In This Issue
When in Newport
SIENA CAPONE 4
Family Moments
POST- FAMILY 2 JAMES FEINBERG 5
Growing Pains
JULIAN TOWERS 6
Parent Trap
postCover by Iris Xie
OCT 18
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VOL 24 —
ISSUE 6
FEATURE
Family Moments
A Collection of Memories by post- Editors BY SYDNEY LO, AMANDA NGO, CELINA SUN, ANITA SHEIH, JULIAN TOWERS ILLUSTRATED BY KATIE FLIEGEL
T
hree years ago today, my parents flew from Minnesota to Providence for my first Family Weekend at Brown. We had been apart for barely over a month but hugged in front of Soban like it had been a year. I’d never been away from home for that long before, and though I was slowly acclimating to university life and talked with them regularly on the phone, I still missed our little routines: tired morning goodbyes over coffee, watching Wheel of Fortune with my mom over dinner, my dad and I finishing our respective work on the couch. As we discussed plans for the weekend over bibimbap, we decided that we could all use a little
of what used to be ordinary. So, instead of attending all the events Brown University had to offer, we sat together in my parents’ AirBnB and marathoned Will & Grace. This show was one of many sitcoms that had played constantly in my house, a pleasant background noise to chores, meals, and conversations. Halfwatching the show and wedged between my parents as my dad recalled the first time he’d seen this episode, I was struck by how much I’d missed that noise. I don’t even remember what happened in the episodes we watched that night, but I do remember finally feeling at home in Providence. When my parents left a few days later, it was back to
my new life, my new world. There were midterms to study for, papers to write, friends to meet up with. But now, when I had the spare time, I turned on an episode of Parks and Recreation I had watched a hundred times before. I brought a piece of my old life into my new and, each time, felt a little more prepared for whatever the rest of the semester had to offer. *** “When do you get out of your meeting? We’ll be there in a few hours to get the calculator,” my mom said to me over FaceTime. Thanks to Texas Instruments’s pricing model, it was cheaper for my
Letter from the Editor Hello, Readers, and welcome to our sixth issue of the semester! I’m sure most (if not all) of you have noticed that change is afoot. You feel it in the crisp breeze no matter how many layers you wear. You hear it in the crunch of the leaves under your boots on the Main Green. You smell it in the air. You see it in the resurgence of Halloween memes, and you taste it in excessive amounts of cinnamon in the Blue Room. For those of you who have been here before, you know what it means. It’s fall (or autumn, as literally any other country would say. But I digress. This is not a treatise on British versus American English, though that is incidentally an essay well worth being written). As Providence truly welcomes fall (and midterm season), student stress levels continue soaring to unprecedented heights. It’s once again the time of year when bleary-eyed students can be seen stocking up on Starbucks (read: pumpkin spice lattes), comfort food, and extra-credit assignments. Fortunately, Family Weekend is here to break the cycle of anxiety that New England fall perpetuates.
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Unless you’re an international student, like me— in which case, homesickness will likely be your only visitor. But worry not, because whether you’re from Ohio or Timbuktu, this week’s issue of post- will still be available for you to read. In honor of Family Weekend, we have A&C pieces on dad-rock and Little Shop of Horrors, a feature piece reminiscing about cherished familial memories, and a narrative reflection on privilege —both inside and outside the Brown bubble. So here’s your weekly reminder: Make sure you stay hydrated during midterm season, dress warmly so you don’t fall sick, etc. Oh, and make sure to read post- so you stay up to date on what’s going on at Brown this week! Yours in 3,000 layers of clothing,
Kahini
Lifestyle Editor
Pumpkin-Flavored Things
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Pumpkins Jack-o’-lanterns Not pumpkin spice lattes Midterm stress on Halloween night Pumpkin-scented Febreze (although we don’t recommend ingesting it) Pumpkin Spice SPAM Squash that you can pass off as pumpkin Anything from the Blue Room with pumpkins in it Smashing Pumpkins, the alt-rock band Pumpkin spice popcorn—it’s really good!
