The Wake Issue 7 Spring 2006

www.wakemag.org

the u’s weekly student magazine

•

april 12-18, 2006

Staff Editorial Editor-in-Chief

Kay Steiger

Managing Editor

Lane Trisko

Athletics Editor

Craig Rentmeester

Athletics Assistant Athletics Staff Writers Campus Editor Campus Assistant Campus Staff Writers

Brian Tolentino Jeff Barthel Tyler Rushmeyer Jessica Mann Sarah Howard Rachel Drewelow Vincent Staupe

Literary Editor

Kim Gengler

Literary Assistant

Kel Sangster

S&V Editor

Michael Mitchell

S&V Assistant

Jenny Odegard

S&V Staff Writers

Erin Belling Haily Gostas Rachel LaBine

Film Critic Voices Editor Voices Assistant Voices Staff Writers

Chris Wilson Colleen Hellenbrand Cole Dennis Tom McNamara Nix Wurdak

Production production manager

Eric Price

art director

Sam Soule

photo editor

Brennan Vance

web editor

Jeremy Sengly

graphic designers

Kristin Drews Carina Enbody Shannon Licari Eric Price Jeremy Sengly

photographers

copy editors

Shelby Falk Aaron Groh Dave Hagen Rachel LaBine Miranda Peterson Aaron Ridgeway Sam Soule Nick Tchida Brennan Vance Stacy Bengs Jessalynn Courtney Ethan Stark Brennan Vance Elizabeth Aulwes Clayton Benjamin Mary Cummings Kelly Frush

BUSINESS business manager office manager advertisting executive pr director

We’ve all been witness to graffiti of some kind; on storefronts, abandoned buildings, and concrete overpasses. Some call it art, while others call it vandalism. Is there a middle ground? Opportunities exist for those who fear the long arm of the law.

Andy Tyra

cover artist

illustrators

12 Taking the Gallery to the Street

Andy Tyra Tamara Swanson Jamie King

14 Your Hard Drive Is So Easy It’s hard to know who’s digitally looking over your shoulder while you’re surfing the Internet. All the information you disclose on Facebook can be just the beginning of the kind of information others can find out about you … without you even knowing about it!

Cassie Benson

distributors

Gwen McNamara Ryan Frailich Brennan Vance Chris Wilson

board of directors

James DeLong Paul Froiland Courtney Lewis Kathy Schlecht William Swanson

©2006

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Regina Alexander, Alex Amend, Erin Belling, Joseph Baufield, Rachel Drewelow, Haily Gostas, Sarah Howard, Christopher Matthew Jensen, Katie Kohlbeck, John Macintosh, Jessica Mann, Tom McNamara, Michael Mitchell, Kristen Mueller, Erica Niemiec, Craig Rentmeester, Ricardo Reyes-Basoalto, Tyler Rushmeyer, Brian Tolentino, Chris Wilson, Laura Winton, Erika Wurst

Established in 2002, The Wake is an independent weekly magazine, produced by and for students at the University of Minnesota. The Wake is a registered student organization.

The Wake was founded by Chris Ruen and James DeLong.

The Wake 1313 5th St. SE Minneapolis, MN 55414 Send letters to letters@wakemag.org Please include your name, year, and college. The Wake does not publish anonymous letters.

Volume 4, Issue 18

Letter from the Editor

I like liquor

Dearest Campus Fair,

Campus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Gymnasts = good at stretching Athletics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

There’s a North Korea?

Voices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Depressed sustain pedal Literary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Cabaret feva’ ... or something like that Sound & Vision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Return of the Dot Game Bastard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

04 07 10 16 18 22

It has recently come to my attention that there are four weeks left of school, give or take however many days I’m off by.

For some of you this means a summer job back home. For others, it’s summer school. I’m sure some people also do really cool things like deadly shark hunting. But frankly, those people suck.

The point being, there isn’t as much time left as we thought. Soon, Spring Jam will be here, and before we know it, we’ll be sleeping through our last final. But have no fear. College is a joke anyways. Get it?

LANE TRISKO

Managing Editor

P.S. Is there something going on with immigration right now?

Correction Last issue, we erroneously credited the cover artwork to Sam Soule. It should have been credited to Nick Tchida.

Sorry, Nick!

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Campus

April 12–18, 2006

At

End

Brennan Vance

The bumpy life of a local liquor store

By Joseph Baufield

For almost ten years, Witt’s Liquor has been tucked snugly into the Park and Shop parking ramp on Seventh Street near Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis, offering off-sale libations to the patrons that walk the streets and work the businesses surrounding it.

To be certain, any business dealing in the trade of “intoxicating liquors” is in for its fair share of bumps and bruises. It’s something the staff at Witt’s is quite familiar with. A lot of the customers are people fumbling with their luck. Many are homeless, quite a few are veterans living in the outskirts of society, and still more are just punks. They pour into the store in an interesting mix with the professionals who keep their offices downtown and the custodians and secretaries who also look for relief in a nice glass of wine or a cold six-pack. It’s always a balancing act. Inevitably, the sale of “intoxicating liquors” ferments into some sort of altercation.

It’s been a tightrope proprietor Justin Greer has walked, after he decided with his brother Seth to open a “simpler business” ten years ago.

“Don’t blame the liquor store because people like to drink,” he says. “I think for every one thing we’ve done wrong, there are probably thousands of things we’ve done right.”

His staff has compiled a lengthy list of customers who have been barred from the store for life.

In fact, the average customer at Witt’s would tell you his staff does a more than admirable job of managing the stress that walks through their door.

Many customers have been shopping at Witt’s for the nearly the length of its existence, and they enjoy the way they are treated, though they know their quick stop to pick up alcohol can get interesting.

While most customers are kind and courteous, sometimes they can be trouble. “The types of customers we have are so very different,” says general manager Marie Morris, who has worked for Greer the past four years. “I feel that there is no excuse for calling me a white bitch, or expecting me to pay for the rest of your drink because you’re short of money, or to allow you to steal from the store,” she says. “In this respect, it’s the hardest place I’ve ever worked.” Greer adds, “We’ve done a great job serving whoever wants to be served liquor and done it in a completely legal and forthright way, as long as we’ve been here. It hasn’t always been easy for us to do that.”

Witt’s has been a shelter to many wandering souls, a place “where we could all count on to come back home, and sort of be taken care of,” says Greer. “It’s been a source of joy for me that I’ve been able to find people that work with me so well.

It’s a place that can afford everyone that works here a lot of personal freedoms to be however they want to be and work when they want to work and be away when they need to be away,” he says.

Family life at the store got tense this past fall, when a valued and trusted employee failed an agecompliance check, not once, but twice in as many months. City police, teamed with licensing officials, recruit young adults under the legal age and deploy them in bars and liquor stores in order to check whether or not the establishment is complying with the laws on the sale of alcohol to minors.

Principal author of a comprehensive manual on age compliance checks, Alex C. Wagenaar, says, “Conducting compliance checks is not an easy task, but police and beverage-control agencies now have access to proven techniques for monitoring alcohol sales to minors.”

Many who work in the retail liquor industry

call those techniques suspect. Many feel it is entrapment, though the police say they are only creating an opportunity for a crime to be committed.

“I know by their definition, what they’re doing is not defined as entrapment,” Greer says, “but it is.

It’s a complete setup. When you set somebody up to be able to commit a so-called crime, that’s entrapment, isn’t it?”

Even after the employee failed for the second time, Greer was reluctant to let him go. He says the city forced the issue as part of the agreement he would come to in order to keep his liquor license.

On top of a fine of over $10,000, Witt’s has also been forced to purchase $1,500 worth of ID scanners. Turns out the scanners, which record more than just the customer’s age, are the hardest part of the fine.

“It’s already hurting business. We have to turn away people who are obviously of age, people who have no business having to carry around an ID in order to buy some beer. We have to turn away people all day long,” Greer says. The city has also stipulated that only four kinds of ID are valid: state issued IDs, Canadian IDs, passports, and military IDs. Many of Witt’s customer’s carry anything but, whether it’s a Mexican license, a foreign driver’s license, or nothing at all because they live their lives on the street.

“Beyond that, they’re telling me that in order to keep my license, not only will I purchase this equipment, but I also have to interface it with a PC that will record all of this information and not

Witt’s has been a shelter to many wandering souls, only record it, but be able to burn it on a CD to surrender to the police whenever they want me to surrender it,” Greer says. “Maybe I’m a little paranoid, I don’t know, but why would you need all of that information?”

His fears of lost business appear to be warranted. In 2001, the MGM Liquor Warehouse in Crystal ordered the same license scanners by mistake. They had intended to order ones that simply read the customers age and nothing else from the license. When customers began noticing all the information from their ID cards appearing on the store’s computer screens, they were not pleased.

They complained to MGM’s headquarters and even had a letter to the editor published in the Star Tribune, and the scanners were immediately removed and the databases erased.

MGM says it lost customers due to its scanning machines. Witt’s is one-tenth the size of the average MGM outlet and can’t afford the loss in customers, which Greer figures is probably around 20 percent.

However, according to Sgt. Travis Glampe of the Minneapolis Police License Investigation Division, no liquor licenses have ever been revoked because of age compliance failures. Instead, every business that fails it—and many do every year—are simply forced to pay similar fines.

Either way, the scanners are just another challenge the staff at Witt’s faces. “This place, love it or not,” explains manager Morris, “is our livelihood.

