Polite in Public Meet the two irregular Joes behind the cameras
Cosima von Bonin An artist whose creations are “Roger and Out�
New War:
End of democracy, start of a monarchy
Melrose Avenue
Where to shop and what to eat
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BUZZ 10.04.07
URBAN OUT-LOOKERS Two guys, some cameras and a badass photobooth
POLITE IN PUBLIC ROGER & OUT “CHUCK’S” ZACHARY LEVI LOCKED & LOADED FOR MISFIRE
The Buzz Editor: Jennifer Caddick Executive Editor: Ian Hamilton Director of Advertising: Stephanie Birditt Assistant Director of Advertising: Sarah Oak Production: Jennifer Caddick Account Executives: Nancy Sanchez Juliet Roberts
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The Daily Titan 714.278.3373 The Buzz Editorial 714.278.5426 thebuzz@dailytitan.com Editorial Fax 714.278.4473 The Buzz Advertising 714.278.3373 ads@dailytitan.com Advertising Fax 714.278.2702 The Buzz , a student publication, is a supplemental insert for the Cal State Fullerton Daily Titan. It is printed every Thursday. The Daily Titan operates independently of Associated Students, College of Communications, CSUF administration and the CSU system. The Daily Titan has functioned as a public forum since inception. Unless implied by the advertising party or otherwise stated, advertising in the Daily Titan is inserted by commercial activities or ventures identified in the advertisements themselves and not by the university. Such printing is not to be construed as written or implied sponsorship, endorsement or investigation of such commercial enterprises. Copyright ©2006 Daily Titan
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BUZZ 10.04.07
MELROSE AVENUE
By Elisabeth Donovan
Daily Titan Staff Writer
A $100 bill is all you need to purchase an awesome outfit and eat a great meal at Los Angeles’ greatest daytime hotspot - Melrose Avenue. Stretching through Hollywood, one of America’s cultural melting pots, Melrose Avenue is home to many breeds of people. It’s the one place where you can find polished businessmen, punk
kids and Hasidic Jewish Rabbis on the same block. The urban environment encompasses many trendy aspects of L.A. Barry Smith, 34, a tourist from Miami, said he often visits Southern California. Melrose remains one of his favorite attractions. “I love visiting this place,” he said. “I always meet people from all over the world. I love watching the beautiful ladies pass by [me]. Most
of all, I love eating here.” The number of Melrose restaurant choices seems endless. Some unique restaurants include Lala’s Argentine Grill, Blu Jam Cafe and Melrose Wok. The Village Idiot is an Englishthemed restaurant where the menu has a small variety of dishes that are vastly unique, including jalapeno creamed corn, brussels sprouts and bacon and shrimp and scallion fritters. I recommend the oak-grilled
Photos By Elisabeth Donovan pork sausage. The entrée consists of spicy sausage, onions and mashed potatoes. If you aren’t hungry, you can hang out and observe the flashy, unique signs that seem to entice a variety of people into the shops scattered across the busy boulevard. Graffiti is etched into nearly every store window. Although some may consider it trashy, it gives the businesses an artsy appeal. The clothing stores offer a wide variety of styles from chic fashion to punk rock. The Blue Stone, a shop specializing in trendy apparel will draw you in with its simple décor. Although a price-tag might read “$55,” don’t let that hinder you. When visiting
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Melrose, you should keep in mind that most store managers allow you to bargain. Because these shops are located in celebrity central, their attire closely resembles the clothing worn by stars. Chaque Jour, an accessory shop, sells purses that look exactly like Fendi bags. Orange County thrift shoppers tired of Goodwill would appreciate the variety of Melrose vintage stores. Wasteland, a huge designer vintage shop is paradise to many Hollywood indie fashionistas. It is easy to find one-of-a-kind pieces here. Anabell Castillo, 23, has been shopping on Melrose for years. “Melrose fashion has personality,” she said. “Most stores are locally owned. There aren’t a lot of big chains. The styles they offer are unique and can’t be found in other stores.” Shopping and eating aren’t the only Melrose attractions. The street also boasts Hookah lounges, tattoo parlors and beauty shops. Floyd’s Barbershop is an eyecatcher. The stylists each sport a distinctive style with their loud clothing and colored hair. The salon’s interior is completely covered with music posters. The walls display pictures of rock artists such as AC/DC and the Ramones. If you want proof, just check out their MySpace page at myspace. com/floydsbarbershops. Michelle Riera, 28, a hair stylist, said she loves working at Floyd’s Barbershop. “There’s never a dull moment working on Melrose,” she said. “There’s a lot of positive energy here. Our salon attracts all types of people. Everyone fits in at our shop. We all share a love for art and music.” You can chill on Melrose until the sun sets on Los Angeles and you will never get bored.
