Post- 3/23/17

MAR 23 – VOL 19 – ISSUE 19

In this issue... clocks, comics, cubes

Editor’s Note Dear Readers,

3

FEATURES After All This Time

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The Joy of Rubik’s Cubes

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5 LIFESTYLE One Minute Early

5

Jew-Ish

5

Imagined Futures

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Yesterday was the first day of Spring. It was also incredibly cold outside. I rolled up my jeans this morning expecting another sunny day through which my similarly devilishly clad Brown students and I would frolic. Unfortunately, when I ventured outside for the first time, I was ambushed by harsh winds and frigid temperatures, which forced me back inside to bundle up and regret my pastel pallette.

Today, at production night here at 195 Angell Street, our layout designer and I had a mutual epiphany when we discovered that though our hometowns are 1000 miles apart, we have a close mutual friend at a different school. We paused our production to rabidly message the individual and yell excitedly about the matter for a bit, and I’m still reeling in the sudden surreal douse of two-worlds-collide. I’m overwhelmed with the sensation that a world of eight billion, or at least, the liberal arts college east-coast enclave of it, is smaller and friendlier than I thought.

I feel like these things have something to do with each other, though I can’t quite put my finger on what.

Maybe they’re both reminders that sometimes things happen unexpectedly, poking through even the most monotonous and routine-constrained life. They can turn out all kinds of good and bad. But don’t let them pass you by. Enjoy the ride.

Happy lineup-betting!

Best,

Monica editor in chief

Post- Board Editor in Chief Monica Chin Managing Editor, Arts & Culture Joshua Lu

Managing Editor, Features Saanya Jain

Arts & Culture Editors Taylor Michael Josh Wartel

Features Editors Claribel Wu Kathy Luo

Managing Editor, Lifestyle Annabelle Woodward

Copy Chief Alicia DeVos

Lifestyle Editors Jennifer Osborne Celina Sun Creative Director Grace Yoon Art Director Katie Cafaro

Assistant Copy Editors Zander Kim Alexandra Walsh Layout Chief Livia Mucciolo Layout Assistants Yamini Mandava Elizabeth Toledano Cover Katie Cafaro

7 ARTS & CULTURE Asian American Slacker

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An “American Teen” Living the Dream

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Hoax at the Oscar’s

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After All This Time

revisiting childhood favorites as an almost-adult

rected teeth peeking out just a tad While I may not have a defined trio, I support, but now, I knew that they because five years of orthodontia don’t do have some truly wonderful indicould help me rebuild. Using Violet’s fix a lifetime of habit. From Laura, vidual friends who understand me ingenuity and Klaus’s passion for Mary, Ma, and Pa, I learned that habit, and laugh with me and share meals discovery (and maybe a little bit of or perhaps tradition, is what makes a with me. While I’m still shocked by by Sunny’s chewing power for physical family, what makes a community, and their compliments, they’re helping me sustenance) I nourished my battered what makes a person whole. When recognize my magic, the kind I’ve admind. I regained confidence in my I’m home on break, I still walk past mired in others and never noticed in abilities, and after a while, I took the the patch of trees behind my elemenmyself. Friendship, one might say, is plunge into serious recovery. I wasn’t tary school and imagine a tiny cabin, its own kind of magic, which sounds really ready, and the way my OCD with a tuft of smoke swirling from cheesy and a little sickening but it’s works, I likely never will truly conthe chimney and candles burning in true without a doubt. It’s the kind of vince myself I’m ready to do anything. the windows. A home. Small, like I enchantment you don’t notice until But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try. still am, but warm and welcoming, you feel it, heightened by newness As the Baudelaire orphans remarked “Always.” like I’ve learned to be. Inside, there’s and nostalgia, and in that sense, it’s in The Ersatz Elevator, “If we wait To any Harry Potter fan, this a place at the red-checkered table the most powerful of all. I Skype my until we’re ready, we’ll be waiting for is the only proper response to the for a little girl with braids, and right parents every week, but I’m starting the rest of our lives.” question posed in the title. To me, it’s next to it, a larger seat for a girl who to form a new family here, and I’m Many years later, in eighth grade, one of four. As a Laura Ingalls Wilder cut off all her hair right before senior starting to feel safe. As Dumbledore I decided to read only “classics” for devotee, I picture a little house in the nearly a year. This didn’t entirely big woods with a fire blazing and corn prom. There’s a chair for the one writ- declared in the sixth book (my faing this essay, who’s trying to grow it vorite), before venturing into a cave work out, but I did find a few of my biscuits toasting. A Lemony Snicket back into braiding length, and one housing a horcrux and an army of favorite books through the experenthusiast, I can imagine a dejected next to that sitting empty, awaiting reanimated corpses “I am not worried, iment. One is Louisa May Alcott’s sigh and a dictionary definition. And her when she does. It’s a place where Harry...I am with you.” masterwork, Little Women. I have as a Louisa May Alcott lover, I can all parts of me, those past, present, Around the same time that I read foggy memories of Amy falling into hear the feverish scribbling of Jo and future can feel safe, can feel loved. Harry Potter, I dove headfirst into the ice, of Beth’s bout of scarlet fever, March’s pen trying to capture the Like Laura wrote in the very first Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortuof Jo generally being awesome. When fleeting chuckles of girlhood. Little book in the series, “this is now.” I may nate Events. To tell the truth, those I read the full book, all of these came House on the Prairie, Harry Potter, A be older, marginally wiser, but my 13 books spoke to me on a level together. I found aspects of myself in Series of Unfortunate Events, and “now” is no different from my “then”—I deeper, more personal, and more each of the March sisters—Jo’s temper Little Women—these are the books gloriously twisted than any others and dreams of writing, Meg’s mathat raised me. Through their stories I am the culmination of a childhood, and none of my selves have gone. As I’ve mentioned thus far. In the most ternalism, Beth’s shyness, and Amy’s absorbed lessons about family, friendbasic sense, they explained to me naivety. Most importantly, however, I ship, love, hope, sorrow, and strength, Laura says, “they could not be forgotten...because now is now. It can never that life isn’t always fair, that adults began to incorporate all of these idenand I shaped my childhood around be a long time ago.” don’t always tell the truth, and that tities into my own burgeoning ideas them. Now that I’m nearly grown, Toward the end of third grade, sometimes, the only person you can about what being a woman, and later, I’m beginning to live these lessons in a red-headed boy named Marcello trust is yourself. Combined with the what being a strident feminist means real-time, and I can’t help wondering chased me for an entire day carrying a dark wit and expansive knowledge of to me. Despite being written in the if all my reading made me ready. copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcergrammar that I would come to incor19th century, Little Women addressed One could say I was, well, a bit of er’s Stone, demanding that I read it. porate into my own brand of humor, many of the dichotomies still relevant an odd child. Not outwardly “weird,” This sounds a bit aggressive, and it I found a voice that I felt as clearly to women everywhere. Does wanting not the kind to bear the brunt of was, but I have to say, I’m eternally as my own. It helped me understand children negate wanting a career? playground teasing, but more the grateful. That little boy opened up my that knowledge is power, that inWhy do women always seem to have wide-eyed, buck-toothed type who tellectual fixation is important, and to choose one? Does making art for preferred to read during recess (which world and introduced me to magic.

