CAN`T DUNK - Dolphin Student Group Web Accounts

The Undergraduate Magazine
Vol. V, No. 8 | November 29, 2004
Unsolved Mysteries
Lauren questions the more baffling aspects of Penn’s campus and culture.
Page 8
Timbre Triad
James reviews a trio of new albums
including Vanessa Carlton’s latest.
Page 7
Racist Attire
Michael laments stereotypes maintained by labels and consumers.
Page 5
Absolut Embarrassment
Andrew expresses distaste for the DP’s
“Social Ivy” series.
Page 4
THE BUM’S TURKEY
MARIAN LEE
MICKEY’S CHALLENGE
FOR PENN YO
MICKEY JOU | SITES AND SOUND
REVIEWING THE SAME
group twice is a tricky and
somewhat weary business.
You have seen the group
perform before, which
takes away half the novelty
of what they are trying to
do. Almost inevitably, your
mind reverts to the earlier
performance, giving a notso-slight bias to critiquing
the concert at hand. The venue may have changed from the
make-shift performance space at King’s Court to the more
formal setting of the Harrison Auditorium, but PennYo is
still the same original campus Chinese a cappella group
backed with strong talent and impressive musical skills.
The main thing to watch for, then, is how much they’ve
challenged themselves this semester—whether or not they
can rise to meet the very high standard they set last year.
The evening started out promisingly enough. A male
and a female singer opened the show with a short, romantic
duet that faded out with the light as a mood-setting teaser,
while the two excitable hosts for the evening, Philip Kor—
guest comedian from Simply Chaos—and PennYo’s own
Rohenna warmed the crowd with their rambunctious onstage verbal exchanges. The guest performance by Off the
Beat, another campus a cappella group, was less than solid.
Maybe it was due to the fact that one of the microphones
was conspicuously off-balance, making it hard for the lead
vocal singer to, well, lead. Or maybe it was because they
were not used to the sea of expectant Asian faces. If you
want to talk about having a target demographic, Off the
Beat’s audience is decidedly Caucasian. Whatever the case,
it did not solve the mystery of why the male lead was chosen
to sing the first song, JoJo’s “Get Out,” as his voice range did
not match the arranged melody. I could not hear his low
notes and his high falsettos seemed to come out of nowhere.
From the melodramatic gesturing and staccato phrasing of
the female lead, I managed to infer that the nameless third
song was in the angry-rock style of Avril Lavigne and Pink.
The group’s strongest cover was Frou Frou’s “Let Go,” with
a strong accompaniment and an even stronger lead vocal
performance by Deb, who kept the breathless quality of the
song about ninety-percent of the times.
Coincidentally, ninety-percent is the overall grade I
gave the PennYo concert. The performance on the whole
was solid—the lead vocalists could sing the necessary range
and were not embarrassingly contrived in their stage presence, but it was not a spectacular show, either. Spectacular
would be Andrew Chung’s debut solo in “Airport 10:30,”
a triple-threat combination of good showmanship, overthe-top sentimentality, and undeniably talented falsetto
scatting. There was a touch of Michael Jackson in his performance. First of all, he’s got the jacket—although his was
black and Michael’s was red. More importantly, his body
moved to the music. Chung’s hand gesturing did not feel
staged, but appeared to be a connection to the interpretation of the music. Even if it felt a little over-the-top, the audience accepted it because of the sincere singer’s authentic
quirks, not because it was a show of look-at-how-into-themusic-I-am. And, it must be said because it’s a fact often
taken for granted, I’ll be damned if this guy didn’t have
spot-on vocal range for the song.
The next two songs, “Rooftop” and “Tropical Rainforest”, were not up to par. Yes, the melodies were lush. Yes,
the lead vocals and the back-up were in tune, in sync, and
enjoyably presented. But what was new about that? It was
rather disappointing to hear three contemporary Chinese
romantic ballads in a row, considering the range of musical
capabilities the group displayed last year. What happened
to the musically challenging vocal arrangement of “My
Anata”, or the spirited update on old classics like “FraContinued on PAGE 7
IVY PLAYERS
CAN’T DUNK
BY ADAM GOLDSTEIN
THE DATE: March 24, 1979. The place: Salt Lake City, Utah.
Jimmy Carter is the president of the United States, the Cold War is
in full swing, and Gloria Gaynor’s disco anthem, “I Will Survive”, is
tearing up the charts. Yet for sports fans here in the cozy confines
of Utah’s Special Events Center, as well as throughout the nation,
the pressing issue of the moment is this semifinal match of the
NCAA basketball tournament featuring Ervin “Magic” Johnson
and the Michigan State Spartans against the Pennsylvania Quakers.
You probably think this is some perverse sports fantasy of
mine, right? Well, think again. During that memorable year, the
Penn basketball team, carried by the play of Tony Price, the Ivy
Player of the Year, did secure a place in the Final Four. Sure, Penn
was manhandled by Magic and the Spartans and was unable to
rally after falling behind 50-17 at halftime. But who cared? This
team had been the first Ivy team in 14 years to reach the Final
Four, and had come within one game of playing an overmatched
Indiana State team—featuring a transfer from Indiana University
named Larry Bird—for the National Championship.
Today, most sports fans look at Penn’s 1979 Final Four run
as a wacky athletic aberration from the distant past. In today’s
big money era of college basketball, in which universities make
millions of dollars for advancing in the NCAA tournament, high
profile coaches make millions of dollars a year, and colleges begin
recruiting players before they can get their driver’s licenses, Ivy
League teams simply fail to compete against the more established
programs. Teams like Penn and Princeton cannot give out the
highly prized scholarships necessary to secure the top prep-school
players and their stringent academic requirements further restrict
the entry of high school players who might otherwise be interested
in attending an Ivy League program. Today, Penn would never
bother trying to recruit a player as skilled as Tony Price, a prep
standout in the 1970s at Taft high school in the Bronx, and a future
second NBA draft pick.
That said, I truly believe that the present landscape of NCAA
basketball, no matter how commercialized or corrupt, does provide
Continued on PAGE 3
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N OVEMBER 29, 2004 | FIRST CALL | VOL . V N O . 8
P AGE 2
FirstCall
Editorial
Vol. V, No. 8 | November 29, 2004
The Undergraduate Magazine
Editor-in-Chief
Robert Forman
Editors
Andrew Pederson
Lauren Saul
Assistant Editor
Shira Bender
Columnists
Robert Forman
Adam Goldstein
Julie Gremillion
Brian Hertler
James Houston
Mickey Jou
Michael Patterson
Andrew Pederson
Lauren Saul
Anna Strongin
Writers
Shira Bender
Victor Bonilla
Christine Chen
Steve Landis
Artists
Stephanie Craven
Shira Bender
Marian Lee
Layout Editor
Krystal Godines
Layout Staff
Julie Gremillion
Anna Stetsovskaya
Business Managers
Jordan Barav
Alex Chacon
Greg Lysko
Marketing Manager
Leah Karasik
Marketing Staff
Lauren Saul
Anna Strongin
BUDDY, CAN YOU SPARE A RIDE?
How many University of Pennsylvania students use SEPTA services? A rough estimate? We’d wager
the percentage, by graduation, is everyone. Every single student. Services provided include the blueline subways, green-line trolleys, buses, regional rail, and more. Essentially, if you don’t have a car on
campus, don’t have the change to shell out to a taxi, and don’t want to walk to Bryn Mawr, SEPTA is the
universal and cost-effective solution.
As students may or may not be aware, SEPTA is experiencing a deep budget deficit to the tune of $62.2
million dollars—after the roughly $7.8 million dollars of emergency funding passed onto the transit
organization this summer. Unfortunately, state law requires SEPTA to adopt a balanced budget.
The solution? Cuts! Massive cuts! SEPTA’s contingency plan, should it not receive new funding from
the Pennsylvania Legislature in Harrisburg, is to lay off approximately 1,400 employees come January 1st,
2005, and to cut services—a logical loss given the decrease in employees.
Which services? Well, forget weekend excursions to… anywhere. All weekend transit: buses, subways,
trains, etc., will be eliminated. Weekday services won’t suffer so drastically, but will drop by approximately
20%, effectively canceling early morning and late evening trips, as well as canceling a few routes. And
there will be a cost to you, the passenger, beyond the inconvenience. Single subway fees will be increased
to $2.50, while the cost of tokens will rise by 40 cents. The less expensive off-peak fares on the regional
rail lines will be terminated as well.
Several motions have been introduced by representatives in the Pennsylvania Legislature, but as of
this writing nothing has received the required momentum or support to alleviate the situation. To make
matters worse, the Pennsylvania Legislature adjourns November 30th. If this problem is not resolved
by the time of printing, there will be a mere 24 hours left for action. Otherwise, the contingency plan
becomes fact.
We here at First Call urge the Pennsylvania Legislature to consider the repercussion of SEPTA’s
anticipated cuts. The proposal is simply not an acceptable solution. Should SEPTA’s budget be put
under control? Undeniably, but the transition needs to be smoother than a sudden drop, essentially
cutting off all non-commuter traffic. We certainly don’t feel like paying exorbitant taxi fares every time
we wish to go to King of Prussia, to an area school to visit friends, to Trenton to catch an NJ Transit train
to New York City, or more importantly, or to Old City for dinner, a movie or bar-hopping.