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BUZZ 10.04.07
Polite in Public bring style and originality back to photography By Nikki Donahue
Daily Titan Staff Writer
Usually interviews don’t include wielding a pair of barbering shears and a fine-toothed comb, but this is no ordinary interview. The boys of Polite in Public are anything but conventional. And their business of interactive photobooth mayhem is synonymous with antonyms of commonplace terms. So with
Photos By polite in public a fistful of spine-length hair and scissors poised for incision, the meeting was conducted. After convincingly posing an argument about why it would be a good idea to cut his mane while he straddled an armchair in a Texas hotel room, Joe Rubinstein, one half of the two Joes who run Polite in Public, sat like a patient patron of beauty school 101 and told the legend behind the Los Angelesbased project. Rubinstein, charming and slightly effeminate in speech, and Joe Miller, small boned and devastatingly quiet at first, share a large house along with a community of other artists in a dicey neighborhood off the 101 freeway. Although unimpressive from the outside, and honestly a little foreboding as far as the safety of vehicles and personal belongings goes, a field of beaux art wet dreams sits nestled in the hills behind. From the ground up, they’ve built an arsenal of stunning sets for the utmost creative in photography. One stage, entwined with large frosted branches and littered with makeshift snow, made up the environment they used for a press shoot of an up-andcoming musician. It came complete with a huge white stuffed toy bear they directed to “attack” the artist. Another set with singed, distressed wallpaper and a red, velvet Victorian couch in the center stands a few weed-mangled staircases away. They flood it with hoses and incorporate smoke machines in order to recreate a scene of natural disaster. This is their playground. “We give people a forum to not be so polite in public. We give them
BUZZ 10.04.07
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something unusual to work with,” Miller said in regards to how they come up with their set themes. In February 2007 they decided to scale down that jungle gym of frame work and furniture and bring it indoors. With a little engineering and much ingenuity they erected smaller elaborate versions. One of their first visual experiments took place in an event that required scaling a secret passageway in order to attend. In the depths of what once was, in fact, home to some notorious mob, Rubinstein and Miller shot the debonair, wasted and utterly intrigued. The hypothesis proved true. Their photobooth test tube baby was a hit. If Hollywood didn’t already love taking pictures of itself, it especially did now. Within a matter of months, Polite in Public mushroomed and their presence was cordially invited to clubs and concerts alike. “A lot of people don’t get to see themselves in professional lighting. It’s good for people to get the chance to do so,” Miller said over the phone. “Now that technology is more affordable we can do this kind of thing. It would have been impossible five years ago.” Now they’re touring nationwide with The Flaming Lips, equipped with an art bus and roadies. They’ve turned their love for detail and color and eccentricity into a career. A demanding career. The leg of the tour kicked off in San Antonio, TX, where Rubinstein and Miller’s $5,000 miniature interstellar space stage was an instant crowd magnet. Couples, best friends and the narcissistically-inclined took the limelight inside the flying saucer-adorned and burnished retro spaceship-printed box. The best part is watching everyone dress up in the props Rubinstein and Miller provide. “I don’t know what’s the fascination with making the wigs come out of their pants, but people love doing that ... it makes for fun photos,” Rubenstein said. We don’t know why some strip down to near nakedness to put on
the fake astronaut suits. Maybe to fully embrace the feel of cheap Halloween costume against their bare skin? And why do the burliest of men always want to put on the shiniest of spandex leggings if provided? Seriously. Whatever the reason, it’s amazing. If Photoshop wasn’t invented for enhancing the glare off Hank What’s-His-Face’s silver lycra fitted groin, then it might as well not exist.
By the end of the interview, Rubinstein’s Pocahontas ponytail is neatly saved in a Ziploc bag for his friend who uses it to make hair for her handmade dolls. His journalistgone-stylist amateur haircut is a little feminine but flattering. When he dons it at the venue, Miller cracks a huge smile, shakes his head and the two go back to being entrepreneurs in the field of visual arts and, maybe even more suiting, wonderful obscurity.
