October 28, 2015. | Issue 9, Volume 63 | thebluebanner.net
T h e st u d en t vo i c e o f U N C As h ev i lle | jaw li n es fo r days s i n c e 1 9 82 | t h eb lu eba n n er.n et
explore asheville haunts
Celebrate Halloween and religious diversity PAGE 2
Haunted Asheville tours PAGE 9
Paranormal Asheville PAGE 10
Pinhead’s Graveyard PAGE 11
Haunted Farm PAGE 12
Scream Queens The Cabin in The Woods PAGE 16
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October 28, 2015. | Issue 9, Volume 63 | thebluebanner.net
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NEWS
Chemicals and insects threaten local vegetation
Photo by Becca Andrews BECCA ANDREWS News Staff Writer randrew1@unca.edu
When driving on the Blue Ridge Parkway, the view is of endless mountains covered with countless trees. But upon rising in elevation, the normally green forest canopy becomes interspersed with patches of gray, dead trees. One example is the road leading up to Mount Mitchell. Each turn on the winding road reveals a new patch of lifeless, bare trunks. Up to 90 percent of these trees are dying as a result of a combination of acid rain and a microscopic non-native invasive pest, the balsam wooly adelgid. Acid rain, or acid deposition, occurs when chemicals like nitrogen oxide and sulfur, released by burning coal, comRead more on page 8
Section Editor: Emma Alexander nalexand@unca.edu
Editor-In-Chief Timbi Shepherd, jshephe3@unca.edu
Halloween brings opportunities for all religions and walks of life MOLLY JABEN Contributing Writer
V
ivid colors and extravagant traditions mark the changing season, including paranormal investigations around Asheville. “When you’re walking up and down Church Street, you’re actually walking on top of an old cemetery,” said Sarah Harrison, founder of the Asheville Paranormal Society and retired clinical laboratory scientist. Asheville hosts several famous otherworldly entities, including Helen from Helen’s Bridge and the Black Abbey on Church Street, the 55 year-old said. “There’s a woman dressed in black called the Black Abbey who haunts the Presbyterian Church there. Then there’s a ghost all in white by the Methodist Church,” Harrison said. “Church Street used to be a cemetery. They dug up the graves, or allegedly dug up the graves, moved them and then put fill dirt on top of it and paved it.” Harrison said she began paranormal investigating in Asheville after taking a ghost hunting seminar in Chapel Hill. She currently holds the title of lead investigator for the Asheville Paranormal Society. “We’ve dealt with non-human entities that are particularly troublesome. They tend to stir up a lot of emotion. They do poltergeist-type activities and they feed off the energy of the fear they generate. They cause a lot of chaos in the house,” Harrison said.
The Blue Banner Fall 2015 Editorial Board
Harrison said that higher paranormal activity occurs in the fall because the change of the season brings about a positive spike in electromagnetic energy on Earth. “We were investigating a house near Beaver Lake and one of the former owners of the house beat his wife and child. He went overboard one night and killed his wife and went outside and shot himself. He stayed in the house and made life miserable for the tenants who lived in the house thereafter. He would wake them up at night, grab them, push them. He was getting his jollies doing what he could to scare them,” Harrison said. The society held an investigation of Lewis Memorial Park in north Asheville on Sunday night. “For us, Halloween marks the Samhain Sabbat,” said Dixie Deerman, a high priestess of Coven Oldenwilde, who prefers the name Queen Lady Passion. “It’s witches’ new year celebration. It’s time to divine our futures for the year to come a time when we lament our beloved dead and appease restless spirits.” Witchcraft denotes a pagan folk-religion that worships life-affirming deities and the inherent sanctity of nature. Wicca means the ancient form of witchcraft which celebrates the balance of life and birth, growth and death, according to coven members. “Of course I believe in ghosts — as well as myriad types of spirits, entities, demons and other quirky beings,” the high priestess said.
Coven members, contrary to popular belief, do not worship Satan, said the 52 year-old. According to the coven, Satan worship profanes Christian symbolism and is a Christian heresy, differing from pagan religions, which pre-date Christianity. Witches do not believe in Satan, and do not have a satanic equivalent deity. Bryan Robbins, lead pastor of Missio Dei Church in Asheville, said many people in his congregation find themselves unsure of how to approach the celebrations during this time of year. “At times the Evangelical Church has said they would whole-heartedly abandon or forsake this tradition because it has pagan roots. That can be short-sighted because there’s this idea of even if it has pagan roots, at what point does it’s current practice stop being tainted,” Robbins said. Some Christians believe Halloween marks Satan’s birthday, while others see it as a cultural phenomenon, Robbins said. “Long story short is that a lot of people are confused about it, should they participate in it or not,” Robbins said. “At this point in American culture, I think whatever pagan roots it might have had are gone. It’s pretty much a commercial holiday.” Robbins said he supports trick-or-treating as well as the other typical holiday traditions. “As Christians, I think there’s a way to say, ‘how can we participate in this in a life-giving way?’ So I would say to my folks, give out the best candy,” Robbins said.
Enterprising Editor James Neal, jneal@unca.edu News Editor Emma Alexander, nalexand@unca.edu Sports Editor Harrison Slaughter, jslaught@unca.edu Arts & Features Editor Larisa Karr, lakarr@unca.edu Copy Desk Chief Tamsen Todisco, ttodisco@unca.edu Layout & Design Editor Makeda Sandford, msandfor@unca.edu Photography Editor Johnny Condon, jcondon@unca.edu Multimedia Editor Maddie Stagnaro, mstagnar@unca.edu Social Media Editor Michael O’Hearn, mohearn@unca.edu Opinion Editor June Bunch, kbunch@unca.edu Copy Editors Devric Lefevre, dkiyota@unca.edu Kathryn Gambill, agambill@unca.edu Katelyn Northrup, knorthru@unca.edu Advertising Manager Amber Abunassar, aabunass@unca.edu Faculty Adviser Michael Gouge, mgouge@unca.edu Staff
Jason Perry, Matt McGregor, Phillip Wyatt, Curtis Ginn, Holden Mesk, Maddy Swims, Sam Shumate, Ashley Elder, Becca Andrews, Roan Farb, Jordyn Key, Meredith Bumgarner, and Carson Wall. Follow Us: @TheBlueBanner The Blue Banner @thebluebanner
Have a news tip? Send to jshephe3@unca.edu The Blue Banner is UNC Asheville’s student newspaper. We publish each Wednesday except during summer sessions, finals week and holiday breaks. Our office is located in Karpen Hall 019. The Blue Banner is a designated forum for free speech and welcomes letters to the editor, considering them on basis of interest, space and timeliness. Letters and articles should be emailed to the editor-in-chief or the appropriate section editor. Letters should include the writer’s name, year in school, and major or other relationship to UNCA. Include a telephone number to aid in verification. All articles are subject to editing.
October 28, 2015. | Issue 9, Volume 63 | thebluebanner.net
oct. 8 - Nov.3
Happenings Wednesday, Oct. 28 Visiting Artist Lecture: Emil Robinson 6 - 7 p.m. Karpen 038
Thursday, Oct. 29 Film: The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution 7 p.m. Highsmith 220 Concert: Foxing 8 - 10 p.m. Highsmith 159 - Alumni Hall
Friday, Oct. 30 The Healing Power of Pets: Fact, Fiction, or Somewhere in Between? 11:30 a.m. - 1:15 p.m. Reuter 102 - Manheimer Room Renato Rosaldo Reading 4 - 6:30 p.m. Karpen 139
Sunday, Nov. 1 Sundays with Brevard Music Center 1 - 2 p.m. Reuter 102A Autumn Players Readers Theater 2:30 - 5 p.m. Reuter 102 - Manheimer Room
Monday, Nov. 2 Arabic Jokes and Other Speech Genres 6 - 7:30 p.m. Karpen 139 - Laurel Forum Film: Citizen Autistic 7 - 8:30 p.m. Highsmith 143 - Grotto
Tuesday, Nov. 3 Someone Who Moves Like You: A Discussion on Autistic Narrative in Film, Fiction, and Memoir Noon - 1 p.m. Highsmith 223 Eli Clare Presents “Climbing the Mountain: Super Crips and Poster Children” 7 - 9:30 p.m. Highsmith 159 - Alumni Hall Israeli-Palestinian Borders: Issues and Dilemmas 7:30 - 9 p.m. Reuter 102 - Manheimer Room
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Campus organizations promote responsible spirits KATIE CROOKS
A&F Staff Writer kcrooks@unca.edu
To encourage responsible drinking behaviors during National Collegiate Alcohol Awareness Week, various UNC Asheville on-campus organizations have partnered to create a four-day series of programs called Think Before You Drink Week. “The whole goal is just to encourage our students to make responsible decisions,” said Barbara Galloway, a substance abuse counselor at UNCA’s Health and Counseling Center. National Collegiate Alcohol Awareness Week is a student affairs initiative designed to be a collective effort in reinforcing university policy and promote alcohol education, according to the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators. Strategically planned in the third week of October, these events help keep safe drinking behaviors on the forefront of student’s minds during the Halloween party season. “Halloween is notoriously a big alcohol holiday,” Galloway says. “I would say to plan in advance, make sure you’re with friends, know how much you’re drinking, find a way to keep track of it, figure out how you’re going to get home so that you stay safe.” The CDC reports that 90 percent of alcohol consumed by those under 21 is in the form of binge drinking. Holly Carter, a prevention specialist for the Partnership for Substance Free Youth in Buncombe County, says she warns those planning to consume alcohol of the dangers of binge drinking. “The obvious is drinking and driving accidents,” Carter says, “but I try to focus more on other things that could happen, to folks if they are intoxicated. For example, sexual assaults, [approximately] 90 percent of those have alcohol involved, alcohol positioning is an issue on college campuses with binge
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drinking.” The CDC defines binge drinking for men as consuming five or more drinks during an event, and for women, having four or more drinks on a single occasion. Carter says students planning on drinking should be mindful of their portion sizes, recommending students limit their drinks to 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine, or 1 ounce of liquor per hour. “A good guideline for a special event is that you have no
Read more on page 7
“I would say to plan in advance, make sure you’re with friends, know how much you’re drinking, find a way to keep track of it, figure out how you’re going to get home so that you stay safe.” Barbara Galloway
photograph by
larisa karr
October 28, 2015. | Issue 9, Volume 63 | thebluebanner.net
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NEWS
Eshelman School of Pharmacy flourishes in Asheville MATT MCGREGOR
A&F Staff Writer mmcgrego@unca.edu
UNC Asheville students were Hacky-Sacking, slacklining and reading in the grass when they witnessed an anomaly. Students in starched white lab coats crossed the Quad from Karpen to Zeis Hall. Beneath their lab coats were ties and business dresses. The Hacky-Sackers, slackliners and readers stopped what they were doing and watched with questioning faces. “I wish I had a picture of it,” says Greene Shepherd, vice chair and pace clinical professor. “It was right there in front of the library. It was sort of like the Beatles’ Abbey Road album cover.” They were watching the first class of the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. They had no predecessors to ask about the program, Shepherd says. They entered a new frontier in 2011 in coming to UNCA, applying and attending where no pharmacy student had gone before. “And what a brave group of people they were,” Shepherd says. “We had a plan for a campus. At the time they were ap-
plying there were no bricks and mortar to show, just vaporware. You couldn’t see the classroom, just the plans for the classroom.” The faculty and staff consisted of four people sitting around a table with their laptops in a room that no longer exists. Shepherd and Mollie Scott, who is now regional dean, made up the faculty. David Mitchell and James Joyce made up the staff. Joyce says they shared a printer, unplugging and plugging the USB port into their computers when needed. “The four of us were huddled around that table,” Joyce says. “Once they got us network capability, I was hooking everybody up with jacks in the wall to get computer access.” They were working from scratch, and on a deadline. David Mitchell, operations manager, says the construction and technological setup finished the night before classes started. Even with the construction completed, there were still just two classrooms for the 15 people who comprised that first student body, whom Mitchell calls pioneers. Since then, they have doubled in size. They grew from a