Department of Corrections:
In the November 15th issue of First Call, we mistakenly forgot the first sentence of
James Houston’s article “Rockism of Ages”. The article should have stated: “A good
rock record is a testimony, and on that basis I charge Danny and the Juniors, creators of 1958’s “Rock’n’Roll Is Here to Stay”, with perjury.” We apologize for any confusion that may have been caused by our error.
JULIE GREMILLION | SOUND ADVICE
Webmaster
Rachit Shukla
Contact Information
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(215) 898-3200
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clubs.wharton.upenn.edu/fcpaper
Submissions
Email letters to the editors and
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Students, please include your
school and class.
Editorial Policy
First Call is the undergraduate magazine
of The University of Pennsylvania. First
Call is published every Monday. Our
mission is to provide members of the
community an open forum for expressing ideas and opinions. To this end, we,
the editors of First Call, are committed
to a policy of not censoring opinions.
Articles are provided by regular columnists and writers. They are chosen for
publication based on the quality of writing and, in the case of commentaries, the
quality of argumentation. Outside of the
weekly editorial and other editorial content, no article represents the opinion of
First Call, its editorial board, or individual members of First Call other than the
author. No content in First Call unless
otherwise stated represents the official
position of the administration, faculty,
or student body at large of the Wharton
School or the University of Pennsylvania.
Julie presents the old, the new
and the diehard favorites.
IN STEREO
“Over and Over”
Nelly feat. Tim McGraw
Nelly and R&B fans alike must be incredibly grateful he released this single off his
album Suit because it meant they were
finally able to get away from the first
single “My Place”, which was a cheesy
nightmare from hell to discerning listeners. Released simultaneously along with
Sweat, the harder hip hop edge of Nelly
so to speak, Suit has fared far better on
the charts and with fans due to the quality of most of the tracks. Nelly chose to do
a fair number of compilations with such
artists as Anthony Hamilton, who pretty
much makes any duet golden, and of
course country singer Tim McGraw, the
big shock to the urban community. It
may take a couple listens, but this song
will grow on you. The looping of the
lyrics creates an interesting effect that
syncs well with the lyrics themselves. It
wouldn’t be half as good a song without
Tim McGraw’s background vocals, which
sound as though he’s coming from an
old record. Arguably, the best part is the
break in the middle of the song where
the voices are distilled, and the effect is
incredible. “Over and Over” is a great
track; just don’t listen to it too many
times in a row because it repeats itself
quite a bit during the length of the song.
RETRO REWIND
“Maybe I’m Amazed”
Paul McCartney
EDITORIAL ADVICE
Written in 1969 in honor of his wife Linda,
“Maybe I’m Amazed” is one of Paul McCartney’s signature tracks. Apparently, it was
suggested during a Beatles’ recording session
for Let It Be but dismissed and so became
one of many tracks found on post-breakup
solo albums. Paul included it on his first solo
album McCartney in 1970, and it quickly became one of the most enduring tracks from
the album although he never released it as a
single. Word has it he was inspired by Linda
after the Beatles broke up and her influence
and voice can be heard in the form of background vocals. The song is a very powerful
expression of love and need; it’s one of those
songs you need when you can’t really explain
how you feel and “I love you” just doesn’t cut
it. Personally my favorite lines are “Baby I’m
a man and maybe I’m a lonely man Who’s in
the middle of something That he doesn’t really understand”. I also highly recommend
the 1976 live version found on Wings Over
America, which gives Paul a great deal of
freedom in playing with the vocals.
If you’ve watched TV in the past few
weeks, you’ve experienced this song on
the new ipod commercials. I say “experienced” because the accompanying visuals
are dizzying; apparently, you’re supposed
to experience vertigo while listening to
it. Normally, I frown upon such commercialization, but this is U2, the guys
who reinvented mass marketing. Their
new album How to Dismantle an Atomic
Bomb was released on November 23rd, and
critics have already proclaimed it another
sensational step in the band’s illustrious
career. Which means we can expect another fistful of Grammy nominations. To
be honest, this song has temporary popularity. It’s a catchy track with a solid rock
tempo, but it’s no “Mysterious Ways”. I
firmly believe U2 chose to release it as the
first single both for its instant catchiness
but because ipod could use it in a commercial. The rest of the album may and
probably does contain a selection of really
powerful stuff, but this track just doesn’t
live up to U2 potential. The random
spoken part in the middle is awkward
and doesn’t fit: “Just give me what I want
and no one gets hurt.” The bottom line
is that these boys still rock like nobody’s
business, but “Vertigo” isn’t anything you
haven’t already heard from them.
“Vertigo”
U2
N OVEMBER 29, 2004 | FIRST CALL | VOL . V N O . 8
P AGE 3
DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD
BY SHIRA BENDER
THIS JUST IN: The witch is dead. Or, should I say, the warlock? I guess in this day and age, men could be witches, kind of
like male nurses, but we won’t let political correctness bog us
down, I hope. The day has finally arrived. Mohammed AbdelRaouf Arafat As Qudwa al-Hussaeini, better known as Yasser
Arafat, husband, father, and friend to terrorists everywhere,
is no more. Let me just take a moment here…FINALLY!!!!
Oh, calm down. I’m sick of being told that I can’t enjoy this
moment. Death is a sad thing when good people die,but when
someone who has clear disregard for the sanctity of life and
peace expires, he deserves to die. Yeah, that’s right. I said it.
Though I’m not an angry person by nature, I can’t keep quiet
on this one. Stop defending the guy! Shut up, Chirac! Paris is
lovely in the springtime, but your country needs a reality check
on the whole good guy/bad guy deal. Bush, just come right out
and say we’re glad the obstacle’s gone — remember that time
when you said we wanted him out? Stop being all nice about
it, people, it’s not like he ever did anything for you, unless
you’re a Palestinian militant who dreams of blowing himself
up someday on a bus full of Israelis. In fact, chances are, if you
died, he’d be happy about it, or he would have been, because
you would be one less American voice on Israel’s side. And if
you’re reading this and thinking, “Hey, I’m not on Israel’s side,”
well then too bad, ‘cuz the country you’re living in is.
Of course, there is the sad reality that his death won’t actually bring much positive change to Israel’s ongoing predicament, so I’m not celebrating because I think we’re on the verge
of peace; we are still far from that day. But at least I can go to
sleep tonight knowing that no more innocent deaths will be
smiled upon and encouraged by that man who called himself
a leader for peace.
Yes, I know I’m using some strong language here, but only
to show how unafraid I am to say these things, because I know
the facts stand behind me. I’m sorry if I am offending anyone
with this article. I don’t mean to. I know we’re all so happy in
our liberal PC sunshine world here at the U of P, but honestly, I
am not prejudiced toward any group of people, and I certainly
am not one of those types to blindly support every single act of
the Israeli government; I love Israel, but not all of its policies.
No, I am simply a girl against people who celebrate killing,
especially the killing of my own people. Arafat was, without
a doubt, one of those celebrators. Ariel Sharon and Benjamin
Netanyahu have both accused him of being a murderer and
a terrorist. Sharon likens him to Nazis, while Netanyahu attributes to him the perfection of the fine art of airplane hijacking. (I guess Osama found his mentor.) However, I don’t
need the big name guys to prove it. His record speaks for itself.
Go Google the Black September group, Munich Olympics,
PLO…it’s all there on the information superhighway, as much
as some interested parties might want to hide it from you. He
was a terrorist, in the plainest sense of the word, and terrorists
are bad people. That should be clear enough for everyone with
a bit of common sense. Have we become so bogged down with
politically correct fervor that we cannot see the killer for the
anti-Israel sentiment?
Over the course of writing this article, I came across some
ignorant, though I’m sure well-meaning peers. Comments
such as, “Couldn’t you say the same thing about Sharon?” and,
“Well you can’t rejoice when a nation’s leader has just died”
and, “but he won the Nobel peace prize!” abounded. After a
slight shudder, I tried to respond as best I could.
No, you cannot say the same thing about Sharon. Well,
I guess you could, but you would simply be wrong. Sharon
has never kept a hidden agenda; we all know he’s a militant
guy, but there is a difference between fervently defending your
country and ordering
terrorist attacks. Yes,
Israel and its leaders
have made mistakes.
Huge ones, drastic
ones, even deadly
ones. So have most
countries, most governments, and most
leaders (cough George
cough W cough Bush).
I am not here to defend anyone’s actions,
since I am a peaceful
gal by nature. But
there is a logical difference between these
types of attacks and
Arafat’s methodologies and ideas. He, like most Palestinian children’s textbooks
proclaim, wanted all Israelis dead. No, I can’t prove this one
with a nicely placed quote ripped out of context of a larger
hateful speech, though that’s probably a result of the hard
work of well-trained record destroyers rather than an actual
lack of such comments. Rather, I base this accusation on his
actions and decisions over the course of his entire career. If he
truly was only seeking peace and territory for his people, he
would have gladly accepted the overly generous offer made by
Ehud Barak, which included Israel’s nearly total withdrawal
from the territories, the removal and destruction of dozens
of Israeli settlements, and even the re-division of Jerusalem.
Instead, he chose to turn down the offer and continue the cycle
of violence and indecision. He was not a man for peace.
