Kitsch Magazine - Fall 2009 by Kitsch Magazine

kitsch

vol 8 no. 1

pop culture, politics, college, etc.

The Strange Creatures Issue featuring:

Sexy Zombies Segway-Riding Freshman Political Vampires Ghost Hunters

plus:

2012 Apocalypse?| Photo Essay: CU Tattoos| Roller Derby|Poetry

k i t s c h magazine

letter from the editor

fall 2009

kitsch magazine an independent student publication

editorial board editor-in-chief Rachel Louise Ensign

managing editor Allison Fischler

zooming in

art editor

Helen Havlak

Andrew Schwartz

zooming out

asst. art editor

watch and listen

head copy editor

Julissa Trevino

Kathleen Jercich

ach issue, Kitsch prides itself on providing a space for writers who want to investigate the innumerable odd and intriguing crevices of our world. So, after seven and a half years of publication, it’s not too surprising that we’ve found ourselves with an issue that focuses the eccentric souls that our writers have stumbled upon. In this magazine, we examine some interesting beings in the Ithaca area (Ithaca’s all-female roller derby team pg. 23, a delivery driver for Insomnia Cookies pg. 31, those who seek love on Craigslist pg. 20), the greater world (employees at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Hollister pg. 62, the right-wing founder of Urban Outfitters pg. 51, those who believe the apocalypse will occur in 2012 pg. 56), and different media (True Blood vampires pg. 84, the gay bad ass in movies and on TV pg. 79, friends who communicate by blogging about their dreams pg. 82.) While our writers followed the threads of their curiosities to form the diverse, investigative articles that are at the core of this magazine, this issue would never exist without our editors who provide their sage advice, as well as the copy editors, artists, and layout artists who transform word documents into a sexy, glittering publication. As always, Kitsch Fiction examines our bizarre world using narrative form. We are also very proud to be publishing poetry for the first time. “Strange,” I would argue, is an exceedingly positive adjective. To be strange so often just means that you were not afraid to follow your unique interests. You probably removed the cloak of normalcy and now want to embrace the strangeness of others with a free and open mind. How great! Maybe you ride a Segway or spend your time hunting ghosts at night in Central New York using tape recorders. Maybe you just really like cats. We publish these articles with a great fondness for all strange creatures, whether those creatures are the subject of a piece, the writer who has the far-out idea for an article, or, most likely, both. It is they who are at the heart of this publication. Rachel Louise Ensign

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cover art by SADIE SMITH

Sadie Smith

Adi Potashnick

fiction & poetry

webmaster

Adi Potashnick

Jen Yang

contributors

non-fiction writers

Julie Chen, Jocelyn Codner, Shane Dunau, James Fairbrother, Matt Flynn, Mariana Garces, Jenna Greenbaum, Heather Karschner, Sarah Matte, Stephanie Meissner, Michelle Rada, Michelle Spektor, Norah Sweeney, Laura Van Winkle, Kelly Wicks, Lucy Zheng

fiction & poetry writers

Daniel Kleifgen, Adam Miller, Samantha Ray, Roger Strang, Laura Van Winkle, Sara Woo

artists

Courtney Beglin, Spencer Chen, Steven Chen, James Fairbrother, Zac Kinkade, Claudia Mattos, Meaghan McSorley, Laura Miller, Cherrie Rhodes, Cat Schrage, Amy Shepsman, Josh Stansfield, Charles Wang, Lucy Zheng

layout artists

Julie Chen, Claire Cipriani, James Fairbrother, LaiYee Ho, Tiffany Jyang, Jee Lee, Meaghan McSorley, Cat Schrage, Jenny Zhao

associate copy editors

Bridget Cullings, Heather Karschner, Josh Mitrani, Alex Newman, Laura Van Winkle

advisors Michael Koch Department of English

Catherine Taylor Department of Writing

Cornell University

Ithaca College

Kitsch Magazine, 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. This publication is partially funded by Ithaca College’s Student Government Association.

Bite size

Zooming Out

Not Just for Kids Urban Outfitters Exposed Organic Living The End of the World Awful Jobs Guidelines for Waistlines The Chase

76 Zombie Chic 79 Gay without Giggles 82 Oh sheesh ya’ll, ‘twas a dream 84 Blood-sucking Politics

48 51 54 56 62 72 74

Watch and Listen

Table of Content Fact

Green - “washed” – Café That’s How He Rolls Love in the Time of Craigslist Ithaca SufferJets A Day in the Life Strangers in the Night Thrifting Ithaca Ghost Hunters Ivy Ink

8 9 10 12 13

Zooming In

14 17 20 23 26 31 34 37 42

Body Check College Diaries Office Space On the Plaza Sexy History

TableFiction of Content

photo by ANDREW SCHWARTZ

Fiction 41 59 65 69

Achieving equilibrium Going red Invisible Creatures Fault line

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12 36 71 71

Poetry

Girls and suckers Hunger Untitled There is no “original”

Letter From the Founders

Katie

Sam

In the first issue in which no contributors worked with the original creators of Kitsch, we ask these ladies to reflect upon journalism and the magazine that is their legacy.

We were going to start this note by saying that you’ve probably heard that it’s a tough time to be in journalism. That feels especially real right now — after years of watching buyouts, pay cuts, and layoffs unfurl and the magazines where we worked, Sam just found out that DoubleX, Slate’s start-up women’s magazine that hired her less than a year ago and launched in May, is closing up shop. And Katie fled the New York publishing world about six months ago after three years of working for a challenging, and ultimately stultifying, boutique publisher. But what we were planning to say next, and what we still will say, is that the picture is not entirely bleak. Magazines live on, whether printed on glossy pages and stashed by the toilet or housed online and consumed via smart phone. There will continue to be magazines. Maybe not as many, and maybe in tweaked forms. But the need for investigative journalism, satire, personal essays, engaging features, short fiction — that need is not going away. In a sense, the diversification in technology that is killing printhas also led to something we should all feel very good about as the future disseminators of information and ideas: the democratization of media consumption. And as the next generation of writers, we are tasked with making sure that this Brave New World of journalism does not become a dystopian nightmare where quality and professionalism fall by the wayside because audiences prefer photo slideshows to long-form journalism. The mixed-up marketplace needs us now more than ever — both our skills as writers and, even more, our big ideas. Written content can just as easily be pulled from “citizen journalists” or wannabe essayists who’ll do it for free. But what the industry really demands are creative, excited types who can have their hands

in everything — PR, social networking, art research, copy editing, business partnerships — who are constantly looking ahead (and at the competition), and who have fresh ideas about how to keep their publication relevant and inspired in a time when so many others struggle and shut down. When we started Kitsch in 2003, it was with a small staff of students with precisely those traits. We all loved to write, but more importantly, we were able to step back and see the type of publication that Cornell needed, and were resourceful enough to bring that vision to life. Many of the people in the industry now are failing at those goals. But given that the spirit of the original Kitsch magazine is still pulsing through these pages, we are confident that the crop of journalists coming out of Cornell has what it takes not just to succeed in a flailing industry at a personal level, but also to help make that industry just a little less flailing. Use your college time for everything it should be: to make friendships you’ll call upon and test for years, to stock up on guest speakers and lively panels, to focus on learning in a way the work force — sadly — just doesn’t facilitate, to test your ability to lead, and to soak up all the skills that you’ll need to be a journalist in the new age: Photoshop, HTML, Java, CSS, video producing, audio editing, the works. You’ll be amazed what you can jam into four years. But while you’re basking in the sweet, intense glow of being an undergrad, please do hurry. We need more of you out here, taking over the reigns from an old crop of editors who’ve lost their way.

- Sam Henig and Katie Jentelson

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art by ANDREW SCHWARTZ

You Suck!

The Secret Vacuum

New trends in body-altering products and procedures.

Haircut Wars by STEPHANIE MEISSNER

art by ANDREW SCHWARTZ

“Flowbee is the best and robo is a piece of junk!” reads Flowbee.com, the first Google hit for the search “vacuum haircut.” The Flowbee® is just one of the many vacuum cleaner haircutters on the market. Vacuum cleaner haircutters are sets of plastic pieces and razors that attach to your own vacuum cleaner for convenient home haircuts. If it sounds complicated, don’t worry, although perhaps you should. An instructional video is said to be on sale on the website, but there is no link to order one on the store page. Made popular, or at least prominent, by late-night infomercials in the late 80s and early 90s, vacuum haircutters have long since crossed the line from usable technology to pop culture fodder – or so you would think. Few people nowadays have the thick, black-tubed vacuums required to operate the haircutters, and hooking an electric haircutter up to one may seem silly and downright arcane. But, the literature on the Flowbee website suggests otherwise, as does that of RoboCut®, its archnemesis. The cosmology of the vacuum haircutter is somewhat convoluted. RoboCut.com cites the one-named “Alfred, Ph.D. EE” as the inventor of the haircutter. Approximately three sentences on the “About Us” page, lovingly entitled, “RoboCut’s Story,” are devoted to RoboCut and its supposed invention in 1979, while four large, adjective-ridden paragraphs are devoted to Alfred’s

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escape from Romania. A raft and friendly dolphins are involved in the latter, a desire for the same haircut every time is implicated in the former. The Flowbee website meets RoboCut’s claims with incredulity. “This is where Alfred lies to you (robocut inventer) [sic] looking you straight in the face,” it asserts. “If somebody knowingly lies to you once they can never be trusted.” Those, my friends, are fighting words. The Flowbee site, however, has no “About Us” page, no insights to share on the birth of the vacuum haircutter. They just stick their tongues out at RoboCut and then run away. A Salon.com article from 2000 informs us that Rick Hunt, a carpenter from San Diego, invented the Flowbee in the late 80s after observing the mad power of vacuum cleaners to remove sawdust from his hair. He sold them first out of his garage and then at county fairs before making it big on the infomercial circuit. While Flowbee’s main assault tactic is to identify itself as a better product, using a better technique to produces better cuts, RoboCut wants to make clear that it was the very first product of its sort on the market. It includes on its website a handy timeline to prove its point and prevent any confusion as to who was first. Highlights include: (1986) the Flowbee founder buys a RoboCut from magazine ad. (1988) RoboCut 15min Infomercial (1989) Flowbee 30 min Infomercial RoboCut also seems to be going for the novelty angle with links to “See it Used in Afghanistan” and “See it Used on the Moon.” Both websites have their fair share of testimonials from children of ailing parents, mothers of autistic children, and owners of picky kitties that sing the praises of their respective haircutters. There seems to be no end in sight to what is clearly a long and established rivalry. The real kicker, though, is that despite all the back and forth bullying, RoboCut.com also sells Flowbees!

r o s s e f o Pr

y x e S

by ANONYMOUS

“He leans over, and I can feel his hot breath on my mouth.”

art by Sadie Smith

Because sometimes real life makes a good story. Everyone says, “No, don’t go there, it’s bad.” I want my professor. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I personally think “bad” is having sex with a rhino or an endangered species of African purple-striped, horned monkey, not having sex with someone who’s 40. His voice makes my nerves stand on end. I wonder what he tastes like. I love the way he walks; it’s so unique and endearing. But what really catches my eye (among a hundred other things) is his curious sense of style. The half-formal half-casual way he dresses almost screams, “even though I know more than you, I can still be fun!” Please then, professor, show me how rough you play. Would you push me against the door of the lecture hall, your hands under my panties and your five o’clock shadow brushing against my breasts? My fantasy: one day after class, I’m slowly packing up. He gently says my name, the TAs are gone, the room is empty. “Yes?” I say. He locks the doors. “I’ve noticed that you’ve been restless in class,” he says as he shrugs out of his signature blazer. My eyes follow his movements, and it takes me a moment to respond. “N- I mean, no, of course not.” He loosens the collar of his button-down long sleeved shirt and walks towards me. He plucks the books from my hand and peels the backpack off my back. I can only stare at him. I realize that he knows. He leads me to the front row of seats and makes me sit down. He pulls out rope from his back pocket and ties my wrists together. Then he takes out a black cloth and ties it around my head, covering my eyes. “But I want to see you,” I protest. He leans over, and I can feel his hot breath on my mouth. “But that takes the fun out of guessing my intent,” he says. This is what I imagine while I sit in class, staring at his mouth, my fingers tightly gripping the pen I’m supposed to be taking notes with. I’m just one in a class of a few hundred, and the few times when we’ve made eye contact it hasn’t held. Should I just try? Should I visit him during his office hours and ask for a little help? He’s a government professor. A brilliant, charismatic man who knows his political philosophy and esoteric histories. And I’m thinking that makes him qualified to ride all night until the neighbors are well aware that the redcoats are coming.

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Office

Space

A peek inside English professor Barbara Correll’s office.

by KATHLEEN JERCICH

I notice it has a picture of Che Guevara on it. Yeah, I added that.

What’s your favorite thing in your office?

I bet. How do you get away with having him in the office? He’s charmed everyone. Sometimes I let him run around on the Arts Quad—everyone lying under a tree gets a visit! But I walk him here from home, which is about two miles away. So he’s pretty tired by the time he gets here.

I got this toy cash register from Big Lots — it actually works! I’m writing a book on love poems and money, and somewhere along the way, I started collecting “money” things.

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How did you decide to focus on Shakespeare? It just sort of happened, I guess. I feel like Shakespeare’s certainly appreciated by today’s students. I also try to include some of the other poets that often get forgotten — Marlowe, for example. Also, when I teach Renaissance Poetry I focus on the poetry of early modern women, which gets ignored by a lot of academics these days.

What kind of dog is this? Tully’s a Tibetan terrier. I got him last December, so he’s just about a year old now. I have two cats, but I just had a longing to know another species. I did a lot of research.

Why is he biting my elbow? He’s trying to herd you. He does this to a lot of students. It really helps break the ice when they’re nervous about seeing me.

What do you teach? Shakespeare at all levels, the Reading of Poetry, Renaissance Poetry… oh! And I’m doing Spenser next semester, which I’m very excited about because I’ve wanted to teach it for a long time.

photos by ANDREW SCHWARTZ

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I’d have mad hops. It’s something about their calves, I don’t know. I would also like to end all my sentences with “bra.” Kate Krantz-Odendahl ‘11 The inherent privileges that come from being a heterosexual white male in Western society. Also, I’d want to put my dick in things. Kate Conway ‘11 I’d love to be able to pee standing up. It’s harder to pee on things when you’re a girl. Guys can whip it out anywhere. Ellie Faust ‘12 I would like to be able to dress up as Spiderman and be believed. Anna Psiaki ‘12

If you could have one of the opposite gender’s traits, what would it be? ART BY LAIYEE HO

Boobs. I’d just stare at myself in the mirror all day. Dan Cloutier ’11 Being able to remember an entire address book worth of people. Steve Pietruszka ‘11 Psychological manipulation. Ryan Bishop ‘12

I’m transsexual, so…there are an array of traits that would be complementary. Anonymous

Girls and Suckers BY ROGER STRANG ART BY CAT SCHRAGE I’m in love with a girl who doesn’t know my name The giant squid has never been seen alive. Bits and pieces wash up on shore and scientists estimate its length from the number of suckers that believe.

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The ease of getting the opposite sex for short-term…affairs. I just think it’s easier for women, if they’re interested, to get someone of the opposite sex. Gavriel Wolf ‘11 Oh, shit! Multiple orgasms. That’s so key. Søren Jahan ‘11

poetry

Spam,Etymologically A tribute to all the ridiculous things you could never write your paper on...

by Rachel Louise Ensign

One of the few begrudging duties that I have as the editor of this magazine is accepting or rejecting e-mails that people try to send to our list-servs. The vast majority of these messages are what one would call “spam.” After spending a significant

art by Andrew Schwartz

amount of my time manually rejecting about three of these messages a day, I began to wonder: What exactly does this person masquerading as Wong Tang of Hong Kong, claiming he’ll give me 3 million dollars if I agree to be the next of kin of one of his Iraqi clients, and the person trying to get Kitsch Magazine to spend $100 on an exclusive new dentistry contact list have in common with a brand of canned meat? The term “spam,” the now common referent to electronic junk mail, originated in the early years of the Internet when abusive members of chatrooms would encroach on rival users’ messages by repeatedly typing the word “spam.” Sometimes they would even nefariously use larger text designs that would take a very long time to load. Remember, they were living in the Paleolithic era of the personal computer. These chatroom users were inspired to use the word by a Monty Python sketch that was popular at the time. In the sketch, people dine in a restaurant where all of the items on the menu contain the canned meat SPAM. A chorus sings “SPAM! SPAM!” loudly in the background, making it difficult for the restaurant’s patrons to carry on normal conversation. Like the chorus, they also began repeatedly sounding “spam,” and thus became “spammers.” Though the Hormel Foods Corporation’s official website says that they “oppose the act of spamming,” they don’t believe that proper usage of the new term denigrates their brand. They ask that “if the term is to be used, it should be used in all lower-case letters to distinguish it from our trademark SPAM, which should be used with all uppercase letters…We don’t appreciate it when someone else tries to make money on the goodwill that we created in our trademark or product image, or takes away from the unique and distinctive nature of our famous trademark.”

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n i g n i m

photos by HELEN HAVLAK

o o z

‘washed’ GreenCafé?

An investigation into the greenwashing accusations against Ithaca’s new Green Café.

hen Green Café opened its doors on March 27, it was hailed as a refreshing addition to the stagnating Collegetown economy and the possible harbinger of a Collegetown renaissance. Reviewers praised its urban-chic décor and gushed over the much-needed revitalization of the corner of College Ave. and Dryden. Soon, however, the discrepancies between Green Café’s name and sustainability practices began to catch the attention of students and locals. Most conspicuous to the average consumer was the lack of recycling bins, but the ubiquitous, high-draw light fixtures and fourteen plasma-screen TVs did little to help its image. As early as the April meeting of the University Neighborhoods Council, locals, such as Collegetown Council member

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by HELEN HAVLAK

Joanne Trutko, were voicing concerns over Green Café’s lack of sustainability. Trutko suggested that Green Café be put in contact with Cornell Dining, whose recent push toward sustainability has included the placement of compost bins in every dining hall. Today, Green Café has added two recycling bins for bottles and cans, complete with extra Reduce-Reuse-Recycle tubs on top of them, just in case you didn’t notice. In addition, their “Tork Xpressnap” napkin dispensers loudly boast “100% recycled napkins” and the disposable silverware is biodegradable. The attempts at sustainability seem to end there, however. Despite its large, open windows, the place is excessively lit with a flatscreen TV in every corner and in the bathrooms. Instead of re-

usable dishware, Green Café offers only disposable containers. And while some are paper or biodegradable plastic, Green Café doesn’t actually have compost bins, so everything goes to the landfills. The new bar, which began serving alcohol in September, is decorated with over 150 light bulbs that work with several projectors to create an energy-intensive nighttime light show. And the vast expanses of plate glass with uninsulated doors, while snazzy, seem unlikely to hold up well to the heating costs of an Ithaca winter. In terms of carbon neutrality, the greenest thing about Green Café is the display of plants by the door. In reality, though, Green Café is no less “green” than most of its Collegetown competitors. It is only the name that makes consumers feel cheated. In an April 23 review in The Cornell Daily Sun, Will Cordeiro and Brandon Ho wrote, “As we wrapped up our brief lunch, we found ourselves left with a stack of plastic containers, cutlery and packaging — almost a little too much to handle. One might have expected more environmental consciousness, given the café’s modernity and its appeal to a more sophisticated diner. How ironic was it? After all, we are talking about Green Café!” Green Café is not without defenders, most of whom disregard the issue of sustainability entirely. In an article for The Ithacan, Whitney Faber wrote, “This is not to say, though, that the café is any less sustainable than the other eco-friendly options in Ithaca. Holding close to its green title, the restaurant gets as many ingredients as possible from local farms and tries to use all compostable products.” Of course, this was before Green Café even offered recycling, and the conspicuous lack of compost bins makes this claim seem a little shaky. Since then, Green Café has faced increasing criticism for its supposed “greenwashing;” that is, using sustainability as an advertising tool without reflecting its principles in action. The term was coined in 1986 by Jay Westervald, who criticized hotels for encouraging guests to re-use towels to help save the environment. As Westervald pointed out, this was principally a cost-cutting, profit-driven measure, as most of the hotels did not pursue sustainable practices in any other areas. Some countries have even taken legal action against greenwashing – in the fall of 2007, Norway passed strict guidelines

“

I think

Green Café was

unprepared

”

for the expectations

of Ithacans.

on automobile advertisements. If auto manufacturers use terms like “green” or “clean” or “environmental” in their advertisements, they now face steep fines. No such legislation exists in most of the rest of the world, though Britain has issued warnings to auto manufacturers in the past. After all, “green” is just a color. In Norway, the “green” law

applies only to the auto industry, and no similar bill is on the table to require documentation of sustainable production, energy use, and recycling before allowing other types of businesses to call themselves “green.” The real question, then, seems to be intent. Wikipedia defines “greenwashing” as “the practice of companies disingenuously spinning their products and policies as environmentally friendly, such as by presenting cost cuts as reductions in use of resources.” Does Green Café really fit this definition? Other than the name, the owners never try to market themselves as sustainable. Rather, the use of “green” in their name was intended to describe the healthiness and freshness of the food. The website of the original Green Café in Manhattan explains the source of its title: “As the name implies, all of our items are made fresh daily.” And on July 3rd, Ithaca’s Green Café tweeted, “the Green Café is a name taken from our sister store in NYC not necessarily the ‘Green’ earth-friendly meaning.” If greenwashing is a deliberate attempt to spin eco-friendly rhetoric to fool consumers, then it is a problematic label for Green Café. The ambiguity of the name seems in no way malicious; if anything, the owners were just unprepared for Ithaca’s expectations. Green Café’s real problem is that they chose to open their new location in one of the few communities in America that would expect them to live up to their name: Ithaca, New York. Ithaca is the city in which, according to the Ithaca Journal, more residents voted for Ralph Nader than George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential elections. If you open any restaurant, store, or business in Ithaca with the word “green” in the title, residents will expect you to fulfill the sustainable associations that they have with the term. If you don’t, you risk public outcry and the loss of any hard-line sustainable customers. In Ithaca, enough people are highly educated and hyper-aware of environmental issues that even if they don’t boycott you for your lack of compost, they will boycott you for perceived hypocrisy. Is this, then, a simple case of the Ithacan hippies overreacting? One gauge of the name’s implications is the Google rankings for the search “green café.” The sixth entry, after Ithaca’s Green Café but before the original Manhattan Green Café, is a link to the web site for Java Green Café in Washington, DC. A self-termed “eco-café,” Java Green boasts exclusively organic and “Fair Trade” products, 100% wind power, real chinaware for sit-in eaters, entirely biodegradable take-out containers, and a

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vegetarian-only menu with vegan options. It would be hard to run a more sustainable eatery. Java Green Café obviously thought the inclusion of “green” in its name would advertise its eco-friendliness. Ithaca, apparently, agrees. Even if the Ithaca Green Café is a case of mistaken identity, they are unwittingly capitalizing on the connotations of “green.” Not every consumer looks past the conspicuous recycling bins and recycled napkins. Joanna, a Cornell senior, said that environmental concerns “definitely play a part in why I come here. I feel much better with sustainable options.” The unlucky combination of name and place has forced the management of Ithaca’s Green Café to stay on their toes. After they came under heavy attack for the lack of recycling, Green Café tried to respond as quickly as possible. On July 3, Green Café posted a series of tweets assuring customers that “we are now recycling all bottles [and] cans and provide compostable plates for our patrons... ALSO, we welcome anyone to come in with their own wares or containers. (get them weighed first upon entry.)” The fledgling café faces criticisms on almost every side. Trying to justify their practices, Holly Kintz, the catering manager at Green Café, told The Ithacan, “It’s not always cost effective to start with all green wares, but we hope to do it in the future.” Chelsea Clarke, a Cornell senior who is very active in the Sustainability Hub, defended Green Café. Last year, the Sustainability Hub put together a restaurant sustainability survey to gather information on compost, recycling, and waste disposal practices in Collegetown. Many restaurants chose not to participate for

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fear of negative publicity. Green Café, she said, via e-mail, “did not wish to participate in the survey but they did say they would be willing to partner with students (perhaps in a class or otherwise) or with other local organizations if the opportunity was presented to help improve their sustainability/ environmental impact. Becoming more sustainable costs time and money, and they are a business trying to make a profit.” Collegetown needed a facelift. Green Café has added an attractive, open-windowed place where busy students can pick up food or meet friends. If they had picked any other name, Green Café would have avoided the negative press entirely. Though the color “green” was first used by the environmental movement in the late 1970s, it has only come into mainstream use recently. Green Café’s mistake was an accident of location. Said Clarke, “I think Green Café was unprepared for the expectations of Ithacans that resulted from their name.” The reality of Green Café’s new location is that, eventually, they will have to meet local expectations for sustainability. Until they do so, they will likely continue to unintentionally greenwash unwary customers and alienate Ithaca’s large population of environmentally sensitive consumers. We, in turn, need to be patient. Going green can be very expensive, especially for new restaurants that still need to establish themselves in a precarious economy. The last thing we want to do is drive Green Café out of business and lose its shiny new presence on College Ave. Still, it’s time to put the “green” back in “Green Café.”

