post- magazine

Brown University l September 23, 2010 l Volume 11 l Issue 3

Original Poster by Jonathan Key

Liza Schmidt

“ You All Have a Bomb Ass School Here.

You’ve Got a Really Nice Library
big boi comes to brown ”
2 upfront
POST-

the LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

post- You’re at a restaurant looking at the menu, and it’s the kind
CONTENTS
03 upfront
staff of menu with little numbers to the left of each item. Numbers 14
to 21 are the meat offerings; 27 to 34 are the seafood ones. Are
you a vegetarian? Pescetarian? Or perhaps just a good ol’ omni-
THINGS THAT MAKE ME ANGRY \\ marshall katheder
OF DUCKS AND DECORATED SHEDS\\ katerina dalavurak
vore? There, on the bottom right, is number 35, which is called
Editors-in-Chief
Marshall Katheder
justice. It’s really nothing complicated, but it goes with just about
everything. All the regional cuisines have found a way to incor-
04 feature
Kate Doyle
Sam Carter
porate it successfully when there’s help enough to obtain it. “YOU ALL HAVE A BOMB ASS SCHOOL HERE. YOU’VE GOT A REALLY
NICE LIBRARY.” \\ katie delaney
Every time a waiter or waitress delivers this plate to a table
Managing Editor of Fea-
tures and Lifestyle he or she announces, in a clarion call, “justice has been served!” 05 arts & culture
Matthew Klebanoff All the other patrons will likely take notice. Some of them will
doubtless want it too, and there’s no way of knowing if you’ll be
TRACKS OVER TRUFFLE FRIED \\ clayton aldern
Music Editor able to get everyone a serving. Revenge is a dish best served GOT GAME?\\ priyanka chatterjee
06 arts & culture
Katie Delaney cold. The beauty of justice is that you can serve it anywhere, at
any temperature, at any time. The flatware hardly matters. The
Theatre Editor
Rachel Lamb
only requirement is never to leave it on the back burner. Serve ORANGE, MULCH, AND POLKA-DOTTED SOCKS \\ michelle meyers
it straight away.
BROOKLYN’S FINEST \\ sam carter
Literary Editor
Priyanka Chatterjee sam 07 food & booze
Staff Writers
The search is never off. ONCE IN A BLUE ROOM\\ remy robert
If one day’s lesson is that all those things we’re out for are
Clayton Aldern
probably right under our noses, the next, rest assured, will be a
WHO STOLE THE PEA PUREE? \\ jane brendlinger
Gopika Krishna
Michelle Meyers lesson in how to keep those newfound answers all nice and neat 08 sex
and orderly-like. More often than not, though, it turns out it can’t
Fred Milgrim
Rémy Robert be done. From the latest in such and such academic debate, to the
RHYTHM METHOD \\ mm
Eric Sun status of this or that friendship, to the frantic thoughts running laps GETTING OFF ON THE RIGHT FOOT\\ lovecraft & dorian
Anisha Sekar in our own muddled brains, to whatever it is it all really means,
things ‘round Brown never really stop churning—and we never
Copy Chief
stop getting tossed about.
Sarah Forman
And there’s a concept (as I’ve learned this week in philosophy
Copy Editors class) that says we’re only muddling ourselves all the more, trying
Julia Kantor so hard as we do to grasp at some idea of who we really are and
Anisha Sekar what we’re really doing—even though that’s what we told every-
Paul Watanabe one we were off to Brown to do.
Wasn’t quite so straightforward, it turns out. And in 200
Layout Editors words or less, there’s no resolution stored up for this one. So we’ll
Madelynn Johnston settle for the questions, and for things well worth the muddle.
Alexandra Linn
Keep calm. Carry on. Something like that.
til next time,

kate
Graphics Editor
Katerina Dalavurak

Photo Editor
Kate Doyle

Staff Photographer NAKED PHOTO

Kayla Smith

Web Designer
Eric Stayton
Treading the boards this week-
Web Editor end and next, the cast of Sam
Allison Palm Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind,
directed by Lowry Marshall
and the first production of the
Sock & Buskin mainstage sea-
son. Plays September 23-26
& September 30-October 3 in
Leeds Theater. Tickets available
at the Leeds Box Office and at
brown.edu/Departments/The-
atre_Speech_Dance. Don’t lie
-- we know you’ll be there.

Post- Magazine is pub-

lished every Thursday
in the Brown Daily
Herald. It covers books,

five
theater, music, film,
food, art, and University
culture around College

3
CONSENT DAY 2010 A LIE OF THE MIND

1 2
Hill. Post- editors can
be contacted at post. Main Green l Leeds l PRELUDE
Buxton l Fri 10 pm
weekend

magazine@gmail. Thur. 3-5pm 9/23-9/26 &

com. Letters are always
welcome, and can be 9/30-10/3
either e-mailed or sent
HOMECOMING: BROWN VS.

5
to Post- Magazine, 195

4
CHEM0690: BODY CHEMISTRY
Angell Street, Provi- HARVARD
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Marcy l Sat. 10pm

dence, RI 02906. We Brown Stadium l
claim the right to edit
Sat. 6pm
letters for style, clarity,
and length.

