Post- 12/06/17

DEC 6 – VOL 20 – ISSUE 12

In this issue...

Winter, Wizards, and Wrap-ups

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Editor’s Note

FEATURES

Dear Readers,

Winter Memories

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– Post- Staff

Local Maxima

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– Chen Ye

As Post- releases its last issue of the semester, we highlight the overlooked arts and culture of 2017, share some holiday memories, and publish a short story about an ineffectual wizard who holds a conversation with a cat named Moloch.

5 LIFESTYLE The Wizard Man

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– Charles Stewart

Pumpkin Spice

Winter is coming, I think. Although there is no sign of snow, and the War on Christmas has mercifully settled into a thankful ceasefire, the semester is reaching its inevitable and stressful conclusion. Reserve your spot at the Rock, grab your coffee and hunker down. The days go dark early now.

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– Sydney Lo

On a more somber note, we bid farewell to our Arts & Culture editor Joshua Lu and one of our Layout Assistants, Eojin Choi. Thank you for your service.

To a bright and hopeful 2018,

Josh arts

7 ARTS & CULTURE So Long, Sucker

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– James Feinberg

For Your Consideration – A&C Staff Writers

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&

culture editor

This Time in Ages Past...

Hot Post- Time Machine “I’m intimidated by people for whom tap water is not good enough at restaurants.”

— Anita Badejo, The Unpretentious Humor of Mindy Kaling 12.02.2011 “The yo-yo incident of ‘98 was handled with discretion and care...”

— Amelia Stanton, Jennifer Harlan, Zoë Hoffman, Charles Pletcher, Holiday Memories: Four Editors, Two Holidays 12.02.2011

Post- Staff Editor-in-Chief Saanya Jain

Creative Director Grace Yoon

Features Managing Editor Jennifer Osborne

Head of Media Claribel Wu

Lifestyle Managing Editor Annabelle Woodward

Features Editors Anita Sheih Kathy Luo

Arts & Culture Managing Editor Joshua Lu Head Illustrator Doris Liou Copy Chief Alicia DeVos Layout Chief Livia Mucciolo

Lifestyle Editors Amanda Ngo Marly Toledano Divya Santhanam Arts & Culture Editors Celina Sun Josh Wartel Copy Editor Zander Kim

Layout Assistants Eojin Choi Julia Kim Gabriela Gil Media Assistant Samantha Haigood Staff Writers Andrew Liu Anna Harvey Catherine Turner Chantal Marauta Chen Ye Claire Kim-Narita Daniella Balarezo Dianara Rivera Eliza Cain Emma Lopez Jack Brook Karya Sezener

Natalie Andrews Nicole Fegan Sonya Bui Sydney Lo Veronica Espaillat Staff Illustrators Caroline Hu Erica Lewis Harim Choi Kira Widjaja Nayeon (Michelle) Woo Cover Illustrator Seo Jung Shin

Winter Memories With a Splash of Holiday Songs “Santa, Bring My Baby Back to Me” Elvis Presley had a bad temper, a weak jawline, and—according to some of his ex-girlfriends—a disappointingly lackluster sex drive. But in the winter of 1957, none of those things stopped him from releasing eight groovy, gospel-infused Christmas songs that effectively sexified the holiday season.

I’m not going to expand upon Presley’s Christmas influence. I don’t feel like writing an well-researched feature about how sacred holiday rituals gave way to pelvic thrusts and XBox60s. I only mention Presley because my second grade crush, Jimmy, looked a hell of a lot like Elvis Presley. His head was tall and narrow, like a can of Campbell’s soup, and he was suave as all get-out. He told me he liked my shoes and I was smitten. Every day at recess, he and his scarf-swaddled friends huddled under the metal slide and tried to dig a hole to China. When it snowed, (which never happened in Virginia,) the hole’s progress was indefinitely postponed, and everyone thought, “Bummer.” In high school, Jimmy stayed cute, and played the bass in a band that most of our classmates agreed was “not great, but okay.”

I don’t know where he is today, but I really do wish him the best.

— AW

I hope he’s still not even that good.

— KL P.S. I did not have a crush on this guy. I just thought it was funny how he sang this song, ok

“White Christmas” I grew up exclusively in places where winter is a time of year and not a season, but the PTA moms who led my Girl Scout troop really tried to bring Connecticut to Dubai.