That’s How

photos by HELEN HAVLAK

He Rolls

Kitsch gets an exclusive, tell-all interview with the infamous Segway Freshman. by MICHELLE SPEKTOR

ou may have seen him zooming along in the bicycle lane of the Thurston Avenue Bridge. Or maybe you’ve noticed his Segway parked at a bike rack on campus. Maybe you’re even one of the several thousand fans of “Segway Kid” on Facebook. All of the hype raises the question: who IS that Segway guy, and what is his story? Well, anxious readers, to answer these pressing inquiries, Kitsch has exclusively interviewed Mr. Segway himself.

William Wagner: Segway Master

eet Segway guy: William Wagner. He’s a Cornell freshman who lives in High Rise Five and is a diehard fan of Beethoven, Mozart, and all things classical. He is double majoring in Economics and Philosophy in hopes of becoming an investment banker. Hailing from Palo Alto, California, William is also a Republican who appreciates any opportunity to share his views. He is active in the Cornell Forensics Society and of course, the Cornell Republicans. William also manages

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undergraduate at your University with one is even cooler. But if you’ve ever thought about trying to steal it (he doesn’t use a bike lock to secure it to the bike racks), think again. “You can rest it just about anywhere,” William explains, “not only do very few people know how to actually glide one, but they have a very comprehensive electronic antitheft system.” He simply leans his Segway against a building or a bike rack, locks it via an electronic key, and the 130-pound Segway is then impossible to ride and extraordinarily difficult to move or lift.

Segway Survival

“”

to make time for the Mutual Investment Club of Cornell and the Cornell Alpha Fund, two student-run organizations that manage real investment funds. It’s hard to imagine how a first semester freshman has time for all of this, and like many at Cornell, William finds that it’s hard to schedule downtime. “I imagine I’ll learn to manage my time better. Somehow or another my time gets wasted because I end up studying the weekend before the prelim. I assumed that I would outgrow that sort of thing after high school.”

A Segway Family

illiam, an only child, grew up speaking Romanian at home with his parents, who immigrated to the United States in the 1980s. For this Eastern European family, one favorite pastime involves Segway duels with umbrellas in the rain. That’s right—his parents have Segways too! At least his father does, and his mother will be getting one in the near future. “My father wanted to get one, with all the hype and whatnot, and I persuaded him to get me one as well,” William said. That was about two years ago. So instead of a hot car to drive to school every day during his senior year of high school, William had his Segway. When asked if his Segway attracted as much attention in high school as it does here at Cornell, William explained, “It was novel, I suppose, but not altogether unexpected.” Palo Alto is located in the Silicon Valley near Google’s headquarters, the Googleplex, where, according to William, everyone rides around on Segways. So the sight of him “gliding” his Segway around his hometown didn’t turn as many heads as it does here in Ithaca.

Segue to the Segway

n addition to its elaborate security system, the Segway also has a system by which it adjusts itself in order to balance the rider. Because of this, Segways are extremely safe, and it is very difficult to fall off of one. Regardless, New York State Law requires Segway riders to wear a helmet at all times, though this is not required for riders of the much more dangerous bicycle. The only way to legitimately fall off of a Segway, William explains, “is if you’re doing silly things, like trying to go over particularly uneven off-road terrain or very slippery, wet grass,” recalling the time he was speeding through wet grass in front of Bailey Hall and completely wiped out and face planted into the mud. It’s also possible to have two people ride a Segway at once, but since this involves a complicated arrangement in which each person balances on one foot, William cautions against doing so: “It’s a bad idea, both for safety reasons and,

illiam’s Segway is an innovative and convenient vehicle for getting around Cornell’s hilly campus. He decided to bring his Segway to school when he realized that shipping it all the way from California cost less than buying a bicycle in Ithaca. And, well, it’s a Segway. Segways are cool, and being the only

18. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

Segways are inherently epic.

well, the fact that you end up really going slower than if you were both walking at a moderately brisk pace.” Traction is very important for the Segway; as long as the wheels can grip the ground, the Segway remains upright. This is why William (along with the rest of us) is eager to see how his Segway will perform in the snow. He’s confident that his Segway will be durable enough to handle Ithaca’s winter, but if it can’t, he could always upgrade to the Segway X2, which has snow tires and a modified balancing system designed to accommodate rougher terrains. William says his Segway functions just fine in the rainy fall weather. “Rain doesn’t hurt it. If it were submerged in water, that would be an issue, but the occasional drizzle is perfectly fine. The rain is a lot of fun, especially in a very brisk wind.” Segways can travel up to 12.5 miles per hour, which is super convenient if you need to get to the top of Libe Slope or if you’d rather

not tackle the steep walk back to campus from the Commons. “It works,” William said, “The Segway stays absolutely perpendicular. You would never run the risk of falling off or sliding backwards.” After its long day of traveling, the Segway rests in the bike storage basement of High Rise Five at night. Since Segways run entirely on electricity, William charges his Segway overnight so that it’s good to go again the next day. In the beginning of the year, William stored his Segway in his dorm room, but it was quickly deemed a fire hazard by residential staff. “For the week or so in which I did [store the Segway in my dorm room], Segwaying up and down the halls of High Rise Five was the most exhilarating experience.”

The Segway Lifestyle

ome of you have probably cheered “YAY SEGWAYYYYY!!!” from your car windows when William glides past you on his way to class. Or maybe you’ve thrown an angry glance at him when he zooms ahead of you as you’re struggling to pedal up a hill on your bicycle. Either way, it’s pretty thrilling to have a Segway on Cornell’s campus, and William certainly doesn’t mind the fame. “I suppose I’m a bit of a local celebrity,” William

”

admits. “I think that’s fine. I enjoy it.” Although being the only person on campus with a Segway is exciting, William wishes that more people on campus would hop on the Segway bandwagon. “One thing I do wish is that more people got Segways so we could start a proper Segway Polo league here. That is a legit sport! It’s great fun.” If Segway Polo, or other Segway sports like Segway Chicken (think the tractor scene in Footloose, but with Segways) sound good to you, be reminded that Segways retail between $5,000 and $6,000. That is why William views his Segway as an alternative to a car. “It’s better than a car, in that it’s a fraction of the price, you don’t need to worry about parking or gas, and you can take it literally everywhere.” Since he’s bought the Segway, he hasn’t had to deal with any significant maintenance costs. As for other modes of transportation on campus, William believes how one gets around, whether it is by bicycle, longboard, or simply on foot, is a personal decision. “I think those are all brilliant, and you should pick what works for you.” For William, the choice was clear. “Segways are inherently epic, [but] it does not go to my head. It is, after all, just a particularly fun toy. That being said, it’s very fun.”

zooming in in 19. 19. zooming

art by MEAGHAN MCSORLEY

20. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

ove in the time of Craigslist by JOCELYN CODNER

ersonals, Missed Connections, Miscellaneous Romance, Casual Encounters: Craigslist makes it easy to define the type of relationship you are looking for. Unlike other dating services, Craigslist is free, easy and very accessible. This makes it a very popular site for those looking to find a long-term relationship, connect with an old friend, or just get a little action. San Francisco native Craig Newmark began Craigslist in 1999, when he wanted to set up a free classified Web site to keep friends informed of community events. It has since become one of the largest Web sites in the United States and also one of the top objects of obsession. In Ithaca’s college community, it’s hard to find someone who doesn’t enjoy slipping onto Missed Connections to read the adorable “I almost said hi but was too nervous” posts. Yet, I hardly know anyone who has seriously used Craigslist as a dating service. Students don’t seem to have much of a use for the site. In fact, the range of ages for most of the posts are mid to late 20s all the way up to 60s. This demographic doesn’t have the forums to meet other people that are available to college kids, i.e., parties, classes, events and clubs. Because I was extremely baffled by online dating in general, and unfamiliar with personal ads, I thought I’d do a little investigating to see what Craigslist brought to the table. While clicking through various posts, I came across an adorable 21-year-old virgin looking to find someone to break the ice, a sports fan looking for a drinking buddy, and a student trying to find a “gloryhole” on campus. I decided I needed to dive deeper into the multifaceted world of Craigslist. So I did what most people do: I posted. I began with a standard Women Seeking Men post. It was mostly fact based, e.g. who I was

and what I’d be looking for. After three days, my post yielded about 25 responses. Many of them were very sincere. Respondents attached pictures, provided adequate credentials as to why they could “be my man,” and expressed a deep desire to meet. Some were very original and lengthy – it was quite the ego boost. After posting my true-to-life ad, I decided to get a little creative. I posted in Men Seeking Women as a mid-20s male looking for a down-toearth lady in the Tompkins County area. That post generated 12 responses in three days. The replies I received were shorter and less impressive than the replies for my Women Seeking Men. Most of them were only one or two sentences.

“

It’s so much easier than spending hours in a bar, hoping to get picked up by last call. A few of them were responses my fake man would never have considered, girls just looking to hook up for a wild night. But most seemed to be local girls who wanted a simple life, just like my fake man. Through this experiment I realized that it is indeed possible to find nice people in Ithaca through Craigslist. With so many options, I could’ve gone on a date a night for a month and had my pick. It’s so much easier than spending

zooming in 21.

hours in a bar, hoping to get picked up by last call. I also responded to posts in both the Personals and the Missed Connections sections. I did not contact a Casual Encounters poster; frankly, their graphic posts and genitalia shots scared me off. I requested an interview from dozens of posters and got four responses. I also received three responses from the ever-present “bots,” a huge Craigslist hindrance. “Bots” are automated responses that try to get posters to sign up for different online dating sites. Andrew Etherington, an Ithaca College sophomore psychology major, agreed to sit down with me and talk about his post in Men Seeking Women. In his post, he offered to make dinner for anyone interested in hanging out. “I was just curious,” Etherington says. “The people who answered weren’t people I’d generally meet. It opened me up to a different group.” This was Etherington’s first post on Craigslist. One Cornell student, who has asked to be referred to as CL, says she reads posts fairly often. She too was driven by curiosity. Her unconventional post read:

“I wanted to say ‘hi’ but was with people. I know you’ll probably never read this, but you were just too cute – and this is a bit cathartic.” This 34-year-old Cornell alumnus, who requested to be referred to as Anonymous, wasn’t expecting anything from his post. “The girl that was eyeing with me was what, 20? I’m 34. How flattering is that? And what are the chances of her reading it? Zero,” Anonymous says. “The act of writing it was cleansing or cathartic because… it just gets that stuff out of my head, I guess.” 33-year-old local Sam Johns enjoys the laid-back atmosphere of Craigslist, especially Missed Connections, which he has used several times. “I like the fact that you can post on Craigslist and forget about it,” Johns says. “If something came from a post, great, but there is no pressure. Introducing myself to attractive women has always been awkward for me.” Like Johns, CL sees the attraction of Craigslist in its lack of pressure. “I think it’s easy,” she says. “There’s less chance for painful rejection, and there’s really nothing to lose but time.” The cushion that Craigslist provides for social interac-

“ ” There’s less chance for painful rejection, and there’s really nothing to lose but time.

“I want to speak plainly and without hurry. I want to share experience and smile. Responses with no more than three sentences please; do not waste words like we tend to.” “I was largely disappointed,” says CL of her responses. “Two men sent me haikus, poorly written, and many just say basics, like age, job, briefly their interests. It’s disappointing how little people have to say about themselves beyond that superficial level.” The Missed Connections section gives people a space to find that special stranger who got away. Feeling adventurous, I wrote a Missed Connection myself about a fictional “class crush” and got only one response. In comparison to the double-digit responses from my personals, I could tell that Missed Connections isn’t really meant for finding or talking to people. It’s more for yourself. Sifting through the mass, I stumbled across this archetypal post: He had seen a very cute girl at Starbucks, and they had made eye contact and even shared a smile. The end reads:

22. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

tion is appealing. Posters can “meet” people slowly by chatting and discovering who they are first before meeting in person. Craigslist personals seem to be most widely used by homosexual men. In five days, the number of Men Seeking Women posts in Ithaca was 15. In the same amount of time, there were 82 posts in Men Seeking Men. For gay men, using Craigslist means they can be sure that who they are talking to already shares, or is at least interested in, their sexual identity, something that is not always so easy to tell at a bar or party. With chat rooms, blogs and online games forming a new realm of social interaction, it makes sense that the act of courting, too, has expanded to the virtual world. And like text messages and Facebook “pokes,” Craigslist’s virtual romance services can provide an effective propellant for real world relationships. Was it the cashier at Sammy’s that posted about how cute you looked while trying to make sure sauce didn’t drip down your arm as you ate a huge slice last Sunday? There’s only one way to find out.

photo by CHERRIE RHODES

e f f Su ing

v o a L , g c vin a o h h S t

: s t r Je

owntown Ithaca’s Cass Park Ice Rink, contrary to popular belief, teems with activity even without the ice. When hockey players and figure skaters aren’t filling the space during the winter, an ever-growing team of fourteen dedicated and beautifully riotous roller derby chicks rolls in. They are the SufferJets of Ithaca, NY. Their name refers to the suffragettes like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony whose work they strive to carry on in roller skates and fishnet stockings. Women come to the SufferJets from every occupation and age group, ranging from eighteen to forty-eight. MamaDusa, a SufferJet named because she is a mother of two and has Rapunzel-like dreadlocks akin to the reptilian tresses of Medusa, commented, “We have nurses, scientists, massage therapists, acupuncturists, and moms.” Founded in the summer of 2007, the SufferJets practice between two and three times a week and have seven bouts per season. The season lasts through the summer and well into the fall. They play by the official rules of the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA) and are part of a league of eastern

and

r e w o irl P

by NORAH SWEENEY teams who come to bout from places as far away as Wilmington, DE and as close as Rochester, NY. Ithaca will soon have its own league, however, appropriately called the Ithaca League of Women Rollers. This league consists, thus far, of the SufferJets; the BlueStockings will join the league next season. Every woman can find a place among the SufferJets. Mass Extinction, a paleontologist at Ithaca’s Museum of the Earth, took up roller derby after moving to Ithaca because there was no team for her first love, rugby. She attended a practice on her second day in Ithaca and fell in love all over again: “I’ve always liked team sports. And I love the fact that you can hit someone and then laugh about it later.” MamaDusa, a mason, woodworker, home schoolteacher, and fastidious vegan, stumbled upon the SufferJets and the sport of roller derby online. “I was looking for roller skates, so I posted to Craigslist, and there it was. I went the next day, and I haven’t left.”

zooming in 23.

Bee Bee DeVille, who has been skating with the SufferJets since their debut as a team, loves that roller derby is “so femalecentered... I never played sports, but I knew that I could do this because I used to roller-skate with my mom when I was little.” Twice a week, the SufferJets drop their careers and everyday personas, lace up their classic roller skates, and prepare for their upcoming bouts. Practice with the SufferJets is a unique combination of skate dancing to quasi-feminist jams like Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” and David Bowie’s “Suffragette City,” and an intense workout and drill regimen led by the ironically mesomorphic Coach Tiny Bubbles, whose name is elusively related to champagne. There is no shortage of shoving and falling during practices. Female Trouble, an exuberant derby chick and teacher originally from Owego, NY, said that “practices are much scarier than the bouts. We’re pretty rough on each other.” Female Trouble went on to show off her injuries: a fellow SufferJet, Golden Diapers, did permanent damage to her elbow. “Now I think about her every time I scratch my head,” she said. But what’s truly incredible about a SufferJets practice session, apart from the rainbow-striped socks and purple penguin boxers that color the team’s practice wardrobe, is the positive

art by CATHERINE SCHRAGE

rink for a mini love-in. They pass around compliments and bits of encouragement to raise the already through-the-roof morale. “The team we bouted against last week said that they strive for the bond that we have,” gushed Bee Bee DeVille. “I’m more afraid of letting everyone down than of getting hurt in a bout.” As always, the practice ends with their team chant, shouted at dangerous decibels, “Suffer! Suffer! SufferJets!” The SufferJets are actually a spinoff of an earlier team. The founding members of the team formerly skated for the Syracuse Psycho Dolls, and decided to give roller derby a chance to flourish in Ithaca. Interest in the SufferJets has grown considerably; according to MamaDusa, “It was hard to put enough girls together to skate against another team last year. Now, there’s great talent to choose from.” The surge of interest in roller derby gave the SufferJets the new ability to do extensive service for their home crowd. As MamaDusa said of the Ithaca community, “They are SufferJets. We play for Ithaca.” A percentage of the proceeds from every bout is given to a local charity, like Meals on Wheels, Books Behind Bars, or, most recently, the Big Brothers and Sisters program. MamaDusa also commented, “We do a lot of comenergy that each one of these fierce and initially intimidating munity outreach with kids too. We talk to them about the women puts into every practice. hows and whats of roller derby, what women’s suffrage Even the infamous hazing ritual for new SufferJets, or “fresh is, and why we do everything, even sewing our uniforms, meat,” has its bits of encouragement. This rite of passage, called ourselves.” the “Meat Grinder,” involves the fresh meat doing laps around the The SufferJets also promote good, clean fun in the derby track while being mercilessly pounded by senior Suffer- Ithaca Community. The “Derby on Draft” program that Jets. But Bee Bee DeVille was eager to add that “we always cheer the SufferJets have started with several local bars ensures the fresh meat through the Meat Grinder.” that some of the profit generated by Ithaca’s healthy par At the end of every hitying appetite goes to support the team. The SufferJets five and smile-filled also hosted a screening of the new roller practice, the entire derby-themed film “Whip It,” starring Ellen team, Coach Tiny Page and Drew Barrymore, to introduce Bubbles, and the shrinking minority of non-believers the referees sit to the coolness of all-women’s roller derin a circle in the by. middle of the Ithaca’s increase in roller derby fanaticism shows no signs of slowing. The browraising blue stockings that the SufferJets wore to their season finale bout against the Greater Toronto Area Derby Debutantes photo by CHERRIE RHODES on October 10 were a preview of sorts. 2010 will be the inaugural A member of the Toronto Derby Debuntantes attempts season for the Ithaca’s second roller derby team, the BlueStockings. Their name to regain composure after being slammed by Golden comes from the “bluestocking clubs” of the Diapers.

“

we always cheer

the fresh meat

”

through the Meat Grinder.

24. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

art by CATHERINE SCHRAGE

eighteenth century, which were literary salons hosted by women with sophisticated literary tastes and unprecedented progressive leanings. The season finale bout drew an enormous crowd, literally filling the seating area at Cass Park to the edge of the derby track. Some chose to sit on the rink’s hard, freezing floor in the hopes that they’d have a close encounter with a derby chick fallen victim to an especially tough slam. Perhaps fitting for a town with such a huge student population, a SufferJets roller derby bout is reminiscent of a day in class – if that class involved outlandish makeup, astounding athleticism, and an upbeat musical soundtrack. Bitches Bruze, the emcee for the bout, serves as the head lecturer. She introduces the basics of the game to the uninitiated before the ruckus begins. The lesson is aided by a group of super-fans called “Jeerleaders” who sprint at full speed around the derby track during timeouts and breaks in matching red jumpsuits, leading the crowd in cheers for the SufferJets. There are five players for each team on the track at a time. Points are scored by the jammers, who score by passing the other team’s blockers on the track. Of the “pack,” the four remaining players, there is a pivot, who sets the pace for the rest of the pack, and three of the aforementioned blockers. A derby bout is played in two thirty-minute periods, which are divided into two-minute segments called “jams.” The jams are oftentimes interrupted by Ithaca’s Bangs Ambulance Service EMTs, rolling stretchers onto the rink to retrieve players with sprained ankles and torn ligaments. But the risk of injury doesn’t seem to worry the SufferJets in the least. MamaDusa described being hit as “really fucking awesome. I look forward to it. I love getting hit, and I love hitting.” She then went on to say, “But roller derby is no more violent than football, rugby or hockey. And we wear full body padding, mouth, elbow, wrist, and knee guards. We play by a strict set of rules, and play against teams that play by a strict set of rules. First and foremost, we re-

spect the other athletes, and hang out with the other team after every bout.” This camaraderie was clear following the Suffer-Jets’ swift defeat of the Toronto Derby Debutantes. The teams ditched their “Derby Widows,” those significant others who must share their partners with roller derby, while they partied in style at the Pixel Lounge in Collegetown after the bout. The Ithaca SufferJets, along with Women’s Roller Derby in general, have done something truly remarkable in the arena of sports. They have combined the competition and excitement of notoriously brutish mainstream sports with camaraderie and girl power. The terms “weak link” and “benchwarmer” are absent from the SufferJets’ vocabulary. MamaDusa added, “When people come to bouts for the first time, they don’t know what to expect. There’s a campy aspect with makeup and stuff, but everything that we do is 100 percent full on. What you see is real women putting their hearts, blood, sweat, and tears on the track. We hope that people walk away with an appreciation of the sport, and have a hell of a lot of fun at the same time… It doesn’t get any better, according to me.”

art by CATHERINE SCHRAGE

zooming in 25.

A Dayin

theLife

A look into the lives of typical (and not so typical) representatives of each Cornell college.

by JULIE CHEN

ne of the downsides to attending a university whose motto is “Any Person, Any Study” is that students often have little clue as to what exactly those taking different academic paths than they do study. To remedy this saddening dearth of cross-college understanding, our intrepid reporter conducted interviews with seven students from the seven undergraduate colleges at Cornell to find out what a day in their life entails.

ARTS & SCIENCES

College: Arts and Sciences Name: Jill Lyon Year: Junior Major: Government Hometown: Scottsdale, AZ

How did you decide on your specific college? I wanted a liberal arts education. I have so many interests: religion, history, government, international relations, languages, etc. Arts and Sciences was perfect for me. If you weren’t at your college, what other school would you have attended? I entertained ideas of being an architect because I’m good at art and math, and I think I’d do well in architecture, but I just don’t love it as much as the general liberal arts subjects I’ve been taking classes in. Stereotype: “It’s all just Arts & Crafts.” Truth: You can’t say that Arts and Sciences isn’t difficult. There’s always tons of reading and it’s impossible to read everything. Also, I’ve changed my mind about what you can do with certain arts majors. I came in thinking that a major like English would be rather useless. I was so wrong. You can do so much with an English major. If you look at accomplished people, what they’re doing now had nothing to do with their major. Being in Arts and Sciences is about becoming an educated person, to be able to understand more complicated thoughts.

26. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

What do you like most about your college? There are thousands of classes I’d love to take in Arts. It’s the shit, because there are so many languages. I’m taking intensive Arabic now. I also want to take Hindi and Spanish. Some of the coolest classes I’ve taken are International Film and Cryptology, in addition to the amazing government classes taught by Professor Kramnick. Future plans? I’m thinking about a government job; perhaps the CIA, perhaps a think tank, perhaps policy. I want a job in which I can continue to learn, but I want to be in the real world. I also want to represent America in diplomacy. How would you rate the difficulty of your schoolwork, with zero being extremely easy and 10 being extremely challenging? Seven and a half to eight, depending on the number of credits. I’m working really hard, but I’d cry if I were in engineering. My classes aren’t curved, so I don’t really feel any competition. Everyone’s so ambitious, though. What’s your favorite book? Toni Morrison, “Beloved” and Gabriel García Márquez, “A Hundred Years of Solitude.” If you could choose to live in a different era, what would you choose? I would live in the 70s — it was a great time of questioning the government, of sexual rebellion and of Nixon. art by ANDREW SCHWARTZ

ENGINEERING

College: Engineering Name: Andy Mishra Year: Freshman Major: Material Science Hometown: Houston, TX

How did you decide on your specific college? I like math and science; thus, engineering. I hate English and history; thus, engineering. If you weren’t at your college, what other school would you have attended? I probably would’ve gone to Arts and Sciences and studied neurobiology. Or maybe even East Asian studies. Stereotype: “Enginerd?” Truth: If you take that to mean that all engineers do is eat, study and sleep, then it’s pretty accurate during weekdays, but we also party just as much as any other school on the weekends. Personally, I like to build computers — I enjoy tinkering with parts and assembling them into full computers. I know quite a number of other engineers who also like computers, but we’re not geeks — we like normal things, too.