I’d encountered fantasy before, sure, that being happy all the time is, well, financial gain mean it can’t count as might explain why I still don’t underand loved fairies and dragons, but by bullshit. This latter fact is, perhaps, real art—even if it’s the only way to be stand the point of tag). Regardless, I the time I’d reached the middle of my what means most to me in my own taken seriously? These are questions enjoyed my childhood, and most of elementary school career, I’d stopped series of unfortunate events. During I still ask myself, as a young woman that is due to the words I devoured this period, my years-long battle with interested in a creative career (probalongside my peanut butter sandwich- believing. It wasn’t the result of a terrible, childhood-ruining epiphmental illness kicked off, catalyzed ably), in workplace success, and in a es. I started with the Little House on by paralyzing fears of contagion and robust familial and parental life (also, the Prairie series (first book published any—as a Jewish girl, after all, I’d never even believed in Santa Claus. It contamination, and culminating in probably). At least I know millions in 1935, picked out by me circa 2005, just seemed the natural endpoint in a diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive of other women have asked themage 7), tucked in bed as my parents my rational worldview. Harry Potter disorder. I wondered how someone so selves the same—Little Women has read aloud about the pioneering famchanged all that. Harry, Ron, and scared could have something so scary. remained consistently in print since ilies who moved west and built the Hermione went to school, like me.

Could be someone so scary. I felt conits first publication in 1868. We might towns I could trace on my placemat They fought dark wizards, sure, and trolled by something that I could feel be unsure, straddling the line between map, crossing through my own home maybe potions class was different stealing my childhood, and yet, I had girls and women, but with the March city in Illinois each time. The Ingalls than polygon lessons in third-grade no power to master it. When I could sisters, we are not alone. As Amy says, family became my model, and though math, but they were also just kids, hardly go outside for fear of con“I am not afraid of storms, for I am I wished I were as daring, as plucky navigating friendships and finding tracting a dangerous illness, I knew I learning how to sail my ship.” and brave as Laura, I knew I had could read. I knew I could retreat to If I’ve learned anything from more in common with her older sister, family. If Little House on the Prairie taught me about home, Harry Potter the world of words. Although I knew these childhood favorites, it’s that my Mary. Mary, who was reserved and taught me about home away from I should try to empathize with Violet, childhood isn’t really over. I may be followed rules, and was maybe a little home. I’d never truly understood what the eldest girl in her family like me, 19 now, in my last year of legitimate bossy, according to my brother. I even it meant to find one until I came to I found myself in the bookish Klaus, teenage-hood, and legally, I’m eligible went as Mary for Halloween in secBrown. From Harry, I learned that her younger brother. Like Klaus, I for most adult responsibilities, but ond grade, wearing a too-big bonnet doubt is inevitable, that imposter began to realize that fear can be I don’t feel like a grown-up yet. And bought off eBay and my long, blonde syndrome is real, and that everyone assuaged by knowledge, that facts and that’s fine. I have my books with me, hair in two braids down my back. I wonders whether they’re really a wizstories can broaden horizons and, as everlasting, even as the pages yellow still have that bonnet, along with the ard. After all, aren’t we all “just Haran added bonus, contribute to some and the spines crack, and I know the dress it came with, a purple calico ry”? Surrounded by so many smart of the best one-liners in the series. lessons housed within will apply to all print, just like the ones I read about.

See the following: “All nights are dark stages of my life. Always.

Here at Brown, I bet I could prob- people, some of whom are nationally recognized musicians or athletes, days, because night is simply a badly ably wear the dress, maybe with some activists and academics, I often feel lit version of day” (The Slippery Slope).

Doc Martens, minus the bonnet, and Anna Harvey like “just Anna” isn’t enough.

Thank“If you are allergic to a thing, it is best s taff writer feel like an alternative adult. Really, fully, Harry Potter also taught me that not to put that thing in your mouth, though, I’d want to feel like myself at Natasha Sharpe I’ll never be alone in these feelings. particularly if the thing is cats” (The age seven again. I guess sometimes I illus tr ator Family exists in friendship, and this Wide Window). But I digress. still do, caught off guard by the crash semester, I’m finally finding out why.

