OPINIONS
FUCK THE SUN
IN ITS SUN-ASS You heard me.
ARMAND NOURI CONTRIBUTOR
D
o you see that smug, orange-tanned orb in the sky— expressionless, merciless? All it does is sit on its axis, basking naked in cosmic rays for vast stretches of time like Greek vacationers. Maybe someone should tell it to put some clothes on because we don’t like looking at it, at least people who are normal or aren’t Southern Californian don’t. No, I jest about my fellow regionals; because it’s normal to be completely in the dark, while constantly exposed to irradiating light, about collective consciousness’ dogmatic devotion to stupefying sunlight. Of course, when living in a place where mainstream and idiocy are words separated at birth, a person who dislikes living so close to a star is branded as strange and sullen. In other words, the big, bad sun and sycophantic star-children team up to strut an annoying alliance and deliver a powerful payload of photon and pop-psychology diagnosis against the so-called sundeprived— as if that’s possible in Southern California. It’s time to fight back. It’s time to fight back, solarphobes, like myself, shielded and empowered by night’s blanket in front of my laptop screen, my true light source. The sun zealots have been blinded to the irony of their fire for too long, and their world of unflinching UV should be exposed as one dimensional and paradoxical. For instance, Southern California is a pretty plain place when you break it down. It’s got one thing, though— sun. On the other end, a snow-blanketed landscape looks novel at first, but the lack of contrast becomes apparent when the only color one sees is white. Sunny So Cal is also monochrome, but instead of water, it’s soaked in rays of yellow American lager. Cheap beers in mind, living in So Cal tends to remind one that they’re living in a constant urinal state, or the “Golden State” for that matter. Things can become so yellow-hued here that you’d think UCLA became a ghost UNION WEEKLY
3 NOVEMBER 2009
Illustration
BRYAN WALTON UNION STAFFER
campus. The best that can be said about this is that I never have to wear yellow clothing, I’ve got that covered. Also, a not so brilliant byproduct of sunlight is the glare that hits you when you’re driving in So Cal. Not only are things really yellow, every car on the road is a disco ball. It also doesn’t help that there are more cars than people on the road in So Cal, moving and blinding all day long. Polarized sunglasses aside, what salve do Southern Californians possess to fight the relentless sun? Probably blindness or sun stroke induced delusions. Although staying indoors also works. By staying inside all day, however, you unfortunately miss out on Southern California’s highly effective storm drain depositories, or as I like to call them, beaches. Not going to the beach in So Cal is thought to be so unnatural that people wonder where on earth you take a piss. Honestly, I’m not a fan of beaches that sit adjacent to metropolitan cities. They’re modern cities’ toilets, yet it’s considered culturally normal and healthy to jump in when it’s sunny; and of course, the beach only works when the sun’s out. Yes, some people enjoy going out on sunny days because they’re energized by the light and warmth, but the sun never fails to brainwash its loyal followers. Because it gives life we’re obligated, or expected to pay it tribute with our semi-nude bodies and reverence whenever it monopolizes the sky. We’re essentially being extorted by the sun because people learn to love seemingly fleeting things and concepts. Admittedly, we need the sun more than it needs us, but it’s just primitive to think the sun exists only on cloudless days. And let’s not forget water’s also threatening to kill itself, it’s just that we choose to ignore the threats. Why does water get taken for granted in So Cal? Probably because we don’t see it. In reality, water is a scarce resource here, whose dearth is suffered by brush land. All it takes
is an arsonist or a child with a magnifying glass to set So Cal’s only natural vegetation completely ablaze along with our air quality. As if So Cal is too clean, these wildfires cough up ash and particulates in the hottest times of the year and coat our desert in a tawny grime that remains until the next (decade’s) rainfall. People grow to accept this as natural. That’s understandable, but if it wasn’t for all the plastic surgery, the stuff would be hard to wipe off. But what about the people who wish for rain to wash away the grime and clear the air? Some people enjoy seeing their car instead of burnt homes and breathing air instead of dirt. If there’s any reason for atheism in this state, praying for rain and getting ash and soot instead could be it. I’m not suggesting we do anything about the sun, because we can’t. Trust me, I would teach the sun a lesson if it wasn’t a colony of nuclear explosions. I’m merely saying that Southern Californians should be aware of
our true condition out here in the desert. Just because it’s sunny, it doesn’t mean everything is beautiful and perfect. Living in a perpetually yellow blur gets to some people. People shouldn’t be branded pariahs if they prefer the toilet at home to the litter box on the coast. Moreover, we’re not blessed or unique just because it’s sunny most of the time. If anything, we’re friends to folly because it’s so sunny. People drench their lawns with already limited water, only to have it inhaled by the sun in a few minutes. Golf courses are artificial marshlands made possible by precious diverted water because sunlight glistens on bald heads all day long. If I’m not mistaken, water in a desert should be conserved for survival and quality of life. You can’t have your suncake and eat it. Perhaps this speaks to the paradox that is the California Dream— a dream that’s kept alive by sprinklers.