TOP TEN
Things Brown is Better at
than Harvard
1 Egyptology. Seriously.
2
There are only two Berks in the world.
One on Thayer. One on Harvard
Square. Ours is better; stomp up Thay.
3
Pembroke > Radcliffe. Even
in the light.
4 9
Rollin’ green.
5 Football.
Of Ducks and Decorated Sheds
neumann on building brown
katerina DALAVURAK
graphics editor
With the Perry and Marty Granoff
Creative Arts Center nearing comple-
tion (behind the Brown Bookstore),
I attended Professor Dietrich Neu-
mann’s crowded office hours to get an
expert opinion on the building.
For the few who don’t know Profes-
sor Neumann, he’s a bit of a campus
legend: teacher of multi-hundred per-
son lectures on architecture, advisor to
all Architectural Studies and History
of Art and Architecture Concentrators,
and, essentially, idol of all artsy Brown
students who intend to have some sort
of career after college.
He approves of the choice of Diller
Scofidio & Renfro, the firm respon-
sible for projects such as the Institute
of Contemporary Arts in Boston and
the Lincoln Center renovations in New
York City.
Although he has yet to go on a
hardhat tour of the site, Professor
Neumann says he’s impressed with the
structure taking shape. He thinks the
building’s design is fitting, considering
its purpose as a creative arts center for
different media; depending how differ-
ent people approach it, they might see
different “moving images” and take
away vastly different impressions.
While waiting outside of Neu-
mann’s office, I spoke with Derek Ban-
gle ’11, an Urban Studies concentrator
who was less universal in his praise of
the new building.
Derek mentioned Robert Venturi’s
famous book Learning from Las Ve-
gas, which posits that there are two
iconographic archetypes in today’s ar-
chitecture: the duck and the decorated
shed. Derek said that the “duck build-
ing” is its shape, i.e., the structural
6 Being well-adjusted.
“There are actually several mem-
7 bers of the Brown community
who wear capes.”
8
Bromance.
Nudity.
The Babe Ruth vs. The End-
10 less Summers. Come on.
Who’d win in a fight?
form and presentation of the exterior
are one and the same. With the “deco-
rated shed,” by contrast, structural
form and presentation are unrelated.
Derek says the CAC is more like a
decorated shed than a duck. Ducks, it
turns out, are expensive and difficult
to make. Building decorated sheds
is easier, and cheaper. If you boil the
CAC down to its essence of form, it
consists of two volumes: two boxes, a
lot of 90-degree angles, he says. This is
a plan that’s relatively easy to execute
and cheap to build. Indeed, the speed
with which the framework was erect-
ed, and the fact that it was done en-
tirely without (expensive) stationary
cranes is very telling. In other words,
the building’s façade was conceived
to be interesting and relatively cheap
and that it plays no part in the build-
ing’s structure or function.
He observes that the CAC’s con-
struction out of a “mosaic of hundreds
of individual tiles” evidences the rise
of digital manufacturing in contempo-
rary architecture. Each of these parts
was rendered on a computer to be di-
rectly sent to the manufacturer who
can cheaply make each piece, stick a
serial number on the back and ship
it to construction site. The workers
at the site just hang the pieces on the
framework in the right order. With
this process, you can even have a small
sample made to see what it will look
like, which explains the telephone
time-machine parked on Olive Street,
facing BioMed.
Alright, it’s simple design and
speedy construction, covered in a fun
skin. But is there anything funda-
mentally bad or dishonest about the
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2010
-Rachel Lamb
building? I don’t think so, and just
so long as we read what is plain to
see in the structure and the building
process, and don’t overstate creativ-
ity of design, we can appreciate the
building as an expedient project that
responds to its site and the univer-
sity’s needs.
I see the building as a bit of a de-
sign cop-out, rehashed contempo-
rary design methods and materials:
one glass curtain wall, some Decon-
structionist-like diagonal slashes for
windows on the metal walls. But this
boxy structure will provide much
needed square footage without mar-
ring the view down Olive and An-
gell Streets. Its glass façade faces
west, catching the afternoon sun
and framing a great tall oak and the
19th century house that’s home to
Brown’s history. I choose to see the
planning behind this view as the de-
signers’ humble recognition of what
most people expect and like to see
when touring the campus of an old
New England university. The build-
ing shies away from making too bold
of a statement, and for that I am
grateful to the designers and school
committee.
upfront
3
Things
That
Make Me
Angry
Marshall Katheder
things that make me angry with Marshall
1. All right, Joe (or “Jill”—no let-
ters, please) Brownstudent. You’re in
class. And your Professor is speaking
with that super awkward inflection
and emphasis that sounds somehow
both awkward and pretentious. So
you raise your hand and drop some
knowledge on how Chapter 8 relates
to gender/race/imperialism in the 21st
Century. And you’re really on your
shi*t, laying down every point solidly
with some chuh-chuh-change (nickel
words). Then the Professor looks at
you through their glasses and says,
with utter detachment, “Let’s unpack
that idea a little bit more; let’s tease
it out, let it unfurl organically.” How
about not, Professor? How about my
point was f*cking brilliant and let’s
just move on. And how about let’s only
use the word organic when we’re talk-
ing about tangerines.
2. Egad! Tangerines! Big Boi, why
didn’t you play my favorite song, Tan-
gerine? Were you afraid to say, “I also
like her throat action, with a passion,
love in her mou-outh, for dental satis-
faction?” Were you afraid that some-
one would ask you to unpack that
idea—sort of tease out what you meant
by that? If so, well played, sir. Other-
wise some students would set up a card
table on the Main Green with neon fly-
ers and own your misogynistic ass. As
Emily Davison, noted UK suffragette
once said, “Don’t be a pig or I’ll make
