Kitsch Magazine - Spring 2009

kitsch

vol. 7, no. 2

pop culture, politics, college, etc.

featuring...

AA XXX: American Apparel

Katy Perry and Wanna-gays

Exploitation.

Also Inside:

Dirty, Stinking Recession Liars

Bicycle Co-Op • Cortaca Jug • Superhero Sequels History of the Future • iReport • Flash Fiction Lies Our Sitcoms Tell Us • IndieBucks • Twitter 1

kitsch

magazine

spring 09

kitsch magazine

letter

an independent student publication

from

editorial board

THE

editor-in-chief

EDITOR

Peter Fritch

bite size

managing editor Marianne Moore

asst. art editor

Kathleen Jercich

Sadie Smith

zooming in

layout editor

Rachel Ensign

Allison Fischler

zooming out

chief copy editor

Marisa Brook

“Use me.”

In my all-time favorite karaoke song (“Use Me,” by Bill Withers), a man explains to his friends, his “brother,” and anyone else who hates his exploitative ladyfriend that he knows she’s using him, but that “if it feels this good getting used, oh, you just keep on using me, until you use me up.” Some, like Withers, enjoy being exploited. For most of us, though, exploitation is far from fun (this goes for students who, like me, are graduating and will most likely end up with an unpaid internship).

Regardless, exploitation may indeed be the reality. We all have used others and chances are we all have been used by others.

Some acts of exploitation use bodies (Read Emma Schain’s “AA XXX”) . Others use false pretenses (“Stage Gay,” p. 50). And others, sheep (p. 20). Whereas some forms of exploitation may be more or less harmless (See “Lies Our Sitcoms Told Us,” p. 59), others may devastate our bank accounts, our lives, and, indeed the country as a whole (“On Bullshit,” p. 54).

At the same time, there is another side of exploitation: it breeds resistance. For those who refuse to quietly sit by while wrongs are being done, exploitation can indeed be the source of solidarity, empowerment, and activism (see “The Re-cyclists,” p. 8, or “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Sweaters,” p. 40).

As both my last issue as Editor-in-Chief and as a relic of my last semester in Cornell, I’m thrilled to have “Exploitation” as the theme of this issue of kitsch. In a school like Cornell, the alarming degree of selfishness and exploitation on the part of many students, in my opinion at least, may be counterbalanced by the astounding levels of revolutionary thought, empowerment, and hope that can come about from people standing up for what they believe is right. I hope you enjoy the issue and I wanted to thank you (the “reader” and Cornell in general) for making kitsch possible for seven years and counting.

Adi Potashnick

webmaster

watch and listen

Jen Yang

D. Evan Mulvihill

fiction editor

advertising

Marianne Moore

Maddie Stone

IC editor

distribution

Elliott Feedore

Maddie Stone

IC liaison

new media

art editor

business manager

D. Evan Mulvihill

Heather Pusey

Eliza McClure

Erin Nuzzo

writers

contributers

David Berezin, Caitlin Cowie, Pete Devlin, Veronica Fischmann, Helen Havlak, Chris Lisee, Allison Musante, Adi Potashnick, Emma Schain, Michelle Spektor, Devon Walker, Andrew Wolf

layout artists

artists

Matthew Kudry, Claudia Mattos, Andrew Schwartz, Michelle Spektor, Josh Stansfield, Ian Tse

Michael Koch English, Cornell University

Helen Havlak, Tiffany Jyang, Michelle Spektor

advisors

Megan Roberts Television and Radio, Ithaca College

kitsch, an independent student organization located at Cornell University, produced and is responsible for the content of this publication. This publication was not reviewed or approved by, nor does it necessarily express or reflect the policies or opinions of, Cornell University or its designated representatives.

Table of Contents

FACT Watch and Listen

Zooming In

AA XXX

The Re-cyclists

Ithaca’s bicycle co-op’ers are fighting the man, one franken-bike at a time

Let’s Get Wasted and Yell at People Hedonism, rivalry, mayhem, Keystone

College Diaries: “Twist and Chout” Heartbreak and sodomy in a freshman dorm

8

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Sweaters

15 20

What now was like then

22 26

Sexy History: Sundae Bloody Sundae Ithaca vs. Evanston: Who invented the sundae?

And why do we care?

30

32 40

Not-So-Sloppy Seconds

46

Stage Gay

50

Superhero sequels

On On Bullshit

That’ll Cost Three Stone Wheels, Please The other side of the coin

CNN’s amatuer e-journalists are enthusiastic, but are they ethical?

Fake-ass bitches

Zooming Out History of the Future

American Apparel’s seedy underbelly, Dov Charney’s bulging crotch

Pete Devlin analyzes CEO doublespeak using Harry Frankfurt’s On Bullshit

Lies Our Sitcoms Told Us

Fresh Prince swaps moms mid-series and they think we won’t notice? WTF

Flippin’ the (Tweet-y) Bird

Why we love Twitter and why we want it DEAD

(A World of Laughter) A World of Tears kitsch’s commentary on Disneyland rides, matrix-style

54 59 61 62 3

fiction A Note from the Managing Editor

I have been gratefully astonished by the quality of the fiction submitted this year — thanks so much to everyone who contributed. The fiction we published influenced the overall tone of both issues this year, from Brian Isett’s surreal journey into the mind of a dying lover in last semester’s “Romance Issue” to Devon Walker’s disturbing portrayal of a father’s relationship with his daughter (“The Belt,” p. 45) in this “Exploitation Issue.”

This semester I took on the position of Managing Editor while retaining my warm nook as Fiction Editor. Thus, as a powerful hybrid mutant editor, I was able to impose my will. I told Peter that for this issue, I wanted to publish not one longer fiction piece, but a collection of very short “flash” fiction pieces. And my word was made flesh, and it was good.

Flash fictions, also called “sudden,” “micro,” and “skinny,” aren’t fragments of stories, but rather complete, powerful fictions that may be just a few sentences or paragraphs long, and rarely take up more than a page. The most famous (and probably, the most extreme) example was penned by the

master of verbal economy, Ernest Hemingway, and is only six words long: “For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.”

Flash fiction typically provokes the response, “That’s not a story. It’s a paragraph [or sentence or poem]. ” Regardless, it’s in the nature of flash fiction to test these boundaries and stimulate this debate. Though it may be difficult to define flash fiction in the abstract, like pornography, I know it when I see it. And like pornography, good flash fiction rarely leaves one unsatisfied. The terseness of the form can make the story pack a bigger punch, especially when confronting tough emotional subjects (“A Thoughtful Story,” p. 44).

Others only take a few words to tell, and are funniest and work best when left trim (“A L’urinate sur des Chaussures,” p. 58).

In this issue, you’ll find flash fiction where you least expect it — at the bottom of a book review or peering around the side of an article on pop journalism. These fiction ambushes serve one of our major goals in the issue — to play with layout and design, presenting you with what we feel is the most experimental kitsch yet. Enjoy.

Excerpts from “The Shortest Story and Other Stories”

44

The Belt

45

A L’urinate sur des Chaussures

58

In a series of ultra-short fictions, Veronica Fischmann explores such themes as love, loss, and motherhood

A father does to his child what his father did to him

A man really, really, really has to pee 4

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Featured Contributors tainly is due to Ms. Havdit is due and it most cer cre ere . wh ly, ve cti pe oming In Editor) and Ms MO and Folsom, CA, res g over next year as Zo kin (ta & lak tch le Wa Hailing from St. Louis, s litt ar’ re ye we xt k and Kathleen Jercich ’s Bite Size Editor and ne sophomores Helen Havla ckily, Jercich (this issue Lu re. he t go y the ! en ies ks, lad pond wh t Listen Editor). Than fish in a big, daunting their chops trying to ge ing lick re we s ion cat bli as other pu arrived in al English majors, kitsch at these two phenomen dirty world ed them from the dirty, the nick of time and sav e credit s. We know where to giv of undergrad publication

ch i c r e J n e e l h Kat

k a l v a H Helen

6

kitsch magazine, spring 2009

A Fond Farewell When kitsch founders Katie Jentleson and Sam Henig reached their senior year in Fall ‘05, worried about who would take over after they graduated, little did they know that an all-star team of then-freshmen were more than eager to please. Rob Ochshorn and D. Evan Mulvihill ‘09 took over as Editors-in-Chief, Erin Nuzzo as Art Editor, Peter Fritch as Managing Editor, and the rest was history.

Thank you to all of our graduating seniors.

Good luck and thanks for making kitsch kitsch!

Marianne Moore

Eliza McClure

Peter Fritch

Elliott Feedore

Erin Nuzzo

Rob Ochshorn

Evan Mulvihill

Ian Tse

Marisa Brook

Heather Pusey 7

zooming in

“W

hat do you mean I can’t buy a bike?”

“We’re a cooperative. We don’t want money.”

If you spend enough time at the corner of East Buffalo Street and Route 13, there’s no way you can avoid hearing this conversation at least once.

When I first encountered this situation, it was August and little kids were practically running through my legs. I arrived clueless, and as I searched for an indication of who to talk to, I approached a girl only to have her hand me a tube of assorted metal parts.

“You can sort these if you don’t have a task,” she said. There were people littered all over the sidewalk. One man was covered practically head-to-toe in grease. Another was precariously balancing on a ladder as he painted the ceiling. A group of little boys laughed hysterically as a man standing nearby helped them paint their bikes silver. (“Look, it’s chrome-plated!” I overheard one of them say.)

A long time ago, this place was a warming station for cold travelers waiting for the next train out of town. Then it was a plumbing station. Sitting right off noisy Route 13, now it is Recycle Ithaca’s Bicycles, familiarly known as RIBs. Located in a small brick building, adorned with a painted bicy-

8

kitsch magazine, spring 2009 8

the re-cyclists Ithaca’s bike co-op’ers are fighting the man, one franken-bike at a time.

by Andrew Wolf

photos by sadie smith

zooming in 9

9

. It ism e n a on ch me some kes g ra or kin bra time f g no b orst o n e in ly ew ical ite som at hav ut th walked s a b qu t th abo an him ook int ou just , a m help ey m t o n n o o is th na ed to p haca Later o eone t hen wal te a crowd et W i I . . m r s u i e o e n q i k h s v e i he e b is lly ea asked ter’s b d out ur in t sIBs orma le, a orts d i R e , n p ur p gh nd op sp ho in a is dau whip next s — c the n to ront is nd pe side arded o e e h cle The f les a The fix hed h nt the fram ing to disc uilde s e i o k i p aly. bicyc tivity. ce of the b tiful a fin He s c n g b not g h n i . ed lt t wit of a de fe behind f beau ost r r h e c o l o f t s si a e hiv andma s. And rove o and m me, ack imself I w akish, red b , i t t h e e re . a h frame asure hottes heir t saling store er tim de a f holst eet. t e e e r p k r e i e i t b h r n u h k t i b is a t bi Ano y to ebra- alo St ing ls g to — r z t th ff a ing bikes mode waitin e

kid foot, n Bu som make ed h e l c t w old ensive metal t e t e e m i o a l lik fiv e d er had Iw nde exp scrap sit n a ta from ver, st bik looked ’s anim wheel few i v w st rk o ing no ed. bea bike hildren front ing a en’s o y la egu d vag On m uys w buil two r eld n he i ildr ac The em of T ut of Rider. d by w of ch f g were aken h o t

o asy t of ch k ces nde bun they ey had t one he bac uys of E n exte d pie u g e t h c e bik tch. T mes, it on , two way bee atch m s i scra ike fra elded them best ike m b d b lar and w Behin er the “fixie” and f hal other. ing ov ear or gear e the e argu fixed-g ly on n r a o h we ake wit to m bike a —

10 kitsch magazine, spring 2009 10

is eh v a h

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l ld Pau ou d c n em ca rie tha s f as a m reen i I h in g w eG kid bike. from time of th ridin e h h e c p ea own hel t the wing whil an,” t d e r , t h a V r s s u he Wit ho rchi RIB -Da ower by t fo as w a p d o , u g n

w bo ets e A arte “Do ble llin g a back road Sav of th lle st ets’s egeta en ro n 0 i r v d v se ns.

199 e.” be ty, Ro n Sa tru t. The ren’s was e n o i b r o i at ize ild , p sea Par und inted still omm k off ee Bik ed o her the p ch eel th the s e t e aro d-pa t can the C ct to on Fr repair Da m g t of hea wh ice a o a t n c e ti ” j c a h d g h ck t a on tw es ed an l pro pera avets “Doo chilé bik t in fr om a with least e thin rom he f u a O S e i r a t t l h to th t e “ nd f th C C ini fee de fr tted bt at who us “c was AB The e nam lle a ck o them Sou o u fi a e e m e re a do l. Th orm -bik th , Ro ba ted the the

lle, der start f the stribu ay at hen Ro of bik hout igina an en nken d. n g u its e r nd . W pro di to wit he o with is Fra rhoo of Gr mber on t ou then ch Su enter the w.