No, we can’t rejoice when a nation’s leader dies. Luckily for
us, Arafat was far from what you could call a “leader,” unless
you mean it in the sense of a leader towards destruction. A
true leader cares about his people enough to make wise and
fair decisions that will ultimately benefit those he leads as well
as those surrounding them. A true leader doesn’t steal billions
SUDAN
NCAA
administration could commit funds instead of American
soldiers and have a true stake in the outcome of the fighting.
The U.S. currently has a private contractor assisting with
housing and logistics to support the African Union ceasefire
monitoring mission, and one-tenth of Americans in Iraq in
2003 were private contractors, not American soldiers. Thus,
one can see that the corporate option is a real one, not just
wishful thinking.
A third, and certainly not final, option is for America
to declare war on the GOS under the umbrella of the Bush
Doctrine, as that state is a full-fledged sponsor of terrorism
against the United States. The negatives of this option are
obvious beyond mention. The positives, though, are real and
beg that this option be considered. First, there is the obvious
humanitarian utility of removing the horribly oppressive government currently in place. Second, it would remove a core
state sponsor of al-Qaeda and terrorism in general. Third,
this option would give the United States a stake in the outcome. The aftermath of this war is another topic entirely, but
we must bear in mind that hardly anything could be worse
than what is going on in the country right now.
If President Bush means to make good on his promise
to fight terrorist regimes, he must act swiftly in Sudan. If
America is going to fulfill its role as a beacon of hope for the
rest of the world, there is little reason not to answer the plea
of hundreds of thousands of persecuted black Africans. While
none of the choices are particularly attractive— paying others
to kill, or sending American troops to do the killing themselves— we must recognize that the Sudanese government is
nothing more than a bunch of glorified Islamic terrorists to
whom reason and negotiation have no appeal. Military intervention may be the only solution to this seemingly endless
crisis. Whether you are led by your heart or your head, it falls
upon you to recognize this reality.
a setting in which Ivy League teams can succeed, and possibly
advance deep into the NCAA tournament. Now, I am sure
that most fans who witnessed Penn’s victorious performance
over the Quinnipiac Bobcats last week, a game which saw
neither team successfully dunk the basketball, would disagree
with this assertion. True, the most uninformed of observers
can instantly recognize the difference in athleticism between
players in the Ivy League and in the major conferences.
One must also take note of the effect the changing nature
of the NBA has had on the college game. Each year, more
and more prep players are opting to skip college and declare
directly for the NBA draft immediately after graduating high
school. Players who decide on attending college are loathe to
stay for more than one or two years, as they are intent on entering the draft before their perceived value begins to diminish. NBA teams have done nothing to dissuade high school
and college players from this manner of thinking, illustrated
by the Portland Trailblazers’ asinine decision to select Sebastian Telfair, an unproven highschooler, in last year’s draft in
lieu of reigning NCAA Player of the Year, Jameer Nelson.
The departure of the nation’s top young players from the
college ranks has had the inevitable effect of decreasing the
absolute quality of play in NCAA basketball. That is, it has
lessened the level of play within the nation’s major college
conferences. Play within leagues such as the Ivy League has
been unaffected, as teams from these less noted groups were
not going to sign the top high school players who are skipping
the college-step for the NBA, in the first place. This leaves a
distinct rift within the college game.
On one side lie the established college programs, whose
teams largely compose the nation’s top 25 clubs. These teams
have become reliant on the play of talented underclassmen
who have not yet left for the NBA and on journeymen upperclassmen who aren’t good enough to leave early for the pros.
On the other side of the divide are teams such as Penn
and Princeton, which lack the marquee players sported by
the high profile clubs, and are thus able to regularly send
Continued from PAGE 8
Victor Bonilla is a senior in the College. You can write to him at
vbonilla@sas.
of dollars from his people and stash it away in private bank accounts. A true leader doesn’t reject a plan that would provide
security and prosperity for his people. By the way, a fun factoid
for you all: the guy wasn’t even really a “Palestinian” to begin
with. He was born in Egypt and claimed to have been born in
Jerusalem. To put it bluntly, he lied to gain acceptance. Sure,
immigrants can become leaders — check out Arnold over
there on our sunny west coast, he seems to be doing quite well
for himself. But has he ever pretended to have been born in
LA?
As for the Nobel Peace prize Arafat received: Back in
1994, Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzchak Rabin all received
this honor “for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East”
in their participation in the Oslo Accords. He was given the
prize as recognition of his commitment to peace and in the
belief that he had renounced his previous acts of terror. The
Oslo Accords required Arafat to recognize Israel’s right to
exist, to guarantee Israel’s safety within its borders, and to
work through a peaceful series of negotiations toward resolving continuing problems. One of the Nobel Prize committee
members, Kaare Kristiansen, chose to resign rather than be a
part of a group awarding Arafat with such a prize. In a statement made in 2003, Kristiansen said, “Arafat is not a peace
loving pacifist but a war-monger and a butcher, an ill fortune,
both for his own people and for his neighbors.” He went on to
publicly deplore the award, and lament the fact that the Nobel
committee refuses to revoke prizes. Hindsight is 20/20, but it
turns out he had the right idea all along. Arafat did not uphold
any of the terms of Oslo, and he did not remain committed to
peace. Back in 1988, he said in front of a UN assembly, “We
want peace...we are committed to peace, and we want to live
in our Palestinian state and let others live.” Nice sound-clip.
But what actually happened during the subsequent years of
the “peace process”? A steady build-up of capability by Yasser
Arafat’s forces on the way to their goal of destroying Israel, a
steady increase in terrorist attacks, with 73 Israelis killed and
more than 100 wounded in 1994, and a steady decline in the
quality of relations between Israel and the Palestinian leadership. Perhaps someone should’ve told those other committee
members that once a terrorist, always a terrorist. Or maybe
they just felt bad giving it to Peres and Rabin and not to Arafat. They wouldn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.
Please don’t start emailing me and calling me insensitive
and ignorant and prejudiced and hateful, though I wouldn’t
mind discussing these issues further. I am none of the above.
I’m well-informed and simply glad to be rid of one of the
obstacles to peace, and one of the condoners of terrorism. It
might be wishful thinking to hope that his replacement will
be any better, but Palestinian leadership certainly can’t get too
much worse.
Shira Bender is a freshman in the College. You can write to her at
shiratb@sas.
Continued from PAGE 1
out senior laden teams because no Ivy player is ever talented
enough to leave school early to go to the NBA. What these
teams lack in athleticism, they make up in experience, fundamentally sound play, and guile—characteristics notably
absent from most of the top 25 teams in the country. This
disparity allows schools from the Ivy League, and other less
major conferences, to compete with the nation’s top teams.
In the last decade, Ivy teams have exploited this advantage
and have often fallen just short of making a significant impact
on the NCAA tournament. Two years ago, a Penn team led
by senior stars Ugonna Onyekwe, Koko Archibong, and Andy
Toole nearly upset Oklahoma State in the first round of the
tourney. Had they been victorious, they would have faced
eventual national champion Syracuse, who sluggishly played
through its first two tournament games. In 1996, a similarly
experienced Princeton team knocked off defending national
champion UCLA in the first round of the tournament. Two
years later the Tigers defeated a highly touted UNLV club in
the same round.
This year, Princeton again rolls out a highly vaunted and
experienced team, one which has received numerous preseason votes to be listed in the top 25. Tonight, at the time of
writing, a Penn team with only two starting seniors squares
off with Providence in the NIT preseason tournament for a
chance to play Wake Forest, an early favorite to win the National Championship at Madison Square Garden.
Will one of these two Ivy League championship contenders make a deep run in the NCAA tournament this year? Who
knows. Regardless of whether your blood runs Red & Blue,
or Black & Orange, any fan of college basketball in its purest,
most unadulterated form has a duty to root for whichever Ivy
team is sent to the NCAA tournament, as that team pursues
its quixotic run for a Final Four berth.
Adam Goldstein is a junior in the College. You can write to him at adamsg@sas.
N OVEMBER 29, 2004 | FIRST CALL | VOL . V N O . 8
P AGE 4
MIXED DRINKING MESSAGES
Muddled Reporting Characterizes Recent DP Series
ANDREW PEDERSON | BRUT FORCE
ON MONDAY, November 15th, I
found a large blemish on the cover of The Daily Pennsylvanian:
“Heavy Use Consistent at Penn:
Increased U. spending has not
decreased consumption level.”
Thinking it was a fluke, I disregarded it until Tuesday, when
I was confronted with “Social
norms ads fail to reduce alcohol
use: Penn data, national research do not indicate effectiveness.” Whenever the DP strikes an authoritative
headline, one always has to look twice to see if they
haven’t made it up. When two appear on consecutive
days, with three more planned for the series, one has to
wonder if they all haven’t gone completely insane.
Monday marked the first day of the DP’s five day
report on the “Social Ivy,” in which they expound the
peculiarities of Penn’s campus drinking culture, which,
as any who have ventured out on weekends know, is to
parties as a wet dream is to sex: imagined pleasure followed by involuntary convulsions and an awful mess
the next morning. In all seriousness, though the DP’s
series may be well-meaning, it is fatally flawed in its
expectations of outcomes, its interpretation and framing of data, and most importantly its contribution to
the problem.
