burgers. Louise is also the character through whom we experience the revelations in growing up—getting her first crush, starting her first underground casino—but she and Gene are the best celebrations of what being a kid is like. Tina, voiced in the driest and so-strange-it-works way by definite male Dan Mintz, is probably the weirdest character on the show, but she’s also probably the most relevant. Tina is a celebration of the awkward, bumbling mess of hormones that is being a teenager, and it is a testament to Tina’s success as a character that her self-proclaimed love of butts and erotic friend fiction makes perfect sense. Tina may be the best example of the show’s ability to

arts & culture

take the supposed weirdness of these characters and turn it right back on the viewer, so that we may find ourselves in them. But the characters are easy to relate to in a way that isn’t overblown or self-conscious: the Belchers are just hilarious and weird and true. And they make mistakes, just like everybody else. As Tina says, “I’m no hero. I put my bra on one boob at a time like everyone else.”

“Bob’s Burgers” also boasts a series of

memorable supporting characters, and some big names as their voices. Aziz Ansari voices Darryl, a video game enthusiast; Jenny Slate is popular girl Tammy, making Tina the manager of her bat mitzvah in one episode; and Sarah Silverman and her sister voice the twin sons of Bob’s archrival Jimmy Pesto, who owns the successful pizza restaurant across the street. Ollie and Andy Pesto are inseparable twins, verging on incestuous, but presented as so earnest and childlike that it

all makes sense in the spirit of the show.

But the best thing about “Bob’s Burgers” is the Belcher family: in the end, it is their show. They are the ones we celebrate, and they are the ones who celebrate the teenager angst or neighbor rivalry or love of Tom Selleck that we’ve all harbored. Every member of the family is funny in his or her own right, but when they come together is when the show really shines. It is a show that always makes me crave a cheeseburger, and

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simultaneously want to hug every member of my own odd and awesome family. I know the moment I fell in love with the show was when I loved each character for everything that made them funny and strange and human. I knew when, as Tina so eloquently puts it, “My heart just pooped its pants.”

Illustration by Peter Herrara

beauty in the bestial

a review of lenny abramson’s “room”

DEVIKA GIRISH staff writer Warning: There are spoilers ahead. Proceed with caution.

Five-year-old Jack and his Ma live in Room.

Room is Jack’s entire known universe; outside of Room is Outer Space—or at least that’s what Jack thinks. In truth, Room is an 11-by-11 foot garden shed. Ma has been imprisoned there for the last seven years, since she was abducted as a 17-year-old by neighborhood psychopath and serial rapist Old Nick.

This is the premise of Lenny Abramson’s “Room” (and of its source material, Emma Donoghue’s novel of the same name), and it is the stuff of horrifying, sensational true-crime stories. These stories surface in the news once every few years. They’re tales of such inconceivable depravity that they leave us incapable of any emotional response other than utter shock—so much so that any attempt to use these stories as fodder for a book or movie seems inherently gratuitous and exploitative, an exercise in emotional torture-porn, existing solely to indulge our morbid curiosities and sadomasochistic appetites for shock value.

And yet, despite the horror of its plot, “Room” is a tour de force that manages to be something not just miraculously beautiful, but also, thoughtful.

The genius of “Room” lies in its telling: It is narrated through the point of view of naïve young Jack, blissfully unaware of his own deprivation. The first half of the film orients us to Jack and Ma’s daily life in Room. It starts normally enough with bathing and eating breakfast and ends with the ghastly routine of Jack shutting himself in the wardrobe while Old Nick pays Ma a visit. It is a cramped space, a pitiful life—but for Jack, this little slice of space and life is an infinite universe, abounding in wonders. He converses with Sink, Plant, Bed, Wardrobe, and his other household-objects-turned-friends; gazes at the sunshine filtering through Skylight and wonders about “Outer Space;” and gets unduly excited when a mouse, a “real living thing,” shows up in Room. Jack’s wonderment is brought to life by a spellbinding Jacob Tremblay whose performance is so utterly organic, so lived, that it is hard to dissociate the actor from the character. Together, Jack, the character, and Tremblay, the electric, wide-eyed actor, infuse Room with such a pristine flame of hope and joy that it leaves viewers with the unsettling, paradoxical experience of finding beauty in what they know to be hideous.

