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upfront

contents

editor's note Dear Readers, Yidi is sick this week, so in lieu of an editor’s note, we have a short story we wrote during a particularly tiring production night sometime last year. Send us your thoughts, feelings, grocery list, nude photos, and/or nothing at alicia_devos@brown.edu.

upfront features 3 • happy birthday

Katherine Luo 4 • santuaria

Rica Maestas

lifestyle 5 • on spinning Anna Harvey 5 • growing up

Anisha Dias Bandaranaike 8 • what’s in a name?

Yamini Mandava

arts & culture 6 • football is family

Joshua Wartel 6 • why i don’t hate math Alex Walsh 7 • kids’ movies for adults

Lily Rockefeller

staff

Editor-in-Chief Yidi Wu Managing Editor of Arts & Culture Ryan Walsh Managing Editor of Features Monica Chin Managing Editor of Lifestyle Rebecca Ellis Arts & Culture Editors Joshua Lu Anne-Marie Kommers

First, you wake up feeling rested and bound out of bed. Following a delicious blueberry pancake breakfast, you proceed to accomplish 20 hours of work in a mere half hour. After a relaxing and invigorating 6 mile run, you get a phone call from your parents who are giving you $300 for “whatever, because you’ve been doing such a good job at school lately.”

So obviously you put $100 into a stock that immediately skyrockets in price, from which you draw $400 for a shopping spree. Fifteen new tops and a cute pair of shoes later, you head home for a nap. After just 18 minutes, you wake up feeling great and eat some of the homemade ice cream you made yesterday as a soothing 10 a.m. snack because you can and this is the best frickin day. The rest of the day is spent doing things that leave you perfectly fulfilled and happy and purposeful, such as walking your dog, hanging with your bffs, relaxing in perfectly manicured grass with the sun shining (but not aggressively shining) on your face, eating some lasagna and cheesecake, not feeling bloated and actually feeling perfectly full and content, and other great stuff like that. To finish off this best day, you chill at home and discover, when you go to floss, that there is absolutely nothing stuck in your teeth and you have not been walking around all day with spinach on your front teeth. Sighing and humming, you jump into bed and fall fast asleep immediately.

Have a great week,

Post- staff

Bring back the naked photo.

Send us your nudes (to put in the magazine) at alicia_devos@brown.edu.

Features Editors Saanya Jain Claribel Wu

Serif Sheriffs Logan Dreher Kate Webb

Lifestyle Editors Claire Sapan Alicia DeVos

Head Illustratrix Katie Cafaro

Creative Director Grace Yoon Copy Chiefs Alicia DeVos

Staff Writers Sara Al-Salem Daniella Balarezo Tushar Bhargava Kalie Boyne Pia Ceres Katherine Chavez Rebecca Forman

Joseph Frankel Devika Girish Lucia Iglesias Ameer Malik Chantal Marauta Aubrey McDonough Caitlin Meuser Emma Murray Jennifer Osborne Spencer Roth-Rose Celina Sun Anany Shah Annabelle Woodward Alex Walsh Joshua Wartel

Staff Illustrators Alice Cao Peter Herrara Jason Hu Beverly Johnson Jenice Kim Emma Margulies Michelle Ng Mary O’Connor Yoo Jin Shin

Cover Katie Cafaro

features

3

happy birthday an annual thank you

KATHERINE LUO contributing writer illustrator CLARIBEL WU

Hey, I know a lot has changed, but will you guys be coming to my birthday party this year? I’ve been making plans.

There’ll be pizza and wings, like there always have been before. I’ll try to find a good movie. I think it’ll be fun.

Do you remember the first one, in 2005? That June 26th, I turned eight.

Thanks for filling my dining table.

Thank you to the ones who were willing to sleep on the sofa. Thank you for staying up with me to wake my brother in the middle of the night, pretending to be robbers about to kill him. Even today, I haven’t forgotten about it.

Did you notice? I celebrated my 8th, 17th, and every birthday in between with the same exact cake. The only things that changed were the candles, and even then, we reused those all the time. Like the hot wings and the breadsticks and the two-liter bottle of Coke, Carvel’s Original Ice Cream Cake found its place at the table the same way you and I did.

The first time we called the icing swirls on the cake “veins,” we practically wet ourselves laughing—we told ourselves we were eating the birthday girl. It’s one of those things that doesn’t make sense to me now, nor is it still funny, but that was what humor was back then. Every year after that, all I had to do was whisper “yum” as the cake came around for us to start giggling again. What was it about eating a chocolate layer and thinking it was intestines that made us bang on the table with laughter?

I remember what it felt like to lie on the floor with you, trying to escape the heat and mosquitos after playing badminton on the lawn. Lying flat on the ground, we saw all the little fibers in the carpet, the quarter under the couch, the way our hair fell around our heads like tangled weeds. One of us fell asleep every time. The rest of us talked about life

and held hands. My mom would walk in, and wonder why none of us were speaking. Looking at each other, we didn’t know either.