I had always turned to books for of plates in the Ratty, my braces-cor-

4

The Joy of Rubik’s Cubes And why you should learn to solve one If you’re restless during midterm season and looking for an instant way to improve your quality of life, I have just the thing for you: a Rubik’s Cube. It might sound like a lame idea at first, but hear me out.

The Rubik’s Cube is a famous 3-D puzzle game in which the goal is to make every side of the cube the same color. While it’s notorious for seeming extremely difficult, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

In fact, I’ve often thought that if I were a grade-school teacher, I’d make a short lesson plan just for Rubik’s cubing. Ultimately, it would give my students more opportunities in life than any equation or poem, and furthermore, they would be cooler people because of it.

I still remember the first time I solved a Rubik’s Cube. I was in sixth grade, and at that time, my dad (who is a sucker for anything related to math) was going through a Rubik’s Cube obsession. He was completely enthralled by the total number of combinations possible with “such a simple design,” how many moves the most efficient solution would require, and how algorithms were created in relation the cube’s state and position—for me, I just saw him fumbling around with it and thought being able to solve one would be a cool party trick.

Thankfully for my 10-year-old brain, solving a Rubik’s Cube can be as simple as following some diagrams and memorizing a few patterns. A week or two later, I was working on it under my school desk when I finally rotated the last row into place. Instantly, I felt like I had cracked the code of life. The world swirled around me in a groovy, psychedelic way. And in that moment, I was no longer a mere child—I was a Rubik’s Cube god.

A few years later, I had amassed a collection of them—more than a dozen, of all types and even from different parts of the world. Solving Rubik’s Cubes became a serious hobby of mine, to the point where I brought them with me everywhere.

Thus began my revelations about the many benefits of knowing how to solve one. I present to you my startling findings to unequivocally convince you to invest in a Rubik’s Cube too.

Benefit #1: A Rubik’s Cube is a great alternative to a smartphone for those moments when you’re

standing around in a public space and doing nothing and wishing you had some friends to talk to (what).

In those moments of boredom, solving a Rubik’s Cube makes you look extremely occupied, not to mention rather august. How many other mundane activities can offer such an incredible combo?

Benefit #2: That said, the speed with which you solve a cube is directly proportional to how interesting you appear, especially to people you don’t know. This makes for great conversation starters, which may well lead to great new acquaintances. You never know what kind of person you may meet because you know how to solve one.

For example, maybe your parents have a cute story of how they first met while dancing at a college party. Imagine how impressed your kids would be if you told them you met your spouse while dancing at a college party while also simultaneously solving a Rubik’s Cube.

And finally, benefit #3, the strangest of them all: Rubik’s Cubes serve as excellent good luck charms.

It sounds odd, but like any proper scientific theory or claim, I have irrefutable evidence.

When I was in fourth grade, before I could solve a Rubik’s Cube, I took a test that was supposed to determine if I was a good fit for our school’s accelerated learning program. Unfortunately, I didn’t make the cut. To this day, I don’t remember what happened, but according to my parents, I was quite distraught.

In fifth grade, I was selected to

take the test again—it was at this time that I first began to be interested in Rubik’s Cubes. I took the test, and miraculously, I passed!

The correlation is clear: my luck had been enhanced by mere association with a Rubik’s Cube.

I can now imagine a bunch of you who have taken any stats class protesting with indignation, declaring, “correlation does not imply causation!” I’ll admit, perhaps this scenario can be passed off as coincidence. But coincidences do not often repeat themselves—and this phenomenon repeated itself many times over.

Basically, starting from seventh grade through the end of high school, I included my ability to solve a Rubik’s Cube on each resume I submitted to any sort of application-type program. I usually added it as an afterthought to give my resume a certain edge, like that one Magritte painting of a living room that looks completely normal except for a train coming out of the fireplace. It wasn’t meant to amount to anything more than that.

But as the years went on, the cube’s power was undeniable: After my traumatizing rejection in fourth grade, as long as I mentioned my interest in Rubik’s Cubes in my resume, I was accepted by every program for which I applied. This fact became even stranger when I realized that, while I always put my best effort into my applications, I was not a particularly impressive person compared to other equally as hard-working applicants. Eventually, I made the connection: the

Rubik’s Cube was a lucky charm.

With it, I was unstoppable.

Thus, the years went by, and before I knew it, it was time to apply for college. Even then, I still considered continuing my “Rubik’s Cube Resume” tradition. However, this time, it didn’t feel as appropriate. After all, this was the culmination of four years of hard work in high school, the event that I had been preparing for since I entered the American schooling system. As a responsible young adult, I eventually realized what would be best for me.

Which was including the Rubik’s Cube, of course.

I carefully inserted it as the last bullet point in my resume: “able to solve a Rubik’s Cube in less than 1.5 minutes.” Then, I sent my documents away, closed my computer, and waited in anticipation to hear back from the (hopefully very impressed) admissions office.

The days went by until, finally, decision day arrived... And well, you can guess what happened.

So this is my PSA of the day: learn how to solve a Rubik’s Cube! I guarantee strange, awesome things will start to happen to you in no time.

Kathy Luo

staff writer

Jenice Kim

illustr ator

5

One Minute Early

I am going to tell you a secret.

It is a secret because it is not the kind of information that I would normally go spreading around; it is not the kind of information you will go spreading around.

On June 1, 2016, I went to board a plane at Boston Logan International Airport destined for London. My flight was to leave at 9 p.m., and I arrived at the check-in desk at exactly 7:59 p.m. I know this because I checked the airport clocks. I know this because, up until a month ago, I wore the same Casio watch on my wrist for four straight years. I know this because my watch beeped on the hour, and it beeped right when I was speaking to the airline agent, when she told me that I could not check in to board the plane. This I know, and I want you to know that it’s the truth because it happened and because my watch had been running for four years and had never skipped a second nor ever needed a new battery or rewinding.