What do you like most about your college? I like the structured academic plan of Engineering. I like knowing what I’m studying and [the] point behind it. Also, Duffield is beautiful.

Future plans? Right now, I’m considering going to med school, but I would also like to work to develop new technologies, helping solve problems for the future. How would you rate the difficulty of your schoolwork, with zero being extremely easy and 10 being extremely challenging? About an eight. What’s your favorite book? Anything by Michael Crichton, especially “The Andromeda Strain” and “Prey.” If you could choose to live in a different era, what would you choose? The warring times of Japan, for sure. The Japanese language and culture have always attracted me. If you could come back as any animal, which would you choose? I’m calm and logical sometimes and adventurous when the time calls for it, so I think I’d be a hawk.

Human Ecology College: College of Human Ecology Name: Kelton Minor Year: Sophomore Major: Design and Environmental Analysis (DEA) Hometown: Boulder, CO

How did you decide on your specific college? I wanted a human-centered functionalist design education with a robust liberal arts foundation. If you weren’t at your college, what other school would you have attended? Either architecture or engineering. I respect the work ethic, drive and relentless commitment of those students in particular. Stereotype: “There are no guys in Hum Ec.” Truth: There are virtually no guys in DEA. When I went to my first information session during orientation it felt like I was entering a sorority. There are guys in DEA: about one for every 10 girls. But in Hum Ec as a whole,

there’s probably closer to a 4:6 guy girl ratio, so it’s not that disproportionate. Still, the girl to guy ratio is definitely an issue. Stereotype: “What the hell is DEA anyway?!” Truth: No one at Cornell knows what I’m talking about when I mention that I’m majoring in DEA. They think it’s the Drug Enforcement Agency. That’s nice, but it often frustrates me to think that Cornell alumni (the backbone of Cornell) and prospective employers do not know what to make of my major either. There’s no design major like this anywhere else because nowhere else will you find a major that blends together such a broad selection of related fields and practices; interdisciplinary is an understatement. What do you like most about your college? Human Ecology is science, design and policy applied to the real world. We get to do undergraduate research in a graduate context. My classes are so intimate — the smallest has 12 students.

zooming in 27.

What are you studying? Personally I am fascinated by “sustainable” technology and human attempts to create simple fix-alls for complex self-inflicted failings. In an age of “eco-everything” and “green environmentalism,” I find vehement disgust and fervent interest in the level of consumer deception that the majority of corporations can sustain without consumer awareness. Beyond green-washed super markets, there is a major movement right now to build “new sustainable buildings” in an eco-revolution of sorts. There is no such thing as new sustainable building. Any new construction is worse for the environment at a baseline than no new construction. I wish Cornell would realize this, as a respected institution. In DEA, we learn how to design, create and retrofit existing spaces to address the present problem instead

of creating an additional one. Future plans? This next year I will study abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark after backpacking through the Alps in the summer. I will study Danish architecture and sustainable policy. If you could choose to live in a different era, what would you choose? I would live in Germany in the 1920s. Bauhaus fan club. If you could come back as any animal, which would you choose? Cave scorpion, because transparent flesh would enable me to see my innards and because impaling people with a poisonous, segmented tail is a lifelong dream.

HOTELIES College: Hotel Administration Name: Heon Lee Year: Freshman Hometown: Seoul, Korea

How did you decide on your specific college? In Korea, there are these hotel “complexes” — large companies that own and operate hotels, department stores, amusement parks and managing these seemingly very different businesses all seems so interesting to me. The hotel school here is a great jumpstart into the industry and the opportunities are amazing. If you weren’t at your college, what other school would you have attended? I’d probably do Applied Economics and Management because that’s business as well, but I find it weird how it’s in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Stereotype: “Hotelies don’t have to study.” Truth: It’s true that hotelies do more work-related activities compared to the students at other colleges, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have academic classes, too. We study hard and play hard — we know how to balance studying and enjoying a social life. Stereotype: “Hotel administration is only about hotels” Truth: This is a very common misconception, but here’s the truth: we’re a business school with a focus on hotel administration. We learn all the aspects of business that any other business school would offer. We can go into other fields later: I have friends who want to work on Wall Street, do real estate, all kinds of things. Our education prepares us well for any kind of business career, and the hotel concentration is just the icing on the cake.

28. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

What do you like most about your college? Our college is really small and so it’s also very tight-knit. People get really close, and that’s good, because in business it’s necessary to form relationships with others. We also get real hotel experience; having a hotel on campus and the ability to work there is big. Other things include our cool traditions, how we have to dress up on Fridays, having formal seminars given by successful businesspeople, and just the overall professional atmosphere.

Future plans? I’m thinking about hospitality and sports management. For example, I love soccer, and Manchester United is a huge company with its own marketing, advertising, management sectors, so working for a team like that would be amazing. However, I’m a Korean citizen, so I have to go back to Korea for military service for a year. I’m thinking of going back after sophomore year, doing that for a year, and returning to my studies and getting a job in America right after I graduate. How would you rate the difficulty of your schoolwork, with 0 being extremely easy and 10 being extremely challenging? Right now, I’d say a seven. I imagine junior and senior years to be much more challenging. If you could choose to live in a different era, what would you choose? I would go back to the 1980s, the entry into the digital age. It was such an exciting era: an era in which one couldn’t possibly imagine the speed at which technology progressed. If you could come back as any animal, which would you choose? I’d be a bear – hibernating for months at a time would be interesting.

College: Architecture, Art and Planning Name: Nick Faust Year: Sophomore Major: Fine Art Hometown: Cincinnati, OH

What are you studying? My focus is on classic Catholic iconography, updating religious paintings and masculinity and sexuality in comic books. Future plans? I book concerts and I DJ, and I’m quite involved in the local music scene. I plan on mixing art with music to create a new culture, a new scene. New York City is already done, completed; culture at my hometown, Cincinnati, is just flourishing and I plan to contribute to it.

How did you decide on your specific college? Honestly, Cornell gave me good financial aid and Ithaca has a pretty low living cost. If you weren’t at your college, what other school would you have attended? I probably would’ve gone to Arts & Sciences for government and philosophy. I initially considered politics and law school, but art is more romantic.

How would you rate the difficulty of your schoolwork, with zero being extremely easy and 10 being extremely challenging? I’m only taking 13 credits at the moment, but it’s not about the difficulty of the work. It’s more important to be aggressive about your goals and to participate on campus.

Stereotype: “The kids in art are majorly artsy and freaky.” Truth: I hate to break it to fellow art students, but people at Cornell aren’t that artsy. There are very few hipsters around and I’m probably one of them. It’s not as hip as one would imagine…an art school [to be]. Stereotype: “All the gay people are in art.” Truth: Not true. Art is pretty straight-laced. There are few guys in art in general, making the percentage of gay guys pretty low. Not many lesbians either. What do you like most about your college? If you want to take charge and get something done, you can. The professors are pretty good, as are the studios. The problem is that it’s hard to educate the young artist. Most art students here are passive and don’t take advantage of their opportunities. They don’t have a direction for their art, and they’re wasting their time.

College: Industrial and Labor Relations Name: Dharmesh Patel Year: Senior Hometown: Harare, Zimbabwe How did you decide on your specific college? I’ve always had an interest in business and law, and I liked how ILR is interdisciplinary and prepares graduates [for] a wide range of career options, such as consulting, law, collective bargaining, human relations, etc. If you weren’t at your college, what other school would you have attended? Applied Economics and Management in CALS.

What ticks you off? Passive living, the general lack of culture and sophistication that is Cornell students. Also — the Greek culture on campus. The point of a party isn’t to hook up; it isn’t all about flesh and getting plastered. A party is a celebration of life. At the parties I DJ and attend, we just have fun — we don’t try to inebriate others with cultish rituals and material desires. If you could choose to live in a different era, what would you choose? I would live in the late 70s to early 80s in New York City. That was the high time for disco, No-Ware, hardcore punk and the birth of House music. It’s too rich now. If you could come back as any animal, which would you choose? I’d be an octopus: they squirt ink and morph into things. They also look really fuckin’ cool.

Stereotype: “It’s so easy.” Truth: It’s not true. Most ILR-ies spend a lot of time in the library. There’s tons of reading, especially from the course called Labor History. A lot of us are involved in many ILR-related clubs, such as Global Affairs, COLA for workers’ rights, etc. What do you like most about your college? I love how ILR is a small college and that everyone feels like family. Everyone ends up knowing you by first name, and there’s a great deal of teamwork, such as study groups to review past Supreme Court and law cases. Also, the career services program is fantastic — I’ve received great advice for internships and jobs.

zooming in 29.

How would you rate the difficulty of your schoolwork, with 0 being extremely easy and 10 being extremely challenging? Eight and a half to nine: some classes are difficult because there’s a lot a reading and you don’t know what will be tested. What’s your favorite book? Stephen Colby, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and Leo Buscaglia, Love. Claim to Fame? Won the Green Card Lottery to come to America from Zimbabwe at age 23, and became a USA Today Community College All-Star based on his performance and contributions to Richland College in Dallas, where he spent the first two years of college before transferring to Cornell.

If you could choose to live in a different era, what would you choose? The Civil Rights Movement, for sure – there was so much unity among the population. The idea of starting from a grassroots level to fight oppression is amazing. Today, we’re so focused on achieving our own goals, but we’re not unified enough to affect actual change. If you could come back as any animal, which would you choose? I’d be a lion or a cheetah– I love Africa and the savannah. In the savannah, you can get really up close with the animals; America’s zoos are sad. The animals are all caged up in tiny confined spaces; they have no place to roam.

AG School

“”

College: Agriculture and Life Sciences Name: Josh Helfgott Year: Junior Major: Interdisciplinary Studies Hometown: Smithtown, NY

Cornell. However, if you want to find a farmer, odds are that you’ll find him at CALS.

How did you decide on your specific college? There’s a very strong study abroad program called CALS Exchange Program. It’s direct enroll, and unlike the program for Arts & Sciences students, we don’t have to take a couple semesters of a language to go to a country that doesn’t speak English. In fact, I’m going to Buenos Aires in the spring. I’ve never taken Spanish classes in college, and I plan on learning the language when I get there by immersion.

Stereotype: “Inferiority due to state grants, cheaper tuition.” Truth: Sure, there is a substantial amount of students from New York in CALS, but then again, there’s a significant number of New Yorkers at Cornell in general. As to the inferiority, this is absolutely not true. The classes in CALS are exactly the same as the ones in Arts & Sciences. In fact, the most amazing professors I’ve had are in CALS — you get tons of personal attention. There’s also great interaction with graduate TA’s.

You feel cared for here.

What do you like about Cornell? You feel cared for here. I was a guaranteed transfer from Binghamton University, and Cornell is different in so many ways. First of all, its physical beauty is an analogy of its whole and true beauty. There’s a certain love and energy here. Sure, people complain about the stress, but underneath all that, there are professors who care about you, friends who care about you — it’s such a nurturing environment. It’s just one big hug. Stereotype: “Tree Huggers, Cow Milkers, Crunchy Granola Hippies” Truth: This stereotype is about 85% false. The 15% that is potentially true comes from the students in Animal Sciences, Dairy Science, Horticulture and Plant Sciences. Some of them literally come from families that live on farms. It’s more likely that you’ll find hippies in those majors, but still, there are very few hippies at

30. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

Future plans? I want to go into broadcast journalism and perhaps work my way up to becoming a TV personality. I love Oprah. If I were to make a show, I’d make it like hers. Honestly, a career is a social contract — it sucks the fun out of things. You don’t need a job title to have meaning in your life. I want to be happy. What’s your favorite quote? “Without compassion, skills and talents mean nothing.” — Madonna If you could choose to live in a different era, what would you choose? Probably right now — tolerance is at a high. The LGBT community has made huge advances in the past decade, and gay people are more accepted now than in the past 200 years. If you could come back as any animal, which would you choose? I’d be a koala because they’re really cute.

Strangers in the

Night

The tale of an Ithaca delivery driver. by HEATHER KARSCHNER

s a delivery driver, Romana Wuest always works the night shift. Unlike at most jobs, the later it gets, the more customers she tends to have at Insomnia Cookies. The Collegetown store gets a lot of walk-in business, compared to its competitor across town, The Connection. Many students stroll into the small, glowing shop after hitting the bars nearby. “Drunk people flock to cookies like a pack of hyenas to dead zebras,” Wuest explains. As we sit at a table waiting for delivery orders to come in on the store’s computer, Wuest tells me how much she likes her job. “Delivering is like the funnest, most ridiculous job ever. The weirdest stuff happens, and I love it,” she says. Wuest has only been with Insomnia Cookies for three months, but she has about two years of delivery experi-

The radio is off so we can talk, but it’s normally playing Queens of the Stone Age or Muse. Wuest is a tiny girl, but she’s full of energy and charm. She says some people tell her they love her when she arrives with their cookies. She once asked a group of drunk guys how to get to a particular dorm, and one pleaded afterwards, “Cookie lady, I want to go with you!” She was even the subject of a “missed connection” on Craigslist once. Wuest has a fast-paced Rory Gilmore-style of storytelling, combined with the indie sense of humor of Charlene Yi. As Wuest tells me how unreliable the pay of a delivery driver is, I wonder why she enjoys the job so much. She makes $5 an hour plus 50 cents per delivery,

“Delivering is like the funnest, most ridiculous job ever.

weirdest stuff happens, and I love it.” The

ence overall. She delivered for a sushi restaurant and pizza place back in her hometown of Monroe, Connecticut. A friend there told her she had to deliver when she got a car, even writing his advice down on a napkin and handing it to her. So she did. Wuest offers me something to eat as we sit surrounded by framed pictures of the store’s different cookies and by the delicious smells coming from the oven. As an employee, she gets all the free baked goods she wants. “I imagine you’d get pretty sick of cookies after a while,” I suggest. “I hoped I would, but I didn’t, so I had to cut myself off!” As we go out on her first delivery run, Wuest stacks a pile of foam cookie boxes on my lap in the passenger seat.

which is supposed to cover gas but really isn’t enough anymore. Then there are tips, which some people don’t even give. Wuest has taken to reminding customers to give tips when they don’t offer any. Some think they’ve already tipped her with a credit card when they haven’t. “I’d hope for at least $2 for every delivery,” Wuest says. She thinks people should also consider how far they live from the store and how long they make her wait outside their apartment. It’s a pet peeve of hers when she arrives with a delivery and the customer doesn’t pick up the phone. Wuest likes to talk with customers about where they’re from, and she can often tell from their cell

“Drunk people flock to cookies

pack of hyenas

like a

to dead zebras.” zooming in 31.

phone area codes. When we deliver to one student at Cornell, she announces on the phone, “You’re from Tennessee!” “How did you know that?” the customer asks, a little freaked out. Wuest gets especially excited about Connecticut area codes, wondering if people are from her hometown. She has no qualms about talking to strangers who might be from the state. As we idle outside of Holmes Hall at Ithaca College, a girl sits talking on her cell phone in a car next to us with a Connecticut license plate. “Hey! Hey! Can I ask

When I ask what she wants to do with that, she says with a laugh she’s finding

When there’s finally a lull, we make a run for it. Wuest’s Honda Accord makes it through this delivery safely, but there are some scrapes on it as a result of delivering. Wuest is responsible for any car damage that happens while she’s working. Only the big delivery chains like Domino’s Pizza tend to insure their drivers. Once, a drunk girl climbed into the driver’s seat of Wuest’s car while she was delivering to the Terraces at IC. Luckily, she didn’t have plans to steal it like Wuest feared. The girl just giggled and ran away when Wuest yelled at her. Friendliness is a big part of Wuest’s bubbly personality. She sometimes tells a knock-knock joke or sings a song when she calls customers to let them

herself.

you a question? Where are you from?” Wuest shouts over me through the open window, later apologizing to the girl for interrupting her call. Wuest only recently moved from Connecticut to Ithaca this past summer. She’s a student at Tompkins Cortland Community College but lives near friends in Collegetown. Her major is “Liberal Arts and Sciences.” When I ask what she wants to do with that, she says, with a laugh, that she’s finding herself. In her free time, she likes to sing, doodle, rock climb, and bake vegan cookies and cupcakes. Wuest is unsure whether she knows the Cornell or IC campus better – she gets more orders for Cornell, but IC’s campus is so much simpler. She uses a Garmin GPS with a British woman’s voice to help her get around, but she has a pretty good sense of direction. “If I’ve been there once, I can get there again,” she says. The farthest she has had to drive for a delivery so far has been Lansing. On this particular night, we head out of town once for a delivery on Slaterville Road. Street lights fade away, but I can still make out the sign for Six Mile Creek Vineyard as we drive past. We try to figure out where the delivery is going, but all of the mailboxes are on the same side of the street and the numbers on houses are impossible to make out. We pull over onto a gravel shoulder when we think we’re in the right area. Wuest dials the customer’s phone number. “Do you see me?” she asks after introducing herself. He does, and we’re on the wrong side of the road. We climb out into the dark and look nervously at the cars speeding past.

This night, we head out of town once for a delivery on Slaterville Road. Street lights fade away, but I can still make out the sign for Six Mile Creek Vineyard as we drive past. 32. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

Friendliness is a big part of Wuest’s bubbly personality. She sometimes tells a knockknock joke or sings a song when she calls customers to let them know she has arrived with their order.

art by CHARLES WANG

know she has arrived with their order. When the frozen yogurt melts in one of our orders for Boothroyd Hall at IC, Wuest feels genuinely bad. She assumes the store will make a replacement order but says, “It sucks because they’re not going to get it soon.” She makes the replacement herself when we return to the store and even hand mixes flavoring into the frozen yogurt to make a flavor they don’t have. Wuest tries not to take herself too seriously on the job. “I like that I can be really casual with customers,” she says. She often brings friends with her on deliveries and sometimes gives rides home to drunk friends who stop by the store. Delivering makes for a long night, but it seems to speed by for Wuest. At one point she looks at the clock and goes, “Oh my god, it’s 2 a.m.!” The late hour is obvious to me, in part because we are frequently hailed by drunk students on the street who mistake our car for a taxi, thanks to the car topper. A sober couple even stops us once to ask about the minimum order for delivery. As Wuest says, everyone loves cookies. Although Insomnia Cookies stops taking orders at 2:15 a.m., Wuest doesn’t get off work this night until 3:30 a.m. At the end of the night, we get an order from a returning customer – Wuest always remembers addresses. “This kid is a friend of the kid who died at Cornell, so I’m going to give him extra cookies,” she says before hurrying back into the kitchen. Wuest is a germophobe who keeps hand sanitizer in her car and has talked to customers about the swine flu. As we arrive at the Cornell address, the two of us climb out of the car into the unseasonable cold and stand on the large house’s front steps, shivering. The relationship between delivery driver and customer is an odd one, normally fleeting. But Wuest always treats customers like they’re real people. The Cornell student walks out on the porch to meet us, and Wuest hands over the heavy Styrofoam box. “Your friend died, right?” she asks, sounding timid for the first time all night. “I gave you extra cookies.”

zooming in 33.

ART BY LAIYEE HO

of local secondhand shopping. worst by MICHELLE RADA

cheap, well-stocked, and full of

odd, tacky things.

Petrune is the sort of store most commonly referred to as ”vintage” because of the exclusivity of the items they accept and the consequently high prices. Although such costliness is counterintuitive to the concept of shopping for used clothes, Petrune’s selection is worth looking through. The clothes are well-picked and in good condition, and there are quite a few racks to look through. The hats are particularly extraordinary and clearly rare. Petrune’s high standards save you the trouble of having to dig through junk to find notable items. In addition to clothing, there are old, but functional, typewriters and film cameras for decent prices, as well as a small assortment of new clothing and jewelry from local artists and independent brands. The extraordinary selection from the 1920s to the 80s will occasionally make up for the pricing – and if not, the items are still worth looking through for ideas (at which point you head over to Salvation Army).

34. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

Petrune

a guide to the best

“

Salvation Army is

126 The Commons | (607) 277-1930

Thrifting Ithaca:

Searching for an outfit that will set you apart from the crowd of muffin top-crowned skinny jeans and misguided tights as pants? Can’t seem to afford that neon green bandana-cum-tube top-cum-shower curtain that’s all over the American Apparel ads on your Texts From Last Night sidebar? Tired of running the circuit of the Pyramid Mall hoping to find a secret corner not filled with the same generic crap all the rest of the kids in your Psych 101 class are toting? Fear no more, gentle fashion-starved readers. Intrepid Kitsch writer Michelle Rada takes you on an inside look at Ithaca’s thrift market—from the choice vintage 80s market to a sweater embossed with the motto of Delaware, it’s all available at a store near you.

Salvation Army

150 N Albany St (Route 13 South) | (607) 273-2400 Oversized sweaters, geometrical patterns, sequined jackets, dusty tea sets, acid-washed denim, bizarre t-shirts… it’s all here. Salvation Army is cheap, well-stocked, and full of odd, tacky things. While browsing, you might want to 119 The Commons | (607) 272-4011 consider the items’ potential for alterations, since many of the priceless oddities are oversized and/or have clownishLook forward to finding everything ly protruding shoulder pads. Most of these items, nonetacky and unflattering about the 90s, theless, have potential. You have to look at the objects as well as the unappealing residue here creatively and consider what style or use they may of more recent trends. While Trader be able to impart to your wardrobe. One way or another, K’s is low-priced and somewhat wellthere’s bound to be the eccentric piece you’ve been sestocked, there’s nothing particularly cretly craving. Since you’re in a thrift store, you can get exciting about the garments it sells; away with trying on and buying these eccentric clothing most of the items have been recently options – at an affordable price to boot. Even if you don’t donated and are consequently only find anything or aren’t really looking, there’s always the used versions of retail clothes. In guarantee of killing a few hours with some awkward scavthat light, it’s definitely a useful place enging. to find wearable everyday items at cheaper prices than usual. It also hapa useful place pens to have a more extensive selecto find tion of sizes than most used clothes stores. There are a few t-shirts with awkward prints and other uncomely ”casual” bits, but nothing exciting or at cheaper prices than usual. ridiculous enough to be worn ironically. Don’t get your hopes up for Despite their seemingly trendy motto, “sustainable anything too unusual or amusing. style,” Tuff Soul’s selection is merely adequate. Their collection of shoes, scarves, hats, dresses, blazers, and pants is decent at best. They offer prices that are tolerable when compared to the ridiculous overpricing of most “vintage” stores. The items, mostly from the 1940s to 80s, are obviously picked to be wearable. Unfortunately, there are no outlandish, shiny, costume-like garments, which are clearly the best part of any thrift store. Because such ridiculous items aren’t sold, the store itself is not as amusing to look through as other thrift shops, but consequently it carries more sellable items. Specifically, there’s a good selection of men’s and women’s boots and coats that have not been overly used. The shop, divided into three small floors, has a neat, tight, and comforting atmosphere - it’s worth looking through the whole store, since its small size makes it a quick visit.

Trader K’s

“

wearable everyday items

Tuff Soul

516 West State Street | (607) 319-0083

zooming in 35.

Hunger

poetry

by DANIEL KLEIFGEN

yellow glow from the lampshade in my room tugging at her smoky-red dress dragging a shadow the imperceptible mist that falls just before nighttime beneath her chest, Our bodies stroked the tattered walls and windows waxy with wet breath and each other As the bus shook through that squalid city. My eyes in hers, the gilded glare penetrating her starless gaze, I, an old man, with wealth that weaves me into the spotted Sun, my infant hands

beseeching the echoless void, not my own, I fell. Down her oily lock sliding over her shouldersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; muddy slopesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; the streets had striped her belly and below Her hairless legs were covered with Earth. A tunnel descended on us two throwing crescents across her figureless silhouette across her cheek whose softness made no sense in those parts. Digging into my imagination, teeth grinding the taste of gold into my mouth, I could never find a light so flawless.