you bite the curb.”
3. People who aren’t like in theatre
or anything and have like two f*cking
keys hanging off their belt-loop with
one of those industrial clip things. Just
dangling in the wind. I don’t think their
mothers loved them.
4. Why is a bottle of V8 more ex-
pensive than a gallon of gasoline?
4 feature
POST-
“ You All Have a Bomb Ass School
Here. You’ve Got a Really Nice
Library
katie DELANEY
music editor
When Big Boi’s latest, Sir Lucious
Left Foot: The Son Of Chico Dusty,
came out this summer, diehard fans
were finally rewarded after a four-year
lull in OutKast studio work. The rest of
us probably approached the album with
a little more skepticism, and with good
reason — Big Boi hasn’t been center
stage for quite a while. OutKast’s last al-
bum dropped in 2006 and, for that mat-
ter, it was Idlewild, their feature film/
soundtrack effort that left many fans
doubting the duo’s cohesiveness, if not
downright disappointed. In the inter-
vening years, Big Boi and Andre 3000
have been at work on solo albums, but
both have been so long coming they’ve
almost dropped off the radar. For Big
Boi at least, much of the wait can be
chalked up to label issues: Sir Lucious
was originally scheduled for release in
2008, but “creative differences” be-
tween Big Boi and OutKast’s label Jive
caused tension and delay (read: Big Boi
wanted to make a decent album; Jive
wanted him to cover Lil’ Wayne’s “Lolli-
pop”). Boi finally left Jive and signed to
Def Jam in March, aiming for a spring
release, only to be held up by Jive again
— Jive contended that the album could
not contain any tracks featuring Andre
3000, as OutKast was still technically
signed to Jive. Big Boi cut the tracks
with Dre (and then leaked them to the
internet), finally getting the album out
in July, two years behind schedule.
But even if you were keeping up with
OutKast drama, chances are that some
of the initial skepticism about Sir Lu-
cious probably stemmed from the fact
that it was by that other guy from Out-
Kast — Big Boi has traditionally played
the straight-man to Dre’s silk ascot-
wearing, Polaroid picture-shaking weir-
do. But while Dre was starring in Will
Ferrell movies, befriending extrater-
restrials, and starting his own clothing
line based on 1930s college football uni-
forms (two of these actually happened),
Big Boi has been
in the studio.
And the hard
work has paid
off. Whatever
your initial mis-
givings about Sir
Lucious were,
if you haven’t
given it a spin
yet, you are tru-
ly missing out.
The album’s got
game, of course
— we’ve always
known that Big
Boi has big tal-
ent — but it’s
also got vari-
ety, flexibility,
and surprises.
Tracks like
“For Your Sorrows” switch easily from
OutKast-esque double time/rapid-fire
rhythms to verses that drip over the
beat like molasses. The lyrical content
is just as limber — Big Boi moves from
New Orleans to dirty south boasts to
Barack Obama to a hooker’s thighs in
the space of just a few lines. (And yes,
there were references to both Soul II
Soul and Talladega Nights: The Ballad
of Ricky Bobby on the same album.) As
for production, distorted
guitar riffs, ‘80s synth ef-
fects, dog barking and au-
to-tuned robo-chanting all
make an appearance. Turns
out the straight man can be
just as creative as his space
cowboy counterpart.
At Brown’s fall concert,
Big Boi’s performance was
just as impressive. The
night started with some
dubstep at dusk by Stego-
saurus — former BCA book-
ing chair James Hinton —
looking the part of Brown
alum in a flannel shirt and
chunky glasses. His set was
energetic. It inspired both
frenzied dancing by the 10
people who made it to the
concert early, and some
intense head throbbing by
Stegosaurus himself that
walked the fine line be-
”
big boi comes to brown
tween looking like
he was really into his
music and like he was
doubled over with
cramps. The sun went
down between the
sets and the crowd
filled in a little, but
even by the time Big
Boi graced the stage,
it still wasn’t huge.
(In fact, while the
fall air/moonlit am-
biance was nice, the
half-empty Lincoln
Field felt awkward.
Kind of like when the
dance floor is a little too big for the party
and you start to get self-conscious.) But
Big Boi made the best of it, turning the
show into an intimate performance. He
leaned over into the crowd, brought stu-
dents (okay, just girls) onstage to dance,
and actually interacted with them once
they were there. And, as you might ex-
pect from a member of OutKast, there
was plenty of multi-media to go around
— every song had its accompanying vid-
eo projected onto the screen behind the
stage, with some old-school pictures of
Big Boi (and occasionally Andre 3000)
spliced in.
Big Boi also brought the refreshing
variety from Sir Lucious to the stage on
College Hill. He mixed in the “new shit”
(his words, not mine) with Outkast ma-
terial — and not just Speakerboxxx hits,
either. “So Fresh So Clean” and “Ms.
Jackson” made appearances, of course,
but he took it back to Aquemini’s “Rosa
Parks” (1998) and even ATLiens’ “El-
evators (Me and You)” (1996). His set
was well balanced between full songs
and excerpts, giving him plenty of time
to showcase the full spectrum of Big Boi:
old, new, OutKast, Sir Lucious, and even
Purple Ribbon All-Stars’ “Kryptonite”
(featuring C-Bone — that guy on stage
with a mic that wasn’t Big Boi). It might
have been a short concert, but there’s no
doubt that by the time it ended Big Boi
had given it everything he had. All the
cards were on the table, and it was noth-
ing short of a Royal Flush (Youtube it if
you’re feeling nostalgic for some Out-
Kast magic).
And then, of course, there is this en-
core business. I’m not sure what techni-
cally counts as an encore, but (contrary
to the BDH story) there was definitely
a moment when Big Boi left, people
yelled his name really loud, and then he
came back onstage and played another
song. Like the set itself, the encore was
short — but Big Boi seems to be proving
that you don’t have to go big to bring it
home.
After a long wait, and maybe even a
little bit of under-appreciation, Big Boi
says it best himself: “One half of Out-
Kast returns like the ghost of Christmas
past.”