We didn’t need much to be entertained. Every year, people asked why I put so much work into organizing an event that most kids stopped having after they turned 10, and there were times when I started wondering, too. But every year, as soon as the school year ended, I thought about us and found myself in Walmart looking for streamers again.

In time, I realized it wasn’t a hassle for me—it was a habit, something that felt stranger not doing than doing. I stopped writing formal invitations. You stopped asking for my address. We were a simple group that thrived on chips, board games, and shared memories that accumulated every year. After all of you went home the next morning and I finished picking the paper plates off the floor, my mom would ask me about what we did. I could never quite remember. She would also ask me if I had fun. I always said yes.

I loved falling asleep with you after staying up late together. After screaming and jumping and rolling around in our sleeping bags, I had the best night’s sleeps I ever had. We slept in total peace, after unloading an entire year’s worth of thoughts, aspirations and fears. Secrets love the dark, where no one can see how hard you’re blushing, and no one needs to smile when they don’t want to. I made funny faces while you were talking sometimes, just to make sure that I was really hidden in that blackness.

Through the years, what we talked about changed, but the honesty and trust between us was constant. Each time after turning off the lights, we made a pact, the classic promise to keep what was said sealed in a room for eternity. I don’t remember the first year we talked about

what we thought love was. But do you remember that time we figured out we all liked the same boy? When I invited someone’s crush one year by a dare, and he actually came? Sometimes I wonder if I still care so much about these things because I actually do, or if it’s because they remind me of you.

I’ve also forgotten the first time we stayed up all night, not just for the act itself, but because we still had things to say. Was it 2010, when we first entered middle school? 2007, the year your parents divorced? Or 2013, the year the first of us started to leave for college? Past nights always had to be punctuated by games and other ways to keep us awake.

That night, the words kept spilling out until the sun came through the windows. I don’t remember exactly what we talked about anymore. I don’t remember who started crying first. I don’t remember whose parent it was standing there that morning, laughing at our sleepy eyes. But I remember the feeling of it: soft, close, and real.

You made the night of my sixteenth birthday one of the happiest of my life. That was the only year I really felt the need to plan, to make it something big— blame it on society, hormones, that one 80s movie with Molly Ringwald in it. By that June, every giddy nerve in me believed that turning sixteen was the most important milestone of my life.

Which is why after a month of planning, when the Carvel Original Ice Cream Cake had melted because I had put it in the fridge instead of the freezer, I wanted to cry in front of all of you.

I thought about all the hours I had put into the night, the fuss I caused over a trivial party, the way the cake box, melting in my hands, seemed to be nothing more than justice for my stupidity.

But you all ate it anyway. You loved that disgusting, melted soup that could only be served in scoops. You ate the whole thing, so that there weren’t even leftovers for the next morning’s breakfast. And now, that liquid cake is still a mess in my mind, but I remember it much more beautifully than something like that deserves. I remember it because of you. As all of your arms wrapped around me and I hid my face in half embarrassment, half joy, you taught me how to love unexpected things. You turned my shame into a blooper that still makes me laugh.

That night, when you had all fallen asleep, I got up by myself to read the guestbook. I don’t think I ever told any of you of this, but even now, I pull it out to read. I keep it in a small box, with the birthday cards I’ve saved each year, and the little pictures you drew with them. That night, I looked at the pages filled with your handwriting, I wanted to cry for a second time—not out of sadness, but because I knew if my life depended on me telling an incontestable truth, I could say: “These are my friends.”

But as much as that was the truth, it was equally undisputable that every finished party meant we were getting older. We knew it; our time in this small town was counting down, and the last few gatherings seemed to take on a sense of urgency. When my mom started talking about moving out, all I wanted to say was Wait! Wait, just let us have one more year, for the sake of holding on. But I stopped myself, maybe because I felt like I had already received too much. What right did I have to one more birthday speech, one more game of Truth or Dare, one more morning waking up to your pillow? I thought of the countless others who were all ready to leave their childhoods behind, and the way I was still pathetically calling for mine to come back.

So I didn’t object. We unceremoniously left the house I had lived in since I was six, and on June 26th, 2015, I turned 18 alone.

Some part of myself tells me to get used to it. This must be how everyone is supposed to celebrate their birthdays after a certain age—no more goody bags, no more pizza, no more talks about crushes and naïve fears. When we get older, these kind of things are no longer supposed to afflict us. I think about my parents, now passing the middle of their lives, who have never had a birthday party since I knew them. I think now, I need to get older the same way they do.

But another part of me wants to strongly, insistently, dearly hold on. It’s true: our town no longer binds us together. Our lives began to diverge that summer, the moment we touched our diplomas with our left hands and shook our principal’s with our right. But I hope that when the weather starts to warm again this summer, you’ll wonder why something feels out of place, and why you left space open on your calendar near the end of June. I hope that soon enough, you’ll remember me. This summer, let’s eat a cake again. We’ll celebrate more than just school ending, or another year on my age—we’ll celebrate coming home.