No one here is living high on the hog and I wish that some of our customers and some the city officials could walk a mile in our shoes.”

Campus

www.wakemag.org

Students Face Classes with a Combination of Excitement and Dread

By RACHEL DREWELOW Aaron Groh

Can’t you just taste the sunscreen melting down your face? Smell the hot dogs sizzling on the grill?

Feel that summatime paycheck burning in your pocket?

It’s April 12 and you know what that means.

There are officially 18 days of school left, plus finals. Well, unless you’re thinking of taking summer classes, in which case April 12 just signifies the second day of registration—to sign some sunshine away.

“With summer classes you either have to have the interest in the class … or you have to be forced,” says neuroscience, physiology (pre-med), and French major Rami Assadi. Assadi has taken three summer courses at the university, and lived to tell the tale.

In 2003, Assadi, then a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, took Arabic 1001 and 1002 at the university while home for the summer.

The classes stretched three-and-a-half hours, five days a week for eight weeks—and earned Assadi 10 credits. Though he took the class for his own interest, and was excited to learn Arabic, he admits, “It got a little old by the end.”

“You have to really like what you’re doing … but I could see some other people were about to call it quits,” he says. It wasn’t too unbearable for him, and last summer—after having transferred to the university—Assadi took another course. This time, he opted for genetics (Bio 4003), so that he could take a lighter load of sciences the following semester. “To be able to just concentrate on one class, and get a good grade was really helpful,” he says.

He says it was difficult to come to class since he had a job, the weather was nice, and friends were out of school, but still he never skipped class. It’s more problematic to skip class during the summer, he says, because ditching class one day is “like skipping two or three classes in a row.” This is because more material is crammed into one class period.

He admits it can get rough and that the campus has a different, lonelier feel. “It just kind of gives you a general feeling of ‘nobody’s here, why am I here?’” he says, even if he admits it was helpful.

You don’t have to have three majors, like Assadi, to benefit from summer term. Maybe you’re getting too old for Camp Ihduhapi and should try the

six-credit philosophy camp offered (Phil 4326) in a prairie in Windom, Minn., instead. Summer term also can help to finish up some general requirements, get a prerequisite out of the way, or take a general interest class (not for credit). However, many major-level courses are not offered during the summer—depending on the college and program.

The university’s entire summer term is 13 weeks, but most classes meet in a shorter time frame. Time frames are broken up into May session (three weeks), two four-week sessions, a sixweek session, an eight-week session and a ten-week session. A maximum of 20 credits can be taken by undergraduates.

Undergraduate resident tuition for summer

There are officially 18 days of school left, plus finals.

Events Calendar 04/12 • Amnesty International: Human Rights in the Phillipines Mad Hatters’s Tea House, 7:30pm

04/22 • An Afternoon with a Princess Elmer L. Anderson Library Rm 120, 3:00-5:00pm

04/22 • Why We Buy Walter Library Rm 101, 3:30-5:00pm

04/22 • “Access to Higher Education” Walter Library Rm 101, 3:30-5:00pm

A lecture by Steven Rosentone

04/15 • Cultural Celebration GREat Hall Coffman Union, 6:30-9:30pM

04/17 • Spring 2006 Hope Forum: classes is $274.62 per credit, and $721.92 for nonresidents. On-campus housing is also available for May and summer students (see www.housing.umn. edu/student/summerschool). Financial aid awarded for the 2005-2006 academic year that has not yet been spent by a student can be applied to summer term. Assadi got to put $92 from a leftover grant into a summer course.

May and summer terms also offer several global seminars and programs all around the world. Topics range from field study to volunteer work to taking classes for credit while abroad. Costs of these programs vary. A summer course catalog can be viewed online at www.cce.umn.edu/summer/catalog.

There is no alphabetical rotation for summer term. It’s on a first come, first served online-registration that began on April 11 for admitted students.

Students admitted to a degree program but not taking classes this spring have to contact their college for registration guidelines. Non-admitted students can begin registering Tuesday, April 18.

More information about summer term can be found at www. cce.umn.edu/summer.

Weisman Art Museum, 5:30-7:00pM

Intelligent Design a Christian Conversation

04/19 • Men Ending Rape Anderson Hall Rm 310, 3:00-5:00pM

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Campus

April 12–18, 2006

Slalom, Trick and Jump Rachel Labine

The Water Ski and Wakeboard team makes a splash

By Sarah Howard One of the most popular activities during the summer in Minnesota is to hop on a boat and go to any of the more than 10,000 lakes. People will spend the day on the boat lounging, drinking beer and maybe doing a little bit of swimming to get some exercise. Not the Water Ski and Wakeboard team. They head to the water four days a week to practice intense jumps and high-paced skiing and boarding, regardless of the weather.

“There is nothing like being on the water, and the adrenaline rush is amazing,” says civil engineering junior Jonathan Raduenz, practice captain, former president, apparel chair and Web director.

Most members of the team have been doing water sports since they were about four or five. “It is simply a part of my life. I cannot live without it,” says aerospace engineering sophomore Heath Marnach, practice coordinator.

The water-skiers have three tournaments per season, spring and fall. “Tournaments are by far the most fun weekends I’ve had in college life so far,” says president and mechanical engineering student Corey Bergendahl. In this tournament, there are three events: slalom, trick and jump, in which five people compete. “Wakeboard tournaments are wakeboarding, sometimes combined with barefooting,” says physiology student Cole Bond, tournament director and wakeboard captain. “I joined the team to slalom and I have found an even greater love for wakeboarding and jumping,” Raduenz says.

One obstacle of the team is that it includes two sports. While both require a boat and the water, they are also unique. “With skiers and boarders it becomes very difficult since both want practice time and they both require different setups,” Raduenz says. “Everyone gets to ski, but we usually pick an emphasis for each day and that’s who’s going to get the most time.”

“There are occasionally days where we only run ski practice in preparation for a three-event tournament, or wakeboard-only days in preparation for wakeboard tourneys,” Marnach says.

The team is sponsored by Midwest Mastercraft, who is helping them get a boat and gear, as well as helping them promote waterskiing as a sport.

“Without them, we wouldn’t have a team because it’s such an expensive sport,” Raduenz says. The group receives no student fees funding. “Everyone pays team dues, and those dues pay for boat payments, insurance and gas to run the boat,” Bond says.

The Water Ski and Wakeboard team has been a club for five years, Bergendahl says, but this team really got going in 2003 when they became a part of the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Water-ski Team INC, a program started by Scott Coley, president of the organization. This allows them to get a brand new Malibu ski boat each season. New boats are purchased from the dealers at relatively cheap prices and are financed through the bank. The teams are required to make interest and insurance payments on the boats. At the end of the season, the boats are resold at a cheap price and the loan is paid back completely from the sale.

Once you have a boat, you still need water suits, skis and ropes. People on the team “generally have their own equipment,” Bond says. “But that’s not to say that you need your own equipment. Most everyone who has it is more than happy to share with everyone.”

Practices generally run Monday through Thursday and begin at 3 p.m. “There are many members who join simply for the water time at practices,” says Bergendahl. Practices usually begin with slaloming, followed by wakeboard practice. The team is typically on the lake until an hour after sundown and practices are on Lake Josephine, Lake McCar-

ron and Owasso Lake in Roseville.

“The great thing is the amount of time you want to put forth is completely up to you,” Raduenz says.

“It’s probably about 10 hours a week without the tournaments during the season and just a couple hours a month in the off season for fundraising.”

The team generally does have meetings twice a month to handle paperwork before they leave for tournaments.

The team will take members of all skill levels.

Everyone is “willing to help each other out and teach new things to everybody,” Bergendahl says.

“There are plenty of people who started on the team not knowing how to get out of the water, and then ended up placing high up in the tournaments even in the next season.”

The fall season runs from the beginning of the school year to about November. The spring season usually starts in April (as soon as the ice is off the lakes!) and runs until around finals week. This guarantees the chills. They also have a long winter off of the water. “We don’t really do anything in the winter except hang out,” Raduenz says.

“Weight-lifting and off-season training are essential to being ready for the spring season,” Marnach says. The team also has an intramural hockey

“There is nothing like being on the water, and the adrenaline rush is amazing,” team so they can play another Minnesota favorite together.

Another struggle is the “lack of community involvement,” Bergendahl says. “We are a great group of people, but are looking to the University and local Twin Cities community in general for support as far as a permanent site to ski, course to practice on and some major sponsorship in order to differ our travel and boat costs.” Despite the logistics, the Water Ski and Wakeboard team has about 40 members who live to be on the water.

Last year, the team won the Collegiate Extreme Wakeboarding Championships against all of the colleges in the Midwest. The team competes with schools throughout Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Kansas, Minnesota and Iowa.

They have two upcoming tournaments the weekend of April 22 at the UW-Whitewater Wakeboard Tourney in Janesville, Wis. and a ThreeEvent in Dayton, Ohio. While chances are good you’re not making the trek to watch them in these events, keep this team in mind. They’re representing the U how they know best, by kicking ass and having fun.

For more information about the Water Ski and Wakeboard team visit www.umn.edu/~waketeam.

Athletics

www.wakemag.org

Upcoming Athletic Events 04/14 • Men’s Tennis vs. Penn State baseline tennis center, 6:30pm

Interview with the

Big Ten Gymnast of the Year Q & A with Laura Johnson By brian tolentino

Brenana Vance

Laura Johnson is, well, kind of a big deal when it comes to gymnastics. Johnson, a journalism senior from Albuquerque, N.M., has been an All-Big Ten honoree four years in a row, making her the fourth Gopher in history to accomplish such a feat.