OPINIONS
DOLLARIZATION: THE UNITED NARCOSTATES OF AMERICA THIS SHIT MAKES SCARFACE LOOK LIKE A LEMONADE STAND MICHAËL VEREMANS UNION STAFFER
A disturbing trend is developing amongst neo-imperialist nations and the countries that they are seeking to exploit. Western countries—and the United States in particular—are leveraging, and possibly encouraging, hard-drug usage and addiction at home in order to facilitate the economic takeover of foreign economies. More than a trend, these international social and economic practices have served as a major financial buffer and investment pool for the sordid affairs of the United States, constituting an astonishingly malicious crime that is over a century old and shows no signs of stopping. In America, the number of people who use cocaine regularly is higher than 3.6 million, including crack users. Heroin abusers are untallied, though invariably over a million in this country. The millions of domestic users form the base from which profits are taken, in the form of drug money in US dollars, in order to fund pro-US governments abroad and expand the influence of the dollar. From the first economic contact between the British East India company and poppy-producing regions in Asia,
opium has become a major narcotic in the Western and world markets, both legally and illegally. Wars have been fought over the importation of opium in Asia, and at every step of the way, Western powers have been vitally involved in its production and distribution. It is not surprising that the three countries that have pursued major military action in Afghanistan now import the most opium and heroin from the region—England, Russia, and finally, the United States. These cartel-like military incursions have developed into extremely lucrative and subversive markets that introduce the US dollar into these foreign economies. The American coca trade has risen in recent years to far outreach the opiate trade in general. The sale of cocaine within the US alone has generated over $70 billion, almost entirely underground. Since the coca boom of the 1980’s usage has risen drastically, no longer confined to certain social classes—most citizens can obtain cocaine or crack quite easily, and at competitive prices. This vast trade encompasses much of the American hemisphere. From South
A TOUCH O' SASS
America, through Central American and the Caribbean to the United States and Europe, has also led to mass addiction and the vicious dollarization of Latin America. If you’re in Southern California, you can test it. The US dollar is valid in the cities of Mexico just south of the border. As in all other opium and coca-producing states from Central Asia to Latin America we see the same symptoms of US narco-colonialism—addiction, exploitation, the dollar. There are no efforts to effectively curb hard drug abuse or to curtail the trade, quite the opposite, the US government has supported the drug trade at many different levels. Addiction growing at home, economic desperation abroad, and international confidence in the US dollar continues to grow as it becomes the global currency of so-called illicit business. But the institutional support for drug use and abuse need not be effective propaganda for the subversion people—they can’t trick us into becoming addicts by subjecting us to domestic oppression. (Read the full article at jaguarpress.wordpress.com)
THE MACHIAVELLIAN WAY TO MAKE FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE
FOLASHADE ALFORD UNION STAFFER
Among the many things I was called in high school, “sassy” remains my favorite. This basically means I’m a no-nonsense bitch who shouldn’t be fucked with. Many variations were created from this nickname of mine, “Sasstoots” being one of them. What has all this sassiness brought me? A lot. My awesome best friend, arguments won, not to mention the fear and respect I deserve. Among all these things I’ve acquired for myself, I’ve never had a boyfriend. No, this is not me whining or complaining about it, I just wonder if it has something to do with my sassafrass nature. I’ve been told several times I’m intimidating. Whatever. To all the sassy bitches out there, this is for you. I know zilch about guys, but I imagine that it can’t be very comforting when a girl jumps the gun. Traditionally, a guy is supposed to make all the first moves, and women are supposed to wait for the guy to just sweep them off their feet. You might wait forever. Well, women can’t help it. We know what we want and we’ll try to get it, somewhat like the guys who saunter up to you and proclaim “Hey baby.”
I recently wasted an entire furlough day going back to my high school to tell this boy I liked him (not my proudest moment). I was freaking out and he seemed equally perturbed. I suppose I accosted him in a way. He quickly diverted my proclamation with some random comment about a mutual friend having a crisis of sorts. He said, and I quote, “Yeah, he needs to get over that.” What the fuck? Thoroughly embarrassed, I fled, to say the least. Things are excruciatingly awkward now, but can you blame me? I was so sure the temperature was just right to dive in, but alas, that water was ice-cold. I’m waiting for the romantic comedy where the girl calls the shots. She says, “Hey, I’m done with your bullshit. I Iove you. What’re you gonna do about it?” Nothing would make me prouder to say I’m a woman. I’m so done with the whiny, crazy, moody stereotypes associated with girls. I don’t want to be grouped with those women who play games with a man’s head. I want a strong female to grab the helm and take care of business, and I want her to be damn good at it.