Involuntarily her hand hung below the throng entreating a coin, one ray from the shadowless world a dribble of sticky warmth sick fetters to the gut of the bus that tied that city. That hand could feed my palm and I could free it within my metal grasp to leave the shadows and make them with me. That Child, whispered a voice, is just a slave girl. It was mine. My hand drifted from the bed and turned out the light.

art by ANDREW SCHWARTZ

28. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

HUNTERS

art by CHARLES WANG

A look into paranormal investigation in Central New York

Stacey Jones gave me directions to her home: enter a large state forest, pass the state trooper barracks, then find the house across from the vacant bar and burned down building, but my journey to Mrs. Jones’ss house really began when I noticed a bumper sticker on a rusty old white car parked next door to my house in Ithaca. Gotghosts.org, Central New York Ghost Hunters, it read. Their website described them as an “organization [that] is geared towards people who are quite skeptical and are serious about claims into the paranormal.” Interested in the activities of our region’s ghost hunters, I sent an e-mail requesting an interview to the general information address and got a quick response from Mrs. Jones, the group’s founder. She invited me to an upcoming investigation that she was particularly excited about – a Native American shaman who had recently joined the group would be attempting to conduct a crossing over (a communication with the dead) in order to talk to the ghosts that were terrorizing an elderly couple in their home near Binghamton. I was, unfortunately, unable to make the event and we instead agreed on an interview at her home. With those ominous directions, I was expecting a dark hovel in the woods where someone with matted hair and amulets would answer the door.

by RACHEL LOUISE ENSIGN But, when D. Evan Mulvhill (a former editor of this magazine) and I arrived at the Jones residence, things weren’t as I had expected. Mrs. Jones is tall and vivacious with short blonde hair. She showed us her pets curled up on couches and made us fresh cups of coffee with hazelnut instant creamer. There was a large poster of the iconic photo of the firefighters raising the American flag at the World Trade Center site in a frame on the wall. We even met Mrs. Jones’s friendly husband and son – neither of whom wore matted hair nor amulets. Mrs. Jones first became interested in ghosts when she learned of her mother’s paranormal experience. When her mother was in the fourth grade, Mrs. Jones tells, her recently deceased father appeared in the front of her classroom and she realized that she was the only one who could see him. As a young girl, Mrs. Jones began her dedicated research on the paranormal, which she continues to this day. “By the time I was 12, I had read every book [about ghosts] out there,” Mrs. Jones said. Mrs. Jones earned a living as a police officer in a county outside of New York City and then as a Federal Police Officer employed by the Department of Defense. Her experiences in

zooming in 37.

these occupations led her to further believe in the presence of a nether world. “With each other, cops tell these stories about a haunting and the paranormal, and they believe in it, there’s no doubt,” Mrs. Jones said, “it’s when they get in the public eye that they don’t talk about it.” An example of one such instance involved a house where a single mother lived with her three children. The mother kept calling the police because she would hear footsteps on the stairs and thought that it was her ex-husband, come to stir up trouble. The police came to the house a number of times and each time found nothing awry. Eventually, they told the woman to stop calling. Ms. Jones, however, suspected that the house was haunted and went back on a day off to investigate on her own

Years ago, the group was conducting an investigation in a family’s home when a group member asked the ghosts with whom they were communicating if they were going to hurt the children. Upon playing back the electronic voice recorder, it was clear that the ghosts had responded “yes” to this question. Though Ms. Jones assured the mother of the family that ghosts often lie when giving answers, this woman became convinced that the ghosts wanted to harm her children, and she refused to live in the house any longer. The member who asked the ghosts if they wanted to harm the children was kicked out of the group. “If the children are unaware or unaffected by the haunting in their home, its better that the parents just deal with the ghosts, than have the children afraid to live in their home,”

only to find that the family had left in the middle of the night. Three months later, the building burned to the ground – no cause was ever found. Mrs. Jones founded Central New York (CNY) Ghost Hunters in 1997. It began as a small group that investigated hauntings people reported in their homes. At first, they only received one or two cases per year. Now, CNY Ghost Hunters is an organization with 15 pages of protocols, a long training period for prospective ghost hunters, and enough members to conduct multiple rounds of investigations in a wide geographic region. In a field where legitimacy is sometimes hard to come by, CNY Ghost Hunters is adamant about distinguishing themselves from ghost hunters whom they consider to be unprofessional or just plain nutty. Mrs. Jones is very serious about the written protocols that, over the years, have become a moral code for her group. According to these protocols, a proper investigation must be done by fully-trained CNY members who are over eighteen years old, do not have cell phones on their person, are in good health, and are not involved in any negative religion (i.e. Satanism). The investigations must have the consent of those who live inside the house, be conducted for free and, most importantly, not involve children. This last protocol comes from the enormous impact that hauntings and subsequent investigations can have on families.

said Jones. Jones has also had other first-hand opportunities to witness the negative effects ghost hunting can have on children: when her son was 14, she brought him along to an investigation in a graveyard where he got an “attachment,” a negative spirit that attached itself to him with the intent of causing havoc and harm. He needed to be taken to get an exorcism shortly thereafter. Despite all of this, Jones maintains an air of skepticism about her time spent looking for ghosts. “The cop comes out in me, saying that this is all bullshit – but it’s my job and I have to do it,” she said. “When I am skeptical first, this keeps [my mind] open for other explanations for the activity [potentially haunted families] experience.” She finds that many of the people who want to be involved with her group, whether by joining investigations or reporting hauntings in their home, are either attention seekers or people with nothing else in their lives. Jones seemed to pride herself on her ability to admit that there are many things about the paranormal she doesn’t know and could not learn via the sort of informal training and lack of resources that are currently available to her. People seeking CNY Ghost Hunters’ services find the group through word of mouth, internet, or television; the group does no advertising or outreach. Jones receives about two calls a day from people who claim to have haunted homes. “The first thing people say when they contact us,” she said, “is, ‘you’re going to think

38. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

I’m crazy.’” The group’s goal is to collect enough information to verify the presence of ghosts in people’s homes. “This type of work is more about dealing with people and making them feel safe in the one place they have to feel safe – their home. People are afraid of what they don’t understand,” Jones said, “[but] negative hauntings and demons are rare.” She finds that people often even develop a sense of humor about their haunting. “They’ll say, ‘we haven’t heard from George for awhile, do you think he’s okay?’” According to Jones, an authentic haunting usually begins with benign occurrences, like strange footsteps, unexplained noises or radios, lights and televisions that turn on seemingly on their own. This escalates to the point at which the strange events begin to provoke fear in residents. Some reported examples of

this are broken glass appearing in people’s beds and physical interactions with the ghosts. In the some of the cases that Jones has investigated, ghosts have given people scratches, pushed them down stairs, and held them in bed immobile. Prior to their investigation, Jones makes the residents affected by haunting “get themselves into some kind of church. You need to have faith in something. Once that faith starts to fray, [the ghosts] pick at the ’loose threads.’” She says that the ghosts seem to thrive on a person’s spiritual chaos and seem to get the energy they need from it. The group currently investigates about 15 private home haunting cases per year. They also investigate about 15 public places that are reputed to be haunted per year. On their website, they feature details of their investigations of some of these public places; these include a castle near Utica and the Landmark Theatre in Syracuse. CNY Ghost Hunters does most of its investigations using infrared and digital cameras and electronic voice recorders. While cameras can pick up images of ghosts that are not visible to the naked eye, Jones told us, it is only by using electronic voice recorders that ghost hunters can actually communicate with the dead through the detection of Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP). Successful investigations with an electronic voice recorder work like this – an investigator will say something and then tape the apparent silence. Then the investigator will play back the recording and find that a ghost actually responded. Jones said that this phenomenon occurs because “electronic voice recorders pick up frequencies higher and lower than what the human ear can hear…we believe that [ghosts] move within [these] frequencies.” Interestingly, cheaper electronic voice recorders seem to be more effective. A $30 GE Micro-Cassette recorder is particularly effective, as is a recorder from Radio Shack that the paranormal community refers to as the “shack hack.” Despite the wide range of equipment that aids in paranormal investigations, Jones believes that the development of effective tools for paranormal investigators has been severely retarded. “The development of new equipment relies largely upon electronic geeks who do it for free,” Jones said. “There is no

money for development and research.” CNY Ghost Hunters has discovered a number of things about the nature of ghosts. The ghosts who communicate with them are believed to be those who chose not to cross over into the world of the dead. “I never hear reasons. I don’t think they want us to know a lot of things, they’re very cryptic.” They live at low frequencies and their “voices” are androgynous. According to Jones, it takes a lot of energy from a ghost to communicate with humans. She said many ghosts with whom she communicates know her name, and they seem to know that they’re dead. Ghosts are coy. Jones explained that they often talk cryptically about “levels.” When asked “what is it like?” ghosts often respond with things like, “not like what I expected.” In one case, the group asked the ghosts whether or not God existed, to which the response was “of course.” They then asked about Jesus, to which the ghost replied that Jesus was a product of “biblical storytelling.” When the group asked him if hell existed, the ghost would not answer. Like living people, their moods and comportment are variable. Sometimes the ghosts investigated are shockingly violent. In one recording that this reporter declined to listen to, CNY’s investigators found a “groundbreaking EVP,” a 20-minute-long recording that Jones believes is the sound of a woman being raped and murdered. According to Jones, there are a number of members of CNY Ghost Hunters whose interest in the paranormal overlaps with their academic endeavors. Jones says that there are a number of academics who are members of Central New York Ghost Hunters (perhaps including the owner of the white car with the bumper

zooming in 39.

sticker), though they are extremely discreet about their ghost hunting hobby when within the university setting. “The ridicule and stigma need to be removed,” Jones said, “there are actual scientists who believe this is real, but they’re afraid to be stigmatized.” The scientists in Jones’s group are mostly interested in studying telekinesis, the ability to move an object with your mind. Part of the reason that Jones believes the scientific community that so readily ponders the nature of life through physics and chemistry is so unsupportive of paranormal research is because ghosts are not easily studied in a laboratory with re-

is both a blessing and a nightmare for Jones and CNY Ghost Hunters. The group’s home page has a sidebar that shows the news outlets they’ve been featured on – this includes the three major national news networks and two of the main newspapers in Syracuse, Central New York’s main metropolitan area. Jones’s most notable media coverage has been from the Discovery Channel. She’s been on the channel’s program, “A Haunting” twice and, “One Step Beyond” once. She’s also investigated, offair, with Jason and Grant, the hosts of “Ghost Hunters.” While these shows allow CNY Ghost Hunters to publicize their activities, Jones believes that their popularity is directly

peatable results. Even for the scientists who are clandestinely members of CNY Ghost Hunters, “a haunting and ghosts are too chaotic in their appearance and activity” to be subjects of usable research. Paranormal phenomena, however, have long been a subject of study in a number of universities in the US and abroad. In 1882, a number of scientists and scholars in London formed The Society for Psychical Research to investigate paranormal phenomena. In 1885, an American branch of this organization was founded. In the early years of the 20th century and onward, scientists at Stanford and Duke researched extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis (PK). Currently, only two American universities still support paranormal research: The University of Virginia, whose Department of Psychiatric Medicine researches the possibility of life after death and the University of Arizona, which houses a laboratory that studies mediums (people who are believed to be channels between the earthly world and the world of spirits). The laboratory at Princeton that studied telekinesis for decades recently closed in 2007. In both the US and the UK, numerous private research institutions conduct parapsychological research to this day. Though Jones doesn’t anticipate increased academic interest in paranormal study, she envisions a future in which investigations are more rigorously conducted and thus yield a more robust body of knowledge about ghosts. Jones would love to see more people adhering to strict protocols like those of her group and charting everything that may be relevant to paranormal phenomena such as the moon cycle, dew point, and temperature. The recent proliferation of media interest in ghost hunting

related to the exponential growth of ghost hunting groups that use reckless, harmful, and uninformed tactics. Jones says that within a 30-50 mile radius of her rural home near Tully, NY, about an hour north of Ithaca, more than 20 new groups have been formed whose members’ only qualifications are the television shows they watch. Jones, conversely, does not watch most television shows on the subject of ghosts and believes that the picture that they paint of the paranormal is largely skewed, “they frustrate me because there is so much more they are not showing. Paranormal [phenomenon] isn’t all about the fear, but, because of its intrinsic entertainment value, that is what all people see and with that limited knowledge, it’s what people think is involved.” More and more people are turning their attention toward the shadowy world of the dead who haven’t crossed over. Jones believes that “ghosts are more active because more people are looking for them and ghosts are utilizing that energy.” Jones said, “I think everyone has some sort of psychic ability, it’s just to what degree you develop it. It’s how you interpret things.” At the end of our visit, Jones sat down at her PC and played Evan and me a number of EVPs in which one could hear eerie, inhuman voices. When we said goodbye, she gave us each a hug. For a moment when we first stepped outside of her home I thought that my world might look different, that the world of the dead had perhaps been unsheathed. Jones had been eminently confident as she spoke, freely sprinkling expletives in her sentences for emphasis, standing in her kitchen smoking cigarettes. But as we walked to the car, I noticed that nearly everything seemed the same; the night was just a little bit colder, a little more silent.

40. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

kitsch

achieving equilibrium

is sideburns are uneven, or at least people kept telling him that. So today he finally checked in the mirror, using his index fingers to mark the staggered black scrapings; he measured evenness. They’re off, minutely, but noticeably so. He didn’t like that. He began to think that there was something eluding him here; This happened every time he shaved. The darker part is that, since he’d noticed this malformation, he’s made it a point to shave a fine line where the two strips can match, yet they persist in their resistance — the left longer than the right, but both dark as the coal-singed whiskers of a three-legged cat. He looked down to his left, then to his right. He noticed, still, his father’s cold ashtray on the windowsill. Something was bothering him, but above the house, up in the guest bathroom, without the stalking bodies below him; without them to bother him, then what? The florescent lighting? He looked down. In the mustard light his placid skin had tone. And his teeth, yellow, yellow, yellow. He hated the color. Plucked petals of daisies were that color, held in softer hands; but luck was never his strong suit. Now he’s only got cigarettes for company. Downstairs, maybe in the partly inundated basement, a mother, eyes sanguine from holding back tears too many times, sat with herself and a laundry basket. She could hear her son through the metallic vents above her head — she couldn’t even escape him at the deepest point of their three-story estate. Still, her husband’s cold ashtray on the windowsill.

by ADAM B MILLER

Upstairs, the boy, who thought himself a man, with sideburns and all, and cigarettes for company, looked down, to his left, then to his right. He thought himself the victim, yet again; and the glistening light of his razor blade, like a flash of fire, caught his eye and held it there. The jutting cutter stared at him from the inside of the bathroom drawer ajar. It winked, and flashed, and stared at him. He didn’t like that — he grabbed it by the throat; it stopped its capricious flirtations. What design had it when it only cut him uneven, and left his sideburns lopsided as his mother’s breasts? Still, his father’s cold ashtray on the windowsill, and he thought himself the victim — his life as lopsided, his emotions unbalanced as his relentless sideburns. How would this boy achieve his equilibrium, when he himself inflicts the staggered scrapings so — a pale child criminal in boots too large for a victim. The boy thought himself the victim, and, still, his father’s cold ashtray on the windowsill. So with his silver instrument he carved himself as one, while carving out his delusional equilibrium (as precisely as unnoticeably so). And in the streets of his hometown he wavered like aftersmoke lingering from his father’s cigar-stained lips; and in the blood-brown corridors of his school-jail the other boys stared at him from half-turned glances; and in his wavering frame, like that of an adult’s shadow in high-noon, he told them, with a sharp rise in his voice, that in addition to his sideburns being uneven, they’ve got blood.

fiction 41.

Ivy Ink

In this issue’s photo essay, six Cornell students show us their tattoos and tell us the stories behind them. For these students, their tattoos have a wide range of meanings; they are reminders of important people and often of the time in their life when the youthful urge to put something permanent on their body was just too strong to resist. text by RACHEL LOUISE ENSIGN photos by JOSH STANSFIELD

“She’s a flamenco dancer. It’s from an old flamenco poster done by Sailor Jerry, I saw the design and really loved it. After a few months of looking at it in the mirror, I realized I needed something more, so I went to the music library and took out a dozen old books on flamenco dancing with posters and photos. I came back to the tattoo parlor and [the tattoo artist] drew up a design for me. I’m getting the second half soon. I’ll have a beautiful lady to wake up to every morning.” - Chad, Graduate Student

42. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

â&#x20AC;&#x153;I got this when I was 17 and living in a home with eight twentysomething guys who had a friend that was a tattoo artist. I got a fox because dogs are lame and wolves are overdone. Fox was my trail name, though that was after I got the tattoo. I hiked the Appalachian trail in 2007, and you have to have a trail name.â&#x20AC;? -Katherine, Class of 2010

43.

“I got the tattoo last summer in Paris while visiting a friend. I wanted something that was for me and made more sense to me than anyone who saw it without back story. It is the Latin phrase ‘Qui Audet Adipiscitur’ which means ‘who dares wins.’ I have horses and have always competed in jumpers, the only English riding discipline that you will not get penalized for showing ink, and as hair has to go up in a helmet to compete, the only time you can really read the tattoo is when I am competing.” -Kate, Class of 2011

44. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

“The dogwood tree was done at Medusa Tattoo here in Ithaca a few weeks before Cornell graduation, by a great artist named Cesar Enciso who also did the stylized chai on my forearm. I had dogwoods in my frontyard all throughout my childhood, and asked Cesar to draw a half sleeve up. I just think the trees are pretty, and while I don’t know how I’ll feel about such a large tattoo later in life. I’m hoping it’ll serve as a reminder of my reckless youth.” -Justine, Graduate Student

45.

“It was my 18th birthday present from my mom and my dad. Getting a tattoo is a rite of passage in our family. It’s like they’re watching over me, they’re watching my back. The second I saw it I knew it was the one that I wanted to have…In our family you have to have a meaning behind it, you don’t just get it. My father has a tiger and my mother has two wolves, for me and my sister. I have three, for my parents and my sister. I just love talking about it, I love telling the story.” -Brian, Class of 2013

46. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

“The horse in my tattoo is the first horse I’ve ever owned and trained. I wanted a horse with symbols that represented my life around it but thought that could be too generic. One thing that I love about polo is that it challenges the idea of immortality, every time that you get on a polo horse could be your last. So many things happen to people while playing polo. The phoenix represents immortality. The phoenix and the polo horse contain aspects of each other but still challenge each other at the same time…I went and got it the day of my 18th birthday.” -Branden, Class of 2013

47.

not ST U J FOR

KIDS

the why, the how, the social commentary, the evolution, the survival of the comic book

art by COURTNEY BEGLIN

48. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

by MATT FLYNN

ifteen years ago, to mention a “graphic novel” to a literary review group was to invite (at worst) fits of apoplectic laughter or (at best) blank, confused staring. Suffice it to say, Oprah wouldn’t have gone near the topic hazmat suited and scrubbed up. However, talk show hosts and geek hordes alike stand today at the unnerving crest of a tidal wave of comic legitimacy. Comic-inspired movies — like “The Dark Knight,” “Watchmen,” and the “Spiderman” franchise, just to name a few — have splashed across summer blockbuster lists, clearing out a fairly large market with the tenacity and speed of an angry velociraptor deep in the throes of a coke binge. Graphic novels are being reviewed by the “New York Times,” and particularly successful comic authors are not only getting book deals, but movie rights. Even President Barack Obama guest-starred in a Spiderman comic. Most college-age folks these days take the popularity of comic books as par for the course. Batman’s been a successful franchise on the big screen since the late 80s. Ever since George Clooney stuck on a pair of rubber nipples, we have been gulping up Batman toys faster than the Third World can produce them. How exactly did a rickety 1930s graphic industry transform into today’s billion-dollar enterprise? Comic books were originally clean-cut publications geared towards shorthaired, America loving, boy scouting youths. Mature themes were kept out of the major companies’ comics for much of the 20th century by “The Comics Code,” an industry standard. The Code was enacted in 1954 to combat what was seen as overzealous use of violence and gore in comics. It was championed by a book called “Seduction of the Innocent,” by Fredric Wertham. This book argued that the majority of comic readers were children and, thus, books shouldn’t have content

zooming out that was any more explicit than what today would constitute a G rating. Since most newsstand owners wouldn’t sell un-sanctioned comics for fear of local reprisal, the Code became a de facto censor of comics as a whole. Comics’ change from the domain of adolescents to the sphere of pop culture has a lot to do with local comic stores and artistic movements. Tim Grey, of Ithaca’s Comics for Collectors, started buying around the 1970s – when the Code was still in full force. At the time, comics were fairly cheap, only about 15 cents a pop. Prices have since steadily increased for collector’s market comics (see today’s $3-5 price tags), and artists as well as authors have found stable roots in the industry. Though, as Grey pointed out, “When [the price of ] comics goes up a little bit you feel a little betrayed,” higher prices mean higher profits. By the 80s, Grey had in fact found that a living could be made buying and selling comics between collectors. “Throughout the 80s it was really a growth period time,” said Grey. “It was mostly an artists’ market. People were buying like crazy, and when a hot artist was on the scene, like Frank Miller, everybody wanted comics by [him]. A lot of investors were going crazy at the time.” Slowly but surely, the comic industry gained a place in mass media. Before long, audiences saw Batman and Superman in the movie theaters. Larger companies began to realize there was a sizeable market lurking beneath the surface of American pop culture. At the same time, comic authors were beginning to push edgier and edgier content in order to appeal to teenage buyers. Pushed by the burgeoning popularity of the industry, stores opened specifically to sell to these adolescent collectors — stores that were not subject to the same pressures to conform to the same code that newsstands were. When a business owner could decide which comics he would sell to whom, the Comics Code stopped having power because the individual store could serve as the effective censor. “Since there were now 10,000 comic stores in the country,” Grey says, “you could sell right to [people]. [The comics] didn’t need to have the Code’s authority anymore, so there started to be an adult market. “

The nineties brought an abrupt end to the economic health of the comic industry. Marvel went bankrupt, Time Warner bought up DC, and a lot of talented authors and artists left the big two all together. In the process of this change, however, many artists and authors ultimately gained more creative control over their works. This control manifested itself as a greater diversity of comics available, in turn attracting a wider range of readers. This simultaneous increase in popularity and artistic freedom spawned a comic that had strong visual and narrative elements. “The reason [readers of the nineties] picked [comics] up was the beautiful artwork,” said Grey, “but if the story sucked, they probably wouldn’t buy the next one. If the story was good, on the other hand, they’d come back.” Today, the names of Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Frank Miller are splashed across summer blockbuster opening screens, as if their presence somehow legitimizes the form of media to follow. Popular authors Warren Ellis and Garth Ennis gather huge crowds at conventions – not simply attracting die-hard comic fans, but also laypeople who happen to have seen reviews of their stories. Styles that, 30 years ago, would have never been considered for mass syndication are now regularly published on a wide scale. “Recently, there have been more things for female readers,” said Grey. “From the manga market, we have a lot of girls coming over and saying, ‘Well, what else is there? What do the Americans have to offer?’ And they’re actually coming and willing to look at these things.” Whether this is because of Comics Code-free graphic novels or some other broader cultural change isn’t particularly clear. Regardless, there now exists an extraordinarily free and creative medium with which to express ideas. From their humble beginnings as political woodblock prints and through their regulation and mass syndication, comics have always captured the popular consciousness, be it the saccharine bliss of the 50s, the independent revolution of the 60s, or even the overwhelmingly ridiculous dramatic angst of the 90s. The only question now is: what will they capture next?

zooming out 49.

The

End Of the World

“It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s… a giant meteor!”

by LUCY ZHENG

art by LAUREN MILLER

50. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

“

“”

ecember 21, 2012 is a date when catastrophic events will happen: Planets will smash into the Earth at the speed of light, dormant volcanoes will erupt violently, giant tidal waves will cover land in water, and Kanye West will be invited to host the next MTV Video Music Awards. These events will happen when the Mayan calendar’s 5,126-year era ends on Dec. 21, 2012 and the world begins to be reborn by destruction. There are other scenarios for apocalypse in 2012, as well. Some astrologists have said that the Sun will align with the center of the galaxy, creating a dangerous gravitational pull that will wreak havoc on the galaxy, maybe even destroying Earth in the process (whaddya know?). Also, there’s always the possibility of God destroying the world – He may come down to smite us due to our sinful ways.

Credible “Facts”…?

“ T

he Mayans did indeed have a linear calendar, and it may mark Dec. 21, 2012 as the day that the current world cycle ends. However, the nature of the transition to the next cycle is heavily debated. There is no clear definition of “rebirth” and many scholars believe that this process of rejuvenation and purification is actually peaceful. In his book ,“The Revolution of 2012,” spiritual healer and writer Andrew Smith writes that the rebirth will entail the restoration of a “true balance between Divine Masculine and Feminine.” Some scholars point out that the Mayans felt privileged to be present at the end of a cycle during

“Experts”can’t agree on the date or the general nature of “rebirth.”

their time. This shows that “rebirth” is not a violent ending, as most people would not welcome painful and imminent death with open arms. (Satanist scholars argue this claim.) Michael D. Coe, author of the 1966 book, “The Maya,” was among the first to write about the idea of the Long Count calendar and its implications for the inhabitants of the world. Mayan calendar-based doomsday theories, though, have become more popular since the publication of Daniel Pinchbeck’s

2006 book, “2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl.” Pinchbeck, aided by the use of psychedelic substances, writes about a rise in global consciousness, alien abductions, and the return of the Mayan god. Even though his ideas may seem fantastical, he is one of the leading orators in forums such as the Divine Light in Toronto and the Precious Life Wellness Village in Berkeley, California. These forums attract thousands of people, believers and nonbelievers alike.