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Photo By emily caldwell
Special Event: Sept. 20 & 27, Myron Barnett Blues Band, $5 cover, 8:30PM
Monday Night Football, FREE hot dog with beer purchase
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BUZZ 10.04.07
By Sylvia Masuda
Daily Titan Staff Writer
this weeks concerts 10.4 Glass House- Dredg The Gig- The Cameron Band Hotel Cafe- Jay Nash
10.5 Chain Reaction- MXPX Glass House- She Wants Revenge The Gig- The Dirty Royals
10.6 The Greek- Steve Miller Band Glass House- Atreyu The Gig- Krash Buzz Nine
10.7 Chain Reaction- Modern Life is War The Gig- Gagging Lolly
10.8 Chain Reaction- Dirty Harry The Echo- Holly Golightly
10.9 Glass House- Unearth Troubadour- Bat for Lashes
10.10 The Gig- Immigrant Gypsy Troubadour- Mt. Eerie
Faceless plush doggies and donkeys. A bikini top more than 10 feet across. Parakeet droppings. To those of us with little to no art background or at least the patience to interpret, contemporary art seems a little gimmicky. Colorful, whimsical and tonguein-cheek, the art of acclaimed German artist Cosima von Bonin is at least fun to look at. In the heart of Los Angeles, von Bonin is showing her first solo exhibit, “Roger and Out,” Sept. 16 to Jan. 7 at the Museum of Contemporary Art on Grand Avenue. The exhibit starts with “Untitled (Not Bad for Openers).” A few yellowed sheets of the New York Daily News littered with parakeet droppings can’t help but make a statement, whether you get it or not. Sure, it’s kind of gross, but poo as a medium will always invoke response. Pinned to the walls of the gallery are giant constructions of two-tone bikinis blazing forth proudly like
the flags of a renegade, fashionconscious nation. A substantial part of von Bonin’s set are her stuffed sculptures. There’s a green donkey sporting a floppy hat, a multicolored octopus with glass-like tentacles and a replication of Mighty Mouse, propped up as if suspended in midair. A creature that looks like Jar Jar Binks’ cloth relative slouches in a corner of the artist’s large-scale piece, consisting of a few green rooms punctured by playgroundlike tubes and adorned with chalk drawings and scrawlings of German words. Climb up a flight of metal stairs and peer inside the roofless rooms. Mirrors are cleverly placed to accommodate for a complete view of the artwork. A video installation accompanies the piece. Von Bonin’s work may be more exciting than your average piece of modern art, but visitors are still perturbed. “I’m not sure if I get everything, but I like this piece,” Dylan Little said, pointing to an installation of tires lined up to one side of a white platform. “The tires are like lovers.” “I think it’s too avante-garde for my tastes,” visitor Maxine Hands
said. “I like contemporary art, but not this modern. I do like the tapestries.” Delores Godfrey said she was lost, but also enjoys the fabric work Hands likes. They’re referring to what von Bonin calls “Lappen,” or rags. Reminiscent of folkloric quilts, drawings and random phrases are embroidered onto assorted fabrics both printed and plain. Line doodles suggestive of people and furniture accentuate scenes cut out of textured fabrics. Along with the animals, they represent the bulk of the exhibit. The artist’s work also has an element of creepiness. One such piece features plush animals hanging on a clothesline. Longarmed monkeys hang from their arms. Rabbits colored pale pink and lavender are held up by their ears, smiling blankly, robotically. Elephants hang upside-down by one leg. At first glance, it’s fun and childlike, but at second glance, it looks like a representation of cute animal slaughter. “Roger and Out,” obligatory ambiguous meanings aside, is worth a visit just for how out of the ordinary and fun it is.
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Photo courtesy of MOCA
Released 10.9 Artist: Band of Horses Album: Cease to Begin Artist: Beirut Album: The Flying Cup Club
Artist: Fiery Furnaces Album: Widow City
Artist: Kid Rock Album: Rock and Roll Jesus
Artist: LeAnn Rimes Album: Family Artist: She Wants Revenge Album: This is Forever
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Photos by richard Tinoco Daily Titan Staff Writer
By Richard Tinoco Daily Titan Staff Writer
Aaron Schmidt, English Masters “I ride my bicycle a lot so I like things that are sporty. [I want my shirt] to be as colorful as possible. It’s really light to wear. It won’t stay wet after I sweat the hell out of it. The bandana is for defiance.”
Wendy Casimiro, Mathematics Major: “I wear the best outfit I can just to be comfortable. I want to teach high school so I’m getting used to the habit of how teachers dress.”
Geonanny Martinee Psychology Major “I like dresses a lot. Summer for me is real free. I like bright colors. I like really flowy [dresses]. They usually look better on me than straighter, tighter things.”