A t r o h s e d t e f l e a o eth — ighb chi d m ased in bik ,” and ree e nity C ding e” gre e f mu un n tog krest he ne brain st an up b ified ce. ik h r a o V nf f i n e B as t m e n o r e bac y of t is the activ a gro ica u nden frin d r a F C a n d g t n v ree r be ratio the ore a env RIBs unity ans, n Afr rdepe a’s A red t S e e c m p ed m Afri ds a inte Ithac nte ty nt

Ce m, “O eplac and und. d i r om ce r a a c New towa y and r of ity ( mun on , an aro gr arn io ud ame Rolle usb t the rking rmon embe mun t Com time es A rk c fr b o wo ial ha e m com Stree t of ater he ids ally, e k pt w t o u v l e c l i m t or ven eca ds ke so act rican outh t a uld y, in nd m f i b E An -Ame the S spen h wo e da arou ing e k eek a h s

t t t n r e s w can und Rolle whic e. O g ou fight Sav ed a up ing fo t k g aro ter), treet, nd Av angin boys ff. a tr win loo lainex n p Ce th S evela as h three ent o ack,” he sho week s, ex had t u l w w w o C w e , b . r e s S ik e ey te t is , h e sa bul wa S.C w b at th they com ‘80s en h light that 2, K. s, tha itle e n e h g t he on prelate re wh ke. A ught Jung s ( Ye ious t ion n i B i t e t th r a b g tho ölfé of RI relig relig all the eek los w l t ove “Gre Bobw ector rom a dern os is .C., o g us el f o cha K.S ir d d g m

o e it f i d n t , i v n e o i a a 2 s n c e pla rent , com ism, ea th Jung unu hat wh cur name rdian he id g to relict red t up, his Disco on t ordin g de d figu xing n in tered . Acc otici ca an ittle fi l ) n n s ce re i gan d Itha ith a e n e w h u b , t le aro ork l Ro es all tle w bik h a lit wit

zooming in 11 11

down imple the gorge . As m a res would ented a ul s y d s t o e m c o in exc hang mmunity wher servic e for dren th w e to pic ould, say, e bikes. T he be se k up nt do trash home wn or s them of elderl would go to y mow to Itha

But e the lawn. cans to h e ve probl ems. n this sy stem Once bikes , h t they f if they’d b he kids g ad it reque reak ot th them ntly d to the e id ( b Rolle arn for re ), they cam which p a e shoul nd Savets airs. At tha back d lear t d p oint, n how ecided t their ha ow t appre n bikes, a o build an t kids d c n ity, ho iation of c d, based repair on th omm w to eir un w ing th is. Th ork toget ity solida e pro her w rject s oon e hile doxpan ded

12 kitsch magazine, spring 2009 12

lt, th ey re kid s hours chilown the elp

into t oday ’s

The b RIBs. ike co mom -o e nell nts. In th p has had Engin e lat its ro work e e c RIBs inclu ering pro ‘90s, a C ky ha show ded f o e c r s osm s develop sor w the p ed up o h h contr o I foun f Ithaca c ed into ol. H at RIBs an ysics of b se a u d e a i d kes gains ts nell k myself a lture — l microdidn’ tried t a t i m t d s the c ers. sters s, Hasidic ong IC k t week e o-op stand a o take The , and ’s An ids, C c J h e a w S C n a o s enter ce h o On W a rc , uth edne 40 year- hippies, h rSide hist foun guara firmly o s N d i p d l C i d g a o m y ht (o m p n r Tra evening rofessor. prese teeing th aintained munity a n d , n nce w it’s s N at th th cont looki e ering en). RIBs ight, ev Ladies ng fo ould be k only Co rol, ery n i p s e r r ids li a ople

edge ke m nell Now, a bike. throu bout emp ow a n e d foun gh just two o othe di r; the skills gain the kno wthat ng, RIBs decades r e w y e d e lis no ar-old f ha w a hiera rom each with ill provid s becom fter its c a m n an. T rchy teac a e e bit. A bike, give anyone a place pract hough a h a midd . A ten n tha s the in Ith l i l le c t u for It a many al reason are there -aged haca ltimate m they pitch ca o f ’s dis being also have f needing or the parat eeting gr in a ound e co call h there. Tee other rea a bike, mmu so ,o i nities beca m, Mr. Te r as the l ns for , ittle k use h e, sa id y e happ y. For likes see s he com s es ing t Alex, h an IC stude e kids nt, it’s

13 13

the community and solidarity gained from being empowered by bikes.

Bobwölfé believes that RIBs can reach many social demographics and bring them together. By using alternate means of exchange he feels that RIBs subverts many of the hierarchies of capitalism. The power structure of RIBs is horizontal: the “leaders” are just those with the most knowledge, or those who are there the most. Though there is a paid staff and some IC and Cornell work-study students, most of those at RIBs are just people hanging out, and everyone contributes something of value.

You can’t gain benefits by flaunting your money or your social status — a small child picking up loose screws in the grass is without a doubt as important as an adult capable of welding a bike frame.

Bobwölfé admits money can be a problem; RIBs’ refusal to accept cash can unintentionally hurt those they most want to help. Bobwölfé says, “If you’re working three jobs just to live you don’t have time to work on a bike, and that’s a problem. Especially, when what they really need is a way to get to work. It’s a difficult issue.”

For Alex Rosenblatt, the absence of money is essential to RIBs’ success. Alex told me that it’s frustrating to him that a well-

made bike can be so expensive, but at the same time biking is completely carbon neutral, post-production, and is a wonderful alternative to motorized transportation. By not expecting money, RIBs overcomes this paradox. Alex thinks that this is what makes RIBs so valuable. By building your bike you are forced to learn exactly what it is worth and what goes into it. Simply exchanging money removes the need to learn.

Once inside RIBs, one is often reminded of the organization’s aim of promoting sustainability — a sign hanging over the main work bench reads “MPG ∞.” Another sign says, “The amount of materials it takes to build 1 car could build 1,000 bikes,” though the challenges to their mission are highlighted by the busy interstate right outside. RIBs’ commitment to sustainability has kept the city funding flowing.

Through the medium of bikes, RIBs has changed the dialogue about what individuals are capable of. It has challenged Ithacans to think about what spending money means, and anyone who has taken the time to volunteer there has come away with a better understanding of the values that really underlie cash transactions. It has brought a diverse and often fragmented community together by building the wheels that keep revolutions rolling. K

a small child picking up loose screws in the grass is without a doubt as important as an adult capable of welding a bike frame 14 kitsch magazine, spring 2009

cortaca jug Let’s get wasted and yell at people.

by Chris Lisee

S

aturday, November 15, 2008 dawns damp and white.

A thick fog curls around Ithaca College, stretching down lonely Route 13 to the State University of New York at Cortland. By noon it might clear enough that delegations from both schools will be able to see each other across the field: players on the ground, screaming, drunk masses in the stands. It’s time for the game of the year: the Cortaca Jug.

I stumble into the kitchen and reach for a beer, smiling at the

art by andrew schwartz

novelty of drinking this early and not feeling like an alcoholic.

Everyone’s doing it, right? For one reason or another I’ve never been able to make it to a Jug — until now. I don’t even care about D-III football or the Cortland/Ithaca rivalry. But what could be a better excuse for cracking open a cold one at 7:30 a.m.?

I start cooking, musing on what’s in store. According to every piece of press I’ve read concerning the Cortaca Jug, Sports Illustrated once dubbed it the “biggest little game in the nation.”

zooming in

15

“We’re joined in orgiastic elation b and watching people kick the shit That’s a lot of hype to live up to. According to every person I’ve talked to about the game, the play is just as important as the battles fought between the jeering fans. Hence the liquid courage, I suppose.

I fix a screwdriver as my roommates stumble out of bed and guests arrive for the traditional “kegs and eggs” breakfast.

Eggs. And pancakes, cornbread, bacon, coffee, orange juice.

Kegs, or not quite: two handles of amaretto, bottles of Bailey’s, Kahlua, vodka (vanilla and straight), a handle of spiced rum, and a world beer tour, the centerpiece of which is a 30-rack of Stones. We’d drink every last drop of it. Underage college kids with fakes and friends and a keg waiting at the game: enough reasons to party hard all day. By the end of it we’ll all be half-dead monsters clutching Keystones, or the toilet, for dear life.

Six thousand five hundred fans crammed into Cortland’s stadium screaming insults across the field. Hatred fueled by alcohol. But what is this game even about? It’s not like we’re really rivals, right? There has to be some cause for the hatred, and I’m determined to find it by going undercover, immersing myself in the festivities. I will experience the game just like everyone else: drunk.

I don’t remember much of the trip to Cortland, just some blaring rap and a driver so sober our buzzes began to wear off. There’d be plenty of time to refuel at the stadium.

Meanwhile, I review what I know about the colleges, searching in vain for an explanation of the hatred I’ve until now only seen on “Cortland Sucks” t-shirts and Facebook photos.

In the southwest corner, weighing in at 6,000 students, is Ithaca College, a private institution founded in 1892. In the northeast corner, weighing in at 7,500 students, is SUNY Cortland, a public school founded in 1868.

Listening to the way fans of both colleges talk, it becomes clear that more than a highway separates the schools.

The Ithaca Bombers are 8-1 and the Cortland Dragons stand at 9-0. Ithaca is fighting for a berth in the NCAA tourney. Cortland’s clinched it by dominating the New Jersey Athletic Conference (yes, New Jersey). Ithaca’s ranked 18th by the American Football Coaches Association and 17th by D3football.com.

16 kitsch magazine, spring 2009

Cortland’s ranked sixth and seventh respectively, but this could be anybody’s game because NJAC is a weak conference and the Empire Eight (Ithaca’s conference) is only slightly better.

Game time for the small-time gonzopretender. The rain makes the parking lot as sloppy as the students stumbling over it. First I find some tailgating bros in red sweatshirts.

“Ithaca is the biggest piece of shit ever.

They’re fucking scumbags. Forty fucking grand for a school that isn’t even good. Fuck ’em!” says one Cortland fan, identifying himself as “John.” He adds that they’ll fuck up Ithaca later in the playoffs as well — if Ithaca would make it that far.

I find another group of guys huddled beneath a tent, draining Keystones and cooking bacon. Orange juice containers and pieces of garbage fly at me as I edge closer. Probably has something to do with my Ithaca College shirt. I brush it off. How many other fans in the history of this matchup have had breakfast flung at them in anger?

Though they began playing each other in 1930 and have played annually since 1948, the “Cortaca Jug” was not introduced until 1950, when Cortland captain Tom Decker and Ithaca captain Dick Carmean purchased a jug that would go to the winner of the game.

Since then, Ithaca has won 32 times to Cortland’s 17. Last year, Ithaca won at home 4017. Cortland’s pissed about something, but is it last year’s loss?

“Motherfucker…Fuck fuck fuck…Suck my fucking balls. Fuck you, brown bomber. I’m gonna take a shit on your face.” Name? “Bobby Bomber, Baby.” Catcalls follow me out. I confront a loner. Maybe they won’t be so brave in one-on-one encounters.

“David” is certainly more helpful.

“Ithaca is $40,000 a year,” he calmly tells me. “That’s bullshit. This is like four dollars.” He gets distracted by a Dish Network truck before excusing himself to find his friend.

Enough of the abuse. It almost hurts. I’ll need to fortify myself with more booze.

I know a guy who rented a U-Haul and camped out overnight in the parking lot, nuzzled between two kegs of Generic Light. Two Solo cups later I’m still wondering: Why the hostility?

by being drunk by 9:00 a.m. t out of each other” Cortland: Why don’t you shove your Beamer up your ass?

Ithaca: Why don’t you park your pickup on your lawn?

That’s a little unfair, but I certainly remember catcalls like that from high school, where economics comprised a large part of fan jeering.

Collegeboard.com quotes 2008 tuition and fees for Cortland at $5,499 a year for New Yorkers and $11,759 for out-of-staters. Room and board comes to $9,170. All in all, that’s

are paying twice as much for a diploma. Ok, I can see how that seems ludicrous. Ithaca’s response: Cortland, Cortland, Cortland, YOU SUCK!

Nifty logic there.

The way it’s presented, Cortland fans seem to feel the way Marlins fans feel when they play the Yankees: the other team is all a bunch of spoiled brats. But it’s not George Steinbrenner helping the team, it’s parents with money. But that’s not completely fair because plenty of IC students pay for or help to

$14,669 for New Yorkers, $20,929 for others.

Projected 2008 costs for Ithaca are nearly double what an out-of-stater pays at Cortland. Because it is a private institution both in-state and out-of-state tuition and fees come to $30,606. Room and board is $11,126, making the average cost to attend the college $41,732.

Cortland students know Ithaca students

pay for their education.

But at the same time, there are plenty of IC students clad in shirts that read, “Dragons aren’t real and neither are educations under $20,000.” I’m sure plenty of Cortland students are seeking a degree that Cortland specializes in, like physical education. In that case, $20,000 is a perfectly reasonable price. It all depends on what you’re looking for, I think as

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I toss away my cup, feeling a bit nauseous.

Gotta see the kickoff. Gotta experience the game. Belly full of beer, head full of hate, we trudge toward Cortland’s beautiful new football complex. It puts Ithaca’s to shame. My program tells me the New York Times called it “…a new stadium worthy of a major university power.”

“What position does Thomas Bergerstock play?” I ask a reveler in Ithaca apparel.

No hesitation. “Wide receiver.” How many touchdowns is he good for today? “Two.”

The reveler walks off and the guy trailing him mutters the correct answer: “running back.”

But he won’t say how many points Bergerstock will score.

How’s the drinking? I ask a young woman.

Last night was “like waiting for Christmas or Easter,” she tells me.

My mind is muddled. Crowds stagger drunkenly through a maze of puddles. The livingdead, alive in a bond of mutual hatred against the Dragons. My own mind lurches through the muck, looking for an answer that seems farther away the more I stumble.

A 2008 ESPN.com article speaks of the rivalry in softball, where Cortland holds a 54-52 lead in a series dating back to 1974. The article calls it a “rivalry born of proximity,” which gave me some idea of why I was so emotionally detached. The 98 percent of Cortland students that grew up in the area were suckled on this rivalry. They know

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it far better than an out-of-stater like me.

Only 48 percent of Ithaca College students are from New York, and many of those are from Long Island, which means that the intense hatred and sense of rivalry that develops in childhood is not present in the majority of students.

Maybe the cause is location? Perhaps. But there must be a more elegant solution. I keep walking.

Security’s tight, but there’s not too much trouble. One silver-haired man goes down raving; police are all over him. He’s trying to relive drunken glory days. Some students are wild, but for the most part, it’s not the drunken stampede I expected.

Girls in the guys’ bathroom, guys using the hand dryers to dry off their shirts, hair, anything that’s wet with the fluids that have been ingested and expelled throughout the day. Everywhere the clamor of drunken people.

People puke along the fence, “friends” standing guard, turned away, listening for the smack of a passed-out body hitting the mud.

Then, finally, a man whose tongue is eloquent — in spite of the alcohol. Ithacan “Bryan With a ‘Y’” enlightens me:

“It’s not even so much Cortland versus Ithaca, it’s more like my friends from high school grew up here. … My cousin went [to Cortland], and it’s just sort of that rivalry, that smack talk. … My freshman year, when I [went to the Jug],

2 3

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ows Tavern opened at nine with $10 Pitchers, “$3 Blue-Gold Shots” (bearing Ithaca’s colors), and free food. If drinking’s not your style, head to the Student Government Association-sponsored screening, which features free pizza and wings, as well as a raffle in which tickets (distributed at the door) will be called until they find someone who actually stayed.

It’s the communal aspect. Students who don’t care about the team at any other part of the year embrace this one all-out experience. It’s not the weekly excitement enjoyed by, say, the University of Texas or Missouri. But it is excitement that unites the school.

The Cortaca Jug is every IC student’s charitable tax write-off. Not having gone to any other game all year, they flock to this one meeting just to say they went. So why wouldn’t they go all out for it?