This year Johnson was named Big Ten Gymnast of the Year and is currently ranked 25th in GymInfo National Rankings in the all around.

The Wake: How did it feel to win the Big Ten for the first time since 1998?

Johnson: It was so exhilarating. It is almost surreal. When you go in you’re not really expecting to win, especially against a team like Michigan who has won the last eight years, and who is ranked a good 15 to 20 spots ahead of us. It really was just an amazing feeling.

The Wake: How surprising was it that Michigan came in fourth place after winning eight seasons in a row?

Johnson: Oh it was unbelievably surprising. I think everyone at the meet including the audience was shocked. If Michigan hadn’t won, it was expected they would have at least taken second. So to be upset by three teams is a huge deal.

The Wake: Why did you choose the U of M being (you are) from Albuquerque NM? Johnson: It was kind of a difficult situation. I was recruited by different schools around the nation. But my parents knew Doug Day (assistant coach) because he is from New Mexico and I kind of grew up with him so they wanted Minnesota.

Plus when I came up here on a trip it just fit. I fit with the girls and the coaches and it was a Big Ten school.

The Wake: What state do you like the most: Minnesota or New Mexico?

Johnson: Umm, they’re just so different. They

both have their good points. I do love the U because it is in a big city and we are in an urban environment, which is great for what I want to do. It has been a lot of fun experiencing this intense of a winter. I also love New Mexico. I love the mountains.

It’s really hard for me to get used to not having mountains around. I love the dry heat and the culture down there … I can’t choose. I would say maybe Minnesota now and New Mexico later in life.

The Wake: What is one misconception people have about gymnastics?

Johnson: That everyone has an eating disorder.

Also I feel like people don’t realize how difficult this sport is. We do train year around and we average about 20 hours a week; about four hours a day, five days a week. I also don’t think people realize the commitment it takes because we have all had training for close to 20 years.

The Wake: What do you enjoy most about gymnastics?

Johnson: I enjoy the diversity. It can always change and you can always do a different skill. You can always get better. In other sports you can hit your peak and there are only certain things you can do, like you can only run. But in this sport there are really endless possibilities.

The Wake: What do you dislike the most about gymnastics?

Johnson: I really dislike the toll it has taken on my body. It really beats you up.

The Wake: Where and what do you see yourself doing in 10 years?

Johnson: Well, because a teammate and myself are starting a lingerie company next year, a maternity lingerie company, hopefully that will be off the ground and running successfully. And also getting married and traveling the world.

04/15 • Men’s Tennis vs. Indiana Baseline Tennis CEnter, 12PM

04/18 • Baseball vs. St. Thomas Siebert field, 3PM

04/19 • Baseball vs. Norhtern Iowa Siebert field, 3PM

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Athletics

April 12-18, 2006

Get Outside!

Your leisure activity guide to spring

Nick Tchida

Hackey Sack

By tyler rushmeyer As some university students traveled to hot spots around the globe over spring break, many stayed in Minneapolis, confined indoors, as 2 feet of snow fell and temperatures hovered near 30 degrees.

And while I watched nearly 25 hours of March Madness, I thought to myself, “Where’s spring?” I turned up the thermostat and threw another Pasta Roni in the microwave and dreamt of the day when I could remain outside for more than a half hour. Well, that time has come. The snow has finally melted and the winter coats have been packed away for good. The Minnesota spring is upon us and it’s time to get outside and enjoy it, because we all know next winter is only seven-short months away.

So I implore readers to get outside, but many of you may wonder what to do once you’re out there.

Maybe the thought of taking a 5-mile jog or running up and down a basketball court isn’t exactly your idea of a good time. Maybe you spent more time playing beer pong than at the Rec Center over the winter. If that’s the case, let me introduce to you the wide world of leisure activities; the ones that require a bit of skill and allow for maximum relaxation while doing their best to make sure you don’t break a sweat. So read on and discover some old favorites that will help you forget all about the drudgery of winter and make sure your homework remains untouched.

Playing “hack” is truly a classic way to waste away a nice spring day without running short of breath. Beside the occasional car flying by screaming “hippies,” a relaxing afternoon is yours. Add in the accompanying meaningless conversations between friends and acquaintances and a daily spring routine begins. Try to cut it off before nighttime when the shadow games begin and the sack blends in with the night sky; it’ll save a lot of frustration and may actually allow you to get some real work done.

What you’ll need: a $10 dirt sack which can easily be picked up around campus and a level playing surface and you’re ready to go.

Bollo Ball

Bollo ball is a little-known game that is in the same vane as “bean bag toss.” Sadly, it was unknown to me until this past summer. Each player receives two “bolos,” which are devices that consist of two hard balls attached through the middle by a piece of string. The goal is to wrap the bollo around one of three horizontal bars, each with their respective point values.

The game consists of two players on each side and is played to 21 points. More challenging and exciting than bocce, without the ever-sostrenuousness task of walking.

What’ll you’ll need: For all you do-it-yourselfers, get to a hardware store and stock up on PVC pipe, rope, and a couple of wooden balls and construct your own sturdy set for an extremely cheap price. If this sounds like too daunting of a task, pick up a set for around $30.

But buyer beware, a Bollo set can be destroyed within a single day.

Catch

Another spring option is to get back to the basics. Tossing around a ball or flying disc may not sound like the most exciting thing in the world, but thousands of university students that get outside anytime the temperature rises above 40 degrees will tell you otherwise.

What you’ll need: Dig through your apartment or house, or check out from the residence halls any equipment you’ll need. Gloves may be in order if a baseball is your choice, and again watch out for those pesky windshields and pedestrians and try not to let that flying disc get away from you.

Bocce Ball

Bocce can seem like a rather ridiculous game, and it is. Toss the little white ball around and then have each player throw to get within the closest proximity of it. However, this fourplayer game can become addictive as players battle for bocce supremacy. Scoring can vary, but according to the prestigious United States Bocce Federation, a game is typically played to 13 points. Beside the occasional thrown-out arm, bocce is another harmless activity that can get you and your buddies outside.

What you’ll need: Go in with a group and pick up a nice bocce set. Sets can range anywhere from $25-$100 and I’d recommend at least a $50 set. Find a wide open area, preferably with some small pits and hills, and let it fly. Try to avoid losing control of the balls and taking out a squirrel or windshield.

So there you have it. These activities along with the likes of bean bag toss, “horse”, lawn darts (if you still have them), and croquet should provide you with the relaxing spring that you’ve thought about since November. So, hit up Marcy Park in Dinkytown, Van Cleve Park on Como, Northrop Mall, or your front lawn and enjoy the spring before the scorching heat of summer arrives.

Athletics

www.wakemag.org

9

Soft Balls and Sweat A look at the sport of Squash

stacy bengs

Off the Court Q&A with Jacob Williams

By craig rentmeester College students and 65-year-old men, in a closed off room, slap around balls. There’s no foul play here, this is the University of Minnesota Squash Club. The squash club is a group of roughly 50 athletes who meet three times per week to compete in a game that few people neither play nor know much about.

Brief Overview of the Game Squash is a combination of tennis and badminton. The racquet used in the sport is about as long as a badminton racquet, but it’s as strong as a tennis racquet. There are two types of balls used in squash, the hardball and softball. The hardball is traditional and not widely used anymore. The U squash club uses softballs.

The court for squash is odd. Like racquetball, the game is played in an enclosed, four walled room.

However, in squash there are boundaries on each wall and the ball must strike within the boundaries. The side walls have lines angling down and if the ball touches the side wall, it must be under the angled lines.

Scoring in squash is similar to the scoring in volleyball because only the server can score. If the non-server wins a rally, he or she then becomes the server. Like tennis, a server switches halves of the court on each serve. When the game is tied 8 to 8, the non-server gets to decide whether the game is played to nine points or to ten. There is no “win by two” rule in squash. A player wins a match in squash by winning three out of five games.

U of M Squash Members of the club range in age from 18 65. The club is always open to new members and frequently has newcomers at their meeting times.

Jacob Williams, first-year graduate student at the U, played tennis in high school and college. Williams recently took up squash and says “One of my professors got me starting to play and he suggested that I join the club.”

Vinh Chung, squash player and coordinator at the U, said that matches can last anywhere from 20 minutes to a half hour. In that time, players are constantly strategizing and running. Chung went on to say that squash is like a chess game because shots are intended to make the opponent run around and wear themselves out.

It is extremely cheap to be a member of the U of M squash club, only $10 per year. The dues cover the cost of social events and clinics taught by professional squash players.

Squash will be played at a very high level April 20 to April 22 when the University of Minnesota Squash Club hosts the Minnesota state singles squash tournament. The tournament will feature more than 100 squash players from around the state and metro area.

If you’re interested in joining the squash club or learning more, the club meets every Tuesday and Thursday from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturdays from noon to 2 p.m. at the Rec Center on the East Bank.

The Wake: How long have you been playing squash?

Williams: I have been playing squash for only about four months now.

The Wake: What did you think when you first started playing?

Williams: It’s fairly difficult, the game itself.

There’s a lot of strategy involved and the ball is difficult to work with. It doesn’t bounce very easily. It’s a lot of wrist action and understanding of the angles.

The Wake: Could you describe the game when you’re playing for the first couple months?