4 features

santuaria granoff’s upcoming monument to moving on

RICA MAESTRAS staff writer illustrator KAY LIANG

Whenever I’m in love, I accumulate like a fiend. A shell from our first date, a pile of safety glass I found with you, a shirt you made for me, miscellaneous junk that somehow elevates itself to the status of an icon, a talisman to another time. It’s a compulsion, like if I don’t snatch as many mementos as possible, I won’t be able to advance to the next level and my beloved will move on without me. It doesn’t even have to be love for a person – when I was in love with swimming, I collected an entire drawer full of competition results and ribbons to hold us together.

I kept that drawer long after I stopped swimming. It festered in my room like a wound, but I couldn’t get rid of it because all that stuff had become a huge part of who I was. There were 15 years of my life in there—more time than I had ever spent on anything. Throwing it away seemed like throwing all that time away too, and I couldn’t do that. I no longer swam, I didn’t want to swim, I didn’t particularly even like swimming, but I used to love it, really love it, and that, in some way, still mattered.

Of course, there was no shortage of generic wisdoms to point me in the other direction—if you love it, let it go; if it doesn’t bring you joy, get rid of it; attachment is the root of suffering; etc. I knew I should let go of all that emotional baggage, but I couldn’t conceive of how.

It was too important to put in a trash bag, not useful enough to go to Goodwill, not relevant enough to be a gift. I couldn’t bring myself to cut it up either, so I could make some kind of collage or sculpture out of it. It was too much pressure to use materials so precious, and after all, crafting that time into an art project would only make one more thing I couldn’t get rid of.

But that was just an excuse. I had this unsubstantiated conviction that maintaining my devotion to swimming, even if it was only in the form of a junk drawer, would somehow keep that feeling of love alive. Maybe I’ll go through it one day and remember all the good times, I’d think to myself. Maybe I’ll even love it again. But I never did. I never even wanted to. All that nostalgic stuff, mementos from something I didn’t even miss, had turned into a drawer of frustration and agony over the fact that my time, love, and commitment were gone.

All those reminders I had collected were just vessels to assuage the anxiety I had over giving so much of myself to something without the assurance that my love would last.

But the truth of the matter is that losing swimming made room for so many other things: I fell in love with water polo, my first romantic partner, my friends. The love I had for swimming hadn’t disappeared; it had just transi-

tioned into love for other things. It’s the same with people, friends, and lovers. When it finally comes time to call it quits, there’s an amazing opportunity to find all the new things you’ll love next.

After an inevitable mourning period, that is.

So I would like to cordially invite you, dear reader, to come together with the other loving collectors in Providence for a celebratory purge—Santuario.

Santuario is a participatory installation at the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts appearing in November. Its purpose it to bring closure by providing a safe resting place for your meaningful items and a medium to embrace the uncertainty of the future. If collecting is not your style, the space also provides notecards for confessional healing as well as a generally therapeutic ethos for less tangible wounds. My hope is that by cleaning out those old loves, accepting their important place in the past but not the present, we will be able to move forward lighter, freer, and more open to unexpectedly good things that come our way.

Before you come, send two pictures of your hands—one clasped and the other open— to rica_maestas@brown. edu with a description of what you plan to let go. If you would like, the clasped hands image and the story will be featured on the project Instagram, @the_ santuario_project. Once the installation

is underway, the open hands will be projected above the objects as a celebration of letting go.

The opening will correspond with the November 2 anthology graduate conference at the Granoff at 7 p.m. , during which I will talk about the concept and lead the first visitor groups to the installation. If you would like to be involved in the disposal process of the donated items, you are welcome to attend our mid-point potluck and discussion on November 17 at 6 p.m. If quiet, solemn mourning is more your style, you’re welcome to attend the silent vigil and participatory take-down on the last day of the event—November 22 at 6 p.m. More information will circulate throughout the month via the project’s Instagram, Twitter (@SantuarioPVD), website (santuario.wordpress.com), and Facebook event page (search ‘santuario project’).

Let the search begin! Locate those magical portals, those things that tie you to a specific past and keep you from seeing all the amazing adventures to come.

Locate your guilt, your nostalgia, your anxieties, your hang-ups, your lack coalesced into some object and bring it to meet all the other emotional baggage in a wondrous monument to moving on.

A project like this only works with the meaning you give it.

lifestyle

5

on spinning an obsessive-compulsive decade

ANNA HARVEY contributing writer illustrator JENICE KIM

I have stuck my finger in an electrical socket, walked barefoot beside a dead squirrel, and deliberately splattered pee over a toilet seat.

My skin crawls at the memory, and yet I did them all, over and over again, to heal. I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, the disorder that thrust me into a therapist’s office at the at age eight, when I couldn’t finish a lemonade stand without scrubbing my hands raw every time I went inside to refill the ice. OCD has given me panic attacks, flaky cuticles, and the power to generate a mental spin cycle that can launder thoughts—starching them, ironing them, and rumpling them up again, in 10 seconds or less. It’s infuriating, soul-sucking, and sometimes even wonderful. So here, in honor of the upcoming 10th anniversary of my diagnosis, are the Top 10 Joys (and Oy’s) of Living with OCD. 1. Lists. The fact that this is a list (and it’s even-numbered).