Tracks Over Truffle Fried
what to make of Maya and /\/\/\Y/\
clayton ALDERN
staff writer
Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam is
not a political analyst. She does not write
the poli-ops for a newspaper, and Maya
— better known as British/Sri Lankan
electro-agitprop sensation M.I.A. — is
not running for office. M.I.A. is an artist.
She makes music, releases albums con-
taining said musical compositions, tours
the world, and performs her songs. This
should all go without saying. However,
when a journalistic firestorm rained
down on her this summer, her most char-
ring critics (including Lynn Hirschberg
of The New York Times Magazine and
Pitchfork s Matthew Perpetua) chose to
target her politics: the naivete, the con-
tradictions, the fame. Maya’s music, on
the other hand, barely had a flame held
to it.
In case you were enjoying your sum-
mer lounging on a beach as opposed to
reading music criticism, here’s a quick
recap of what happened: Hirschberg’s
profile of M.I.A. made her out to be a
snotty, clueless, truffle-flavored-french-
fry-eating hypocrite that didn’t have her
radical leftist facts straight and was do-
ing more damage than good. Perpetua,
along with a good portion of the blogo-
sphere, followed suit. Let’s get another
thing straight right away. Maya Arul-
pragasam is a pop star. Everyone has
heard “Paper Planes” from 2007’s Kala
(if you’re skeptical, think gunshots and
cash register sounds in the chorus). The
song catapulted M.I.A. into the interna-
tional spotlight, which Arulpragasam
quickly turned into the stage for her
opinions (yes, opinions) concerning Sri
Lanka’s post-colonial civil war between
the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil mi-
nority (the latter of which Arulpragasam
identifies with). What’s relevant are
M.I.A.’s outspoken remarks concerning
Got Game?
priyanka CHATTERJEE
literary editor
A lot of the sports fans I know don’t
read anything but scoreboards and sta-
tistics. And it’s a shame because there
is a plethora of sports journalists and
retired athletes who are eager to pay
for their summer homes with royalties
from novels about their lives. For ev-
ery man who needs something to read
on his Kindle on RIPTA, or every girl
who wants to impress the hooligan of
her choice, there is a nonfiction mas-
terpiece of sport for you.
Moneyball, Michael Lewis: A guide
to the turnaround of the Oakland Ath-
letics, this book has been hailed as a
classic for the baseball set. It describes
the strategy of Billy Beane, a manager
no one believed in, and his unconven-
tional and analytical ways of turning
one of the poorest teams in baseball
into a successful one. By focusing on
discounting the myth behind the value
of regular baseball statistics, the book
is well-written and easy for those who
never really understood those regular
baseball statistics anyway.
what she believes to be a genocide of the
Tamil people — not the size of her home.
Newsflash: Pop stars’ houses are bigger
than yours, Ms. Hirschberg.
On her most recent release, /\/\/\Y/\
(as fun to type as it looks), Arulpragasam
was executive producer, a mixer, and in
charge of creative direction, art direc-
tion, and photography. Allow me to re-
iterate: she is an artist. So then, pretty
pretty please... somebody talk about the
record! Pitchfork’s scathing July 12 re-
view of /\/\/\Y/\ attributed three and a half
of the six paragraphs to actually review-
ing the album. The article was, rather,
a critique of M.I.A. herself that danced
in the shadows of Hirschberg’s profile.
Interestingly enough, reviewers of the al-
bum that focus on the music as opposed
to the controversy rate it much higher:
compare Pitchfork’s 4.4/10 with Spin’s
9/10.
helping athletes pay for their summer homes
Open, Andre Agassi: One would
not think that a biography of a tennis
player would be packed with as much
backstory as Agassi’s; everything from
his famed haircut (which was at times a
wig) to his meth addiction play a part in
this expose of the pressures of the ten-
nis world, which has one of the longest
seasons in sports. Agassi’s biography
goes behind the pressures of a champi-
on with both good writing and excellent
gossip.
The Game, Ken Dryden: Although
it was published back in 1983, this ac-
count of the 1979 Montreal Canadiens
(who knew you could spell Canadians
that way?) is claimed to be one of the
most well-written books written by an
athlete of any sport. It details the pres-
sures behind being the goaltender — i.e.
the scapegoat of every hockey team— as
well as the journey of a team that would
eventually win hockey’s biggest honor:
the Stanley Cup. Dryden is an intelli-
gent writer, not requiring the help of a
ghostwriter to write with insight; being
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2010
arts & culture
5
fork: /\/\/\Y/\ is not a perfect album by
any means. It tends to fall awkwardly on
the line between conscious dubpop and
ignorant party jam. “Meds and Feds,”
which draws from Sleigh Bells’ “Treats,”
is a bit of a disappointment, especially
coming from Derek Miller, the man who
blessed us with “Crown on the Ground.”
I can understand a few of their gripes. I
cannot, however, accept that M.I.A. is
“...shrinking from her chance to engage
with a mainstream audience and refus-
ing to live up to her potential as a pop art-
ist.” She has already accomplished both
Photo courtesy of http://buffawhat.com
of those things (and since when is this
the automatic ultimate goal of a musi-
cian anyway?). /\/\/\Y/\ is something new:
a cynical, paranoid, sardonic critique of
technology and twentyten. Because of
that, the album isn’t “mainstream.” It
isn’t supposed to be. /\/\/\Y/\ is rude and
barbarous, littered with mocking digital
crunches and thin autotuned chanting.
The album is the most powerful state-
ment M.I.A. can make as an artist.
/\/\/\Y/\ is stellar. The first time Maya Arulpragasam’s job is to create
I heard “Story to Be Told,” I had an Ar- and perform her music. Lynn Hirsch-
ulpragasm that probably hit the Richter berg’s job consists of “exposing” the king-
scale. UK dubstep producer Rusko’s pins of our dirty entertainment industry
production is ominous, twisting, and — and she wouldn’t have this job were it
topped off with just the right amount not for pop stars like M.I.A. So yes, I’m
of filth. When this is combined with more forgiving of M.I.A.’s state of mis-
M.I.A.’s jeering rhymes, a pretty dank information than The New York Times
piece of art emerges... not to mention Magazine and Pitchfork. Arulpragasam
the dirty work the piece does on subs. “It is entitled to her own opinions about
Takes a Muscle” is a zany synth reggae her homeland — she simply happens to
cover of a 1982 hit by Dutch group Spec- have mass media as an outlet. However,
tral Display; if it’s possible to chop and in ranting about the Sri Lankan conflict
digitize reggae while still staying true (and consequently being chastised and
to the genre, she comes very close here. corrected), M.I.A. has brought global at-
Production is so over-the-top that it is tention to an issue that deserves more at-
impossible not to realize that the beats tention than it has received. And hey, I
themselves are another form of her own know it’s easy to forget, but amidst all the
biting commentary on the present day. controversy, finger-pointing, and Tweet-
Neither Diplo, nor Switch, nor Blaqstarr ing, she managed to record one hell of an
fail to disappoint.
album.
We should be fair to the folks at Pitch-
Canadian probably helps in that aspect, football team from Odessa, Texas, the
as hockey is their second language. But book is not so much an exploration of
if the only thing you know about hockey the sport as an expose on how much
is the movie Miracle, this book is a good the sport can mean to people. The
and insightful introduction. book deals with the greater issues in
the town that infiltrate their football
World Cup 2010: The Indispensable team, such as racism and the exulta-
Guide to Soccer and Geopolitics, Ste- tion of football over all.
phen D. Stark P’11, Harrison Stark ’11:
Everyone talks about how soccer is the Now, if you’re looking to indulge in
world’s favorite game despite America’s some light nonfiction to escape from
refusal to accept it. The authors break emotionally investing in characters,
down the 32 teams competing in the perhaps these books are not for you.
2010 World Cup and bring soccer into Not one of them is simply a book that
the politics of the countries that play explains the rules of the game (there’s
it. It discusses the importance of the that whole Dummies series for that).
first African World Cup and explains Rather, it brings each sport into a