parents to drive from Boston to Providence to get my old calculator than buy a new one for my sister. It was the second week of fifth semester, and I had just moved out of the only place I could consider my real home into an off-campus apartment with a million problems. That day, I expected to see my family for a few minutes before they made their way back. To my surprise, my mother came in lugging a tote bag and a garbage bag, and my father a hefty set of tools. My sister trailed behind empty-handed but with arms opened for a hug. Mom called me into the kitchen. “I got you two loaves of bánh mì. And frozen har gow. And har cheung. And here—some Vietnamese coffee. Oh! I also made you some kimchi.” She pulled out these foods as if from some bottomless magic hat while my dad banged away with his tools. I found him installing a new doorknob to my room, which had been broken since I moved in. “It closes and locks now. See?” My sister snuggled up in my bed after pulling a body pillow out of the garbage bag. “I brought you your favorite pillow. And Ollie,” she said, revealing a pink plush octopus: one of my only stuffed animals. By the time they left, my fridge was full, my room secured and insulated, and my bed cozier than it had been that morning. Everything feels incomplete without my family, but their visit made my apartment feel a little more like a home. *** I vividly remember how I learned that—spoiler alert—Santa Claus isn’t real. I must have been seven or eight, on the cusp of realizing that the world isn’t all magic and mystery and sunshine. We had just arrived home from a long day out at Strike, a bowling and arcade establishment where I spent many a birthday knocking down very few pins but winning quite a few tickets. I remember it being Christmas Eve. My mom, dad, sister, and I often went to Strike during the holidays. It was late, probably past my bedtime, and as I shrugged off my coat to hang it on the back of my chair in the dining room, I saw my mom gesture to my dad, who dutifully went down into the basement. When he resurfaced, his arms were full of wrapped presents that he put under our tree— bedecked in lights and ornaments, a beacon to Santa. Who, apparently, was my dad. I don’t remember my exact reaction to this stunning revelation, which means I probably already had some inkling that old Father Christmas didn’t exist (after all, who would want to live somewhere so cold all the time?). But I definitely asked questions— so, who wrote back to me every year in such pretty cursive after I sent out my wishlist? Was it always Dad who ate all the cookies and drank all the milk? I do remember that the year before, I had woken up in the middle of the night to a loud thump and the creaking of floorboards. Guess that was just Dad. Years later, my parents asked me, “How did you learn that Santa not real?” I recounted the story, but my mom furrowed her brow. “We wouldn’t do that. Right in front of you? That doesn’t make sense.” “This is definitely how it happened,” I protested, looking to my sister.
She shrugged. “I don’t know… Would Strike even be open so close to Christmas?” It was an outrage. I went to my room and dug out the diary I’d kept back then. And there it was, written in my shaky, baby handwriting: We went bowling! It was fun! Then we came home and dad put presents under the tree!!! Santa isn’t real!!!! I ran downstairs and placed my diary on the dining room table for all to see. “I told you so!” My mom looked at it. “I don’t know... You sure it wasn’t just dream you wrote down? I don’t remember.” My dad deferred to my mom, and my sister laughed. But I knew the answers to the questions I remembered asking. The post office had a special program that replied to children’s letters to Santa. My dad was always the one to stay up, but sometimes he put the cookies back in their container. The moral of the story: Sometimes your parents, for whatever reason, won’t admit the truth—but you know what you know. *** Many kids are familiar with the practice of writing letters to Santa Claus, proclaiming their goodness and advocating for the right to presents each Christmas. I, with the help of my mom, did that too every year without fail. Another regular pen pal I had growing up was the Tooth Fairy. So I would regale her with tales of my labor—my constant tweaking and twisting, prolonged days of soreness and sensitivity due to my wobbling canines, and elaborate doorknob-string-pulley systems. The best part of this practice was that they would always write back. Santa Claus would congratulate me on another year of spotless report cards, timely chore completion, and getting along with my older sister (most of the time). The Tooth Fairy would celebrate the newest gap in my smile with me and would urge me to take good care of the latest state in my quarter collection—would it be New Hampshire? Or Texas? I would listen to my mom read these letters aloud, grinning and captivated, hanging onto every last word from my fantastical friend who was so far away but felt so near. As I got older, I started to read the letters myself, relishing in their crisp folds, the festive patterns bordering the text, and the beautiful words and wishes the Tooth Fairy wanted to share with me. Then I began to notice some oddities in the letters—a grammar error here or a misspelled word there. My mom would reassure me in her fluid Cantonese, “The Tooth Fairy is just very busy. No time for spell check!” One evening, I was playing in my mother’s closet, rummaging around to see what shiny jewelry and beautiful fabrics she was hiding. I found a box, deep in a shelf stuffed full of thick sweaters. I opened it, hoping for treasure, and instead discovered letters. Years of my correspondence with the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus, neatly stacked in the box. The delicate fantasy I had fought so hard to maintain shattered before my eyes. I remember crying, a whole-body cry.