A synthetic Christmas tree that sprayed Styrofoam balls through the pipe in its trunk to the tinny tune of “White Christmas” was installed in the common room where we had our weekly meetings. We listened to the song and the whoosh of fake

at the time Juno decided to turn my city (and most of New England) into an icy wasteland. I spent my impromptu break catching up on my Netflix queue and exploring plane wrecks and abandoned treasures in the action-adventure video game Tomb Raider. But what started as a post-Christmas miracle turned out to be something out of a time loop movie. Days blended into weeks as we remained trapped in our homes, waking up to the same cancellation calls and white flurries each morning. With one week allotted to winter break in February, our snow days took out school for almost the entire month. I haven’t seen as much snow since that winter, but now every flake piques the tiniest hope that maybe a storm will grant me a much-needed extended reprieve from all my homework.

sound, so if we didn’t stand by our windows, we would never catch the brightness of the lights announcing themselves. Whether your decorations were a dull yellow, or a rainbow sprawl across the gutters, with a dumb, unblinking reindeer in the yard, you had to have something. We would walk around the neighborhood, touching the bulbs to keep our hands warm, returning after-hours to the blankness, the unintelligible religion, we called home.

And then one year, as school was ending in the middle of June, we called up old family friends, requested engineering help, and relearned the difference between parallel and series circuits. It didn’t matter that we had to wait for sunset or wore shorts and t-shirts. We watched the lights surge alive and asked each other: If Christmas happens in the summer, it is it still a holiday? No, we decided. What only happens once isn’t ceremony but miracle.

— JW

“Last Christmas” Christmas always felt like a performance I didn’t buy: unwrapping a present, putting up a Christmas tree, all the while not believing in Santa Claus, in a country in which 99.9% of the population is Muslim, without Christmas trees or snowflake decorations to get in the holiday spirit.

“All I Want For Christmas Is You” He wasn’t even that good at singing.

But come December, he did it often—every class, to be precise. And because that winter, we had almost every class together, I heard him singing (attempting?) Mariah Carey’s vocal runs at least once every sixty-eight minutes. If the teacher was strict, he did it alone, singing as long as he could until he was told to settle down and shut up. But if the teacher wasn’t as much of a killjoy (and those were the kind of teachers that loved him the best), he got all of us to join in. Our choruses were out of key, uncoordinated, lyrically mismatched—A cacophony of joy.

I haven’t heard that sound in a while. Now, three years later, we don’t have share classes anymore. We don’t go to the same school anymore—I’m still here in snowy RI, and he’s spending his winters in the sunny city of Miami. But once in a while, especially when the air first begins to smell like winter, I take in a deep breath and wonder if he misses the snow. I wonder if the right professors take a liking to his antics, the way the right teachers once did. I wonder if he can hit those high notes now.

snowflakes as we gathered for a field trip to an outdoor “ice” rink, where we rollerbladed on blocks of marble coated with oil in the balmy night air.

It played for two straight hours while we made gingerbread houses with the graham crackers and Sour Patch Kids someone had bought off the Internet (back before that was cool). By the time we got around to caroling to unimpressed residents of the neighborhood around the school, even the kids who’d never celebrated Christmas before knew it by heart.

There’s a lot of snow here in New England, but that song still makes me think of sand.

— JO

“Baby It’s Cold Outside” There is no better feeling than waking up at 5 a.m. to a message from the superintendent, clearly worn from the never-ending battle waged between school administrators and inclement weather, calling to surrender our mornings to a snow day. I was a sophomore in high school

— AN “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” In the wintry winter of two thousand and three, a man arrived in New York City, possibilities aplenty.

Coming from the North Pole on a quest to find his dad, Buddy finally finds Walter, but he isn’t glad. Doing whatever it takes to earn his dad’s love, he’ll make some friends along the way, and sing Christmas carols, spreading Christmas cheer for all to hear.

No matter the year, no matter the flurry of Christmas season, I make the time to sit down and watch Elf, because it never fails to put a smile on my face and get me in the Christmas spirit, whether Buddy the Elf is cramming cookies down the VCR, eating spaghetti for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, or crying on the toilet.

— ZeeKay

“Christmas Lights” They would turn on without a

Last Christmas, however, was the first time it felt like the real thing.

My entire family, along with aunts and uncles, was actually together in Washington D.C. Around the table, so many magical events were in the works. A little baby cousin was growing in my Aunt’s belly, my parents were contemplating a move across the world to Shanghai and I was figuring out what concentration to declare, a decision that has snowballed into a series of events that have fundamentally changed the trajectory of my life.

Also Last Christmas, ironically, George Michael died. Who knows what awaits us this Christmas and next year as we gather around the table. I hope it’s just as special as the last one.