...and Kanye West will be invited to host the next MTV Video Music Awards.

Pinchbeck claims that 2012 will contain “an imminent polar reversal that will wipe our hard drives clean.” But not all Mayan aficionados agree. Dr. Susan Milbrath, curator of Latin American Art and Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, writes in her book, “Star Gods of the Maya,” that the archaeological community has “no record or knowledge that [the Maya] would think the world would come to an end" in 2012. Perhaps as expected, the Mayan 2012 prophecy has a few gaping holes. Some of the evidence of the predictive power of the Mayan Long Count calendar has been revealed with the 20/20 vision of hindsight. For example, some claim that the Mayans also predicted the events of September 11th. On this date, the Mayans supposedly predicted that the “great birds will come from the sky and end a great city to the north.” Initially, however, the calendar set the year as 1999, not 2001, and only after adjusting the details in later computations did the “experts” on Mayan archeo-astronomy get the date to come out right. Certain research findings about the Mayan Long Count calendar have nothing in them about the end of the world occurring in 2012 at all. Carl Calleman claims this in his book, “The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness.” Calleman writes that the cycle will end on Oct. 28, 2011, more than a whole year before the actual “panic date.” While this prediction is less well-known than the familiar Dec. 21, 2012 date, originally predicted by John Major Jenkins, it shows that analyses of the same Mayan artifacts lead to different conclusions. “Experts” can’t agree on the date or the general nature of “rebirth.” Compared to the Y2K scare, the 2012 apocalypse seems trivial and almost ridiculous. In the months preceding the turn of the millennium, there was seemingly solid proof that something might go wrong, like problems in data storage and documentation due to the process by which four-digits are abbreviated into two-digits. Concerns about computers exploding, self-deletion of the world’s most important data, and the permanent stunting of technological growth ran rampant in the minds of even the most rational scholars. However, none of this happened. Society withstood the threat of electronic failure and did not revert back to the Dark Ages. If we made it through Y2K alive, why worry about an apocalypse foreshadowed by much flimsier evidence? The second scenario of apocalypse, based on the Sun’s off-kilter alignment, is also suspect. Though it is indeed a rare event, research findings show that this unusual phenomenon will not have such unusual consequences. Mayanist scholar

zooming out 51.

Mark Van Stone, from Southwestern College in Chula Vista, California, writes that the difference of the Sun’s alignment in 2012 compared with its alignment in 1870 and 1941 is only two degrees, or four solar diameters, apart. The difference in effect, Stone notes, is “not very” important, and thus the fear of massive cosmic radiation is unfounded. In his article, “It's Not the End of the World: What the Ancient Maya Tell Us About 2012,” he writes that the pull of gravity will not change, as there are still a few hundred million miles between, Jupiter, the “Destroyer,” and Earth. So, there will actually be no crushing force upon our feeble heads to cause the planet to explode or enables it to reverse its magnetic field in one day – a process which usually takes about a couple hundred to a thousand years. As for the last possibility, that God will judge and smite us, I can’t really argue for or against it. It’s a lose-lose situation: If I answer correctly, I don’t have any evidence to prove my claim, but if I answer wrongly and He’s watching, I will be branded a heretic and thrown into eternal Hell, wherever or whenever that may be. In these three situations, the one thing I can be certain of is that there is no definite evidence for apocalypse in 2012. There is only a miniscule chance that it might happen. So, what’s with all the panic about 2012?

realists, who do not act based on predictions, but rather, act as they do normally until the event actually occurs. Kathryn S. March, Professor of Anthropology at Cornell, does not have a strong opinion as to whether the apocalypse will happen or not, but is instead mostly concerned about present environmental crises, such as “the melting of the Himalayan glaciers and the drying up of the major rivers… rising sea levels…water wars.” When asked about what she will do if an apocalypse actually does happen, she gives a calm and logical answer: She’d spend the last hours with her family. Lastly, there are the nine nuclear nation-states that possess a total of approximately 23,330 nuclear warheads. Though nuclear war has become less of a hot topic since the end of the Cold War, the detonation of just a fraction of these warheads could quickly cause total human extinction. With these potent weapons of destruction stored all over the Earth, is there any surprise that contemporary humans have a propensity towards apocalyptic thoughts?

“” ... the seeds of apocalypse have already been sown in the earth, and not by the Mayans, the Sun, or God, but by us, modern humankind... The God of Destruction

here is a reason why fantasies about the “end of the world” are so prominent in our culture. Apocalyptic fantasies are not only found on fanatic Websites and new-age compounds, but exist also in the mainstream news and in our own run-ofthe-mill psyches. There’s a very real sense that the seeds of apocalypse have already been sown in the earth, and not by the Mayans, the Sun, or God, but by us, modern humankind. In recent years, environmentalists have successfully focused the attention of the general public upon the changes that industrial development has brought to the Earth. Black fumes from smokestacks in the center of large industrial cities and miles and miles of treeless and destroyed rainforests are the images that come to mind for many when thinking about the results of global capitalism. Our anxieties about global warming and changes in natural resources lead us to imagine what large-scale climate change would entail. If the numerous articles and books about nearly-inevitable and catastrophic climate change still haven’t instilled a real fear of apocalypse in us, movies such as “The Day After Tomorrow” and “An Inconvenient Truth” envision for us what the end of humanity will actually look like. This is the type of apocalypse that concerns situational

52. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

So if the predictions are true…

o matter the evidence, I disagree with the whole “Oh no, we’re all going to die – let’s go crazy and act irrationally!” theory. We can’t let the fear of apocalypse trigger its own apocalypse of sorts. Let me explain that further. On the morning of Dec. 20, 2012, large groups of prophecy believers get together and decide to abandon the responsibilities and obligations of their normal lives and instead live out their final day on earth in pure freedom. They quit their jobs, take out their savings and go nuts. They raid, pillage, burn, have crazy sex in the streets, steal, break things, and create general havoc. Such behavior would escalate into a situation where this riotous behavior is contagious and public behavior is uncontrollable. With all the commotion and lawlessness, societal order would break down and internally implode. The “end of the world” would occur without geological catastrophes. Of course, I could be wrong – these groups of believers may just lease auditoriums across the globe and meditate quietly, waiting for the next dimension to envelop them in its warm, loving embrace. In the end, what we should focus on is preventing the apocalyptic events that could happen as a result of human action. Perhaps, if we created a world free of mounting greenhouse-gas emissions and stockpiles of nuclear weapons, we would have a bit less fear to channel into our anxiety about planetary alignment and the calendar of those sage, ancient Mayans.

Urban

Outfitters EXPOSED Think you know Urb a n O u t f i t t e r s ? T h i n k a g a i n .

ast semester when I received news the hipster mecca Urban Outfitters was coming to Ithaca, I was thrilled. See, it is one of my life goals, one I believe many share but may be ashamed to admit, to be a cool hipster chick. Sure, maybe the fact I am knowingly trying to be a hipster means I will never truly be one. Still, I continue on, and one of my favorite methods of attempting to earn this title is by shopping online at urbanoutfitters.com. For those of you who may not have discovered this retail paradise, Urban Outfitters is a clothing and housewares retailer that sells everything from designer shoes to a mustache comb disguised as a switch blade. According to the company Web site, Urban Outfitters offers “a lifestyle-specific shopping experience for the educated, urban-minded individual in the 18 to 30-year-old

by KELLY WICKS

range.” I can peruse the Web site for hours without ever buying anything. I click around, wondering whether or not I could pull off a romper (or whether I would even want to) or why I don’t own a bodysuit, all the while daydreaming about living in a hip neighborhood, in a cool apartment furnished with the myriad eccentric books and knickknacks that Urban Outfitters supplies. Upon hearing the news that Urban Outfitters was going to be coming to Ithaca, my first thought was along the lines of, “Yes! I am one step closer to realizing my hipster dream!” My second thought was about just how perfect a fit Urban Outfitters seemed to be for Ithaca, with its little homegrown stores on the Commons and the general hippie vibe of its public spaces. Urban Outfitters finally opened on Green Street in downtown Ithaca this past summer. Walking through the new store’s

zooming out 53.

crowded floor with display cases made of paint-splattered wooden crates and T-shirts emblazoned with phrases like “Peace One Day” and “Broke is the New Black,” you nearly forget you’re shopping in a store that is a part of a large chain. As you dig through the multitude of products, it’s as though you’ve discovered a cool thrift or vintage store full of unique finds.

“

a big mainstream advertiser,” writes a blogger on the award-winning financial blog “The Motley Fool.” “Its success has relied on grassroots, word-of-mouth buzz, which I believe has also given it much more of a non-mainstream, noncommercial feel than big advertisers like Gap.” Urban Outfitters is able to portray itself as a noncommercial company, which appeals to its customers, even though it is obviously a large commercial enterprise. The fact that Urban Outfitters can even pull off this deception is exactly what makes it successful, in more ways than one. While the early history of Urban Outfitters meshes well with its peace-loving and underground image, its current reality is one that would probably cause liberal hipsters to shudder in their skinny jeans. Urban Outfitters’ co-founders Richard Hayne, who is now the CEO, and Judy Wicks were married in 1969 after graduating from college. According to a “Philadelphia Weekly” exposé, the two had been childhood sweethearts and rekindled their romance during the peace and love movements of the 60s. They were married at the height of the Vietnam War and were both part of the student anti-war

While the early history of Urban Outfitters meshes well with its peace-loving and underground image, its current reality is one that would probably cause liberal hipsters to shudder in their skinny jeans.

This, however, is obviously not true. There are over 130 Urban Outfitters locations worldwide, and like any other chain, they all look very much the same and stock the same products. And as soon as you check out a price tag or two, you very quickly lose the idea this is at all similar to a thrift store. “Urban Outfitters has never been

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54. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

movement. Looking to be a part of something bigger, the two joined VISTA, Volunteers in Service to America, and left for Chefornak, Alaska, soon after their marriage. They spent the next 10 months teaching English to Eskimos and living under conditions for which “harsh” would be an understatement. After the program came to an end, the couple moved to Philadelphia, where they began their next venture: running a store. In 1970, they opened Free People’s Store. Its bohemian values were a true reflection of the times, offering cheap goods for penny-pinching college students and hosting events for social causes. Working with clothes they bought either by the pound or cheaply from Asian importers, the two ran their store and lived a modest life. Unfortunately, not all hippies live in harmony; one year later, the couple split, leaving Hayne to run the store alone. And that he did. Not only is Hayne responsible for the exponential growth of what became Urban Outfitters, but he has also expanded the original venture into a total of four brand lines: Urban Outfitters, Free People, Anthropologie and Terrain. According to Urban Outfitters’ investor relations Web site, company sales for Urban Outfitters Inc. totaled $1.8 billion in the 2009 financial year. As for Hayne, he was

743rd on the Forbes World’s Richest mitted to putting our dollars where our hearts bor and using genetically engineered People list last year, with a net worth are, where would we ultimately decide to ingredients.” Raheja brings up a good estimated at $1.6 billion. point: when, and how, can we decide shop? In an article in the “Minneapolis Star Tri In the process of Hayne’s trans- bune,” Lauren Raheja writes, “We live in a world whether a company is ethical? formation from working class to that’s far too complex to slap either a ‘good Would the knowledge that the wealthy, he also moved from hippie company’ or a ‘bad company’ label on every executives of a person’s favorite chain to hard-core Republican. Hayne store have political allegiances differdonates generously to ent than theirs actually keep both the party and its them from shopping there? candidates. These doJames Detert, assistant professor nations have included at Cornell’s Johnson School of large sums to Rick Management, doesn’t think so. Santorum, a former “My sense is that not that many Pennsylvania senaAmericans are actually valuestor known for his based shoppers in that respect,” notoriously anti-homoDetert said. “I think we’d like to sexual politics. In a 2003 think that people make values statement, Santorum a priority in their consumption equated homosexuality choices, but I think the sad realto pedophilia and besity of the data would be that the tiality. In that same majority use fashion, price, conyear, Urban Outfitvenience, etc. to decide where to ters made a $4,650 spend their money.” contribution to Santo In fact, the demographic inrum’s campaign. formation of urbanoutfitters. In an interview with the com shoppers, as reported at “Philadelphia Weekly,” Hayne quantcast.com, suggests that first denied, then avoided the the average shopper may be question of his political contrimore like the Richard Hayne of butions. When asked about his today than that of his past. The financial support of Santorum, statistics show a consumer who Hayne claimed not to have prois generally college-educated, vided him with any. When prehas a good chance of having atsented with his name on a comtended graduate school, and is puter printout of Santorum’s quite affluent, with the majorcampaign donors from the ity citing a household income Center for Responsive Politics of over $100,000 a year. Urban Web site, Hayne said, “I’ll have to Outfitters may give off a hiplook into this. I don’t think this art by CLAUDIA MATTOS pie vibe, but it looks as though is right.” According to the same its shoppers have grown out of “Philadelphia Weekly” article, their humble pasts, just as Hayne In the process of [CEO Richard] he and his second wife have conhas. Hayne’s transformation from So, is Urban Outfitters’ hippie tributed $13,150 to Santorum and working class to wealthy, he charade, combined with Hayne’s Santorum’s political action committee over the years. also moved from hippie to hard- political leanings, enough to make The big question, of course, me forgo my pursuit of hipstercore Republican. is will — or should — customdom by way of his store? I have yet ers really care? For one thing, the to decide. But what I do know is corporation in the market … Starbucks, for expolitics of the CEO is not the only issue ample, is the premier sponsor of the 15th Anthis: if consciously trying to be a cool confronting people who want to be nual Business Ethics Awards and is described hipster chick means I would be a fake guided by their conscience when they as ‘A Model Global Corporate Citizen,’ yet it has hipster, then Urban Outfitters and I are shop. And if any of us were truly com- also been attacked for exploiting foreign laa match made in heaven.

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zooming out 55.

rganic living

Why is organic so trendy? Is it just a yuppie fad?

This fall’s trendiest edible accessory is available at your local supermarket. Obtainable in many varieties and colors, easily fit into a designer bag, and marked with an enticing “organic” label, the organic salad is suddenly the chicest thing that you can call lunch. But, unlike your latest fashion accessory, the trend toward organically grown foods represents not just a revolution in the aesthetics of eating, but a complete metamorphosis of our society’s perception of food and health. For me, eating organically is not a fad, but a lifestyle. I grew up on an organic vegetable farm that my parents started over twenty years ago. For the past eighteen years, I have had an organic salad after every meal, knowing exactly where each leaf of lettuce came from. Now, coming to Cornell, I see the desire among students to eat organically and locally and I wonder- when did my life become so trendy? My parents were not always farmers. Long before they wielded shovels and spades, my mother and father made their living as artists in Manhattan. Once my older brother was born, my parents started to question their lifestyle and began wondering if New York City was really the best place to raise their children. Eventually, they decided that leaving their jobs as actors and playwrights was the only way that they could have the life they wanted for their family. When my parents first bought our 50-acre farm, they knew only what a stack full of magazines had told them about organic farming. Through years of trial and error, crop failures and mistakes, they finally have farming down to a science and an art. Now, produce from our farm can be found on menus all over Manhattan and on dinner tables in many local homes.

56. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

by SHANE DUNAU The obvious difference in quality and taste between fruits and vegetables grown organically, as opposed to those grown using conventional farming techniques, may be the reason for the rising trend in the organic market. Organic produce is grown without exposure to any synthetic pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers. Instead of being exposed to these chemicals, the produce on our farm is rotated from field to field to prevent bugs and pests and all weeds are pulled mechanically or manually. Conventionally grown vegetables are cultivated in fossil fuel based chemicals that leave a permanent residue. Now one may ask, what’s wrong with chemicals? For the answer we must travel to Mountain Dell Farm in Hancock, New York, and ask my dad, Mark Dunau. According to him, conventional farming’s use of synthetic pesticides may have directly resulted in the cancer epidemic. “Cancer has become a plague in this country, and though it is a naturally occurring condition, it is by no means naturally occurring at this rate. Fifty percent of men and forty percent of women will develop cancer in their lifetime. People aren’t happy with those numbers anymore,” said my father, a political activist as well as a farmer.

Perhaps the real root of the surge of interest in organic foods is the thing that has changed everything in the last decade– the Internet. The Internet has allowed organic farmers and activists to make knowledge about pesticides more widespread and easily attainable than ever before. Additionally, the Internet has allowed those farmers to establish social networks that are designated specifically for organic farmers and those who want to work on organic farms. This changes the practice of farming from a relatively isolated field to a heavily networked, social occupation. Many farmers have their own websites that enable people to learn how to buy produce and find out about community events. For my parents, the Internet has made a vast difference in the number of applicants who apply for internship positions at our farm. Every year, my parents hire two or three interns to stay on the farm from May through November. These interns are college graduates between the ages of 22 and 30. Oftentimes their major in college has nothing to do with agriculture (this year our interns majored in History, Performance Art, and Anthropology), yet for some reason they all wind up digging in the dirt by mid-April. When my parents first started recruiting interns, they placed ads in various organic farming newsletters and publications and would usually get four or five responses. Eventually, they started advertising on sites like ATTRA (Appropriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas), a sustainable agriculture website, or WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms), an international internship exchange program. After my parents first began advertising on the Internet, the number of internship applications increased from 5 to 20. Last year, my parents received over 60 applications. It seems as though many freshly graduated college students are veering away from following typical, white-collar careers and are pursuing organics as a means of freedom from more conventional jobs. The recent dramatic increase in intern applicants is also undoubtedly a direct result of the economic recession. More and more people are becoming interested in obtaining the skills and stability that farming provides and are veering away from the getrich-quick schemes that have left many unemployed over the past

“

year. As my mother, Lisa Wujnovich would say, “As a farmer, you will never go hungry.” Though much of my parents’ time is devoted to the farm, organic farming allows them to pursue other interests. My father is heavily involved in local and state politics and my mother is a published poet. They were able to pursue these passions because of the flexibility of their business. Because of the labor-intensive nature of organic farming, organic produce is much pricier than conventionally farmed produce. Like driving a hybrid car, buying organically sends the message that you are not only socially conscious, but that you also have extra money to spend. If people are only buying organically grown foods as a means of self-promotion, they will stop as soon as the organic fad is no longer popular, and discard their organic veggies like last season’s fashions. In order for the organic movement to be long lasting, it cannot be solely for the elite and wealthy. Instead, the organic movement must permeate through the upper and middle classes to the lower class and become accessible to everyone. Maybe this new trend in food is a result of people becoming more health conscious, or a means of displaying status, but it’s also possible that society’s newfound fascination with organic food is part of something much larger. My parents’ path to organic farming is not an uncommon one. Oftentimes organic farmers first pursue a wide range of careers, but, eventually, something always brings them back to the land. For my parents, that something was the birth of my brother, but for others, it is a loved one, an illness, or a feeling of social responsibility. The idea that the organic farmer has such a close connection to the land is part of what makes eating organically so appealing to many people. Though eating organically may be both healthy and fashionable, perhaps it is this unconscious push back to the soil that might permanently transform the organic movement from a fad to a lifestyle. According to my mother, “People are looking for a relationship with the land,” and sometimes, just eating a tomato grown by an organic farmer on a small farm is enough.

In order for the organic movement to be long lasting it cannot be solely be for the elite and wealthy. Instead the organic movement must permeate through the upper and middle classes to the lower class, and become accesible to everyone.

”

art by LAIYEE HO

zooming out 57.

art by ANDREW SCHWARTZ AND JAMES FAIRBROTHER

Awful

Jobs!

In the tradition of Upton Sinclair, Kitsch proudly brings you two memoirs of work in America’s fast-growing service sector.

by JAMES FAIRBROTHER

ollister has become one of the most popular clothing brands among middle school, high school, and college students since its inception in 2000. Considering the idolization of the brand by its consumers, it’s not surprising that many of those fans want to work amongst all that clothing. Walking into a Hollister store, it’s easy to pick out the employees from the multitude of shoppers. The workers are the ones with unnaturally effervescent personalities, dressed entirely in the Hollister brand and wearing flip-flops no matter what the season. However, as I learned from personal experience, working for the company itself is a far cry from the idealized California surf culture the store markets as its “roots.” In fact, it completely sucks. When applying to work in this particular hellhole, you are educated in the employee terminology. There are two different kinds of basic employees. There is the “impact” team, which works

58. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

in the back room and stocks the shelves. This is where the workers that don’t fit the store’s “look” are banished. I was fortunate enough to be hired as a salesperson, or “model.” Calling basic sales associates “models” is possibly one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard. How can you tell people they’re models when all they really do is work a register? I guess the logic is that all of the actual models for the company’s ads are hired from the sales floor and nowhere else. Then there is the strict “look policy” from the employee manual. Surprisingly, the policy itself places an emphasis on natural beauty. Employees are required to wear jeans with either flip-flops or Vans slip-ons in a choice of six colors. Your top has to be in one of the season’s colors, usually navy, white or grey. It’s absolutely prohibited to wear black, and while the clothes do not have to be from Hollister, they cannot display any com-

“”

petitor logos and must fit with the style of Hollister clothing. This would be a lot easier if the employee discount was more than the measly 30 percent they give you on full-price clothing only (the clearance rack is cheaper to shop from). Hair must look natural and not go past the ears for guys, who must also be cleanshaven at all times. There is even a razor with shaving cream in the bathroom. No jewelry or accessories can be worn unless it is a watch, wedding band or a pair of simple stud earrings for girls. Girls’ makeup must be natural — no eyeliner allowed — and nails must be real and can only be painted a natural color. Even the length of nails is regulated. Then there is the music. At first, it didn’t bother me. The mix of pop, punk and alternative that plays in the store makes up a good portion of my own music collection, and I did hear some great new artists there that I wouldn’t have found otherwise. The only problem was hearing the same song three times per hour at completely deafening levels. A touch screen allows shoppers to choose the music that plays as they shop, and naturally, shoppers pick songs they recognize. No matter how much you may like “Shake It” by Metro Station or any of Paramore’s singles, they get old really fast when you hear these songs 10 times per day. I thought it might get better once the touch screen was removed and there was a preset loop of music — finally, no more repeats! Much to my dismay, three of the songs on the new store soundtrack were from High School Musical 3. This may be appealing to the 14-year-old girls that shop there, but it’s not to the workers that have to put up with it all day. What makes it worse is that the music is so loud it is impossible to hear anything that anyone says unless they scream in your ear. It would be hard to exaggerate how many parents complain about the noise and the fact that they can’t see due to the perpetual twilight ambience of the store. Some of them joke that the point of all this is to distract them from reading the prices before they pay for their children’s clothing. More distressing than the music, however, are the shoppers themselves. While working there, most of the customers I encountered were middle school students that acted as if they were the greatest things since the tasteless frappuccino and would, without fail, destroy the pile of clothing I had just painstakingly folded. The store is expected to look perfect, and the managers are serious about it. I would have to use special boards when folding to make each piece of clothing in the store look identical. I then had to organize clothing items by size (the largest sizes on the bottom and the smallest on top) and make sure the size stickers on each item were lined up together in just the right spot. God forbid a sticker was a fraction of an inch to the left of all the other stickers in the pile. I would then spray every table and shelf with the company’s own brand of cologne in such large quantities that it could be smelled outside the store and three businesses down. When I was finished, I would be told by a manager that the pile I had just folded wasn’t straight enough and should be refolded. Two minutes later, some girl with a loud mouth, poorly applied makeup and Ugg boots would storm in. She would destroy that pile, along with five others, and ask to try on the size 00 jeans. I would have to get these down for her from the top shelf using a stepladder. Of course, she would walk out of the store without buying a single item. Then I would begin folding shirts again. At least the cologne smelled good. I’m normally a pretty happy person, but after half a shift

like this (at minimum wage, I might add), I didn’t want to talk to customers, and I certainly didn’t want to be nice to them. Too bad indifference or (gasp!) downright moodiness isn’t tolerated at Hollister, even if your entire family has just abandoned you and you found out your dog has cancer. Every customer must be greeted with a smile, followed by the company’s current tagline. When I worked there, it was, “Hey, what’s up?” Not “Hi, how are you?” or “Hello, how is your day going?” Simply, “Hey, what’s up?”

Do you want California in a bottle?