Do you know what the airline agent said? She said that I was late and that she needed to go help passengers aboard the plane. She was hurriedly packing her bags to leave and did not stop to greet or speak to me, as most airline agents do. I asked, kindly, for her to check

Jew-Ish

“I’m going to tell you a secret”

me in. I asked her colleague to check me in, and the man placed his stuff on the chair beside the computer and started to attend to me. He greeted me and asked for my travel documents. She forbid him to check me in. He looked at me then at her. Me then her. It was then clear that she was his boss, for he abandoned checking me in and decided to turn off the computer instead. He did not speak to me. He did as he was told—he handed over my travel documents and prepared to leave.

“What should I do?” I asked, when I realized that I was being left on my own at the check-in desk.

“Can I call your boss?” I asked the lady. As she walked away, she said that I should call the airline and reschedule a flight. She said that she would not give me her boss’s number and that she had received clear instructions not to check any passengers in after one hour to departure. This she said even though I was on time. I wondered whether she was just having a bad day, or if my sagging trousers and tattered shirt made her not take me seriously; she didn’t smile or call me sir or even young man.

She was just cold. But even if these presumptions might be the case, I was one minute early. My now dead watch knows this, and you know this too.

When she left, I approached the guards who were seated by the opposite desk and asked them for help. They asked what had happened, and I narrated to them

the happenings of the last fifteen minutes. They shook their heads and sympathized with me. They said that airline agents never refuse to check passengers in, even if they show up, be it one minute early or 15 minutes late. They apologized, explaining that they didn’t have the number for the airline—they worked for the airport as security agents. One of the guards agreed to lend me her phone so that I could look up the airline’s customer service numbers and call them. I spoke with an agent who told me that I had to pay $350 to reschedule my flight. She said that I had to do this 30 minutes before the plane left, or I would lose my return ticket as well. I told her of my misfortune; I pleaded, I asked to make a complaint. She listened and told me that she could do nothing.

The guards wished me luck and said that I could sleep at the airport. They sympathized with me and shook their heads in disgust.

This they did, and then they left to go home as their shift was over.

I was so angry that I decided to finish playing Hitman: Absolution on my computer. For one hour I took out my anger by strangling club bouncers and shooting enemies and non-enemies alike. I was agent 47, and I was meting out my anger and frustration on innocents, not worried about progressing in the game. This is what happened, and I wanted to cry. I wanted to throw down my laptop and scream.

I wanted to hit the wall, but I was in an airport, and you know how

the security is in airports. All I could do was play Hitman: Absolution.

To tell you the truth, I wished the airline lady bad things. I imagined how nice it would be if I got the $350 refund and opted to buy her a ticket to the countryside, say Idaho, where she would plant potatoes and surely be unhappy. She is not fit to interact with people, I thought. But then, I was worried that even the potatoes would not be able to stand her, and the potato harvests would diminish.

That is my secret, and I have held it for many months. I could go on telling you about the outcome of this unfortunate incident, which I did pursue with the airline, but to cut a long story short, justice was not served. The lady got away that day for I did not take note of her name, and the airline did not care enough to find out who she is.

Now that I have told you my secret, I hope that you understand that I was one minute early, and I missed my flight to London and had to pay a $350 fee to reschedule my flight.

I hope you now understand why I wished the airline agent the fate of farming potatoes that would never grow. I hope that this secret of ours remains between me and you.

ings. Still, I can’t help but wonder...)

To clarify, Unitarian Universalism is a liberal religion that encourages members to seek out their own spiritual growth as part of a community characterized by intellectual freedom and inclusive love. In fairness, though, this information comes more from UU’s Wikipedia page than my own memory.

Services would go like this: we’d enter the community center multi-purpose room and engage in some light mingling before listening to a short introductory speech, then participate in a full church sing-a-long to a suspiciously religious-sounding hymn. After, the children would be ushered upstairs where a different parent would teach a lesson each week, each clearly tailored to their own beliefs and with zero formal training in religious education whatsoever. Though I have no recollection of the lesson material, I do remember once telling a parent who was Swedish how much I loved her country’s fish. She didn’t understand.

After an hour, the kids would run back downstairs, where the adult services (a longer speech on some nonreligious topic; if my memory serves me well, they were all about outer space)

were finishing, and the congregation would then engage in more mingling over assorted desserts before we bid them adieu. For seven years we repeated this tradition until finally my sister and I wore my parents down with complaints (ex. “I’d learn more by reading Jesus’s Wikipedia page”) and thus didn’t have to be part of UU anymore. But seeing as the next year we were inundated with our Jewish peers’ coming of age, I suppose it was by default that I began considering myself Jewish, too.

I’ve never felt secure in this identity, however. In high school, I was the only non-practicing Jew or Catholic in my advisory, a divide mentioned often. During Brown’s orientation, I went to a Hillel barbecue and met three of my closest friends, who recite the Jewish mourner’s prayer whenever I make a bad joke, but I still feel out of place when they mention any terms or traditions from Hebrew school. After discovering that two of my best friends at Brown were both Catholic, I urged them to discuss their shared faith; instead, whenever we’re all together they mock me for my enthusiasm, saying “Go with God” to each other in jest. When it comes to religion, I feel like an elderly person

Bianca Stelian staff writer

Katie Cafaro illustr ator

exploring the in-between

I’ve probably been to more bar mitzvahs than you. Having grown up in the heavily Jewish suburbs of northern Chicago, my seventh grade weekends almost always consisted of two, three, or even four services and parties to attend.

Indeed, if you’ve ever stayed in a hotel in the Chicago area on a Saturday night, the odds are high that downstairs in the ballroom, a bunch of pubescent middle schoolers are dancing their asses off to LMFAO’s “Shots” (or any song involving pretend inebriation) while adults monitor for grinding. Repeat this tradition for fifty-two weeks, and you have yourself a bar mitzvah season.