— SJ

Post- Staff Kathy Luo

fe atures editor

Local Maxima

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t’s called highpointing,” an internet stranger explains on Reddit. “Pretty simple.

You try to get to the highest point of each state in the U.S. There’s usually a geocache up top.”

According to the Highpointers Club of America, 286 people have summited all 50 U.S. states since 1966. Doing so requires climbing some of the most well-known and challenging peaks in North America: Denali (20320 ft, 46 mi hike) in Alaska, Mt. Rainier (14411 ft, 16 mi hike) in Washington, and Mauna Kea (13796 ft, 12 mi hike) in Hawaii.

Denali alone is one of the most challenging high-altitude climbs in the world—its weather, remoteness, and relief exacerbate the physical challenges of hiking at high elevations.

Even today, only about half of climbers who aim for the summit reach it.

And then there’s Rhode Island.

Contrary to urban legend, Rhode Island’s highest point is not on top of a landfill, but instead in Foster, at Jerimoth Hill (812 ft, 0.6 mi hike).

It’s no Britton Hill (345 ft, 0 mi hike, highest point of Florida), and it is actually a summit (unlike Connecticut’s highest point, which just lies on the slope to Mt Frissel in Massachusetts), but the trail is almost literally a walk in the park.

Despite this, Jerimoth Hill is notorious among highpointers for

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The Story of Rhode Island’s Summit

once being among the most challenging places to summit in the nation— not due to technical challenges, but because it had to be accessed via the property of hostile neighbors. In an effort to dissuade adventurers, they posted the usual discouraging signs (“Private Property”, “Beware of Dog”, “Trespassing is a Violation we take Seriously”) and even installed motion sensors. People attempting to sneak in anyway were confronted by verbal abuse, and if you believe the stories, slashed tires, stolen cameras, and fistfights. Of particular note is an incident in 2002 when hikers from Alaska were held face-down at gunpoint. Warning shots were allegedly fired, kicks were allegedly aimed, and only the arrival of police defused the situation. The Alaskans, who had successfully summited Denali, had almost been unable to bag Jerimoth Hill.

Completionists interested in summiting Jerimoth Hill without being shot had two options: visit during four designated times per year under escort, or enroll at Brown and take an astronomy course, as the University owned the actual summit, and used it for stargazing.

Today, access to the “peak” is thankfully much more mundane.

New neighbors opened up access to the trail on weekends in 2005, and the State of Rhode Island finally

acquired the highpoint and its trail in 2014, rendering the issue a moot point.

Which is why I found myself on the shoulder of RI 101 last Wednesday, after a 23-mile bike ride through the beautiful late-fall landscape of western Rhode Island. A signpost next to the roadbed indicated the elevation, and a small placard on a tree marked the trailhead to the actual summit. As I turned onto the quarter-mile trail, my biggest obstacle was a six inch log laid across the path. I passed a man from New Hampshire (Mt Washington, 6288 ft, 8.4 mi of hiking) and we exchanged pleasantries.

The trail ended almost before it began, in a clearing. There was a weathered shed and a concrete patch with mounts for stargazing equipment. I looked around for a bit, laughing as I found the actual highest point: a small rock outcropping next to a lawn chair. Someone had built a cairn and added a small Rhode Island flag on top, extending the “peak” by another foot. Next to the cairn was an olive ammo box, emblazoned with the logo of the Highpointer’s Club, a red map of the U.S. superimposed onto a vivid landscape of mountain peaks and rivers. The summit log inside, containing nearly 200 pages of entries since the beginning of this year, revealed how popular Jerim-

oth Hill has become since access opened to the general public. Leafing through the log revealed small vignettes, as I read the breathless (and somewhat embellished) tales of derring-do it took to reach the summit from families and hikers from all over the country.

I wrote down my own entry: 11/29/17 1:20 PM; 58°F, SUNNY, WINDS 17 kt W Baby’s first highpoint!

Chen Ye; PROVIDENCE, RI//CHICAGO, IL I took a few pictures and tossed an extra granola bar into the box before returning it and getting back on my bike. As I wound my way back onto Route 101 and turned east, the wind picked up, and I sped my way back toward Brown. With the sun shining brightly and the sky a deep blue, it was truly a perfect day. Perhaps not the most challenging adventure on a senior-year bucket list, but certainly one of the most pleasant.