Why does it have to be “right” for a man to make all the moves? Why can’t women be just as direct and entitled? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want all the men to go cowering in a corner somewhere. I just think it should be okay for a woman to ask for what she wants and not be seen as too bold or forward. I’ve never been one for letting things pass me by. Embrace your inner sass ladies. Go get what you want. This doesn’t just apply to asking guys out. It could be anything, some super cool job, or one of those once in a lifetime opportunities. Even if you fall flat on your face it’ll feel a whole lot better than wondering “what if?” Women are slowly asserting more power, but it would be amazing if being a woman meant more than just something for men to look at. The day when being a woman means expressing yourself with your own standards and not the ones society creates for us is what I’m waiting for. To all the men out there reading this, you might encounter one of us in the future. We might be a bit sassy but you’ll learn to love it.
UNION WEEKLY
3 NOVEMBER 2009
ISSUE 65.10 “Perhaps I misjudged you. Proceed—on your way to oblivion.” -Charles Foster Kane, citizen
JOE BRYANT Editor-in-Chief
RACHEL RUFRANO Managing Editor
CLAY COOPER
Managing Editor
A LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
KEVIN O’BRIEN
kevinob.union@gmail.com
F
or me, this past summer was all about preparation. I went on one short road trip at the beginning and then I spent most of my days cooped up in the Union office, knowing that’s what my predecessor had done, and his predecessor, and his, and so on. Other than the basic stuff I set up on the server—templates, save folders, etc.—I really didn’t have much to do other than coordinate with Caitlin and Kevin (our ad people) and clean up this hellhole. Not that I wasn’t productive every day, but I quickly realized there was very little to stress over during the summer. As long as somebody was in here doing something, I didn’t sweat it. Sure, I’d slack off and play video games every once in a while, but for the most part I’d say that I was pretty good at being my own dickhead boss. The stress came back once the staff returned and got to work (of course), but even that is manageable. Everyone here works hard and sacrifices their
weekends to put out this publication. It’s all for you, but don’t feel too bad, we all secretly kinda like it. The most stressinducing, logic-confounding, god-defying, bane of my editorial day-to-day is the Phaser 7400N. This means absolutely nothing to you, but to this office it is everything. The Phaser 7400N is the real workhorse of the Union. Without it, copy-editing is near impossible and the staff is one step away from bloody, bloody revolution. It is our printer and I fucking hate it for its faulty wiring and importance. It’s been all sorts of screwy since the second or third issue of this year, but we recently got the thing back into full swing, but it’s taking its toll. First it was the imaging units that crapped out— which I learned are different from both ink and toner cartridges. I have no idea what imaging units are, but we ordered replacements for cyan and magenta. We got those and then the printer said, “Oh yeah, I forgot I also need a new yellow
News Director
ANDY KNEIS Sports Editor
CAITLIN CUTT
Literature Editor & PR
JAMES KISLINGBURY
Entertainment Editor & PR Music Editor & PR
CHRIS FABELA
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Creative Arts Editor
imaging unit. Nope, I don’t know why I didn’t tell you this earlier.” Same process. Order. Wait. Replace. New error. Replace black imaging unit. Repeat. Replace black toner. Order. Wait. Replace. Success! Or so I thought. Then, lackadaisical and frustrated, I dealt with the Phaser 7400N printing pristine “test sheets,” but refusing to print anything useful. Like, say, page two of Music. War-weary, I got the IT guy to help me, who I’m pretty sure is terrified of our office (it’s pretty dirty). He fixed it, but now the display is warning me there’s low levels of cyan and magenta toner, and I can’t help but worry that the Phaser 7400N’s time is but nigh. The moral of the story? Nothing. I just wanted to bitch. Ask Away!
Who better to get advice from/complain to than some guy you don’t know? Send all emails to: joeb.union@gmail.com
DOODLE STRUDEL WE, LIKE YOU, AREN’T REALLY TAKING NOTES
clay.union@gmail.com simone.union@gmail.com
RACHEL RUFRANO
JOE BRYANT
rachel.union@gmail.com
SIMONE HARRISON Opinions Editor
JOE VERSUS THE PHASER 7400N
joeb.union@gmail.com
andyk.union@gmail.com caitlincutt.union@gmail.com jamesk.union@gmail.com rachel.union@gmail.com cfab.union@gmail.com
VICTOR CAMBA
victorpc.union@gmail.com
KATHY MIRANDA
kathym.union@gmail.com
Comics Editor Culture Editor
SOPHISTICATED BEAR Grunion Editor
bear.grun@gmail.com
CLAY COOPER Art Director
ANDREW LEE
Photo Editor/Cover Shot
MIKE PALLOTTA
On-Campus Distribution
KATHY MIRANDA Web Editor
CAITLIN CUTT
Advertising Executive
caitlincutt.union@gmail.com
Contributors: MIKE PALLOTTA, MATT DUPREE, SEAN BOULGER, JASON OPPLIGER, ERIN HICKEY, MICHAEL MERMELSTEIN, ALEXANDRA SCIARRA, JEFF CHANG, CHRISTINE NOH, BRIAN NEWHARD, KELVIN HO, ARMAND NOURI, JOHNNY ALT, MAY ZIMMERMAN, JOHN YANG, LEO PORTUGAL, MONA KOZLOWSKI, STEVEN GARCIA, MAXIMILLIAN PIRAS, JANTZEN PEAKE, KELVIN HO, BRYAN WALTON, ALLEGRA RINGO, JAMIE KARSON, STEVEN GARCIA, MICHAEL VEREMANS, AMANDA KHO, FOLASHADE ALFORD, AARON KOSAKA, ALEXANDRE RODALLEC, ELISA TANAKA, KEN CHO
Disclaimer and Publication Information The Union Weekly is published using ad money and partial funding provided by the Associated Students, Inc. All Editorials are the opinions of the writer, and are not necessarily the opinions of the Union Weekly, ASI, or of CSULB. All students are welcome and encouraged to be a part of the Union Weekly staff.