Williams: When you first start playing, it’s really fast paced. There’s a lot of reaction time and it seems as though you’re just reacting to the ball. But as you play more, it’s like a lot of other sports, the game starts to slow down.

The Wake: What’s your favorite part about the game overall?

Williams: It’s challenging. As a young guy, you know most people that play this game are old men and there’s not very many sports where I think old men can beat me. But in squash I think I’d get my ass kicked all the time by old men. It’s competitive and it’s intergenerational which I think is pretty cool.

Voices

North Korean

10

April 12-18, 2006

B L U E S

When viewed from above at night, North Korea is a black space in the highly lit and populated Asian continent. The majority of North Koreans— the workers and peasants—live in a Government immersed in figurative and literal darkness.

Whenever discussing his war on terror, President Bush names North Korea as an axis of evil. He paints the country as an outdated relict of the Cold War—an oppressive communist state that starves its people. Additionally, the Western world suspects and claims that North Korea’s government has nuclear weapons of mass destruction. This is the only information most Americans have on the struggling country. Consequently, North Korea is the enemy.

But should Americans only view North Koreans as a foe?

North Korea’s communist government is known as the Korean’s Workers Party. The organization’s philosophy is juche, which is based in self-reliance.

Its ideas are routed in Marxism and Leninism, but departed from true socialist thought in the mid1970s under late President Kim Il-sung, who is still referred to as the “Eternal President of the Republic.” Although Marx and Lenin’s words are no longer being used in North Korea, their concepts supposedly remain. However, Kim Il-sung deemed that the leader of the country could be the only person to interpret the principles of juche; therefore, the rule of North Korea is extremely centralized—negating communism, which in actuality should be a government of and for the people.

The occupants of North Korea are not godless commies with the bomb. Rather, they are hard working, aspiring and want the best for their children just like any American, French, Venezuelan or Iraqi. There is only one human race. This idea sounds cliché, but what government in this world

SAM SOULE

acts like it is a government of the world?

Much can be said concerning the character and resolve that North Koreans have demonstrated in the past twenty years and throughout their coun-

tom mcnamara try’s history. Starting in the 1990s, North Korea experienced a ten-year-long famine that killed more than one million people (sometimes estimated to be 3.5 million) out of its 23 million population.

The 22 million survivors did so without any aide from Kim Il-sung or current chairman and leader Kim Jong-Il. Seemingly the ideologies of juche, which are based in socialism, did not apply in the eyes of North Korea’s leaders to help its citizens survive. UN advisor Hazel Smith’s recent book, Hungry for Peace, maintains that in the place of government assistance, which would have undoubtedly happened in a true communist country, that North Koreans found help from each other. According to an interview on PBS’s “Foreign Exchange,” Smith said that “they [the North Koreans] didn’t survive because the State helped them; they survived because … they swapped, they bartered, they sold, they tried to get hard currency, and so from the mid-1990s you had a market economy that developed and people looked after themselves.” North Koreans have experienced conditions worse than America’s Great Depression and are surviving without any substantial assistance.

Smith also said in the interview that the famine in North Korea is “… as if oil had suddenly run out in a modern industrial country and it had to cope on its own; most people in America and my country in

the UK couldn’t do that. They’re not going to grow enough food in their back garden for themselves.”

North Koreans, have been, among other things, doing just that.

North Koreans are not looking for Western intervention like the current American-induced quagmire in Iraq. If change is to come in North Korea and be successful, then the revolution must come from the people, something that the American failure in Iraq has proven correct. Due to the harshness of their winters, the extreme heat of their summers and the famine they have experienced, North Korean political action has been second to survival.

Therefore when the United States turns its imperialistic eye from the Middle-East to North Korea, demand that the U.S. government send medicine in the place of soldiers and drop Red Cross care packages instead of bombs. Americans of the 1960s and ’70s said that another Vietnam should never happen again, but it did. Now, Americans have the chance to not let another Iraq happen again.

Tom McNamara is a Voices columnist and welcomes comments at letters@wakemag.org.

Voices

www.wakemag.org

11

A View From the Background The New Abortion Ban

I was disgusted, although not surprised, to read the reactionary comments from Sam Brownback, a senator from my home state of Kansas, in the March 20 edition of Newsweek about South Dakota’s ban on abortions, as well as those of several other politicians (both pro-life and pro-choice). I was surprised at the noticeable absence from the article of a quote from a woman. Any woman at all. As with any other

erika wurst scientific investigation, the next step was to check Google to further examine what I considered this great injustice. In the first 15 hits on Google news under the search “abortion” only one woman, who has not had an abortion, mind you, is quoted. On Google images, under the same search, the first 40 pictures contain five women: one blurry, undefined figure under the title “It‘s not right,” three protesters and a picture of Hillary Clinton with the headline “Hillary Woos the Anti-Abortion Vote,” along with 19 images of mangled fetuses. Appalling.

These discoveries are indicative of a phenom-

enon that I had not, up to this point, noticed; there are no well-known, visible females involved in the abortion debate. The dominant voice on the issue is undoubtedly that of the rich white male, i.e., our politicians. Since its inception, and even more so lately, the question of choice has been framed by the conservative men running the country. This is why we hear “unborn child” instead of “clump of cells,” and “partial birth abortion” instead of “third-trimester abortion.” It is quite rare indeed to hear the voice of the pregnant woman, the woman whom the procedure would be performed on, the woman who will have to deal with the consequences of her decision (whatever they may be), the woman whose body and life are being regulated from a hill in Washington, D.C. by men in suits who will never, ever be in her position. This is why calls to “end the murder of the innocent” have all but eliminated the political space once reserved for sexual equality and women’s rights regarding pregnancy.

There are few biological processes that humans undergo more emotionally, physically and mentally trying than pregnancy. It is not just a woman’s medical records that become government property after an abortion ban, but her very body. When control of a ball of cells in her uterus was taken away, the government performed the most grotesque violation of privacy imaginable. All U.S. citizens have the right not just to the security of their own persons, but also to liberty and the pursuit of happiness without meddling from the government. In the debate surrounding one of the most intensely private decisions a woman will ever have to make, interference from politicians whom she will never know is outrageous and absurd.

In addition to the security of privacy, the right to an abortion without interference from the gov-

Photos of the Week • By Ethan Stark

ernment is absolutely essential for sexual equality among women and men. Only when women are sure of their right to an abortion they can have sex without the fear of an unwanted pregnancy.

Men know that such a pregnancy will cost them, at most, child support. Whether or not they choose to act on this knowledge and shirk all responsibility varies from person to person. Needless to say, some do.

Because women do not have the ability to forget a pregnancy, they approach every sexual encounter knowing that even when the utmost precautions are taken, a single act could lead not just to pregnancy, but to a lifetime of individual responsibility for another human being, which they are often unprepared to accept. Even when adoption is considered as an option, the social stigma associated with unmarried or teenage pregnancies is both undeniable and crushing, not to mention the emotional trauma of giving up a baby. Until these fears are alleviated through the legal right to a safe abortion, women will never act or be treated as the sexual equals of their male partners.

But there is more at stake in this debate than privacy and equality. The value that society is willing to assign to women hangs in the balance along with the right to choose. A ban on abortion makes women effectively subordinate to their ability to reproduce. When women are literally forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, their futures, their dreams, their lives become secondary to their repro-

miranda peterson

ductive capability. This is not true for only women who have abortions. The lives of every woman in the world, by virtue of the fact that she has, has had, or will have the capacity to bear children, are diminished in relation to that capacity. Orwellian predictions aside, the message to women implicit through an abortion ban is simple: your ultimate value lies in reproduction.

The preceding issues are rarely heard in policy debate because the argument that devalues women also largely excludes them. The lack of female voices in national politics and the media has led to a conservative-dominated discussion that centers around when life begins and what the Bible says about abortion as opposed to its real life implications for women. Is this article a call to action? Not really. I’m not asking you to write an angry letter to your congressperson or hand out pro-choice literature on a street corner. Rather, I’m asking you to remember the woman who has been left out of the debate—the silent, faceless figure looking on from the background while her future is determined.

Erika Wurst is a Voices guest columnist and welcomes comments at letters@wakemag.org.

12

Feature

April 12-18, 2006

Taking the Gallery to the

Street

BY KRISTEN MUELLER brennan vance

29th and Aldrich 3:55 a.m.

A pool of light illuminates a small brick building, abandoned, but for a sign taped to the door reading: Attention gangstas, pimps and prostitutes.

YOUR TIME IS OVER! Night patrols starting NOW. To the right, a large plywood board covers a partly smashed window. Like a blank canvas it waits, taunting the artists that haunt empty corners and alleys, bringing them to life with a flurry of spray paint and brushstrokes.

Ignoring the sign’s angry threats and the infrequent hum of traffic drifting from Lyndale Avenue, “27” sets down a backpack bulging with paint cans and brushes. The shadow cast by the building’s overhanging roof helps conceal his body, buried in head to ankle black, with dark brown sneakers torn near the toes. Broken hunks of glass and concrete grind beneath his feet as he steps over two empty 200 mL Peppermint Schnapps bottles with

his spray paint in hand, poised for action.

He starts with the face, onion-shaped and pale pink. Next comes a torso in yellow, legs in blue and a wave of hair. A car engine roars closer—too close—and 27 is gone, gliding down the street. The vehicle passes, and he’s back at the window, legs slightly bouncing as the paint flies faster, a rhythmic pss, pss, pss sound disrupting the damp air’s cool silence.