“I’m sorry,” my mom said when she found me. “I wanted to help you keep this magic in your life, to help you believe in this beautiful fantasy for as long as I could.” That didn’t help. “But now that you know,” my mom continued as she hugged me tight, “maybe I can help you find this magic somewhere else in your life, in reality.” And knowing that she had and would continue to make my life magical did help me feel better. *** My dad is really all you could ask for: he’s got a strong-willed code of American masculinity that makes him a little scary, but he’s also tender and empathetic—willing to support me no matter what path I take. Deep down, though, I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m a nerd. Not in the manner of, say, a bully—more like the cheerleading captain that takes pity on the frumpy valedictorian and gives her a makeover. That’s because my dad’s pretty much been that cool high school girl all his life, especially when he was a cool high school boy: top of his class, a track star, lead of every theater production, and, central to his legend, asked out to senior prom every single year. Dance skills apparently held cultural cachet among post-war, predominantly middle-class Jewish communities—and, guess what, he also had the best two-step in town. Even factoring out the two years I spent locked away at an all-boys boarding school, I never stood a chance. My junior prom night was spent eating peppermint Oreos and lazily watching The Passion of the Christ. Somewhere around the seventh minute of Jesus being flagellated by cackling Roman soldiers, my father’s voice carried downstairs to tell me to turn the volume down. His patient, dulcet tones carried a just barely detectable note of sadness. I had a rough first year at NYU; it’s a complicated story that ends with me hooked on cigarettes while obsessively performing stand-up comedy to homeless people. In short, I decided that I was going to transfer within a week of arriving and called my father to tell him not to attend Family Weekend. I’ll never forget the chill of desolation I felt when he told me not to “lose your youth in transit…y’know, like your mother.” (This is how my dad speaks.) By the time he journeyed up to see me at Brown a year and a half later, I had undergone an unprecedented glow-up. I was editing this magazine, I was TA-ing, I was running a film society. Furthering the image of my intense engagement, everywhere we went that day—even esoteric places like the RISD Museum—we ran into someone I knew (understand that I know 14 people in total, so this almost never happens). Reflected back to me off my father’s beaming smile, the new things in my life filled me with pride. It was a kind of pride they hadn’t given me before. I wondered if I hadn’t, deep down, glowed up just for him. When my father left, all the sad, unfulfilled elements of my experience would once again assert themselves—my film society was falling apart, my academic work was unfulfilling. But his validation lingered; it’s good to have the cheerleading captain on your side.
“I learned this entire language from Google.”
“Hey, Siri, set a reminder to get a life tomorrow at 8 p.m.”