faculty and staff of four to 10, Mitchell says. “We intend on growing more. The space has expanded. When we started four years ago, nothing looked like this,” Mitchell says. “The layout was completely different. Now it feels like we have more of a presence. The pharmacy school has a well defined space.” A typical class size today holds between 25 and 30 people. Mitchell says the class size of their home base at UNC Chapel Hill is around 130 students. Sarah Dobbins, a third-year student, says she didn’t want to be just another face in the crowd. She chose the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy for its small community relationships. “Being on the Asheville campus gives you the best of both worlds – the privilege of obtaining a world-class education with the advantage of a smalltown feel,” Dobbins says. Mitchell says the UNCA branch administration intends to keep class sizes small. These allow for more one-on-one interactions between students and teachers. “Each of us wear more hats,”
Joyce says. “We don’t necessarily stay in one particular box. If somebody needs some help they give it or they get it.” The campus evolved its own culture from this closeness. Stephanie Kiser, director of rural health and wellness, says this culture thrives on efficiency due to everyone’s accessibility. “We offer a smaller campus experience,” Kiser states. Students know the teachers, and teachers know the students. Maybe this sense of community rubbed off on Franklin Rodriguez, a third year student. Rodriguez currently works at Asheville Compounding Pharmacy on Merrimon Avenue. Unlike college students who dislike the jobs that carry them through college, Rodriguez says he would be glad to continue working there after graduation. Still, there was competition over where the school would even go, Kiser says. It came
Au revoir, Ashe-Hole:
down to Greensboro or Asheville. Shepherd says the city of Asheville, the Chamber of Commerce, the Mountain Area Health Education Center and Mission Hospital came together to make a pitch to the Board of Governors. Shepherd says it was something of a no-brainer. Asheville was already a celebrity in the pharmacy world. Mission Hospital and the city of Asheville had joined in the ’90s to create the Asheville Project. City officials examined healthcare costs, Shepherd says. They researched ways to reduce the costs while increasing efficiency. A partnership formed among the city, Mission Hospital, and the Mountain Area Health Education Center. Pharmacists took on a more active role in making sure medicine was properly taken, while promoting health and lifestyle Read more on page 9
What the removal of a campus social hotspot really means for UNCA students ROAN FARB
Asst. Opinion Editor rfarb@unca.edu “The fact that I have a stronger work ethic than the administration here really surprises me,” said Leon Breakstone, a 20-year-old UNC Asheville sophomore from Winston-Salem, on the subject of the uni-
versity closing its most popular designated smoking area. Breakstone is one of many concerned students at UNCA who are unhappy with the impending removal of the campus’ most populated designated smoking area, the “Ashe-Hole”. “The Ashe-Hole is like a forum for people to go to,” said
Pablo Best, a 20-year-old Charlotte native and women, gender and sexuality studies student at UNCA. “I don’t mean to make it sound like more than it is, but it’s always felt like a large watering hole of sorts.” Best described the smoker’s circles as one of the only places on campus where students ar-
en’t simply crossing paths with other students, but rather having prolonged interactions with peers in a relaxed setting. “Frankly, I think it’s pretty stupid the university is taking it away. The way I see it, if you’re going to confine students to smoke in a designated area, you should allow them to take own-
ership of the area,” Best said. Best brings up ownership because he said the university recently informed students at the Ashe-Hole that the spot will be removed next semester because of all the art, trash and graffiti both inside and on the wall directly outside the smoking area. In addition to the mess and Read more on page 19
October 28, 2015. | Issue 9, Volume 63 | thebluebanner.net
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SPORTS
Ellie Stone, freshman mid-fielder, sets up a kick in Saturday’s game.
Section Editor: Harrison Slaughter jslaught@unca.edu
UNCA vs. Longwood
Asheville falls in hard fought game CHRIS JONES
Sports Staff Writer cjones5@unca.edu
In a battle of the Big South women’s soccer top-scoring offense in UNC Asheville and one of the conference’s most aggressive defensives in Longwood University, the Bulldogs fell to the Lancers in a closely competitive match 1-0 Saturday afternoon at Greenwood Field.
“It was a very close game against a very tough team tonight. We fought hard tonight and it showed that we can play against and are at the level of the top teams in the conference,” said Michelle Demko, Bulldog head coach. “Our want and our will to win and succeed is at an all-time high right now for this group.” With the loss, UNCA falls to 11-7-0 overall, and 4-50 in Big South Conference
play. The Longwood Lancers improve to 9-6-2 overall, and 5-2-2 in BSC play. “This was a very great game to watch as a coach. Both teams played great and we were able to come out with a hard fought grind in our victory tonight and earn another shutout,” said Todd Dyer, Longwood head coach. “This was our last conference game on the road on the season, and we have gone unscathed and undefeated on
the road in conference play. That tells a lot about our team and our toughness and determination going to other teams’ homes and coming out with the victory each and every time.” The lone goal scored in the game was by Longwood senior Bridget Bergquist, who hit her second game-winner of the season on Saturday night. “I just got the ball in the right spot and got it in the back of the net. There was a little bit
Photo by Chris Jones
of luck and a little bit of skill that went with it,” Bergquist said. Longwood held Asheville at bay from start to finish. UNCA had four shots and only one of those shots went into the goal. Longwood had seven shots and six of those shots were on goal. UNCA will finish out the regular season with a road match-up Tuesday against Gardner-Webb.
October 28, 2015. | Issue 9, Volume 63 | thebluebanner.net
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SPORTS
Bulldogs score late to shock Liberty CHRIS JONES
Sports Staff Writer cjones5@unca.edu
The UNC Asheville Bulldogs men’s soccer team attacked and scored two goals late in the second half to claim a 2-1 victory over the Liberty Flames Saturday night at Greenwood Field. “I’m very happy with the result tonight. It’s good when you play well in front of your home fans and have support from them as well,” said Mathes Mennell, Bulldogs head coach. The first half of the match ended at a 0-0 draw, as both teams failed to hit the back of the net. After a scoreless 61 minutes, the Liberty Flames broke down the Asheville defense and Liberty forward Sachem Wilson knocked in the goal off of a rebound from a shot from Blessing Tahuona that was knocked away by Bulldog goalkeeper Zach Davis. “There was a scramble after the goalie blocked the shot and the ball came near me, so I knocked it in and scored. The opportunity was there to take the shot and I took it, and it was successful,” Wilson said. In the 75th minute, Asheville junior Zach Joens scored a goal off a cross from sophomore Ben Chapel, his first of two goals in the match. In the 82nd minute of the match, Joens scored again when he knocked in a header off of a cross from a corner kick by freshman Joe Lacasto. Joens is the Bulldogs leading goal scorer and this was his seventh goal of the season. “I thought we were much better in the second half. Liberty caused us some problems and we responded excellent to their goal. We have a lot of work to do and have three important games left in the conference remaining. Our toughness and re-
siliency were on display tonight versus the Flames tonight,” Mennell said. Liberty tried a last-ditch effort to tie the game in the 88th minute of the match as Bulldog keeper Zach Davis stopped Liberty midfielder Khalil Karl’s shot. Liberty held a 14-12 advantage in shots and an 8-2 edge in corner kicks over the Bulldogs. Liberty Asheville goalkeeper Zach Davis finished the match with eight saves in the win and Liberty goalkeeper saved six shots in the loss. With the loss, Liberty University falls to 5-9-0 overall and 1-5-0 in Big South Conference play. After collecting the victory Saturday night, the Bulldogs drop to 5-8-1 overall and 2-4-0 in Big South Conference play. “We’ve had a tough season this year and had a lot of games like this. We start out well then we fall apart in the second half and can’t get things going again. We just have to look at the tape to see what we can do and make adjustments to the areas we are not doing well or performing at our best in,” said Jeff Alder, Liberty head coach. “We had a lot of chances in this game to score, especially from corner kicks. I believe we had eight or so, so we have to convert those chances when they are there. Hopefully next game we won’t make the same mistakes and keep on playing hard as we always strive to do.” UNCA return to the pitch on Tuesday night as they travel to Atlanta and take on Georgia State in a non-conference match and then travels to compete against Big South rival Longwood. Asheville returns home Wednesday to Greenwood field as they take on Presbyterian at 7p.m.
Forward Zach Joens aims the ball as the Liberty team watches.
Photo by Chris Jones
October 28, 2015. | Issue 9, Volume 63 | thebluebanner.net
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SPORTS stats
Pharmacy From page 4
By Harrison Slaughter, Sports Editor
changes in the patient. “The big thing was that it demonstrated that using pharmacists properly you could improve a patient’s outcomes and decrease healthcare costs for the city dramatically,” Shepherd says. “City workers, paired with pharmacists, would make sure people were using their medications properly.” The project gained national attention, paving the way for the school. Now, Asheville is an innovative place to practice medicine.
Bulldog Grady Bradshaw guards the ball from Liberty. Photo by Chris Jones, Sports Staff Writer
Volleyball Oct. 23 UNC Asheville Charleston Southern University Oct. 24 UNC Asheville Coastal Carolina
Final 1 3 0 3
Oct. 23 Final UNC Asheville 1 Charleston Southern University 3 Oct. 24 UNC Asheville Coastal Carolina
Men’s soccer Oct. 24
Goals by Period
UNC Asheville Liberty University
0-2 0-1
Final 2 1
women’s Soccer
Women’s swimming
0 3
Drinking
Oct. 21 Goals by Period 1OT 2OT Final UNC Asheville 0-2 0 1 3 South Carolina State 2-0 0 0 2 Oct. 24 Goals by Period Longwood University 1-0 UNC Asheville 0-0
Final 1 0
From page 3
more than one drink per hour for up to three hours,” Carter says. The last day of Think Before You Drink events included two driving simulations set up in the lobby of Highsmith. The machines are a part of a touring group which travels to high schools, colleges and military bases across the county. “It’s just raising awareness for responsible behavior,” said Toan To, assistant director of SAIL. “They have one simulator set up for texting and driving, and they have another one where it’s a drunk simulator built into a driving simulator.”
Let's speak about student speech! Wednesday, Nov. 4, at 2 p.m. Karpen 012 Frank LoMonte of the Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Va., is coming to UNC Asheville to give a lecture about what free speech means in the 21st century. Any and all faculty, staff, students and community members are welcome to attend this talk. For more information on the SPLC and their staff, visit these websites: www.splc.org/page/about and www.splc.org/page/staff. We hope to see you there!
oct. 28 - nov. 3
calendar Oct. 28
Wake Up Yoga Meditation Room 468 Sherrill Center 7 a.m.
Oct. 29
Abs Blast Sherrill Center Room 351 Noon
Oct. 30
Volleyball vs. High Point University
Justice Center 7 p.m.
Oct. 31
Volleyball vs. Campbell University Justice Center 2 p.m.
Nov. 1
Mindful Flow Yoga Meditation Room 468 Sherrill Center 4 p.m.
Nov. 2
Spin Class Student Recreation Center
213-B 5:30 p.m.
Nov. 3
Fit in 5 Sherrill Center 351 12:15 p.m.