According to the City of Minneapolis website, illegal graffiti is not art. “If it’s done on your house, would you think it’s okay?” asks Steve Johnson, Deputy Chief of the University of Minnesota Police Department. But 27 tries to avoid private property, favoring city-owned dumpsters and doorways.

“I would rather hit abandoned things,” he says.

Besides, “If it can be painted over, it’s not really destroyed.”

27 strides toward the glow of Lake Street’s Super America, cuts across a parking lot, and walks down a bright alley. He inspects and dismisses a dumpster, sighs, then settles before a brick-red door, already marred by several tags scrawled in black and green. Eyes narrowed in concentration, he draws a cartoon body using what’s left of a white oil bar. He smears the pigment with his right hand before lining the character in black, adding streaks of side swept hair, eyes like sideways rain drops and a nose that swirls and slides into a cheek.

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jessalynn courtney

A generator kicks on, sending a bolt of electricity through the air and into 27’s oil-darkened fingertips. Each strategic smudge injects life into the flat surface, until suddenly the character pops—exploding off the door, into the third dimension.

Another page on Minneapolis’ website says, “A neighborhood plagued by graffiti generates fear … creates blight … and is inconsistent with the city’s aesthetic standards.” Of course, it depends on whose aesthetics you’re talking about. While business owners and police officers often decry graffiti artists as vandals, galleries across town, from the venerable Walker Art Center to Ox-Op, a miniscule venue off-shot from Grumpy’s bar, celebrate notable graffiti artists. And then there’s Intermedia Arts—a veritable shrine to the genre, wrapped in a rainbow of paint that sends tourists digging for cameras.

“We’ve gotten really positive feedback. People like the change, new colors and activity,” says Theresa Sweetland, Programs Manager of Intermedia Arts. Once a year, a group of artists paint a mural on the building’s façade. The current design was created last summer in conjunction with “B-Girl Be,” a six-week long exhibit honoring women in hip-hop. Nineteen females, from St. Paul to Phoenix, collaborated over five days and countless cans of paint. “This is the first time we know of that a whole wall was painted by all women.”

Trail the three-color ribbon connecting the mural around Intermedia’s corners, and you’ll find the only “free wall” (a space where graffiti is tolerated by the police) left in the city, since former Minneapolis mayor Sharon Sayles Belton launched a fullscale attack on the illegal art form in 1999, prompt-

brennan vance

er Roger Cummings sits with a stack of photos and a half-full album. Adolescents bent over giant canvases wield cans of spray paint in several pictures, but don’t call the graffiti hotline just yet—it’s all part of Juxtaposition’s mission for “Guiding urban youth along paths to success through visual arts.”

Minneapolis’ website says, “A neighborhood plagued by graffiti generates fear ... creates blight ... and is inconsistent with the city’s aesthetic standards.” Of course, it depends on whose aesthetics you’re talking about. ing Sgt. Tom Stocke to shut down the Bomb Shelter, a free wall near 34th Avenue South.

Intermedia’s free walls are awash with pieces (multi-colored designs with 3-D qualities), tags (single-color monikers, quickly penned to identify the artist), a shout out (“Hi Waffle!”), and political propaganda (“End War.”) “It’s an outdoor gallery, a space for learning artists,” Sweetland says.

Across town, Tupac’s gruff alto thumps up Juxtaposition Art’s winding stairway, where co-found-

13

“A lot of people come in who want to do graffiti. That’s not what we do,” Cummings says. “We do public art, teaching the basics of aerosol, and the history behind it.”

The soft-spoken artist’s own interest in graffiti emerged in junior high, when he wrote his Dungeon and Dragons name up and down the street. “It’s a way to acknowledge that you exist, and have something to contribute to your neighborhood,” he says.

“Kids are gonna be rebellious. Some get noticed

because they can fight really well, or because of promiscuity or access to drugs … This is the least of the evils. People recognize you for doing something creative and colorful, even though it’s not the best place to do it.”

For 11 years, Juxtaposition’s students, mainly teens from the North side, have been commissioned to paint murals on walls across Minneapolis, including the intergalactic farm scene on a Kemps/ Marigold building. It’s a win-win partnership—the students can legally indulge their creativity in a space where they’ll be recognized, and businesses are less likely to endure tagging on an already painted surface.

29th and Aldrich, 4:24 a.m.

Birds twitter loudly in the ever-lightening sky as 27 dabs a long paintbrush into a pool of black ink. He paints with his body, bending at the knees to lower his back with each vertical stroke, until he’s crouching over the littered ground. Every new line heightens the contrast—between the pink face, yellow torso and blue legs—with the brown plywood background.

Plastic gloves protect 27’s already-stained fingers as he seduces the fresh paint into position, blending and shading with an experienced touch. At 4:31 a.m., he adds his lucky number—27—to the corner of his canvas, then vanishes back into the streets.

14

Feature

April 12-18, 2006

1000111100111 0010100100100 1001001110010 1010110100110 1000000110011 1110101110101 Your Hard Drive is so Easy –––

BRENNAN VANCE

Are the innocent being targeted?

With the growing independence that accompanies going off to college, students find themselves learning more than what’s taught in the classroom.

Most people nowadays are spending more and more time operating in a world that they don’t truly understand—the World Wide Web. It can probably be safely said that most students don’t really know the nitty-gritty technical aspects of the Internet, but they have figured out how to instant message, create a Facebook profile, download songs, order textbooks and register for class.

Of course, while an extensive knowledge of technology isn’t necessary to send an email, not

really knowing what you’re working with can leave you vulnerable—especially when you’re giving away important information such as your credit card number online. It’s also a legal dilemma: how can you tell the court you had an expectation of privacy when you surfed the net and essentially opened your hard drive to anyone who knew how to access it? Just because most of us don’t know what’s going on doesn’t mean that everyone’s clueless.

On March 28, the Silha Center and the INMS sponsored a presentation, “Your Email is not Yours!

Government Surveillance and Digital Privacy,” by three Internet-savvy speakers, including Mary Hor-

Experts discuss what digital privacy really means

vath, program manager and senior computer forensic examiner with the FBI; Dick Reeve, deputy district attorney in Denver and adjunct professor at the University of Denver College of Law; and Stephen Cribari from the University of Minnesota Law School.

The presentation focused on the constitutional interpretation of privacy. The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures …” But what about a search of your computer?

Would the people that wrote the Fourth

Amendment have protected the hard drive? It’s hard to know since there has been no Supreme Court decision yet that precisely answers that question in relation to the constitution. The question of what the constitution says about online privacy is a tough one, Cribari says—the “jury’s still out” on whether or not your hard drive is even still solely yours once you connect to the web. “When you connect with an Internet site, do you know what’s been put on your computer?” he asks.

“The notion of what’s private when it comes to cyberspace is not an easy question,” he says. The notion of privacy that most of us have online is a

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15

1000111100111 0010100100100 1001001110010 1010110100110 1000000110011 1110101110101

By Jessica Mann

sense of anonymity, but anonymity is not the same as privacy and simply being anonymous doesn’t protect private information, he says.

While constitutional protection hasn’t yet been defined, “there are federal laws, including various privacy acts, that govern where the Fourth Amendment might not,” Reeve says.

Aspects of these laws outline the steps that the government must take in order to search for information on a private computer. When examining a hard drive, forensic examiners can only look for evidence of an alleged crime and need to get a new warrant if they find anything else, Reeve says.

When they’ve received a warrant, their first step is to make a “forensic copy” of all digital evidence is made.

Such a copy is “a virtual snapshot of the entire drive,” including supposedly erased and reformatted data. “It takes a picture of everything, including where there’s nothing,” he says. “There’s no such thing as ‘hidden data’ in a forensic laboratory.”

There are also numerous ways to intercept and or “wiretap” for information in addition to accessing data that’s simply stored on a hard drive. For instance, “data sniffers” are programs that are designed to collect individual packets of data—each of our emails is broken into thousands of these—that are sent through servers around the world when we hit the send button.

All Internet traffic is routed through multiple servers and the routers determine the path that the information takes. Although the system tries to find the best path, the information still goes

through multiple servers. “This is one of the major reasons there is no privacy on the Internet,” Horvath says.

However, there’s a great wealth of information stored on computers that is relatively easily accessed. Most of us don’t realize just how much of our actions remain recorded in files that our computer creates or moves around. “When I delete an email, it’s gone, right? When you throw something in the trash bin on your computer, does it go away?”

Cribari asks. “No, it just moves to a different part of the computer,” he adds. “Your emails are not private technically. Anybody can get your emails and it’s very easy to get if you know what you’re doing,” Horvath says.

As an FBI examiner, “I handle digital evidence of stored date, not the wiretaps or wireless transmissions or ‘data sniffers,’” Horvath says, although there are other examiners that work with such programs. Examiners used to go through every file on the computer over a course of several days, but now that would be impossible, so there are automated programs that do the same thing, she says. Methods of searching include date reduction by filtering out recognizable files, going through metadata that computers create about your actions in certain programs (such as Word), and looking through Web browser history files that record where you’ve been online and how frequently you visit. Sometimes even passwords or credit card numbers get stored in computer files. Nearly anything that has been “deleted” remains findable, at least in part. “When you delete a file … that information is still in the computer,” she says.

While the law oversees governmental use of these techniques (although the Patriot Act has lately been the subject of controversy in its treatment of government access to information), criminal hackers roam the Internet world and are able to do many of the same things, putting your personal hard drive at risk whenever you’re online.