2. Who invented breakfast for dinner anyway? It’s a completely illogical excuse to use up pancake mix. I’d rather have my meals during their proper times, thank you very much.

3. I love the feeling of filling up all the space in my planner, of being daunted at how long it will take to complete each task, yet positively thrilled at the prospect of sequentially checking them off.

4. My dad and I compete over the amount of anxiety medication we take. He wins in terms of total amount, but I win in terms of amount per pound of bodyweight (score!)

5. I know my hand lotions. I may be fighting a losing battle against rinse and repeat, but for mildly chapped cuticles, I suggest Vaseline.

6. Efficiency is underrated and totally awesome. Considering my aforementioned mental spin cycles, you’d better believe I’ll get everything else done quickly.

7. This is not to say that by valuing speed I sacrifice quality. In fact, OCD makes it nearly impossible for me to abandon anything until it is finished, revised, edited, and proofread a solid three times.

8. I’m a veritable encyclopedia of obscure medical facts. Most are probably useless, but if you’re curious about your risk of contracting rabies from the local raccoon, I’m your girl.

9. My powers of observation rival even the best quality control inspector’s. I like to use these skills to notice the little bits of magic hidden beneath the surface, in the scratches on an old woman’s wedding ring or the way a discarded spoon catches raindrops on a summer evening.

10. But danger lurks everywhere, you know.

There’s a suspicious stain on my desk; I’d better take care of it. Could be coffee, could be con-

tamination as yet unknown to scientists across the globe—best to be safe.

So, if there is anything this decade has shown me, it’s this. I might wash my hands until my knuckles smile, pink and raw. I’ll probably spend half an hour too long adjusting the

margins on my lab report. Tonight I may segregate vegetables on the kitchen counter, then look away in pain when I toss them into salad.

Yes, I am obsessive. Yes, I am compulsive. But no, I am not a disorder. I am me, a girl trying to figure herself out, and I am so much more.

growing up reflections on three years passed

ANISHA DIAS BANDARANAIKE contributing writer illustrator JULIE BENBASSAT

As my final year gets into gear, I have been pulled into a sense of nostalgia for the last three years. It’s true I have a quarter of my time here at Brown left to go, but it feels like this year is going faster than the previous three, and I don’t quite know how to deal with that.

People say that time goes fast when you’re

having fun; they say that as you get older, time speeds up, that when you’re in danger, it slows down.

There are theories about why this is, about how your brain processes information. Scientists have found that when you’re doing something new, you focus on all the details, processing each one i n d i v i d u a l l y.

But once you do something again and again, your brain stops taking it in. It all becomes the same, and that’s when time starts to fly past you. Maybe that’s why my freshman year felt so long, and why each year has felt shorter and shorter since. All I know is I have one quick year before I graduate and time slows down again.

I look back on who I was freshman year, and I can’t recognize myself. Change happens in in-

visible increments; it feels like barely anything is happening, and then it’s been three years. Suddenly, you’re a different person. That’s an overstatement; I’m still the same person at my core.

I still overthink every word and action; I still care too much about fictional characters; I still find it hard not to procrastinate. My being hasn’t shifted—I still feel the same excitement for life that I always did. What’s changed is my perception of myself.

Coming to Brown for the first time was overwhelming. I’d been a big fish in a little pond, so overconfident in my intelligence that I couldn’t imagine a world where I could feel small. But then I arrived at Brown and quickly realized how insignificant I was. In seconds, I lost all confidence in myself, in my ability to convey thoughts and ideas, in my ability to have them in the first place. I was awed by the people around me, all so capable and intelligent.

I think about who I was three years ago, insecure, terrified I wouldn’t make any friends, worried about all the things I wanted to do and thought I couldn’t. I think about how much has changed. I think about how I went to the writing center for the first five page paper I ever wrote, concerned and confused. (Now, I sometimes start five page papers the day they’re due.)

I think about how I had never had anything at Jo’s but a spicy with until the end of freshman year. (Jo’s salads are a gift from God.) I came out freshman year, not worried really, but still unsure how to express myself. (I found my people.)

I think about how in my first three weeks of college, I was convinced that the key to a Real American College ExperienceTM was to try to

go to parties on the weekends. (I realized that I really don’t like dancing, or parties, or people who are wasted.)

I’m supposed to feel like an adult now, ready to get a job, to graduate, to be responsible. But I don’t feel even close to ready. I’m still young and there’s so much I don’t know how to do. But someone once told me that no one really ever feels like an adult, that what makes an adult is life experience. Everyone gets to a point where instead of feeling blind panic in a situation— whether it’s interviewing for a job, shopping for groceries, or doing your own taxes—you think, “I know how to do this; I’ve done this before.”

That’s what growing up is—just adding more items to the list of situations you know how to handle.

My list is a lot longer now than it was three years ago. It’s not a comprehensive list, but what matters is that it’s growing. I can cook decently enough to feed myself; I can chair a meeting with confidence; I can write a paper, face a deadline, do a presentation, without panicking; I can build things with power tools and wood; I can stage manage a show; I can spend three months being lonely and miserable and put myself back together.