October 28, 2015. | Issue 9, Volume 63 | thebluebanner.net
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Trees From page 2
bine with the water in clouds and precipitation. “The acid is in not just rain but snow and fog and mist. It even falls dry out of the atmosphere,” said Irene Rossell, environmental studies professor at UNC Asheville. “So you have a combination of some corrosive impacts on the needles, but the changes in the nutrients in the soil make it harder for the plants to live there, and it changes the shape of the roots. The root hairs are not as nice and slim, they become kind of clubshaped. It’s harder for them to absorb water and nutrients.” The clouds at the top of Mount Mitchell can reach the acidity of vinegar, according to North Carolina State Parks data. These acids leach important nutrients like calcium from the soil and increase the presence of aluminum, which is toxic to plants in high levels, Rossell said. The trees at this elevation are especially vulnerable due to their dependence on cloud coverage for the majority of their moisture. Climate change also plays a major role, said Andrew Laughlin, an environmental studies lecturer at UNCA. “Climate change is causing the cloud cover to move up slope. Average cloud coverage altitudes are actually 30 feet higher now than they were decades ago because of warming,” Laughlin said. “So these mountain-top forests are retreating up the mountain and eventually there’s going to be nowhere for them to go.” The spruce trees are affected the most by the acid deposition, Rossel said, but the Frasier firs are also suffering due to the effects of the adelgid. “They are sucking insects. They stay on the surface, but they get into nooks and cran-
nies on the bark,” Rossell said. “They have this long proboscis and they insert it into the vascular system of the tree, they can even insert it through the bark of the tree.” Rossell said the insect feeds on the carbohydrates in the tissue of the tree, disrupting the flow of nutrients so the tree can’t feed itself and slowly dies. It is important to protect the Southern Appalachian SpruceFir forests as they are one of the top two most threatened ecosystems in North America. The forest at the peak of Mount Mitchell is an example of a boreal forest, which typically exists at more northern latitudes such as northern Canada, Siberia and northern Europe, Laughlin said. “It’s a biome, it’s a forest type that is dominated by firs and spruce trees. And the reason we have them here down in North Carolina is interesting, the last ice age when there was ice pack covering north America these boreal forests were pushed down into southeastern United States,” Laughlin said. “And when the ice retreated 10 or 12,000 years ago, retreated back north, the forests moved back with them. Except some of them retreated up the mountain slopes of North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee. So we’ve got these high elevation islands of boreal forest.” Without the forests, Laughlin said, animals who depend on this ecosystem, such as the northern flying squirrel, the saw-whet owl and the endangered spruce-fir moss spider, will have nowhere to live. It is not only the boreal forests that are affected. On other parts of the mountain range, the hemlock trees are affected by an insect of a similar species, the hemlock wooly adelgid. Albert “Bud” Mayfield, a research en-
The Blue Ridge Parkway is surrounded by boreal forest.
tomologist who specializes in this adelgid, said the two species are very similar in the way they infect trees. “The hemlock adelgid comes from the Osaka region of Japan and it has been in the U.S. since the ’50s, at least,” Mayfield said. “It was probably introduced earlier than that and likely from Japanese hemlock seedlings that were shipped from Japan.” Mayfield has been working on a number of ways to decrease the population of adelgids. A temporary solution is Imidacloprid, a systemic pesticide absorbed by the trees’ roots and carried through their vascular systems. “That compound can provide five or more years of protection of an individual tree. But you have to treat on a tree-by-tree basis. And when you have thousands of trees you are trying to protect it’s a very difficult and expensive way,” Mayfield said. “If you had all the money and all the time you still couldn’t treat all the trees.” A long term solution is biological control. Adelgids are so populous because they have no natural predator here, where they are non-native. Releasing predators of the adelgid could help control the population and prevent further deaths of hemlocks, Mayfield said. “The one that has shown the most promise and widespread establishment is call laricobius nigrinus. That beetle is native to the pacific northwest,” Mayfield said. “There’s another, laricobius osakensis, that is native to the Osaka region and that one is more recently introduced. Most recently we have released some silver flies from the pacific northwest.” A wide array of predators is needed because the adelgid can
repopulate faster than one predator could contain it, because the adelgid lays two generations of eggs per year. Another possible solution is breeding the trees with a tree of a similar species that has a natural resistance to the pest. Although the American Hemlock does not breed well with its Japanese counterpart, the option may still be a possibility for the Frasier Fir, Mayfield said. Laughlin said this process was utilized to save the American chestnut, which was once one of the most dominant trees in eastern America, until a non-native fungus from Chinese chestnuts practically wiped out the population “It used to be the most dominant source of food for a lot of wildlife and now you are lucky to find a sapling. They just don’t exist anymore. What scientists have done is start breeding the American chestnut with the Chinese chestnut,” Laughlin said. “So, they’ve developed this tree that is 15/16 American chestnut and 1/16 Chinese chestnut. It seems to be resistant, their idea is to reintroduce it to the forest again.” Even if these efforts are successful, there is no guarantee the forests would return to the way they were before. Without the hemlocks providing shade, the microclimate has changed. Yellow poplar, red maple and rhododendrons are replacing them, Mayfield said. Similarly, without the thick canopy provided by spruce and fir, the soil and moss at the top of Mount Mitchell are drying out in the sunlight. Blackberry bushes and other early successional plants are replacing the trees, Rossell said. Another issue is money. Pesticides are expensive and so is biological research, said May-
field, whose research is funded by federal grants. “The challenge with that is that there is always new non-native invasive pests coming on the scene, almost continually,” Mayfield said. “The number of problems that have to be addressed have a static or steadily decreasing funding.” Rossell said the funding for her doctorate research on acid deposition was pulled halfway through the grant cycle, causing her to have to scramble to finish. “Our grant actually came from a power company and people are always mad at power companies, ‘You’re causing acid deposition, so you’d better fund research on it.’ Then, all of a sudden, people were saying, ‘By the way, you’re also causing global warming and so you’d better do something about that,’” Rossell said. “So they were probably thinking, ‘OK, we funded acid rain for ten years now it’s time to fund global warming.’ It’s a PR issue. Granting agencies are very responsive to what is good for them politically.” The state parks themselves also have to deal with a decreasing budget. Governor McCrory’s proposed budget suggests a budget cut of $3.3 billion for 2016 and a $7.1 billion cut in 2017. “If they are trying to manage these ecosystems that are under so many threats on a shoestring budget obviously that’s not going to be good enough,” Laughlin said. “You need basic research on the problems in the first place and then implementing that research takes more money and resources. I’d say that it’s very difficult on a budget that keeps getting slashed.” Photo by Becca Andrews
October 28, 2015. | Issue 9, Volume 63 | thebluebanner.net
Arts & Features
page 9
Section Editor: Larisa Karr lakarr@unca.edu
Specter-tacular: The dark tales that haunt your city review
KATHRYN GAMBILL Copy Editor
Asheville is full of rich, colorful history. However, not all that history is as pleasant as you might think. Believe it or not, the city is teeming with haunted houses and spooky sites. From hotel murders to phantom nuns, the Haunted Asheville classic walking tour takes you through downtown, stopping at various ghostly places and telling of how the specters came to be. Meeting on the steps of the Asheville Masonic Temple, the tour loops through the city, making stops for stories at sites such as the Battery Park Hotel, a cemetery beneath the streets and a parking lot where the gallows once stood. Sometimes, the stories feel so real you think you might just see a ghost. And you could, if you look Photo illustration by Larisa Karr - A&F Editor hard enough. A Montford home is decorated for Halloween. My guide, Brian Bloxsom, it. anything, the hairline was a middle school teacher and happened during my tour, the It sounds pretty believable, definitely clear. paranormal investigator, often thought that I might see someunless you know that Thomas Wolfe has also supposedly talked about people seeing thing was equally as thrilling. Wolfe is dead. been seen reading a newspaper apparitions and experiencing When we passed the old Bloxsom passed around in a rocking chair on the porch. jailhouse by Pack’s Tavern, spirits during his tours. the picture as we stood across When Bloxsom shined his laser Bloxsom extended an invitaFor example, he claims one the street from the house. It on the rocking chair, everyone woman saw Thomas Wolfe tion to knock on the door. If showed what looked like an squinted in hopes of seeing the peering outside a window of you’re lucky, someone might outline of Wolfe’s peeking apparition. his mother’s boarding house. knock back. Even though nothing ghostly And she took a picture to prove from behind the curtain. If I approached the heavy door,
and even though I knew nothing would probably happen, my heart raced as I knocked. Silence. There was no response, but I still imagined someone on the other side might have heard. Bloxsom’s enthusiastic belief is contagious, and if you’re a Halloween fiend like me, you’ll want to believe. It’s easy to get absorbed into every story the guide tells. Not all the stories are scary, though. Some are comical, and some are just historical events. Bloxsom dropped in factual tidbits between haunted sites, including a story about Elvis performing his last concert in Asheville. Who knew? But one of the most interesting stories is about how the owners of a funeral home used to parade an anonymous embalmed duke up and down the streets of Asheville until someone finally claimed his body. I’ll have to let Blosxom explain the rest of that one. The tour lasts about two hours, depending on the pace at which your group walks. But regardless of how slow you go, it never gets boring. The guides have a wealth of knowledge on the haunted history of Asheville, and could probably tell their stories all night. So if you’re looking for a good scare this Halloween, hoping to find a ghost, or just wanting to learn more about our city’s history, take a walk through Haunted Asheville.
October 28, 2015. | Issue 9, Volume 63 | thebluebanner.net
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Paranormal investigators declare Asheville overrun by spirits EMILY HENDERSON Contributing Writer
As Halloween approaches, Ashevillians become aware of tourists from the afterlife, whether it be through costumes and folklore or supposed paranormal occurrences. “The electromagnetic energy is higher in the fall and winter, and when the weather is cold people tend to stay home more and they notice more,” said Sarah Harrison, a retired clinical laboratory scientist and founder of the Asheville Paranormal Society. Harrison said she had an attraction to the paranormal since childhood because of the ghost stories that surrounded her in Winnsboro, South Carolina. She giggled with childlike innocence as she said Scooby Doo is to blame for her involvement with the paranormal. “Halloween is just a secular creation based on the old Sowan rituals of the Irish and British that came over with the settlers,” said Harrison “It morphed into little kids trick-or-treating and people dressing up in costumes and carving jack o’ lanterns.” Asheville contains an immense amount of history, ranging from being located within some of the oldest mountain ranges in the world to the vast number of years containing violent, sudden or suicidal deaths. Harrison published a report called “The 1906 Will Harris Murders: A Massacre in Asheville,” which can be read on the Paranormal Society website. Harrison said Harris was a memorable murderer in Asheville. “He escaped from the chain gang, got drunk on his way to Asheville and then proceeded to walk down the street and shoot people at random,” Harrison said. “One of the cops he shot in the street is here, seen wearing an old-fashioned police uniform, running down Broadway Street.” On her last investigation, Harrison said the psychic medium on her team contacted a 10-year-old girl who was shot in the stomach by her little brother in 1923. Ever since, she wanders around looking for her mother. Harrison said the team successfully crossed the little girl over to the other side. For people who don’t believe in the paranormal, those who do and those who enjoy a good laugh, the Lazoom bus tour has haunted segment in the spirit of the Halloween season. Lazoom comedy tours are owned and operated locally by founders Jim and Jen Lauzen. They met in New Orleans as street performers and moved to Asheville 12 years ago. The duo bought a bus, painted it purple and, together with friends and a band, began their road to success. Lazoom, in their ninth year of operation, encompasses three buses, four drivers, one director and eight on-and-off bus guides, Jen Lauzen said.