Chen Ye

staff writer

Doris Liou

he ad illustr ator

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The Wizard Man

H

e was the wizard of a thousand kings surveying his domain. One nostril smelt it burning. Empty windows pasted thick with circus fliers ran up the high street. His left hand twitched. A Boots and a Ladbrokes. Two towers. The wizard man strode on, his chattering jewelry announcing his presence to the street’s occupants.

Tonight, this was a stray cat named Moloch who he had raised from the dead a fortnight before. She had patchy fur and a missing incisor.

Moloch walked up to the wizard man and did a figure-eight between his legs. The wizard man picked her up and popped her on his shoulder. She fell off.

Tonight, the wizard man had chosen to wear the purple robe and the gold-and-purple cape. The robe cut off at the knees and some of the stitching irritated his left nipple. That said, it had the most decoration on it—little golden frilly bits and some sort of dragon sewn into the back with the word “blaze” stitched underneath. His beard was long, but dense and well-kept. The cape had a large, vampiric collar. His slippers were pointy. He wore a violet skull-cap.

Pointy hats drew far too much attention to yourself these days, and it was better to keep a low profile, thought the wizard man, as a draft caught his cape and made it billow behind him in a flourish of gold and purple.

“Moloch,” began the wizard man, “you chase the smallest pigeons on my high street. You try to devour them because they refuse to stay on the ground with you. Jealous cat.

They are magical creatures.”

“I am a scientific thinker, wizard man,” said Moloch, in Cat. “I dissect the birds I catch. I examine them.

You wander; I wonder. I ask questions.”

“Do you remember what the doormouse said?” asked the wizard man.

“No, I ate him,” said Moloch.

“Neither can I,” the wizard man sighed. “You cannot fully comprehend what you have already half-eaten.” He conducted a blueish finger through the air and stopped to pick

A Man and his Moloch Meet Mortality up a fifty-pence piece. He turned to the cat and twirled it between his digits. The coin disappeared behind the ring finger. The wizard man reached behind Moloch’s ear, but the coin wasn’t there. His mouth opened then closed. The wizard man gave the cat a

ing.

“Mordred’s children, wizard man,” said Moloch. She slipped from between his legs and hopped onto a bit of railing where someone had laid some flowers and empty bottles of Stella for a boy named JACK97-11.

“I understand,” said the wizard man, looking at his pointy slippers. His bare knees were cold. Boots on fire.

He stood in the middle of the road.” scratch instead.

“I do not need them to answer for me to ask,” purred Moloch. “I’m satisfied to ponder. Some things you can never understand.”

“I understand,” said the wizard man.

They walked up the street together. There was a Rimmel poster at the bus stop with a smiling woman on it.

She had a gap in her teeth. He missed her.

“You ever wonder if some birds just go, ‘Fuck it,’ and fly off into space and explode?” asked the cat.

The wizard man chuckled because of course he had. He knew the answer too.

The roar was steadily approach-

Some had masks, but most were just wearing hoods with scarves pulled up to their eyes. If you look into a druid’s mouth, you can see his buck-teeth and turn him back into a white rabbit. Back in the hat he goes. There was a name in there.

Alice. Poor Alice, when she was just small. The wizard man let his hand rest on the hilt of his athame just for a moment. She had a gap in her teeth. There had been a woman once, but her face slipped away from him.

Might have been Amy. They began by smashing the windows. They threw fireballs overhead which landed in empty rooms, announcing their entry with the displacement of clouds of plaster and

a splash of red. The beached corpse at Woolworth’s was filling with flies.

“I understand,” said the wizard man, looking at his pointy slippers. His bare knees were cold. Boots on fire.

He stood in the middle of the road.

The horde parted around him like the sea. Two druids stopped.

One of them pushed him in the chest. They cackled. The wizard man laughed his own breathy laugh too.

One of them took his cap. He didn’t know their words. Everything smelt of smoke. Someone had managed to find a television.

He was on the ground. Something pulled on his beard. His high street’s city greys were becoming oranges. Druids encircled him. A Woolworth’s bag blew past his face.

“Might have been Agnes,” said the wizard man.

He stood to his full height. The druids began to scamper back. His cloak became gold, and his eyes became fire. He floated over the city.

From above he saw two armies.

The druids were hooting and running down the street from one direction.

Footmen were marching towards them with their shields. Plod plod.

The druids were dancing back and forth, slowly losing ground. The wizard man saw some footmen stop at a pile of gold and purple in the road. One of them turned over a man, and took a small knife off his belt. It went in a bag. They patted this gold and purple thing and carried him off by his hands. He could be balanced, but they could not seem to make him make a noise. His knees gave before they could get him to the van. A cat approached but was shooed away.