The additions to my list may not be the same as anyone else’s, they may not be as impressive or as useful, but each new item has made me more confident. When I see freshmen now, I remember how worried I was, and I want them to know that feeling goes away. Their lists will expand.

As my final year gets into gear, I feel like maybe I’m ready for this, ready for this year, and ready for the world.

6

arts & culture

football is family touchdown for netflix documentary In Massillon, Ohio, where they’ve been playing high school football since 1894, football starts at birth and ends at death.

Or, if you believe in heaven, then there is surely Tigers football there as well. In a town of only 33,000 people, the football stadium seats 16,600. The Tigers Booster Club visits maternity wards to give newborn babies mini footballs. Season tickets pass down through the generations. As one woman tells in the recent book, Tiger Legacy: The Stories of Massillon Football, “The football team isn’t only about family. They’re like a family. For those four years, they’re brothers.”

The football family of Massillon, Ohio, is only one of many. Think of Odessa, Texas, whose Permian Panthers were made famous

by Buzz Bissinger’s 1990 classic book, Friday Night Lights. Or Allen High School, also in Texas, which built a $60 million stadium in 2012, only for the foundation to crack two years later, rendering the stadium useless. Ten million dollars and 18 months later, however, and the Eagles were back and better than ever.

The National Football League (NFL) doesn’t have the school settings or smalltown settings of Massillon or Odessa, but it does have more money and brighter lights.

If you turned on a game last year, you might have caught the NFL advertising spot featuring New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski. Gronk, as everyone calls him, rolls out of bed, eats his cereal, hangs out with friends, drives to Gillette Stadium, and dresses for the game. Just as he and his teammates storm out of the locker room tunnel, the NFL’s slogan flashes over the image. It says, “Football is family.”

—— Somewhere between the New England Patriots and Massillon, Ohio, is Eastern Mississippi Community College in Scooba, Mississippi. There is nothing to do in Scooba; even the nearest Walmart is 45 minutes away. Nothing much happens in Scooba, except on a few good Thursday nights every fall, when the school’s crown jewel, the EMCC Lions, are in action.

Premiering in July, the Netflix original documentary series Last Chance U follows the EMCC Lions through their 2015 season. It’s a shame that Last Chance U may have slipped under the radar upons its summer release in

the dog days of summer. The six-part, roughly 300-minute season is a brilliant piece of sports journalism. The dramatic stakes are high since EMCC is the two-time reigning junior college national champion. The players are colorful characters, desperate to earn scholarships from Division I programs, and the filmmaking is inspired. Directed by Adam Ridley and Greg Whitley, Last Chance U avoids the shaky-cam aesthetics that make many documentary viewers dizzy. Football has always been a sport that looks great on TV, but Ridley and Whitley mix great access, slow-motion shots, and sharp editing to bring the audience closer than ever.

Watching the show, you can almost feel that seering Mississippi heat and the postpractice ice baths. The spaces feel lived-in and authentic. The dorm rooms where players share their thoughts have all the causal indicators of college life, like familiar boxes of snacks and hats sprawled over the place.

Guys struggle to open their new box of headphones while complaining about class.

The language of Last Chance U is raw and uncensored but not vulgar. In other words, the series’ approach is first and foremost an honest one. Everyone, but especially college kids, wants someone to pay attention to them. Last Chance U makes the most out of listening closely.

—— The players of EMCC call themselves a family, but like all unhappy families, they are unhappy in their own way. They have an aggressive, wild “father” in head coach Buddy Stephens and a traditional, loving “mother” in academic advisor in Brittany Wagner. The kids want to win a national championship, but even more, they want to get academically eligible and catch the attention of a bigger, wealthier “family” at Auburn or another SEC school. As one of the assistant coaches says without blinking: “None of these kids want to be here.”

But these kids didn’t have anywhere else to go. The likeable, jolly defensive lineman Ronald Ollie was raised by relatives after his father killed his mother in a murder-suicide.

Running back D.J. Law’s father just got out of prison, and Law is trying to motivate himself enough in class so he escapes the trapped life of his Florida hometown. Even the player with the stablest family, quarter-

back John Franklin III, is a transfer from Florida State where he was highly touted out of high school, only to be forgotten on the depth chart.

The young men of EMCC find no love from Coach Stephens. Stephens, a man built like he once ate a player, is an absolute lunatic. He gets suspended for two games for throwing punches in a bizarre fight with a ref, proving there’s a first time for everything.

He also shoves a player who back talks him and, when EMCC plays poorly in the first half of a game, yells this at halftime: “Shut the fuck up. Don’t say a goddamn word to me. That’s what I fucking think…

Some of you were brought here because we thought you were players. I think I may be wrong. I fucked up recruiting ’cause I let your asses come here. Some of you. I fucked up. Now you either decide to play or your asses won’t be around here anymore.”

If EMCC is a family, then it’s a fucked-up family. And Coach Stephens is only part of the problem. Football is a sport predicated on violence. Not just accidental violence, the concussions, the tearing of ligaments, but schematic, intentional violence. John Franklin tells Brittany Wagner at one point that “we risk life and and death every time the ball is snapped.” “Oh, please,” she replies. “You’re not at war.” “How are we not?”