Legally, the question of how much online privacy a person is entitled to remains an open-ended one. “Do you have to understand all this to expect privacy?” asks Cribari. For practical purposes, “if you’re going to use this high-tech stuff and are passing information over it,” Horvath says, “then you should understand the security risks.”

16

Literary

April 12-18, 2006

Depressed Sustain Pedal by christopher matthew jensen

Editor’s Note It seems every month of the year is assigned subject that people are intended to observe.

For instance, April is National Poetry Month and I decided, like a good citizen, to observe it with an issue entirely devoted to poetry. I don’t know who designates the topics with their respective months, but I am glad they gave poetry its own month because it feels neglected and lonely. Now all we need is an entire decade devoted to poetry and I would feel a lot better. But until then, enjoy these poems and write something of your own in honor of the month.

Kim Gengler

Literary Editor

Upcoming Events 04/13 • Access to Higher Education nolte hall, 4pm

Recently, financial aid has become a greater problem for more and more potential college students in the United States. What are the causes? What are the solutions? What does this turn mean for the future of higher education? The U of M’s Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Steven Rosenstone, will be discussing access to higher education in greater depth.

04/17 • Stephen Burn and Monica Youn

The piano tapered at the seams Filled over the strings With water Chocked thick With Dust From twenty years’ skin And fingers shredding into oblivion Letting crimson seep Through piano pores Warbling the sound Through the mic To the mixer

Living Sap by regina alexander I was conjured from constant boil, boil toil and trouble. Thick as molasses from the center. The tree of knowledge brewed, curling up and in away a bubble grew.

Traveling out through arms of light the finger tips of what held me a slight.

For out of night I coddled this image: utopian fields and day starred through emeralds, eyes that watered constantly. Until, became of me bursting the day as fingers broke free

the loft literary center, 7pm

Stephen Burn’s compilation of poetry, Parallel Play, is just what its title suggests—it is full of poetry about people who interact, but are ultimately concerned about their own self-interest above all else. Monica Youn’s Barter considers the transactions between things that we know exist, but refuse to acknowledge. Burn and Youn will be celebrating and reading from their compilations, and hopefully there will be no debates.

04/17 • Annual Premack Memorial Lecture Icoffman theater, 7:30pm

Michele Norris has been picking up information and reporting her findings in the wake of bigger commercialized news for years, and has continued to do so on NPR’s All Things Considered.

She will be the featured speaker at this year’s Premack Memorial Lecture, which aims to celebrate “the best public affairs reporting in Minnesota newspapers.”

04/18 • Mark Seely coffman bookstore, 2pm

Forget about the weather in Palookaville: You’re in Minnesota, and you don’t know what it’s going to be like next week, tomorrow or even in the next ten minutes. Mark Seely has got you covered, though. He and co-author Belinda Johnson somehow managed to compile enough accurate information to create The Minnesota Weather Almanac. Seely will be discussing his book and possibly explaining just why we have a season called “Road Construction.”

Varying the wave As the liquid drains And the muffling wanes Allowing delay to emerge From the bleeding thing Thundering descending minors In low registry In strange timing While shifting From the strings to the keys Mutilating fingers Crying With hair in his eyes And emotions unsheathed

which from no longer did I hang like sap off the tree.

Sweetly and full of juice, an almost bound sea.

And once I dropped from these tangled branches, they rained with such velocity I obtained, a child born of roots dug low and mother veins infiltrating I, a viscous enforced with debris, and propaganda I think. For as I went with mixed influence straight back to the earth I sank.

Temporary Metamorphosis in the Halls of St. George’s School for Boys

by Ricardo Reyes-Basoalto Wading through a chest-high sea of easy prey, dominating the crowding hall, she is foreign in this place. The perfectly patterned lockers stretch infinitely down the corridor. Monochrome landscape, free of pheromones and vibrant colors, anything exciting the emotions beyond squeaking Florsheim shoes (overwhelming all other sounds). Towering over the ten-year-old saplings, she navigates the elementary orchard

She falls into a distant life, vividly removed, she feels the itch of government issue bed sheets— caustic sandpaper tissue against her face, She looks up through her prison-patterned telescope and fantasize about this day.

She sighs now choosing an exceptionally short blond from the largely anonymous collection of miniature neckties and squeaking shoes.

and patiently waits ...

Pausing ...

confidence manifested in her expression, curiosity piquing her plucked eyebrows.

realizing now she knew this day would come she feels a crushing sense of self-defeat.

Literary

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The Side-Walk

Lucid Waking

by JOHN MACINTOSH

by laura winton

Someday when you are older, I will bring you to the forest that I planted. I dug a whole for each tree and bade The Rains to come. I made clear this is The Wood of My Son.

What follows

before the first word?

What tree’s dead falling fruit cracks

open upon the ground feeding

you seeds: the knowledge

of apples and gravity, falling

neatly into chalk outlines laid out

like a child’s school uniform for the word.

The knowledge— waking dreams in pictures: the ghost of Van Gogh’s ear still hears

the color of morning

light at soundspeed racing

to your waking lucid

eyes, scratching sleep from your temple

with mother’s brooches—pearls

and dreams and unnatural

understanding.

Cleanse

in a warm shower you’ve been dirty so long you’ve gotten used to your own smell, forgotten the warm wet drops

on your

skin

drip dry in the breeze.

Cleanse yourself.

The third eye

You are that son.

Each year, I return to that parcel of land. Now the trees have branches that connect completely to each other branch.

If one tree decided to fall, they would all fall together.

It is a no-wind zone. I willed it and made it so, so that no other child’s breath would touch your trees.

Only you. * In the years before the motor car, we walked among the paved roads and wondered what they were made for.

We did a dance we called The Side-Walk and we wore hats that you would deem ridiculous. But you are just a boy.

One road led to the spot where I planted your forest. * Things changed when you were born. Out went our collection of precious silences. They were replaced with your rocking crib and your robotic-dog. I guess I’m not bitter, even though.

17

waiting

yourself

You are too young to know these things.

But soon, when your legs can touch the pedals of our hybrid, I will take you to the forest with no wind.

I will parade you to the gods, and they will clap.

And if your electric dog yips, that is fine because this is the forest that was conceived for you.

of the hurricane will wash you beneath your skin, leave

behind the flesh after

the storm, lucid

awake.

Once I was a child in a family – now left to wander blind, scratching at scars.

Awake in dreams.

Lucid only in sleep.

Unnatural understanding –

the knowledge of nakedness.

Life

an

ellipsis . . .

To the Walker on the River by erica niemiec You wandered slowly downstream throwing your gaze to the other shore.

Small wonder: you have always loved your coastlines. You’d dart for a stone, like a heron fishing, pluck and then weigh it in your hand, smoothing away the sand.

There are markings in the sand, from somewhere younger in the time-stream, another traveler on your way.

That day, you did not share the shore.

You sank through water, pretty stone forgetting rivers you had loved.

There, in twilight, it seemed no one loved you, your hair soft and brown as sand and all their eyes as flat as stones, the ones tossed out by shallow streams to wait for you to tread their shore and tell them each how much they’d weigh, as if the world cared for a stone’s weight.

You chose two, only, that you loved

staring at you on the edge of the shore one perfect, rounded by sand, another bored and bitten by the stream, hole-filled, less whole stone.

Later, you will choose a gravestone, thread it through a chain to weigh your neck, fill it with a stream of tears. Only I know which one you loved best. And when your body turns to sand I will be waiting on the shore;

the farther shore, the shadowed shore.

You’ll know me, sitting on a stone; we’ll bury ourselves in wet sand neither of us caring how much it weighs.

It will embrace us and we’ll feel loved as we watch the boats slip off downstream.

I stand on the shore, tracing the way your path was set in stone, the way you loved.

Sand in my eyes, I follow the stream.

18

Sound&Vision

April 12-18, 2006

U Theater closes season with Cabaret brennan vance

THIS IS NOT THE LIZA MINELLI STORY By haily gostas The stage is full of them; writhing bodies mobbed by sexual energy. Heads are smothered in breasts, legs are flailing, and partners are swapping, each empty soul beckoning an invisible audience from any grim outside tragedies into their seedy underworld of hedonistic pleasure and delicious debauchery.

It is not until the stage manager halts the singing and dancing to give notes that these assorted riffraff become university students once again, merely actors and actresses taking a break from their rehearsal of Cabaret, the closer for the University Theatre’s 75:20 Mainstage season.

But when things are in motion and attention is

held, you get the idea: Visits to the nightclubs of 1930s Germany were as fantastical an escape from real-life horrors as was humanly possible.

“We’re here to entertain you, but you must pay attention,” instructs Tony Award-winning director Barbra Berlovitz. Cabaret is her latest production, and marks the former University Theatre actress’ return to teach a very important history lesson—one of acute sensitivity to the past, present, and future.

“I wanted to look at things thematically, because Cabaret is a warning piece of sorts,” she explains. “These situations shouldn’t be ignored or they’ll happen again.”

“You are at the mercy of what you are watching, and it certainly can be applied to modern

situations,” cast member Jairus Abts agrees.