You could see its ribs through its skin.

“Fuck it,” said the wizard man. He flew into space, and exploded.

Charles Stewart

contributing writer

Lisa Fasol

illustr ator

Pumpkin Spice

S

olomon 001 holds a tense calm at 10:00am, recently emptied in quiet preparation for the lecture to come. Although November has been full of sunny mornings and temperatures that barely qualify as sweater weather, the lecture hall is fixed in a cold, desolate winter.

Off-yellow incandescent lights cast awkward shadows on the half-erased blackboard and cramped, vacated aisles. A few students sleep in the creaky seats or cave into their computer screens. I totter down the steps and take my chosen place in the second row with every intention of completing a lab report due later in the week. Pulling my laptop onto my lap, I stare momentarily at the various barely-touched documents and tasks flooding the desktop—Pinterest it is.

The familiar red-and-white dashboard fills with generated possibilities: recipes, images, and articles, all pleasantly photographed and labeled with quaint captions. With the emerging holiday season, the majority of the content relates to DIY decorations, gift ideas, and seasonal desserts. There are instructions on how to make snowflake ornaments, a promotion for 50% off a crockpot, a tip sheet for Black Friday shopping, a

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& Other Existential Autumnal Comforts recipe for cranberry pecan pie, and so on. I sift through them absentmindedly, save an infographic on public speaking, a list of apps for busy college students, a recipe for homemade Larabars. I pause as my mouse hovers over a photo of pumpkin spice granola spilling from a mason jar.

I’d never been adamantly against pumpkin during autumn and its consuming presence in foods and doorsteps and daily life. Rather, I had just become bored with it.

I’d eaten the one-note slice of pie, carried a chosen pumpkin out of a farmer’s market and cut my finger as I attempted to carve a jack o’ lantern. Year after year I watched local pumpkin patches saturate with excitement and county harvest festivals venerate the sunset-colored squash as if it were some new, profound crop. In small grocery stores already overflowing with pumpkin minutia I overheard the countless conversations about pumpkin soups, pumpkin bread, or pumpkin beer, and nodded half-encouragingly as neighbors and family friends ecstatically described some new concoction they’d seen on the Food Network. For a small Midwestern town, pumpkin was simply an inescapable aspect of fall, a reminder that people had nothing

better to do then obsess over the odd plant. And when the flavor inevitably fell into the holiday potluck, I found my palate always in preference of other tastes. For me, it just didn’t live up to the hype.

When I started working as a barista during high school, the arrival of the jugs of thick pumpkin syrup signified an overly saccharine beginning to the busiest time of the year—a beginning that can only be described as “basic.” The popularized classification of pumpkin lovers, despite my resistance to its problematic nature (Is it just another excuse to shame people for liking things?), quickly sunk into my vernacular as my ambivalence towards the flavor became annoyance. I quietly judged the customers that crowded the store to cling to its nostalgic comfort, downing beverage after beverage for the sake of the season. With my coworkers I lamented how the syrup complicated the cleaning processes and cluttered the countertops. If I never tasted the flavor again, I was sure I’d be all the better for it.

So why is granola suddenly so appealing? I picture snacking on it casually with my family in our house back in Minnesota, watching some sitcom and flipping through newspa-

pers or magazines while our backyard fills with fallen leaves. The image softens, full of an unfamiliar warmth and yearning that startles me from the lull of browsing. For a moment I’m lost in it. With a tentative click I save the recipe with a sense of impulsive confusion, before I close the site and stare again at all my unfinished assignments.

Like most college students, I’d left my home and all its rote activities with the stubborn belief that I’d never return. I had been suffocated, trapped in the cornfield-laden center of Minnesota, and I was sure that the rest of the world had so much more to offer. When I moved to college, I felt certain that Brown University would introduce me to impactful, busy people that were too occupied changing their communities or advancing in their fields to care about silly trivialities like pumpkin spice.

Although campus still contains plenty of pumpkin (you can’t ever escape Starbucks’s pumpkin spice lattes), it has in a way squashed my time for this indulgence. In Brown’s hyper-competitive and studious environment, any minor celebration is a threat to my grades, and partaking in seasonal traditions has become a luxury I can’t afford. How can I justify, for example, watching Halloween movies or going apple picking when I have a midterm on Monday? Why would I make a pumpkin pie when I have a lab report that could be done?

While I definitely procrastinate regularly, somehow setting aside that time always seems too costly, especially when I know I never cared for those activities in the past.

Nonetheless, there is a hollowness to functioning without them, each week passing undistinguished and swallowed by a million tasks.