the parallels of politics and soccer that greater context, whether that context
make this book fit to read for any one be the goings-on of a small town in
of Brown’s many international relations Texas or one revolutionary figure that
concentrators. changes the entire business of a game.
But there’s no need to be embarrassed
Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissing- to pick up any of these works. After all,
er: You know the movie, you know the you can always cover it with the sleeve
television show, but, as with many of of a David Foster Wallace novel.
Hollywood’s ideas, the book came first.
Following a small-town high school
6 arts & culture
POST-
Orange, Mulch, and Polka-Dotted Socks
michelle MEYERS
staff writer
So, strangely enough, my Satur-
day night included lots of mulch, the
lingering smell of burnt eggs, a creepy
child, a very strange story about pigs
and fingers, and a haunted woman
named Orange who lives by herself in
the middle of the woods. By now you
may be thoroughly confused or in the
middle of typing up an e-mail to me
asking what I drank/smoked/snort-
ed/etc. and where you can get some.
But the truth is that the weirdness and
excitement described above were not
the result of chemicals or substances
(saved that for later) but various el-
ements of the play Orange, Hat, &
Grace, produced at Soho Rep Theatre
in New York City and written by Greg-
ory S. Moss, a graduate of Brown Uni-
versity’s MFA playwriting program.
The play opens with a monologue
from Grace (played by Reyna de
Courcy), a lingering child who is seen
but not heard for the majority of the
plot. This is followed by the sound of
chopping as Hat (played by Matthew
Maher) stands on the roof of a cabin,
trying to lop off a hunk of firewood
with his axe. Hat is a feral young man,
grizzled by the wilderness, with a long,
scraggly beard and a sweat-stained
shirt. All of this occurs much to the
Brooklyn’s Finest
sam CARTER
editor-in-chief
If watching Between Two Ferns
isn’t enough, or if listening to Coconut
Records isn’t enough, or if, for some
strange reason, reclining in front of
some Cheers reruns just doesn’t do
it for you, it’s probably because you
haven’t figured out how to combine
all three effectively. And you must
not watch enough HBO, which figured
out the perfect combination and will
air the second season premiere of its
Bored to Death this Sunday.
A triptych depicting three messy
lives, the show, created by novel-
ist and sometimes-boxer Jonathan
Ames, revolves around the various
deeds and misdeeds of the fictional
Jonathan Ames, played by Jason
Schwartzman. With a penchant for
marijuana and white wine — where
one often complements the other —
Ames is both a failed novelist and
failed boyfriend. He’s also a writer
for a magazine whose editor is George
Christopher, played by the inimitable
Ted Danson. The final musketeer, as
it were, is Ray Hueston, comic book
artist and Jonathan’s best friend.
The show’s principal premise is
almost a 21st-century update of Don
the brunonian’s new york night out
dismay of Orange (played by Stephanie
Roth Haberle), an aging woman who
happens to be the owner of the roof. An
unlikely romance ensues between Hat
and Grace as they deal with the dimin-
ishing resources of their environment
and the consequences of an unrecon-
ciled past.
The performance was followed by
a talkback with Paula Vogel, winner of
the Pulitzer Prize and former head of
the Brown MFA playwriting program,
a smiling woman with round glasses
and polka-dotted socks. Arranging her
chair across from Gregory Moss in the
mulch, Vogel first asked where the play
came from, given that Moss’s interac-
tions with the rural South are relatively
minimal. Moss described the process of
forming this play as one of visualization
without preconception, in which he, in
essence, allowed his characters to go
where they wanted to go and then re-
ported what they were doing. Moss also
noted that his influences for Orange,
Hat, & Grace include the photographer
Walker Evans, best known for his docu-
mentation of the Great Depression; the
music of the Carter family, which had a
profound effect upon bluegrass, coun-
try, and southern gospel; and Shake-
speare’s The Tempest, which provided
HBO’s bored to death
Quixote. Like the man who read so
many tales of knighthood that he
fancied himself a knight, Ames has
read so many detective novels that he
believes he can make it as a private
eye. The journey begins as soon as he
makes a post on Craigslist advertis-
ing his services, and each episode in
the first season follows Ames and his
merry crew in their efforts to solve a
single case.
Watching the interplay among
Schwartzman, Galifianakis, and Dan-
son recalls both the best scenes of a
Wes Anderson movie — imagine what
The Darjeeling Limited could have
inspiration for the improbable love tri-
angle that occurs between Orange, Hat,
and Grace. Throughout the play, there
is a progressive withdrawal of affection
as the natural resources surrounding
the cabin became increasingly limited.
In some ways, the plot felt as if it was
skirting the edges of the post-Apocalyp-
tic genre, with allusions to a past that
was more verdant and a present envi-
ronment that was constantly dropping
below subsistence.
As Vogel noted, Moss’s plays are
generally tied closely with music, which
was used here to inform the rhythm of
the characters’ actions, such as Hat’s
chanting of “chop! chop! chop!” as he
slices apart a log for Orange. Vogel also
observed that while Moss’s plays often
include a “squirm factor” - something
that makes the audience uncomfort-
able, that makes them want to strug-
gle in their seats - the squirm factor is
somewhat less obvious in Orange, Hat,
& Grace. Rather, the commentary of the
play revolves primarily around the ways
in which parenting and religion teach
us to repress true human needs. Moss
seeks to push beyond the threshold of
negative empathy, showing that empa-
thy for characters for whom we don’t
necessarily have a natural affinity can
been like with either Zach or Ted —
and the easy humor of a show like
Cheers. If a comparison with another
HBO show is needed, imagine an En-
tourage for people who have heard of
Raymond Chandler. Danson’s antics
as a bumbling magazine editor who
keeps joints in his prescription Via-
gra bottle aren’t nearly outrageous as
those of Ari Gold, but that means the
comedy doesn’t stem from shock so
much as genuine amusement.
Although it takes place in New
York, the show is one that deals with
Brooklyn and what it means to live
there in the same way that Sex and the
be the most powerful kind.
Following the talkback, as my
friends and I waited in the lobby, we
decided that we had to introduce our-
selves to Paula Vogel. After all, Vogel
defined Brown’s MFA playwriting pro-
gram for decades upon decades. And
she was wearing polka-dotted socks,
which was pretty cool. We soon real-
ized that the task was going to be quite
a challenge, given that almost every
other audience member had the same
idea. However, with that drive par-
ticular to ambitious college students,
my friends and I soon formed a semi-
circle around Vogel so that she would
have to acknowledge our presence to
move anywhere. The plan worked and
introductions were made (in which I
grinned hugely and name-dropped like
crazy). Vogel then smiled and said that
given the smallness of the playwriting
community, we would likely see each
other again. All in all, it was a night
to be proud of Brown theatre and the
legacy of Paula Vogel, who encouraged
up-and-coming playwrights like Moss
to push the boundaries of convention
while simultaneously creating an aes-
thetic language with which we are able
to connect and empathize.
City treats the Manhattan lifestyle.
Ames looks like he just walked out of
a Williamsburg bookshop. Brown-
stones and organic food co-ops line
the quiet streets along which Ames
chases down juvenile skateboard
thieves and searches for clues about
lesbians who steal donated sperm.
But the best part about Bored to
Death is that it never makes the ab-
surd seem so — and that only height-
ens the humor. Boxing duels between
magazine editors and their doubles
and triples, stalking someone out-
side an Al-Anon event, and finding
a Russian chanteuse named “The
White Dove” all take place. A scene
of Hueston and Christopher lighting
up joints in a car while wearing night-
vision goggles, drawing comics, and
forgetting to keep dibs on a sleuthing
Ames might be the best of the entire
season.
AMC might have Mad Men, Show-
time might have Weeds, but HBO has
Bored to Death, along with all its oth-
er shows, including Boardwalk Em-
pire and Eastbound and Down. Tune
in on Sunday eliminate all that post-
studying ennui.