Written by the notorious duo Kander and Ebb, who brought the sex and scandal of Chicago to Broadway, Cabaret is, at first, a fantastical but ultimately tragic exposure of Berlin nightlife during the rise of the Nazi regime. It details the relationships between two couples in this time of political tension: the Kit Kat Klub’s beautiful, boozing star attraction Sally Bowles (Sabrina Crews) and the seduced American writer Cliff Bradshaw (Ryan Lear); Cliff’s buttoned-up landlord Fraulein Schneider (Maria Effertz) and her kind Jewish tenant Herr Schultz (Gabe Steinberg). A magnetically twisted Master of Ceremonies (Abts) and his troupe of performers musically narrate their trials

Sound & Vision

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tions with show-stopping numbers all at once comical, erotic, and devastating.

“I’m trying not to think of this as 75:20’s big finish because then I wouldn’t be able to get anything done,” Berlovitz laughs. “I’m proceeding with this as with any show, as something that relates to the world we live in now. Obviously the music and the dancing of Cabaret are always spectacular, but there are a lot of correlations to reality.”

Berlovitz’s visions for Cabaret are hardly Hollywood, and she instead portrays the Kit Kat Klub as a dirty, brutal nightspot filled with lowlifes.

“This is not the Liza Minnelli story,” she jokes, referring to the 1972 film that customarily defines the role. “Minnelli’s performance was so specific to that version. When I research for a production, I go straight to the sources.” To prepare for Cabaret, Berlovitz immersed herself the book The Berlin Stories and the film I Am A Camera, extensively studying first-hand accounts of the events in Ger-

many at the time.

Despite her research, however, Berlovitz has her limits. “There are no completely new ideas. At some point all that has to be put aside and I have to seize what is here on this stage with these individuals.”

The character of Sally Bowles strikes a particular chord. “In a way, Sally exemplifies what a lot of people were doing. She wants to go beautiful and young because she can’t look a long life in the face.

She’s always running,” says Berlovitz, though she recognizes some merit to such a tragic character.

“Sally is someone you would definitely want as a friend. She walks into a room and everything is much more fun, however temporarily,” she adds.

“And our Sally, she’s great.”

The Sally who Berlovitz speaks so highly of is freshman Sabrina Crews, who stood out amongst 150-some students hoping to be cast as Bowles.

Crews, who was talked into auditioning by her fa-

Salon 3136

Making it okay to listen to classical music By erin belling

Dave hagen

It happens every time. You hold your breath and tiptoe into the concert hall to take a seat just as the pianist flips their tuxedo tails over the piano bench. Parched, you reach into your sack and fish for a cold beverage. You lean forward, holding the can of Grain Belt inconspicuously near the floor as you slip your fingernail under the metal tab. Unfortunately, there is no feasible way to mute the telltale crack and foam sizzle. You raise the can to your lips to slurp off the golden river, but, suddenly, whatever buzz you were about to enjoy is prematurely killed by hundreds of simultaneous dirty looks. All you wanted to do was get your Chopin on, but once again you find yourself stifling the urge to mutter even the faintest catcall, slamming beers in the bathroom stall between movements.

You’re not impolite or uncultured, and you’ve lived in shame for too long.

This is where Salon 3136 comes in. Their mis-

19

ther, admits to feeling a bit of initial intimidation in her first university production. “But working with everyone is motivational because they’re all so passionate,” she says.

Crews underwent research similar to Berlovitz’s, and decided on an unconventional interpretation. “In I Am A Camera, Sally is depicted as quite young, and you’re given more insight on her character. I wanted to convey her inexperience because I think deep inside she’s really just a scared little girl.”

Abts asked questions to get answers when it came to developing his own character. “I had to consider what the role of the MC was, what his job entailed, how he fit into society and history, and ultimately, what was going on around him,” he explains. “It has definitely been a process.”

No one ever said keeping things authentic was going to be simple. Despite the stress of cramped scheduling, musical director David Saffert praises

both his 9-piece cabaret band and the fast-paced direction of Berlovitz. “I don’t get to actually work with the band until a week from opening night,” he laughs. “But Barbara and I are on the same wavelength. We both have a sense of the necessity of drama within the music.”

“It’s not completely smoothed and polished,” Saffert adds. “The music of Cabaret fascinates me because it’s so rhythmically dark and reflecting of the past—very quirky, very real. You’ll hear each instrument individually, just as you would the singers. It’s raunchy and powerful, not some beautiful, sterile choir.”

After all, with a show rooted in such gritty reality as Cabaret, there must be all the blissful perfections and harsh imperfections of the era and its characterizations, or nothing.

sion: to offer “concert music” for the rest of us. The venue is welcoming and geared toward the events at which a younger, more relaxed audience would typically show up. Walking through the front door, it seems you’d be just as likely to stumble upon a game of beer pong or a poker night as you would an evening of concert music. They’ve hosted a series of events aimed at reinventing the image of concert music as something approachable, free from the potential pretentiousness of typical concert halls.

Their latest premiere, Rock Rite, featured a collaborative electronic remix of Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, the salon’s fourth 24-hour concert. No, you can put away the No Doze, the concert doesn’t last 24 hours. The standard rules are as follows: beginning at 8 p.m. on Friday night, composers are given 12 hours to write a piece for a randomly selected ensemble. Performers then have 12 hours to prepare beginning at 8 a.m. Saturday morning for an 8 p.m. performance Saturday night. This latest incarnation had a slight twist—it was the group’s first all-electronic 24 hour concert. The fourteen movements of Stravinsky’s controversial ballet were randomly assigned on Friday night to seven artists, including five University grad students (J.

Anthony Allen, Noah Keseeker, Zachary Crockett, Elliot Miles McKinley and Matt Dorn), and two local DJs (Oliver Gredf and Holly Hampten) to be remixed as they saw fit. There were no external samples allowed; source material could only be extracted from a shoddy 1950s RCA classic recording. The remixes were showcased Saturday evening along with a crudely edited video of the original performance in which each movement was sped up or slowed according to the length of the remix. The results were oddly poetic, ranging from moshpitinducing to tensely ambient.

The Salon 3136 experience bridges an uncomfortable gap for a more humble music listening audience. The musical line-up might involve a work from Bach followed by a piece by Elliot Smith. Sporadically inspired applause and trips to the fridge for a Leinie’s are encouraged. “We’re trying to say, that’s okay,” says Keseeker.

Salon 3136 will be hosting one more concert at their current location, after which they will be in transition to a new venue and seeking new sponsorships. For information about upcoming shows or about how to get involved as a composer, a performer, or a sponsor, visit www.3-1-3-6.com.

Cabaret opens April 20 and closes April 29, 2006 at the Rarig Center on the University of Minnesota West Bank.

For ticket information, call (612) 624-2345.

20

Sound & Vision

April 12-18, 2006

Album Reviews

Mates of State Bring It Back

By Michael mitchell In the world of “bigger is better” rock music, bands with lineups in the double digits reign supreme. Amidst these giant ensembles, it’s the husband and wife duo Mates of State who ironically produce the most colossal sound. One listen to “Think Long,” the opening track on Bring It Back,

The Unknown Prophets By katie kohlbeck The Unknown Prophets is a telling name for the Northeast Minneapolis hip-hop group. Local hiphop veterans Big Jess (producer/emcee), Mad Son (emcee) and Willy Lose (DJ) will lay their hearts and souls out for any listener willing to listen. In such a bling-bling, MTV hip hop era, it’s refresh-

Aaron Ridgeway

A Publicity and Mockery Sandwich

Extra Celebs Please By alex amend It would be moot to point out that Richard Nixon had no idea what his compulsive habit of recording conversations would get him in to. But this is

will leave your head spinning.

Bring It Back is Mates of States’ fourth fulllength release and their first for Barsuk records.

Without betraying their easily-identified sound, the band explores the potentials of the studio more than they have on previous records. Additional vocal layers and even a guitar or two find their way into the mix of the new album.

The new songs show all the elements of the Mates of State repertoire: happy organ riffs, danceable drum beats, and insane vocal harmonies. Kori Gardner (keyboards, vocals) gives more emphasis

to her piano playing with great results. “Like U Crazy,” a slower song with a lot of piano work is one of the most well-crafted songs the duo has offered to date.

With help from producer Bill Racine, Mates of State have released an album with an incredible sound. While the layering of multiple tracks and use of effects on the vocals takes away from the organic feel of their early records, it’s hardly a step in the wrong direction. If anything, it amplifies the energy that this duo brings to their CDs and their live shows.

ing to hear a group like the Unknown Prophets that actually offer poetic lyrics.

The Unknown Prophets’ latest album The Road Less Traveled carries on with the same attitude. It offers tight production and lyrics that mean something. The title is appropriate considering the group’s ambition for reaching ears that are brainwashed by mainstream hip-hop. The album considers and comments on the mainstream music industry, mobilizing against the grain, and shedding light on the misfortunes in life that we can never predict. While playing with the unpaved road

theme, the Unknown Prophets manage to express mad love for the Midwest, and in particular their home state of Minnesota. They also never forget to show appreciation for the supporters—creating a much more personal listening experience.

The artwork is also noteworthy. The artist, Chris Allen, (a.k.a. Inkproof) creates a sharp, professional and overall very attractive cover design.

So if you were going to judge an album by the quality of the cover, it would be safe to bet on The Road Less Traveled. The attractive cover is only the surface to an album that is sincere in the face of the mainstream music industry puppets.

fucking ridiculous, and fucking great. A group of actors resurrect Tricky Dick through 30-year old transcripts, so we get to see the overwhelmed and emotional “crook” beseeching Donald Rumsfeld to watch Brian’s Song for the film’s portrayal of race relations. He also lectures about drug use in America while smoking a joint with a confidant on the White House roof.