The nerds are taking over the small screen, and “The O.C.’s” creator Josh Schwartz has a little something to do with that. After four years behind the California teen soap, Schwartz is giving nerds a brighter spotlight on his new NBC series, which follows a Seth Cohen-like character in the world of espionage and video games. “Chuck” premiered Sept. 24 with over 9 million viewers. Checking in with star Zachary Levi and cocreator Schwartz, they dished the inside scoop on upcoming episodes and behind-the-scenes info. “Chuck” follows the titular character as an average 20something who accidentally opens an e-mail with all the government’s secrets inside. With the information downloaded into Chuck’s brain, he has the CIA, NSA and international baddies coming after him. On top of that, if only he could get a girlfriend. She might be coming in sooner than expected. Aside from his flirtation with CIA agent Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski), Chuck is about to tango with “O.C.” alumna Rachel Bilson, who will board the show as a potential love interest. Bilson will be playing a “magical
sandwich maker” who may or may not be who she says she is. “She’s going to do a couple of episodes,” said Schwartz. “Having worked with her ... It just felt like she could really fit the tone of the show ... [The] comedy between her and Zack seemed ideal.” The waves might have made their final splash on “The O.C.,” but Schwartz is helping with the transition between both series with his musical touch. After executive-producing on “The O.C.” soundtracks, fans of indie music can listen into “Chuck” to hear musicians like The New Pornographers, The National and Spoon. Schwartz
Photos courtesy of tv.yahoo.com won’t relegate himself to just indie bands, though. “Popular songs work here as well ... I’m just saying this is a big spoiler, Britney [Spears’] ‘Toxic’,” he said. “The show really lends itself naturally to all kinds of different music.” Unlike Seth Cohen’s portrayer Adam Brody, who became the indie-emo poster boy with bands like Death Cab for Cutie, Chuck’s Levi isn’t so much inclined to do the same. Schwartz said, “Zack is only interested in music that he can conquer at Guitar Hero.” Levi replied, “It’s so true ... Josh is far more privy to the indie sound than
myself.” Despite their differences with music, the two share a close bond, apparent in their banter and quick wit: “Zack, anything you want to add to that?” Schwartz said. “No, you’re very smart,” Levi fired back. “Caffeinated,” he said. As for his friends and family, he will be in a constant struggle between having to keep his identity a secret and living a life as a spy. “It really is a balance between that office place comedy, the spy action and then the Chuck quarter life crisis,” said Schwartz. But at the center, there is just a nerd. A nerd who must save the world. And if the ratings aren’t high enough, there is always the crossover possibility of a battle between Chuck and Seth Cohen. “I’ll hop off the phone real quick, you can answer honestly,” said Levi. “It would probably be via video game,” said Schwartz, “but I would have to say [Levi has] a couple of inches on old Seth Cohen.” “Yeah, I do,” said Levi
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BUZZ 10.04.07
cartoon by reza allah-bakhshi By Thomas madden For the Daily Titan
There is a looming threat approaching our slothful media outlets and soon our conscience. Large enough to give Lady Liberty indigestion, this problem is being manufactured by Dick and George and will most likely fly over our vague gazing eyes. This threat isn’t from the outside, won’t cause you to empty your clear gels before a vexing heavy breathing airport official or even require a background search to receive clearance to visit an ill family member at a local Fullerton Hospital. This threat lies in the under-works of the grid streets of our capital, and
if not confronted soon will be a selfafflicted shot to our republic. In the next coming months don’t be surprised if our wars switch consonants. From bow tie wearing butt-boy television pundits to respected former Defense Department analysts, the Bush administration’s plan on furthering its crusade with dough-brained strategy seems to be taking shape. Here we come Iran. No conspiracy theorist here, I’ve just learned from the past. I have realized that nothing is impossible with these drooling criminals, even entering into another war. So if we enter another fight with our overextended army and unsupportive community, then we must prepare for what will happen here, earthquake kits and umbrellas. Any sign of aggression towards Iran will be a huge mistake, with the brunt of it affecting our Democracy. Another war without public approval that goes against international laws only strengthens the executive branch’s pimp-hand over our system of checks and balances. While our naiveness will force us to believe that we are the most progressive and powerful country in the world, the fact that our democracy is still young in the pages of history should suppress future tyrannical fantasies. Face it, we aren’t as progressive as we believe, our virtue is shattered by the undemocratic Guantanamo’s and the Abu Ghraib’s, deliberation is absent in our decision making, and
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our inability to constrain our leaders only leads to the public suffering. With all the wire-tapping and email checking, who really receives the repercussions of paranoia? Who have been more impacted from our Government’s prying, the evergrowing al-Qaeda or the innocent middle-eastern family, detained during their trip to Disneyworld? We privatize our military, by giving corporations such as Blackwater USA the right to freely shoot innocent Iraqi citizens, all while being drugged and buzzed. Ah, bullets and Black Tar, the perfect combination for Bush-paid mercenaries. This privatization is dangerous because it removes the military from the hands of our society, making us less democratic by loss of citizen’s perspective. Our core democratic foundation is getting raped, ravaged and plundered, and wanting to restore it doesn’t make you weak or unpatriotic. After these recent years of mundane safety measures and trying to avoid the inevitable (we will always face terror), this certainly doesn’t feel like I’m living in the mightiest country. Sure, I’ve never been asked to run into a crowd of unsuspecting people with a belt of explosives, but I have had a jarhead recruiter on campus tell me that I’m perfect height for driving a tank. He was handing out mini-flags with his mini-observations that day, I took one and sighed, thinking that our world is changing.