Once in a Blue Room
rémy ROBERT
staff writer
Walking through that hallowed
brick archway from Waterman onto
the Main Green, you can sense some-
thing different is in the air this fall —
something bustling, something fizzy,
full of zest and zippy energy. Those
fetching “Building Brown” signs that
swathed Faunce House for the past
year have been ripped off like the
wrapping on a long-awaited birthday
present to unveil Faunce 2.0.
The Stephen Robert ’62 Campus
Center seems to have been outfitted
with everything shy of a manageable
nickname (well, that and an ATM —
a shortcoming it more than makes
up for with so much space for activi-
ties!). The new student center also
boasts a plenitude of meal options
that make it far too easy to spend all
your hours there. Here, then, is an
ode to our new Blue Room, a missive
on its highlights and hiccups.
For the entirety of my freshman
year, the Blue Room was a bottom-
shelf commodity. Occupying the
ever-scintillating Faunce Multipur-
pose Room, it was a land of pre-made
sandwiches and myriad muffins,
Me Jane, You Food
jane BRENDLINGER
food columnist
Food. Television. Competition.
These timeless cornerstones of Ameri-
can culture find themselves flawlessly
united in Bravo’s Top Chef, which just
last week ended its seventh season in a
gripping finale. Though I’m not one for
reality TV (and I’m about as passionate
about my television as I am about my
eats), the Emmy-winning Top Chef ris-
es above the bawdy tales of teen moms
and the obstacle course struggles of the
obese. Dare I say that it’s reality pro-
gramming for the refined palate?
In some ways, Top Chef exhibits the
same generic symptoms of competitive
television, namely pithy attempts at
drama and a poor struggle to turn con-
testants into characters. Will we root for
Tiffany, who could use the prize money
from this Quick Fire Challenge to pay
for her wedding, or Kevin, who will
put the $10,000 towards his mounting
debt? Neither story pushed me in either
direction. I heartily enjoyed the petty
kitchen antics, however, as chef was
pitted against chef. Who could believe
the outrage when Alex clearly stole Ed’s
pea puree and then went on to win the
elimination challenge with the pilfered
ingredient? The creators of the show
are rather heavy-handed as far as plot
goes, with highly suggestive camera
angles and blunt attempts at foreshad-
owing that make a viewer wonder how
much “reality” is actually involved. The
the culinary campus center
nothing more, nothing less. The seating
was scanty and slapdash, an ambience
exacerbated by its disruptive disassem-
bling everyday before the 4:00 closing.
I had heard sentimental myths about
the glaringly absent focaccia, but hav-
ing adapted to life at Brown without it,
it wasn’t missed.
Ah, but how the tables have turned.
As of September 1, leagues of carb-crav-
ing Brown students have been reunited
with their beloved Italian bread, herby
slices of which house a smorgasbord of
sandwiches served warm everyday. One
gripe? They are somewhat inexplicably
whisked away at two o’clock (BUDS,
why you gotta be that way?), but maybe
that’ll change once the honeymoon’s
over.
In that vein, when you’re cock-
blocked from your dreams of focaccia
afternoon delight, the build-your-own
sandwich line is a beacon of autonomy
and condiments. The discovery that
they keep arugula in a drawer is thrill-
ing, to be sure, but behold the bounty
of other offerings: salami, tabbouli,
chèvre, unwieldy leaves of basil! Don’t
believe what they tell you, though. The
who stole the pea puree?
counterargument to this skepticism is,
of course, couldn’t they think of a better
plot twist than pea puree? True or not,
the relief I felt upon Alex’s elimination
in the next round was real.
Sometimes the most intriguing
drama of all remains unfilmed. I write,
of course, of ethereal host Padma Par-
vati Lakshmi, the reigning goddess su-
preme of popular food culture. Model,
actress, former wife of Salman Rushdie
(I flipped out too), Padma resides mys-
teriously behind her role as host and
her seductive voice that’s creamier than
Kevin’s panna cotta. Where did she get
that seven-inch scar on her right arm?
(Answer: A car crash when she was
14, according to Wikipedia.) And most
intriguing of all, when one Quick Fire
challenge entailed making a sophisti-
cated dish that could be pureed into
baby food for Padma’s new little one,
the question pervaded the air: who is
Padma’s baby daddy? The mystery con-
tinues…
Though Top Chef remains in the
base category of reality television, it
has been able to use this medium for a
greater purpose: bringing to the general
public the most respected in the food
industry and those on the forefront of
modern cuisine. The judges, including
James Beard-award winner Tom Colic-
chio, Gail Simmons of Food and Wine
magazine, Eric Ripert of Le Benardin
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2010
prosciutto is really just ham.
Then, of course, there’s the hot food
line. The fact that one can buy Kabob &
Curry for less than a full meal credit is
a great modern triumph. The menu is
constantly in rotation, but it is consis-
tent; I’d urge you all to try whatever’s
on offer, though vegetable mango curry
and chicken vindaloo are favorites. The
ground lamb with peas made a believer
of my friend, a skeptic of the joys of In-
dian food. Now, if they only had samo-
sas… well, that’d really be something.
The initiative to integrate local busi-
nesses into the Blue Room is manifest
in nearly all of the other selections.
Shanghai provides pre-made sushi
rolls, which I initially found harrowing.
(Shanghai? Sushi??) As far as pre-made
sushi rolls go, though, they’re actually
pretty tasty.
Bagels from Bagel Gourmet and
pastries from La Salle Bakery round out
the eatery’s spread. Skip the almond
croissants, which have a damp, gritty,
and overly sugared filling. Instead, let’s
pause for a moment to reflect on the
ham and cheese croissants, which are
a revelation if you can get them while
restaurant in New York, and, of course,
the cookbook author Padma, are all, in
a word, legit.
And as much as I pride myself on
my own culinary knowledge, I am con-
sistently baffled by the sheer prowess
and creativity of the cheftestants. Some
of the challenges seem absolutely in-
surmountable: in one episode the chefs
were presented with exotic ingredients
(duck testicles and goat tongue, to name
a few), then, halfway through their own