october 18, 2019 3
NARRATIVE
When in Newport Of Bubbles and Privilege BY SIENA CAPONE ILLUSTRATED BY CAROLINE HU
I used to peer into my dad’s fish tank and wonder where, exactly, the fish thought they lived. Surely not the ocean. And yet, they definitely wouldn’t conclude that they were perched on the granite kitchen counter, within the orbit of my family’s Sunday pasta dinners and loud laughter and political discourse. They couldn’t know; little blue fins wiggling, round discus fish as pink as wounds—they’d spent their whole lives swimming along a plexiglass horizon. I first got the feeling when I entered high school and my chief social activities became sitting in my friend’s Honda, running into people’s moms at Target, and trying to explain to classmates why Andrew Jackson shouldn’t be on the 20-dollar bill. The feeling that my world was only so big—and my viewpoint so limited—was pervasive. My telescope into the outside world was locked in place. And moving it, giving a second thought to the thing my family friend said at that dinner, sounded a lot like seeds rustling in a shaken paper packet—making noise, but remaining confined. A persistent feeling of enclosure. Even if I didn’t realize it until I was 16 and sufficiently jaded, I’d lived there my whole life. I was in a bubble. *** Newport has always held a sort of mythology on campus, especially in declarations of long weekend plans, sandwiched neatly between Boston and NYC. The name conjures up images of grand houses, raw gray cliffs, and condensation on paper cups of Del’s Lemonade. My friends and I had never been to Newport, so the idea of a day trip held novelty, fueled by my desire to not miss out. After all, I appreciate any chance to spend time with the people I love and to ditch, well, the campus bubble. So I stuffed my bag with a seldom-used bikini, a reading I probably wouldn’t do, six pads, and my camera, and met my friends to trek down to the ferry.
The most exciting part, initially, was simply that we were going; poking the carefully constructed College Hill bubble came with a bewildering sort of joy. My American studies professor once joked that Brown students are “allergic to leaving.” And although the weight of books in each of our bags acted as subtle tethers to the gates we left behind, we were going—at least for the day. The Bristol Ferry Dock reflected in our eyes as it passed, the sun falling over Elena as she excitedly pointed out the expanse of blue reeling outside our window. (I, for my part, have ruined many a boating endeavor losing my innards and focused on the inside of my eyelids.) It was perfect beach weather back at school: 80 degrees, sunny. The Main Green was humming with life. And we were running with it, making out like thieves into an entirely new place where we would get to eat things we couldn’t at school, lie on a beach, and tell everyone about it. We stepped off the ferry into a humidity so thick, it felt like Newport was holding us in its mouth. Overhead, the sky was cottony, sunlight struggling to leak through the cracks in the wall of clouds. “Well,” Mary tried, looking down at a weather app, “it changes to partly cloudy around 2 p.m.” Her optimism was the only light present. So the sun didn’t want to leave College Hill either. Go figure. Nonetheless, we set off in pursuit of memorable experiences.And we found them, among pastel houses on waterfronts swallowed by fog and masses of seagulls and shops with weird names like Soap & Water. We poked around in a toffee store and put our faces in a your-face-here cardboard cutout of shellfish with “We’re so fresh!” emblazoned across it. We galloped around the beach attempting to take artsy pictures, and Aidan’s Speedo patterned with gold chains was the most memorable image of all. At one point early in the day, we were browsing a historical gift shop when two tourists entered: a guy holding the door and a woman behind him. Moved to profound emotion by this gesture, she declared to the shoppers before her that “Chivalry is NOT dead.” My eyes fell on a children’s book about women in the Revolutionary War called Independent Dames. I knew that if I looked at any of my friends I would burst out laughing—but I also knew that we all felt, for lack
I first got the feeling when I entered high school and my chief social activities became sitting in my friend’s Honda, running into people’s moms at Target, and trying to explain to classmates why Andrew Jackson shouldn’t be on the 20-dollar bill. The feeling that my world was only so big—and my viewpoint so limited—was pervasive.