Even though in the moment I am doing exactly what I hoped to be doing—living a life too busy for Midwest middle class nonessentials—I feel myself proceeding through each day and immediately forgetting it.

I miss the insignificant significance given to harvests and end-of-the-year celebrations, the comfort of days void of the sense of something to be done.

I miss arbitrary small town traditions and the forced cheer of the pumpkin spice and foods. Moreover, I don’t want to sit through another cold, serious lecture. I want to talk about nothing in the grocery store, care about things that matter only superficially, and live beyond academia. I want to spend time with loved ones and experience autumn turn into winter. I want to embrace my home and cook some pumpkin spice granola.

Sydney Lo

staff writer

Jennifer Xiao illustr ator

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So Long, Sucker

Images of a State at the End of an Era

B

arring any unforeseen circumstances, on January 16, Chris Christie will become the first Governor of New Jersey to complete two terms in office in almost thirty years. We therefore approach the end of a period to which I must reluctantly refer to as the Christie era, an epoch which has taken the citizens of the Garden State on a thrill ride through eleven credit rating downgrades, one of the slowest recoveries from the recession in the country, and at least one instance of vindictive corruption so obscene it warranted a “-gate” suffix. Still, it’s difficult to say New Jersey is a national joke (after all, one of our senators hasn’t been on trial for accepting bribes in the last calendar year!), so, as we New Jerseyans count down the days left under our fearless leader, I hope you’ll forgive me for succumbing, if briefly, to nostalgia for the development of our 2010s image.

Perhaps every New Jersey governor has his defining cultural parallel. The Sopranos (1999-2007), which still lends the state the bulk of whatever class we retain, could be seen as a reaction to the staid, white-bread corruption of Donald DiFrancesco (term: 2001-02), who took illegal campaign donations but easily bridged the gap between skeevy and suburban.

Plus, Centanni’s Meat Market, where Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini)

“What, then, can we say is America’s view of New Jersey, at the end of these eight long, long years.” hangs out in the pilot, is in Elizabeth, a city DiFrancesco represented in the State Senate when the show premiered.

And maybe Zach Braff ’s Garden State (2004) is a symbol for the administration of Jim McGreevey (2002-04).

Both were edgy in an inoffensive way, indie, grassroots—and both, eventually, led to disappointments—McGreevey’s resignation from the governorship (he had an affair) and Braff ’s effective resignation as a filmmaker (he made Wish I Was Here).

So what’s the great opus of the Christie years? His inauguration, in 2010, came at an odd time for the state.

The Sopranos was over, and our novelist laureate, Philip Roth, was hanging up his hat; his last novel, Nemesis, came out in October 2010. (It’s about a creeping disease overtaking New Jersey.

Can’t fault the guy for timing.) What we were left with is probably the defining image of our fair state in the modern era—the MTV reality series Jersey Shore (2009-12), which premiered on December 3, 2009, one month to the day after Christie squeaked past incumbent Jon Corzine in the gubernatorial election. Like Christie, the cast is of Italian ancestry and almost defensively proud of New Jersey—only two, Deena Nicole Cortese and Samantha “Sweetheart” Giancola, were actually born

and raised in-state, as Christie was, but that’s by the by. After all, the parallels go more than skin-deep. Witness the show’s de facto star, Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi (like Christie, she currently lives in Morris County), who opined, in a 2011 episode, “I don’t care if you talk shit about me. Talk shit about me all you want.” Compare with Christie, confronted with his 15% approval rating in June 2017. “The fact is, who cares?

You guys care much more about that stuff than I do… And I don’t care.” Two weeks later, Christie proved his point by helping himself to a closed public beach on the very same Jersey shore. I rest my case.

Interested in higher-brow, Sopranos-adjacent fare? Look no further than Terence Winter’s HBO drama Boardwalk Empire (2010-14), in which Steve Buscemi plays Nucky Thompson, a corrupt elected official (in this case, the Treasurer of Atlantic County) in the 1920s and ‘30s. In a 2011 episode, Kelly Macdonald, as Nucky’s wife Margaret, as an act of revenge against her husband, signs away valuable land on which her husband had planned to build a road and bridge from Atlantic City to Philadelphia—vengeance via public works a full two years before

“some traffic problems in Fort Lee.” And Thompson’s eventual ironclad grip on Atlantic City is nothing compared to Christie’s literal state takeover of that city in November 2016 after its near-bankruptcy. “I can’t wait any longer,” Christie told the media in 2015, while considering the decision.