Franklin fires back, and you sense he knows he’s exaggerating, but only by a little. The Lions’ after-game chant is taken from the military. A team captain yells, “Blood makes the grass grow” and other players ominously chant back: “Kill! Kill!”

—— “No one gets killed” is about the only good way to describe the premature end of the Lions season. The scene is the end of the second-quarter of their last regular season game, the Lions leading up 48-0 on Mississippi Delta. The teams have been on the verge of fighting the entire game, and when one of the Delta players lands a cheap shot on D.J. Law, the situation explodes. The allout brawl that transpires is football stripped to its primitive savagery, swinging helmets like weapons and lashing out at whoever comes within reach. But, as one player says, “We ain’t about to let [Law] get jumped.

We’re family out here.”

As a consequence for the fight, EMCC is

JOSHUA WARTEL staff writer

disqualified from the playoffs; there will be no climactic championship game for the Lions. Afterwards, the healing is slow. Many of the black players on EMCC lose respect for Stephens when he criticizes the team for “punk-ass thug shit.” Ollie yells, “Coach Stephens, he don’t give a fuck about us.” But the brawl turns out to be a counterintuitive gift for Last Chance U, as it gives the characters space to give a long goodbye.

Franklin III earns a scholarship to Auburn. Law and Ollie struggle to get make the grades they need. And off the field the final episode belongs to academic advisor Brittany Wagner. Throughout the series, she is badgers players to do their work, offering advice and vouching for them when recruiters come by. On her office wall is a collage of pictures of her posing with past EMCC football players, giving the sense that she’s not only doing her job well, but with clear eyes and a full heart. She’s the one that asks the players how they feel and tells them they can do anything. And she is the person who cries twice every year at graduation. “It’s like losing children,” she says, and the hugs goodbye are long and full embraces because we, too, are saying goodbye to Scooba.

The football family of Last Chance U is one that doesn’t last very long. It’s more tentative and transactional than Massillon or Odessa while remaining smaller and less corporate than NFL Sundays. The players, coaches, and fans of EMCC are stuck as perpetual Penelopes: They love football but must wait a while for it to come back.

Thankfully, Netflix has given the go-ahead for a Season 2.

Of course, I understand the many people who don’t know a kicker from a punter or a first down from a fourth down, and who dismiss football either with indifference or as the last dying ritual of masculinity. And I tell you that Last Chance U is still made for you. Sure, football is a sport that is both wild and over-plotted, that destroys and creates, that rips apart dreams, only to stitch back together hope for next year. Maybe someday the people and towns of Massillon or Scooba won’t need football. Community will appear out of thin air. But for now, these flawed families love each other, even if football is all they’ve got to love.

why i don’t hate math in defense of everyone’s least favorite subject

ALEX WALSH staff writer illustrator MICHELLE NG

What is an article about math doing in Arts & Culture? Math is terrible and I don’t want to read about it. My geometry teacher was so mean. She made us write stupid proofs about triangles. I hate triangles. I’ll never use math in my life. I’m bad at it anyway.

If you’ve thought, said or heard variations on this theme, please read on.

This article is not a defense of algebra.

This article is not sponsored by math teachers

who demand more respect. This article is best understood as a parent defending a child at a parent-teacher conference (“Jenny’s not a bad kid, she’s just different”). In other words, math receives a lot of hate, and I would like to take this opportunity to defend it.

The first reason I love math is the reason anyone studies anything: I think it’s beautiful.

Math is beautiful the way a poem is beautiful. Like poetry, math tries to respond to the question, “How does the

world work?” Math seeks the underlying truth. Math breaks life down to its essence and finds its hidden connections.

When you prove a theorem, you’re uncovering secrets, not creating them. It’s as though you’re a mouthpiece for the world.

Math research is discovery. Just like doing experiments in a lab, math goes down path after path in search of a meaningful result. There is trial and error. There are methods, tools, ideas, theories. Your

field is numbers, your work is done on paper, but the results are concrete and useful. Most theorems will one day be applied. But a proof in math is not tentative: when you prove a statement, that statement is true for all time periods, places and cases. It’s powerful and universal. It holds no matter how much weight you put on it, no matter how much you question it. A proof in math is the final word.

That brings me to the next reason I love math: it transcends everything, even

arts & culture us. Numbers and symbols are like words; they stand for things that will always be true, even if language itself disappears.

We can’t change math, just as we can’t change the way the universe is structured. Math is there, behind every curve of nature, every shape, waiting for us to find it. Math is in pinecones and sunflowers. But it gets better: math holds true in any universe, not just ours. It is invincible. Math is beautiful through its immortality.

Of course, as anyone who has studied math knows, nearly every mathematician hates her work from time to time.

Like most creative endeavors, math can be frustrating. But to keep from sinking, you have to remember what it feels like when you finally integrate an impossible function, or when someone explains an abstract idea in a way you completely understand. With every new topic you learn, you open the door to a new set of bigger, more important concepts. Math builds infinitely on itself. To stop learning math would, for me, be like abandoning a mountain climb halfway to the top.