I’ve been drunk the entire day, and I know I’ll be hung over tomorrow. But this is a marathon day. An Ironman day. A day Hunter S. Thompson and Ernest Hemingway would have been proud of. Back in the car to take a short nap, then out for a night of drinking. Holy liver poisoning, Batman! But we’re all in it together. This drunken orgy of screams and booze makes one temporarily forget $40,000 worth of tuition debt and the 10-page essay due in class on Tuesday.

Oh yeah, Ithaca won, 35-13. Not that a win was needed to validate the experience. K

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I didn’t think it was gonna be that big a deal, ’cause everybody’s drunk. But when you hear that first “IC’s shit” chant, it just brings that whole feeling, that I want to kick their ass sort of thing. I just want to kick their ass, you know?”

That has to be it. Really. My shaky concentration won’t let me form another hypothesis.

Ithaca’s cry is “Cortland, Cortland, Cortland, YOU SUCK!” Concise, but with no strong factual basis. And it doesn’t address the economic concerns of Cortland’s jeer. The level of hatred is equal, but its cause is not reciprocal.

For Ithaca, it’s the camaraderie. You can feel it in the stadium. The buzz of alcohol unites the fans. It’s not real hatred­­— it’s esprit de corps. And perhaps that’s what it is on the other side of the stadium, too, hiding behind the mask of frugality.

Bryan With a Y goes on. “Some people want to drink and have fun, but some people want this game to actually mean something. I kind of feel both. I want [Ithaca] to win.”

Yes, Bryan With a Y. You’ve got it!

Despite the fact that half of us do not care about football, we’re joined in orgiastic elation by being drunk by 9:00 a.m. and watching people kick the shit out of each other. And perhaps the I.Q. points dropped by the liquor are replaced with a temporary infusion of school spirit.

And one needn’t be at the game in person to share in the sentiment. In Ithaca, Moonshad-

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art by allison fischler

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19

twist and chout art by andrew schwartz

by anonymous

Ah, Diego — the beautiful Chilean boy who took my virginity the year before I transferred to Cornell. He was straight out of the Andes — think Brokeback Mountain, but Latin — and from the first time I saw him, I was into him. After a few nights of drunken flirtation we started seeing each other and soon I became what my mother would call “a real woman.”

It felt like a fire was set off inside of me, and from that point forward I wanted to do it everywhere, and I do mean everywhere: in the woods, in the library late at night, ev-er-y-where. The only thing was that, and maybe it was a language barrier, or maybe it was some sort of cultural incompatibility, he never seemed to want to open up to me. I tried again and again, talking about my crappy childhood, or the dream where I’m being choked by Mr. Rogers, or the first time I masturbated and my older brother accidentally walked in. Regardless of my mortifying intimate stories,

20 kitsch magazine, spring 2009

he hadn’t disclosed anything to me… yet.

One morning after a particularly passionate session of what I called “making love,” I’d had enough. I wanted to know more about him, and I decided to do it by asking him a question, one which I realized afterwards is something you should never, I repeat, NEVER, ask someone you’re seeing: “What’s something you’ve never told anyone else before?”

He paused, and started to speak, and then stopped.

“No,” he said. “No, you will think I’m weird.”

I was offended, so I said, “No, of course I won’t. I promise, whatever you say, I won’t judge you.”

“Ok.” He licked his lips and continued slowly, “Back in Chile, when I helped my father in the farm, I would sometimes go weeks without seeing a woman other than my mother and my sisters...”

“Uh-huh…” This was gonna be good. I sat up a bit.

“And I, you know, would get very lonely…”

“Okay…” Intimacy, heeeere we come!

“And every now and then, every now and then, I would, um, make love to a cheep.”

Time out. What? I started thinking, A cheep. A cheep. (I all of a sudden pictured him at a party last week, singing along to “Twist and Chout.”)

“Please tell me you’re kidding,” I blurted out. “Please, Diego.

No.”

“It wasn’t a big deal or anything.” He was getting defensive.

“Lots of men where I’m from will, you know, do it. They really don’t seem to mind.”

“Who? The men or the livestock?” As culturally sensitive as I was trying to be, I started picturing Little Bo Peep, and other intimate childhood memories. I was getting upset. This was too much.

“To an animal, Diego? To a defenseless little animal?” My mind got ahead of me. Something that had been inside of me had also entered Lamb Chop. I pictured indeterminate Baaaaah’s, either signaling pleasure or pain (maybe both?) and my heart started racing. Oh my god. Isn’t something like this how Ebola suppos-

edly spread?

“I’m sorry. I, um, actually have to go.” I started putting my clothes on.

“Oh, come on, don’t go!” He reached for my arm. “Hey, listen, I was kidding, okay?”

“Right, right, uh-huh. Hey, um, I’ll call you, okay?”

It was never the same after that. I saw him around the dorm and we avoided eye contact. Everything started to take on a new significance. His homemade wool hat, which I had adored before, now seemed oddly suspicious. And before I used to love it when he would pet my neck as he made love to me, but now I couldn’t help but question who, or what, he was picturing was there instead of me.

Later on, in a Cultural Anthro course I took, I was embarrassed to learn that in many rural areas across the world (even here!) sodomizing sheep is indeed quite common. Did that somehow make it okay? To this day, I’m still not sure how I feel about it. All I really learned, though, was that I will never again ask a boy I’m seeing for his darkest secret. Some skeletons need to stay in the closet, next to a fleece jacket conjuring up warm memories of home. K

“It’s going to be in some completely unexpected manner... like getting trampled to death by elephants on an Indian safari.”

David Musselwhite ‘10

“The sooner, the better.”

John Chambers ‘10

photos by kathleen jercich

When do you think Amy Winehouse is going to die?

“Well, last time she got all messed up it was because her boyfriend dumped her, so I’d say the next time it happens I think she’s done for. Wouldn’t you say? ...I watched a lot of ‘E! True Hollywood Story’ over break.”

Sarim Shah ‘11

“For real, or like...in her mind?”

Safwan Majid ‘11

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art by claudia mattos

history of t What now

T

he world is going to end in three years. That is, according to the ancient Mayans, whom you may or may not choose to believe. Do keep in mind, however, that the Mayans’ calculations of astronomic events were frighteningly accurate. If you do indeed choose to heed their warning that the apocalypse is going to arrive in 2012, you should start preparing now. (Though admittedly, how you prepare for an apocalypse, I cannot say. Canned soup just doesn’t seem to cut it. Maybe a nice rain jacket? Or a bomb shelter?)

The point here is that no one actually knows what’s going to happen in the future. No one. Not even Miss Cleo (believe it or not). Everyone drums up their own predictions, and that’s really the best we can do. Admittedly, some theories are more plausible than others, but show me one instance of a psychic who was spot-on all the time, and I’ll eat my laptop (not really).

22 kitsch magazine, spring 2009 22

zooming out

the future was like then.

by CAITLIN COWIE

Projections of what the future will be like often seem silly, even downright ludicrous, in retrospect. Take Y2K, for instance; we all thought the world was going to end. People all over the world stocked up on batteries and bottled water, almost completely convinced that nearly all the computers in existence were going to crash at the stroke of midnight local time like some freakish cyber-version of Cinderella, leaving the world, in a single day, in the grip of pandemonium. I know that I, personally, watched the New Year’s countdown with bated breath. And what happened? Nothing. Magically, each computer considered the matter and deduced that 1999 + 1 must = 2000.

The history of the future is fascinating in both its sincerity and sheer absurdity.

There’s a lot to be learned from it about time periods, evolution of thought, and the human race in general, but — allow me to get bucked off my high horse for a

second — it’s also highly entertaining. It makes you wonder what college students 50 years from now will think of pieces like this article (assuming, of course, that the world does not end in three years).

megalomaniac microwaves and other tamer technologies Call it crazy, but 60 years ago, the very idea of a personal computer was so ridiculous that no one even considered it as a real possibility. In 1943, the then-chairman of IBM, Thomas Watson, said, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”

Considering that these days, the average college student would probably grovel on their knees if robbed of their precious life-giving laptop, Mr. Watson surely had no idea what he was saying. But then, he didn’t anticipate that there would ever be a way to make a computer smaller than

the size of an entire room, let alone portable. In fact, computers are becoming so small that we hardly even consider them computers anymore.

So where will the computer go from here? I can see it now — they’re going into your phones, iPods, cars, calculators, sunglasses, toilets, shampoos (okay, maybe that’s a stretch). Quoted in a recent BBC feature by Tracey Logan, entitled “Computers to be ‘oxygen of the future,’” Simon Moore of Cambridge University claims that computers will soon “be woven into our clothing as identification markers during manufacture... They might tell your washing machine what cycle to use, or monitor bio-signs to alert us to impending illness.”

Logan goes on to describe that the next big thing with computers will be a system that flawlessly tracks a person and directs communication with them based upon the most convenient device

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for their location. Her example taken from a previous prototype test of “a cell phone call turned into a video-conference call when the researcher entered his office and back to a cell phone call as he left for his car.”

Imagine every detail of your life from your grocery list to your body temperature being stored and tracked by your phone.

With a whole new smorgasbord of hack-able information to the plate of bored 15-yearold cyber-geniuses, it seems as if there will be no escape from this new Matrix of machine-motoring.

How long will it be before computers themselves are smart enough to present a problem? The classic example of this is our old pal, HAL, from Arthur C. Clarke’s novel 2001: A Space Odyssey developed and released alongside the film-version directed

by Stanley Kubrick. Back then, the idea of computers with functioning consciousness could be envisioned only as a part of science fiction. Today, technology has advanced to the point at which it doesn’t seem like much of a step from iPhones and programmable rice-cookers to megalomaniac self-aware microwaves bent on taking over the world (or at least your kitchen), but really, machines like HAL are a mere threat on the horizon.

Artificial intelligence is a ubiquitous idea, but one that remains largely confined to sci-fi decades after 2001’s publication and ironically even several years after 2001 itself. To be fair, cognitive-scientists and roboticists continue to make progress towards creating artificial neural-networks capable of learning. But it’s a creepy-crawly notion nevertheless that our own technology could one day be smarter than we are.

flying deloreans on eBay (we wish) The matter of what future transportation will be like is certainly a contentious one — but then, it always has been. Only 150 years ago, most people were still riding around in horse and buggies. Those people would have been, by my calculations, greatgrandfathers to most of us, unaware of the repercussions that the ideas of one Henry Ford were going to have for the challenge of getting around. After that, of course, came the airplane, the possibility of which the esteemed Lord Kelvin (as in Kelvin the temperature scale) had once rejected, saying: “Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” But what about a combination of the two: something along the lines of that

24 kitsch magazine, spring 2009

flying DeLorean in Back to the Future?

Throughout the previous century, many people speculated that we’d have flying cars roaming the highways by now. Although we may not see DeLoreans aloft anytime soon, according to a Discover Magazine article entitled “Dude, Where’s My Jetpack?,” NASA had a flying car (or, as they prefer to call it, a “personal air vehicle”) in development until the program was cut in 2005. One of their prototypes, which touted foldable wings for navigating banal earthbound highways, would only have cost roughly the same amount as a Mercedes-Benz. Not that your average American could afford that.

I’m still waiting, driving my old Oldsmobile... which isn’t even electric. Not that the possibility of electric cars hasn’t been explored many times; as highlighted in the 2006 documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?, it was the introduction of the Model T that temporarily ceased the production of electric car models being developed at the time. It goes to show that history does indeed repeat itself. Not only did electric car production plummet in the 1930s but again in recent years following further development in the wake of the 1970s oil crisis.

Nowadays with fears about global warming kicking in throughout the world, the electric car may finally make its mainstream debut. Its little bastard child, the hybrid, has become popular, but whether the Toyota Prius will be willing to drop its terrible addiction to gasoline remains to be seen.

3D: the new genre Moving from silver motors to the silver screen, the history of the future of the entertainment industry has always been, well, entertaining. In the past hundred years, the world has seen the rise of a film industry now frighteningly powerful, starting with the silent carnival-like cinema of the 1900s and gradually becoming the influx of exorbitant CGI-dominated blockbusters we see today. Did Hollywood see this coming? Not in the least.

Right before the introduction of sound in movies (originally called “talkies”), H.M. Warner of Warner Brothers scoffed at the idea, saying: “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” Apparently a lot of people.

This wasn’t the only surprise to come for early filmmakers. In the industry’s embryonic days, many of those involved had ambitious concepts of what film could be used to

art by allison fischler

accomplish. Film theorist Siegfried Kracauer believed in using film to reinstate our relationships with reality, and experimental filmmakers Victor Eggeling and Hans Richter saw the possibility of using film to create a universal language.

Hollywood, on the other hand, saw an opportunity to make a whole lot of money, which (surprise!) they’ve succeeded in doing.

As the typical Hollywood blockbuster becomes more and more computerized, where on earth will they go from here? According to a March article in Reuters quoting DreamWorks chief executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, the next move will be into the third dimension.

If he means 3D as in the Terminator ride at Universal Studios, we may see amusement park-esque features in our local cinemas... or something to that effect.

ideologies in 500 words or less Contrary to what you may now be thinking, the history of the future isn’t entirely about chuckling over kitschy (and false) predictions.

We can also observe the rise and subsequent demise of entire ideologies as well. The best part? You don’t even have to poke them with a stick.

Communism introduced a political structure in which all men would be equals.

The revolution in Russia was going to spur revolutions all across the globe, and all men would abolish the ruling class and share all the fruits of their labors. Or so Lenin believed.

Unfortunately, Stalin had a bit of a problem with the definition of the word “all,” and as a result, Lenin’s vision of the future died a painful, tortuous death. Am I simplifying? Yes, but only so much can be said about Communism before it launches into full-blown analysis, which is what history courses are for.

Lenin was by no means the only one who went astray; tie-dyed shirts, peace signs, and the Beatles... these are a few of my favorite things. Hippies in the 1960s thought we’d be living in the land of peace, love, and harmony by now. They foresaw a revolution that would usher in an era of equality and happiness on earth. Then, when that revolution didn’t really manifest, they all had to face the facts and settle down into the collared shirts of their forefathers.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m incredibly indebted to the hippies (mostly because it’s now more than acceptable for women to wear pants), but I wouldn’t call our current political climate anywhere near peaceful.

(Of course, there’s a long tradition of blind

hope for world peace. World War I was originally called the “War to End All Wars,” but that only lasted until good old World War II came along.) WMD is now an acronym that can be found in the vocabulary of your average 8-year-old.

Then, of course, there’s L. Ron Hubbard and his Scientologist cronies waiting around for the mothership to carry them home.