Failure is a strong word for anything. Last week
the football team lost to Harvard, putting them decidedly in the “failure” category by DP standards. Cancer
researchers, in their inveterate failings, did not, despite
decades of funding and hard work, announce their
cure. I recall that a great deal of public financing goes
toward public outreach and support programs, yet
when I walk the streets of Philadelphia or any other
major metropolis, I still see droves of homeless and
signs of drug epidemics. What a failure. Further, what ever
became of the U.N.’s stated goal for world peace? Perhaps the
DP should let us know when those efforts, too, have failed and
are no longer salient.
The social norming campaign never stated a reduction
in the overall consumption of alcohol among Penn students
as a goal. Social norming is based on well-known theories
of harm reduction, which still allow undesirable behavior
but introduce change slowly through awareness and mutual
understanding. The DP was kind enough to quote Stephanie
Ives, Director of Alcohol Policy Initiatives, saying “the reason
you do [establish a social norms campaign] is, number one,
getting people to talk about alcohol abuse … It has succeeded
in that way.” On the front page, however, they boldly proclaim
that the program had not fulfilled its intended mission and in
the next issue imply that it was a waste of funds.
How can the DP justify printing large, colorful headlines
which contradict even its own content? These shameful
headlines are indicative of the DP’s in ability to overcome
their biases as students in accurately reporting the state of
university policy. Rather, they chose to include all of the
pertinent facts underneath an entirely disingenuous banner
that fundamentally perverts their meaning and relevance. As
most people know, the front page of the student newspaper is
difficult to get past. Rarely do articles spark enough interest
to get the reader inside of the paper to the jumps, but for the
daily frustration of The New York Times’ crossword puzzle.
Even then, is it really worth it? In reality, the front page is
the only exposure many students receive, if any at all. The DP
must realize this because they has exploited their bias to unfairly frame the reduction alcohol policies as expensive, ill-fitting failures, even though the majority of the actual content of
the articles and the simple dictates of common sense suggest
otherwise. This year’s editorial board must have been watch-
ing Fox News very closely, for they have begun to subscribe to
the obscene art of the American Media Mind Fuck. I remind
you that “The Social Ivy” series was intended to be a news report, not an opinion piece.
As much as one can expect of an imitation of the imitative
mass media, the DP took real facts and reasonable observations and misconstrued them in a veiled threat of failure. Instead of representing the issue fairly and not exercising a professional prejudice, the information was hopelessly warped to
convey a message the evidence does not entirely support. For
this reason, the DP is entirely complicit in the perpetuation of
Penn students’ unhealthy drinking habits. Why obscure and
spin the “effectiveness” of the social norms campaign to show
complete failure, if not to defend the self-image of a happily
drunk college student?
Although it had the opportunity to support a worthwhile
program that is still in many ways in its infancy, the messages
in the DP uniformly reinforce the status quo and wage what
is, in reality, an antithesis to what the Alcohol Policy Initiatives
are trying to achieve. The DP is in this way tacitly displaying
its support for unregulated alcohol use at Penn through a
variety of literal and visual messages. Alcohol paraphernalia,
a shot glass inscribed with the Penn logo, and a liquor bottle
modeled on those from the popular Absolut ads, appear
prominently in each of the first two series. Images such as
these cross the line of objective journalism and venture into
outright manipulation. According to the DP, these are the
only suitable images with which to associate alcohol, and
they go hand in hand with the title of the series, “The Social
Ivy.” Did I miss the meeting where we all decided we were the
“Social Ivy,” or did I simply ignore the idiotic, baseless classifications of schools that riddle the Princeton Review, which are
gleaned from student surveys? The” Social Ivy,” like much of
the drinking culture here at Penn, is largely a self perpetuating myth which ultimately finds its roots in the
misconceptions of the students themselves.
Enter the social norms campaign. Because
administrators like Stephanie Ives assume, correctly, that there is little chance of preventing
alcohol consumption outright among students,
their goal is to encourage healthy approaches
and attitudes towards drinking and other behaviors. Foremostly, the ads which tout “4 or Fewer”
are not targeted at students who already engage
in drinking safely. Rather, the ads are targeting
the population who is most at risk; those who
drink “ten or fewer” drinks per night. If the
campaign succeeds, then high risk users either
reduce their intake or do so in a way which has
less potential to cause problems. Statistically,
the campaign may not reduce actual consumption numbers, but this in no way indicates the
kind of failure insinuated in the DP.
Further, the addle-brained beliefs in a
“Social Ivy” and other such nonsense about
Penn’s status as the elite school where one may
alternately work hard and then “play hard” are
next to impossible to change in the current Penn
population. Simply read the DP extension 34th
Street, and immediately you have an idea of
what is and is not socially acceptable within the micro “popculture” of the Penn community, and just how deeply rooted
this kind of crap is. Information and behavioral modification
projects, such as the social norms campaign, are understandably effective only in the long term and must be given ample
time to counter decades of social programming on numerous
levels: in incoming and current students. The DP, for its part,
should make a distinct effort not to subtly undermine such
laudable, progressive efforts with its shameful, stilted portrayals of alcohol use at Penn—for 34th Street, all I can say is stop
telling me how to be cool on the weekends and get a life, you
pretentious pricks. If the DP could let go of these immature
stances and avoid stereotyping themselves and the rest of us
as drunken, carefree college students, maybe there would be
some hope for forgetting about upholding our “Social Ivy”
image and creating a social atmosphere where people don’t
get their stomachs pumped at the behest of Neanderthal frat
rituals, or fall to their deaths reliving the “good ol’ days.” Is
that so much to ask?
Andrew Pederson is a sophomore in the College. You can write to him
at awl@sas.
PHEROMONES: A FAD FOR ALL SEASONS
A N N A S T R O N G I N | A TA S T E O F M E D I C I N E
UGG BOOTS are getting old. It’s
too cold for those tiny pleated tennis skirts. Everyone owns an iPod.
I think it’s time for a new fad, but
this time I’m not talking about
clothing or electronics, I’m talking pheromones. They may not
be anything tangible, but they are
totally cool and can get you a lot
more than a short skirt can.
For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, pheromones are very subtle scents given off by men and women that
trigger hormonal changes in others. In the 1970s, synchronicity of menstrual cycles in women living together was found to
be related to pheromones. These invisible molecules are best
known for their role in developing physical attraction.
On one hand, this is bad. No matter how many hours you
spend at the gym or how high you pop up your shirt collar, if
the pheromones you emit are not appealing to a certain girl,
then there may be nothing you can do to get her attention. On
the other hand, the presence of this invisible chemical force is
quite good because it can rationalize the fact that you’re really
turned on by the fat, ugly guy who sits next to you in class.
It is precisely the element of rationalization that is so
appealing to me. I mean, just think about it. If the word
spreads, and research continues to substantiate the existence
of substances that are responsible for all the obnoxious, annoying, and desperate things we do in the name of sex and
love, then we will be able to justify all of those things and do
them even more frequently!
A study published last year that was conducted at our very
own university found that women who were unknowingly
subjected to smelling extracts of male sweat tended to have
up-regulated levels of the luetenizing hormone—a condition
essential for ovulation. Hence, a woman will never again
have to feel like there is something deviant in obsessing over a
guy for 24 hours. Rather, she will know that this is her body’s
natural response. It is an attempt to fulfill the body’s most
significant biological purpose: reproduction. She will proudly
spend the day thinking of him and waiting for his phone call
and when he does not call, she will contentedly settle into
another 24 hours of total unproductiveness because she will
have researchers and their intricate studies to keep her going.
Spreading the word about pheromones can do even more.
Not only can it alter the way guy-crazed women view themselves, it can even alter our entire vocabulary. Without doing
a single additional study, we can already remove a number of
words—“slut” and “player” for instance—from our jargon.
In a society where pheromones are a fad, everyone will
know that multiple sexual partners is neither a sign of promiscuity nor sex appeal, but a reflexive response… kind of like
pulling your hand away from a burning stove. Even if we were
to neglect this “natural response” idea, several studies, including the one done at Penn, have also shown that individuals
exposed to the odor of the opposite sex tended to become
more relaxed and develop a better mood. Ergo, the concept of
post-coital bliss, perhaps?
These findings discount the message preached by every
single talk show ever produced—that random, indiscriminate
sex is hurtful and unhealthy for all the parties involved. Now
that we have factual evidence to the contrary, sex can be seen
as a way to enhance the proximity of, and prolong the exposure to, pheromones. In these terms, the concepts of “slut”
and “player” have no significance. That’s my case for making pheromones the new fad: one that can really turn things
around not for a season, but for a long time. Think about it.
In the meantime, I’m going to go boost my mood…
Anna Strongin is a junior in the College. You can write to her at
astrongi@sas.
N OVEMBER 29, 2004 | FIRST CALL | VOL . V N O . 8
P AGE 5
ABERCRAPPY AND FETCH
How to Waste Your Money and Promote Racism
M I C H A E L PAT T E R S O N | O U T O F T H E F O L D
WHEN I HEARD Abercrombie
& Fitch settled a race and sex
discrimination lawsuit, I must
say that surprise was not my first
reaction. Picked up one of their
catalogs lately? It’s like a vacation brochure for Whitesville,
USA. Every picture shows nothing but attractive, young, and
VERY white men and women
cavorting about in various poses
wearing the overpriced crap that this store carries.