preparation, they were told to take on
the dish of the cook to their right. The
finale, held in Singapore, did not de-
mand authentic Asian cuisine in every
dish, but it did require each chef to in-
corporate the flavors and styles of the
region into his own cooking. These chal-
lenges, I believe, weren’t just entertain-
ing hoops for these already established
professionals to jump through; they
were true tests of a chef’s competency
in technique and powers of creativity.
Can we, for a moment, appreciate the
utter genius of season winner Kevin
Sbraga’s innovative dessert, the Singa-
pore Sling 2010? The Singapore Sling,
as I myself learned in this episode, is a
famous cocktail recipe whose ingredi-
ents include pineapple juice, grenadine,
and gin (taking notes?). Our Top Chef
Kevin took this cocktail, froze it into a
granita, then served it in a hollowed out
dragon fruit cup over coconut panna
food & booze
7
they’re hot. The pastry itself falls just
this side of gummy, but the melted
Swiss spills just perfectly out of each
end.
The following deserves its own
paragraph: sometimes, there is cake.
It’s not superb, but it is cake, and it’s
blanketed in frosting. Giddy-making
frosting.
Once you’ve vanquished the byz-
antine lines and paid, a host of seats
and crumb-stricken tables awaits you.
The room is constantly abuzz with
people completing problem sets in
the cozy armchairs by the fireplace or
idly Facebooking in the booth they’ve
snagged, while others spill freely onto
the patio and Main Green.
With the new campus center, we
have a locus of student life that’s truly
multipurpose. On one level, Faunce
serves to unite our eccentric and
colorful interests as a student body
— you can flock here for everything
from French section to UCS meetings
to hosting a show on BSR. But diverse
as we are, eating is one thing we have
in common, and at the Blue Room,
there’s something for everybody.
cotta and macerated fruits. The judg-
es, along with me, the viewer, were
blown away.
Top Chef, in my mind, encom-
passes more than your average Bra-
vo program, at least more than the
refinement of Jersey Couture. For
foodies, Top Chef is a place to both
learn from and appreciate the greats.
Who knew that gray tuna tartar was
the result of oxidation, which can be
prevented with a light addition of oil?
Or perhaps it would be interesting to
try Ed’s whipped cream recipe, add-
ing fleur de sel to lend a salty kick?
For chefs and the food industry, it’s a
forum to promote true excellence in
their craft. By the end of season sev-
en, the judges were truly struggling
to find grounds to eliminate a contes-
tant since each dish was impeccable.
Sure, the reality aspect satisfied my
own penchant for guilty pleasure tele-
vision: the communal living, the all-
revealing interviews, and the biting
remarks that added to the palpable
heat in the kitchen. But it all comes
down to the food and the remarkable
abilities of the cooks who produce it.
And Top Chef, with each spark of bril-
liance that reaches a plate, reminds
the audience that the world of food,
like language, is infinite and creative,
and that it is an art of soulful, edible
expression.
8 sex
POST-
MM
sexpert
Rhythm Method: n. birth control
technique by which sexual partners
abstain from sex during weeks when
pregnancy is likely (i.e., that of ovu-
lation), and compensate during the
remainder of the month by getting all
the more nasty. Also: Natural Family
Planning; Vatican Roulette
Apparently “The Rhythm Method”
is the official name of not one, not
two, but at least seven current musi-
cal groups. A Google search tells me
that their home bases range from Mil-
waukee to Nova Scotia to Portsmouth,
New Hampshire and that none of them
plays either Fela Kuti-style Afrobeat or
post-rave electronica (a Boston-based
“The Rhythm Method String Band”
actually performs old-time square-
dancing music, which seems to me
incongruous with their sexy, drum-
machine-redolent name).
In fact, historically, the rhythm
method corresponds less with head-
banging party-goers than with practic-
ing Catholics. Sure, the rhythm method
has been around since women started
ovulating (i.e., forever, or at least since
Eve was twelve-ish), but not until the
1930s did Japanese Kyusaku Ogino
and Austrian Hermann Knauss create
a formalized, calendar-based contra-
Lovecraft & Dorian
lovecraft & dorian
sexperts
Dear Lovecraft and Dorian,
What’s the best way to tell a part-
ner about a fetish? I have a very com-
mon, mild fetish but have been too
embarrassed to bring it up with any
of my partners so far. I like feet, as
in like like. I mostly just want to be
able touch or hold a beautiful foot (or
two) while I am doing other sex acts
— maybe not the whole time, but just
for a few minutes. Nobody else knows
about it. I recently started hooking
up with someone who I think would
be down, but I’m not sure how to talk
about it without coming off as creepy
or putting a lot of pressure on indulg-
ing it. What do I do?
Mild Fetish Makes For Mild Fears
Darlink MFMFMF,
How common and mild you are! I
like your concern about not pressur-
ing, but given your awareness I think
you can easily slink around it. A good
way to start talking about fetishes is
to initiate a conversation about fan-
tasies and turn-ons, first asking your
partner (a la Ludacris) and then shar-
ing yours, including your oh-so-bland
fetish. It should work out to be a nice,
Sexicon
rhythm method
ceptive method1. The advent of natural
family planning as a legit system of preg-
nancy prevention coincided with the
sanctioning of condom use by the Angli-
can Church and, a year later, the Federal
Council of Churches. The Pope, however,
was so not down with latex. Pius XI is-
sued the Casti Connubii in 1930, which
continues to this day to ban the use of all
contraceptives under the premise that
intercourse has one exclusive purpose:
to make babies2.
If I thought the purpose of sex was ex-
pressly to populate my life with a bunch
of squealing crumb-munchers, I’d have a
lot less to say in this column. As it hap-
pens, I’m a big fan of both condoms (and
artificial contraceptives in general) and
the rhythm method.
Unfortunately, everyone in my high
school referred to having condom-less
sex as “raw-doggin’ it,” a decidedly un-
sexy phrase that conjures the image of a
bunch of uncooked Ballpark franks lub-
ing up with some Grey Poupon in antici-
pation of the forthcoming plunge into my