Enough said.

the future: specializing in laughing at you since the dawn of time What, then, does the future hold? In the near future, it will most likely be leading to hybrid-electric cars, smaller and lighter computers, and more space exploration, conducted by various countries. Political writer Jane Jacobs would say that the future will become ever more corporate, filled with more chain-stores than you can shake a stick at. The United States government would like to predict that their bail-out plans will indeed reverse the potentially catastrophic effects of what could well be a global economic recession.

The Hubble Telescope continues to send us photos of planets that few — if any — of us will ever visit, and maybe one day, it will snap a photo of a little green man waving hello. Meanwhile, recent medical discoveries are clearing the way for possible cures to heart disease and cancer. Yes, we do have a general idea of where the future is headed, assuming, of course, that the Mayans didn’t have the right idea about 2012.

However, be forewarned: the future has its own way of pulling the rug out from under us. Case in point: in 1929, right before the stock market crash that heralded in the Great Depression, Irving Fisher, a Yale professor of Economics said: “Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”

At the very least, you could say the future has a sense of humor. Or maybe it just gets the last laugh. And as for predictions, well, 90 percent of the time, you might be able to get it right, but the remaining 10 percent will really make you scratch your head in bewilderment. Thus, in honor of that 10 percent (and of all us mortals who like to exercise our amateur psychic skills), I predict that in the next few decades, the world is going to be populated entirely by radioactive cows with wings made from Kryptonite. It sounds ridiculous, but hey, so is the world.

K

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, that�l sto

Notab

art by michelle spektor

26 kitsch magazine, spring 2009

M

ll cost three one wheels, please...

ble currencies from various times and places

by Michelle Spektor

oney! We all use it, love it, want it, and for some reason we (especially as college students) never seem to have enough of it. But when was the last time you thought about money? No, really thought about it? In a way it’s a bit hard to contemplate any unique qualities in bills and coins, since most of the time they’re pretty predictable – a dead president’s portrait, and perhaps a weird eyeball-in-pyramid symbol accompanied by even more patriotic images. Even currencies in other modern-day countries tend to follow a similar pattern of paper and metal, and the monotony makes us stop paying attention.

Having worked in retail for over a year, there were for sure many times that customers got away with paying those extra few cents in foreign coins without me noticing. Sure, mistakenly accepting Canadian or Bahamian pennies wasn’t really that big of a deal, but what would have happened if someone tried to pay with a severalhundred-pound stone wheel? Well, you say, that would be highly unlikely and ridiculous; as such things surely could not be money. But if you lived on the Island of Yap, part of the Federated States of Micronesia, you would very well have to accept the stone wheel as legitimate payment. Giant stone wheels, believe it or not, are a perfectly valid form of money there.

If you refer to any economics textbook, you will be told that in order for something to qualify as money, it must be all three of the following: a medium of exchange (something you can give in exchange for a good), a unit of account (a measure of a good’s value or cost), and a store of value (able to be traded, stored, and retrieved over time).

A broad interpretation of these criteria can enable pretty much anything to be money, allowing communities and nations to design their currencies in a way that works best for them.

Bills, coins, credit cards, and, clearly, Big Red Bucks are widely used today because they’re convenient, make for easy transactions, and are not difficult to carry around in large amounts. These features fit very well with our consumer culture and its emphasis on speed and practicality. It’s cool that we can spend money so easily (especially Big Red Bucks – I’ll admit I have a bit of a spending problem when it comes to those) but in some cultures

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speed and practicality are not monetary priorities. One such culture is that of the people of the Island of Yap.

The proper term for the island’s illustrious stone wheels, which range in diameter from a few inches to twelve feet, is Rai, and they have been an integral part of the Yapese economy for the last several hundred years. Quarried and shipped from the Island of Palau (about 250 miles away), the value of these enormous wheels is determined by the efforts it took to bring them all the way back to Yap; if someone died or was seriously injured while quarrying or transporting a particular Rai, that Rai would be of extremely high value. On the other hand, a Rai would be worth comparatively little if it happened to be easy to quarry and transport.

Not only does this system of putting Rai into circulation provide jobs for a lot of people, it also emphasizes and rewards hard work. Even better, it guarantees that any inflation of Rai is kept in check. There were times in the history of Yap when Rai were relatively easy to quarry, resulting in a larger-than-usual amount of stone wheels on the island. Normally, a sudden influx of the amount of currency available would cause inflation, but since more-easily quarried Rai were automatically held at a lesser value, the Yapese economy did not suffer any inflationary effects.

The people of Yap were rather innovative with the creation of their currency, but they wouldn’t just drag giant stone wheels into their local Wegmans to buy groceries. In fact, Rai are mostly exchanged in recognition of a favor or service, high-

28

lighting what anthropologists call a “gift economy.”

Michael F. Bryan of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, who conducted extensive research on the Yapese economy, suggests an example of this: if a person hypothetically wanted to fish in someone else’s waters, he could give him a Rai (or a deed to one if the Rai in question is too large to move).

Once he properly returns the favor by giving the owner of the fishing waters a portion of the fish he caught, he might take the stone back. Few, if any other, communities have such a “gift economy” in conjunction with their regular economies. It’s actually rather heartwarming, as it promotes honesty and trust by ensuring that no one will take without giving back.

Although using giant stone wheels as currency may seem primitive, or just downright impractical, the Yapese stone wheel economy is much more sophisticated and progressive than it seems initially. After all, it would be pretty sweet if money here could self-correct for inflation and if the dollar-bill-manufacturing industry provided for a cornucopia of employment opportunities in these difficult economic times. And let’s not forget the important social values that the Rai embody – hard work and integrity, and keeping one’s end of a bargain.

The brilliance of the Yapese Rai system aside, there are other quirky currencies out there worth mentioning. One is Kissi money, which was used by various tribes in West Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries. It consisted of thin metal rods with one end shaped into a “T,” and the other end flattened like a spoon. With such a delicate structure, it was inevitable that some Kissi might

break. In order for a broken one to be recirculated, it would have to be brought to the Zoe, the local witchdoctor, so that not only could it be physically put back together, but also spiritually repaired by having its soul restored. That’s a lot of trouble to go through to fix your Kissi, and it might not even seem worth it.

But if you subscribed to the superstitious beliefs that many of these tribes held on to, then you would be much better off doing that than faking the restoration of your broken money by fixing it yourself. Unfortunately, as those African regions have now adopted the more modern (read: soul-less) system of coins and bills in recent times, Kissi money is only used for ritual purposes.

Space: the final frontier. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about the logistics of leisurely space travel, but once that becomes commonplace we’re all going to need some way to buy food and souvenirs outside of the Earth’s atmosphere. Fortunately for us, scientists at the National Space Centre and the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom have already solved this problem (even though it is highly unlikely that any of us will be able to take space vacations in our lifetimes).

QUIDs, or Quasi Universal Intergalactic Denominations, are intended to be acceptable legal tender all over the universe, and are small, transparent, coin-like discs with colorful centers that will not cause injury if they fly around uncontrollably in zero gravity situations. How greatly this invention contributes to the scientific community is not something I can judge, but at least creators of the QUID are forward-thinking individuals.

Alternative currencies don’t have to be novelties from faraway lands and times, they can exist right here in the U.S. of A as unique, locally recognized currencies. After learning about local currencies over 15 years ago, a certain Ithacan named Paul Glover decided to create one here in Ithaca, called Ithaca Hours, to help keep revenue inside the town. Starting with the well-loved Farmers’ Market, many Ithaca business owners signed on to accept Ithaca Hours for full or partial payment for merchandise.

One Ithaca Hour is meant to represent one hour of work, thus each Ithaca Hour is worth ten dollars, the average hourly wage at the time of the Hour’s introduction. Today, the Ithaca Hour system is used as a model by other towns across the country looking to create a local currency of their own. According to his web site, however, Paul Glover says that he doesn’t feel it’s right for him to take credit for the Ithaca Hour, in light of the fact that its adoption and expansion was very much a community process.

And he’s absolutely correct. Without the support of the unique community here, the Ithaca Hour wouldn’t be nearly as prominent as it is now. Over 900 businesses accept Ithaca Hours, and over millions of dollars worth of Hours have been exchanged since its creation.

They may not be gargantuan stone wheels, but at least we could say that in the midst of the wave of conformity that has taken the world’s currencies by storm, the people of Ithaca have taken part in promoting a great and timeless tradition of quirky, unusual, and downright revolutionary monetary endeavors.K art by Peter Fritch

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!

Sexy H Sundae Who really birthed the ice cream sundae? by helen havlak

Few can dispute the delicious glory of the ice cream sundae.

Despite their quiet, unassuming brilliance, however, sundaes have sparked quite the controversy. For years, a heated battle has raged between the towns of Two Rivers, Wisconsin, and our very own Ithaca, New York, about who can truly claim the tasty treat’s origin. In matters of such incontestable gravity, it seems, no measures must be spared to determine the true fount of sundae.

Pieced together from a variety of sources, there are two basic tales centered around the conflict. The Two Rivers’ version, as proclaimed on an official plaque in Two Rivers dated 1973, starts with a man named Edward Berner. According to legend, one George Hallauer paid a visit to Eddie’s establishment, Berner’s Soda Fountain, in 1881. In an undeniably cutting-edge maneuver, he supposedly asked Berner to drizzle his ice cream with chocolate syrup; soon, Berner began selling the treats every Sunday for a nickel. According to enthusiasts in Two Rivers, the spelling of “Sunday” changed either in reverence to the day’s holiness or when an unintentionally avant-garde passing glass salesman misspelled the word in an order for canoe shaped

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dishes for the treat.

The Ithaca version, as told by the “Official Website of the Ice Cream Sundae”, begins in 1892. On the historic day of conception, the Reverend John Scott left services at the Unitarian Church and walked to the Platt & Colt Pharmacy on State Street.

There, the Reverend broke his usual routine of plain vanilla: instead, he placed a scoop of vanilla ice cream into a champagne saucer, slathered it with cherry syrup, and placed one candied cherry upon the top. In honor of its creation day, the Reverend decreed that the treat would henceforth be known as a “Cherry Sunday.”

After a period of relative calm, hostilities between Two Rivers and Ithaca reached a new height in 2006, when Topher Sanders of the Ithaca Journal documented the research of two recent Ithaca High School graduates, Meredith Buchberg and Laura Willemsen, into the sundae’s origins. After extensive research into the relevant primary sources, the girls uncovered new facts relating to the case.

Their first strike against Two Rivers was the July 2, 1939 obituary of alleged sundae inventor Edward Berner in the Chicago

History: e Wars Tribune. In the obituary, Berner is hailed for his invention of just forty years earlier, placing the sundae’s creation date at 1899, seven years after Ithaca’s Reverend Scott invented his special dessert. The two intrepid researchers further pointed out that, according to the biographical data, Edward Berner was just 16 or 17 in the year 1881, and was unlikely to have owned a Soda Fountain as asserted in the Two River’s story.

The stubborn citizens of Two Rivers, Wisconsin, however, were barely fazed by the seemingly conclusive evidence against them. They still cite a 1929 interview with Edward Berner and language authority H. L. Mencken’s research into the word “sundae” as conclusive proof of Two Rivers origins. They also tout their recognition by the Wisconsin Historical Society, although the state’s involvement in the matter seems distinctly biased.

In fact, the new research has given birth to a fresh wave of persistent Two Rivers protests. The small town even has a fight song for the Sundae Wars which concludes: Evanston and Ithaca, they are among the worst.

But confronted with our facts, concede that Ed was first.

In 2006, the stubborn villagers even issued an official city council resolution; a declaration of war, as it were: “Now, therefore, be it resolved, that the City of Two Rivers re-asserts its status as Birthplace of the Ice Cream Sundae; and Be it further resolved, that the City of Ithaca is hereby directed to cease and desist from its continued claims of being ‘Birthplace of the Ice Cream Sundae,’ lest the City of Two Rivers be forced to take further action to set the historical record straight; and Be

art by sadie smith

it further resolved that the good citizens of Ithaca are urged to henceforth direct their energies to more appropriate pursuits, like cheering on the athletic teams of Cornell University and celebrating the beauty of the Finger Lakes Region, while leaving ice cream sundaes to the town that knows them best: Two Rivers, Wisconsin.”

On their Web site, the Two Rivers Sundae Squad boasts that they dispatched their resolution to Ithaca Mayor Carolyn Peterson’s office along with several sundae souvenirs from Two Rivers, among which was an inflatable cow. Said the pugnacious, pun-lusting residents: “We figured they could use a cow to go along with all the bull they’ve been dishing out!”

Not content with that display, Two Rivers also took out an ad in the Ithaca Journal offering a coupon for a free Two Rivers’ sundae to Ithaca residents, with the stipulation that they rescind all claims to the sundae’s true birthplace. The ensuing hostilities have included an ad placed by Ithaca ice cream aficionados in Two Rivers’ newspaper entitled “Got Proof?” and a resulting barrage of postcards sent to Peterson in Ithaca.

Ithaca does have the earliest conclusive documentation of the Cherry Sunday: an 1892 advertisement in the Ithaca Daily Journal. But although the Official Web Site of the Ice Cream Sundae names Ithaca as the dessert’s most likely origin, a ceasefire seems unlikely to occur anytime soon. For a small town on the frigid banks of Lake Michigan, there are few claims to fame (not to mention associated tourist revenue). Two Rivers will therefore continue to assert its role in ice cream history, despite the superior evidence in favor of good old Ithaca.

Isn’t it a bit ironic that the two greatest competitors for the sundae’s birthplace are cold, dark, and snowy? K

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watch & listen photos by josh stansfield

American Apparel 32 kitsch magazine, spring 2009 32

Buy this shirt.

You’ll get laid.

American Apparel and the sexualization of a cotton tee.

I

have an addiction, and it involves taking my web browser to places that are unpassable as anything close to appropriate. The whole site should be dubbed NSFW (or Not Suitable for Work, for those who are unfamiliar with the acronym). During my last escapade, I was greeted by just a girl and her buttocks, accompanied by an over-the-shoulder glance of seduction tricked out with all sorts of sexual innuendo. This was no amateur porn site, it was even better: the home page of American Apparel. My addiction is satisfied only when my order for the newest styles and the softest t-shirts has been placed , but to get that hunter green hoody, who would have thought that I’d first have to navigate through multiple cyber slide shows of thighs, boobs, bare backs, and quite a lot of ass?