JAMES KISLINGBURY
All letters to the editor will be considered for publication. However, CSULB students will have precedence. All outside submissions are due by Thursday, 5 PM to be considered for publishing the following week and become property of the Union Weekly. Please include name, major, class standing, and phone number for all submissions. They are subject to editing and will not be returned. Letters will be edited for grammar, spelling, punctuation, and length. The Union Weekly will publish anonymous letters, articles, editorials and illustrations, but they must have your name and information attached for our records. Letters to the editor should be no longer than 500 words. The Union Weekly assumes no responsibility, nor is it liable, for claims of its advertisers. Grievance procedures are available in the Associated Students business office.
HILLARY CANTU UNION WEEKLY
3 NOVEMBER 2009
RACHEL RUFRANO
JOE BRYANT
Questions? Comments? MAIL : 1212 Bellflower Blvd. Suite 239, Long Beach, CA 90815 PHONE : 562.985.4867 FAX : 562.985.8161 E-MAIL : lbunion.info@gmail.com WEB : lbunion.com
NEWS STATE OF THE BEACH
YOUR WEEKLY CAMPUS NEWS IN BRIEF JOHN YANG UNION STAFFER
The 23rd Annual Great Chefs of Los Angeles will take place on Nov. 8th and will be a day of food so tasty I can’t even pronounce it. Tix are 150 bucks and there are giveaways on their Facebook/ Twitter page—you kids do that stuff right? For those of you who ride the rails, good news might only come in 10 years, not 30. If LA can get the Subway to the Sea done in 10, it would be amazing. It would only take you two hours to get to LA from downtown LB and only a few more to get to Santa Monica, all on the super convenient rail. Expect your Measure R High Speed Rail (the one that made sales tax go up) from LA to SF to take some time between now and forever plus eternity. The AFI Film Festival starts this week and all the movies are free! Check it out at afi.com/ afifest. Or be a true champion and somehow legally find the movies online. Just saying. Maybe you want to see Cirque du Soleil but don’t want to drive all the way out to muggy Las Vegas? They are now in Santa Monica for your viewing pleasure and tix start at only 60 bucks. Still feeling bummed about the economy? That’s okay, the stock market is doing fantastic and there’s usually some lag between the stock market and the actual economy and job market etc. While you wait, why not check out fun government websites like recovery.org to see where this “Stimulus” money is actually (supposedly) going or other silly government websites like http://www.mycali.ca.gov/ On Nov. 3rd, co-sponsored by the Philosophy department, Being Straight is So Gay: The Improving Nature of Straight Masculinity, 1:00 p.m., USU Beach Auditorium. For further information, email americanphilos@aol.com. Did you notice those huge nutrition fact sheets by the Outpost and the Nugget? They were just there to make sure you knew you were eating some of the most unhealthy food on campus (also the earth) and to see if it would deter you (which it didn’t.) The message is clear: pack your lunch or die of diabetes. Kudos to the brave math department kids doing surveys. Looks like we’re going to need 40,000 troops to save Afghanistan. So chronologically, we have gone to Afghanistan, then Iraq, and now Afghanistan again. Hmmm...
NURSES NEED LOVE TOO BREAKING GROUND ON A NEW NURSING ADDITION BRIAN NEWHARD UNION STAFFER
Illustration
AMANDA KHO
UNION STAFFER
W
ednesday, October 28th ok saw the groundbreaking ceremony for a new addition to the Nursing Department. The expansion, the Nursing Department’s first since 1975, will include 3 classrooms, a computer lab and new faculty offices. In attendance were nursing faculty and staff, university administrators, as well as representatives from Taisei Construction, the company building the add-on. Everyone seemed excited and hopeful for the future of CSULB’s Nursing Department, and more tangibly, the lavish luncheon following the speeches. The headlining speaker was Provost Dr. Don Para. He began by reading a prepared statement from President F. King Alexander, who could not attend the ceremony in person because of other commitments. “I love groundbreaking ceremonies because they show the progress of our university,” said Alexander via his proxy, “be sure to save me one of the shovels!”