Maybe you’re with me on the beauty of math, but you still don’t think you,

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personally, are capable of being a mathematician. Luckily, being a mathematician doesn’t mean you need years of training, or the backing of an institution. You become a mathematician the same way you become a writer: you work and work until eventually you go from being someone who dabbles in math, someone who writes for fun, to being a full-fledged member of the field. You don’t have to be Gauss or John Nash (super math geniuses) to contribute to mathematics. All you have to be is open, patient and willing to start over time and time again.

I promised this wasn’t propaganda, so I don’t mean to argue that everyone reading this article should study math.

But somehow, somewhere along the way, studying math acquired a deep stigma that most other fields don’t seem to have.

You—anyone reading this article—can do math. What’s more, you don’t have to do it at a desk: you can solve problems in the park, in the shower, on the treadmill—wherever you do your best thinking.

QED: you don’t have to study math, but there are plenty of excellent reasons why it’s a wonderful field to choose.

kids’ movies for adults thoughts on the animation renaissance

LILY ROCKEFELLER contributing writer illustrator CLARISSE ANGKASA

When I began high school, moving from a day school to boarding school far away from home, I started watching cartoons again. It wasn’t even of my own accord. Immune to embarrassment (which I was not), my new friends would often get together and watch the children’s show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and expected me to attend. To be perfectly clear, these pink-horse-loving friends of mine were not elementary-school girls, but teenagers, and at least half were male. Neither were they shut-ins, but rather quite socially adept, open-minded young men and women. I, baffled but glad to have friends in this new environment, settled down to watch the cartoon and found that, yes, while it was strange and in many ways years beneath my level, the jokes were clever and the animation artful. Since then, my love of animation has only grown.

I am not the only one to be surprised by how enjoyable a cartoon could be. Recent years have witnessed a notable increase in the US in the number of adults watching so-called “kid’s” movies or shows, animated cartoons whose general lightheartedness attracts a youthful audience. That’s right-- I don’t mean shows like South Park or Archer, whose satirical or dark humor alienates the young but appeals quite purposely to adults. Instead, it is shows like My Little Pony, specifically geared toward children, that have enjoyed massive success among adults. Indeed, this franchise in particular was a smash hit among young men, mostly around eighteen, famously dubbed “bronies.” Indeed, staples of our millennial childhood such as Cartoon Network still receive visits from fans loyal since 2000.

Such networks have capitalized on this theme, producing shows such as Adventure Time which, though clearly aimed mostly toward children of classic cartoon-watching age, maintains themes relevant to adult viewers and have huge viewership demo-

graphics among them. Indeed, Indiewire hailed it as “one of the biggest television phenomenons [sic] of the decade”. For example, Adventure Time is purported to be set in the aftermath of a nuclear explosion, which accounts for the excess of limbs on horses or the ability of one talking dog to change shapes at will. The profundity of this war-torn setting casts a somber light over the otherwise light-hearted show, inviting the viewer to consider this animated world in a more realistic, adult light.

Or take Over the Garden Wall, a stunning Cartoon Network show from the same writer and creative director of Adventure Time. Television critic Kevin McDonough calls it “an ambitious cartoon that gives older viewers something to look at and think about while remaining silly enough for the Cartoon Network’s key audience.” It incorporates literary devices, such as an unreliable narrator and metafictional themes, while painting an incredibly moving pic-

ture (no pun intended) of a young boy and his brother lost in the haunted, gnarled woods over the garden wall.

Why does animation seem to be regaining its cultural capital in the US today? For one, this movement fits in with a greater one: that of the millennial interest in nostalgia, grunge styles, retro gadgets like the Walkman and the cassette tape, and what may be called reviving the 90’s zeitgeist.

Considering this, it makes perfect sense that animation would also make a comeback, aligning with the nostalgic return to our collective millennial childhood. This desire to revive the 90’s may come from our generation’s dissatisfaction with the contemporary state of affairs we face. When we take what we see as the injustice and violence of the world today and compare it with our earliest memories, in which the “peace and prosperity” of the Clinton years conflates with the softness and warmth of childhood, it would be hard not to want a

return.

But there is another reason animation may be experiencing a renaissance, which is simply that it is a valuable art form that, slowly, is throwing off its mantle of youthful associations. There is no inherent reason that animation must appeal to children and not to adults. In Japan, animation is deeply respected: Hayao Miyazaki’s movies (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke) are widely regarded as the impressive work of an artist. Indeed, in the US, fine art maintains its cultural capital and has done so for centuries. Why should moving art somehow then be relegated to the child’s sphere? I This work is intricately complex and beautifully realized. Cartoons, as they overcome their associations with childlike unsophistication, are a valuable contribution to the artistry of pop culture. No matter what the reasons are for its occurrence, I for one am in full favor of the Animation Renaissance.

lifestyle

topten worst date ideas

A: You should be the long-board.

B: I’m not, because he doesn’t love me.

Sometimes I walk around with my headphones in and forget to play music/ podcasts, and then I laugh because no one else knows I’m not listening to anything, including myself.