Abercrombie and Fitch—or as some of my friends in
high school called it, Abercrappy and Fetch—represents only
one piece of the overall problem. Practically all of the mainstream clothing lines that most Penn students wear do a terrible job in the diversity department, particularly concerning
African-Americans and Latinos. Any time I have ever walked
into a Banana Republic, I have rarely seen anyone other than
young, attractive white employees helping customers. Same
goes for the Gap. Taking a look at their advertisements, one
sees the same problem—the vast majority of the models are
white.
The problem with companies such as Abercrombie goes
beyond the inherent racism of its marketing and hiring, to
the very culture of youth in this country. Many people consider the most important aspect of a piece of clothing to be
the name on the label. Every time I walk into a department
store in the mall, inevitably I see people hovering near a rack
of Calvin Klein jeans like bees on honey. Sometimes they
even get aggressive in their pursuit of the ‘best’ clothing
brand.
“Look hon, the women are having a knife fight over
the last Dior bag. My money is on the one with the 6 inch
blade.”
In most high schools around the country, students glorify brand names. They worship millionaire designers like
gods and cast out the non-believers who would wear a pair
of jeans costing under $40. Did that turtleneck cost under
$100? How incredibly tacky! Sacrilege!!!
If I thought high school was bad, I had no idea what I
was in for at Penn. Half the people here are nothing but label
whores—men and women alike. Many turn Locust Walk into
a fashion runway on their ways to class, dressing to the point
where one would think they are going somewhere more important than Econ or Au Bon Pain. Of course, most people
are not actually going anywhere significant. They really are
just that shallow to think their appearance matters.
In the national scheme of things, is it any great wonder that a culture which promotes a system of hierarchy in
something as seemingly innocuous as fashion could advance
the racist glorification that some companies have engaged
in? As people try to emulate everything in popular culture,
businesses start catering less to “everyone” and more to those
that represent the majority.
The sad truth is that Abercrombie and most mainstream
clothing chains consider white culture the ideal, as it represents the largest sector of their profit. This is a repugnant
consequence of the shallow economic habits of mainstream
America. People who idolize designer names at places like
Penn are responsible. Too many waste thousands of dollars
on overpriced clothes, amongst other things, and they perpetuate the notion that some labels are better than others.
The more White-European sounding the designer, the more
likely people will want to buy his or her clothing. To clarify
my point, try counting the number of times around campus
that you encounter students at Penn wearing something by
brands such as Sean Jean, or FUBU. Take a grand tally over
a few weeks and see how it goes. I can guarantee that the end
number will be small enough to count on your two hands.
Ok, just one hand.
The lawsuit that was just settled against Abercrombie
represents a great first step in the process of addressing the
subtle and sometimes blatant racism of the fashion industry.
At least the courts are holding companies responsible for
the racist policies they maintain. However, as long as society
condones the attitudes held by those who think the whiter
the name on the tag sounds, the better the clothes must be,
the undercurrents of bigotry will remain. For any real progress to be made, we must look at what we as individuals are
doing to maintain an overall culture in which white people
continue to represent the ideal look that others aspire to
achieve.
Michael Patterson is a senior in the College. You can write to him at
mjp2@sas.
WHAT, CALL ME A DRUNK?
BRIAN HERTLER | SLEIGHT OF HAND
THERE HAD been
a lot of noise about
the so-called “drinking culture” at Penn.
Clearly, the situation
called for some investigative reporting.
However, since I’m a
geek who writes silly
fiction stories, I had
neither the experience nor the inclination to
carry out such a duty. I therefore sent a friend
to take my place—I told young Jack McFoley,
a senior Chemistry major, to research alcohol
consumption at Penn and write a story about
it.
Jack undertook a night of exhaustive
investigation and then sent me the following
email. Gentle readers, take warning: his subject matter is unsavory, and his style is vulgar.
In fact, he used to write for 34th Street.
Dear Brian,
Thanks for the opportunity to help with
your article. While I’ve never actually read
First Call, I’m sure it’s a fine publication, and
I’m honored to make a contribution.
There are as many “drinking cultures”
at Penn as there are social cliques-- that is,
one for every racial, economic, and academic
category. Nevertheless, last Thursday night I
attempted to go undercover into as many as
I could.
I started out by pre-gaming at a friend’s
apartment off-campus.
Somebody had
brought a bottle of tequila, and by the time
The Apprentice was over I’d put away six
shots and felt like a caballero. I suggested a
trip to Mad4Mex to make our mild evening
more picante, but when we walked outside
I was distracted by a group of lovely Penn
senoritas.
I wanted to research the effects of alcohol
on sexuality, so I approached the ladies with
the swaggering confidence that only a good
buzz can muster. Luckily, their whistles were
just as wet as mine-- from the looks on their
faces, the girls had been knocking it back
hard.
“Where are you all headed?” I asked.
The prettiest girl of the group, and the
one who looked deepest in her cups, addressed me: “My friends are all headed to
the bars, but I’m going to the Writer’s House,
where there’s a wine-and-student-poetry
night going on.”
The Writer’s House! I was intrigued.
Normally I can’t make heads or tails of verse
and rhyme, but I remembered my pledge
to probe the underbelly of Penn’s drinking
culture.
“What a coincidence!” I said. “I was just
going down there myself. I’m planning to
give a reading.”
“Oh! You’re a poet?”
“Sure I am. I have a talent for making
rhyme-- in fact, I do it really often. My name
is Jack, but my friends call me Sam Iambic.
What about you, hon?”
“Call me Precious,” she said. “Linda Precious.”
So Linda and I headed to the Writer’s
House. When I opened the door, a wave of
angst nearly bowled me over, but thankfully
the white wine was flowing generously. I took
a seat and partook of the refreshments, and
soon I was drinking up culture by the stanza.
One by one, the student poets rose to
read their work. The alcohol loosened their
tongues, and their verse grew freer and freer.
The wine inflated our spirits, until our emotions were like a rushing, swirling cascade-- a
kaleidoscopic waterfall of raw and transcendent expression. Needless to say, every spoken word made me crave another drink.
A fourth glass was just numbing my ears
when Linda gave me a nudge. “It’s your turn,”
she slurred. “Go up and recite some poetry.”
As I approached the podium, I was so
nervous that the room seemed to spin. I
cleared my throat and tried to think of something clever to say. Unfortunately, while I
was preparing to throw down some rhyme,
my stomach started preparing an evacuation.
The combination of white wine and poetry
must’ve been more than I could handle.
“There once was a man from Nantuckett,”
I versified unsteadily. Then, to my dismay,
the wine rose up with a vengeance. “Urrgh...” I doubled over, trying to stem the tide.
“Somebody fetch me a bucket...” When no
one replied, I hurried outside before I began
to upchuck it.
I guess only the bushes got to appreciate
my best material.
As I straightened up, I saw Linda kneeling on the ground beside me. She, too, was
performing a piece of expulsive prose. “Too
much drinking?” I asked.
“Too much poetry,” she said, wiping off
her chin. “Let’s head someplace less artistic.”
Thus we considered a few of Penn’s drinking cultures. “I hear there’s a party at Alpha
Whatever,” I said.
She pooh-poohed the idea. “The frats are
a dead-end for serious drunks. A watery beer
isn’t worth wading through the entire freshman class.”
“Well, we could go to Smokes, maybe.”
“Bah!” she cried. “All the campus pubs
are the same-- a pack of rum-and-coke-heads
dealing pickup lines at the bar.”
“Well, I think a friend-of-a-friend is having a house party.”
“Forget it!” she exclaimed. “Parties aren’t
cool at three degrees of separation. I don’t flip
cups with strangers.”
“Well...” One last option suddenly occurred to me. Tenderly--drunkenly--I took
Linda by the waist. “I must have a bottle of
something in my bedroom.”
She accepted happily, and we started
walking towards my apartment. Unfortunately, we passed MarBar on the way. Like
a high-pitched whistle to a dog’s ears, the
trendy ambience called to Linda in a fashion
no man can grasp.
She grabbed my wrist and led me inside.
“You can buy me a drink!” she said.
Eight martinis later, I was flat broke, the
bar was closing, and Linda had passed out in
my arms. I started to carry her home, but at
that point my memories get hazy-- after all,
we’d been going blow-for-blow for hours. I
recall tossing her over my shoulder, but what
happened afterwards is a mystery to me.
I woke up in a classroom in Towne, near
the end of my Friday-morning Chemistry
recitation. I’m still not entirely sure how I
got there. I filled out an evaluation form for
the TA (he didn’t stimulate class discussion),
then stumbled to the library and fell asleep in
the first-floor lounge.
And that, Brian, is my investigative
report. Incidentally, I later found Linda’s
phone number written on my hand. I called
her up and we made a date, even though she
didn’t remember meeting me. I think something beautiful is developing between us.
So, I hope this article is what you were
looking for. Since I hear this is your secondto-last First Call column, I recommend just
having fun and not worrying too much. I
know it’s painful to have these assignments
hang over your head every week.
Your friend, Jack.
P.S. Sorry about that last one.
Brian Hertler is a senior in the College. You can
write to him at hertlerb@sas.