The haunted tour segment began the second or third year, Lauzen said, and became a hit as they came to realize the amount of haunted history in Asheville. “We all developed more of a love for hearing some of those old stories,” Lauzen said. “I don’t know that many of the people on the crew had an innate passion for the paranormal, but we appreciate not only the stories in Asheville, but also in other cities.” The Lazoom bus caters to ages 17 and up and allows consumption of beer and wine during the tours with valid identification. “We just rewrote the haunted tour and rehearsed and launched new material this week and will be running seven-days-a-week through October,” Lauzen said. Eliada, a non-profit agency serving the children and families of Western North Carolina, opened the annual corn maze this year for its seventh season. Just five minutes from downtown Asheville, the expansive field on 2 Compton Drive opens Wednesday through Sunday until Oct. 31. Families can enjoy attractions such as giant tube slides, a sandbox filled with corn kernels, cow train and hay rides, corn cannons, a large spider web net, storybook trails and a pumpkin patch. For history buffs or lovers of the paranormal, the Swannanoa Valley Museum in Black Mountain hosted the fourth annual Historic Haunted House Tour last Friday and Saturday. Museum volunteers led tours of In the Oaks, a Prohibition-era country manor house on Montreat College’s campus. The tour explored the history of the 24,000-foot National Historic Register property that once welcomed Roaring ’20s flappers and Martin Luther King Jr. For haunted house enthusiasts, The Haunted Farm is an option. Located in rural farmland near Hendersonville, The Haunted Farm sits on a mysterious, blood-soaked stretch of land where the forlorn and deranged Missy Mae Lively eternally pines for her lost groom, according to farm operators. “My friends and I had so much fun last year,” said Kristin Langan, a management student at UNC Asheville. “The farm was so scary and was the highlight of my Halloween.” The farm is open on select days throughout October from dark to midnight. The attraction consists of 50 minutes through the three main parts of the farm -- The Woods, The Farm and The Haunted Hayride. “One of our friends was so scared she had to spend the hour in the car by herself waiting for the rest of us,” Langan said.
Photo by Jakob Nilsson - Contributor
October 28, 2015. | Issue 9, Volume 63 | thebluebanner.net
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Arts & Features
Aren’t there enough real world terrors? Pinhead’s Graveyard: Short on scares, high on cheesiness
Commentary MATT MCGREGOR
A&F Staff Writer mmcgrego@unca.edu
A white wooden sign portends disaster for Brandi Wardrip. According to the blood-red font, she enters Pinhead’s Graveyard at her own risk. It denies any responsibility for personal injuries and loss of or damage to personal property. The sign does not assuage her fears. Then the inhuman, grinding wail of a chainsaw, followed by screams, intrude on a theory postulated by 12-year-old Wardrip. “What if this isn’t even scary?” she asks. For Wardrip, the theory is a whistle in a dark alley. She is visibly terrified. Her friends talked her into coming to Pinhead’s Graveyard, and she worries about losing her voice from screaming. John Morrison says he comes to Pinhead’s Graveyard to see if he can get scared, but even after the chainsaw ripped through the trees, he remains unimpressed. “I feel like I’ve watched so many horror movies that I’m desensitized to being scared,” he says. Dan Lewis and Melinda Sherwood
traveled to Asheville from Miami and discovered Pinhead’s Graveyard through one of the local papers. Melinda said she loves horror movies and she is hoping for an adrenaline rush. So here we are, in the dark line, waiting to be chased through dark, unpredictable trails. We will be ambushed by people dressed as horror movie characters, wagging chainsaws and machetes in our faces in attempt to make us lose control of our bowels in terror. Aren’t there enough real-world terrors? A wooden sign in a tree halfway through the trail suggests so. Painted on this sign is “Hide-n-Seek Champ Eric Rudolph.” It’s the one element of the haunted trail that isn’t based on a movie. Eric Rudolph was convicted of three bombings. He hid in the mountains of Western North Carolina for five years. According to reports, he detonated a bomb at the Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta, killing two people. Later, he bombed a gay nightclub in Atlanta and an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama. Eric’s brother filmed himself sawing off his own hand to protest what he felt was unfair perse-
Photo by Matt McGregor - A&F Staff Writer
cution of his brother. Leatherface, the Byronic hero of Pinhead’s Graveyard, is based on the real life case of Ed Gein. Gein confessed to killing two people, and he filled his house with exhumed body parts. Gein’s other hobbies included making a female costume out of human skin so that he could pretend to be a woman. And then there is the cold-blooded, gluttonous zombie festival that is retail, where I worked for 10 hours before arriving here. In retail, ordinary people become gourmandizing monsters of self-entitlement who rival any masked killer I expect to be meeting on the tour. I voluntarily enter this grisly world so I can pay bills that are scarier than any body-part-collecting recluse. And on a good day, I tell myself: this can’t be real. However, when I hear the swinging chains and see Pinhead emerge from the dark, I can’t help but wonder, what if this were real? (The question is immediately answered by Pinhead’s southern accent.) Maybe that’s why we have all come to Pinhead’s Graveyard. We need a
tangible fear that gives the abstract fears of real world terrors such as bills, stress and deadlines, a frame of reference. It is cathartic theater we enter and participate in, taking that passive fear of watching a horror movie to the next level. We enter the horror movie, making for a more intense experience with an adrenaline high that overshadows those more abstract fears. And it doesn’t get any more tangible than Brandi Wardrip’s piercing screams behind me as Jason Voorhees approaches with his iconic hockey mask and machete. Honestly, after how long we stood in line, I’m really just hoping he is bringing me a sandwich. He’s a lot shorter in person, and I feel like I could outrun him. A quick gander tells me Jason hasn’t been taking care of himself since the last Friday the 13th. Instead of eating wild berries and forest animals while waiting on his next human kill, it looks like he’s been devouring Fritos and chugging malt liquor. But he walks directly in our path, leaving our group nowhere to run, and it looks like that machete is about as real as it gets. Read more on page 15
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Arts & Features
October 28, 2015. | Issue 9, Volume 63 | thebluebanner.net
Children in the corn: Uncovering one of Hendersonvilleʼs famous haunts Commentary JASON PERRY
A&F Staff Writer jperry1@unca.edu
The Haunted Farm in Hendersonville is probably the closest place a UNC Asheville student can go for a haunted thrill. For $19, each victim gets about 45 minutes through the farm. The farm includes several haunted barns, a haunted trail through the woods and a wagon ride through a corn maze. Starting off, driving to the location seems quite spooky. The Haunted Farm is pretty secluded off in the woods. Expect a fairly long wait before entering, at least 20 minutes to an hour. Don’t worry, the scaring starts soon, with several monsters and zombies finding a way to jump out at those waiting in line. Chilton Birdwhistell, a Hendersonville native, has been going for the past couple of years. His experience started as soon as he got there. “Before I even went on the trail,” says Birdwhistell, “I went to the bathroom and got the shit scared out of me.” The Haunted Farm starts with a walk through the woods. Every tree provides a chance for someone or something to be hiding behind. One will at first be relieved when they walk through the first couple of turns unharmed, but sure enough, soon there will be somebody ready with a chainsaw. The trail leads each visitor to multiple haunted houses, and there are often groups of 10 to 15 people. Each house seems to have a theme so be prepared for clowns, a cannibal dentist and creatures hanging on the wall. During my experience, I went through the house with a cannibal dentist. There was a dentist chair, a bathtub full of arms and legs and a man standing over some fake bodies. I thought I was doing fine until he lunged at me with one of his long knives. I darted into the next room only to find that the exit door was locked. I tried my best to find a nearby exit, but there was nowhere to go. Eventually, another group caught up with mine, so there were about 30 people crammed into the same room. It was miserably hot. After about 20 minutes I actually started to feel scared. I was stuck in a house with murder weapons everywhere. In my head, it would be a perfect place for somebody to really get a group of large people. Everyone seemed to be feeling the same way. One of us went back to the room with the cannibal dentist and explained to him that the exit was stuck. He broke character, thank God, and told us he would fix it. Five minutes later we were out of the house and ready for the next one. The climax of the haunted houses happened at the last house. You enter a long hall full of red smoke. The whole time you expect something to jump straight out on you. Personally, I recommend looking down on the floor because that is where you will see the witch crawling on all fours. If you forget to look down, then don’t be surprised when she claws at your ankles.
After exiting this haunted house, you come outside to a pig pen. This is where you wait for the hay ride to take you to the corn maze. There are fake body parts hanging around the pig pen to make you somehow think these pigs would eat you. To be honest, the little piglets are so cute it gives you a sense of relief after the rush from the houses. The hayride is probably the scariest part of the adventure. All of the monsters and crazy killers hide behind the corn and climb onto the hayride and get right in your face. There is nowhere you can go, so be prepared to face one head-on. Be sure to watch your back as well, because they love to scare you from behind. Matt Barrera, a freshman from Matthews, North Carolina, said he recommends the farm to anyone looking for a thrill. “It was a rush,” Barrera says. “My heart was beating the whole time. I definitely recommend it to anyone going.” The hayride is a great experience but it seemed a little short. Overall, for the $19 you spend, it is a pretty good Halloween adventure that I highly recommend.
October 28, 2015. | Issue 9, Volume 63 | thebluebanner.net
beat from the Street
page 13
By Larisa Karr | Features Editor | lakarr@unca.edu Many stories lurk throughout Asheville, whether they are behind the Vaudevillian jazz-folk played by buskers around Pritchard Park, the colorful businesses decorated with funky, hand-made crafts or the laughter echoing from a patio as locals and tourists alike enjoy delicious beer.
Vaden Landers and Jessica Lloyd pose during a busking session in downtown Asheville
Jessica Lloyd, hairstylist and busker from Ft. Lauderdale Vaden Landers, musician from Knoxville
What do you like to do on the streets of Asheville? Jessica: “Make music and make people happy.” How would you describe your look? Was it inspired by a certain person or movement? “Well, I was inspired by these lovely pants from H&M on sale for $20. I wear them all the time because you can make such cool outfits with them so I always base my outfits around the pants here lately. But this shirt, actually my boss has a line of clothing, and this is one of her shirts. I wanted to wear it out today because I knew we were going to be here and I wanted to wear her clothes.” What is the story behind your tattoos, like the scissors? “Yes, the scissors are for doing hair. These, I used to do these as my makeup and I got tired of doing my makeup everyday so I just got ‘em tattooed. This one, I want it to be kind of like an elf cloud. It’s going to be more to come, kind of smaller up here coming down as a triangle. It’s forming. It’s in the works. I just need money. I want it to be like kind of a decorative headpiece.” What would you say inspires you in terms of art or music or any type of creativity? “Definitely my emotions. I would either have to be really, really, really happy to create something or super, super depressed. There’s no in-between, it’s always like an outpouring of emotion in one direction or the other. I mean, it’s different for music inspiration rather than for hair inspiration. For hair inspiration, I go off with colors because I like bright, bold colors, disconnected haircuts. But for most people, they want something subtle and haircuts that blend and things like that, but I want the wow factor, something that will catch people’s eye, and that’s how you get your name out. If you do some bold piece, they’re like, ‘Dang,
I’ve never seen anything like that. Who did that? I have to go because if she can do something that awesome, she can probably do that with someone else.’ But music-wise, it’s sad to say, but I don’t really get too much inspired by music anymore because I don’t play as much and I’ve just started playing in a band with him. I’m just playing their songs, what I know, and just kind of rolling with it. Every once in awhile, I’ll get inspired and be like, ‘Ooh, we should do this,’ and then get caught up in life and forget.” What type of music do you guys play? “I would say just jug band--” Vaden: “Early nineteenth century ragtime, juggling music, Delta Blues, folk and jazz.” Jessica: “See, he knows what.” If you were to say one thing that you love and one thing that you hate about Asheville, what would you say? “I love the openness to be creative and free and speak your mind and I hate--” Vaden: “--how expensive it is to live here.” Jessica: “How it’s very hard to find housing, dealing with that right now. Recently our rent went up and we weren’t able to find a house so it’s been about a week now where we haven’t had somewhere to live. We’re just struggling because we have money and it’s just about finding a place that allows a couple and animals. Also, I don’t like the horse carriages. We can’t escape the tourism. We thrive upon that but some way we can help it to where animals don’t have to work in unfit conditions.” How did you end up in Asheville? Vaden: “Oh my God. Okay, I spent a long time being homeless when I was an early teenager and then I got tired of that so I went to school online and then started train-hopping and then I came back to go to school. I finished at an alternative learning center and finished high school and then left town, saw 36 states through four years of riding freight trains and then lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan, lived in Allentown, Read more on page 21
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October 28, 2015. | Issue 9, Volume 63 | thebluebanner.net
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Arts & Features
Local hip hop artist perseveres to tell his tale after hitting rock bottom
HARRISON SLAUGHTER
Sports Editor jslaught@unca.edu
As the voice comes through the speakers, it is difficult not to hear the hope in the words that describe such hopeless events in a person’s life. It is even more difficult to not sense the determination behind that voice. “I suffer from a lack of spiritual strength. I deal with the pain until I let it spill on the page. A lot of layers to my soul slowly peeling away. I kneel when I pray, but God doesn’t feel what I say,” Jus, hip-hop artist, flows over a quiet beat on the opening track titled “Spill” on his latest mixtape So To Speak. Jus works full time as a residential counselor at Eliada Homes, a psychiatric residential treatment facility for kids, but his passion has always been music. “I have always loved music. My mom had me pretty young and I remember her playing hip-hop records before she got into more contemporary adult music,” Jus said. “My dad would always play all the classics like Billy Joel and Pink Floyd around the house. They say that music is the universal language and it sounds kind of corny but it’s definitely true.” He said he always knew he wanted to do something with music, whether it was playing an instrument or something else. He wanted to be able to put his own body of work out. “I started writing poetry before I really started putting words to beats. I remember my teachers saying it was really good and I would impress my family with it. I would write poems around the holidays and send them as Christmas presents,” Jus said. “I have distinct memories of sitting in my room around the age of 10 or 11 and actually writing raps.” His family didn’t have a computer, so he would go to his friend’s house and download instrumentals and rap over the beats, Jus said. It was instant love. Jules Baxter, hip-hop artist and Jus’ best friend, said he met Jus in 2007 around the time he was dropping his first mixtape, Blown Possibilities, and
Photo courtesy of Jules Baker Rapper Jus said he struggled with drug abuse in the past.