What did I gain from my frequent attendance? I have a whole shelf in my closet back home devoted to the themed sweatpants given out at each celebration.

I’ve eaten more mozzarella sticks and pigs in a blanket than one could ever dream of. But I never had a bat mitzvah of my own, so I attended these events purely for fun, without fully identifying with the occasion’s religious magnitude. I’ve never read from the Torah to become a woman in the Jewish faith, but also, much to the chagrin of my devout Greek Orthodox grandfather, I’ve never been baptized. In short, my religious

identity is the equivalent of shaking a Magic 8 Ball and getting “Reply hazy, ask again later.”

If I had to blame anyone for this ambiguity, it would be my parents. My father, Jewish by blood, fled Romania as a child with his parents. As Communism in eastern Europe had stamped out religion pretty successfully, my dad assimilated into his new Philadelphia suburb’s predominantly Italian Catholic community with ease, and didn’t encounter life among practicing Jews until he went to college at - you guessed it - Penn. Still, he never reclaimed the religion as his own.

My mother, however, had Christianity forced on her as a child, attending Catholic school despite being Greek Orthodox (‘the next best thing,’ according to her father) and was routinely told what to believe. So when these two crazy kids decided to start a family, they were lost as to how to raise me and my sister religiously. Naturally, we started attending Unitarian Universalist services every Sunday, carrying this on from kindergarten to sixth grade. (Legend has it that my dad picked UU because its followers statistically get the highest SAT scores, but he claims it’s just because UU had an open mindset with no oppressive teach-

learning about technology; I can discuss it, but it’s clear I have little experience and no authority.

Recognizing my limited knowledge base, I called four people for input on this essay. My friends Mike and Michael both told me about church and temple, respectively; my dad told me how despite his family being Jewish, the last person to be bar mitzvahed was his great-grandfather; my mom told me how she tried to fit in with the popular girls at Catholic school by praying with them at lunch. Clearly my parents have survived without definitive religious identities, so I guess it’s not the worst thing in the world to accept my lack of a traditional religious upbringing and allow every part of my background to coexist, to crack red eggs on Greek Easter and fast for Yom Kippur and

humor my Danish grandmother by eating the ceremonial Christmas Eve rice pudding (check it out, it’s a real tradition). I now realize that my quest to find my religious identity is perhaps the most Unitarian Universalist thing I’ve ever done, in regards to UU’s promotion of spiritual growth. In this sense, if I ever wanted to spice things up, I guess I have a pretty good excuse to visit the neighborhood Church of Scientology and ask them to give me their best shot at indoctrination. Hey, if Tom Cruise can do it, why can’t I?

Bianca Stelian staff writer

Katie Cafaro illustr ator

Imagined Futures Imagine the impossibilities, it begins.

Then, depicting assured annihilation, it urges, Fight for the future.

Welcome to Fringe, the TV show that I was once mildly obsessed with.

(You know it’s mild when you’re still relatively coherent about it. For a counterexample, see past history re: Affleck, Ben.) Over its five seasons, Fringe explores the lives of Olivia Dunham, Peter Bishop, and Walter Bishop, who work for the fictional Fringe unit of the FBI. Each episode loosely features a combination of fringe science (basically, very unstudied and theoretical science) and traditional TV serial drama tropes (FBI agents with Ray-Ban aviators, villain-of-the-week, romantic love triangles, etc.). In this respect, it’s as much a show about narrative expectations as it is about fervent belief: We know you’ve seen most of this before, but did you also know that the universe might be expanding beyond our ability to imagine it?

In the finale of the show’s first season, Olivia is in the elevator

Sarah Cooke

staff writer

Diana Hong illustr ator

6

a fringe fan reflects

when a flash of blue light splits the screen. The elevator doors open to an empty, bone-white corridor. A secretary greets her and leads her to an office, where, on a desk cluttered with objects, lies a copy of the New York News. “Former Pres. Kennedy to Address UN,” reads the front page.

OBAMAS SET TO MOVE INTO NEW WHITE HOUSE. As the camera pulls away from Olivia, we see a shadow emerge—William Bell, the man who, along with Walter, discovered a way to bridge the two universes. Olivia is not in hers; she’s on “the other side,” or in the alternate universe (alt-verse, in fan-speak). The camera pulls away even further, panning out from the office window, out of the office building, until it’s pulled away entirely. What we’re looking at, years after 9/11, is the Twin Towers, still standing. In this universe, the White House was hit instead—hence, the Obamas needing to move into a new, glass-domed White House.

Ken Tucker, in his review of the series finale for Entertainment

Weekly, discussed the show’s legacy as one of fundamental, albeit flawed, optimism. “What the film critic Manny Farber once wrote about Val Lewton’s The Leopard Man (1943)— ‘a nerve-twitching whodunit giving the creepy impression that human beings and “things” are interchangeable and almost synonymous and that both are pawns of a bizarre and terrible destiny’—might serve as an apt summation of much of dramatic friction sparked in Fringe, except for the remarkable achievement of the series: The idea, as September/ Donald [a character on the show] put it this night, that “destiny can be changed.” That, indeed, the “bizarre and terrible” can through willpower and brain power be turned into the idyllic and the wondrous.”

Among the many, drastic differences between alt-verse and “our universe” (i.e. rationed avocados and coffee, daily trips to the moon, Andrew Jackson never being president), the one that I couldn’t stop thinking about was how differently people moved. In blue-verse, where the Towers did fall, the characters are closed off, their bodies unasked questions: Everything is tense and tight and wound up waiting for the next war. But in red-verse, they’re warm, funny, a little rough-and-tumble but fundamentally more at ease than they ever were in blue-verse. It was a distinction made all the more apparent through Anna Torv’s phenomenal performance as both Olivia and Alt-Olivia: Whenever these two women share the screen (thanks to magic of CGI), it is hauntingly obvious how different their lives are, how differently they view themselves and move through the world as a result.