N OVEMBER 29, 2004 | FIRST CALL | VOL . V N O . 8
P AGE 6
KEEP YOUR PANTS ON
NippleGate still haunts televised football
ROB FORMAN | MY 13-INCH BOX
ABC’S MONDAY NIGHT
FOOTBALL
match on November 15th,
between the
Eagles
and
the Cowboys,
will not be remembered for
Philadelphia’s
blowout victory, but for its scandalous introduction featuring T.O. and three cast members of ABC’s hit new dramedy, Desperate
Housewives. Okay, most people I know will
remember the game, but apparently there are
those who would rather complain to the FCC
about Nicollette Sheridan’s concealed but naked body. The introduction in question ran
as follows:
Approximately ten minutes before gametime, Terrell Owens sees a beautiful blonde
woman (Sheridan, as DH character Edie
Britt) wearing nothing more than a white
towel inside the Eagles’ locker room. They
greet each other, and Edie explains she was
there to take a shower, as her house had
burned down (an event from DH’s pilot).
T.O. wants to go play in the important game,
but Edie has another game in mind. He bargains with her; he’ll stay if she tells him what’s
underneath the pool (again, referring to a
mystery element of the show). She can’t say,
so he moves to play the game. In a last, dare
I say desperate, move, Edie drops her towel
and T.O.’s resolve fails. The scene changes to
two women watching television: Teri Hatcher
and Felicity Huffman, other central characters from DH. After asking who watches
trash like that—yes, that was a self-referential
jibe in case you missed it—Hatcher says she
knows something they should watch. She
flips the channel to MNF and both women
ask the viewers, “Are you ready for some
football?”
I’ll fill in the blanks. One, Nicollette
Sheridan’s character, though naked after
dropping the towel, was filmed in such a way
that the viewer only saw her from behind and
from above the waist. Two, it is not uncommon for ABC and MNF to team up and do
cross-promotional hooks like this. Three, the
complaints sent to ABC and the FCC were, of
course, about indecency and recalled Janet
Jackson and Justin Timberlake’s Super Bowl
Halftime Show mishap. ABC issued a statement on the 16th apologizing for the introduction. The NFL called it “inappropriate and
unsuitable for [their] Monday Night Football audience.”
Can I break
from this fact
stating and ask…
huh? How is this
any more indecent
than what’s shown
in any episode of
North Shore?
I
know I’ve seen
Kristen
Kruek’s
naked back on
Smallville. How
is this hook any
different? The NFL’s face-saving line about
it being inappropriate for MNF’s audience is
ludicrous. True, there are families watching
the game. In the words of The Simpsons’ Mrs.
Reverend Lovejoy, “Won’t someone please
think of the children?” Let’s do that, then.
There are more males than females in the
audience, and more adults than kids; I imagine children who haven’t hit puberty wouldn’t
really understand what this particular intro
was implying, anyway. And when have most
males had problems with sexy women?
Suddently, the NFL would have us believe
that scantily clad women are inappropriate for the football audience? Is it just me,
or are pro-ball cheerleaders, especially the
world-famous Cowboy cheerleaders, dressed
in less-than-concealing garments? I mean,
did you see the gratuitous T&A shots and
the conveniently placed stars on their haltertops? Certainly we must put some pants on
these poor, objectified women to hide their
shame! I bet that wouldn’t go over too well
with MNF’s audience, though.
This is, of course, not to mention the fact
that the introduction itself does not condone
T.O. and Edie’s scripted behavior. Hatcher
explicitly asks, “Oh, my God, who watches
this trash? Sex, lies, betrayal?” It’s calling
the cheesy, soap-opera scene crap, not asking
people to strip off their clothes for orgy-hour.
Maybe this isn’t
about implied sex.
Maybe this is indecent because T.O. is
black and Sheridan
is white, and we all
know
interracial
couples
shouldn’t
exist. Given the demographic make-up
of many television
watchdog groups, I
wouldn’t be entirely
surprised if racism
was one of their mission statements, or at
least an unstated underlying value of the
organization. Alright, that accusation may be
overstepping my bounds and isn’t in line with
my real opinion—though I might point out
that the last major indecency act on television
was during a football game and involved with
interracial pairing—but enough is enough,
people. Good lord, let’s not imply that people
have sex!
Thanks to the Gestapo tactics of groups
like the Parents Television Council—check
out their sickeningly hilarious website,
parentstv.org—Desperate Housewives has
lost sponsorship from brands like Kellogg’s,
Tyson Foods, and Lowe’s. Admittedly, ABC
isn’t having a problem filling the commercial
gaps since DH is the highest rated new show
of the season and is number two overall in the
coveted 18-49 year old demographic. This is
lobbying at its worst, as there is the potential
to deprive people of an intelligent, wellcrafted hour of television in favor of Bible
morality just because it is a bit racy. I suppose
it worked for getting Dubya back in office, so
I must be in the minority.
Here’s a suggestion for these so-called
watchdogs: turn off your television sets and
educate yourself on the FCC’s codes, which
are extremely broad with regards to what
is considered indecent: anything that even
implies the acts of intercourse or excretion.
People, these are both a natural part of life,
certainly more than violence is. Watch the
recent South Park episode “Good Times With
Weapons” for a hilarious satire of this issue.
Indecency, by the way, is legal on broadcast
television between the hours of 10 p.m. and
6 a.m., because children are less likely to be
watching. The FCC can’t even touch cable
networks because subscription service, even
as a basic programming bundle, means they
aren’t strictly “public.”
The FCC has another category of transgression never legal on television: obscenity,
which is indecency with no artistic, comedic, dramatic, or literary merit. Confusing,
or even comparing, Janet Jackson’s bare
breast—unfortunate and inappropriate even
if accidental—with Nicollette Sheridan’s bare
back is impossible. The current regime at the
FCC seems to be geared toward cleaning up
all indications of smut, so no one is shutting
the moaners up. In fact, the willingness of
ABC and the NFL to back down and ask for
viewers’ forgiveness for a lapse in judgment
just invites more complaints. The video clip
from MNF is available at iFilm.com. Judge
for yourself.
Robert Forman is a junior in Wharton. You can
write to him at robertf@wharton.
BEST BETS
11/29 - 12/5
Rob’s TV picks for the week
Monday: Listen Up “Enemy at the Gates” (CBS, 8:30 p.m.) It’s over. The Seinfeld curse is
over, now that Jason Alexander’s far-worse-than-Seinfeld sitcom got the full season pickup. The show is about a sports talk show host who tries to balance his family with sports
fans, his love of the various games, and work. Sports Night is isn’t, but it is on before Everybody Loves Raymond.
Tuesday: Veronica Mars “Drinking the Kool-Aid” (UPN, 9 p.m.) The mix of comedy, drama, and pop culture on this show never ceases to impress me. Though I think I’ve figured
out the mystery behind Lilly Kane’s murder, the way the individual cases are put together
and relate to the main characters’ lives still gives me a really enjoyable run around. This
week involves, as the title might suggest, a mystery involving a cult.
Wednesday: Jack & Bobby “Today I Am a Man” (WB, 9 p.m.) Oh, the special sex episode.
Grace discovers Jack buying condoms and derails his train, as she is wont to do. Seriously,
between the social class hierarchy in Veronica Mars and Grace McCallister constantly
reminding her son that his dumb-as-a-brick girlfriend is beneath him, I’m beginning to
wonder about people. I mean, it seems like we all suck.
Thursday: The Apprentice “Career Candy” (NBC, 9 p.m.) Just so you know, this is the
last good episode of Donald Trump’s show for the season. After this episode, NBC has an
interview special—snooze—and a 2-hour finale. If you remember last season’s finale, you
probably remember you need to prepare with several caffeine injections.
Friday: Medical Investigations “The Unclean” (NBC, 10 p.m.) Oh my god! It’s CSI: NY,
but on NBC. The team at the NIH investigates yet another potentially cataclysmic outbreak. But this time is special and thus gets my attention, because it’s apparently the only
new show airing on First Friday in December.
Saturday: College Football (ABC, 4:30 p.m.) Yes! The SoCal blood I wish coursed through
my veins is boiling for this Los Angeles match-up. It’s one of the last games of the season,
with #1 USC taking on unranked UCLA in what’s sure to be akin to fratricide. It’s like the
Lakers and Clippers of college football. And that makes me happy.
Sunday: Arrested Development “Good Grief ” (FOX, 8:30 p.m.) Though I have to say each
episode is individually funnier this season—there were a few early duds last year while the
show was finding itself—I’m not digging this whole “Michael feels abandoned because
his family doesn’t need him to survive” thing. And Buster’s getting shipped off to fight in
Iraq? Get off the moderately dramatic stuff and back to the zany cut scenes like Lindsay’s
“Mommy What Will I Look Like?” company.
If You Can Only Watch One: Veronica Mars. You know you can’t resist Kristen Bell.
N OVEMBER 29, 2004 | FIRST CALL | VOL . V N O . 8
P AGE 7
JAMES HOUSTON | THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS
Weekly Music Reviews From
First Call’s CD Expert
Vanessa Carlton, Harmonium
Earlimart, Treble and Tremble
Brian Wilson, Smile
In last October’s
Rolling Stone, Vanessa Carlton said of
her album-in-progress: “There’s nothing
piano recital-y about
it. It’s goth… Do you
know what Wicca is?
I believe in like spells
and stuff like that.
The Wicca in me has
come out.” Reading
that made me glad to
finally have concrete
evidence that Columbia University will accept any celebrity,
but I also felt distressed at the prospect of a born-again
black magic woman riding her preachy broomstick over the
pop airwaves.