Para then continued with his own speech. He read a list of thank-yous to various people who helped the new building come to fruition, including Vice Provost David Dowell, Lucy Huckabee, Mary Stevens and Vivianne Locken. He also spoke about how the new structure would add prestige to the already successful Nursing Department. CSULB graduates over 300 nursing majors every year, the most of any school in the CSU system. The nursing program has quadrupled its enrollment since 2004 in order to alleviate California’s nursing shortage. Para said the expansion would even further increase the number of the highly valuable nursing graduates. The building’s preliminary plans, working drawings, construction and equipment will be paid for by a $2.3 million state appropriation while the rest of it will be funded by the CSULB Foundation. This means that construction will likely not be interrupted by the budget problems. However the budget
crisis is still hitting close to home; your humble reporter was respectfully disinvited to the aforementioned luncheon because there might not be enough food. Times is tough all over.
ART IS GOOD FOR YOUR KIDS’ BRAINS THE MORE YOU KNOW... ALEXANDRA SCIARRA UNION STAFFER
“What If ”, a gallery show curated by the Arts Education Student Association opens November 8th in the Marilyn Weber Gallery. The show is a collaborative piece and will draw attention to how children are significantly empowered through art education. Pertaining to what programs are usually cut in education, Vice President of the Association Valerie Park states that, unfortunately, “art is one of the firsts to go, unlike science or math [it] teaches kids necessary imaginative and cognitive skills.” The renowned Department of Art at California State University Long Beach has over 2,100 students working towards a degree in various disciplines of art. The department is consistently recognized as one of most exceptional University Art departments in the Western United States. Within this group lay a dedicated subset of students who in studying Art
Education are eager to influence youth by presenting fine art, imagination, and furthermore genuine creativity and encouraging manner. Students of the campus of California State University run the Arts Education Student Association. They look to take a politically active stand in Art Education at both the state and national level. The newly renovated Association has this semester elected an entirely new board of members. The show, which opens this Sunday in the Marilyn Weber Gallery, will focus on the relationship between art and community. In using found object materials and opaque plastics, the members will be working with four groups of 5th graders from Minnie Gant elementary school in Long Beach to create a post-human earth within the gallery space. As an artist statement, the asso-
ciation has agreed upon giving a narrative to the children as to give them a clear guideline to explore art and the world. While still in development, the Association decided on the title “What If ” to open a dialogue with the children, who according to club President Celia Zimmer will be viewed as “fellow artists, rather than just kids.” The Student Association intends for the show to evolve throughout the week and encourage patrons, artists or not, to interact with the artistic space. This example of collaborative art is key to making the creation process accessible to non-artists. “What If ” reflects what the many Art Educators who make up the Student Association seeks to provoke in those they teach, which fundamentally enforces that art is everything you create, which in turn is how one molds their surroundings and shapes their future.
UNION WEEKLY
3 NOVEMBER 2009
ENTERTAINMENT COOK, CLEAN, AND REPEAT
A LOOK AT A MOTHER, A WIDOW, AND A PROSTITUTE KELVIN HO
C
CONTRIBUTOR
hantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles might be a film unlike any other you will ever see. A hyperrealist film that takes the ordinary and heightens it into a cinematic spectacle. Jeanne Dielman will definitely bore and irritate many while mesmerizing, confounding, boring, and irritating a few. With a running time of three hours and twenty minutes, Akerman has constructed a film where “nothing happens.” It follows the domestic labor of Jeanne Dielman, a widowed mother who prostitutes herself for a living. As intriguing as the premise sounds, Akerman does not glamorize it to the point of pleasure or entertainment. Akerman, a Belgian filmmaker, is regarded as one of the pioneers for feminist filmmakers. Made when she was only 25-years old, and released in the same year as Laura Mulvey’s quintessential essay on feminist film theory “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Jeanne Dielman’s combination of “realism” and an “auteur’s touch” reinvents a new form of visual and narrative expression. Regarded as her masterpiece, the film proved attractive for the feminist film movement for it brought about liberation in cinema. Jeanne Dielman takes realism into the realms of hyperbole, as paradoxical as that may sound. Akerman is celebrated for her stationary and immobile camera. It is fixed low to the ground, which she attests to her short height. This seeming rigidity of her camera denies close-ups, angles, and point-of-view. Jeanne Dielman is simply a con-