What is remarkable in this initial act is Lenny Abramson’s near-perfect cinematic rendition of the novel’s first-person subjectivity, which allows us to see, breathe, and feel the poignant paradox of Room through Jack’s perspective. The camera moves, sometimes shakily, with Jack as he skips and prances about the space, imbuing the scenes set in Room with the comforting intimacy of a home-movie. Widescreen close-ups make the claustrophobia of the setting palpable, while the use of shallow focus obfuscates our sense of scale

and depth, making Room feel stifling, yet limitless.

As viewers, our point of view in “Room” may be aligned with Jack, but it is Ma (Brie Larson in yet another stunning, award-worthy performance) who enacts the paradox of our spectatorship: She is aware of the horrors of her circumstances, and yet, both because of Jack and for his sake, finds life-sustaining beauty in her imprisonment. Brie Larson’s face becomes the stage where Ma’s internal battle is played out with the kind of nuance that, again, makes it impossible to separate actor from character. With her clenched jaw and numb, heavy-lidded eyes, she fights constantly to keep her despair at bay, doing everything she can to sustain the fantasy of normalcy that keeps Jack (and, therefore, her) going: baking him a birthday cake, stringing together eggshells to make playthings, reading him bedtime stories. Her hard-won composure cracks occasionally—sometimes in moments of raw tenderness, as she obliges Jack’s request for a song, and at other times in moments of desperate, protective fury, such as when Old Nick almost touches Jack.

However, when Old Nick loses his job and starts becoming even more dangerous—at one point, punishing them by cutting the heat in the shed for two days—Ma realizes it’s time to let the precarious fantasy die. She explains to Jack the existence of an outside world, and how they ended up in the room—not Room anymore, but a room. It is a paradigmatic upheaval for Jack, who exclaims, “I don’t like this story!” Ma responds, in a metanarrative moment: “This is the story you get.” Nevertheless, Jack slowly understands, and the two of them plot an escape. And then, two astonishing things happen.

First, in the 20 or so minutes that follow, Abramson demonstrates his directing chops in a sequence of escape attempts orchestrated with excruciating, intense tautness. It is one of the most visceral experiences of suspense I have had in a movie theater: the prospect of watching their escape attempts fail and repeat and drag on felt so intolerable that I contemplated walking out at one point. But then the second astonishing thing happens (and if you are unfamiliar with the plot of “Room” and averse to spoilers, you are advised to stop reading here): Just halfway into the movie, Jack and Ma escape.

As someone who walked into the theater knowing nothing about the movie other than its premise, I was very confused at this point: The film purportedly had a runtime of 118 minutes, but it felt like the film had already ended. However, after this mid-point, it is as if a new, entirely different film unfolds.

This half provides a contemplative look at how Jack and Ma adjust to ordinary family life.

The axis of the story flips to focus on Ma, who becomes the ill-adjusted child, while Jack becomes caretaker. For Jack’s transition opens up his world: He must expand his limited worldview

to include a flood of new people, concepts, and information. In a charming moment, awed by the dazzling amount of activity in the real world, he comments that he can no longer decide where to look, “world or TV.” For Ma, however, who comes home to divorced parents and hounding paparazzi, the transition opens up a well of posttraumatic depression, resentment, and regret.

Unlike Jack, she doesn’t simply gain a new world when she escapes—she has also lost a huge chunk of life and time in the seven years she was imprisoned, and she now has to contend with that loss.