Unfortunately for the Purple Lipstick Club, she lied. I’ve
never been to a piano recital, but unless the title image in
“White Houses” is a neo-Freudian symbol for screwing your
mother’s decomposing corpse, the song kicks off a blatant
rehash of Be Not Nobody’s cheery, carcinogenic sunlight.
Harmonium is made of sugar, spice, twinkle-toed piano
droplets, and everything else nice enough to make Wicca
covens worldwide burn Ms. Carlton in effigy. In fairness,
the tone darkens a bit toward the album’s end, when the
titanic, omnipresent string section is dismissed and Carlton
tries two songs solo. An entire album of these solos would
have been much better—she’s the type of skillful pianist who
effortlessly wows drunks with impromptu performances on
fraternity house pianos—but as is, too many of Harmonium’s forty minutes are mired in sticky sentimentality and
professionally overblown arrangements.
Production and co-writing fall to Carlton’s loverman
Stephan “3EB” Jenkins. As the author of such indelible
verse as “Doot-doot-doot! Doot-doot-doot-doot-doot!”, he
could have cleaned up some of his lady’s shambling lyrical
vignettes, or at least convinced her to stick with the goth
vibe instead of going with hackneyed ejaculations of hope
like “Who’s to say we won’t stay together? Who’s to say we
aren’t getting stronger?” (“Who’s to Say”). Come on! I suppose the gloom descends in “Half a week before the Winter”,
which chronicles what appears to be a battle between vampires and unicorns, and in “She Floats”, which, as Carlton
bragged in the aforementioned Rolling Stone interview, is
about “the kind of the euphoria that someone gets when
they’re tortured by being dead.” That cost me a mouthful
of coffee when I read it, and I’m sorry if it did the same to
you.
As long as there are hearts to be broken and summer
evening kisses to be kissed in Everwood and Smallville,
there will always be a market for albums like Harmonium.
Carlton slyly acknowledges this chokehold in “Private Radio”: “You can’t deny me, you will oblige me, it’s my melody.”
Maybe so, Vanessa, but you’re still a dumbass.
Grade: D
Two years
ago, Beck’s Sea
Change was a
problematic
album for me.
I only needed
to hear the first
three songs on
my
pilfered
.mp3
version
before scrambling to the
Penn Bookstore
to overpay for
the real thing. Back home, ravaged shrink-wrap still on the
floor, wispy apparitions of $19 worth of Yuengling danced
around my dejected head as I realized nearly every track on
the album was identical. Juxtaposing my disappointment
with my initial infatuation, I concluded: “If someone could
take this pleasant soporific feeling, shake in some variety,
and somehow make it rock, they’d have a big awesome scary
monster of a record.”
Earlimart is that someone. Singer Aaron Espinoza’s voice
is a survey course in modern sad-bastard music, containing
Ira Kaplan, Beck, Thom Yorke, Ryan Adams, and especially
Espinoza’s late friend Elliott Smith. I would believe in a second that the weary “Hold on Slow Down” is an unreleased
Smith song, and the wonderfully, or terribly, named “The
Hidden Track” sounds like Smith’s ghost taking over Dave
Grohl’s body as he begins “Everlong”. But Earlimart is no
copycat: it uses the interlocked hands of confessional pop
and shoegazer as a foothold on its way over the boundary
wall which restrains most other contemporary bands.
Espinoza asserts that Treble and Tremble “is about love”,
though impressionistic song names like “Unintentional
Tape Manipulation” and “808 Crickets” suggest he means
the self-mutilating indie weirdo variety. That’s all well and
good though—I find the appeal of oddball affection increasing as the mainstream pop media becomes ever more saturated with amorous disciples of Carrie Bradshaw and Bridget
Jones. Anyway, get this album.
Grade: B+
Brian Wilson was the Michael Jackson
of our parents’
generation:
fragile,
enigmatic, extremely gifted, and
nuts. After cutting his abusive
father’s leash by
becoming a star
with The Beach
Boys, he heard
Rubber Soul, took a ton of LSD, and made Pet Sounds, semiarguably the best album ever. Then he began to dissolve.
He released a few more brilliant oddities and made possible
the wonder that was Wilson Phillips before becoming a
recluse, allegedly spending his days at a piano in a custombuilt sandbox that doubled as a toilet for his dogs.
The 1967 EP that followed Pet Sounds was called Smiley
Smile, and it featured the gems “Heroes and Villains” and
“Good Vibrations”. Though superlative, it felt unfinished and
rumors abounded that Wilson and lyricist Van Dyke Parks
had written a lot more songs that, when added to the released ones, would form a conceptual sequel to Pet Sounds.
The anticipatory furor over the mysterious tracks was only
offset by the frustration over the increasingly weird Wilson’s
refusal to let his fans hear them.
Nearly forty years later, he’s changed his mercurial mind
and we finally have Smile. The opener “Our Prayer” is no
misnomer—it is a hymn-like reminder of Wilson’s unsurpassed genius for vocal arrangement. A seamless transition
brings a re-recorded “Heroes and Villains” which is so rapturously good that the “teenage symphony to God” Wilson
set out to create in 1965 appears to have been realized in two
tracks. The charging beat recedes into the excellent, icy-textured “Roll Plymouth Rock”, maintaining the expectation of
a living master’s masterpiece.
What happens after that is hard to describe. The short
version is that it’s a letdown, especially compared to the
unfaltering brilliance of Pet Sounds. Wilson’s aged voice is
still emotive and his band is flawless, but the “feels”, as he
once called the sonic essences of his tunes, are missing the
oomph that characterizes his best work. Parks’ playful lyrics
are generally more charming than annoying and include the
best line I’ve heard in a long time: “I threw away my candy
bar and I ate the wrapper” (“Vega-tables”).
Considering the bigger picture, it’s a beautiful thing that
Brian Wilson rediscovered his life and his music instead of
dying a raving, obese footnote in the 1980s. Pet Sounds II it
isn’t, but Smile is one of the better albums released this year.
Carnie and Wendy should be proud.
Grade: A-
PENN YO
FIRST CALL CONTEST!
Take Mickey Jou’s Pop Culture Challenge!
Continued from PAGE 1
grance of the Night”? Having PennYo sing
standard Top-40 Chinese love songs—cutesy
duet interaction or not—was like having the
Dixie Chicks winning a Grammy for covering “Landslide”: well, duh. Of course they’re
going to sound good! It’s a talented group
singing a good song, where’s the challenge
in that? The same happened with the Josh
Groban/Charlotte Church duet, “Prayer”, as
covered by Ted Lin and Jasmine Tsai. They
were able to hit every note beautifully and
the harmony attested to the group’s solidarity in perfecting the collective sound, but that
was nothing new. For a group so good at
adapting to different Asian languages, it was
surprising and not a little maddening to hear
Italian being sung quite so poorly.
The evening was not without its great
moments, however. Throughout her swan
song “Lydia”, senior Candice Wei expertly
guided the audience’s attention to the heaven
she’s singing about, and supplemented the
meaning of the lyrics with her natural body
movement and marvelous voice. She was
as much a pleasure to listen and watch this
year as she was the year before. The formidable Singaporean duo, Joshua Yap and
singer-arranger Douglas Tham, continued to
maintain their swoon-worthy status. While
the harmony was slightly out of tune in
the translated “I Believe”, Yap’s eyes-closed,
James Houston is a senior in the College. You can write to him at
jhouston@sas.
hopeful presence as a person trying to have
faith in love was enough to steer my attention
from the harmony and onto the lead. Meanwhile, Tham, paired with his equally talented
co-arranger Yin Yin, closed the show with
a lovely and carefully translated version of
well-loved hymn, “Amazing Grace”.
I knew for sure that PennYo was holding
out on me when they came back on stage
for their encore: a comical holiday medley
including both the Chinese New Year and
Christmas standard, “Jingle Bells”. The
harmony and the lyrics of this final selection
were by far the most inventive and refreshing
sound of the evening. The singers must have
felt the same way because the playful and
energetic atmosphere of last year’s “Kaleidoscope” program finally graced this year’s
“Serendipity,” with its presence at the close
of the evening. There were plenty of reasons for everyone to have a little fun, with a
syncopated and challenging arrangement in
the harmonic parts and whimsical lyrics for
the lead singers. Hopefully, by this spring,
PennYo will recognize the talent that went
unchallenged this fall and show us what they
are really capable of, as an inventive, engaging a cappella group: not just a solid show,
but a spectacular performance.
Mickey Jou is a junior in the College. You can
write to her at myjou@sas.
1. Read last week’s review column “Sites and Sound.”
2. Watch The Incredibles.
3. Send Mickey your list of 5 most obscure pop culture references not
mentioned in this week’s review.
Winner will recieve $20!
Respond to Mickey (myjou@sas) by Dec. 1.
Winner will be announced in our Dec. 6 issue.
m
s
i
l
l
our dose of
a
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weekly wisdom
s
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2ND HAND STORES: CALL IT
VINTAGE, BUT IT’S ACTUALLY
JUST DEAD PEOPLES’ STUFF.
THE UNDERGRADUATE MAGAZINE | N OVEMBER 29, 2004 VOL . V NO . 8
Critically
Informed
ANOTHER REGIME TO OVERTHROW
BY VICTOR BONILLA
AFTER LAST WEEK’S SUDAN AWARENESS DAY, it’s no
secret at Penn that Sudan is the scene of the world’s worst
humanitarian crisis today. It’s hard to imagine any reasonable
person not believing that something must be done to alleviate
the vast suffering taking place. Republicans and Democrats
alike have lined up to condemn the government of Sudan and
offer various solutions to the problem.