I wasn’t and still am not a sci-fi person. Although I know the genre has many redeeming qualities, I don’t like it. But something about Fringe grabbed hold of me, and I would show up every week in front of the

TV to watch the different universes unfold as I balanced a giant mug of tea against my knees. This was a few years before I was diagnosed, in what amounts to time that feels neither blissful nor stolen when I try to recall it; for, like so many things I wish I could remember, I simply can’t.

Only now, years later, do I realize why I was drawn to the show. I wanted to see, even only in fiction, the end of the question that I’d never dared ask, and still don’t: What if things had gone differently? And although I did not know then what I know now—that I was, at the time, chronically and dangerously depressed, with suicidal thoughts that I didn’t know were suicidal—that doesn’t change the fact that the pain was there, the pain had always been there. When I was 13, I told my sister I thought I might have depression and PTSD. You don’t have that, you can’t have that, she said, and that was all. She does not remember that moment, but I do. It is one of the few things in my life that I can recall with perfect clarity.

Olivia walks differently because in one universe, our universe, she was abandoned and abused and raised to believe she was worthless, while in the other she was not. It’s a quiet point of biography, her walk, but I was obsessed with it. Thinking about the show now (it went off the air in 2013, months before I graduated high school), I wonder how much of my fascination was driven by the desire to think, only if for the duration of a single episode—so, 43 minutes, plus commercials—that such a change could be possible for me, too.

That somewhere, a version of myself without mental illness was walking around like that, shoulders squared back and grinning because she was in on the joke. Imagine the impossibilities: there, there, and maybe there, too.

7

Asian American Slacker

The model minority myth is a pain in the ass.

Living with the pervasive misconception that Asians are submissive, assiduous, SAT-acing geniuses is enough strife, especially since the myth reinforces the denigration of Black and Latino Americans. Seeing this one-dimensional caricature of overachiever Asian Americans in pop culture adds insult to injury.With shows like Master of None racking up the Emmys, we’ve come further than the days of mustache-twirling Fu Manchu and the cringeworthy Mr. Yunioshi. But scan major Hollywood releases and you’d still be hard-pressed to find an Asian character that isn’t: 1. the emasculated sidekick who handles the gadgets.

2. the exotic racial fetish.

3. Emma Stone, Scarlett Johansson, or Tilda Swinton.

Is it too much to ask that Asian Americans be portrayed as…normal people? (Or in that last case, portrayed at all?) Normal people who have friends and insecurities?

For whom “Asian American” isn’t a struggle or an all-encompassing adjective but an interwoven part of a life experience?

Enter the graphic novels and cartoon collection Same Difference and Other Stories

by Derek Kirk Kim. A Korean American artist who immigrated to the United States at the age of eight, Kim won the “triple

these characters are not your average model minority myth

crown” of debut comic awards (the Heisner, the Harvey, and the Ignatz) for the featured story Same Difference in 2003.

Same Difference follows the friendship of two Korean American 20-somethings, Simon and Nancy. They’re home from college, uneasy about “the next step.” They smoke on the sidewalks of a Bay Area suburb. Simon hardly speaks Korean; Nancy can be a jerk to her friends sometimes. Far from prodigious, they are Asian American slackers.

The aimlessness of this period of Simon and Nancy’s lives is reflected in the narrative structure: Same Difference follows less of a conflict-resolution formula than a wave of shifting moments that glide in and out of the focus. Amidst their friendly teasing, the characters confront tender everyday pains: long-simmering regrets, difficult apologies, and growing up uncertain of where exactly “up” leads.

And yet, the protagonists in Same Difference, as well as the Asian American protagonists in the shorter Other Stories comics, are imbued with a distinct Asian American-ness. It manifests in weighty ways, like racism. (In one scene, an acquaintance of Simon’s wife tries to “practice” Chinese with him. Kim exaggerates the awkwardness of this moment—shifting glances and tense smiles and all—across multiple excruciating panels.) But Asian American-ness is also in the details, like having a Spam omelette for

dinner.

Some of the most compelling facets of this collection are the many complex ways that Derek Kirk Kim handles the the theme of Asian American masculinity. And not one character is the one-dimensional IT guy. The collection recalls the spirit of the rebellious punk rock zine Giant Robot, a relic of Asian American popular culture that blossomed in the late ’90s. Giant Robot and Same Difference evoke truths that are often erased by the model minority myth: a defiant and disobedient Asian America.

In Same Difference, Simon wonders aloud, “Just what the heck is ‘Oriental flavor’?” as he examines a cup of Maruchan Ramen. “Is there one specific flavor that encapsulates the entire ‘Oriental’ sector of the world, or…?” Nancy gnaws on Simon’s arm to find out what he tastes like. As a best friend would. It’s one of many distinct metaphors that Kim deftly incorporates, to great visual effect: Same Difference and Other Stories doesn’t claim to subsume an singular Asian American experience. The only truth Kim claims to tell is Simon’s. And his arm-gnawing friend Nancy’s.

The Other Stories are worth reading, particularly “Pulling,” a short scene about a college-aged man struggling with a long-distance relationship. Not all are quite so thoughtfully executed: Some of the gags in “Oliver Pikks” (a cartoonish sketch about

An “American Teen” Living the Dream A few birds are chirping. An alarm is going off in the distance. A sweet, slow electronic melody and an upbeat synth reminiscent of all the greatest ’80s songs you’ve ever heard carries in a smooth-yet-raspy, soulful voice. Living the good life full of goodbyes, Khalid Robinson, whose stage name is simply “Khalid,” sings, My eyes are on the grey skies / Saying I don’t want to come home tonight. With this first track, Khalid, only 18 years old, introduces to his listeners a teenage desert utopia—a world that is both fully captured and capturing in the singer’s debut album, American Teen.