Here again, Tremblay and Larson impressively capture their characters in all their unique complexities, and the cinematography draws us in, allowing us to vicariously experience the characters’ disorientation. Spacious wide shots and calm, unhurried camera movements contrast with the fragmented and urgent camerawork we got used to in the first half and make the world outside of Room feel oddly empty and static.

The mid-film climax is the other stroke of genius that allows “Room” to transcend not just the clichés of film narratives in general, but specifically of film narratives based on true-crime stories. True-crime stories are usually made into the most plot-driven of genre films—at worst, pulpy Lifetime movies, and at best, lurid, highstakes thrillers. These are movies that tell stories of victimization but not of survival. They fixate excessively on events and gory details, rather than the people who experience these events, and rely

on shock and suspense, that is, the desire to know happens next, to keep the viewer watching.

“Room” does something different. Once Jack and Ma escape, the film loses its urgency. However, it still holds you rapt—not because you are dying to know what happens next, but because you come to know and feel for these characters so intimately that you cannot let go. You simply want to be there as they unspool and reconstitute on-screen—as Jack has his first-ever spoonful of ice cream and meets a real dog for the first time, as Ma struggles to stay afloat and, once again, finds salvation in Jack.

Moreover, by staying with its protagonists as they move beyond their trauma, “Room” allows them to be defined by much more than just their ordeal. It is telling that unlike the usual discourse surrounding these events, which tends to dwell on the perpetrators and their psychology, “Room” chooses to focus almost exclusively on Jack and Ma. It affords Old Nick a few minutes tops of screen time, and once Jack and Ma escape, he recedes from the film almost entirely.

This is a testament to this film’s firm refusal of cheap thrills in favor of a sustained and sensitive character study. By liberating its story from the shackles of plot and suspense, “Room” reels you in with something more complex and beautiful: empathy.

Illustration by Mary O’Connor

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lifestyle

topten

real fake facebook events we’ve been invited to

1. become an actual potato 2. crawl under the coffee table and never leave 3. turn into mitochondria and become the powerhouse of the cell 4. give ur goldfish a bath bc you’re procrastinating studying for finals 5. cry in your comforter burrito bc Brad didn’t text u back since you forgot to forward that chain email about the sewer girl in 6th grade

I’m all about dialectics.

I don’t care about the Earth. That’s what’s sad.

I mean, between a tiger and a viking, a tiger would win. Any contest between a tiger and a human. Except a thinking contest.

I feel like I’ve been living in the real world for years surrounded by children.

hot post time machine And here we are, taking the final curtain call at the end of a season that has been described by one of Brown’s preeminent bespectacled theatre practitioners as “rough, with some unanticipated high points, like a Purdue chicken breast baked in a toaster oven but stuffed with three gourmet truffles.” sex in front of my professor and 18 peers -04/25/11

6. PET EVERY SINGLE DOG 7. pretend to be adele pretending to be an adele impersonator impersonating herself

8. quit school and become a professional piece of grass 9. depressingly ironic event in all lowercase 10. eat flamin hot cheetos till you see god

feelin’ 22 taylor swift and time passing AMY ANDREWS managing editor of online When my older brother turned 22 a couple years ago, I quoted the infamous Taylor Swift lyrics on his birthday card. Not being as familiar with her work as I was, he read the card and turned to me, puzzled: “Why are you telling me this year is going to be miserable?” (I guess 22-year-old guys don’t hear the T. Swift references on their birthdays as much as the girls do.) I’ve been 22 now for just over a week, so it’s hard to say exactly if I’m living up to T. Swift’s “happy, free, confused, lonely, miserable, magical” mantra. But as a description of my senior year of college, it sounds about right so far. happy Over break, my high school friends and I met up at Moe’s Southwest Grill, a chain restaurant that we have somewhat inexplicably been obsessed with for years. In our early years of college, our lunches there mostly consisted of swapping stories of the most college-y things we’d been doing and gossiping about people we’d gone to high school with.