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of `a better word, the “vibe” of the area we were. This part of Newport is commonly known to be dominated by wealthy white tourists. Its bubble-like nature is as unmistakable as Brown’s. A woman from New Jersey whom we met on the beach expressed this feeling best. My friends and I happened upon large-scale drawings of a particular anatomical feature in the sand on our way out of the beach, and our laughter quickly turned to confusion as we noticed that the artists behind the gallery of phallic shapes were all children under the age of 12. The woman, presumably their mom, offered the following critique: “We’re not in New Jersey anymore; we’re in Rhode Island! You can’t do that here!” (I, personally, would have commented on the drawings’ form, but I understand not wanting to discourage people in the early days of their artistic process.) Humorous as the encounter was, the woman’s oversimplification of the disparate social norms between New Jersey and Rhode Island also made clear that we weren’t alone in feeling the tonal shift present in the touristy parts of Newport. Like us, this family had traveled to Newport from their own hometown bubble, with all of its specific permissions and rules, and were trying their best to exist in a space with new ones. In other words, they were learning a new bubble. Many of us have had to do the same at some point in our lives. When I came to Brown, I felt absolutely floored by the breadth and depth of things I did not know beforehand. While we discussed more wellknown catastrophes, such as the Flint water crisis, in my environmental studies class, we also talked about disasters not as publicized like the gas leak at a pesticide plant in Bhopal. I had never once heard the name “Bhopal.” After that class, a friend and I vented our anger towards the systems of power and passivity that allowed these events to transpire with no consequence. Ignorance like ours can cost lives. We discussed the fact that we never knew about Bhopal and questioned the elaborate, carefully filtered mechanisms in place to feed us information. “And what makes it worse,” my friend pointed out, “is that the only reason we know about it now is because we go here, one of the most privileged places in the world.” She’s right. And yet, I thought I’d tried my best to stay aware, even back in Birmingham, Michigan: home of particularly sheltered childhoods and frequent PTA spats. But there exists a longstanding history of people and systems keeping countless dayto-day tragedies hidden under the radar. And even if we don’t feel unaware, many of us from sheltered backgrounds or identities of privilege often inadvertently perpetuate existing systems of power. The fact that enclosed spaces of privilege exist is not a revelation. I’m not the first person to point this out, nor will I be the last. But I don’t think it should be a revelation. It’s something I have to constantly remind myself of. Even if I didn’t realize it until I was 16 and sufficiently jaded, I was born and raised in a bubble. Birmingham was a checkerboard of suburban lawns and cement driveways that came with fixed rules and defined perimeters. Those rules—and that limited surface area I had access to—informed most of my life before Brown. Bubbles are often places we love and by no means as easy to hate as institutions of bureaucracy or vast chemical companies—we should be careful of this. I love Birmingham and hold onto nostalgic memories of its Target sunsets and the hollow echo of the marching band drumline off the high school stadium bleachers. But I recognize the structures of power and injustice that are at work in the
ARTS & CULTURE very same town. While my friends and I wove through Newport shops, I, like most first-time tourists, thought that it was a place of beauty, fun to visit. But it can’t be reduced to one dimension. Like with all places, there is the bubble constructed for the white and the wealthy, and there are low-income communities and communities of color in Newport that don’t fall within that sphere. Every place holds the disparities they do today because of a complex history rooted in racism, exclusion, and oppression that I seek to understand. The work lies in the act of reconciling the Target sunsets of my hometown with the harmful “opinions” of my high school classmates. It’s about trying to learn as much as I can at Brown while knowing that where I study is not an ordinary place, affiliated with a corporation that certainly does not always have humanity’s best interests at heart. It's about thinking of how I intend to change that, to the best of my abilities. Being grateful that I can. My friends and I stopped by Del’s and then Newport Lobster Shack; we watched the clouds finally break at 2 p.m. Mary wrote the name of her home state in the sand over and over again, like a summons. As if she could’ve conjured up her bubble right there on the beach—Minnesota unfolding onto the sand like a pop-up in a children’s book. We didn’t do any of our readings; we observed the world around us, limited as it was, as flawed as it is. Tried to make sense of it. My books stayed in my bag with my six pads and my camera and a few new postcards to write home on.