“We need more aggressive action.” The takeover team was authorized to restore Atlantic City to solvency “by any and all… means.” How’s that for empire?

But a big governor deserves a big screen, and like Christopher Nolan for The Dark Knight Rises (2012), a film about an area in such rampant decline that the concept of destroying it with a nuclear bomb gets tossed around with a degree of seriousness, he came to Newark. But lest the residents of the Brick City get swelled heads, keep in mind that in a Nolan press release in November 2011, when the third Dark Knight film was still shooting there, Newark was not listed among the filming locations. Ah, well. As last year’s Republican primary made fully clear to our estimable chief executive, you win some, you lose some.

What, then, can we say is America’s view of New Jersey, at the end of these eight long, long years? An urban

wasteland overrun by musclebound pro-wrestler types? A political landscape stuck in the Prohibition era? A commune of the generously tanned?

And where do we go from here? We’ve had governors like Christie’s incoming successor, Phil Murphy, before—in fact, we had one just eight years ago, when Corzine, another boring, white, former Goldman Sachs executive from outside the state, held the reins of power. But we’ve never seen, and many never see, another governor like Chris Christie. That Livingston heartthrob who screamed at protesters to “Sit down and shut up,” who vetoed animal welfare legislation supported by 91% of the state while campaigning for Iowa pig farmers, who called Donald Trump a “thin-skinned,” “13-year-old” “carnival barker” and then jumped on board as Trump’s McDonald’s boy—a man like that comes around once in a state’s lifetime. But take heart, friends! Despite everything, a Jersey Shore reunion is still coming in 2018.

James Feinberg staff writer

Clarissa Liu illustr ator

For Your Consideration

I

t’s been a difficult year for movies at the box office. It seems like people have fewer and fewer reasons to go out to the theaters. Movies like It, Get Out, The Big Sick, and Wonder Woman were massive hits among fans and critics. But a lot of films disappointed, with Justice League, The Mummy, and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets all performing well below industry expectations.

Fans and critics mutually agreed on a lot of films this year, which is why I think It Comes At Night, directed by Trey Edward Shults, fell through the cracks a little bit.

While critics adored it, audiences were dissatisfied. The film takes a closer look at human ethics and vulnerability when another zombie-like plague infects the entire world.

The film is a lot smarter and more provocative than what its marketing and trailers would imply (that being another typical zombie flick akin to I Am Legend and AMC’s The Walking Dead). Rather than a cheap slasher, It Comes At Night is a meditation on fear, desperation, and core survival instincts.

Joel Edgerton gives one of the strongest minimalist performances of the year, and Shults’s direction is captivating. The cinematography and sound effects make the most out of its potential, and I felt exhausted after watching it. Once again, this film proves the scariest things in life are the things we can’t see.

If you feel the horror genre has underwhelmed this year, give this one a go.

—Zander Kim Loving Vincent, Vincent Van Gogh’s biographical animated drama, was released on June 12 of this year. It was the first fully painted film in history, as every frame of the film was hand-painted in the artist’s iconic style. Following its release, Loving Vincent won myriad awards, including the Best Animation Award at the Shanghai International Film Festival and the Audience Award at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. But with regards to infiltrating popular culture and becoming a common topic of conversation, Loving Vincent did not fare so well. The film’s Facebook page did not gain a huge following, and it seemed to me that internet culture was more interested in Wonder Woman (which came out at a similar time) or Kardashian pregnancies. As a result, this beautiful piece that celebrated the tormented life of one of the fathers of modern art remained greatly overlooked.

In the seven years it took to make

8

Overlooked Stuff from 2017

Loving Vincent, 115 artists from around the world came together and painted each frame, creating beautiful moving canvases.

The film follows the young son of a postman as he delivers Van Gogh’s last letter to his brother, Theo. On his journey, the boy encounters those who knew the artist well, and he explores different aspects of Van Gogh’s problematic life through the eyes of those who interacted with him in varying capacities. Loving Vincent is a heart-wrenching story about the importance of celebrating a life rather than speculating about a mysterious death, and by exploring the characters closest to Van Gogh, the film introduces new and thoughtful perspectives for studying the troubled artistic genius. Additionally, a beautiful soundtrack accompanies the smooth visuals to create an otherworldly experience, with tracks like “Starry Starry Night” by Lianne La Havas transporting the audience into the devastating universe of Van Gogh’s inner sorrows. It’s a shame Loving Vincent didn’t get the attention it deserved, but if you’re looking for a unique cultural experience this winter break, be sure to check out this moving masterpiece.