he knew Jus was anything but ordinary. “I had an apartment in New Haven at the time and we just started hanging out. There are so many corny artists that when you meet a real one that you really click with, you really go in deep with them,” Baxter said. “Jus told me he was coming out with an album and he wanted me to be on it. I was on two tracks and we have been friends ever since.” Baxter said he met Jus very briefly before they got into music together and didn’t think they had much in common, but the music brought them together, and that led him to realize their similarities. There was a period of sustained success after this with a group they created together called Crunchhouse Records where drugs weren’t an issue, Baxter said. “I started smoking weed and experimenting with gateway drugs pretty early. I smoked weed for a while in college. I would do a little coke here and there and roll on ecstasy. I was nev-
er afraid to try a drug,” Jus said. “Pills were a really big thing where I’m from in Connecticut. They were a big money maker. You could get 180 Percocet 30s from an old lady with a terminal illness trying to make a quick buck for 10 bucks a pop and then flip them for $25 to $30 apiece.” This was when Jus started getting into selling pills for extra money. “I never tried them for a long time because I would see kids pretty much sell their souls for a little blue pill. I was in a relationship at the time and it was really like my first love. The relationship started to go really downhill,” Jus said. “Me and my buddy were driving to the bar and he started breaking up a few lines in my car. I didn’t even ask him what it was. I had a lot on my mind just going through trials in the relationship. I sniffed it and I felt like a million bucks.” Jus found out later that what he had
snorted was a Percocet 30. He said his first thought was that he might have found what he had been looking for. It was instant love. “I started doing them more and more. The thing about it is that once you start to do so much, you build up a tolerance,” Jus said. “If you try to stop doing them then you get sick. You go through withdrawal. It became so expensive that instead of selling them, I started doing them all.” Heroin became a much stronger, cheaper alternative. Jus said he tried heroin for the first time and that was it. He knew it had him in its grips. “That stuff really does steal your soul. It really is the devil,” Jus said. For the first little while, the drugs didn’t affect his music, he said. After some time went by, though, the drugs really started to overshadow the music. He wanted to get high more than he wanted to write music. “At first it would help me write music, but then I got to the point where I couldn’t get out the bed without doing some heroin. Eventually I stopped making music altogether,” Jus said. “It would be very sporadic. I’d write a song maybe once every couple of weeks as opposed to every day like before. Then it became once a month, then every couple of months and finally I went about a year and a half where I didn’t even put a pen to the pad.” Jus became a person he never wanted to be after this. His parents kicked him out and he started to lose trust of his family and closest friends, he said. “I became a really sorry excuse for a man. Once you lose your passion, it’s just really the worst feeling ever,” Jus said. He made several trips in and out of rehabilitation facilities after this, but nothing seemed to stick, Jus said. He knew he had to hit his rock bottom. “I was trying to do it by myself and I couldn’t get it right. I would go a week or a few days and be like, ‘I’m good. I could Read more on page 15
Check out Jus’ music on SoundCloud: http://www.soundcloud.com/nodsquadsound
October 28, 2015. | Issue 9, Volume 63 | thebluebanner.net
Pinhead I could dodge him around the path and successfully hightail, but I can’t see outside the path, and my ankle has just started to hurt, strangely. Is this how it happens in the movies? We get annoyed with the victims when they trip and fall at the worst possible moment. My ankle hasn’t hurt in years. Why now? Does the mere act of being pursued create ankle cramps? If I were to run now I would certainly injure myself. Maybe I should stay and just talk to him about a good exercise and diet plan. There is no better motivation than a chainsaw coming down the path behind us. I should hire this guy for days when I
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don’t feel like running. We all collectively bolt in many directions. The barrier that was Jason Voorhees is just one of many cinematic confrontations. We cross paths with Michael Myers, the Devil’s Rejects and Freddy Kruger, to name a few. The tour ends with Leatherface chasing us back to our car. I am treated to the the authentic experience of what it is like to drop my keys as I am trying to unlock the door. I will never again make fun of those people in the movies because here is the deal: it really happens. Poor Brandi Waldrip makes it back to her car safely. She
piles in with her friends and starts laughing. It is over, and it appears she had a good time. Driving away, I recall the different haunted houses I went to when I was her age and the friends with whom I went. I wonder where they are now. It occurs to me that she will be 37 years old one day, and will look back on this experience and smile. She will recall that night she went the Pinhead’s Graveyard with her friends. For Wardrip, this experience is a construction of a memory she will carry with her, even after adult life brings real life terrors of uncertainty. She can stop and call an old friend and
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Photo by Jordyn Key Students, faculty and staff gathered on the UNCA Quad Wednesday for Turning of the Maples.
Jus use today.’ Once you find out the real process of addiction, you can’t use like a normal person. You can’t go out to the bar and drink like a normal person. You can’t just have a little fun every once in a while. That’s not how it works. That addiction will never stay dormant. You really have to work at it everyday.” Jus’ mom told him about her friend’s son, Cooper, who had problems with addiction and moved to North Carolina to get clean through a treatment program. “My parents presented me with an opportunity. I hit rock bottom. I had no money left. I was feeling terrible. They told me they would send me down to North Carolina to get clean and start a new life,” Jus said. “I decided to go and the rest is history. It’s been a blessing. It the best move I’ve ever made in my life.” Music is a feeling to Jus. At first it was very difficult to write any music at all, he said. When he first got clean, he said it took a while for his emotions to come back. “I don’t want to say I felt dead for the first few months, but I just wasn’t myself. I was still in the process of getting back to being able to feel happiness and feel pain without putting something into my body. I was numbing all my emotions for years,” Jus said. “I knew it would come back. It took a little longer than I liked.” One day, he said he decided to write some music. He wrote a couple songs that he didn’t think were that good. “After that I really started getting dialed back in. I started writing every day. I started getting inspired. Things would happen in my life and I would
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break out my phone and make a little note to write about this or that later,” Jus said. Chris “Biff” Rodden, executive producer on So To Speak, heard of Jus through a website Rodden used to run called College Rap Up. “Jus submitted a video for his song titled ‘Let’s Get It,’ and I watched it and the way he was doing his syllables where every single syllable rhymed. I was just like, ‘whoa, who is this kid?’” Rodden said. “I hit him up and I ended up going to see a couple of his shows and we have been friends ever since.” Jus has always had good lyrics, but the content is different, Rodden said. He likes how he talks about his relationship with his family. It’s driven more so by his past experiences and where he’s at now. It has been a different experience being clean and writing music, but it has been good. Jus said he thinks that you can tell in the music. “The So To Speak project is kind of touching on all the trials and tribulations that I went through while I was struggling so the content is still a little down tempo, but it definitely has a positive tinge to it. When I was writing before, a lot of the content was like ‘fuck this’ and ‘fuck my life,’” Jus said. “Now it’s like I went through this, but it built character and I’m actually looking forward to the future now. I’m looking forward to seeing where my music can take me. I’m looking forward to meeting a girl and raising a family.” His new life is better than anything he could have imagined. It is definitely better than waking up and only looking forward to getting high, Jus said.
new web design on thebluebanner.net
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October 28, 2015. | Issue 9, Volume 63 | thebluebanner.net
TV SHOW Review
Scream Queens combines Mean Girls with Scream to provide new Halloween series review MICHAEL O’HEARN Social Media Editor mohearn@unca.edu
For Halloween, I decided it would be a good idea to pick up one of Fox's new TV series, Scream Queens, and give it a try. I could have done the second episode of The Walking Dead this season, which was much more thrilling with the arrival of a much-anticipated band of enemies, but the popularity of this series leads me to believe it is going to be the new October pastime alongside The Walking Dead. However, the ratings for this series are starting to slip. Only 2.7 million
people watched last week's episode, while The Walking Dead only saw a small dip in their ratings compared to the monstrous season premiere Oct. 11. I have a blender here and I will toss in Mean Girls, Scream and a healthy helping of pop culture references ranging from Friends to Game of Thrones to give you what is a cheesy and headache-inducing hour and a half pilot comprised of two episodes. Emma Roberts plays Chanel, the leader of a clique in the Kappa Kappa Tau sorority at a college headed by
Jamie Lee Curtis' character, Dean of Students Jane Munsch. Let me go ahead and say Curtis is the one saving grace of this show. She chews up the scenery as the corrupt school administrator and, given more time and development, her character might rival Kevin Spacey's Frank Underwood on House of Cards. We start in 1995, when one sorority girl gives a bloody birth to a baby in the bathtub of the girls' mansion during a party and then dies while all the other girls complain about her bathtub baby.