Growing Pains
Little Shop of Horrors at the Westside Theatre BY JAMES FEINBERG ILLUSTRATED BY ANNA SEMIZHONOVA
Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s 1982 stage musical Little Shop of Horrors, a clever and funny—if surface-level—dissection of American consumerism in the decades after World War II, generally works because of the man-eating plant. The 1960 Roger Corman B-movie on which Little Shop is based is a mannered farce; Ashman, lyricist and librettist, expanded it into a sci-fi tale about an alien species of flytrap that comes to Earth looking “essentially to / eat Cleveland / and Des Moines / and Peoria / and New York / and this theater.” The alien plant is found by timid florist’s assistant Seymour Krelbourne, who names the creature Audrey II after his co-worker and paramour Audrey. Seymour rises to prominence because of his botanical discovery (even making it to the cover of Life). Unfortunately, Audrey II is the advance force of a floral extraterrestrial invasion and needs to be fertilized with human blood. Seymour, looking to stay on top of the world, eventually feeds his foster father and Audrey herself to the plant. Though Ashman’s writing is overtly silly, he’s playing with serious themes here. In fact, the dilemma is as old as 1001 Nights: The unsuspecting (and, eventually, craven) putz finds himself in control of forces greater than he and plots to use them to gain fortune and notoriety. It’s the same territory Ashman broached, with more pleasant music also written by Menken, in the 1992 movie musical Aladdin. The threat, ultimately, is not the plants themselves but that enough “jerks” will fall for their get-rich-quick pitch and “feed them their fill.”
“They may offer you fortune and fame,” our heroes warn us in the disturbing finale, “Love and money and instant acclaim, / But whatever they offer you / Don’t feed the plants.” It might just as well be “don’t feed the bond traders.” It’s not the aliens who are coming to get us—it’s our own avarice.
until Groff’s appearance, and rightly so. Groff, it turns out, gives a remarkable performance in an essentially unremarkable production. Though I was worried, after the 2015 City Center production starring Jake Gyllenhaal, that this traditionally nebbish role would swerve toward permanent
It’s not the aliens who are coming to get us—it’s our own avarice. Done right, Little Shop should, on some level, inspire deep-seated moral terror. Done right, Little Shop should, on some level, inspire deep-seated moral terror. At minimum, its audience should find themselves avoiding begonias for at least a week. Michael Mayer’s new Off-Broadway production of Little Shop at the Westside Theatre is notable for a cast that includes Tony nominee Jonathan Groff as Seymour and Tony winner Christian Borle as sadistic dentist Orin Scrivello (among other roles). As such, it has inspired ravenous anticipation, impressive ticket sales, and a two-month extension to January 19. Its Audrey II puppet, designed by Nicholas Mahon and voiced by Kingsley Leggs, has been comparatively unheralded, for good reason. It’s well-puppeteered by a team of four, but it’s too smooth and decorative for my taste, more like a Muppet than a monster; though, to be fair, it’s tough to compete with Frank Oz’s masterful puppet from the 1986 film version and its quivering, articulated lips. Groff skillfully manipulates Audrey II’s half-grown version, a hand puppet with a disturbing number of gnashing teeth; its “mouth” snaps shut with a chilling thud that echoes through the 270-seat theater. In Act II, by contrast, Audrey II is larger, but torpid and unthreatening. The big lug (described in Ashman’s stage directions as “a cross between an avocado and a shark”) viciously chomps Audrey (Tammy Blanchard) across the stomach without leaving any visible marks. So much for eating this theater. So this Little Shop isn’t scary, and, as it turns out, isn’t particularly new, either. Risks are few and far between under Michael Mayer’s direction. On a utilitarian set designed by Julian Crouch, Mayer’s staging seems obligatory, a panacea marking time