At this lunch, though, the conversation was entirely focused on post-college plans. This friend is trying to decide between med school and grad school. These two are graduating a semester early. This one might move abroad.

For once, there was almost no gossip. (Key word being “almost.” We haven’t entirely changed, for which I am thankful—when everyone’s lives are so uncertain, I’m glad that some things stay the same.) confused Right before I went home for Thanksgiving break, I got a flu shot. The student giving my flu shot asked how old I was and I answered “21,” adding that I would be 22 in a couple of days. She mentioned that she was also a senior and feeling apprehensive about growing older, just as I was, explaining, “When you’re 21, you’re still in college.

But when you’re 22 … that’s an age where you could theoretically not be in college anymore.” And then she stuck a needle in my arm.

So far, senior year feels like that—I’m minding my own business, and then a sudden sting. Every day something comes up and reminds me: inevitably even the most

mundane conversations will end up going from school to jobs to the rest of our lives post-college. My roommate and I talk about the possibility of moving to New York City and what that would mean for the future. I grew up in the suburbs—my childhood was all running around our backyards and quiet streets with my neighbors. “I can’t imagine raising kids in NYC,” I say. Or, the truer thought: I can’t imagine raising kids at all. lonely It feels like every couple of days someone I know is making a big life decision. One of those neighbors I used to run around with got engaged over Thanksgiving. My Facebook feed is filled with people getting engaged or moving in together or doing all kinds of adult-y stuff. My friends and I talk about whose wedding we’ll go to first out of all the couples we know. So many people I know are in serious, long-term relationships, and I’ve had nothing more serious than a couple dates in my whole time at Brown. Senior year of college might not be the time to start looking for a relationship, but it’s hard sometimes not to be jealous of friends who’ve had much more success in this area than I have. In high school, I held out hope that college would be full of dates and possible relationships; at this point, I’m holding out the same hope for post-grad life. miserable I remember being a senior in high school and feeling so excited about what was to come—moving away from home, college, real life. I didn’t know where I was going, exactly, but I knew that college was the next step, and I was so excited and ready for it.

But now, as a senior in college, I have no idea what the next step is. There are so many possibilities, but that sureness of what I’ll be doing next year is gone, and sometimes it terrifies me how little I know about my own future. free But possibility isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

As more and more of my friends have graduated and are working in the real world, postcollege life starts to seem more appealing. I

could go anywhere—Boston, NYC, Philly, San Francisco—and do anything. (Well, not quite. It’s unlikely that I’ll start my career as an engineer or a computer scientist anytime soon.) I’ll meet new people and take up new hobbies once I no longer have homework— the only aspect of college I am 100 percent ready to be done with. magical At the beginning of 2013, I started a project where I wrote down one good thing that happened to me every single day. It only lasted a couple months, but it’s fun to look back at those scraps of paper and try to recreate my optimistic freshman year self. I’m mentally doing the same for senior year, because I know those kinds of moments are the ones I’ll remember: champagne and linked arms with the other band seniors at our last home football game. The carton of eggs where four of the 12 eggs inexplicably, improbably had twin yolks, and I held my breath every time I cracked an egg for the next week, eager to see if there would be another surprise yolk inside. Late nights doing homework or watching The Great British Bakeoff with my roommates in our dilapidated but cozy living room. Burning garlic literally every time I try to cook, but still making some pretty decent meals. Dinner with my suitemates from last year and how easy it is to fall back into our routines even when we don’t live together anymore. Speaking up more consistently in class after being timid about it my first few years, and feeling like I actually (sometimes) know what I’m talking about. Walking on the Main Green through the falling fall leaves and thinking how goddamn beautiful this place is and how lucky I am to have had four years here. I still don’t know what I’ll do or where I’ll be next year, but for now, I’m embracing the magic of senior year: a mixture of possibility, of fear, of appreciation for my life as it is now, of excitement for the future.

Illustration by Emma Marguiles