Photo courtesy of Fox
The mysterious death of the girl in the bathtub has no real significance on the rest of the plot. The year 1995 and the mixtape with TLC's "Waterfalls" playing at the party do have significance, however, for a reason hinted at later in the pilot. Roberts studied Mean Girls to get an inspiration for her spoiled and rich character who bosses around "minions," including co-stars Abigail Breslin and Ariana Grande, and her maid for most of the episode. She's annoying, self-obsessed and Read more on page 20
One from the vault: The Cabin in the Woods reflects our own society review MATT MCGREGOR
A&F Staff Writer mmcgrego@unca.edu
The Cabin in the Woods contains significant homage to other horror films while reflecting how our own real-world horrors are what feed the monsters from these movies. The world portrayed in the film is an outrageous construct only if one fails to see the parallels to our own world’s synthetic and controlled nature. A nod to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre takes place when a group of college kids arrive at an old gas station in their camper. They are on their way to a cabin in the woods (hence the title) where they will spend the weekend. The scene closely resembles the gas station scene in Chainsaw to the extent that if it were a composition on paper, it would be plagiarism. The cabin itself is a replica of the cabin in The Evil Dead. Later, one character plays
with a round version of Lemarchand’s box, the puzzle box that releases the Cenobites in Hellraiser, referred to as Deadites in Cabin. Then the crew swims in a lake, jumping off a pier within a setting that could be taking place in the first ten minutes of any of the 12 Friday the 13th movies. But this is more than just another unoriginal horror movie rip-off as we see in the opening shot of two office workers, Sitterson and Hadley, in a military base. The audience returns to these two characters after the crew leaves the gas station in their camper, disturbed by the attendant’s behavior. The attendant immediately telephones Sitterson and Hadley and tells them, “The lambs have passed through the gate. They have come to the killing floor.” The biblical allusion to sacrificial lambs tells us that the crew are a part of something bigger than a horror movie plot. The office workers have orchestrated a ritual sacrifice to ancient gods to keep them appeased and the sacrifice Read more on page 20
Photo courtesy of Lionsgate
October 28, 2015. | Issue 9, Volume 63 | thebluebanner.net
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A true observer:
New exhibit in Ramsey Library pays homage to legendary Asheville artist
PHILLIP WYATT A&F Staff Writer pwyatt@unca.edu
Asheville native Isaiah Rice, an amateur photographer and prolific figure within the city’s African-American community, always had a camera handy. While simply walking down the street, socializing at a church or community event or driving his delivery truck through downtown, Rice was always prepared to snap a candid photo of a multitude of subjects engaging in everyday life. Rice’s ambition and love of photography resulted in over 1,000 photographs documenting Asheville’s African-American community in the 1950s through the early 1970s. Darin Waters, assistant professor of history and special assistant to the chancellor for outreach and engagement at UNC Asheville, is also Rice’s grandson. After Rice’s death in 1980, Waters continued visiting his grandmother, Geraldine Rice, at her house on Fayetteville Street in West Asheville. Geraldine Rice was “one of the most proper women I’ve ever encountered,” Waters said. “She could have held court with the Queen of England.” She would sit on the corner of her sofa, conversing and sharing some of her late husband’s photographs with Waters, he said. “One day, she said, ‘Ya know, Darin, people have many vices. Your grandfather didn’t have many. Taking photographs was his vice, and I was willing to live with that,’” Waters said. After Geraldine Rice passed away in 2003, Waters and his family discovered Isaiah Rice’s eclectic collection of photographs taken all over Asheville and made the unanimous decision to share their findings with the public. A discussion featuring the Isaiah Rice Photography Collection was led by Waters Friday at the second annual African-Americans in Western North Carolina Conference in the Highsmith Student Union. Gene Hyde, head of Special Collections and University Archives at UNCA, and Ken Betsalel, professor of political science at UNCA, joined Waters for a panel discussion regarding the photo
Photo courtesy of Isaiah Rice’s collection. A historical self-portrait: Isaiah Rice stands with his delivery truck.
series at the conference. Special Collections was founded in 1977 as the Southern Highlands Research Center with the mission to collect manuscripts, photographs and oral histories to preserve the rich history of Appalachia, Hyde said. Special Collections’ guidelines during planning stages state that Asheville is the center of the region’s black population, Hyde said. “We should collect the history of black highlanders. Such a collection will be useful corrective to the assumption often found in Appalachian literature that all mountaineers are white,” Hyde said. Over a year ago, Waters said he approached Hyde with a tub full of 2.25by-2.25 inch photograph slides. “When we started pulling these out and looking at them, I was immediately impressed by the quality of the images from a technical standpoint, and also from a compositional viewpoint,” Hyde said. “Rice’s skills as a photographer were equal to his uncanny ability to document his community.” Waters and his mother began working with Special Collections to scan the photos and transfer the digital rights to UNCA.
Hyde said the Waters family retains the original materials and all the copyrights to the photos. “It’s a beautiful arrangement that works so well in a digital world,” Hyde said. “The Waters family keeps their personal family photographs but shares them with the rest of the world through the ability to digitize them.” So far, Special Collections has scanned over 500 slides and nearly 100 prints, but a lot of work remains, Hyde said. The collection features photos of Rice’s friends and family, as well as fellow church members, community members and street scenes in Asheville. “It’s unique, extensively documenting Asheville’s African-American community from the late 1950s to the 1970s, and it’s important from that studies perspective in showing great photographic detail the largely undocumented urban middle-class African-American communities that existed in Appalachia,” Hyde said. Special Collections, located on the second floor of Ramsey Library, will hold an open house Friday in celebration of the collection from noon until 2 p.m. Rice’s cameras will be on display for the public to view.
The Isaiah Rice Photograph Collection featuring 20 of Rice’s photos is on display outside of Special Collections until Dec. 15. Rice’s equipment included Isaiah Rice a Zeiss Ikon Ikoflex IC 8 86/16 20 lens reflex camera and Ansco Speedex 45, both manufactured in Germany in the late 1950s. He also kept a Minox camera, about the size of a pack of gum, in his pouch, always ready to snap a candid shot, Hyde said. “For those of you who haven’t looked at a manual camera, you didn’t just go and point the thing and shoot. You had to be aware of the light. You had to use a light meter. You then had to manually focus when you were actually composing your shot. You had to set the film speed. You had to set your aperture and shutter speed in order to get the right exposure for a camera,” Hyde said. “When you look at the Rice photos and see how well and quickly he was able to do this, he had mastered his equipment. He truly understood exactly what he was doing with this.” Adjusted for inflation, Rice invested around $1,800 in his cameras alone, Hyde said, as well as additional funding for film and developing. “It was an ongoing expense that shows a labor of love,” Hyde said. “He was very serious about his hobby and he sought out what was probably the best equipment he could get.” Waters is currently working on a book based on Rice’s photographs and the Asheville it presents, Hyde said. During the panel discussion, Betsalel said he shared an email he wrote to Waters in response to his request for assistance with archiving and interpreting the photos. “The Rice collection may well be the most important collection of vernacular photography of our time and place here in Asheville,” Betsalel said. “These photoRead more on page 19
October 28, 2015. | Issue 9, Volume 63 | thebluebanner.net
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Arts & Features BLACKBIRD BLACKBIRD PAINTS A TANGERINE SKY LARISA KARR
A&F Editor lakarr@unca.edu
+
MAKEDA SANDFORD Layout & Design Editor
msandfor@unca.edu
The night started on a fairly average note. While some people were attending pre-Halloween parties, others were roaming about, and some had trickled into the Asheville Music Hall to drink beer and catch a show. Julion Roberts, drummer for local band Pussy Liquor, was one of the people hanging around outside. “I saw a flier near Barley’s. I’m interested in the music and I like to support local bands,” Roberts said. “Also, it is important to give a good representation of Asheville.” The crowd of smoke that circulates outside the Music Hall was kept alive by more people outside than inside listening to Asheville-based DJ Adam Bombthreats. It was a semi-appropriate set to listen to upon venturing into the dark, dark cave that is the Asheville Music Hall. On the stage, Bombthreats, clad in a loose white T-shirt with his hair loosely tucked into a ball cap, was really into his set, which, in some parts, was reminiscent of music that Scandals plays at midnight on Saturdays. Swirls of neon pink and blue lazer lights streamed in tandem with the music, which at various points transferred from slick techno reminiscent of the kind played by ’90s era Underworld to loud, abrasive, throbbing trap, a sadly inevitable choice of any modern musician wanting to win the favor of millennials.
Photos by Makeda Sandford - Layout & Design Editor
Blackbird Blackbird switched between old and new tunes at the Asheville Music Hall.
It was at this point, when trap became a heavier facet of his set, that more audience members, the majority of whom were non-descript, started to trickle in in more pronounced numbers. Most were fresh-faced 20-somethings in beanies while bobbing side to side in a manner that befits the usual hipster. Two people clad in Dia de los Muertos-style costumes entered at one point in Bombthreats’ incredibly long set while the inevitable Asheville “hippie” was the only one on the dance floor, her long hair whipping in unison with the red, orange and yellow ombre ribbons adorning her this evening. The floor had been vibrating with the heavy pulses of an-
other concert happening in the One Step, aka Grateful Dreadhead-central. Surprisingly though, upon descending into the slightly more well-lit cave that is the One Stop, it became evident that this was where the party was at. Rap group Xero God were taking the stage to much fanfare, and pretty soon, it was very difficult to even manipulate from one end of the room to the other without fearing bumping into a happy, beer-wielding audience member. Finally, after the pushing and sliding through the dense Xero God adoration, the act of the night strapped on his guitar and took the Asheville Music Hall Stage. He was short, shy and packed immense volume into the half-idle, half-vibing room
quickly filling up with neon smoke. He goes by Blackbird Blackbird, and as he introduced himself after a taste of his aesthetic, it was clear the San Francisco native Mikey Maramag was just the wake up the crowd needed. “I didn’t personally choose to play in Asheville,” Maramag said. “It was decided through a booking agent. I played here a couple times before and I like the vibe here.” The vibe liked him back, and as he shoulder-swayed to the beat of his dreamy pop infused with synthy trap, it was evident Maramag has a knack for drawing in a bystander as the crowd grew dense.
The guitar and vocals were subtle, with long intros of slow vibration and pulsating outros. Blackbird Blackbird became a concept after every pulling track, spinning back each time into a promising calm. Periodically, Maramag’s voice bashfully interjected between dreams, saying “this is an old one,” or “here’s Read more on page 21
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October 28, 2015. | Issue 9, Volume 63 | thebluebanner.net
Ashe-hole graffiti, campus police have responded to reports of drug and alcohol use at the Ashe-Hole, according to the campus police crime log. While it’s understandable that the university feels the way they do, Best said a spot like the Ashe-Hole unavoidably becomes the environment of those that frequent it. “It’s a school. The point of a school is to protect the students. So, if you feel like your duty to them is to prevent them from doing something, then tell them not to do it. And if they continue, leave it at that, because in the end they are here for school, not to get locked up or have a stain on their record,” Best said. Best expressed concern for students who frequent the AsheHole, and said he worries some wouldn’t just be dealing with campus law enforcement if the smoking area were taken away. Scully Schubert, an 18-yearold UNCA freshman from Denver, North Carolina, frequently visits the Ashe-Hole and said she can see why the university will be removing the spot next semester. “I’m here at least five times a day,” Schubert said. “I’ve made a bunch of friends here.” Schubert said if she didn’t smoke cigarettes, she would probably stay in her dorm the majority of the time. “They’re taking away such an important social outlet for kids who otherwise wouldn’t have any social environment to be comfortable in. I know a lot of kids who wouldn’t have friends if they didn’t come here all the time,” Schubert said. On the other hand, she said she feels students have gotten
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too comfortable in this space, neglecting to properly dispose of their cigarette butt waste. “I’m not surprised they want to take it away. We fucked it up. I mean, the people here fucked it up,” Schubert said. “Hopefully, this will teach everyone a lesson, like, this isn’t your hometown, like, you can’t go and trash shit everywhere.” Schubert said she feels the removal of the smoking area will not change any of the student’s behavior, and that they are not harming the area significantly. “People are still going to do what they’ve been doing, they’re just gonna go somewhere else to do it. I can see why they’re taking this place away, but I still don’t think they should. Not only would it inconvenience a bunch of people; the Dunder workers come here to smoke. Plus, they’d just be spreading about the drug use and whatnot, and there’ll be so many cigarette butts littered all over campus,” Shubert said. Best said UNCA does not care about the individual well-being and success of its student body. “It’s just smoke and mirrors. The university presents this image of protecting the students,” Best said. Best said he wasn’t surprised to hear campus police wanted to eliminate the spot. “When it comes to protecting the students, I don’t feel as though that’s really the goal,” Best said. “I feel like the goal, like any other law enforcement branch, is to generate revenue for whoever they work for, and that’s what they’re doing.” Best said he lived on campus last year, like most freshmen at UNCA.