struction of master-shots with durations that run longer than an average viewer’s patience. Her method also reveals an indelible sense of space as setting and time ultimately becomes Jeanne’s confinement. However, as restrictive as her style may seem, the liberation stems from the viewer’s ability to gaze all around at the screen’s meticulous composition. Unlike most of the movies out there, where the camera usually shows what the filmamker want to show, Jeanne Dielman is more observational than expositional. To say the film is merely an experimental exercise is to undermine the film and protagonist’s poignancy. Through-
out the film, the setting and action resides mainly within the confines of Jeanne Dielman’s apartment. It is as if the sum of her existence is made up by the parts of her home. In great extended detail, we observe her searching endlessly around for a missing button, bathing in the bathroom, tidying up the bed in her bedroom, folding linen cloths in the living room, or sipping coffee in the kitchen table. One of the most notable scenes is Jeanne kneading ground-beef for her meatloaf recipe. This is interspersed with moments of prostitution, where it is just as monotonous and repetitive as her other chores. Only once do we witness the actual process and we realize how laboriously she treats it. Because Akerman hardly cuts and allows the camera to roll, everything Jeanne is doing is being done in “real time.” Only once in a while does the elliptic narrative skip through time, as if to break up her quotidian routine only to have it hurriedly resume. Akerman does not romanticize these moments; she shows domestic labor as such. Focusing on what is usually ignored in dominant cinema, it becomes a strong assertion against the naturalizing and disparaging of women’s position. As bland a picture I have painted for you, I can also guarantee you Jeanne Dielman is surprisingly satisfying and rewarding if you give it a chance. To argue that nothing happens in the movie is to admit that you are a lazy viewer, because if given some effort, you’ll find that Jeanne Dielman is a film unlike any other.
JEFF DUNHAM IS THE GODDAMN WORST A VENTRILOQUIST THAT SOMEHOW SUCKS, BLOWS, AND MAKES MONEY ALLEGRA RINGO CONTRIBUTOR
I thought I knew the meaning of the term “off-theshelf ”until I saw Comedy Central Presents: Jeff Dunham. Never before had I heard so many jokes that I was already familiar with, repeated in rapid succession. Dunham, a ventriloquist, asks Walter, one of his dummies, “if you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn?” You know: that joke that made the rounds on the Internet about ten years ago. Walter replies, “Is that what they’re calling it these days?” Which, if I’m not mistaken, is literally the oldest joke in existence. Dunham’s standup special, which aired in 2003, also includes some gut-busters about Bill Clinton and OJ Simpson, men who were both old news by the time they aired and are easily the top two people who you cannot write a new joke about, because every joke has already been written. Years ago. And most of the time they weren’t any good back then, either. Dunham is less a comedian than a bird that regurgitates jokes like so many chewed-up worms. You could program a computer to do what he does. You could train a dog to do what he does. It’s as if someone said, “these terrible jokes need to be delivered by next week. What’s the most efficient way to do that?” UNION WEEKLY
3 NOVEMBER 2009
Dunham’s act is not only hackneyed, it’s blatantly racist. One of Dunham’s characters is Sweet Daddy Dee, a black pimp whose “black” slang—“ho,” “word,” “heard that”—constantly confuses Dunham (playing himself). Apparently the “smoothtalking black pimp” stereotype is still not only acceptable, but funny. This *ARTISTIC CONCEPT is news to me,. Another character, Achmed the Dead Terrorist, relies solely on tired Middle Eastern stereotypes and post-September 11th fears for laughs. Achmed is a suicide bomber with a long beard and a turban, who says the word “infidels” constantly (I heard that his original name was Achmed the Most Obvious Stereotype Conceivable). Achmed’s jokes cover the topics of Saddam Hussein and the “72 virgins” myth, and every other stale Middle Eastern trope you can think of. In
one joke, Dunham asks Achmed to spell his name. Achmed replies “A. . .C. . .” then pauses as if thinking, and then continues “. . .phlegm.” For some reason laughter follows. Let me break this joke down for you: the funny part is that non-American names are different from American names. Oh man! How crazy! I don’t know which to be more offended by: the flagrant racism of the joke or its complete lack of original thought. Why not both? All of this wouldn’t be that disturbing if Dunham was just another hack comic that no one has ever heard of. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. The trade publication Pollstar reports that Dunham is presently the top-grossing standup comedian in North America. He recently signed a contract with Comedy Central that includes his new show The Jeff Dunham Show, a network-sponsored tour covering 60 cities, and another standup special. It’s pretty disheartening that an act as unoriginal and as unabashedly racist as his has lead to such a wildly successful career. But I guess you can’t argue with ratings.