Over the past six years, American Apparel has gone from a distributor of simple clothing basics to the hipster shopping mecca, but it has also staked a claim in fashion without knowing any boundaries. While still the relatively new kid on the fashion block, American Apparel is not just a manufacturer and a distributor with stores all over the world, but a phenomenon, an enterprise that has marked the youth culture of this generation. The consumer base is far reaching, but there is definitely a strong, well-endowed relationship between the hipster kid and the store. The company, headed by creator and CEO Dov Charney, has created an image that fits in at a place like New York City’s Lower East Side, where the hipster kids walk around all have bangs and retro tortoiseshell glasses and seem like the 20-year-old versions of that kid who sniffed glue in middle school and listens to the bands you’ve never heard of. The hoody

by emma schain

with white accents (look for white pull- strings and a white zipper) is a staple on this campus as well.

What makes American Apparel different from the clothing brands of trends past is not simply its clothing, but the images (and sometimes messages) that mark its advertising. The advertising is a product of Charney’s vision for his company, and the ads run the gamut from pornographic to iconoclastic to ironic, and usually some mixture of the three. Many feature models who are virtual unknowns, looking the part of the girl just dragged off the street with minimal makeup and not a lot of airbrushing done; some others seek to have an impact on the viewer through ironically tinged shared knowledge of pop culture, like one billboard which featured a still frame from the movie Annie Hall (Woody Allen in a Hasidic Jew getup with a look of comic bewilderment on his face). But, most of the ads stick to that familiar, reliable theme, the advertiser’s best friend — sex. In American Apparel’s advertising campaigns, sexuality is not just implied through sensual looks, but often openly displayed without inhibition by girls who look to be in mid-orgasm or posed bent over, wearing heels and underwear. American Apparel’s ads, mass producing a new kind of sexual frankness, differ stylistically from those typically seen in the pages of magazines. The ads show girls and guys against a bare, minimalist background, and while they have one piece of the American Apparel clothing on somewhere, they evoke the feeling that seconds after the shoot, the clothing was on no longer.

By being unapologetically brash in its advertising, American Apparel has toyed with the level of obscenity acceptable for the

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“ fo ra c

Be flexible.

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public. This has caused a fair amount of controversy, and a lot of angry blogging — understandable, perhaps, considering the poses the girls are configured in, their sexually charged looks, and the rumors that swirl of Charney’s own sexual involvement with the models. The homemade, cheap production look that is a stylistic choice of Charney and his artistic team, may be uncomfortably close to the truth about what goes on at the American Apparel photo shoots. But the ads don’t exclusively feature stick-thin models, and the women are more prone to show blemishes and small imperfections. The web teems with cyber conversations about whether or not the public should accept the ads as an amplification of sexuality in advertising or interpret them as the greatest attack on female empowerment since the Comstock Laws.

Anyone who is sick of Kate Moss draped sloth-like and doped-up on the pages of any and all major fashion magazines should appreciate the different looks of American Apparel models, which, to a certain extent, may represent a redefinition of the typical model. Featuring hints of muffin tops, calloused feet, and sweaty foreheads, the photographs look like an amateur

when Charney inserted something new into advertising by refusing to use Ford Agency models to sell highlighter tees. This is a great marketing move on Charney’s part, but it leaves a residue that reeks of hypocrisy when the so-called alternative culture is just as consumer-driven as its corporate antithesis. American Apparel has the American part down—we like to buy stuff, and this is a trend maintained even in the alternative culture.

Charney’s main target is the demographic he labels “Young Metropolitan Adults.” He banks on their desire to be shown the real, multi-cultural human body. American Apparel ads may seem progressive to some, not only because they are sexually provocative, but because they feature models of many different skin colors, hair textures, and ethnic backgrounds. American Apparel is also not afraid to use models of ambiguous racial identities, a bold social statement by fashion industry standards. The advertisements in conventional beauty magazines are overwhelmingly graced by white models, while the non-white models are easily put into the racial categories that we are familiar with from checking the “optional” boxes on the SATs. American Apparel

“Featuring hints of muffin tops, calloused feet, and sweaty oreheads, the photographs look like an amateur photogapher experimenting with a camera as the average girl comes into contact with her sexuality.” photographer experimenting with a camera as the average girl comes into contact with her sexuality. It is real youth in its (nearly) nude form, (slightly) pornographic and aimed at the generation that invented “sexting,” — text messaging pictures of one’s exposed body parts. American Apparel is not shy about tapping into that sexual curiosity.

The ads definitely do not resonate with everyone, but they do reach the more anti-conformist young consumers. At one point in his journey to success Charney realized that the girls who prowl the Bowery for the best new NYC hotspot are not looking to buy clothing advertised by models who would fit an “America’s Next Top Model” standard of beauty. And that was

acknowledges that in today’s globalized world, the ambiguities of race have infiltrated even the highest American political office (Barack Obama is the perfect president for the American Apparel generation—young, hip, technologically savvy, non-white, and totally hot).

The girls are exposed, and yet they are reallooking. Some even resemble the girls in your dorm—hiding between the extra-long twin-size sheets your mom bought you from Bed Bath & Beyond could be Tessa in the Sexuali T, a sly expression on her face. Chances are, however, that while Tessa (a model with a slideshow of her photo shoot on the website) seems to belong between the sheets, it is highly unlikely that, say, your roommate Trevor would ever be asked to

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pose in a similar position. Simply stated, American Apparel does not produce the same number of advertisements featuring men as it does women, but to what extent this is really problematic is a complicated question. While the girls are sexualized, the guys are given sweatshirts and tshirts and asked to pose in their jeans with looks of nonchalance. The entire display can seem almost like a sneer of indifference toward those who voice concern about the ways that women are portrayed and objectified in public.

Cornell student Erica Southerland, majoring in Communication with a minor in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, sees both sides of the issue. “My feminist self and my potentially-wanting-to-work-in-advertising self conflict on the issue because it is unnecessary and somewhat degrading to show a girl topless just wearing a pair of pants,” she said. “But if the point of the ad is to sell the pants, there’s no need for a shirt and the fact that she’s topless draws attention to the ad.” Still, she added, “it creates a definite imbalance of power when women aren’t wearing any clothing and the men are.”

In 2007, the debate over the advertisements erupted in full public view at a busy intersection in New York when someone graffiti-ed “Gee, is it any wonder women get raped?” over one of the American Apparel billboards.

When the story was posted on Jezebel.com, some readers left comments about how they could not stand American Apparel. One wrote, “Their clothes are overpriced and chintzy. Their ads are misogynistic. Their founder is a human cesspool of filth.” As if the ads weren’t provocative enough, the ethics and values of the company are being called into question because of an owner who has more shit talked about him online than Chris Brown.

It’s no secret that Charney’s vision for the look of his models is inspired by pornography, especially pornography from the ‘70s and ‘80s (a dead giveaway would be the copies of vintage Penthouse covers that decorate many of the stores); his escapades would make Larry Flynt blush like a school girl. Charney disclosed in an interview with Business Week that he has been in sexual relationships with members of his staff, and in 2005, he was sued by three employees for sexual harassment. His general attitude toward women can come across as extremely misogynistic, backward, and un-PC; one particularly disturbing advertisement is a photograph of Charney lying in bed next to an attractive, much younger woman. Their heads rest on bed sheets, and the photo is one of many pieces of evidence feeding rumors that Charney incorporates his sexual life into the company’s public image. But, even more shocking is the quote that accompanied the portrait. “Meet Dov Charney” it says in bold letters, and underneath is the following quote by Charney: “Women initiate most domestic violence, yet out of a thousand cases maybe one is involving a man. And this has made a victim culture out of women.” The absurdity behind this statement is enough to make any women’s group incensed, but what is truly disturbing is the notion that American Apparel may be capitalizing on anti-woman statements.

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Tight.

Loose. watch and listen 37 37

Touching.

American Apparel 38 kitsch magazine, spring 2009

Many who’ve come into contact with Charney have gone on public record with statements about his character that do not leave one thinking of him as a good role model. Take, for example, the testimony of former employee “David,” whose name has been changed at his request. In an email interview with kitsch, David described Charney as “extremely bi-polar and somewhat loopy.” Recruited on the street by Charney and creative director Iris Alonzo in 2005, David had frequent interactions with Charney after being hired as an employee at the Lower East Side store in New York City.

David was discovered by Charney and Alonzo on the corner of East Houston and Orchard in New York City. Charney approached him and his friends, and after an audition that consisted essentially of Charney closely examining their faces without taking heed to personal space and social norms, David and his friends were brought in to interview for job placements at the Lower East Side store.

David’s take on the experience reflects a skepticism typical of many people who have had interactions with Charney. “I was the last one to be interviewed,” David said. “The interview was seemingly pointless and consisted of questions like: ‘What music

pany’s profits have expanded nearly eight-fold since 2002. In 2008 alone, AA opened 80 new stores, bringing its grand total to 223. The brand is all over the magazines and the tabloids, from Lindsay Lohan passed out in Samantha Ronson’s car wearing the unisex flex fleece zip hoody, to the slightly more innocent (for now) Miley Cyrus sporting blue metallic American Apparel leggings on Rodeo Drive.

Not even the frequent media controversy and some consumers’ strong negative opinions have been able to really bring the company’s growth to a standstill or keep women and men away from the racks (no pun intended). Perhaps the success of American Apparel is yet another reminder that sex always triumphs; it boasts a strength that cannot be diminished, that ultimately conquers the criticism. Sex is as great a part of the youth culture today as it ever has been, so it is difficult to pinpoint American Apparel as a propagator of any unhealthy images or perverse messages. In reality, the amount of skin does not differ greatly from any other example of sex-driven advertising, like that of Abercrombie and Fitch or Guess.

Perhaps we’re to blame more than the company itself for the success of their arguably sexist advertising campaign. This

“Barack Obama is the perfect president for the American Apparel generation— young, hip, technologically savvy, nonwhite, and totally hot.” do you listen to?’ So in the middle of the interview Dov walks over and crouches down in front of me. He stares at my face for about two minutes, then tells me he wants me to model for the company and wants me to come out to L.A. with him.” After refusing to move out to L.A. with Charney, David worked for a few years at various stores in New York City. He is no longer with the company. “Personally, I like the ads,” said David. “We are all sexual beings — why hide or repress it? I’m never one for censorship.

Do I think it promotes a healthy image of sexuality? Yes. There are far worse things out there than a girl in barely-there clothing. But then again you’re talking to someone who is extremely liberal. There will always be people who will be upset by things like this.”

Despite the backlash against American Apparel, one can’t traverse Manhattan, or any other urban center, without spotting AA clothing on every corner (keep an eye out for cotton basics taking over the world in hunter green, cranberry, and tri-blend).

Judging by the sales, the expansion, and the general mass cultural coup initiated by Charney, young consumers (especially women) are eating it up. Just take a careful look at the t-shirts and sweatshirts that are produced for our very own sorority events. Most, if not all, of the t-shirts worn after Bid Day 2009 had the Greek letters printed on American Apparel tees. The com-

is, after all, a store trying to impress the generation that grew up with Britney Spears at the helm, starting with the Catholic school girl uniform—it only went downhill from there. We watched her embrace the thong above jeans look in the early 2000’s, in a progression finally culminating with her naked, rhinestonecovered figure in the music video for “Toxic,” where it looked like Lynne Spears attacked her with a bedazzler. As she grew up, she became progressively more sexualized, and it is still unknown whether we were trying to keep up with Britney or if she was struggling to keep up with us. Regardless, it will take a lot more to elicit interest and shock from our nearly unshockable generation. Clothing cannot sell itself from behind subtle sexual messages. Subtlety is as dead as bubblegum pop and boy bands; sex must be out in the open and stamped with all things deviant.

Based on American Apparel’s vast growth in sales and marketing and store expansion, there is something effective and resonant in the unabashed sexuality portrayed by this company.

It could be argued that they are promoting good images for an over-sexed generation. Their ads break down the barriers between the real girl and the model, and reclaim some beauty for the everyday girl. The American Apparel consumers of today— from hipster guys to sorority girls—are the pilot generation for a new look of realness and candid sexuality in advertising. K

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the good, the ba the ugly sweater by allison musante

CNN’s iReport: A benign mix of news and nonsense or a threat to journalistic inegrity?

W

hat if you picked up the front page of a newspaper, and in addition to on-the-scene reporting of the violence in the Gaza Strip, you saw a story about ugly Christmas sweaters, a cat’s eighth birthday party, and a ten-pound hamburger? iReport, a user-generated news Web site created by CNN, is a multimedia Frankenstein’s monster: a bit of hard-hitting reporting, a touch of YouTube, a dash of commentary, a pinch of The New Yorker’s wit, and a sprinkling of photos from someone’s vacation album. iReport’s comical blend of what its users call “news” is only part of its identity crisis. Its danger lurks in the fact that, as CNN boasts, it’s “Unedited.

Unfiltered. News.” As college-trained, professional journalists start writhing in pain considering the many ways in which an unchecked news source can cause mass chaos, iReport has the potential to show news-consumers how raw news impacts us every day at the most local, personal level. Now the question is…will iReport be a gentle giant who will serve us, or will it be a menace that we’ll hunt down with pitchforks?

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how it works: instant reporters From the moment users register with CNN, having provided only a valid e-mail address, everyday people begin creating their individual iReporter profile and stacking it with bylines. CNN allows its users to upload text, photos and videos of virtually anything the iReporters find interesting on a personal, national, or international angle.

While some iReporters structure their posts as roundups and commentaries of political, economic, and social news, others structure theirs as running diaries of hometown happenings. Many of the iReporters are uploading eyewitness accounts and photos of breaking news incidents. With new stories uploaded every minute, iReport has become a one-stop shop for on-the-scene photos of the Hudson River plane crash, questions for the Jonas Brothers, opinions of the Chris Brown-Rihanna debacle, and how about a nice picture of a rainbow, too.

CNN selects some of this content to air on television, usually as an eye witness or reactionary comment to a headline story. Last month it aired more than a thousand iReports; but for the others, CNN says up front that it does not edit, fact-check or screen the content before it appears online. Taking this hands-off approach, CNN

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art by allison fischler

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relies on community self-policing by providing its users with guidelines listing prohibited content, including pornography, hate speech, and copyrighted material. Any iReporter who finds offensive content can alert CNN’s online moderators, who may remove the content and then boot the iReporter after three violations.