This is the basic format of Minneapolis native Michael Martin’s Verbatim Verboten to gather “private” transcripts of the rich, famous and powerful and give them to actors who recite them, word-forword and tongue-in-cheek, in what amounts to a potent pop culture lampoon.

Started in Chicago in 1999, Verbatim Verboten has collected over 200 transcripts. Court proceedings, TV interviews, e-mails, phone messages, offmic public events and 911 calls have been tossed like a lamb to the wolves of these actors’ calculated performances. “Most manuscripts are read completely,” said Martin, “but we screw around with the interpretation.”

Growing up in the Watergate era, and being buried like most in the Lewinsky fascination, Martin didn’t have to go far to find material and direction. And last year Martin, a resident of New Orleans, was delivered another load of epic governmental ludicrousness in the horrendous display of FEMA’s response to Hurricane Katrina.

As for other content, Martin need only pursue a few inquiries on the web to find lavish and opportune bait for a frenzy of celebrity. Last year, Paris Hilton’s portable Blackberry was famously hacked and information sewn through all of cyberspace.

Through a patient combing, the text-messaged details of Paris’ daily life bellow from an actor playing the part of a slam poet.

Even though Martin says, “We make no effort to keep current,” gems like a drunk Ashlee Simpson crawling over a McDonald’s counter are too good to pass up.

Martin succeeds in tugging on the instinctual draw of another (in this case a famous one) person’s misfortunes and/or private goings-on and relishes the comedy behind the cult of celebrity and power all the meanwhile skipping along the line of outright offensiveness and well-deserved ridicule.

Verbatim Verboten has evolved and expanded since its’ conception in Chicago, and has shocked audiences into laughter in Seattle, New Orleans and New York. Now, in its first full production in Minneapolis, 12 brand new transcripts glisten and gleam waiting to be devoured by guest actors and new witnesses.

And as the content rotates, every show will be different than the last. And in Verbatim Verboten’s scheduled run through April here in Minneapolis, that leaves plenty of mockery to be had.

Sound & Vision

www.wakemag.org

21

Movie Reviews

Thank You For Smoking

By chris wilson Smokers, non-smokers and those who somehow fit in some third category: go out and see Thank You for Smoking. Don’t be afraid; this movie won’t teach you anything you didn’t already know about smoking or the tobacco industry. It works as well as it does because the film skewers those who attack big tobacco equally as those who defend it.

Hollywood, humanitarians and Congress all receive pointed jabs. Equality hasn’t felt so refreshing for

a long time!

Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart, a great underrated actor when given the right material) is the master of charm and spin; he’s the top lobbyist for big tobacco, getting this job not through a fancy Ph.D. but because of a certain “moral flexibility” he possesses. He’s not evil; he’s just the spokesman for it. Naylor works as the vice president of a firm called the Academy of Tobacco Studies, a research group whose star scientist is so brilliant that he found no connection between smoking and lung cancer. Throughout the film, Naylor juggles pushing forward the tobacco industry’s goals and raising his 12-yearold son, who uses his father’s teachings to win school debates.

It made me unendingly happy that the film didn’t force our hate-ably lovable hero to undergo a Jerry McGuire-esque moral awakening. In fact, despicable as he is, I pretty much want to be Nick Naylor. He’s the most genuine, smooth-talking antihero to come out of Hollywood in ages. The film lacks a certain bite due to its universally accepted premise but there are plenty of great scenes, such as when anti-tobacco extremists kidnap Naylor and try to murder him with an overdose of nicotine patches. They inadvertently turn him into a figure of public sympathy when he survives due to his advanced tolerance built up through years of smoking. Naylor even spins his unlikely survival: he tells the press nicotine saved his life.

The writing in Thank You for Smoking is wit and sarcasm at its best. The only thing more impressive in the film is the cast that delivers the lines. From J.K. Simmons as Naylor’s unscrupulous boss (“We sell cigarettes. And they’re cool and available and addictive. The job is almost done for us.”) to Sam Elliott as the former Marlboro Man,

the cast is top notch and each fits their part amazingly well—except Katie Holmes as a seductive reporter. Maybe it’s the fact that she looks like a teenager to me. Maybe it’s that she can’t act (proven to us before in Batman Begins, Phone Booth, The Gift and her relationship with Tom Cruise), but whatever it is, she was the only letdown in a movie with nothing but let … ups.

I can’t imagine someone not enjoying this movie. Okay, I can. I understand that some people just don’t like cynical humor, and the message of personal choice isn’t for everyone—fascists and commies namely. Regardless, Thank You for Smoking is cleverly written, perfectly cast and well acted (if you ignore Katie Holmes any time she opens her mouth).

I’m running out of adjectives here so I thought I’d get this out of the way: this movie is a smoking satire!

Pun intended, you know?

Yeah, that’s why I really shouldn’t be paid to write.

Awesome! I Fuckin’ Shot That By katie kohlbeck Nothing about the Beastie Boys’ MCA, Adrock, Mike D and DJ Mix Master Mike is conventional so why should their concert film Awesome! I Fuckin’ Shot That be any different? At a 2004 sold-out concert at Madison Square Garden, the band handed out 50 video cameras to fans to capture the concert from their viewpoint. Yauch, who directs the Beastie’s videos under the alias Nathanial Hörnblowér, spent a year editing the footage of the concert. The end result is a mind-blowing kaleidoscope of images that captures the experience of a Beastie Boy’s concert. It’s an emotional film that is represented by a camera operator who turns the lens toward his cheering face, and another who films a girl that is engrossed in dancing. We’re taken along beyond the concert as a fan makes a run for the toilet and when a couple of fans, equipped with a camera, try to sneak backstage during the concert.

But it’s not just a series of randomly assembled shots. Awesome! is a 90-minute hybrid of a

music video, documentary and of course, comedy.

The editing of Awesome! is unbelievable. The audio synced up with the images is impeccable and graphic effects enhance the overall experience of the film. The visual effects employed in Awesome! create another dimension and eliminate the cheesy close-up shots of the performer or swooping shots over the audience typically seen in concert films.

Obviously graphic effects aren’t part of the reality of the concert but despite that, such amazing editing can make one forget that they are sitting on the couch or in a movie theater.

The Beastie’s perform a blend of their material, from the old to the newest album. At the end of each song I felt a strong urge to stand up and cheer, but realized that I was in a movie theater in Brooklyn Center, one of the 200 theaters that showed a special sneak preview on March 23. In addition to the special sneak preview, the film was enhanced with a short film by director Nathanial Hörnblowér, which will never be screened again. The short

features David Cross as the fictitious director who embarks on “A Day in the Life of Nathanial Hörnblowér.” Hörnblowér is just an ordinary man who favors dressing in traditional German clothes and prefers to transport himself by way of cross country skis, despite the fact there is no snow on the ground.

He makes his way around the city to the coffee shop and a chocolate haven, where he insists on dipping his finger in the chocolate. Hörnblowér references his German heritage as well as Irish background, all in a Scottish accent. It’s a worthwhile short film that further demonstrates the talent of the director, Yauch.

Even for people who aren’t totally into the hiphop group, Awesome! is a concert film masterpiece that can be appreciated not only for the subject choice, but the quality of editing and production, and above all the unconditional love that the fans put into shooting the Beastie Boys and one day when they look back on this film they will indeed say, “Awesome! I fuckin’ shot that.”

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Bastard

April 12-18, 2006

This Week in UofM History • April 13, 1980 • In honor of the just released movie, Friday the 13th, hundreds of UofM students dressed in hockey masks and butcher knives. However, some students got a little out of hand, resulting in the death of fifteen college students. They weren’t killed by Jason imitators, rather, they were killed by wandering off the Washington Ave. bridge because the eye holes on their hockey masks weren’t big enough, and they couldn’t see very well. This resulted in a university-wide ban on hockey masks. Brick Haircut, goalie for the men’s hockey team, was pretty pissed when the ban was instilled. But who cares about him. He was a douche bag.

The Dot Game!

Want ads Wanted: Less handicapped spaces or more handicapped people...those spots are so tempting.

Wanted: 2 kidneys … quickly, please!

Wanted: To have the same abilities of Inspector Gadget … Especially his gogo gadget penis. What a stallion.

Wanted: A radio station that only plays commercials. I’m getting sick of hearing all this music all the time.

Wanted: A cell phone so big that it doesn’t fit in your pocket so you’ll have to carry it around and everyone will see how big of cell phone you have and be totally jealous. That, or they’ll think you’re a big douche, which you probably are. Why would you want a phone that big anyways?

Sheesh.

Wanted: A flavor of vomit that doesn’t taste like vomit.

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Bastard

www.wakemag.org

23

alex judkins

Arbitrary Awards coolest cop

Robocop lamest cop

Sheriff Lame-o HONORABLE MENTION

Deputy Douche Bag most important cop

The mounted cop, because there’s nothing more important than having a mode of transportation that can poop on people nicest cop

The ones that don’t give you speeding tickets, despite the fact that you were going sixty in school zone with a bottle of gin in one hand, a crack pipe in the other, listening to John Tesh. He was a nice cop. craziest weapon a cop uses

A spiked baton dipped in a solution of rattlesnake venom, arsenic, urine, and Mississippi River water… actually, it’s just dipped in the Mississippi, which happens to contain all of those elements best tv show about cops

COPS best kind of cop

Copping a feel