Humanitarian reasons convince many, including myself,
of the need for action; for many others, an appeal to the
American national interest is the way to go. What is
vexing is the lack of any approach to Sudan that utilizes
the rationale of the Bush Doctrine to make its case for
action. Somewhere within the spectrum between Machiavellian power politics and full-scale counterterrorist military action, the American solution to the Sudan
problem can be found.
The humanitarian need in the Sudan, of course,
is clear. The Government of Sudan (GOS) is publicly
known to be paying Arab militiamen to slaughter, rape
and displace countless black Africans. “We have orders
to kill the blacks,” one militiaman was reported as saying
in a U.S. State Department brief. “We even kill our cattle
when they have black calves.” It’s a race war for the militia fighters, pure and simple. The atrocities are countless and horrific. “Khartoum has made no meaningful
progress in substantially improving the overall security
environment by disarming the Janjaweed militias or
arresting its leaders,” said Colin Powell in September,
shortly after donning his “Captain Obvious” beret.
One might guess that the presence of UN ceasefire monitors writing TPS reports is of little comfort to the fathers who
are forced to watch their daughters get gang raped by government-sponsored Arab terrorists. I wish I were making that
up. However, it is only slight exaggeration.
Unfortunately, this is the best we can get when dealing
with the UN. The African Union has done little more by
providing several hundred troops to protect the ceasefire
monitors while they write their reports in beautiful cursive
for presentation to an international community—except for
key actors such as the US, which brought the issue to the UN
to begin with— that has turned its back on Sudan.
As expected when dealing with the UN, however, the U.S.
is going to have to take matters into its own hands in order
to avoid another Rwanda. Neutralists— to whom, along
with Bush Doctrine subscribers, this article speaks— might
ask why the responsibility of this problem should fall on our
shoulders.
The GOS is officially listed by the State Department as
one of the state sponsors of terrorism in the world today. The
United States and the GOS do not have a friendly relationship; we have not had permanent diplomatic relations with
the country since 1996, when we teamed with Saudi Arabia to
force Osama bin Laden, whom Khartoum hosted, out of the
country. Sudan has actively sponsored terrorism against the
U.S., from hosting al-Qaeda fighters to giving terrorists bomb
materials to use for attacking at least one US embassy. International investigators suspect it as a financial hub for terror
networks since 9/11. Sudan has also been developing chemical weapons for years, according to a recently declassified CIA
report. Can we say, “Iraq on steroids”?
Where does the Bush Doctrine fit into all this? After 9/11,
President Bush made clear his intention to fight terrorism
around the globe. He was re-elected on a platform of military
action against terrorist states as well individual terrorists. So,
it’s time for him to make good on his promise. How is best to
do that? The US has several options, all of which ought to be
considered in depth, and none of which can be accomplished
without bloodshed. Unfortunately, peaceful means—negotiations and economic threats—have yielded nothing for the
past several decades.
One option is to support fully the insurgency, as the
US has done before, under the Clinton administration by
economically and diplomatically encouraging the SPLA
(Sudan People’s Liberation Army) in their fight against
the Khartoum government. This approach is a mixed bag.
On the one hand, it clearly puts pressure on the Khartoum government, which has struck deal after diplomatic
deal only to re-engage in fighting time after time and now
needs to be forced, not asked, to listen. On the other hand,
the rebel forces in Sudan have not been able to bring the
fighting to a decisive close after all these years. This halfin, half-out approach would only prolong the miserable
war that has raged for so long.
A second option is to contract with a private military
firm (PMF)— yes, such things exist— and give them clear
orders on how to handle the Sudan crisis. This is precisely
the option that the UN rejected for Rwanda in 1994, despite being presented with evidence by the PMF, Executive Outcomes, that it could perform the military aspect
of operations at one-fifth the cost of the UN mission and
far more quickly as well. There are legal questions about the
use of a private firm, such as concerns over whether they adhere to the contract, but it is incredibly hard to imagine that
a professional mercenary firm, such as Sandline (British) or
Northbridge Services Group (American) could come close
to doing as badly as to commit the sort of atrocities we have
seen in Sudan. With this private military approach, the Bush
Continued on PAGE 3
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE PENN KIND
L A U R E N S A U L | W E E K LY S A U L U T A T I O N S
THE END OF THIS SEMESTER
is approaching rapidly, and I feel
that my presence on this campus
is becoming as established as it
will ever be. As a result, I am
starting to accept the realities
of a Penn education, but at the
same time, I know I will never
understand many facts about
this campus.
Indeed, some
aspects of Penn life and their
causes will always remain a mystery to me.
Fact 1: The inescapable smell of sewage on Locust, especially
in late afternoon.
Thankfully, admissions tours take place earlier in the day.
Otherwise, tour guides would be ill-equipped to handle the
questions posed by prospective students and their parents:
namely, why that odor pervades the Walk. Nowadays, dusk
arrives earlier and earlier with the coming of winter, and it
seems that with the arrival of the sunset comes the smell of an
outhouse. I can’t be the only person who leaves the spotless,
corporate environment of Huntsman only to wish I had taken
a deeper last breath before closing the heavy doors. When
smells come from holes in the ground, as is the case on Spruce
and Walnut, there is no reason to be surprised. However, Locust Walk, with its silver snake path and uneven red stones,
is the last place on campus where one would expect to be
greeted with whiffs of human waste. That is the first element
of mystery about this situation. The second perplexing factor
is the timing of this problem: it is only noticeable in the late
afternoon and evening. In the morning, it can be a pleasure to
walk down Locust and see the world, especially if your mood
and the day’s weather are sunny.
Fact 2: The University’s choice to fund the refurbishment of
Hill Field while Hill Dorm remains decrepit.
Freshmen living in Hill are literally on top of each other.
This fact may explain why so much hall-cest occurs in that
dorm. If the cramped quarters are not enough to drive some
of Penn’s newest additions to levels of insanity, the perpetual
heat may finish off the job. Despite knowledge of this problem, Penn decided that giving a facelift to Hill Field, which is
used by few students with any level of frequency, was more
important than improving day-to-day life for over 500 Penn
students. The University in this case (and also in many others), prioritized the outside over the inside. Therefore, the
beauty of Hill is literally only skin-deep, and outsiders are
deceived. Hmm, perhaps that isn’t too hard to understand
after all.
an endeavor must be quite exhausting, especially when sick
people usually don’t even go out to get their own food. While
it may make sense to put Student Health close to HUP, students are the SHS system’s main clients and would be better
served if it were located somewhere closer to where they live.
Fact 3: Rosengarten’s sub-zero late-night temperatures
Anyone who has ever been stuck writing a paper until
wee hours of the morning knows that it gets pretty cold in
the basement of Van Pelt. In fact, those who are unfortunate
enough to work there keep a kerosene heater behind the desk.
Frequent library night owls often arrive with their books
and plentiful layers of clothing. Penn must find something
objectionable about heating a building that’s open all night.
Perhaps two administrators somewhere are bragging to their
colleagues at other Ivies about how Penn is the party school:
“Hehe, do you know how we encourage our students to party?
We keep part of the library open, but then we don’t heat it!”
Fact 7: Penn is so large, yet every unwanted run-in happens.
It happens to everybody. At my high school, we called
this “Awkward Mondays.” However, with 10,000 undergrads,
one would think sheer size would alleviate these problems.
Clearly, that is not the case. It may work in the opposite set of
circumstances — running into people who you want to see can
be rare. But once you need to avoid someone, the probability
of seeing them quadruples. Some statistical explanation for
this truism must exist, but I haven’t found it.
Fact 4: As the weather gets colder, freshmen girls wear less
clothing, especially at night.
From a logical point of view, the opposite should be true.
However, as the season changes, many of Penn’s most innocent have decided that as long as their feet are kept warm with
Uggs, the rest of their bodies don’t really count. As a result, it
is even easier to spot freshmen from far away.
Fact 5: Student Health’s location is another reason never to
get sick.
If there is anything worse than getting sick while at school,
when there are activities, classes and exams that cannot be
missed, it’s going to Student Health to try to resolve health
problems. The walk to SHS alone would exacerbate most illnesses, and that long, dark alleyway at the end of the walk is
the last straw. When people are really sick, the worst thought
imaginable is to take a walk from the high rises to SHS. Such
Fact 6: A real mystery: do people actually have sex under the
button in front of Van Pelt?
I’m unsure about this one. If anyone wants to share experiences, email me so I can enlighten next week’s readers.
Fact 8: New Delhi still doesn’t know who is a Penn student.
Few Penn students have missed out on the New Delhi buffet during their years at Penn. However, despite the fact that
its main customer base is students, New Delhi still does not
give a student discount until someone asks. First of all, New
Delhi has no obligation to give a student discount at all. Most
other campus venues do not, and people still go to them. But,
if New Delhi is going to offer the discount, it is pretty silly to
pretend their customers are not students until the students
ask them to correct the check. It just makes service issues
even more uncomfortable than they already are.
At any rate, if anyone can think of explanations for these
phenomena, please let me know. I will consider printing
them next week, even if they are entertaining and not true.
Have a good week!
Lauren Saul is a sophomore in Wharton and the College. You can
write to her at lcsaul@wharton.