lady-parts. But maybe it’s good that my
classmates painted such an unappealing
picture of unprotected sex — because,
as we’ve been informed since the fifth
grade, it’s ultimately pretty risky, expo-
nentially ncreasing chances of STI con-
traction and pregnancy. Nevertheless,
these statistics don’t necessarily render
the rhythm method a thing of the past.
In fact, a friend told me recently about
an investment she’d made in CycleBeads,
getting off on the right foot
fun “getting to know you” conversation,
yielding much juicier tidbits than their
first hamster’s name. You are definitely
not asking too much, and incorporating
foot fun into other sex acts is probably
the least threatening way to introduce
it. For example, you could hold a foot
while you are giving the foot owner head
or manual stimulation so it’s a very nice
time for both of you. They will come to
see it as another way to add net plea-
sure and arousal rather than an isolated
act that does nothing for them. Don’t be
embarrassed: one of the main reasons
we get nervous about our fetishes, how-
ever mild and common they may be, is
because they are important to us, to our
sexual expression and fulfillment. A car-
ing/down partner will recognize this and
try their best to give it a go.
xo
Lovecraft
Dear MFMFMF,
First off, thank you for admitting,
at least to yourself, that your fetish is
just a normal and healthy part of your
sexuality. There are far too many people
here, and indeed everywhere, that feel
like if they just want to give someone a
foot massage (and get a kick out of it)
a string of oblong glass beads that could
pass for a necklace. CycleBeads are ba-
sically a color-coded handheld calendar,
with twenty-eight to thirty-two beads
(one bead per day of the menstrual cy-
cle), and a rubber ring that shifts from
bead to bead as the days pass. Different
colored beads signify different weeks of
the cycle; the week of ovulation is usu-
ally expressed with white beads. To me,
it seems like CycleBeads are to contra-
ceptives what Silly Bands are to jewelry:
a product with an obscenely low produc-
tion cost and a few bright colors. This is
not to say that CycleBeads are a bad idea
— in fact, they’re a great idea. They’d also
make a cheap, two-second DIY project
for any fertile, industrious female.
What I find appealing about the
rhythm method and the concept of a
beaded ring is that they are a way of re-
claiming and checking in with our bodies.
I am not a proponent of unprotected sex
— not in my public or personal lives —
but I am also not a proponent of compla-
cently slapping on a condom or popping
a Plan B every time penetration occurs,
without any consideration for the bodies
and preferences of the people involved.
I have friends with latex allergies and
friends who have experienced reversible
bone loss while using certain contracep-
tives; a singular blood condition makes
hormonal contraceptives very dangerous
for me.
In this century, and at this university,
we have so many contraceptive options
then there must be something seriously
wrong with them. This is not helped by
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
(used by mental health practitioners to
classify different disorders) which clas-
sifies most fetishes as “paraphilia” and
something that must be cured. That’s
what you are up against, MFMFMF, so
it should almost be your duty to bring up
your fetish to whomever you are hooking
up with. Just throw in catchphrases like
“subvert sexual normativity” and “over-
throw the cultural hegemony of hetero-
sexism” and you’re bound to get good re-
sults. Brown students love that stuff like
a hipster loves skinny jeans.
Your Friendly Neighbohood Fag,
Dorian
Dear Lovecraft and Dorian,
I’m a pleasantly plump girl, but I’m
constantly being ignored by men be-
cause of my size. How do I get boys to
pay attention to me without resorting to
slutalicious measures? Please help!
Can’t handle my love handles
Darlink CH My LH,
My first niblet of advice is this: Work
it. Whatever you like about yourself/ look
good in/feel good in, do it! Develop your
at our fingertips. Finding the appropri-
ate method of birth control — whether
it’s a female condom, a diaphragm, an
IUD, any of a multitude of birth control
pills, a spermicidal sponge, a patch, a
good old-fashioned condom, or some
other pregnancy and/or STI preventer
(note that many of the aforementioned
methods do not prevent STIs) — can
be an empowering and enlightening
process. And while you’re figuring out
what works best with your body, it’s vi-
tal to know where you or your partner
stand in terms of ovulation and fertil-
ity.
So take a tip from the golden-agers
and the church-goers, and implement
a little rhythm in your sex life. Pay at-
tention to when you or your partner
will be ovulating (roughly between
days 11 and 20 of an average cycle,
which restarts on the first day of ev-
ery period), and to any pre-menstrual
symptoms (which can clue you in as to
how soon menstruation will occur). If
you’re makin’ the sex during a period
of infertility, it can give you the confi-
dence to, say, try a spermicidal sponge
for the first time (since, even when the
beads aren’t white, you should always
be protected). And hey, while you’re
going old-fashioned, why not set the
mood witha little string-band music —
just to get the rhythm going.
1 www.fertilityfriend.com
2 Collier, Aine (2007). The Humble Little Con-
dom: A History
ladyswag, cultivate it like a pumpkin
worthy of the blue ribbon at the state
fair. If any of these boys still ignore
you or talk sh*t about your plumpness,
then they suck and would probably be
assholes about other things, too. We
all like different physical character-
istics, but that’s no excuse for being a
blatant douche.
xo
Lovecraft
Dear CH My LH,
The only guys that pick who they
get with based solely on waist size are
not the ones that I want to find myself
with. (Usually because that sense of
shallow entitlement brought to them
by good looks pervades everything that
they do.) So I would say that they need
to realize that you are interesting and
attractive in so many ways other than
just the physical. (And also, if/when
it gets to that point, showing off some
physical skills wouldn’t go amiss.) Just
be yourself; you are beautiful and spe-
cial, and someone will notice.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Fag,
Dorian
Questions! Post them at form-
spring.me/LovecraftDorian