The pre-chorus to this track, “American Teen,” from which the album gets its name, builds up to an infectious anthem of a chorus—a couple of lines that will easily be chanted in high school and college parties alike all across the nation. So wake me up in the spring, Khalid croons, While I’m high off my American Dream.

If Khalid’s “American Dream” is to have his very first album hold the no. 9 spot on on the Billboard Top 200 Albums, then he is indeed soaring high. The teenager, who calls El Paso, Texas his home, has since the release of the album been given shoutouts from dozens of Hollywood A-listers, ranging from Kendall Jenner to Ella Yellich-O’Connor (you most likely know her as Lorde) to Hoodie Allen.

Khalid began his career in a quintessentially millennial and DIY way—by recording songs on his iPhone, writing his lyrics in a Notes app, and uploading the finished recording on Soundcloud. Tuni Balogun, vice president of A&R at RCA Records, told USA Today that these Soundcloud uploads “caught his ear.” So, during his senior year, Khalid traveled to Atlanta to record his hit single,

“Location.” The track garnered popularity for about a year before the release of American Teen. “Location” was featured on one of Kylie Jenner’s Snapchat stories, sending the single’s popularity through the roof.

Khalid, a self-prescribed military brat, began his passion for music at a young age.

His mother, who is in the Army, dreamt of becoming a musician. A household full of music and a fateful assignment at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, Khalid says, combined perfectly to make him the artist he is today. The singer claims to have leaned into his loneliness to produce the songs on American Teen.

Khalid’s sound is definitely unique, though some music critics categorize him under “Contemporary” or “Alternative” R&B. The self-made singer/songwriter/producer certainly has an R&B base—think Frank Ocean or Chance the Rapper. But he also has some sticky-pop vibes and fun synth energies and reverbs that, coupled with choruses and hooks, sound more like a Lorde or Carly Rae Jepsen production.

The Lorde comparison in particular makes sense. Khalid and the New Zealand singer, who recently released two brilliant singles off her upcoming sophomore album, share a producer, Joel Little. Joel Little perhaps has a knack for finding teenage prodigies; Khalid’s album and Lorde’s debut project, Pure Heroine, are more similar than one would initially think. Khalid sings about being “Young Dumb & Broke” much like Lorde sang about her and her friends never becoming “Royals.” The two write about the loneliness of growing up—“A World Alone” wraps up Lorde’s album, while Khalid croons in the track “Winter” about life in my lonely

an unlucky-in-love olive whose roomie is a sloth) contain insipid references to suicidal ideation. This story is better off skipped altogether.

But the very best part is the final section, titled “Autobio Stories.” These humorous, confessional scenes cobble together some of the frustrations and epic fails of Daniel Kirk Kim’s own life as a 20-something. To the college-aged reader, the sentiments of uncertainty and aloneness may be familiar. The vulnerability is refreshing.

A dash of honest realism perfectly rounds out the mostly-fictional collection that has earned its place in contemporary Asian American art.

And it’s way better than watching Ghost in the Shell this weekend.

Pia Ceres

staff writer

Doris Liou

illustr ator

a soundtrack of fun, angsty, youthful soundcapes

city of El Paso.

The two works truly capture teenagedom with an acute sense of genuineness that can only stem from the fact that the two artists wrote and recorded their respective albums as teenagers. Khalid chants in “American Teen”: My youth is the foundation of me. Although, on second thought, perhaps thinking their age is the biggest contributor to their success is a disservice to both artists. Their work is of course inherently influenced by their lived experiences; but, it is also so mature and, well, good, that their success must also be a direct result of each artist’s raw talent and keen insight into the worlds that surround them.

Thus, this album isn’t just for teenagers—it’s for anyone who remembers being young, dumb, and broke, or who has experienced naïve love, or who simply wants to reminisce about youth, adolescence, recklessness, or the kind of irresponsibility teenagedom can foster.

Just as Lorde introduced us to the suburbs of New Zealand, Khalid brings us to the desert city of El Paso, where the singer claims he truly became an artist. He gives “the 915” a shout out every chance he has, writing about the desert skies, the Texas highways, and, of course, about the El Paso girls, who are all pretty and down for the hype American Teen leaves no teenage-themed stone unturned.

Khalid writes of sneakily getting high off marijuana and trying to keep it a secret from his mother, of driving around town with the top down singing songs aloud, of wanting to just get the hell out of here, of love, of heartbreak, of fearing commitment, of relationships. And though these themes may sound generic, Khalid’s songwriting, like Lorde’s, is so full of tiny details and beautiful imagery that you’ll

feel like you are hearing about heartbreak or wanting to “get the hell out” for the first time.

If you are like me, only a few years removed from high school, you’ll almost want to go back and listen to this record in some old parking lot with your friends, while you do all the stupid shit that young kids do.

I can’t recommend this artist, and album, highly enough. The record has some danceable bangers filled with lines that will be stuck in your head for weeks—look out for “American Teen,” “8TEEN,” and “Another Sad Love Song.” It has fun songs to chill out to, like “Location” and “Winter.” And it has tunes that will likely make you cry with their emotional depth, like “Saved,” or “Angels.”

The album wraps up with another alarm sound going off, indicating Khalid’s awakening from his “American Dream.” If the album is a dream—a dreamy sound symphony full of smooth R&B tunes, sick pop beats, and catchy anthem-like choruses—then I suggest you go to sleep very soon.