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1. glee marathon 2. flossing 3. weight watchers meeting 4. a middle school dance (as chaperones) 5. trump rally 6. bean eating competition followed by snuggling 7. invite them for dinner and then ask them to cook for you 8. merge your faces to imagine what your future children will look like 9. a funeral 10. burritos (trust us, it ain’t pretty)

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hot post time machine

Proposed SW tribute: eat 171 chicken fingers at Fratty in the Ratty. Do it for the glory. For your constitutional rights. For America.

schwasted • 04/11/14

what’s in a name? a crisis of indian-ness

YAMINI MANDAVA contributing writer illustrator EMMA MARGULIES

“It’s Yamini.”

“Yuh-MEE-ni?”

“No, YA-mini.”

“Yuh-MA-ni?”

“Nope, YA-mini.”

“Oh umm, okay…”

[Think “YEAH!-mini.]

The beginning of a semester marks my biannual ritual of awkwardly correcting professors as they mispronounce my name.

Nothing about my name had ever posed a challenge to anyone in my life before I made the trip across this unholy, overheated planet where my poor name would find itself mutilated again and again. My baby sister could say my name long before she could wrap her tongue around her own (Revathi—RAY-vuhthi). My name had never posed a problem to people with lisps or t/th speech impediments.

It was correctly pronounced by three-year-old children, with whom I’d had almost no contact.

It was accessible to old-toothless people, with whom I’d had too much contact (think racist, sexist, homophobic grandparents). It was an easy name to correctly yell from one end of a classroom to the other in anger and frustration (as in, “YAMINI! Why are you asleep again?”).

Well, no longer. Gone are the days when people were comfortable enunciating my name.

Now when I’m at the mailroom, I have to stand

close to the counter because the kind soul with my parcels will invariably say my name more softly than Jack or Patrick or Angela. And if I’m not within hearing distance of an underconfident whisper, I may never get my hands on my mail again.

People’s difficulties with my name have prompted me to realize the ways that my Indian (colonized British) pronunciation was different from the American (also colonized British, but we’re talking very different timelines) pronunciation. I tend to emphasize the first and fourth syllables when I speak, while I’ve heard most American speakers emphasize the second and fourth syllables. Say the word repetitive to yourself. Now, assuming that you fit into the binary (I know—all dichotomies are false dichotomies, just roll with it) of pronunciation styles I’m talking about, you might notice a pattern of focus on specific syllables.

Did you say rep-ET-it-IVE or REP-et-itIVE? If you’re having a hard time with the second one, try rushing past the second and third syllables like the “t” between them is a clipped rolling “r.” The small inflections in the way I pronounce words are the only things that remind me everyday of how Indian I am. Given the wider, healthier definition of what it means to look American, it’s now harder let the color of my skin indicate my nationality. My Hindi is heavily accented, and my Telugu is fragmented

and exclusively conversational. My hair is too purple to be Indian, or belong to a person with Indian parents. I have a religion only in name, and maintain no meaningful Hindu traditions or customs. I have no understanding of Hindu astrology (it’s called Jyotisha—even my mum didn’t know that. I had to Google it.) I didn’t grow up with Indian music, television, or films.

So, this is all I have: my name, the way I pronounce four-syllable words (BEN-ev-ol-ent or ben-EV-ol-ENT), the fact that I still use the word “git” and “crib” every once in awhile (they mean “idiot” and “whine,” respectively), and my undying love for aloo-ghobi. (It’s ghobi, not gobi, despite what the Kabob and Curry menu insists. Gobi is the name of a Mongolian desert.)

This crisis of my Indian-ness has left me with the crippling fear that I might lose my accent, that the hard constants and stretched middle-vowel sounds may creep into my daily vernacular and never make their way out. My soft “t”s might abandon me forever, and I might forget how complex-“h” syllables work.

I monitor myself constantly, chastising myself for drawling my way through words like “Wayland” or “Asking” (it’s asking, not aaaasking). I pinch myself every time I say; en-velope instead of on-velope, or car-ma instead of kurr-ma.

I live with the constant fear that if I do lose my accent, my family may disown me. Their

own hybrid accents, South Indian and Gujurati, will be in stark contrast with my generically-Indian-morphed-intoEast-coast-accent (one very reminiscent of the ABCD—American Born Confused Desis—relatives we’ve mocked for years). Perhaps my accent crisis is really just a fear that my parents will mock me every time I go home.

Whenever I talk to them, I worry that they may hear the emphatic a’s or the clipped t’s, and no longer be as gullible to my pleas for money as they have been in the past.

My attachment to my accent is one that I have struggled with for a year now, and though it gets easier every day to repeat myself when I’m not understood the first time, it will never be as easy as pretending I don’t have an accent at all. Perhaps the temptation to make myself more pliable appeals to me because, as a woman, I’ve always wanted to avoid being an obstacle, never presenting a challenge to those I interact with and taking up as little space as I can. By fighting my desire to seamlessly blend into the background, I’m challenging myself to manspread my legs across the subway seat of language.