If a secret shopper came in that day to report on the store’s quality and you didn’t use that exact phrase, the store actually lost points from its score. Worse still was the register tagline. It was usually related to the new fragrance that was being forced upon the children of the desperate parents who had finally made it to the register after an hour-long wait in the dressing room and checkout lines. And let me tell you, asking someone, “Did you grab some SoCal?” or “Do you want California in a bottle?” makes you feel like a fucking idiot. The kids make fun of their parents for not understanding such a “simple” question as the parents either yell “No!” or “What?” from two feet away across the counter. Remember, they can barely hear me, let alone understand the language of this store filled with overpriced, middling-quality clothing shipped from some factory in Guatemala. So I would just continue like I never said it at all, remove the sensors from the clothing, and swipe the credit card as fast as I could, partly to get the line down to a manageable size and partly in sympathy for the bedraggled mother trying to maintain her sanity. The cherry on top of all the aforementioned craziness is the fictitious tale of the company’s “founding.” This is a three-page story in the employee manual that describes the life of J.M. Hollister, a man who sailed around the world with his Javanese wife, finally settling in California, where he opened an exotic imports shop in 1922 (the number featured on most T-shirts). That store was then passed down through the family generations and became the iconic surf wear shop it is today. This story is complete and utter bullshit. J.M. Hollister never existed, and it’s only legal to perpetuate the story because of the fine-print disclaimer at the bottom of the page. The brand was conceived in the year 2000 by Abercrombie & Fitch, and the surfboards placed in each store aren’t even real. They include warning labels not to use them in the ocean. Hollister Co. is one of the most popular clothing brands in the U.S. and abroad, and youth consumers are entranced by its allure of luxury. But behind all of the “glamour,” the store is just another retailer. The brand drips with false hopes and expectations that fall flat once you are on the payroll. The next time you walk past a Hollister store, take in a big whiff of that impossibleto-miss cologne, and think of all the sore fingers that worked so hard to assault your nose like an anvil in a Wile E. Coyote cartoon.

zooming out 59.

by MATT FLYNN

worked as part of the security team, which most people would think is kind of fantastically freaking awesome, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Obviously my days would be filled with glorious misadventures the likes of which Ben Stiller couldn’t imagine if he’d been touched inappropriately by all nine muses, smoked enough illegal South American narcotics to kill the Grateful Dead and their roadies, and then gotten dropped into a room full of the finest epicurean delicacies.

had been ordering hookers right up to the museum doors at night. The few times that people pay attention to the value of the actual artwork are shining moments in an otherwise sea of kids on school trips, people on dates, sharp Wall-Streeters on corporate outings, and shambling geriatric hordes. The questions visitors asked could fill their own humorous book alone. Highlights include: 1 “Where are the dinosaurs?” 2 “Can I make it to African art without seeing any genitalia?” 3 “Do you have the Mona Lisa?... No? Okay, well do you have a copy?” 4 “Is this real?” 5 “Can my kid ride the horse?” (in the medieval arms and armor exhibit) In endless waves, people stream into the museum, and as a security guard it was my job to run back and forth all day long – sprinting from one flash photographer to the next, pulling kids off statues and reminding folks that yes, stone things eventually break, leaning against Andy Warhol paintings is not good for them, and if you break the rules we will ask you to leave. So when you go to the museum, please be nice to the guards. Most of them are folks just out of college who really like the artwork and want to make sure it’s available for later generations. Yes, the rules may seem silly and pointless at times (you know, like asking you to leave when we close), but we’re all doing it so works of art like that wonderful painting of Washington crossing the Delaware don’t have people gluing poetry to them... which may or may not have happened.

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Where are the dinosaurs?

Unfortunately, this is remarkably far from the truth. The life of a Metropolitan security guard is generally a mind-numbingly banal repetition of security round after security round, punctuated by cascades of bathroom-related inquiries. These awfully boring two years of my life were punctuated by more bizarre, disturbing and disheartening events than I would have witnessed if I had spent that time watching Fox News. Kleptomaniac grannies with beehive hairdos? We’ve got them! Cokedup Russian nudist hookers? They’re here too! Agalmatophiliac (that’s sexual attraction to statues) Canadian tourist kids? Oh hell yeah (he humped the statue of a Greek lion just south of the entry hall). It was long ago rumored that the last group of security managers ended up forcibly retiring when it was found out they

60. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

kitsch

invisible creatures

by SARA WOO

t had been eighteen years since he had last been in the country of his fathers, and there was something he could not quite name, something he could not quite pin beneath one finger and say with confidence, This is it. He was a physician and it was in his nature to probe, to diagnose, to treat; but this country – there was something about it that eluded him entirely. It made him feel like an adolescent again, fifteen years old maybe, confused, embittered, with an inexplicable emptiness gnawing inside him that he could only describe with abstract words, metaphoric images that twisted and pricked inside of him. He was to spend two weeks in Seoul, puttering in tourist-y things during the day and retreating back to the hotel for a night of fitful sleep. He had been told to expect to be surprised at the colossal changes that had taken place since he had last been in this city, but he had been ten years old the last time he had walked through these streets – if they were even the same streets – and the templates of that memory were too murky to lend him much surprise in the present. At the end of the first week, he caught a glimpse of what it was that he could not quite name; he glimpsed it in its shadow. Korea, he realized with unsettled wonder, was a country full of invisible creatures. That was the best way he could put it. They were invisible but they wanted to be seen, secretly. Everywhere there were traces of Someone having passed by; every-

where there was a feeling that Something was lurking not very far. That was all he knew for sure (as if invisible creatures were something he could know for sure). As for what he wasn’t sure of, he had a vague, indescribable feeling that they were mostly creatures of great sadness. On the night that he first saw one, he stayed up late, blinking quietly in the red upholstered armchair in his hotel room. At last, he got up. His room in Seoul had a fantastic view overlooking the Han River. He could not put it any other way: the Han River was home to a great she-creature. When he looked out the window of the hotel, it was night. Every now and then he saw people, young and old, stooping alone at the water's edge when they thought no one was watching. They dipped their faces close to the shimmering surface and whispered words, lead words that fell out of their mouths and sank down out of sight, silently gulped up by the hungry River. Just a few hours ago he had taken a walk by the waterside and had decided to stoop over the river, like he’d seen the people do from his hotel window. He had brushed the tips of his fingers in the cold black water, and that was when he had met her. He knew all of a sudden that he was stroking the tangled mane of a she-creature hungry for sadness, the only food she had ever known. She passed through his fingers silently, undemanding, but beckoning. He could only describe it in this way: figuratively, sorrowfully, with nothing but sheets of light and inky shadows. His shoes were muddy from the riverbank. A wave of

fiction 61.

photos by ANDREW SCHWARTZ

62. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

sleepiness overwhelmed him as he stood looking out the window, and he stumbled over to the bed. When he awoke again it was morning.

ama Shin was the distant family connection to his being in Korea in the first place. She was a thirdremoved cousin of his mother’s, and a handful of relatives he had never met were rumored to have gone on her tour before. After eleven years of being buried alive under books and endless sleepless cycles of taking his stethoscope in and out, in and out of his ears until they felt sore (his ears had always been a little too small), he found himself standing on the brink of something unexpected, something that recalled him to a former life, long passed, long done away with. He was newly resurrected from his Harvard S quare grave

and standing on the brink of a vacation, the first in eleven long years. He would return to the grave in just two weeks, and he hadn’t the faintest idea what to do with himself. At first the thought of a vacation had thrilled him. He had suggested Paris; he wanted to see the Mona Lisa. His mother said the Mona Lisa was a disappointment, and besides, he could speak no French. “Two weeks in Korea,” his mother had said, shaking her head so that the bun on her head wagged side to side like a Rottweiler’s tail. “Mama Shin’s Vista Tour,” she said with satisfaction. “Perfect fit for you.” That had been her same four-word slogan for medical school. His mother liked to speak in slogans. Mama Shin was a stout, curly-headed woman with a face so wide he wanted to poke it, to make sure it wasn’t some kind of illusion. But the width of her face was the only part of her that gave itself for the purpose of imagination; she was as stout in mind and character as she was in stature. Her neatly typed packets of information were bullet-pointed and stocked with numbers, measurements, and military history. She marched backward at the front of the large pack of tourists and shouted a stream of facts into her red bullhorn, motioning with one arm, to the left, then the right, as though she were born to direct traffic on the move. He imagined her as a cadaver, broad-faced and still beneath the surgery lamp, and felt that even her veins and guts would come numbered naturally, already dyed in color-coded shades of red and blue. Their large tour bus, red with a swirl of white and “Vista Tours” written in calligraphy across its sides, was his favorite part of the tour. It gave him pleasure to board it, feet sore from trekking through the streets, head aching from the sound of Mama Shin’s voice, to find his black backpack and gray fleece waiting for him in his seat towards the back, exactly where he had left it. As the bus lurched to its next destination, he would sit with the backpack on his lap and bury his face in the fleece, which felt soft against his eyelids and lips and smelled like lemons and moth balls.

he seco n d week in Seoul was his week of freedom; but freedom had always disarmed him and there was nothing

fiction fiction 63. 63.

like an empty week alone in a foreign city to leave him feeling vacant, helpless, and lost. No relatives were left in Seoul; he had no friends to call upon. He had never been particularly curious or adventurous. And so he did the most reasonable and safest thing he could think of: he took to riding the subways. He had discovered his affinity for the Seoul Metropolitan Subway the very first day after the tour ended. The Seoul subway was the vein-works of the city, the bloodline of the beast, and it gave him something firm to stand on, a literal path to follow. As soon as he descended the hundred or so steps into the bright, crowded tunnel, he left behind the limitless sky and frightening wind to a world defined by low gray ceilings, warm and familiar air, and an infinite amount of small articles for sale in the underground bazaars. There were shops overflowing to the left and right with all kinds of merchandise – accessory shops with scarves and stockings draped by the dozen in front of large bins stuffed with baseball caps and mittens and cheap nail polish, whole walls covered in glittering necklaces and hairties and pins; cell phone shops with salesmen calling out new deals in loud mechanical voices; flower stands with blooms of every shade; small eat-in shops with plastic tables and chairs, their menus tacked to the walls; and bakeries with their doors thrown open wide, filling the air with the scent of fresh red bean buns. He could lose himself in that comforting sea of concrete non-essentials, slipping past strangers plugged away into their solitary worlds of sound. For a few hundred won he would pull out a cup of sweet milk coffee from the machine and sip at ease as he waited for the train. Down there, no one looked his way unless he gave them good enough reason to. He could be alone and not be noticed, because so many were alone. Down there, no one seemed to speak too loudly, move too much, or do anything much to draw unnecessary attention to themselves; they were, for the most part, intent upon something, driven by a common purpose to be somewhere by some time. The subway was encased in its own kind of clean sterility, bound by its own kind of rules, a kind of transitory community that accepted him without acknowledging him. In the entire city, it was perhaps the one place he could be without feeling exposed or out of place. On the first day, he took the nearest subway line to its very last stop, staying put in the same car, watching the people who rushed in and out, swaying to the rhythm of the tracks and busy with their cell phones and MP3 players and books. He listened to the perfect woman’s voice announcing the name of the stop, first in Korean, then in English, which he approved of. He read all the ads tacked near the ceiling of the car and counted the number of tiles between his seat and the seat opposite. When he was hungry, he got off at a station and bought a sandwich from a newsstand. He would wander about the station for a bit before boarding the train again. On the second day, he bought a voice recorder. He was in the electronics section of one of the large underground megastores, poking about the round-eyed stereos, when he saw it – the voice recorder. It was black and gray, handheld, simple, with only the most necessary buttons placed around its sides and faces. He imagined cradling it in his hand, pushing the little red “record” button and holding it up to his lips. Whispering secrets into it like Moses’ mother at the Nile.

64. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

He thought of putting it on a thin leash, like the cords people used for carrying around their USB drives. He could put it in his pocket, or hang it around his neck. He imagined folding up the cord around the body of the recorder, tucking the softened little mummy with its hard metallic body into his pocket like a doll. He purchased it immediately. On the third day, as he sat in the subway car, reading across the familiar banner of ads on the opposite wall, he tried to think of something to say onto his newest purchase. He had not even given it a test run yet. What would he say? Testing, one two three. Hello, hello. As he was thinking, an old man sat down beside him with a grunt, uncomfortably close. The old man pressed his dirty brown coat against the sides of his gray fleece, and rubbed his oily nose with one hand, smacking his crusted yellow lips, and ran the same hand through his oily black hair. There was an unbearable stench, like old dry squid. Disturbed, he got up and stood in the aisle, searching for an empty seat, when, seeing that the old man’s gummy yellow eyes were fixed on him, he made his way quickly into the adjoining car, where again, he could not find any seats. He was unreasonably flustered, crossing and uncrossing his arms as he stood swaying impatiently near the door, and when the train came to a stop, he exited. The jostling and bumping of the crowd against his shoulders, his backpack, his arms, increased his irritation. The ceiling felt too low, the air too stale, the lights too dim, the corridors too cluttered, the packs of school girls standing about much too loud, their legs too thin and white. He chose an exit at random and nearly sprinted up the steps of exit number two.

xit number two was at the corner of a street, and beyond that corner, there was a park. The street was unnamed, there was no sign – many of the streets in Seoul had no name. It was a cool autumn day. He had almost forgotten that there was such a thing as sky, and that it was blue. It was strange how just one hour in the subway could make him forget like that, about things as solid as sky. He crossed the street and sat down on a bench in the center of a park, in the middle of a patch of dirt, feeling wonderfully, refreshingly alone. There was a cluster of trees to his left and to his right, a fountain just beyond him. There was a purple flower sprouting from one of the legs of his bench, and he stared at it for a moment because he hadn’t known that flowers bloomed in autumn. He thought about how he’d be in the hospital in Boston again the following week, and how very strange it was, sitting there on a bench in the middle of Seoul, in the middle of an empty week, without a soul in the world knowing who or where he was. Sitting there like that, he suddenly thought of his very first electronic dictionary. He had secretly named it Fred, to practice the “f” and “r” sounds, softly, to himself. “Phh.”“Err.” Those were the most difficult sounds for him to make. Fred had been a red and blue primary colored machine, about the size of a very large and cumbersome calculator. When he punched in a word, he could push a button and Fred would say it for him, and he’d imitate. Brill-ee-unt. Bay-ees-ment. Too-geh-ther. Poh-tay-toe. He could even have it say his own name, which he had chosen for himself. Har-vee. He wondered where Fred was now. Prob-

ably in some heap of garbage, floating out in the middle of the Atlantic. He chuckled to himself – it seemed like it was the first time in days – as he thought about Fred teaching him to talk like that, like a machine, saying his name like that. Har-vee. He had always admired artists. Today was a day he felt artists would appreciate. He took out the pad of paper he’d brought from the hotel and tried to doodle, but doodling on a blank white page had the same effect on him as freedom did, disarming him, making him feel helpless. He tried to sketch the tree in front of him, starting at the trunk and working his way up, but gave up when he realized just how complicated leaves and branches really were. He closed the pad and on the first page he saw what he had written a few days before. His handwriting was sloped to the right and it was difficult to decipher. He put the pad away without looking at it again. A shadow passed over him, and he looked up. It was an old woman, who had passed him and walked on, one arm bent behind her hunched back, the other arm swinging rhythmically at her side. Her white tennis shoes made scraping noises on the pavement. As he followed her with his eyes he realized that he was no longer alone. There was a small, loose cluster of men, perhaps four or five of them, gathering in suits around the fountain. They each were settling themselves with either a pad or a laptop; as they settled, a stout and balding man propped up a small sign onto the pavement. It was in English. The Writer’s Guild of New New York, Seoul Division. He glanced down at his bag, still partly open, and looked up again. In a moment he knew that he had made up his mind to sit closer. So he did. When he had positioned himself precisely close enough to be a part and yet just far enough to look a complete stranger, he took out the pad from his backpack again, and reread what he had written the night before. He sat on the bench, staring at the page as if reading, but his eyes were not in focus. When they focused again, he scribbled something on the next page. He looked up and saw a man with bushy eyebrows, who squinted at a screen on a nearby bench, and then he looked down again at the pad. When he was finished writing, an idea crossed his face and he brought out the voice recorder. He uncoiled the cord slowly, all the while staring at the words on the pad, mouthing them silently. After muttering to himself for a few minutes, clearing his throat, practicing the script he’d written for himself, crossing out a word here and penciling in a word there, he cleared his throat once more and spoke softly into the recorder. In high school, I had a friend who lived in a big house, and the walls were covered in heavy gilded frames. One day I noticed that a portrait of a lady hanging to the right of the bathroom door looked just like the lady in a portrait in the next room, the piano room. I spent ten minutes walking back and forth between the two portraits, trying to hold their faces in my mind, trying to converge them into one face; the color and shape of their dresses, how they fell over one shoulder, or the way the left corner of their mouths seemed to twitch. The color of their eyes, the texture of the cushions scattered about the couch, the gold of their hair. If I could burn the image onto my mind, I thought –

He didn’t feel like returning to the hotel, to the view of the Han, to the hospital in Boston, to his mother’s house. He remembered that old man on the subway and shuddered to think of returning underground. He wondered what it would be like, if this bench were his home, if he grew roots and became a tree. He glanced around him, quickly, furtively, with his eyebrows scrunched in all seriousness, and took in a panorama of the men sitting on benches around him. He thought about the impossibility of communication and about things like telephone lag. He might as well think of things like telephone lag, when he was sitting there in a park full of strangers holding the voice recorder, now holding his voice, his words, now no longer virgin. He might as well. He had spoken to his mother a few nights ago and it had left him bewildered. The lag in the line necessitated that he predict the future, predict what his mother would say, and speak the response before the inquiry so that his answer would reach her in time. It was a glorious, bewildering discovery. But what? He had tried to predict the future. He had grown aware of the lengthening silence; it had disheartened him in his discovery and he had said once more, “Hello?” There was a clicking sound, and then his mother’s words had come in a giant spurt. It sounded like Mickey Mouse speaking Morse code. There was a rustle and a click, then silence. “Hello?” He had remembered then that she had probably hung up long before that torrent of words; she had hung up somewhere during the prolonged silence that had preceded it. Somewhere beyond the park he heard the sound of a train whistling. He brought the recorder down from his lips and let his hand fall on the scratchy cloth of his bag, let it rest there, slumped palm-up with the fingers curled around it. There was a flutter of birds, punctuating the dying strains of the train with their papery staccato. He saw a great cloud of them flying overhead towards the west. Dusk was seeping into the rims of the horizon and the sounds of day began to eclipse with the sleepy stirring of crickets, the occasional lone cicada, the scent of night, the writer’s guild. Another shadow passed above him. It was the man with the bushy eyebrows, and he was somehow sitting next to him now, both of them sitting there together on that bench. He hadn’t heard him coming. The man was holding his laptop in one hand, gesturing with the other, smiling broadly. English. He looked at the glowing screen and read. When she first came to this land, there were strange flowers she didn’t know, great purple and yellow and white flowers heaped up on subway shop tables and blooming over fences, with dark green leaves as broad and smooth as a forehead. With time, she came to realize that she had seen these flowers before, even smelled and touched them before. They were as familiar as a lost brother whose long eyes she shared. She realized that she had met them in a dark, safe place where she had not only seen and smelled and touched them, but she had loved and even longed for them.

The man was asking him his name. “Harvey,” he said.

fiction fiction 65. 65.

kitsch

e had just finished his third espresso and his fifth cigarette. The dark-haired man had draped his long, lean limbs across the dimly lit booth with faux casualness. The angle of his chin and the laziness in his gaze seemed to ooze with cavalier cool. Only the rapid, percussive thump of his fingers on the smooth burgundy tabletop gave away his impatience. His dark, unruly hair fell across his face, his slitted eyes fixed on the café door. He didn’t even glance up at the waitress when she hesitantly asked if he wanted another espresso. He merely growled and shoved the tiny crimson cup in her direction and continued to drum with his long, pale fingers. The café was fused with the tangy scents of tobacco, patchouli, coffee and a variety of fresh pastries. Its patrons donned dreadlocks and piercings, thick-framed glasses and vintage cardigans. They carried bulging headphones and messenger bags quilted in political patches. They lounged and chattered with one another, perused dog-eared copies of Kerouac and Vonnegut and Salinger and scribbled in their Moleskine notebooks. The dark-haired man ignored them all and kept his gaze fiercely fixed on the café door, fingertips dancing violently against the table. It was snowing heavily outside, but inside the café the air was hot and damp. The windows and door were coated in sheets of condensation. The café swam in a thick fog, and the clothcovered lampshades threw a reddish glow into the haze. The bell on the café door tinkled, and the drumming suddenly ceased. The man was frozen, his fingers curled midtap, his eyes following the young woman who had just entered the café in a flurry of snow and icy wind. “Uh, hello,” she murmured to the man behind the coun-

66. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

going red

by SAMANTHA RAY

ter, nervously twisting at her scarf, small hands and delicate fingers burying themselves in the scarlet cloth. “A large herbal tea, please,” she uttered softly. Her voice lilted with a gentleness that radiated from her tiny frame. “For here or to go?” he asked her rather abruptly. “Oh, well, um, here I guess.” The young woman smiled awkwardly. “You can sit.” The man gestured to the crowded tables and booths. “Okay, thank you.” The woman moved toward the tables, hands still buried in her scarf. She scanned the café for an open table or booth, and finding none, she twisted the scarlet cloth still more anxiously. The dark-haired man still followed her with his eyes. “Excuse me,” he purred as she approached his table. “Would you like to sit?” He gestured to the empty space in the booth. “Oh, yes! Thank you!” the young woman replied breathily. “You can hang your things.” The dark-haired man pointed to where tendrils of blackened iron sprouted from the exposed brick wall. The young woman stuffed her hat and gloves into the pocket of her woolen coat that now hung listlessly from a wrought-iron hook. She kept the scarlet scarf draped around her pale neck. “Thank you so much,” the young woman sighed as she sank into the booth. Now that she had removed her hat, her hair tumbled past her shoulders in a thick, dark sheet, like old molasses clinging to the walls of a jar.

disguise

scarlet

icy flush suspicious violently

snowflakes

cherry red cold angel

glowing

frozen

burst

smoldering

hesitation

orange snow blush shadowy fog smile

uneasy

ablaze

disasters

freezing

dark

nervously

warmth

wary vermillion

radiant

rosy

burgundy

”Cigarette?” the man asked. “Oh, um,” the woman hesitated, “sure, I guess.” The darkhaired man handed her a cigarette; it was lighter than she had expected. She held it awkwardly in her hand, unsure what to do with the small, delicate shaft of tobacco. The dark-haired man watched her as she brought the cigarette to her crimson lips. The dark-haired man produced a silver lighter; it spat a narrow burst of flame with a sharp click. “Pull,” he said. She did. She coughed. She coughed again. A flush crept up her neck and violently colored her cheeks. “Oh!” When she had regained her breath she said, “I’ve never tried one of these before.” The dark-haired man smiled knowingly, gazing at the vibrant ember that swelled as he sucked his breath deep, deep into his lungs. A brief silence followed. He exhaled thick plumes of smoke, relishing each twist and curl and smoldering caress. “Do you have a name?” He smiled again, letting his gaze slide from the ember to the young woman. “Oh, yes. I mean, I’m Claire.” She had a pleasant face, soft features, a small nose, pointed chin and enormous brown eyes framed in thick lashes. “And you are?” “Bók.” “Wow, that’s an unusual name.” “It’s Russian.” “Oh.” Claire paused. “Are you Russian then?” “My grandparents were. I grew up here, in Boston.” “Oh.” Claire twisted at her scarf, her fingers braiding the crimson fringe. “Where are you from, Claire? That is, if you don’t mind me asking.” Bók waved his hand casually, his eyes never leaving Claire’s face. “Oh, well I’m from a fairly small town. You’ve probably never heard of it.” “Try me.” Bók smiled. “Okay, well the town is called Mattaposiett.” “You’re right,” Bók laughed. “I’ve never heard of it.” “Oh.” Claire clung to her scarf. “Why don’t you tell me about it?” Bók said, leaning forward conspiratorially. “I’d love to know all about this place — what did you call it? Matta — Matta — Mattawhatsit?“ “Mattapoisett,” Claire corrected him. “Yes! I want to know all about this quaint little town of yours!” “Well, it’s very small. It’s on the coast, so everyone knows how to swim and sail. I grew up in a cottage by the marsh. During the summer, the air is always salty and thick with mosquitoes. And we loathe the summer people who come from Boston and crowd our quaint little town.” This time it was Claire whose eyes glinted with mischief. Claire told Bók all about Mattapoisett and her childhood spent there, swimming in the calm harbor waters, fighting off the vicious marsh mosquitoes, playing tag around the lighthouse, quahoging in the dark, rank sand. He smiled and laughed at each of her stories, lighting a new cigarette with the glowing stub of the previous. “So why did you come here?” asked Bók when Claire paused to sip from her fourth cup of tea. “What could have forced you to leave such a beautiful place?” “Oh. Well, I’m here to visit my aunt,” Claire began. “She was a librarian, you know. She always brought me a new book

naive

fiction 67.

whenever she came to visit.” “Wow, that sounds amazing.” Bók smiled and took a drag from his cigarette, his face cast in an orange glow punctuated by the shadowy angles of his cheek and brow. “Haha — yeah,” Claire laughed awkwardly, glancing downward as her hands, which had been dancing so animatedly moments before, buried themselves in the vermilion tassels of her scarf. The rosy glow that had pooled in her cheeks burned fiercely. “I mean it,” Bók said seriously. “I never had anyone like that. Both of my parents were only children, so I have no aunts or uncles or cousins. My grandparents died long before I was born, and honestly, my parents could never be bothered. I was the responsibility of one au pair after another.” “I’m sorry.” Claire’s voice softened. Her fingers uncurled and fell away from the scarlet and crimson cloth. “It’s alright,” Bók assured her. “I just mean to say that I really do think it’s wonderful about your aunt.” He slid his hand across the table, his little finger tickling the inside corner of her wrist. “Thank you,” Claire murmured, blushing furiously. “So tell me more about this aunt of yours,” Bók said gently, gazing intently with his dark eyes at the rosy hue of Claire’s cheeks. “Well, uh, she brought me books.” “Right, you said that. What kind of books?” “All sorts, mostly picture books when I was young.” Claire started to smile again, her eyes alight with memories. “My favorite was ‘Where the Wild Things Are.’” “Wonderful.” Bók slid his hand over Claire’s. This time she did not retreat to the cherry safety of her scarf. She lifted her soft brown eyes to meet his fiercely dark gaze. “Oh goodness! Is it really that dark out? I’ve got to go!” cried Claire when she averted her eyes from the intensity of Bók’s gaze. It had grown dark and murky outside the café, snowflakes twinkling as they twirled beneath the streetlamps. “Let me walk you home,” Bók insisted, rising to get Claire’s things from the iron hook on the wall. “No, it’s okay,” Claire replied hurriedly. “Really, I’m sure I’ll be fine.” “Hey.” Bók caught her arm and stared her square in the face, his eyes burning. “Do you know where you’re going? It’s late, it’s dark, and you’re clearly from out of town. Let me walk you.” Caught off guard by Bók’s sudden insistence, Claire agreed. She hadn’t been to her aunt’s Beacon Hill townhouse since she was a small girl. Bók slipped his long, powerful arms into his heavy leather jacket and slid his hands into thick leather gloves. Claire was still fumbling with the buttons on her woolen coat when Bók led her out of the café with his hand firmly pressed at the small of her back. “Beacon Hill is this way,” he said a bit gruffly as Claire finished buttoning her coat and bent her head against the freezing wind. His stride was long and quick, one of endurance and efficiency; Claire practically had to jog to keep up. The wind gnashed its icy teeth against her face, and she wrapped her scarf an extra time around her neck. “Careful!” Bók caught her by the arm as she slipped on a patch of black ice.

68. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

“Thank you!” Claire gasped. “Can we slow down a bit?” Bók slowed a bit, shortening his stride to match hers. “I’m sorry, Claire.” The warmth returned to his eyes. “I’m used to walking alone, and walking quickly is the best way to fight the cold.” He loosened his grip on her elbow and let her slide her hand into his. The two walked in silence for five blocks. Every so often Bók glanced sideways at Claire, whose dark hair was laden with snowflakes. She’d forgotten her hat in the café. Her face was flushed against the cold, cheeks and nose a vibrant cherry color. Lit by the fiery glow of the streetlamp and bundled in her brilliant scarf, she resembled an angel ablaze. “How close are we?” Claire asked nervously. It was getting darker and colder. “Just a few more blocks.” Bók gave her hand a squeeze. They had reached the historic district of Beacon Hill. The roads and sidewalks were laid with brick. Bók warned Claire to watch out for loose bricks that tend to jut beneath a snowy disguise. “I’ve experienced my share of icy disasters from these damned things,” he told her, laughing. “I think this is it,” Claire said excitedly. She had stopped in front of a row of brick townhouses. “Are you sure it’s not that one there?” Bók pointed across the way to an identical-looking building. “No, this is it!” Claire insisted. “Number thirteen!” She pointed to the iron numbers fastened beside the door. “You’re sure this is it?” Bók asked once more. “Yes! It’s — wait, that says twelve! Thirteen is over there!” Claire exclaimed. “You’re right! Let’s go!” The two hurried to townhouse number thirteen. Claire rang the bell. No one answered. She rang the bell once more. Still no one answered. “Perhaps you should knock,” Bók suggested. She knocked, still no answer. “That’s strange,” Claire said. “Perhaps she’s fallen asleep.” “Well, it’s awfully cold out here —” Bók began. “Oh! I have a key!” “A key?” “Yes! My aunt sent me one in case she was out when I arrived!” Claire rummaged through her purse and found the key on a large red key chain shaped like a buoy. She shoved it into the lock and turned it. The door opened with a click. Claire stumbled into the foyer. “Come in! I’d love for you to meet my aunt!” “Oh, I would love to meet her.” Bók followed her in, smiling broadly, showing all of his teeth. “Auntie?” Claire called. “Are you here? Auntie?” “She doesn’t seem to be here,” Bók observed. “I’ll go upstairs and check her room. You stay here and make yourself comfortable.” Claire trotted towards the broad mahogany staircase. “Auntie? I’ve brought a friend!” Bók locked the door behind him; it was the type of deadbolt that required a key on either side of the door, both inside and out. He put the red key chain in his pocket. There was a phone on the foyer table. He unplugged it. He walked into the parlor and spotted a plush burgundy sofa. Bók sank into the sofa and waited. He could hear Claire walking upstairs. He smiled again, showing all of his teeth once more, and licked his lips.

kitsch

fault line

by LAURA VAN WINKLE

t wasn’t fair to switch it up this late in the game. High school was long since gone, and he was almost done with college, and really — continuing the lie could be easy, theoretically. As he reclined against the bedpost, however, a tension wrapped around his lungs. He knew the feeling: truth, squeezing its way out of his chest. He shifted his hips, pressing the pillow further against the post. “Hey,” he muttered. Ryker lay stretched over the foot of the bed, newspaper opened across his chest. His head turned to look across the mattress. “Hm?” “Do you remember that girl Elli from last semester’s psych class?” “Redhead?” “Yeah.” “Sure.” Ryker rolled to rest on one angular arm. “What about her?” “She’s in my soc class now.” Chin tucked in, Isaac glanced up and down to Ryker and back to his own lap. “I just, uh…I thought I recognized her, but I wanted to ask.” A chuckle fell from Ryker’s mouth as he rose to his knees. Scuffling across the worn comforter, he slouched against the headboard next to Isaac. “Was that all?” He could leave off there, and Ryker would go back to

staring at the ceiling and dozing off. Isaac nodded. In his peripheral, he could see Ryker trying to make eye contact, but he avoided it pointedly. One long finger hooked through the belt loop of his jeans. “What?” Isaac pursed his lips. “It was weird.” He turned his shoulders more towards his companion. A pause filled his mouth as he formed his words. “We sit next to each other, and I started talking to her a few weeks ago. We have to work together on projects and stuff like, like last week we had to take this —“ “Hey, hey, hey,” Ryker shushed him with his free hand. “You’re rambling.” “I just —“ Isaac sighed. “Today, she walked out with me. She was all about — like, asking about my birthday and what I do over the weekend and — mm.” He reached over to run a hand down the back of Ryker’s arm. “She did one of those. Just — touched, and then she bounced off.” A puzzled scowl twisted Ryker’s face. “…Okay?” “That’s it.” The scowl faded into a smirk, and Isaac’s cheeks burned. He wondered irrationally why, if they were so close, Ryker didn’t just read his mind. It certainly would have saved him a lot of trouble from talking. As it was, Ryker was not a psy-

fiction 69.

chic. He stared curiously at Isaac and tugged at his jeans. “You don’t think,” Ryker grinned, voice small and teasing, “that she was flirting with you, do you?” Isaac feigned surprise. “No!” Guilt succeeded over the outright lie; he relaxed, curling in on himself as he amended, “I mean…she might have been.” “Okay.” Ryker’s shoulders rose and fell beneath a threadbare t-shirt. “That’s no big deal.” No, it is, Isaac shot mentally, again lamenting Ryker’s inability to perceive it telepathically. “She’s cute, and you’re cute.” Ryker leaned forward for a moment to punctuate the compliment with a noisy whisper in the blond’s ear. “And I guess if you were straight she’d be your type.” He settled back, practically purring with amusement. “Am I right or am I right?” An honest explanation tried to crawl up his throat, but Isaac knew. The truth as it was now was only distorted and halfformed. Pulling it out now would only hurt. He looked to the mattress, mouth closed to stop things from tumbling out. The cocky smirk faded out of Ryker’s voice. “…Hey.” Isaac looked up. “Am I right?” Ryker repeated, concerned. “What? What are you talking about?” His voice rose. Lying was so much easier than being humiliated for the truth, and the false irritation communicated more readily than any other sentiment Isaac might have wanted to exchange. Ryker sat straighter and shot defensively, “Well, I’m sorry, but you’re over there pouting about something, and you obviously aren’t repulsed by this chick, so I have no idea what the hell is wrong with you.” “Nothing’s wrong!” “Sure.” Isaac found himself honestly offended. “I’m serious! Anyway, what d’you mean ‘obvious?’” “Isaac.” “No — what do you mean?” “I just mean that —“ A laugh jolted dead air out of Ryker’s lungs. “I mean, I feel like…I don’t know, I feel like you don’t care that she was all over you. Like it was a turn-on or something.” “She touched my arm!” “I know, okay?” “You’re freaking out!” Isaac bit his tongue, clenching his

70. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

arms around his chest to hide the shaking. “No, you’ve been completely —“ He stopped short and pressed his lips together, black eyes storming around Isaac’s face. The thought never finished. Ryker rolled over and stood, starting for the bedroom door. Isaac knew that Ryker would leave if not stopped. He would hide in another room for a while or take a walk. When he came back, he’d apologize for overreacting like it was his fault. The little monster beneath Isaac’s ribs squirmed agitatedly. Isaac called out before Ryker’s hand hit the doorknob, “Where are you going?” The dark head bowed and shook, tossing the thoughts about inside. Ryker turned, slumping against the closed door. Because he was brave, he looked directly back at Isaac. “Dude…I have no problem with you looking at girls once in a while.” “That’s not—“ “No, listen.” Isaac shut his mouth. Ryker pursed his lips, and it horrified Isaac to realize that he’d already pushed the other boy to an apology. “Sometimes I feel like I pushed you into this. I don’t think it was fair for me to bank on our friendship to get you to come out.” “Ryker.” “I’m just saying, we started this really young. It’s understandable that you’re still…experiencing women.” His head thunked softly against the door, and he looked up at the ceiling. “I just don’t feel like I reach you lately, Isaac.” Everything beneath his skin buzzed, and a dull pain seeped from his lungs up into his jaw. “Come here,” Isaac sighed. As Ryker pushed off the door and returned to the bed, Isaac watched the faded pattern of the blanket. A string was loose, and he plucked at it. While his friend and lover slid closer, arms slinking around his waist and lips pressing against his forehead, Isaac twisted the loose thread around his finger. It created sharp little hills in his skin, and it hurt. He held it. “Hey,” Ryker mumbled into his hair, “you know I’m all for you, right?” Isaac did not look up, but watched as the blanket string slowly constricted the blood flow to his finger. He took a ragged breath before letting the truth spill out.

Untitled

by DANIEL J. KLEIFGEN

poetry

Soul, against whose harrowing supplication I so long remained a pillar, who, from dreams of turgid sticky-red and moon-white eyes, awakens me, Speak. art by SADIE SMITH

There Is No “Original” by ADAM MILLER

I can sit here at my two thousand dollar laptop and lament. Because I can I can skip school and be a vegan and fight the man. I can wink out injustice With a blink of an eye (wink) If I think hard enough, Really hard enough-Hey bro, need to take some alone time to work on my poem anthology-Then I can sublimate, like, all my “problems” Into beer, or cowboy hats, or dirtstchaches But damn then I will be a consumer And I can cry about introspective shortcomings And drink Colombian coffee that I stole Because the workers don’t get any money anyway, I think The coca-cola company shoots its employees So don’t drink it, I read that on the internet. fiction 71.

art by ALLISON FISCHLER

Guidelines

for

Waistlines How vanity sizing has changed the American woman’s fashion experience.

by SARAH MATTE

n recent decades, the American fashion industry has shrunk women’s clothing sizes to accommodate the inversely widening American public. No one seems to be able to pinpoint what store exactly started shrinking their sizes in order to sell more clothes, but it likely began in 1983 when the U.S. Department of Commerce dropped the uniform sizing system for women, saying that it no longer reflected the size and shape of the average consumer. Once a uniform, standard size was no longer required in clothing stores, businesses realized they could manipulate their sizes. This is called vanity sizing – according to a 2008 article in The Seattle Times, sizes today are, on average, six times smaller than

72. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

the original size. That means today’s size 0 is roughly equivalent to a former size 6. According to Fox News, stores shrank the number of the size while not actually shrinking the clothes themselves in order to get more customers. This was an effective competitive move, since consumers would want to buy clothes that would make them feel thinner. New clothing sizes began being invented – sizes 4 and 2 and, eventually, the ominous and infamous size 0. Later still, the 00 even joined the ranks at some stores such as Abercrombie and Fitch, Hollister, Pac Sun, and department stores like Macy’s and Nordstrom. Architects use a technique called “framing” that is similar to the fashion designers’ vanity sizing. “If architects want

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to make an object look smaller, we’ll just enlarge the objects around it,” architect Ken Bartholomew said. The American fashion industry did roughly the same thing to sell more clothing. If women who are typically a size 8, for example, go to a store and find a pair of size 6 jeans that fit them, they are much more likely to buy those jeans because they feel thinner, even if they didn’t lose a single pound. “I know it’s probably awful, but as I’m typically a size me-

However, there are those who don’t believe vanity sizing even exists. They claim that just as humans have different body types, stores create different clothing sizes based simply on their own distinct label. The change in sizing numbers is not for “vanity” purposes, they say, but is instead simply a matter of evolution. “There’s no such thing as vanity sizing,” says Karen Fasanella, a well-known fashion blogger. “People are so different from one

They feel thinner, even if they didn’t lose a single pound. dium, if a size small shirt fits me, I’m going to buy it, no matter if I like the shirt or not,” said an anonymous student at IC. “It’s the same with jeans. American Eagle’s sizes run bigger, so I’m a smaller size than normal, so I just usually buy all my jeans from there. I like to feel thinner.” This fashion phenomenon of reduction is particular to the United States. The United Kingdom, for example, did go through a period of vanity sizing, but nowhere near as severe as the one in America. Thus, UK sizes are roughly four sizes larger than U.S. sizes. In other words, a UK size 4 is about the same as a U.S. size 0, or an old U.S. size 6. European sizes, in turn, are mostly based on actual body measurements. Instead of being a size 4 at one store and a size 6 at another, you would be one set size – a 32 in jeans, for example, or however wide your hips are, at all stores. It’s impossible to vanity size because you cannot negotiate an actual measurement – you’re a 32 in all stores, no matter what. There are many consequences of vanity sizing, some more unexpected than others. As sizes shrink, some petite women are left unable to fit into size 2 and 0 clothes at their favorite stores. Then, of course, there’s the question of whether or not the fashion industry is in part contributing to the obesity epidemic in America. Instead of realizing that they may be unhealthy because their clothing size keeps getting bigger, these customers may be staying the same size as they always have been because vanity sizing helps to disguise weight gain. art by CHARLES WANG

another that it is an unreasonable expectation that our clothes should be sized uniformly.” The American culture’s Photoshopped magazine spreads, racy billboards, and size 00 movie stars perpetuate unrealistic views of what the human body should look like and the idea that one is never thin enough. In this society, where people are extremely self-conscious about their bodies, the ability to provide a clothing size that allays this anxiety gives a brand a huge edge over others. At least there is small comfort in knowing that unless clothing companies start doling out negative numbers, vanity sizing has likely reached a point where it can go no further — that is, unless a size triple-zero debuts as next season’s latest fashion trend.

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Onthe

art by LAUREN SCHUNK

Origin

“The Chase”

A scientific search for the reason we want what we can’t have by JENNA GREENBAUM

or thousands of years, people have been tediously trying to understand the motivations of the opposite sex, with little success. My puzzlement at the male psyche began with Alex pushing me down during recess (allegedly because he liked me) and has yet to even moderately subside; thank you Tucker Max. And ladies, when did we decide that playing hard to get meant sending the right message and moreover, when did being a bitch become a good thing? I think for all of us, the ridiculous confusion is always there. I know personally when I find myself flirting with that guy who fucked my friend and didn’t ever call her, I think about the hilarity that is the human condition. (Side note: The flirting was harmless; I’m all about bros before hos reversed.) Tell me this: why is it that beta females of a lion pride always seem more than willing to accept the offer of the beta males, but humans can’t say yes to dinner with that guy in Calculus, who we admit is sort of funny and kind of cute in a dorky way? Why do we seem to have that best guy friend, who gets us completely, but would much rather get with the busty, bottle blonde who still can’t remember his name despite the fact they lived two doors apart all of freshman year? A former pre-med student (I made it one semester before I realized that I’m no good with beakers and brain-dead frogs), I thought it best to turn to science to uncover the mystery of why we just can’t seem to get what we want in the opposite sex. Here are my findings:

Human beings have a perception of self.

74. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

This allows each and every one of us to be narcissistic, selfserving, and egotistical. Human beings happen to be one of the only animals in the animal kingdom with a perception of self. Over the summer, I watched a four-hour documentary about black bears and for two of those four hours the researcher attempted to get the bear to look into a mirror and take off an object stuck to its head (if you give them enough money, researchers will really investigate just about anything). The researcher was so disappointed when her precious furry friend couldn’t accomplish the task, but I say, “Kudos, Mr. Bear!” Without a perception of self, animals are capable of being content with potential partners on the same level as themselves.

II. Perception of self varies between genders. One study found that women are more likely to describe themselves as outgoing, optimistic, and caring, whereas men are more likely to describe themselves as intelligent and good looking.

III. When seeking what’s best for our self-knowing selves, different genders want different things!

In a 2007 study on mate selection through a speed dating experiment, both men and women said they wanted romantic partners who were similar to them. The results told a distinctly

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different story. Men are overall less selective and will generally choose nearly every woman above some certain attractiveness threshold. Unlike guys, if women want to have sex we can; there will always be people who are willing to have sex with us. However, women in the speed dating study used their self-perception of physical attractiveness to adjust their aspiration level, trading off physical attractiveness against overall quality of the men across several domains. At the end, the women only picked a few men, thinking, “I’m as good looking as this guy is funny, smart and sweet.” In general, participants, male and female alike, recall cues about physical attractiveness more for female and cues about wealth status more for male. Both genders are more likely to remember how hot a woman is because its important to men to determine potential partner value and important for women to assess the competition. This is the same for wealth status of men.

IV. We all want someone better, but women seem to want the best.

According to behavioral psychologist, Steven Clark, when surveyed on where they believe they fell on a continuum of 19 different traits and what they found to be attractive in members of the opposite sex, men wanted partners better than themselves on just five traits: sense of humor, attractiveness, patience, emotional stability and communication skills. Statistically speaking, this means that men generally wanted someone that they thought was on the same level as themselves. Women, however, were far more discriminating; they wanted someone better on 15 of the 19 traits they were presented with. Some of these traits included status of occupation, income, and weight.

V. Mr. Kahn’s (my seventh grade science teacher) version of natural selection. Women have an excuse for wanting what they can’t have. Taking an evolutionary perspective on the matter, women can afford to be choosy. For mammals, in general, the most common mating dynamic involves male-male competition over access to mates and female choice of mating partners. By and large, it’s up to the female. Although I can’t pretend to understand the motivations of butt men, I know that female peacocks are all about the biggest and brightest backsides: “Look at all those feathers, MM-MM-MMM, cut me a slice of that.” Sadly, these facts only lead to more guesses about how humans go about pursuing potential mates. I decided it was time to take my investigation straight to the jungle (or straight to postulations and opinions of individuals clearly not qualified). Sophomore Samantha Cheirif, offered a very different perspective than the experts. Her look at wanting what you can’t have was more of a predator-prey relationship. “It’s just the thrill of the chase,” she said simply. We’re all quite familiar with the chase – the exhilaration of the pursuit and the victory of the takedown. But hunting the strongest in the breed goes directly against Mr. Kahn’s pretty

little description of natural selection. It just doesn’t make any sense! For thousands upon thousands of animal species, picking out prey is simple. The lion will take down the slowest and weakest of the gazelles every time. Humans, however, seem inclined to spend weeks running alongside the herd until they finally stretch their little legs long enough and take down the fastest and strongest of the pack, if for no other reason than to be able

...thank you Tucker Max.

to say, “Yeah, I got ‘em.” It’s really no wonder seventh graders have absolutely no concept of dating. I spoke with Glenn Geher, chair of SUNY-New Paltz’s Department of Psychology and a psychologist credited in Clark’s 2005 study on perceptions of self and of ideal mates. I wanted to see if he agreed with Samantha’s radical theory. Professor Geher acknowledged, “there has been little research,” on this topic area, he explained that the phenomenon of “the chase” may be because women invest more into mating, “female mating psychology may well make them particularly attuned to signals of high quality. And a male who essentially sends signals that he’s ‘it’ – whether his signals are honest or deceptive – may well hit just the right buttons in certain females, encouraging them, unconsciously, to pursue such men.” So, yes girls, we may be more evolutionarily inclined to chase, but it might be beneficial to get yourself a nice bullshit detector. Though the chase itself may be a beneficial evolutionary adaptation, Geher said, “it seems to me that being excited by the chase – or excited by courtship – would be adaptive, but only to a point. At [some] point, it would be in a woman’s interest to pair up with a high-quality mate, but…that would be after taking a very good look at what’s out there.” So, why do we keep running instead of simply selecting the best from what we can get? Geher and I agreed that this subject area does require additional research. Sorry… While I can’t provide any legitimate scientific explanation as to why you wanted the captain of the football team, even though you hate sports, and why he wasn’t interested, despite the fact that you spent three weeks at cheerleading camp (I truthfully can’t believe I said that), maybe this discussion at least points you in the right direction. For now I can at least leave you with this. The betas are actually kind of awesome. Try to think of that old expression, “Don’t knock it till you try it.” (But not literally. I’m not condoning anything.) So yes, for the sake of not being a giant hypocrite, I will take that slightly dorky guy from my calculus class up on his offer. If you are, however, truly insistent on taking down an alpha, just remember what my self-described brilliant roommate, Samantha Cheirif always says: “I don’t believe in leagues, with a good personality and a great push-up bra, anything is possible.”

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art by ZAC KINKADE

”

watch & listen

Ch iC

“They’re zombies.

They’re strippers. No— they’re zombie strippers.” by KATHLEEN JERCICH

“It’s hard to get it up for a rotting corpse who wants to eat your brains-even when that corpse used to be on the cover of Dirty Bob’s Xcellent Adventures 25.”

76. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

n case you haven’t been following Jenna Jameson’s voluptuous career lately, the porn star-cum-director recently released a cinematic masterpiece in which she also played the starring role. “Zombie Strippers,” ladies and gentlemen — what happens when you put the “hor” back in “cannibalistic, bloodthirsty horde.” Zombies, once one of the few classic horror movie monsters unencumbered by the weight of their own crushing libidos (I’m looking at you, Stephenie Meyer), have finally succumbed to the inevitable: zombie porn. The old days, when one could flip on Cinemax innocently expecting some hot living-on-living action, are no more. Compared to the rampant wave of orgasms heralded by any mention of Edward Cullen, however, zombies do not inspire fangirling from a purely visceral point of view. It’s hard, after all, to get it up for a rotting corpse who wants to eat your brains — even when that corpse used to be on the cover of “Dirty Bob’s Xcellent Adventures 25.” The truth, horrifying as it is, is that far from being the ticket into Silent Hill conventions it once was, objectifying zombies has become — dare I say it — chic. From a historical point of view, the fascination with zombies is nothing new. In 1937, Zora Neale Hurston (of “Their Eyes Were Watching God” fame) traveled to Haiti to study the legends surrounding voodoo. According to Haitian folklore, she found, it is possible for a sorcerer to bring back the soul of a dead person for one’s own means — a sort of undead, unpaid intern, if you will. In keeping with the traditional Western notions that sensationalize the foreign as exotic and barbaric, this concept fascinated many a pearl-clutching fiction reader. In 1940, Time Magazine cited “The Magic Island,” by William Seabrook, as the first introduction of

“It takes some serious heartlessness to look your former fuck-

maggot-crawling eye sockets, murmur sweet buddy in the

nothings about how you’re just not ready for a relationship, and set the sucker’s hair on fire as he screeches incomprehensibly.”

the word “zombi” into American culture. True to form, it’s a book fraught with caution against the perils of dark rituals and naked ladies, with a healthy dose of necromantic black magic mixed in. For most classic zombie fans, though, the real birth of the genre was in 1968, the year that “Night of the Living Dead” exploded onto drive-in screens around the country. While by no means the first film of its kind, George Romero’s independent, black-and-white brainchild transported the danger of the zombie from foreign lands onto American soil. As news coverage of the Vietnam War brought the notion of the “evil, barbaric foreigner” into question, Romero’s film reminded Americans that such wanton terror is just as possible on our own turf. The dead rising from the grave to wreak havoc on innocents is all well and interesting, but it’s not until it’s happening at the cemetery down the street that shit really starts to get scary. In 1968, it was that transgression of boundaries that really struck fear into the hearts of Coke-slurping teenagers. Unlike most horror-movie monsters, zombies are frightening for their simultaneous physical familiarity and emotional distance. With vampires and werewolves, after all, there’s still an aspect of consciousness to the limb-rendering beast: woo that sparkly vampire with your ineffable pluck and aw-shucks charm, and you’ve got a superhuman, bully-slaughtering friend for life. With a zombie, though, what you see is pretty much what you get: a slavering, rotting corpse who wants to kill you for reasons no one understands. Sure, in theory zombies want to eat your brains (and some more scientific types have hypothesized that biting is the becorpseifying, infectious, blood-borne virus’s way

of keeping its own evolutionary foothold), but it’s not like they turn into humans three weeks out of four or are prone to narrating long, navel-gazing tomes about their descent into madness. You got a zombie in your grill, you crowbar the mother — no ifs, ands or “tell me about your childhoods” about it. At the same time, though, it’s hard to rip a stop sign out of the ground and jam it into the neck of what used to be your sweet fourth-grade teacher. Just like with any other apocalypse, when the zombies come knockin’, only the strongest survive. The difference, though, between the ol’ comet-crashes-into-the-sea scenario and 600 grave neighbors coming to make a hot dog out of your Jack Russell Terrier is that these zombies used to be your friends. It takes some serious heartlessness to look your former fuck-buddy in the maggot-crawling eye sockets, murmur sweet nothings about how you’re just not ready for a relationship, and set the sucker’s hair on fire as he screeches incomprehensibly. It’s a testament to American individualism that this rejection of personal attachments isn’t the mark of a sociopath — rather, it’s a survival skill. In recent times, though, there’s been a shift in cultural response to hypothetical zombie-ridden chaos. In the past, insecurities about our reliance on technology for our livelihoods were the root of a bone-deep terror reaction to any sign of the apocalypse. Take away our iPhones and internet connections (or for that matter, our automobiles and electricity), the public seemed to realize, and you take away any advantage we once had. Zombies are a way to start over, so to speak, but trial-byfire only sounds good when you’re watching it on the big screen.

watch and listen 77.

Films like the aforementioned “Night of the Living Dead” and its approximately frillion copycats almost infallibly showed what humans knew to be true: that when it’s undead monster versus fleshy human, zombies are always going to come out on top. Not so with the most recent zombie pop culture, however. In 2006, Max Brooks’ novel “World War Z” proposed a scenario of life after zombie apocalypse, when humans have learned to coexist with the decaying hordes. There’s still an element of fear, of course, but the control has been given back to humans. Rather than hole up in a Denny’s with a shotgun and a handle of Smirnoff to wait for the end, Brooks offered an alternate plan, one that actually hinted at ultimate survival. His companion book, “The Zombie Survival Guide,” took it a step further by actually inviting the audience to recapture their own agency. In the same vein, films like “Shaun of the Dead” used humor to propose yet another alternate ending: zombies were harnessed as menial labor workers, allowing them to actually live in harmony with their breathing, coherent counterparts. And of course, Jenna Jameson’s “Zombie Strippers” showed a zombie’s ultimate defeat: the same patriarchal reduction to sex objects that living women face on a daily basis. So why the switch from freak to chic? Strangely enough, it seems to be a message hinting of hope. As the modern adolescent generation takes war overseas for granted, as they watch the ice caps melt and silicone mines create endless cycles of poverty, the only solution which emerges is a return to the 1930s realm of zombies-as-fantasy. By showing that the cadaver movement is eventually fallible, the creators of today’s zombie pop culture imply that so, too, can the other forms of meaningless chaos we face on a daily basis be surmounted. Strategize to defeat zombies, make them work as grocery baggers, or shove suspiciously sticky dollar bills into their thongs — for the new generation of zombie fans, the outcome of an apocalypse is not always set in (tomb)stone.

“You got a zombie in your grill, you crowbar that mother--no ifs, ands, or ‘tell me about your childhoods’ about it.”

78. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

GAY w i t h o u t

GIGGLES

DASS. A dia. B e Y m A e G ls in th Enter . a E u L x A e AY M omos h G f C o I S e AS w fac e n Exit CL e h cing t u d o r t In

by LAURA VAN WINKLE

he Classic Gay Male is under serious pressure. He has long had the responsibility of representing homosexuals in movies and on television, but viewers haven’t completely decided how they feel about him. He’s struggling to stifle the flow of hate and fear. He’s giggling and smiling and making pop culture references. But this two-dimensional, family-friendly face, which he strives to project frequently, brings criticism: Isn’t that a stereotype? I have homosexual friends and they’re nothing like that. I hate the way all gay people on TV are the same. That’s not accurate. These criticisms weigh heavy on the Classic Gay Male’s already burdensome responsibilities. The mass of our misgivings is crushing him. Luckily for him, someone else has arrived to share the task of being the public face of gay men. The Gay Badass is here to help the Classic Gay Male. This variation on the Gay Male has all the strength, stoicism and swagger of any action hero. He can start a fire, hunt deer, wield a gun, charm a lady and drive a racecar, and he can do it all with his hands down your boyfriend’s pants. Four parts traditional and one pivotal part deviant, the Gay Badass (or GBA, let’s call him) seems to be the next step away from the usual ridiculous stereotyping. His gay gene is watered down for mass audiences by the fact that he’s so goddamn awesome. Now, I’m not talking about those boys in the Hollywood closet (Maverick, Iceman, you know where to find us when you’re ready to talk.) This title is reserved for the gents who are out and about. It would be hard to find someone who doesn’t recognize the title “Brokeback Mountain.” Those who haven’t seen the film know the premise: two Wyoming boys fall in love and face obstacles. Ennis Del Mar, one of the two, is played by the late Heath

watch and listen 79.

, h t g n e r st of r swagge

d n a m s i stoic

o. any action her

start a fire, hunt deer,

He can

, n u g a d l e wi

charm a lady

drive a racecar,

and he can do it all with

hands down your

“

This variation e on the Gay Mal has all the

Ledger and is the pre-eminent GBA. This guy’s response to running into a bear, falling headfirst off his horse and losing half his food supplies is the grouchy gaucho equivalent of “Aw shucks.” He also knows how to kill, skin and cook an elk. Bad. Ass. How about Perry Van Shrike of “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang?” A Los Angeles private eye, “Gay Perry,” has got his crime scene procedure backward and forward. He slaps the silly out of rapists and takes death threats about as seriously as a gourmet takes Oreo Cakesters — they’re just disgusting little bits of life that slow you down and keep you from enjoying other things. Like sex. Then there’s Captain Jack Harkness from the popular British science-fiction television shows “Torchwood” and “Doctor Who.” Harkness is your standard rowdy, violent, time-traveling trickster. He fights aliens and is known for making the tough decisions, like whom to kill for a cause. He also carries on a fairly steady (fairly steamy) relationship with his teammate Ianto during the run of “Torchwood.” We absolutely cannot forget about Albus Dumbledore — headmaster of Hogwarts, top-class wizard, doting parental figure and allaround owner of life — from the “Harry Potter” franchise. This man exudes awesome and manly and quality, but when author J.K. Rowling pointed out that she had written Dumbledore as gay, it was little more than an “oh yeah…” moment for most fans of the series. His sexual orientation made sense, and fans responded to that. After decades of abuse at the hands of overworked, underdeveloped templates, it seems that the role of characters who are not heterosexual is finally beginning to progress beyond the funny/girly/ terrifying purpose it has served in the majority of films. In the film “The Object of My Affection,” for example, main character George Hanson is gay, but it’s played up for either laughs or angst. In contrast, “The Silence of the Lambs” killer, Buffalo Bill, calls himself a transsexual, but the movie’s psychologist insists this is just because he’s batshit insane, as if being nuts in the head is the only way to really be anything other than a heterosexual . In light of these predecessors, bringing the GBA in seems like a desperate attempt to not only create a wider range of gay characters, but also to garner a wider audience. When composing a movie or TV show, creators must consider their audience. The GBA can, when done properly, appeal to a much larger demographic than his predecessor, the Classic Gay Male. His attractiveness stems from the fact that you can more easily ignore the whole gay his aspect, if you want — and many ambivalent viewers do want to ignore it. When confronted by peers or family who oppose the character, the ambivalent viewer can say, “Well, yeah, Dumbledore has that whole thing with Grindelwald, but I don’t really pay attention to that part. I mean, do you remember when he fought Voldemort?” In fact, you could step back and ask the question: Is homosexuality even important when we think about some of these characters? When a character is solid, psychological insight is woven into every word and action of the character. When examining the GBA, one has to wonder if homosexuality is even a palpable psychological trait of his. Perhaps Hollywood thinks that the public’s attitude towards homosexuality is going nowhere, so there’s no point for them to write obviously gay characters. Sometimes the GBA’s homosexuality is simply a gimmick to make the character a novelty and attract more view-

boyfriend’s pants.

80. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

“

ers. When this is true, the shift to these new gay male characters is a lateral move. Hollywood just wants the money garnered by the gimmick, and why bother trying to influence social mood? When a character is really a reflection of the different types of gay male selves, however, the GBA represents a change in attitude. Creators are seeing that they now have greater freedom than was previously afforded them in the realm of character values. When Rowling said Dumbledore was gay, it wasn’t to please all the fan In , will we be seeing fiction writers. (You know they totally partied, though.) It was because he would not be the same wizard withworking alongside out his turbulent relationship with Gellert Grindelwald. If Captain Jack’s appetites were limited to women, his character at its very foundation would be compromised. He ? would be stiff and unbelievable. If Ennis Del Mar stayed faithful to his wife after he traveled Could the next Disney hero be up Brokeback Mountain, he might have had a more bucolic life — but he would be a stale character, just one more mumbling man- a knight, dedicated to saving his child seeking maturity in the number of children he can feed. The prince from the witch’s plot? litmus test of the GBA is whether you can remove that ‘G’ and maintain the integrity of the character. If the man is exactly the same without it, you’ve stumbled into an attention-grabbing scheme, my Will friend. But when the man’s homosexuality is integral to his character, you have the makings of a revolutionary, quality characterrealize that ization. This is when the GBA is a step forward, and a timely one at that. was the right person The GBA adds an element of exoticism to our modto save after all? ern media. Certainly, this character will become less novel as the years go by and we manage to integrate a wider variety of lifestyles into our media without using them as crutches for giggles or drama. For the moment, however, the GBA is an important asset to the Gay Male character. He expands the role in such a way that creates opportunity for the exploration of other homosexual figures — more kinds of characters to carry the weighty responsibility of teaching audiences the myriad natures of people in our society. He also paves the way for reconsideration of established characters and stories — in five years, will we be seeing James Bond working alongside his first Bond boy? Could the next Disney hero be a knight, dedicated to saving his prince from the witch’s plot? Will Bruce Wayne realize that Harvey Dent was the right person to save after all? The Gay Badass is super cool. He’s competent, he’s capable and — if you’re doing it right — he’s hot as hell. We will be seeing more of these boys in the near future. They’re here, they’re queer and they can outwit, outfight and outclass you in so, so many ways. Get used to it.

five years

JAMES BOND his first BOND BOY

BRUCE WAYNE

HARVEY DENT

art by AMY SHEPSMAN

watch and listen 81.

Sheesh

Ya’ll,

Twas

Dream

The story of high school friends keeping in touch through posts on a Dream Blog.

“

We were all at a blood drive that was in our gym. I wasn't scheduled to get my blood drawn out until much later in the day, but then John Belushi led me over to the chair with an extremely large needle and plunged it into my skin. Blood splattered everywhere, and then I remembered I was anemic, and I passed out…I woke up, and I went to Liz Lemon's room, got into a fight, and went to slow dance in an empty pool…Then I woke up,” my friend, UPenn student Meghan Chandra wrote, describing her most recent dream. However difficult the task, my friends from home and I have been staying in touch with each other via a giant thread of Facebook messages in which we share our dreams. The venture started in late August when eleven of my close friends and I prepared to leave for our first year of college. The simple instructions read: “If you have a crazy dream while you're away at college please blog about it here! Be as descriptive as possible and post frequently!” There is something about dreams that has enthralled humans for years. Whether we like it or not, a parallel universe that we don’t fully understand emerges each night when we go to sleep. People have been fascinated with dreams since the Greek and Roman eras, when dreams were often interpreted as messages from divine beings. Native Americans thought of dreams as spiritual ways to visit with ancestors, and other cultures have thought of them as predictions of the future. Scientists today still disagree on the nature of dreams. Modern psychology’s most prominent work on dreams is probably “The Interpretation of Dreams” by Sigmund Freud. Freud attributed dreams to a relationship or conversation between the conscious and unconscious. He theorized that our wishes and desires are often symbolically depicted in dreams so that our id, ego, and superego can communicate. Dr. Alfred Adler, the

82. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

by MARIANA GARCES

founder of the School of Individual Psychology, theorized that dreams are problem solving devices that help us to learn from our waking life. Many dream scientists still debate a connection between REM sleep and the occurrence of dreams. Dreams beget questions that are difficult to answer. What do they mean? Do we have any control over our dreams? Are we paranoid and self-centered for needing to analyze every mental release? As a college freshman, I am just now coming to terms with the fact that dreams belong to a separate, sleeping self. I feel that she is completely unrestrained, free from societal constraints, and yet faces more wonderful and horrible possibilities than my waking self ever could. The strangest thing about your friends in dreams is that they are never really your friends. Dreams are the wasteland of human interactions – I find that what seeps into my dreams are simply fragments of my waking self’s most fundamental relationships. I often wake up with a heterogeneous mixture of messages and symbols that I feel the need to decipher as if they were the Rosetta Stone. The first few entries of our Facebook thread are pre-college – strange now, but still familiar and fueled by anxiety. The thread was peppered with dreams of arriving at college naked, lost, and with no friends; it turns out the standard freshman dorm is strikingly similar to the Marshall’s fitting room where I used to work. As we started to head off to our respective colleges, we learned, one by one, the effect this new setting had on our dreams. Part of my half-baked Theory of Dream Transmigration states that after our bodies migrate, so must our dreams. After this hugely life changing move, our dreams took some time to catch up with us and adapt to the new setting and community. A prime example of this is an entry from my friend Hannah, who attends the University of Wyoming: “I can't remember my

“

art by COURTNEY BEGLIN

She accepted the mechanics of the conception, only thinking, “Oh fuck, another baby!”

dreams lately! A result of high elevation?” Melia dreamt of a spontaneous make-out session with Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords, to which Hilary responded, “reflection on first days at Syracuse? I think so.” A week later, Hannah admitted, “I’ve started dreaming about my new friends.“ While I haven’t been able to keep in touch directly with all of my friends, this dream thread allowed me to keep tabs on how college has affected them individually. Hannah’s wacky adventures from our hometown in New Hampshire are overlapping with dreams that incorporate her new shenanigans out west; Charlotte, at Drew University, is struggling with a recurring dream in which her wings are broken; Melia is adapting to city life in Syracuse; and Hilary is dreaming of pretentiously smoking clove cigarettes at Skidmore. While some dreams are impossible to analyze, others are more straightforward and dwell on everyday worries. After a regrettable one-night stand and her first walk of shame, Lindsey dreamt that a boy sneezed into an open wound and impregnated her. She accepted the mechanics of the conception, only thinking, “Oh fuck, another baby!” No matter the type of dream, our log of them has kept my friends and me together for the past two months, and it continues to provide a personal medium for keeping in touch. It has let us vent and critique to our hearts’ content, and has given us a way to keep our jokes and imaginations sharp. Though the entries are not all deep, I always find them entertaining. When Hannah dreamt of a Monopoly board with longitude and latitude, Jan-Erik quickly replied, “Mannnn that’s just like REAL LIFE, just a GAME.”

The strangest dream I contributed to the blog was the one in which I came across a toddler and an infant version of myself who were seriously discussing the rate of my adolescent growth. Although I couldn’t hear the words they were saying, I had a profound sense of being judged. It was as if I had not lived up to their plans for me and they were trying to tell me to stick to my simpler dreams. Younger me had wanted to be a stand-up comedian and her only goal in life was to have fun. Waking up the next day, I couldn’t help but feel I had an unwanted glimpse into my psyche that could now never be forgotten. Since that dream, I have realized that I have to satisfy my inner children, even if that means gratuitous amounts of Dunkaroos, SpongeBob, and inventing a Comedy major at Ithaca College. Dreams are fluid, fickle things. Their vivid pictures can haunt us for years or slip from our memory before we even wake up. Some are visionary and give us insight into reality, while others are a ridiculous medley of jokes, images, and worries pieced together from the day before. Dreams have survived into the age of Twitter, the first black President (who is coincidentally known for his big dreams), and the amazing, versatile, fleece blankets with sleeves known as Snuggies. We will continue to agonize over their meanings and ascribe symbolism where there wasn’t symbolism before, but that’s in our nature. I can only hope we all continue to have freaky, confusing dreams so that we can maintain our dream blog and expand upon our own quirky theories. Dreams will certainly outlive us, but we can still try to understand them – as long as we’re awake.

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g n i

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Does True Blood really promote gay rights? Or is it just about vampire sex instead? by JAMES FAIRBROTHER

“F

riends don’t let friends drink friends.” Um, what the hell does that mean? Whether you watch the HBO series “True Blood” or not, chances are you’ve probably seen the creepy-ass advertising campaign that appears to be hocking fake blood for people to drink. While it sounds disgusting, this advertising campaign is just one of the many reasons that people are watching “True Blood,” which has recently exploded in popularity. Thankfully, the synthetic blood only exists in the series’ disturbing fantasy world for the vampires to mainstream into society. (But if you really can’t get enough of it, or if you’re in some freaky vampire cult à la second season “Buffy,” there is a blood orange flavored soda packaged to match the show.) While the clever advertising and gory plotlines draw some viewers in, others are likely attracted to the show’s use of political allegory. The first season opened with a vampire “coming out of the coffin.” This revelation shocked the small town of Bon Temps, Louisiana, and polarized the residents in the new fight for vampire rights. With faux-CNN broadcasting the battle for vampire equality in the background, viewers watch individual vam-

pires struggle to be accepted in society for who they are. Even the opening credits are political. While they roll, clips of the KKK are flashed and viewers see a church sign that reads, “God hates fangs.” Sound familiar? The show is littered with references like these: vampire Bill (Stephen Moyer) asks human Sookie (the gap-toothed Anna Paquin) to marry him in Vermont, where intermarriage is legal, and vampire bars such as “Fangtasia” let vampires and “fang-bangers” (essentially human sex slaves who cannot get enough of the vampires they serve and feed) alike get their kicks, sans harassment. Many of the vampires themselves have ambiguous sexualities. Queen Sophie, played by the almighty and hot-as-hell Evan Rachel Wood, takes a female human as her partner and claims that she has become bored with men, though the sexual tension between her and fellow vampires Eric (Alexander

...the only thing people care about is watching a couple of super-sexy vamps get it on...

84. kitsch magazine, fall 2009

Skarsgard) and Bill is undeniable. In season two, the Fellowship of the Sun Church is created. Like many Evangelical Christian institutions in the Southern United States condemn homosexuality, this church unabashedly deems vampires inherently evil beings and creations of the devil, while damning to hell those humans that associate with them. This is about as deep as the political allegory goes. The author of the novels on which the show is based, Charlaine Harris, has said that she intended the vampires to represent minorities in society, and not specifically the gay community. The show, however, only vaguely follows the plot of the book series; as a consequence, it loses much of that conviction. Creator Alan Ball said, “I really don’t look at the vampire as a metaphor for gays…For me, part of the fun of this whole series is that it’s about vampires, so it’s not that serious.” Ball’s creative goal is to create something that is, above all else, entertaining, often with plots and characters that may not necessarily depict the outcasts as noble crusaders for social justice. Many of the vampires are indeed “arrogant, perverse and cruel,” and want nothing to do with humans other than to use them for food and sex. Those few humans who do embrace vampires are reduced to fang-bangers. These fang-bangers are condemned by society at large as strongly as the vampires themselves. The allure of being a vampire’s plaything turns many otherwise “normal” citizens towards homosexuality to get their fix. The sex and violence purveyed by the vampires is gratuitous at best and downright animalistic at worst. During these relations, humans and vampires alike are killed mercilessly; the dungeon below Fangtasia holds human prisoners chained to the floor. The sex scenes involving vampires are nearly as violent as the killings; they often result in a mutually euphoric act of feeding while in the midst of carnal pleasure. Multiple journalists, such as Maxine Shen of the New York Post, have brought to light the fact that if the vampires represent any minority community, specifically the gay community, their violent endeavors may portray the minorities that they represent in a much more negative light than a positive one. After speaking to my friends that have seen “True Blood,” it seems to be an all-or-nothing addiction. My friend Jon said, “I watch every episode.” In its second season, which ended in September, the show pulled in an average of 12.4 million viewers per episode when viewership of reruns and DVR are included. Of those few

“

Viewers easily see the political undercurrents of the show — they’re so blatant that a chimp could probably figure them out.

”

friends of mine who only watched an episode or two and didn’t jump on the bandwagon, their lack of interest was due to confusion regarding the plot and multiple, at times seemingly random, orgiastic scenes. Kelly, another friend who recently saw the show for the first time, described it as “a woman [who happens to be a sadistic maenad, a mythical Greek creature who follows Dionysus] started shaking and people got naked.” I believe that viewers easily see the political undercurrents of the show — they’re so blatant that a chimp could probably figure them out. However, I think that people are unsure of how the vampires might portray the gay community, as it is unclear whether the vampires are good or evil. This being said, I highly doubt that the show itself prompts viewers to discuss politics and social change. An episode’s quality is contingent upon suspense and the sexual exchanges between incredibly good-looking vampires. Empathy for the situation of Bill and Sookie may subconsciously influence a person’s opinion of marriage equality, but as most people watch the show for its entertainment value, I doubt that the show influences their political beliefs. As far as this author is concerned, the only thing people care about is watching a couple of super-sexy vamps get it on. However, I believe that instead of being mere entertainment, these raunchy scenes make the show’s message regarding homosexuality even more confusing. Despite all the blunt gay rights propaganda (which, according to Ball, is not actually there), every sex scene involves a heterosexual couple. The only possible exception is during the orgies that aforementioned maenad Maryann (Michelle Forbes) incites during her psychotic bitch tirades of “I want to possess everyone in the town and make them sacrifice body parts for me.” Yet in these moments of homoerotic unconscious abandonment, it is very difficult to tell who is who in the throng of bodies. There is never even so much as a kiss between two members of the same sex, regardless of any homoerotic vibes there may be. Lafayette, the only character who is clearly gay, is also one of the only people on the show who is not in a relationship; his escapades are learned about from dialogue rather than actual depiction. Apparently, even on HBO, it’s still considered taboo to show gay sex in anything other than porn.

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The Minor in Inequality Studies The Minor in Inequality Studies allows undergraduate students of all colleges to supplement their studies for their major with a coherent program of courses oriented toward the study of inequality. The concentration is appropriate for students interested in government service, policy work, and related jobs in nongovernmental organizations as well as students who wish to pursue graduate education in such ďŹ elds as public policy, economics, government, law, history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, literature, and philosophy. To enroll in the minor, please download an application from our website, www.inequality.cornell.edu, or stop by the CSI ofďŹ ce in Uris Hall, Room 363. Our email address is inequality@cornell.edu. The website provides current information on the minor, sample tracks of study, as well as CSI programming in general.