Daniella Balarezo staff writer

Clarabel Wu illustr ator

Hoax at the Oscar’s INT—BOARDROOM: Boardroom of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Beverly Hills. The Oscars are next week. Seated around the table are a dozen representatives who make up the Board. Each representative is 89% white and 73% male, and they are all exactly 63 years old.

At the head of the table is OSCAR, a mystical distillation of the Academy. He looks like Ted Danson in The Good Place.

OSCAR Well, the results are in! Moonlight won Best Picture.

REPRESENTATIVES (murmuring amongst themselves) Wow, great, black, great, LGBTQ, cool, chef’s special, wow.

OSCAR It’s clear that this is just what the doctor ordered for this country right now. Like, I know we usually just give Best Picture to whichever movie paints show business in the best light, but come on—imagine if Trump, the Patriots, AND La La Land won?

REPRESENTATIVES (murmuring amongst themselves) True, yeah, haha, remember The Artist, haha, me neither.

OSCAR But we’re faced with a more pressing issue. The last Oscars were the lowest-rated in eight years. It’s clear that we’re losing touch with the American public, and especially with those strange, Snapchatting creatures known as millennials, who terrify us. What do they like?

REPRESENTATIVE #1 Beyoncé!

REPRESENTATIVE #2 Bernie!

REPRESENTATIVE #3 What about an on-air fuck-up that would instantly go viral while at the same time

8

how the best picture screw-up really went down

delivering a much-needed underdog victory and re-establishing our ceremony as can’t-miss television…

Slow zoom in on OSCAR’s face OSCAR My god…

CUT TO: EXT —NIGHT: OSCAR walks along a road up in the Hollywood Hills. The stars are shining just for him, but also for RYAN GOSLING, EMMA STONE, and DAMIEN CHAZELLE, who are walking alongside him.

OSCAR So what do you think?

DAMIEN CHAZELLE What’s in it for me?

OSCAR How about Best Director?

DAMIEN CHAZELLE What?

OSCAR Yeah, Mel Gibson somehow won for Hacksaw Ridge, and we’re sure as hell not going to give it to that piece of shit.

EMMA STONE You’re still going to give Best Actor to Casey Affleck, though…

OSCAR Anyway, what do you say?

RYAN GOSLING slowly lifts up a remote car lock to his chin and clicks it once. Somewhere a car beeps. He runs off excitedly.

DAMIEN CHAZELLE It’s a yes from Ryan.

EMMA STONE And you can guarantee I’ll win Best Actress?

OSCAR Yeah, you legit won. It was you or Huppert, and not a single voter actually watched Elle.

EMMA STONE Alright, then, sure. It’ll make us look

Spring Break Destinations 1 the ratty 2 the u.s. bureau of engraving and printing 3 tinder 4 your happy place 5 out, mom!

6 cuba 7 where the wild things are 8 the CIT 9 facebook 10 a whole new world, a new fantastic point of view, no one to tell us no or where to go or that we’re only dreaming

gracious, at least.

DAMIEN CHAZELLE It’s a wrap! Cue the music!

Jazz plays from an unknown source as the three of them begin an elaborately choreographed dance number. JK Simmons pops his head in real quick and then leaves. They all blast off into the night sky.

CUT TO: EXT—DAY: A beach. MAHERSHALA ALI stands in four feet of water and tenderly holds OSCAR in a backfloat. BARRY JENKINS is in a floaty tube nearby. The cinematography is fucking exquisite.

BARRY JENKINS Hahahahaha yeah we won! Eat it, Chazelle!

He is so excited he capsizes. He pops back up, still beaming.

BARRY JENKINS So ordinarily I wouldn’t want to share the Best Picture spotlight—like, we won fair and square, so what’s to be gained from staging a mix-up— OSCAR (groans) BARRY JENKINS —but now I’m thinking, our film is a story of love and inclusivity, and I am feeling so tolerant and accepting and love-filled and inclusive that I am going to do something nice for you, Oscar. I’m going to go along with this dumb plot. OSCAR Of course! That is a power that I, as a mystical distillation of Hollywood, possess! What say you, Mahershala?

MAHERSHALA ALI (wisely, sagely) Fine.

OSCAR That’s my Best Supporting Actor!

MAHERSHALA ALI (saintly, serenely) Word.

CUT TO: INT—WARREN BEATTY’S CAR. OSCAR is in the backseat of the car as WARREN BEATTY and FAYE DUNAWAY are riding in the front. They have just robbed a bank. OSCAR is car-sick.

OSCAR So you just read the one we give you, okay?

But sell it a little bit so it seems like you’re unsure about what you’re reading.

WARREN BEATTY And this will make me go…virile?

OSCAR No, it’s viral, gross, but yes, a whole new generation of young people will get to know your name. I’m sorry, but kids don’t really watch Bonnie and Clyde nowadays. This will get you back in the spotlight! You’ll be famous on a whole new level! You’ll get memed!

WARREN BEATTY (swerving to avoid a pothole; Oscar retches) Memed?

FAYE DUNAWAY It’s a good thing, darling.

WARREN BEATTY takes both hands off the steering wheel and turns around to shake the hand of OSCAR, who is screaming as the car speeds down the highway unmanned. CLOSE UP on WARREN BEATTY’S hands.

CROSS FADE TO: INT—DOLBY THEATER: The Oscars. Best Picture is being announced. WARREN BEATTY’s hands reach out and grab the fateful envelope. He opens it, sees the phrase “Warren Beatty, remember to say ‘La La Land’ now lol it’s all a hoax” written on it. He smiles and winks at the camera.

CUT TO BLACK—END TITLES

Spencer Roth-Rose staff writer

Ruth Han

illustr ator

d n e fi s l e e ” n ? o c y i n rot a es rs e o “D vato ele

“gluten i s conditio a necessary n of ana rchy”