Since CNN unleashed the iReport Web site last February, it has attracted more than aspiring college-age journalists, YouTubers and bloggers. High school students, moms and dads, math teachers, CEOs, social activists, and humanitarians have reached for their keyboards and cameras. iReport welcomes everyone over the age of 13 to contribute news, which it defines as “something that happens someplace to someone” on its “About” page. At the “assignment desk,” CNN suggests timely stories for iReporters to contribute to, such as recession survivor stories and Super Bowl party photos. iReporters can also look to the “toolkit” for CNN’s tips on generating story ideas and taking better video and photos.

here’s the rub: Missing from iReport’s guidelines, however, is a code of ethics. While the iReport toolkit tells first-time reporters that stories should be true and fair, it doesn’t spell out how. The ethics that anyone learns in Journalism 101 dictate that good reporters should write objectively, confirm their facts by multiple sources, include all points of view on an issue, and minimize harm to the sources and subjects involved. iReport’s model is problematic because it’s putting a great amount of faith in an untrained group of people to practice good taste at the bare minimum. For example, what consequences did username bowmanreport consider before posting a racist anti-Obama photo that had been floating around the Internet?

Also consider the problems that could arise when fact mixes with commentary, as the toolkit omits encouragement to separate the two.

Many iReporters are challenging the importance of objectivity and fairness by covering issues they care deeply about. Take, for example, iReporter Jerome Lazarus (username JeyLazarus), whom I spoke with about his reporting of violence in Sri Lanka. Lazarus has contributed hundreds of posts to iReport on the topic, many of which have been aired on CNN. While several of his stories are written in the straight news, Associated Press style, with his facts corroborated by policemen and authorities, he introduces other articles by stating his opinion. For instance, just above a story about a bus bombing, he writes “And they [Sri Lanka] call themselves a Buddhist country? I don’t think Buddha would approve.”

Originally working for a media organization in Sri Lanka, Lazarus said he left for the United States to escape the country’s civil unrest and media antagonism. “My point here publishing the news that is happening over there is to simply raise awareness of the country’s situation,” he says. “Now that I live here I find many people who have never heard of Sri Lanka, and I’m only wanting to educate them on another part of the world.” Lazarus is also producing photo slideshows of how the Sri Lankans have been affected by the violence and is working on a full-length documentary film as well.

While Lazarus’ stories are gripping and fascinating, does a reporter who indicates his or her bias before reporting on a certain issue lose credibility? The Journalism Ethics 101 answer is that journalists

should never share their opinion in a news article, because it calls the accuracy of their information into question, leaving readers to wonder if they’ve gotten the entire story. As the Society of Professional Journalists’ code of ethics reads: “Distinguish between advocacy and news reporting. Analysis and commentary should be labeled and not misrepresent fact or context.” But iReport has thousands of contributors reporting on issues to which they feel personally connected. Why does this seem like such a radical idea? Given iReport’s growing popularity, perhaps iReporters are leading a revolution against dry, emotionless AP stories to promote impassioned storytelling.

what’s in a name?

The next step for us as media consumers is to determine how much we value the professionalism of journalists who are trained to leave bias at the door. iReport feels like a slap in the face to all traditional media outlets, as if iReporters are collectively saying, “we can do it better.” And it’s not surprising; unethical reporters like Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass have disgraced print media by fabricating stories.

Broadcast news seems to have failed us as well, when Fox News is criticized for a conservative bias, when Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos hold scandal-mongering debates over the Democratic primary, or when we were all forced to follow the indepth coverage of a female politician’s wardrobe.

With a mass of global conflicts occurring beyond our borders, largely ignored by the media, the public is understandably frustrated with the professionals who have long — maybe irresponsibly — been the sole gatekeepers of news.

Ithaca College sophomore and iReporter Chloe Scutt feels college students are wise to these flaws in the media, which may be steering them to iReport’s off-the-beaten-path stories.

“When NBC is reporting on Angelina Jolie’s dress, it’s like, come on,” she says. “And then Fox [News] has

by Veronica Fischmann really ruined its image with our generation. It’s like Bill O’Reilly needs No one except for her knew that it was the first anniversary, the yarzheit, of the to stop talking, or Fox needs to put sudden death of David’s mother. They all thought different things. someone next to him to challenge Ben thought that David didn’t like the tunes that he had chosen the week before. him.”

Noah didn’t think anything specific about the fact that David was leading services

Scutt, whose video of the for the first time ever this particular Shabbos. campus election night celebration Judah was jealous that his voice was not as good as David’s. was aired on CNN, said that users Devorah thought that she would like to someday lead services. should consume iReport as one of Danny, who was already ready for dinner, thought that David was taking his time many news sources to gain a wider with services. perspective on an issue or event.

Sarah thought that David was choosing beautiful tunes, but didn’t know any of As an example, she liked how CNN’s them. election night coverage included Jesse wished that he could join in the singing, but he had lost his voice earlier iReports. that day and had yet to find it.

“I remember seeing one [iReport] Andrew thought that David was doing a good job leading services, and from a small town in Africa, and how made a mental note to ask him to do it again. they were celebrating,” she says. “You She thought about how hard it must be to lose a parent at such a young could really see how the whole world stood age. still that night.”

David thought about his mother.

flash fiction

A thoughtful story:

continued on page 60...

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so now what? iReport gets journalistic credit for localizing large stories and inviting us to see the world through another pair of eyes. Just when I think I’ve made my peace with the concept, I look again at iReport’s tagline: “Unedited. Unfiltered. News.” and I shudder. Although it’s hard to find stories that are spiked with obscenity, bigotry, and blatant lies like the pessimist in me expects, I worry that this honor system of fact-checking and self-policing will fail to generate a useful news source. Right now, iReport feels much like digging through the department store clearance rack; if you have the time and patience to search, you may find a few gems hidden among the junk.

For iReport to evolve into an intelligible and informative destination for our generation of news web-surfers, it can’t proceed without informing iReporters of basic reporting ethics. The Poynter Institute, an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes media education, said in a 2007 conference report that user-generated content can “broaden the marketplace of ideas, deepen our understanding of issues and events, and connect people with like interests.” But Poynter warns that anyone who publishes online has a relationship with an audience.

The report reads: “Ethics guidelines should not be considered the

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exclusive province of those who describe themselves as journalists.” If we accept the most basic definition of a journalist as anyone who collects and distributes information, then iReporters like bowmanreport need to know that they are responsible and accountable for every word and image they publish, and should at least consider consequences before re-posting that viral photo.

But let’s not forget that the public should shoulder some of the responsibility when consuming this media content. Just as we read Wikipedia as one — and not the only — source of information, iReport can complement our daily news intake as a nutritious dose of how the news hits home. When we get down to the nuts and bolts of it, iReport’s potential rests in its ability to show an uncensored glimpse of the world from windows across the world. At the moment, that potential is dormant. It’s waiting to be electrified into life while we sift through the fact and fiction, insight and absurdity, value and garbage, like shoppers at the bargain bin. With a few more tweaks of the wrench, iReport may just become the information leviathan we’re all hoping for.

As we continue to find iReport’s niche in the information landscape, it’s interesting to see that even its contributors have a love-hate relationship with iReport. An iReporters’ recent debate about “Thin Mints and Office Politics” really says it all. In response to this topic from the iReport assignment desk, username Swaycow said, “CNN should be ashamed to call this ‘news.’ Shouldn’t CNN be reporting on stories that matter?” Fellow iReporters responded: “Haven’t been here long, eh? Hehe. Welcome to iReport, where fluff and cookies sell”; “Sometimes we need a little light hearted news to be able to continue to face the other stuff on a daily basis.” Isn’t that the truth? K

flash fiction

My dad once asked me if I wanted him to strike me with his belt. I was sitting on his and Mom’s bed watching him change out of his sweaty work clothes. Just like me and my dad, he said. You could feel it just once. My feet were far from the floor as I dangled my legs off the bed. It was the sort of question that didn’t have a right answer. I took my time and while I did, he took off his belt. No, I said because it was the only word I remembered that second. I tried to smile, and he smiled back.

Dad’s face was the kind that couldn’t lie though. His eyes undid every myth that came from his mouth and the way he looked at me, I felt like I was someone else– –someone he hadn’t seen in a long time and that he felt sorry for. I wanted to say something, but there wasn’t much saliva in my mouth. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t tell him I’d changed my mind or that possibly I’d never made up my mind in the first place. You want me to show you how it was? He’d wound his belt all up around his fist, and even though he’d just changed his shirt, there were dark patches forming beneath his arms. I looked at him and said OK without words. He looked at his fist with the belt wound all around it. When I came home from school. When I came home. His voice broke and left me alone with the quiet. He brought his arm way back over his head and let the belt unwind itself from around his fist so it

The

Belt

by Devon Walker

trailed down his back. When I picture him standing there like that, he’s too still. He’s a statue or a photograph. He’s something unfamiliar and too permanent to be real. Then he fades away and the bed is shaking again. The belt is slicing through the air so quick that it goes invisible and all I can feel is the impact of it crashing down and the whine of bed springs shudder through me. There are grunts and droplets of sweat coming from Dad and pouring down over my skin and the sheets. I can’t tell what’s his breathing and what’s mine or if the wetness on my face is from tears or his sweat. Then it’s just still again. The only sound is Dad trying to breathe with his face buried in the comforter.

I look at my arms to see where he’s written his pain all art by Sadie Smith over me, but there’s nothing. I touch my face to feel his swollen scrawl across my cheeks, but it’s smooth and won’t be read. When you cry your throat wants you to gasp and shudder, but I swallow my sounds so Dad can be alone with his rage. I can see him kneeling alongside the bed, face buried into the covers and hands clasped over the back of his head. He's murmuring, but just barely, as if he were in a church. The weight of his head and those big clasped hands press his moving lips down deep into the covers. And all those folds of fabric, they smother his words before they're even formed.

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Not so sloppy Seconds?

An exploration of Superhero Movies...

by David Berezin

art by erin nuzzo

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hen I was nine, my thoughts on comic books and girls usually arrived at the same conclusion — they were great to look at, but I just couldn’t understand them. With characters dying and coming back, powers changing, and villains and heroes switching sides, a kid — especially one whose best idea of a criminal mastermind is the Power Rangers’ double-horned foe Rita Repulsa — stands little chance of deciphering the epical meanderings of Superman, Batman, and the like.

Luckily for me, mass marketing of the first X-Men movie less than four years later opened my eyes to the fact that nine-year-old me’s conception of the X-Men as a badass team with bitchin’ costumes was surprisingly lacking in intellectual depth. The X-Men really were a “mutant” minority against which the rest of humankind discriminated. The X-Men’s nemesis Magneto was still, in an elementary sense, your standard villain trying to take over the world, but on another level, he was a Holocaust survivor who feared that prejudice would once again corrupt the minds of human leaders.

While I have the first X-Men movie to thank for bringing me back into comics, it’s the sequel, X2, which stands out far more in my mind. Most movie sequels tend to be pointless rehashes of what came before, but X2 was superior to its predecessor thanks to its exciting action and its deeper plot. For these reasons, second superhero movies are usually the apex of the franchise. But third movies fall into traps of repetition and cheesy humor that bring them, and the franchise, down with them.

Much like our college experience, superhero movies can be fun and thoughtprovoking. But they can also be as repetitive as a droning professor or as cringeinducing as a drunken frat guy. So I ask, what makes superhero movies take off at the box office, and what makes them crash with their audience? And when do their sequels go from being a necessary extension of the previous film, to a soulless cashdriven gimmick?

freshman year

Remember how annoying introducing yourself to the entire freshman class during the first few weeks of school was? How you had to tell every insignificant floormate, roommate, or even classmate your name, major, and hometown? (Name: Superman, Hometown: Metropolis, Major: Truth, Justice, and the American Way.)

The same tediousness goes for first superhero movies: filmmakers are obligated to go through the motions of why the heck the main characters became superheroes in the first place, predictable backstories that even casual viewers already know.

And superhero origins get repetitive, just like Cornell pedigrees. That’s not to say that all superheroes are from Long Island, Westchester, or the Korean upper crust, but really—how many superheroes have turned to crimefighting because of their guilt and/or helplessness over the death of a parent figure? It’s a powerful story, but it’s one that we see in Batman, (whose parents were shot down by a mugger in an alleyway), Spider-Man (whose uncle was killed by a thief ), and Daredevil (whose father was murdered for refusing to throw a fight).

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Comic books go on forever (trust me on this one)... that's why these movies are important - they give viewers the dramatic moments that they won't see in the comic books. sophomore bump

Think about how much better things are your sophomore year: no more icebreakers, no more awkward introductions, and no more freshmen writing seminars. Superhero sequels function in a similar way. Everyone who saw the first X-Men movie in a reasonably sober state was familiar with the predictable backstories of the X-Men and their foe Magneto, so the sequel didn’t have to waste any time explaining it.

Instead of the proverbial sophomore slump, our movie jumped right into the action. The first scene: blue-skinned, pointy-eared Nightcrawler teleporting through the White House, trying to kill the President. It wasn’t just exciting, it was shocking — in the comics, Nightcrawler is a good guy!

Like the sequels to Superman: The Movie and Batman Begins, X2 blurred the line between heroism and villainy (the X-Men team up with Magneto to stop Professor X, who’s been manipulated into killing all mutants, Superman II featured Clark Kent giving up the cape and stockings, and. The Dark Knight showed Batman using Big Brother style surveillance). Free from a cutand-dry origin story, these films took their characters in unexpected directions — they were sequels that felt more original than the original movies.

Comic books go on forever (trust me on this one), so writers can’t change their characters without worrying how their changes will affect the next decade of stories. That’s why these movies are important — they give viewers the dramatic moments that they won’t see in the comic books. Heroes can kill their villains. Their loved ones can die. In the end of Superman II, the Man of Steel breaks up with Lois Lane — in the comics, they hadn’t even hooked up yet, even after forty years of sexual tension. Sequels show that even with their powers and experience, superheroes not only deal with tragedy but grow from it, just as we would in real life.

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KA! W PO

junior blot

So if a second superhero movie is better than the first one, the third movie must be even better, right? Not exactly. In much the same way that junior year can end up being just a repetitive version of what came before, third movies tend to have difficulty following the character-expanding stories of their predecessors and end up rehashing plot elements. X-Men: The Last Stand had the X-Men fighting Magneto, as we’ve already seen in the first movie (as opposed to X2, which had the twist of Magneto being their ally). Spidey’s girlfriend was kidnapped by Venom in Spider-Man 3 — which would’ve been okay had she not been kidnapped by villains in the first two movies. (You’d think after being kidnapped twice in a row, she’d start carrying around mace or something.)

Whereas X2 was rife with complex dilemmas, in X-Men: The Last Stand, the nefarious Juggernaut (before knocking himself out by running into a wall) yells, “I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!”