matinee idol status, I’m glad to say that Groff’s deeply skilled performance does not rely at all on his beauty, his least interesting trait. His rage as Audrey II takes over his life is exquisitely colored, and his sense of twisted fun is palpable in the delicious “Feed Me (Git It),” a duet with Leggs. It’s a great musical moment in which Seymour, with Audrey II’s help, plans his first murder: “Stop and think it over, pal,” Groff practically shrieks, leaping up on a counter, “The guy sure looks like plant food to me.” Mayer, who directed Groff in his breakout role in the original production of Spring Awakening, seems surest-footed when working with his star. Since Blanchard’s vocal range is limited (tragically, given that Audrey’s two torch numbers, “Somewhere That’s Green” and “Suddenly, Seymour,” are the most powerful in the show) and the hammy Borle has entirely too much fun for his performance’s own good, one increasingly wishes Seymour and his big green buddy could be left alone onstage. Let’s face it—they belong together. On the occasion of this new, minimized, and intimate production, much has been made of the show’s downtown roots (it ran at the Orpheum Theater in the East Village for five years, from 1982 to 1987). But Little Shop isn’t a show specifically aligned with Off-Broadway such as The Fantasticks or Stomp, and it is certainly no more countercultural than its contemporary and spiritual predecessor Sweeney Todd. Therein lies the problem with this largely uninteresting approach to underserved material: So much, from Menken’s brilliant, genrehopping score to Groff’s gorgeous lyric tenor, is crammed into so little space. Where’s the room to grow? october 18, 2019 5
ARTS&CULTURE
Parent Trap
What to Expect When Mom & Dad Take the Aux BY JULIAN TOWERS ILLUSTRATED BY GABY TREVIÑO
I’m pretty lame. The highest my pulse rate has been all year was probably when I read that Travis Scott had a new single coming out. My parents are lame, too, but in a sadder way. They haven’t even listened to pop radio since before I was born; maybe your parents haven’t either. Musical complacency can seem like a fate worse than death, but should we really expect our parents to have hot takes on YoungBoy Never Broke Again or Lil Tecca? Looking 20 years down the line, I can hardly hope to keep up with my best friends from high school, let alone the music I liked; it’ll be a miracle if I know that Jaden Smith’s son, Ninja Qwest Smith, is spearheading the 2039 trap-disco revival. Whenever I get in the car with my parents, my ears may resent their choosing to play Bob Dylan Christmas charity albums or the EDM remix of Paul Simon’s Graceland, but my soul makes me grin and bear it. The artists that soundtracked their carefree youths remind them of a time before the grind of adult life. I can’t take that away from them. On the occasion of Family Weekend, I present a guide to the most notable recent releases in parentmusic (colloquially known as “dad-rock,” but that’s a restrictive category in more ways than one). Each record has been rated on two scales: one assessing its musical quality and another grading its potential to facilitate cross-generational bonding. Hopefully you’ll luck out and get handed the aux cord. But if not… Tool—Fear Inoculum Tool and its rabid fans make for disgustingly easy
punchlines, and I will have no part in it. Instead, I’ll say that the parent who explains to their captive child how Lateralus incorporates the Fibonacci sequence is likely the most passionate music fan you’ll find in this guide. Tool began the 1990s making dingy, dive bar sludge rock before somehow levelling up into alternative metal’s reigning Galaxy Brain. Fans obsess over their complex rhythms, unique time signatures, and pseudointellectual references to Carl Jung, Aleister Crowley, and German weed cookies. You could probably turn in one of their lyric sheets and get a B in a high school philosophy class. There’s not, however, a substantial amount of harmonic variation in their basement-dwelling sound. At first blow, each song is the same sludgy nightmare of chunky bass riffs, plunky drums, and preening vocals. Things start to deepen if you have time to learn where all the guitar solos come in, but that’s simply not possible in a single car ride to Boston. Thankfully, you’ll have your parents to guide the way. Fear Inoculum, the band’s latest opus, comes after 13 long years of feverish anticipation (presumably, they were meticulously timing each drum solo to correlate with Kabbalah numerology), so any devoted fan has likely spent a lot of time with it already. I’d recommend faking intense interest as your parents rave about Danny Carey’s expensive sonor acrylic drum kit and point out the secret messages the band has hidden in their time signatures. After all, didn’t they listen when you tried to describe your thesis? Musical Value 7/10
Bonding Value 9/10