ENTERTAINMENT
BLACK DYNAMITE
WILL RAZZLE DAZZLE YOUR HONKY ASS JASON OPPLIGER UNION STAFFER
A
rarely discussed element of film is the energy that a movie projects. Not merely the pacing or the action but, the literal appeal of the thing. What lies just below the celluloid is often hygienic and cold, and this is exactly what manifests so blatantly in the freewheeling and irreverence of Black Dynamite. It’s a revelation of film grammar. There is an energy here. A tangible liveliness, a joy even evident in the marrow of the entire film that translates into something unique: a quality of spontaneity and effervescence that so rarely appears in our feature films. That inertia, unconfined in timbre and bouncing with unprocessed fun, yells off the screen. It is simply palpable that it was fun to make and that carries over into the viewer. There is, and pardon the expression, soul to the film. There is an underlying jubilance that pushes a premise that could quickly wear thin into legitimate comedic territory. Because while it would be reckless to not acknowledge the Blaxplotation source material parodied here, specifically the equally energetic and frankly, mesmerizing Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song and the oft-mocked Last Dragon, the film plays more as a send-up of B-movies everywhere not specific to the genre. With that irreverence in tone and of filmic tradition, the jokes land squarely, because while this is very much a parody, it doesn’t rely solely on the idea of satire to function.
Instead, it wisely ventures into the space of eccentric story exploration in moves that mimic the post-modernist comedy of something like a smarter South Park (At one point, the titular character drives a boat to place called Kung Fu Island and accuses the fiendish Dr. Wu of Kung Fu treachery—and that’s just scratching the surface). The bends in exposition are legitimately funny but the performance turned in by Michael Jai White is so good it’s almost frustrating simply because, until now, he’s been relegated to wallowing in an obviously undeserved Tyler Perry Hell. The glue that holds this together is the great lengths
the filmmakers are willing to go to give the appearance of clumsiness, all that minutia, the enthusiasm to chase after the in-jokes, the wielding of illiterate film grammar like a pair of lethal nun-chucks, the boom mics, the stilted dialogue, the lighting, the obviously borrowed footage; it even looks as though they may have actually shot a good portion of it on honest-to-goodness 16mm. It’s a spectacle of fantastically (and purposely) bad filmmaking. The exacting precision of the satirization is reminiscent more of Spinal Tap than of anything else, simply because it is so spot on without ever sitting back and getting lazy. And while this writing is drenched with comparisons, it walks a path of distinctiveness to being very much its own film, and an extraordinarily funny one at that. The optimum viewing experience for something this brisk is in a full house, so take some friends and smuggle some beers. And while it is rare that I so freely offer such an open recommendation, here it is: All people, go fucking watch it. You will laugh.
UNION WEEKLY
3 NOVEMBER 2009
SPORTS
YEEHAW! CSULB SPORTS ROUNDUP FIND OUT WHAT’S GOING ON WITH ALL THE SPORTS YOU DORKS
Found image
Found image
MEN’S HOCKEY
INTRODUCTION
H
ello welcome to my sports page. This is what I do. Instead of just covering one game and slapping some pictures up to fill my page, I decided to give you all a big juicy steak of a sports roundup. I rounded up some of the best writers that actually want to talk about sports and set them loose on this fall’s wild sexy season of sports! For all you indies out there that I am trying to cater to for some reason, here’s some ways you can integrate sports into your v-neck life. I think indies drink tea? Well if you do, maybe you can try to throw your teabag into the cup from across the room. Congrats you just accidentally invented basketball, kind of, and had fun doing it. Oh and have you ever kicked anything? That’s soccer. Put that in your Pabst Blue Ribbon and drink it. Put that on your Radiohead album and enjoy it. Put that in your thrift store and charge far too much for it. Alright that’s all, quit reading this junk and get onto the sports, jerks. I’m the editor. Bye.
ANDY KNEIS
Photos
MAY ZIMMERMAN
SPORTS EDITOR
Hockey is a cold and brutal sport, and it takes some of the most rough and ready men from our great university’s club to go out onto the ice and represent Long Beach. The 2009-2010 season has only just begun with a home opener against our supposed rivals Cal State Fullerton earlier this month. We lost 5-7, honestly it’s been a rough season. The next game was against Loyola Marymount and again we lost, 3-5. However, we certainly stuck it to Sand Diego State University with a win of 8-5, and after another loss to San Jose State, the season has been steadily turning around. The last two games played have been against Northern Arizona University and were won by us, 4-3 and 6-5, hooray! Now that we are in our stride hopefully we will continue to control the ice into the next year and through the conclusion of the season.
KEVIN O’BRIEN NEWS DIRECTOR
Found image
WOMEN’S VOLLEYBALL If over the past nine weeks you’ve had the chance to attend a CSULB Girls Volleyball game, then you realize just what a frenetically talented team we have. Over the course of this semester, the team, a mixture of both new and veteran players have time and time again dominated their opposition with flexibility and stamina. The team as a whole is solid with standouts like junior Lee and her near suicidal dives and senior Washington’s fear-inducing kills. Today the team stands in the red, 13-5. As far as Southern California is concerned we are the ones to beat, we embarrassed CSU Fullerton 3-0, and whipped UC Santa Barbara 3-2. UCLA bowed down 3-0, but somehow UCI slid past us with a win 2-3, but that’s just the exception that proves the rule. That rule being that we have a killer girl’s volleyball team. The 49er girls will be traveling for the Big West Tournament, the first match up is against Cal Poly, a team we narrowly beat in the same tournament last year.