Whereas the second Superman film presented a dilemma between the two identities of the Man of Steel, in the third, a villainous Superman blows out the Olympic torch and straightens the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Example 3: Jim Carrey plays the Riddler? Superhero movies need humor, but it can’t dominate the characters. If the writers don’t take their villains seriously, why should we?

And if third movies can’t have better stories, should there even be a third movie at all? Of course there should! Studios exist to rake in the profits, and superhero movies are goldmines — The Dark Knight made over $500 million, so another Batman film could make the same amount, even more. We can complain all we want about crappy sequels, but we’re the ones with the ticket stubs burning holes through our pockets. Studios will make fourth movies and even fifth movies of the Amazing Spider-Man and the Uncanny X-Men because we hand them the most powerful being of all — the Almighty Dollar.

graduation

The first movies of superhero franchises have to explain how a human can gain powers. But the second movies are free to explore how a human with powers can still be human.

The third movies, though, focus so much on over-the-top action and corny humor that audiences can no longer relate to their favorite heroes (just as I struggled to relate to them in the comics). No matter what number movie it is, filmmakers have to reinforce that behind the masks and underneath the spandex, superheroes are just as mortal and fallible as the rest of us. Their feats might be great, but their shortcomings are even greater. K

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Stage G

Haven’t you bicuriosity is th

by kath photo by Rachel Ensign

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Gay

heard? Fake he new plaid.

hleen jercich

T

he scene was much like that of any other Top 40 performance: arena full of screaming girls, check; spastic waving of digital cameras and cell phones, check; enough eyeliner to make Ronald McDonald get a little tingle of jealousy, check. Up onstage, however, the strutting rock god of their slavering affections was putting on a far different performance than the typical look-bored-with-four-chords routine. Shaking his hips and grinning, he would purr into the mic, “Last night — I had a dream.”

The girls — and they were, by the vast majority, girls — would seem to sense what was coming, their shrieks growing in decibel and enthusiasm.

“I dreamed,” the singer would continue, sauntering toward his guitarist, bedecked with rose petals and elaborate eye makeup of his own, “That I was in a meadow…awaiting the passionate embrace of true love’s kiss.” In a practiced move, repeated at concert after concert, he would grab said hapless guitarist by the ears and, with varying degrees of success, attempt to plant just one such true love’s kiss on the mouth. Then, to the background of a now well-known electronica beat, the two would stare into each other’s eyes as the singer breathed the opening lines of a song dedicated to, among other things, masturbation and premarital sex.

For the Internet user well acquainted with the seedier parts of the Web, such an act was to gay erotica as sugar-free Jell-O is to strawberry-flavored lube. But in 2006, Panic at the Disco’s “Nothing Rhymes with Circus” tour acted as a harbinger of the newest wave of would-be shock performance to hit the entertainment industry: the sometimes wonderful, usually frustrating phenomenon dubbed by LiveJournal-mongers as “stage gay”.

lying is the most fun a [band] can have without taking their clothes off

“Stage gay” is exactly what it sounds like, a reference, either veiled or explicit, to homosexuality for the purposes of publicity or awareness. For the members of Panic at the Disco, using stage gay on a tour named after a profession of artifice and elaborate rehearsal was only fitting. Despite what some more avid fans might hope, lead singer Brendon Urie has publicly identified as heterosexual for as long as he’s been in the spotlight. And after all, one ill-timed cheek kiss a night (for Urie hardly ever made the effort to make contact) plus intensive staring contests isn’t exactly Bowie/Mercury material — rather, it is jarringly reminiscent of the pubescent all-girl slumber parties of yore.

Still, reporters and fans both jumped on every possible opportunity to label the band as “unique.” In a 2007 interview with “Out” magazine entitled “Pretty! Gay?” bassist Jon Walker defended the stage act as simply that, stating, “Brendon had this little character he was for the whole show…I don’t think it was too gay.” In the same interview, however, drummer Spencer Smith playfully implied that Urie and guitarist Ryan Ross “might

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be dating.” None of the band members help the situation offstage, either, frequently holding each other’s hands and wearing t-shirts last seen in GapKids. Simply to Google “Panic at the Disco gay” is to invite a veritable barrage of fan-made “manifestos”: collections of pictures fans have hoarded showcasing all the reasons why, in the words of “ryrobden4ever”, “Panic at the Disco are totally in lovvvvve.”

For fans, the appeal seems to transcend the purely visceral appeal of watching two hot guys lick the sweat out of each other’s mouths (om nom nom). In a society which remains stubbornly heterosexually centered, those who play with sexuality

“Frankly, it’s not all that revolutiona as straight has a few too many vodk on a bestie for all of Facebook to se are admirable in their rebellion. Ironically, exhibiting traditional heterosexual love now seems distinctly N*Sync-worthy: today’s teenage rebels sans a cause pledge allegiance to rockers who present themselves in a fashion generally disapproved of by the average mom. Despite this, to raise the subject with the band itself is to invite deadpan stares or resigned laughter: although they take advantage of it, they simply don’t understand the allure.

dry-humping for a cause

Such coyness with regard to the stage gay gimmick isn’t shared by all of their contemporaries, however. The same summer that members of Panic at the Disco were slobbering on one another for their own entertainment and for the fascination of their fans, bands like My Chemical

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Romance were using it to force those in the hardcore and emo scenes to question their attitude toward diversity, particularly that of a sexual nature. While Panic stuck with suggestive dialogue and bananahammock girls’ jeans, My Chem often turned their stage shows into The Softcore Porn Hour of Fun, complete with screamy accompaniment.

Lead singer and frontman Gerard Way defended his onstage antics, which included groping rhythm guitarist Frank Iero and licking the chest of bassist brother Mikey, as a personal challenge to those factions of their fan base comfortable with homophobia. “The idea is that it’s an au-

Enter the callipygian Katy Perry, who slid her way onto the scene during the summer of 2008 in a move as unanticipated by the masses as the Madonna/Britney/Xtina triplock of ’03.

bicuriosity is the new plaid

Pop culture’s collective memory is notoriously faulty, however, and radio listeners everywhere were orgasming all summer over the “novelty” of Perry’s breathy confessions of tasting cherry Chapstick.

The song was an insta-hit, the delight of horny frat boys and girls with weird striped highlights alike. Frankly, it’s not all that revolutionary— girl identifying as straight has a few too many vodka tonics and macks on a bestie for all of Facebook to see in the morning. Still, it was enough to send tweeners into flails and gay rights activists into a tailspin.

You’ve all heard it, I’m sure. The LGBTQ community, particularly those identifying as bisexual, was none too pleased with Perry’s playfully pithy recapitulation of society’s favorite myth: girls who kiss girls and boys are nothing but confused, slutty, or both. Like the minstrelsy acts of the early twentieth century, who donned blackface makeup and attempted to emulate the mannerisms of African-Americans, activists claim that Perry is exploiting and mocking their lifestyles for attention.

And sure, listening to that slick-lipped scene queen giggling about how she knows “it’s not what good girls do” gets old fast. But by forcing everyone within hearing distance of a Top 40 station to hear again and again all about how satisfying your curiosity is pretty damn fun, Perry also brought questions about experimentation and acceptance out in the

ary— girl identifying ka tonics and macks ee in the morning.” dience full of dudes and if we can make them understand us I think it’ll make them more open-minded people,” he said in a 2007 interview. “If you make [a] person say, ‘You know what, I don’t know if this dude is gay or straight and I actually don’t care…I could accept all these guys on stage,’ then that’s a great thing.”

Even though the bands’ onstage shenanigans were no secret — various My Chemical Romance members even got to first base on the Conan O’Brien show — they still remained mysteriously unrecognized by mainstream audiences. With all the radio play that aggravatingly catchy “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” has gotten over the last few years, one would think a few snarky disc jockeys would feel the need for comment. But for the most part, stage gay remained a part of a band’s image only for those who made the effort to properly sit through shitty Youtube’d concert footage.

open. Society tends to assign people to a trichotomous-at-best sexual preference, neatly slotting people into straight, gay, or precisely bisexual despite all the talk of Kinsey scales and sliding spectra. “I Kissed a Girl,” although pretty fucking obnoxious, suggests that daring to challenge your own sexuality doesn’t have to be the crisis many make it into. Kissing girls is fun. So is kissing boys. The cheating aspect referenced in the song is another issue (“Hope my boyfriend don’t mind it”), but even that is less a subject of sexuality-based promiscuity and more one of infidelity in relationships. I mean, Perry’s then-boyfriend, Travis McCoy of Gym Class Heroes, is known for doing a little non-monogamous man-loving himself, so it’s doubtful that he minds much anyway.

Ultimately, stage gay allows those of non-heterosexual persuasions to be put in the spotlight, albeit not always on their own terms. When a thirteen-yearold Robert Pattinson enthusiast pelvic thrusts to “I Kissed a Girl,” it’s unlikely that she’s thinking about how the lyrics affect her own life. Likewise, a kindergoth My Chemical Romance fan is probably more eager to emulate Gerard Way’s dye job than wonder what the roof of Frank Iero’s mouth tastes like.

But, like Way says, these fans are getting the message that homosexuality isn’t something to be feared or loathed. Rather, it’s to be embraced: sung about, videotaped, and written into steamy first-time blow job fan fictions. Personally, I’d like Katy Perry better if she took a leaf from Pete Wentz’s book and put her…well… mouth where her mouth was, but if she wants to make music videos about girlon-girl pillow fights, that’s fine. Whatever sells your records, I suppose.

Stage gay can be appreciated as a step, though a shaky one, in a direction for national acceptance If it makes all the church ministers and people like my father nervous, it can’t be all bad. Plus, you know, let’s be frank – it’s hot. If we can just get the Jonas Brothers in on a little quasi-incest threesome action, we’ll be set for life. K

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photo by Arno Volkers

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on bullshit Insight into the present recession through an essay from the past.

by PETE DEVLIN

I

have heard people respond to this mire we call a recession with a loud and resounding “It’s bullshit!” The credit crisis, the collapse of the housing market, corporate carelessness; all this is bullshit. But, you only seem to say this because of an innate unexplainable capacity to identify bullshit. Whether it’s from a subtle tingling in one’s feet or some other extrasensory perception, it’s become clear to quite a few that this recession was caused by the triumph of bullshit. Banks made careless loans, Wall Street made careless investments, and when everything began defaulting they and the consumers had a crisis of confidence.

Take the two most prominent champions of bullshit in this crisis: Markus Schrenker and Bernard Madoff. Why exactly we associate them and their cases with bullshit can’t merely be the result of frustration, outrage, or fear. Bullshit is something particular, peculiar, and unique, and something very much worth our time to investigate.

Let’s begin with the charming Markus Schrenker. A financial manager located in Indiana, he accumulated an absurd number of lawsuits over the past ten years, on top of being unfaithful to his wife (who filed for a divorce at the same time he was in the process of losing $533,500 in federal court). Way to go.

Whereas most rational human beings would, in similar situations, suck it up and get through such adversity with a lot of hope (or a lot of booze), Schrenker chose a different path. He had the brilliant and unprecedented idea to fake his own death in a plane crash. He began flying his private plane to Destin, Florida when he called air traffic control and said his windshield imploded and that he was bleeding profusely. He then proceeded to set his plane to autopilot and parachute out, and it later

crashed 50 to 70 yards from a residential area. Needless to say, a few people, like the U.S. Coast Guard, were mildly annoyed. After some encounters with the locals, Schrenker drove his motorcycle he had strategically planted in a storage facility to a camp ground in Quincy, Florida where he attempted suicide but was caught in the process. Something in this story reeks of bullshit; probably the fraud and absurd attempt to evade accountability.

Maybe so. But why exactly is bullshit a word that comes to mind before anything else? In short, a thorough analysis of bullshit may indeed be necessary so that we might understand the recession better.

2,500 years ago, Socrates began the tradition of asking the simple yet profound question “What is x?” What is justice? Virtue? The soul? While these are all noble inquiries, bullshit now deserves our investigation. Every day it seems we are put into positions where we must talk about something beyond our experience and knowledge and are forced to resort to bullshit.

Well, what is bullshit? Harry Frankfurt answered this question in his seminal essay On Bullshit published in 1987. But is the stench of his generation’s bullshit the same as ours? And does bullshit actually explain the recession?

Is bullshit merely a lie? Think for a minute about bullshit. We can often recognize bullshit but could we give a definition that would satisfy Socrates as much as handsome boys?

In some intriguing passages about Max Black’s The Prevalence of Humbug, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Oxford English Dictionary, Ezra Pound, and others, Frankfurt dissects bullshit with a steady and critical hand. From Black he picks out an important seed for his definition, namely, that bullshit is some sort of misrepresentation.

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“Bullshit like Mich

art by andrew schwartz

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cannot be sculpted helangelo’s David.”

“Excrement,” he writes, “is not designed or crafted at all; It is merely emitted, or dumped. It may have a more or less coherent shape, or it may not, but it is in any case certainly not wrought.”

While referring to a statement by Wittgenstein about builders who carefully produced their work, Frankfurt questions whether bullshit is haphazardly thrown together or sculpted. It seems intuitive that bullshit cannot be sculpted like Michelangelo’s David. But it’s pretty obvious that advertisement, public relations, and politics pay close attention to every kernel of corn in the bullshit wrought by them.

After discussing run-over dogs, excrement, hot air, and bull sessions, Frankfurt pulls together a well-supported working definition of bullshit. “The essence of bullshit is not that it is false but that it is phony.” Frankfurt really hits this home with a quote from Eric Ambler’s novel Dirty Story, essentially asking: Why lie when you can bullshit? Bullshitters completely disregard the truth and only care about representing themselves in a certain way. Bullshit, therefore, is “a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.”

The highly publicized story of Bernard Madoff epitomizes the phoniness, the bullshit, the real enemy of the truth, in the recession. For those of you living under a rock, Madoff confessed to his sons that the asset management arm of his firm was an enormous (perhaps the largest in history) Ponzi scheme, meaning a fraudulent investment operation. In short, Madoff told federal agents that he “paid investors with money that wasn’t there.” If you can think of a better example of phoniness, then I’m a monkey and Madoff’s a saint.

The single count of securities fraud he is being charged with has a wide reach, effecting foreign banks, Steven Spielberg, and others. It seems that he was able to get away with his devastating (and brilliant) scam for so long because he was bullshitting rather than lying. Bullshit is often more difficult to detect until its negative consequences, the economic crisis for example, are realized (such as the fact that as the market began to plunge, Madoff’s investors tried to withdraw money that basically didn’t exist).