—Chantal Marauta Comedian Chris Gethard’s one-person show, Career Suicide, is genius. The live show was filmed and released by HBO earlier this year, allowing me—and anyone else who missed the original off-Broadway run—to experience it. Part stand-up comedy, part storytelling, the show centers on Gethard as he guides his audience through his battle with depression, which has been ongoing for several years. His story chronicles his efforts to find a suitable healthcare professional, to determine the right kinds of medications while dealing with their side effects and— in the show’s most painful moments—to resist suicidal urges. Gethard is candid and honest, and his anecdotes are often raw and heartbreaking. But many of his stories are gut-bustingly funny, too. The way Gethard shares details about difficult moments in his life, while finding room for humor and thoughtful reflection, is masterful. There’s not a single millisecond of bullshit in the entire ninety-minute show, and never once is Gethard’s tone or delivery off. The way the show ends on an uplifting note of hope is both a testament to Gethard’s resilience and an example of the perseverance of the human spirit. I admire his courage, and I’m confident that by sharing his story, Chris

Gethard has helped many people and will continue to help many more who face similar mental health difficulties.

Career Suicide is no doubt a difficult watch. But I can’t remember another show from 2017 that lifted my spirits and made me feel genuine hope as much as this one did. I needed it, and I think it’s essential viewing.

—Ameer Malik Amid the chaos of 2017, indie-folk singer Phoebe Bridgers gave the world a much needed piece of art: her lush and introspective debut album, Stranger in the Alps.

The cover, a childhood photo of Phoebe with a white ghost drawn over her, depicts the tone of the whole album in one image. This album is about Phoebe’s home not feeling like home anymore, and how she now feels like a stranger there. Phoebe’s lyrics deal with relationships, hometowns, and memories in a way that make you feel completely alone and hyper-aware of your own past. She evokes something in you not because her lyrics are general and relatable, but because they are so hauntingly specific to her particular experience. While the topics range from an overdosed friend’s funeral in “Funeral,” to an awkward walk with an ex in “Scott Street,” to getting high and sending nudes you later regret in “Demi Moore,” the tone of the album remains consistent: It feels like you are floating on a cloud that has shackles on your ankles. If you ignore the lyrics, you will only hear a soft falsetto, a gentle guitar, and some brilliantly incorporated strings. But it is lyrics like “Jesus Christ, I’m so blue all the time” and “I have emotional motion sickness” that pierce through the sensory beauty, give a listener insight into Phoebe’s heart, and make this album my favorite of the year.

—Nicole Fegan Nobody who saw Michael McKean’s turn as Chuck McGill in season three of Better Call Saul, which ended in June, could possibly have overlooked it. But the Emmy committee somehow managed it—McKean wasn’t even nominated. McKean dominated from the beginning, a force of nature from start to finish, a whirlwind of tics, suspicions, and insecurities, and his fall from grace over the course of ten episodes covered so much emotional ground, it’s nuts they all aired in the same decade, let alone year. McKean is best-known as a comic (he’s a former SNL cast member and a co-star of This is Spinal Tap) and now he’s proven over three seasons

that the barrier between comedy and drama is and should be eminently permeable.

His was a performance of extraordinary dignity and humanity. Every moment he was on screen, he towered. Since he likely won’t be back on the show again, this was the last chance for the Emmys to honor this remarkable actor for a still more remarkable accomplishment. The only consolation for this snub of all snubs is that Chuck is even more rewarding on a rewatch.

—James Feinberg While the once-reigning, indie-rock kings Arcade Fire were releasing their scattered and cynical Infinite Content in 2017, it was a fellow Canadian band, Broken Social Scene, that shined. The collective released their fifth studio album, Hug of Thunder, in July and it remains one of the most joyous, energetic albums of the year. Broken Social Scene has swelled and subsided since its 2002 breakout, You Forgot It in People, performing with anywhere from six to eighteen members, but never losing its ability to produce anthems. “Halfway Home,” “Stay Happy,” and “Protest Song” are all songs that live up to a lyric elsewhere on the album: “We’ll run away for life.” The muted chants of Feist (of “1234” fame) emerge on the album’s title track. Her muffled words seem to just be humming along, self-contained and uncertain, until we arrive at the cathartic chorus: “He will know what’s real or numbness / Catching up and climbing life / Speaking like a hug of thunder.” Feist and Broken Social Scene promise there is a better, more hopeful future ready to emerge in 2018, one we so desperately need.

—Josh Wartel

A&C Writers Claribel Wu

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