Black Keys—“Let’s Rock” On the one hand, the band plays a strain of backyard barbeque blues that is perhaps the most deeply normal and archetypical rock music I can conceive. There’s a reason they’ve always been the de rigueur soundtrack to car advertisements. Squint your eyes, and their latest album will again conjure images of dusty roads, flatbed pickups, and 1.9 percent APR rates. But viewed another way, this band makes deeply surreal, uncanny, and downright odorless music for alien life-forms. Of another human being, has anyone ever sincerely thought they “get low like a valley / Then high like a bird in the sky?” What would it mean to “shine a little light on” another person’s “soul?” Is that…does that mean sex? Sure, they’re not the first band to write almost exclusively in rock cliche. But with the Keys, there’s no dangling humanity—no passion, hedonism, or romance to suggest they’re leading a life that would make someone reach for rock trope in the first place. It’s music that only reveals itself as bad when you ask yourself why
“Even more than peeing my pants, even more than my teacher’s shocked, reddening face, I remember days I spent in the corner of the classroom, by the shelves, reading books.” – Kathy Luo, “the english major” 10.20.17
“He always took my seat in the lounge and left his banana peels on the table. Oh, I’m not bitter." – Divya Santhanam, Jennifer Osborne, Kasturi Pananjady, “too close for comfort” 10.19.18
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Anita Sheih FEATURE Managing Editor Sydney Lo Section Editors Sara Shapiro Erin Walden Staff Writer Anna Harvey NARRATIVE Managing Editor Celina Sun Section Editors Liza Edwards-Levin Michelle Liu Jasmine Ngai
anybody would want to make it—besides ad revenue, that is. Assuming it was played willingly, this is the album I would be most concerned to hear over Family Weekend. Best case scenario, your parents have found new jobs in marketing; at worst, they’ve completely disengaged from all human experience (these could admittedly be co-related elements of the same scenario). Send for help, regardless. Musical Value 4/10
Bonding value 1/10
Nas—The Lost Tapes II “I don't want to go see Nas with an orchestra at Carnegie Hall!” That’s underground rapper and proud Marxist Billy Woods, coming off his track “Spider Hole.” It’s a great line, which I’ve determined is the result of two factors. One: It’ll make you feel better if you sing it after your debit card gets denied. Two: It encapsulates why it’s so hard to care about Nas these days. He’s too rich. Of course, rappers are supposed to get rich. That’s half of their superhero appeal; they sweep up the listener and make their conquest ours. But unlike, say, his enemy Jay-Z (example chosen to piss Nas off, should he be a Herald reader), the guy’s never really known how to make himself a legendary character. At his core, Nas is just an excellent journalist: intensely mouthing off about whatever’s in front of him. On 1994’s timeless Illmatic, recorded when he was a teen living in New York housing projects, that meant matter-of-fact documentation of crime, strife, and Nas’s determination to escape both. On 2019’s time-stamped The Lost Tapes II, it means dry boasts about investing in tech startups, handing luggage to his bellhop, and winning divorce settlements. Whereas even mediocre rappers know how to ride their wealth like a rickety rollercoaster, giving it real stakes and excitement, Nas turns his into a bland human interest story. If anyone could relate, though, it’s probably your parents. From their point of view, Nas building his own venture capital firm is no different than any other “Dad’s got his groove back” move—the rich person equivalent of leasing a sports car or cheating on your wife. We all have to block out the ever-encroaching void somehow. Should The Lost Tapes II come on, it might be wise to feign encouragement the same way you do when your mom talks about her macrame. Try, “Wow, Nas sure does have great really lawyers” or “It’s cool Nas still finds time to read the Wall Street Journal every morning.” You never know; to mock his mid-life crisis might be to mock theirs. Musical Value 5/10
Staff Writers Kaitlan Bui Siena Capone Danielle Emerson Naomi Kim Anneliese Mair Grace Park ARTS & CULTURE Managing Editor Julian Towers Section Editors Nicole Fegan Griffin Plaag Staff Writer Rob Capron David Kleinman
Bonding value 6/10
LIFESTYLE Managing Editor Kahini Mehta
SOCIAL MEDIA Head Editor Camila Pavon
Section Editor Caitlin McCartney
Editor Paola Solano
Staff Writers Eashan Das Lauren Toneatto
HEAD ILLUSTRATOR Rémy Poisson
COPY Copy Chief Amanda Ngo
LAYOUT Co-Chiefs Amy Choi Nina Yuchi
Copy Editors Maddy McGrath Jennifer Osborne Mohima Sattar
Designers Joanne Han Steve Ju Iris Xie WEB MASTER Jeff Demanche
Want to be involved? Email: anita_sheih@brown.edu!
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