“I don’t think they (the campus police) really mind students doing illicit things in the dorms ’cause that just gives them the opportunity to go in, mess with them, make some money off them, whether it’s immediate citation fees or multiple infractions leading to a bigger fine,” Best said. “That’s why it’s so important that they don’t take this place away -- because there are ways to avoid whatever it is exactly the university wants to avoid.” Best proposed a possible solution to the removal of the smoking area, in the form of a student coalition consisting of students appointed by students to check, clean and maintain the Ashe-Hole. “I live off campus now, but it’s still pretty clear that students really care about this place. And if we really care about something, since we’re paying you money to look out for us, you actually include us in the decision process,” Best said. Keegan Martin, a 20 year-old junior at UNCA and Asheville native, said he isn’t shocked at the stance the university is taking on the issue. “The Ashe-Hole feels most like a creative spot and one you won’t get in trouble for loitering at or just feel bizarre hanging out at all afternoon,” Martin said. As for the criticism the regulars at the Ashe-Hole have received from the university, Martin said he understands. “Obviously, the school doesn’t have to offer us a smoking spot at all, let alone a clean one, but it is hypocritical of them to say ‘If you wanted to keep it, you should’ve kept it
Isaiah Rice graphs document the joy and freedom of being alive and sharing that life with other people, loved ones, family, such candid beauty, must be honored, recognized and remembered.”
clean’ to a bunch of kids,” Martin said. On the subject of illicit activities at the Ashe-Hole, Martin said students will surely still drink and smoke. He explained that removing the Ashe-Hole will only encourage students to drive off campus to drink and smoke, unavoidably causing a spike in students driving under the influence. Martin said the closing of the spot will ultimately change nothing in terms of student behavior. “There’s going to be a dispersal of the people who like to hang out there. And because those groups of people won’t stop doing what they’re doing. It’s not really solving much of anything,” Martin said. For Martin, the issue comes in the form of student safety, which he said is ultimately being ignored by the university’s removal of the Ashe-Hole. “Smarter countries than us have something called the ‘Needle Exchange’, which basically means if you’re kinda dumb and want to shoot up heroin, at least you don’t get sick or fuck up your veins, and in that respect, I think the Ashe-Hole is kinda serving the same purpose,” Martin said. “If you’re the type of kid who likes to ‘turn up’ on campus, who’s to say whether or not you should ultimately be allowed to do so or not? It’s better to have those kids at the Ashe-Hole where they’re within walking distance of their dorm, police officers, hell, even medical attention, and when you force kids to start sneaking around, the methods they use to drink or smoke become more risky and danger-
ous, as opposed to having the option to do it pseudo-openly.” Martin said he acknowledges the university’s point of view but argues that the well-being of students should certainly take precedence over appearances. “I’m not saying if kids can’t drink their 40 out at the AsheHole, they’re going to start brewing bathroom hooch in Mills Hall, but I am saying when you rob kids of that social atmosphere they’ve grown to depend on, there’s less support and safety involved in their activities, and that’s a problem, because no one’s going to change their behavior once the Ashe-Hole disappears,” Martin said. Martin also expressed concern for the message the removal of the spot is sending the student body; “I really don’t think they’re removing it (the Ashe-Hole) because the administration hates the people who frequent it, but I know that’s how a lot of the people who go there feel about its removal,” Martin said. The Ashe-Hole was first introduced to students in fall of 2014 as a new smoking area to replace the smoking spot in front of Mills Hall that was (much like the Ashe-Hole is about to be) removed from campus. “To see the university start such a small project, I mean, this is a small fucking thing, this is a smoker’s circle. They’re giving up on a project they sprung into creation not even three full semesters after introducing it, and that’s kinda concerning to say the least,” Breakstone said.
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Rice was also a musician and taught Waters how to play the piano, Betsalel said. “That sense of rhythm and music and note and proportion is in the photo-
graphs,” he said. Rice not only photographed the African American community. He was also photographing the white community, Betsalel said.
“When you think about it, that was quite extraordinary,” Betsalel said.
pagenet 20 October 28, 2015. | Issue 9, Volume 63 | thebluebanner.
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Scream Queens plays the character with such over-the-top cruelty that I got turned off to her within the first five minutes of her on-screen time. She refers to her group members as "Chanel number one," "Chanel number two," Chanel number three" and "Chanel number five." Chanel number four died of meningitis, which is just insulting to me since I had it at three months old. She even engages in a battle of wits with the coffee barista/ investigative reporter about how hot her pumpkin spice latte should be, which is 210
From page 16
degrees and somehow not possible at the coffee shop. If my description of Roberts' character doesn't make you want to scream, pun intended, I have no words for you. The show then tries to infuse mystery into the plot by introducing the killer, a mysterious figure dressed in a cheap devil costume. It's like the showrunners, the creators of Glee and American Horror Story who have teamed up here, took a page from the scripts of Pretty Little Liars and pulled an "A" out of their hats for this gruesome show.
The disappearance of every corpse killed by the devil character lead me to believe something more fishy was at play behind the scenes, something the show refused to disclose until the after-credits scene. Here's the fun part, though: the murders are all part of a gag put on by Nick Jonas' character. There is potential involvement of an investigative reporter at the college, who is looking into the corruption of the sorority and the father of one of the main characters. People who love Glee and American Horror Story (which
Cabin in the Woods must take place in the form of the tropes of a horror movie. This sacrificing is an operation, calculated and controlled, or at least manipulated, as Sitterson explains: “They have to make the choice of their own free will, otherwise the system doesn’t work. It’s like the harbinger – this creepy old fuck – practically wears a sign: ‘you will die.’ Why do we put him there? It’s the system. They have to choose to ignore him and they have to choose what happens in the cellar.” The game is only partially rigged, he explains, justifying his collecting of bets as to what creatures the crew will unknowingly choose in the cellar to kill them. The Cabin in the Woods illustrates a need to play assigned roles and take part in the ritualistic, automated act of sacrificing our lives for the greater cause of the military industrialized complex’s sacrificial war machine that takes young people and kills
know, shows like Real Housewives or Jersey Shore or the show with Honey Boo-Boo and her obnoxious family. I would even watch Duck Dynasty over this cheesy crap. I'm not saying every show has to be as high a caliber as Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad or even The Walking Dead, but if Scream Queens manages to get past one season, I'm going to be completely blindsided. Unfortunately, allusions to pop culture, and Jamie Lee Curtis’ role in the series, prove to be the only shining aspects of the series.
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them based on a belief systems of patriotism, tradition and the existence of freedom requiring death. These roles of the athlete, the scholar, the fool and the virgin are assigned through the chemical mists released at various times, such as when Curt, the athlete, states that everyone should stick together – a strategy rarely used in horror movies – until he is sprayed by a mist. Looking confused, he changes the plan, suggesting that everyone should split up, which follows the illogical plan of the characters of horror movies more closely. Marty, the pothead, asks, “Really?” This splitting up is no different than the division created through the Republican verses Democrat trance induced through various mists of complacency. It is important to note that it is marijuana that allows Marty to see through the construct and assigned roles. Noticing Curt’s sudden personality
Corrections In last week's issue, the heading for the second part of Becca Andrews' aticle on Leslie Newman
seems to be a lot of people if you were to combine those two fan bases) will get a kick out of this series for the blending of mysterious terror and comedy fans of the more mature High School Musical series, which concluded earlier this year. You might, at some point, stop reading this review because of the impression I just don't know how to have fun with a ridiculous show such as this and that's fine. I'm just sick of horror movies that are not scary and TV shows like this that are served to me like junk food. You
change to alpha male and Jules’ sexual promiscuity, Marty speaks to himself, “We are not who we are.” When the heavy cellar door swings open mechanically, Dana says the wind must have blown it open. “That makes what kind of sense?” asks Marty. He is constantly observing the presence of a script which they follow, and discovering cracks in the construct, such as when he finds the microphone wire in his room. He tries to explain his finding to Dana, but she doesn’t understand what he is saying. “You’re not seeing what you don’t want to see,” he says to her, then to himself, “puppeteers.” Key factors in Marty’s ability to see through the construct is he does not drink alcohol with the rest of the crew; he only smokes pot. “What’s up with that guy’s pot anyway?” Sitterson asks, frustrated that he keeps interrogating the reality they are being fed and supposed to
accept blindly. Lin, the chemist, says, “Whatever he’s been smoking has been immunizing him to all of our shit.” Using marijuana as a plot device to make Marty the voice of reason, the writers tell the audience that what is legal, alcohol, is dimming our vision. What is illegal, what the government has deemed unsafe for human consumption, may have been deemed so based on the possibility that these substances would allow one to see the construct, stepping out of complacency. The lambs have to play a role, as the director explains to Marty and Dana, who made it farther than planned and discovered the facility of monsters. “It’s changed over the years, but it has always required youth. There must be at least five: the whore – she’s corrupted, she dies first; the athlete, the scholar, the fool, all suffer and die by whatever horror they have raised, leav-
misstated Newman's first name as "Lisa." In addition, the wrong caption appeared under Jeff Bengal's photograph on page 17.
ing the last to live or die as fate decides: the virgin.” When Jules is killed, Sitterson and Hadley bow their heads and pray,“This we offer in humility and fear, for the blessed peace of your eternal slumber as it ever was.” Later, Sitterson recollects, “Remember when you could just throw a girl in a volcano?” This parallels what the director tells Marty and Dana: “What’s happening to you is a part of something bigger, something older than anything known . . . It’s our task to placate the ancient ones as it is yours to be offered up to them.” The movie uses the recycled horror movie script to describe a society that manipulates its civilians into playing roles that lead them to their death. Why would the creators tell this story of a society who requires sacrificial deaths by way of a horror movie plot? They are reflecting our own society as it is: a horror movie.
The Blue Banner apologizes for these errors.
October 28, 2015. | Issue 9, Volume 63 | thebluebanner.net
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OPINION
Section Editor: June Bunch kbunch@unca.edu
The Blue Banner’s view #ThinkingOutsideTheBox: Listen to yourself, Ben Carson
TIMBI SHEPHERD Editor-in-Chief jshephe3@unca.edu
A recent CBS/New York Times poll shows Ben Carson taking the lead in the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. This development comes soon after Carson made statements threatening to defund public universities on the basis of perceived “extreme bias.” Carson has not stated what, exactly, qualifies as “extreme bias” in speech on college campuses, but said he would invite students to file complaints at their own discretion. The Department of Education would review each of these cases and determine—again, at their own discretion—whether an investigation or action against the
university is necessary. As facilitators of this forum for free speech at UNC Asheville, The Blue Banner editorial board is not only concerned about, but troubled by the restrictions that Carson’s administration might place on faculty and student voices. Carson says he supports a free market, but his statements do not indicate support for a marketplace of ideas. Rather, what Carson’s statements do suggest is a stripping of our First Amendment rights. He claims his proposal for curbing “extreme bias” is aimed at preventing political indoctrination, but it seems instead to be a means of enacting political re-
Blackbird, Blackbird something new for you all,” as if he, although conducting the journey, was enjoying the moment too much to say a lot. Much like the visual designs and
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cover art for Blackbird Blackbird, the music was awash in pastels, even in its most trap-induced moments. It filled the hall with a much-needed freshness amidst the stinginess of non-draft beer
and the heat making it’s way up the staircase from One Stop. Blackbird Blackbird takes a passenger to the tangerine sky, and softly brings them down as the sun sets.
BFTS Pennsylvania, and then I came here. The music is what really kept me here. Yeah, just the good music scene, stellar.” What’s the story behind this outfit? Is it inspired by the music you’re playing or do you dress like this normally? “I dress like this every day, pretty much. It’s like an inspiration from old ’20s music, jazz musicians. For them it was a normal day, just kind of
pression. In order to promote global citizenship and a critical understanding of the world, we must be open to ideas that challenge and expand our own limited perspectives. We must be willing to listen rather than repress. Carson should let his guard down. Liberal arts education has never been defined in opposition to conservative politics, but has always been about liberal thinking in the original sense — free thinking.