Such bullshittery, like that mentioned in this example, seems to come from a lack of substance and support, like a stock market bubble. Investors build the bubble up with bullshit and too much optimism. The real state of the economy couldn’t matter less. Ironically, the real state depends on the perceived state, so when investors catch sight of the real state, they worsen it by panicking and we end up in a deadly self-sustained spiral as bullshit backfires. The government stimulus packages were supposed to restore the confidence and the bullshit. We have yet to see if this works.

In the mean time, let’s see what else we can extract from

bullshit. Consider the popular card game of the same name, a game in which you are either telling the truth or forced to lie, and when someone suspects you of lying, they yell out “Bullshit!” with a big, shit-eating grin on their face. Is this an actual case of bullshit?

Well, in the same way that some politicians talk about freedom and liberty putting aside the truth for what people think of them (an example Frankfurt uses), the bullshitter in “Bullshit” could care less whether or not they are telling the truth. They only want everyone else to believe they are telling the truth. According to Frankfurt’s definition, “Bullshit” seems like bullshit.

But on the other hand, you sometimes tell the truth (put out the correct card) and want the others to think you are lying so that they falsely accuse you (making this not a case of bullshit because of your blatant awareness of the truth). Your bullshit in this case is inextricably tied to what is true, and is therefore, not truly bullshit (Frankfurt says that “[the bullshitter] pays no attention to [truth] at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.”). By comparing a world filled completely with bullshitters and an identical world inhabited only by liars, we can evaluate this statement.

The world of liars would at least have some foundation for truth, since as a starting point people would know what the truth is not. Living in the world of bullshitters, however, would be like trying to crawl across the Sahara desert (not that it can’t be done by Bear Grylls, but even he would still need a lot of luck to find his way). In such a bullshitty world, you wouldn’t be able to deduce anything from what anyone says. In such a world, if a man pulled up to you in his white, unmarked van and said, “I have candy, get in the car,” you would get in because he may or may not have candy. In a lying world you would say, “Liar! You don’t have candy!” and run away.

In the world of bullshit, we would end up in complete isolation. No one would listen to anything anyone says. Though both are relative and depend on a person’s state of mind, lying is more or less the rejection of truth; bullshit is its disregard. And so when things go bad in the economy, it is difficult for everyone to ban together, get some credit flowing, begin investing, and ‘wrought’ bullshit again.

So, next time you play “Bullshit” and are called out for being a bullshitter, tell your accuser that they are wrong. You lied outright. You are not someone asked to speak of something they know nothing about. You are a common, unskilled, petty, low life deceiver, different from your run-of-the-mill bullshitter.

In this day and age, we hurl epithets and accusations of “bullshit!” at one another with remarkable confidence. Take Seinfeld: in one episode, George goes to a holistic healer at the suggestion of Kramer. The healer rubs his own hands together,

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grabs George’s bald head, and says to George “you are in disharmony… adenoiditis is in Chinese medical terms an invasion of heat and wind.” The show then provides the audience with some comic relief thanks to a voice over of Jerry’s thoughts (“there’s some hot air blowing in here”). How the attending audience heard his thoughts is beyond me. But that’s beside the point.

What matters is that while this scene may not have violent accusations, it is revealing nevertheless.

Frankfurt says that hot air could be a good substitute for bullshit, and Seinfeld reinforces this idea. The healer’s words have no substance in the same way that excrement has no nutritional value (except maybe for dogs). It seems that the healer (an ex-con to boot) truly believes in the powers of holistic healing, that putting a wire pyramid over someone’s head can cure them. Since he doesn’t ignore the truth and he isn’t trying to misrepresent himself this isn’t a case of bullshit. But, Jerry and the viewers believe that this fictional new-age ex-con does just that. Jerry would still think “hot air” regardless of what he knew about the healer’s own beliefs. This suggests that bullshit is also dependent on a third person judgment, a common, albeit possibly incorrect, use of bullshit that Frankfurt never mentions.

Another good example is sports, an activity packed to the brim with bullshit. It’s 1-1 in your soccer game with a minute left. The Bears have been insulting your mom and hacking away at your ankles. They have the ball around the top of the box and your big defender steps in for a clean tackle. Your opponent, about to piss his pants, leaves the ball, dives into the air, rolls on the ground, and holds his ankle screaming. Then the referee blows his whistle and calls a penalty kick on which they score

flash fiction

A L’urinate Sur Des Chaussures

“Thanks Mark, I owe you one,” he said taking the key from the café owner’s hands. Making his way towards the restroom he noticed that the closer he got to the heavy door the more urgent his need to relieve himself. His walk turned to a trot, his trot to a jog; he wondered if he was not exacerbating the situation. As he thought “exacerbate” he immediately thought of the word masturbate, not at all helpful at the present time.

Finally reaching the bathroom door, a full-blown, precipitous erection in tow, he wondered what people might think of a man half-running into a bathroom in his state. Worrying less and less what people thought, he fumbled with the key. The pressure inside his bladder had built to a penultimate urgency.

As if an air compre sor had been feeding an already overfilled balloon.

The door swung open. He clambered forward; his fly was undone before he knew he had to undo it. No time to play with

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and you lose the game. Walking bitterly back to your bench of furious Cougars, you kick the Gatorade cooler or the nearest small mammal and yell “Bullshit!” The other team does not consider their win to be bullshit however. It is only bullshit according to you because you don’t believe their win was valid.

A similar eau de bullshit seems to waft around the economic crisis as well, based on a similar outrage over the sense of unfairness that comes from thinking, Hey, it’s not my fault this whole mess happened. Besides the bullshit of phoniness and disregard for the truth, there is also the bullshit of outrage, which comes about, for instance, when you say the economic crisis is bullshit because it seems that it could and should have been avoided.

As unfair as it may be, though, bullshit is nevertheless great and necessary–it plays a key part in the boom and bust cycles of our economy, not to mention that it has made many people very wealthy (unless you use it to subvert the law like Madoff and Schrenker). So the question becomes, then, a matter of whether or not bullshit can be sustained.

The essence of bullshit that Frankfurt discovered has not evolved much through the ages. I’m sure that if you put Roman bullshit, Feudal bullshit, and post-modern bullshit side by side, they would all consist of more or less the same thing, only perhaps sculpted differently. You can take a course in cognitive science or post-colonial literature, but I have yet to see a course on bullshit. Perhaps this is for a good reason. Why lie when you can bullshit? Or, for that matter, why tell the truth when you can bullshit? It seems that there is so much of it around anyways, but it’s important to not become jaded and cynical. Because how can anyone praising bullshit be anything but full of bullshit? K

by Adi Potashnik pants’ buttons, or even entertain the thought of loosening the belt, he reached desperately into his pants, his feet firmly planted in their readiness stance. The last step, he lifted the toilet seat.

In the microsecond before he released what must have been no less than an eon’s worth of stored urine, the toilet seat faltered and began to fall. Deftly, he grabbed at the plummeting seat, hoping to avoid a clamorous ordeal. But the seat did not fall; rather it lurched forward, and in his swift yet clumsy attempt to avoid what seemed an impending pandemonium he managed to proverbially shoot himself in the not so proverbial foot.

“Shit… leather shoes…” He muttered bitterly to himself.

Cleaning himself up as best he could he washed his hands and hoped the smell or urea, so apparent to him, was less than noticeable to the friends and co-workers waiting patiently for him at the expectant microphone.

BEFORE

AFTER

lies

art by matthew kudry

Pictured above: Polygamy? No, just shoddy sitcom continuity.

by David Berezin

our sitcoms told us You wake up.

There’s a strange man in your room. You jump out of bed, screaming, “Who the hell are you?”

The man grins. “Silly, I’m your dad!” You know who your dad is, and this man doesn’t look anything like him. He doesn’t even sound like him. And yet, he expects you to believe that he’s your father, who you’ve known for literally your whole life, just because he says so? “What kind of moron is this guy?” you ask yourself. “Who could possibly get away with a trick that’s so un-

believably stupid, that goes against the very fabric of logic and common sense?” But, crazy as it sounds, innocent victims fall for this scheme all the time…in sitcoms.

I know that these shows are make-believe. But the whole point of make-believe is to make somebody believe, and sitcoms do quite the opposite when they replace their characters with new actors. Am I really supposed to believe, for instance, that the family in The Fresh Prince of Bel Air would accept as their

watch and listen

59

mom a woman who looks and sounds totally different from the mother of the past three seasons? Maybe they thought she had plastic surgery; they are rich, and they do live in LA. Still, that wouldn’t explain why she was a foot shorter and had a higher voice. And I don’t know about Uncle Phil and Carlton, but if a strange woman showed up at my house saying she was my mom, I’d be on the phone with America’s Most Wanted.

A character isn’t just a bunch of lines in a script; it’s the presence that the actor brings to the role. And a sitcom isn’t just a weekly thirty-minute string of jokes; it’s the rapport among the cast. Recast a character, and you mess with both. Now, I know that you can’t always keep actors tied to a show. Sometimes they’re divas; sometimes they jump ship to start up an ill-fated movie career, like Shelly Long leaving Cheers or David Caruso ditching NYPD Blue. And they can have health problems that cut into their work, like the original husband on Bewitched.

Unavoidable as these situations are, shows can still keep their verisimilitude by making new characters instead of replacing existing ones and thereby respecting the character that the actor, and not just the writers, created.

Replacing actors isn’t the only continuity issue that bugs me about sitcoms. Imagine, for instance, that you’re coming downstairs for breakfast. At the table there’s a five-year-old girl who you’ve never seen before. You think, “Who the hell is this kid?” or “What was I doing five years and nine months ago?” You see your mom and ask her the first question (not the second).

She says, “Why, it’s your kid sister of course!” You have only one sister, and she’s not even a year old. Yet overnight, she’s quintupled in age. I’m sure you’ve realized by now that I’m referring to that sitcom phenomenon where a character who was a baby in one season is a five-year-old in the next. Now if you had a baby sister who’d aged five years in one night, would your parents be going about life as usual? No, they’d be filing lawsuits against the baby food company or getting her checked for the rapid aging disease from that Robin Williams movie. I know why sitcoms do this, because babies really can’t contribute much in the way of memorizing and speaking lines. But if I wanted to see a show where time was being fucked with, I’d download an episode of Heroes.

But the sitcom continuity error that really makes you realize what coldhearted sons of bitches these sitcom parents are is when characters disappear and don’t come back, like in a Criss Angel trick gone awry. You might recall that this happened to Judy Winslow, the younger daughter from Family Matters. While her brother Eddie was chasing girls and her sister Laura was being stalked by Steve Urkel, poor ten-year-old Judy had nothing to do except smile and look cute. And despite the show being called Family Matters, I guess family didn’t matter to the Winslows because when Judy disappeared, they didn’t do shit, even though Mr. Winslow was a police officer. While we’ll never know the fate of Judy Winslow, we can at least hope that she didn’t become a drug addict and porn star like the actress who played her.

Situation comedies might be comedies, but they’re also situations, events that could happen to you in your own life. So it’s not just the jokes that bring you into the show, it’s these stories that you can relate to. It’s that the characters are actual people, not drawings or hand puppets. When a character ages five times faster than normal or goes missing without anyone noticing, it pulls you back out; it reminds you, “Oh, you’re just watching a show.”

And that’s when you become the butt of the joke. K

60 kitsch magazine, spring 2009

h s a fl n o i t fic ...continued from page 43

A love story:

They met on the first day of kindergarten. Three of them formed their own little group, instantly overcoming preconceptions about cooties through a shared love of Disney movies. Hannah, Julie, and Brian. They were inseparable. When they played “Peter Pan” Brian was Peter and Hannah and Julie were both Tinkerbell.

Hannah was sure that Brian liked her interpretation of Tinkerbell better than he liked Julie’s.

art by SADIE SMITH

An honest story:

I have learned that it is better not to tell the truth. When you tell the truth and he leaves you, it is harder. It is better not to tell the complete truth and to blame his leaving on that.

twetard thought: twitter is perfect for my lazy friendships. i can get updates on people’s lives without actually having to talk to them. awesome. just saw eight people i knew outside the library. funtimes

about sixteen hours ago from twetard

twatter ummm twitter friendships are NOTNOTNOT friendships. they basically are vessels for people obsessed w irrelevant details of their lives kthnx 5:13 PM Mar 8th from txt twetard @twatter ummm you passive aggressive much? SORRY for tweeting that i was hungry for vegan muffins. you dont HAVE to follow me... why bother?

5:24 PM Mar 8th from web twatter @twetard u no what? some tweets i CARE about (anderson coopz). others i MILDLY care about (joss whedon). others are LOW on the effing LIST 5:40 PM Mar 8th from web twetard @twatter again, you dont have to follow me. be one of those pretentious people who follows only the new york times and cnn, see if i care.

6:22 PM Mar 8th from web

twatter @twetard not being pretench just being honest. it MAKES PPL STALKERS. if u r eating funfetti frosting and katy perry just did, it doesn’t m 7:43 PM Mar 8th from web twatter @twetard ake you and her besties UUUGGGGHHH btw 140 character limit???!!!! wtf 7:43 PM Mar 8th from web twetard @twatter lol so i like to hear about pete wentz’s naked times before they hit perez. shoot me. at least now i dont have to text my friends 8:17 PM Mar 8th from web twetard @twatter when a hobo in the commons asks me how much for a handjob. tho the 140 character thing is annoying. but wevs can you imagine how 8:17 PM Mar 8th from web twetard @twatter cluttered ur homepage would be without it? it’d be like group blogging. talk about overshare 8:18 PM Mar 8th from web twatter @twetard i don’t no. maybz it’s ppl being way self-obsessed. maybz it’s like way avant garde or something. all i no is I AM SO OVER TWEETING 9:30 PM Mar 8th from web

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(a world of laughter)

a world of tears

Disney Princess Meet & Greet

Cute

the discerning college student’s guide to “the happiest place on earth”

by helen havlak and kathleen jercich

Finding Nemo’s Submarine Voyage Space Mountain

Big Thunder Mountain Railroad

Tom Sawyer’s Island Robinson Crusoe Treehouse

Peter Pan’s Flight

Lame

Mad Tea Party

Haunted Mansion

Jungle Cruise

Fun

Indiana Jones Pirates of the Caribbean

Goofy’s Playhouse Matterhorn Splash Mountain Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride

Small World

62

Shady

thank you emperor gnome

The Mulvihills

Claire and Maurits Edersheim

woodland gnome Eileen and Roberto Fischmann M.A. Marsh Peter and Eve Stone

garden gnome

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