From page 13
like I’m going to a jazz club or I’m going to rob your mom’s house. I could be the nicest guy ever or I could have a tommy gun in my car.” What inspires you creatively? “Definitely people who are more talented than me. Anything that isn’t, I don’t know, normal. I don’t know, people inspire me.” What was the strangest experience you’ve
had train-hopping? “I don’t know if I can tell you that, but I can tell you the funniest strange thing. One time I was playing banjo in a boxcar and I fell out.” Jessica: “That’s not that funny. That sucks.” Vaden: --“rolled all the way down a 30-foot hill and laughed the whole way down. I got up and I was so light-headed. I just like had scratches all over my arms. I got up and
started walking and I was just like, ‘Uuuuuuuuugggghhhh.’ I broke all my strings. The bridge snapped but that’s like the simplest fix. I rolled on top of it. I used it as a blanket on the way down.” That’s intense. “Yeah, it was funny.” At least you didn’t fall into the tracks, though. “Yeah.” What’s one thing you like about Asheville and hate
about Asheville? “The music scene, the busking scene is really cool and one thing I hate? How many hippies there are. I wish there were no drum circles.” The drum circle is kind of bittersweet now because it used to be legit but now tourists are starting to come. “Yeah. I mean, I’m not prejudiced against hippies.”
October 28, 2015. | Issue 9, Volume 63 | thebluebanner.net
page 22
OPINION
The three rules of cool JOHN MALLOW Contributing Writer
What does cool mean to you? Is it a relative lack of heat or is it something else? Lev Grossman of Time magazine calls it “our country’s most precious natural resource: an invisible, impalpable substance that can make a particular brand of interchangeable product . . . fantastically valuable.” The process of trying to figure out exactly what makes something “cool” is as hard as nailing Jello to a wall. The more you try, the more it just slips away. Cool has been part of the culture since before temperature-related adjectives referred to something popular. To quote the Psychology Journal article “Too Cool at School—Understanding Cool Teenagers,” cool is “a performance that needs to be validated by an audience.” If no one is around to regard you as cool, are you really cool? Coolness and popularity can be used to describe any number of things which all fall victim to a few key factors: youth, apathy and relevance. Leanna M. Closson, of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, posits that coolness is dependent on social prominence and dominance within a peer group. I partially agree, as coolness can be correlated with having power. Truthfully, when was the last time anyone called their boss cool without hinting at sarcasm? This could be because the deciders of cool are usually younger than those who rank above them. The complementary nature of age and coolness seems like a fairly straightforward concept until you delve into the realm of vintage clothing, music, movies and cars. Just because something is old does not mean it is cool. There is always a certain cut-off for what qualifies a car as “vintage” or “outdated.” The purveyors of cool are much more interested in a 1969 Chevrolet Camaro SS than your great-grandfather’s 1940 Ford Business Coupe.
1. Vintage is cool, old is not.
The familiar phrase “whatever” is popular among the members of the entire youthful generation, but is highly preferred by the cool crowd. It is this perceived lack of interest and preference that can be the difference between a modern-day James Dean and the next Steve Urkel. In W.R. Belk’s essay “Cool Shoes, Cool Self,” he observes popular teenagers as having a “nonchalant control of emotions, a rebellious trickster demeanor, an ironic detachment from the regard of others, and a cool style of talking, walking, gesturing and grooming.” To remain apathetic, even about stuff you truly care about, is key to the effective
cool ensemble. The stoic façade works wonders when all else fails. Even at Disney World, the cool kids would never devolve into wide-eyed kindergartners, even if inside they were holding back exclamations of joy.
2. Fake apathy is cool, real excitement is not.
The cool social causes and movements to get behind these days are, without a doubt, anything that involves sustainable living and/or organic farming. If there is anything at all you could actually care about, or feign true apathy for, it is the environment. Green is definitely the new color of the cult of cool. Like the vintage versus old deal, timing is everything. It does not matter if you were Mr. Tree-Huggin’ Hippy back in 1970, if you are a CEO today, you are seen as the evil corporate America. “It’s all about today, man. The here and now,” some college-aged stoner might quip while clutching an “Eat Local” poster. The cool do not care about carbon emissions or discontinuing the use of pesticides, they really only care that it is hip to seem to care about carbon emissions and discontinuing the use of pesticides.
3. Today’s social issues are cool, yesterday’s used to be cool.
What constitutes a cool kid has changed, yet stayed the same, as cliché as it sounds. The mentality of not caring but still caring has always been the go-to persona for members of the in-crowd. Now, appearing to care about the right things is on the cool’s agenda. Cool used to mean challenging convention and expressing oneself authentically. Authenticity is a quality that is definitely lacking in today’s youth culture, but it is also something that is hard to pull off. What about those who actually like The Beatles, not just because they are a throwback, but because they love Paul McCartney’s lyrics? What about those who really don’t care what anyone thinks of them? What about those who study the greenhouse effect because they are genuinely interested in the health of the earth? Are they just as cool as those who do it all ironically and without conviction? I assert that yes, they are.
October 28, 2015. | Issue 9, Volume 63 | thebluebanner.net October 14, 2015. | Issue 7, Volume 63 | thebluebanner.net
page 23 page 1
Food: The that tastes Candy: thefake fakestuff stuff that tastes good on halloween good on Halloween
JUNE BUNCH June Bunch Opinion Editor
Opinion Editor kbunch@unca.edu kbunch@unca.edu
Little Little humans humans in in costumes costumes scooted past my windowevery evscooted past my window ery Halloween with pillowcasHalloween with pillow sacks es of cavity culprits. One fullfull of free cavity-culprits. One of my neighbors, a dentist, of my neighbors, a dentist, alalways gave them apples -ways gave them appleswhich which they spited -while my they spited- while my next next neighbor shared her -doordoor neighbor shared her treatreasure bowl of Reese's and sure bowl of Reese's and Jolly Jolly Ranchers. There was no Ranchers. There was no surprise surprise as to which door they
in which door they favored. favored. At the the end end of of their their trek, trek, the the At youngins skipped skipped and and squirmed squirmed youngins in their their weird weird masks masks and and pirate pirate in hats, blood blood full full of of sugar sugar and and hats, gums caked caked in in corn corn syrup, syrup, gidgidgums dy. They They peered peered into into their their bags bags dy. for just just one one more more to-go to-go treat treat bebefor fore they they crashed crashed at at their their house. house. fore Inside at at last, last, they they often often Inside dumped their their loot loot on on the the living living dumped room flfloor oorand anddevised devised plans room plans for for post-Halloween post-Halloween hunger, hunger, sorting sorting theirking-size hierarchy of away prize their prize bars king-size from the from the bars stale away butterscotches stalelicorice butterscotches and licorice and that someone else that someone elsetrade would hopewould hopefully them for. fully trade thema for. There were few friends of There were a fewbyfriends of mine who sorted wrapper mine who sorted wrapper color. Others sortedbycandy by color. sortedthen candy by fl avors:Others chocolates, fruity flavors; then chocolates, things, bubblethen gumfruity and
things,lollipops. then bubble gums later, and later, lollipops. I don’t remember how many don’tminion remember how many of I my middle-school of my hid minion friends rationsmiddle-school of their prefriendssustenance, hid rationsbut of we their precious started cious sustenance, we started wising up to the but safety of our wising up to the safety of that our candy quota, suspecting candyparents quota,would suspecting their scamperthat in theirfeel parents would scamper in and entitled to our rightfulandearned feel entitled our rightfully AlmondtoJoys. ly After earnedallAlmond the faceJoys. paints were After all were washed off the andface all paints the jack o' washedcandles off and allblown the jack lantern were out, o'lanterns’ candles were blown we surely slept soundly. out, weafter-taste surely slept The ofsoundly. Halloween The wasn’t after-taste of Halloween candy so sweet, howevcandy so sweet, er. Thewasn’t crap that those howevdarling er. Theincluding crap thatmyself, those darling kids, shovkids, into including myself, shoveled eled their mouths throughinto the their later mouths throughout out weeks hardly the later as weeks hardly and counted counted nutrition, yet, as nutrition, and yet, the candythe candy-coated oblivion car-
ried on. coated oblivion carried on. I’m not opposed to Hallowto Halloween eenI’minnot theopposed least, but there are in the least, should squeeze some nasty we consequences to that factoidmyself in before we continsustaining on empty calue, but there were some nasty ories. consequences sustaining the on I specificallyto remember empty prior calories. weeks to my 11th HallowI specifically remember the een. weeks my 11eleventh Theyprior weretorollercoasters of Halloween. prances and sleepsugar-high They werecrashes. rollercoasters of ing-in-class My dad sugar-high prances and to sleepsaid he’d haul me over the ing-in-class so crashes. My read dad playground he could he’dwhile haul the me jungle over togym the asaid book playground could read shorted out so myhesucrose-fi lled a book Iwhile the it. jungle gym circuits. was into shorted out my sucrose-fi lled Apparently, hyped on Hercircuits.II was into it. impresshey’s, a pretty Apparently, sive speedster. hyped on Hershey’s, I was worked a pretty its impresThat candy wonsive speedster. ders.
But during those days, I think That candy its wonI spoiled my worked dinner for three ders. days straight before my mom I think hidBut myduring stash. those I knewdays, she would, Iso,spoiled being my the dinner clever three little days con straight before my mom my artist I was, I already hadhid gross stash I knew she would, sums (which of chocolate squished and so, beingbetween the clever con I melted mylittle mattress was, I already waiting. had gross sums and boxspring, of By chocolate and meltthen, it squished was too late. edMy between matress and annual my dentist appointboxspring, waiting). ment was the second week into By then, itand wasItoo late. November remembered My oblivious, annual dentist being at 11 appointyears of ment was thebuilding, second week into vocabulary to what November and “cavity” I remembered the strange term meant. being oblivious, at 11 years of It meant my parents toppled vocabulary to what my dreams ofbuilding, candy breakfasts, the strange “cavity” meant. lunches andterm dinners. It meantbemy toppled I would putparents on a no-dessert my of candy breakfasts, dietdreams with a desperate craving to lunches disobey and my dinners. parents’ horrid deI would be putevery on a no mands. I snuck bitedessert that I diet a desperate craving to couldwith chew. disobey my parents’ horrid fideHowever, after getting llmands. snuck everyteeth, bite that ings in Iquite a few I leftI could chew.with more than just the dentist However, after and getting filla new toothbrush a creepy ings inring quite a few teeth, tooth. I left plastic with a smiling the with more than just I leftdentist with remorse. a new toothbrush a creepy I would forever and trick-or-treat plastic with a smiling tooth. with anring unfortunate knowledge Ithat leftthose with remorse. candy wrappers held I would forever trick-or-treat something more consequential with unfortunate knowledge than an awesome energy boost, that candydestruction. wrappers held they those held dental something moremight consequential Hence, you imagine, than awesome energyfor boost, I’m an a real advocate the they held giving dental destruction. neighbor apples to kids. Hence, you Babbling little might ones imagine, run fast I’m a real advocate for the without a motive and their suneighbor giving apples to terrikids. per-sucrose-fueled speeds Babbling little ones run fast fy me. without a motive suNot only that, and but their diabetes per-sucrose-fueled terriapparently runs inspeeds my family fy andme. I have to be a good example that, but and diabetes forNot my only little nephews niecapparently runs in my family es who trick-or-treat with me. and I have to beknow, a good Little do they myexample dentist for my little nephews neighbor is the only and one niecwith es, with me and the trick-or-treating good stuff. spiting mywill dentist neighbor. LitThere be no more secret tle do they he’s thecandy only stashes of know, Halloween one with my the good stuff.and boxbetween mattress ThereFeel willfree be no secret stashspring. to look. es of Halloween candy between my mattress and boxspring. Feel free to look.
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