KEVIN O’BRIEN NEWS DIRECTOR
UNION WEEKLY 3 NOVEMBER 2009
WOMEN’S SOCCER
MEN’S WATER POLO
The season has come to a close for 49er women’s soccer. Big ups to senior Sarah Strohl and redshirt juniors Chantel Hubbard and Jenn Brooks, whose collegiate soccer careers have finished. Thanks for playing soccer for our team, we appreciate it. Although their record wasn’t great (5-10-3 as of Thursday, with a game left to be played against Cal State Northridge on Sunday), LBSU stayed competitive throughout the season, but caught some bad breaks and lost four games by a single goal and played to ties in three. A few more lucky bounces and a few less unlucky injuries and LBSU could have been much higher in standing. The 49er future looks bright! The team is young and improving, with two-thirds of its players either freshmen or sophomores. Looking back at this last season, we can see that there is a lot to look forward to.
Water polo guys you have taught me many things, like that water polo players are tall. These guys are averaging a hair over 6’3”, who knew? They taught me that water polo is all about teamwork. There were about three water polo players in my Fitness for Living class, and those guys were thick as thieves. Thanks to teamwork, they dominated us non-polo players in Ultimate Frisbee. Summary of what I’ve learned: if you’re short, or if you’re not a team player, water polo may not be for you. We’ve got a sophomore on our team from Serbia named Alexsandr Petrovic. Sure, he has a name that would fit a Bond villain, but he’s not shooting at Bond (which would be a futile thing to try, anyway), he’s in a shark-filled pool scoring goals by the truck load. Keep up the good work. Senior Derek WiebeBailey, thanks for protecting our goal with the same skill and finesse you used to dominate in Ultimate Frisbee. Senior Jeff Greenwood, thanks for scoring a shit-ton of goals. For every player, thanks for playing polo for the 49ers. We appreciate it.
LEO PORTUGAL CONTRIBUTOR
LEO PORTUGAL CONTRIBUTOR
MUSIC
Illustration
RACHEL RUFRANO
NEON INDIAN, JUST ANOTHER BAND TO BLOG ABOUT? both articles by
SEAN BOULGER
UNION STAFFER
I
n a very interesting way, 2009 has been the year of the blog bands. Though I’m surely going to come across as quite a bit of an asshole for calling it by name, anyone that’s been paying attention to the more progressive end of the internet indie scene will have noticed an interesting—and in my opinion, exciting— trend as of late. Some of the most-hyped bands this year have been acts who have achieved their success thanks in large part to the ease with which we are now able to create and distribute music, on account of more recent technological developments. It’s never been easier for two dudes in Brooklyn to make a record with an electric guitar and a Macbook, call themselves Ratatat, and get famous thanks to
the internet. So now we’re taking a look at Psychic Chasms, the debut album from Neon Indian, arguably the most recent of the internet indie buzz bands. The interesting thing here is that we find ourselves faced with an excellent specimen of genetic experimentation. In a fitting tribute to Halloween, Neon Indian lumbers after us with a dragging leg like a stitched-together amalgamation of just about every band that we’ve seen on any of the blogs one cares to visit in search of the latest cool independent rock band. Oh, and surprise! The dude’s fucking 21 years old. Seriously though, let’s do some math here. It’s quite simple: Neon Indian = Animal Collective + Wavves + Passion Pit +
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. With Boards of Canada producing, maybe. The aesthetic of each one of those bands is clearly present here, and while that doesn’t necessarily make this album a bad one, it does create a situation in which I am sometimes unable to hear the music over the sound of my own scoffing. Enjoy the childish, bouncy vibe of some of Animal Collective’s more recent tunes? Check. Fan of the lo-fi guitar sounds of Wavves, maybe Bibio? Present in full force here. And our friends Boards of Canada have lent their influence in the form of warm vinyl crackling and popping throughout much of the record. Digging the warbles and squealing synths Passion Pit bestowed upon us earlier
PLAYING WITH THEMSELVES Adam Drucker does not like to make things easier on his audience. Better known as Dose One, he and producer Jel make up alternative hip-hop duo Themselves, one of the flagship acts of Anticon, Oakand’s premiere underground hip-hop record label. Specializing in a particularly disjointed and abstract style of hip-hop, Themselves’ music has been as scattershot as their beats can be, releasing only three album in the last nine years, with 2002’s The No Music being their only release leading up to CrownsDown, the duo’s official “comeback” record. Following on the heels of the well-received teaser mixtape theFREEhoudini, Themselves are back with an album of surprisingly straightforward hip-hop. Kicking the album off with “Back II Burn,” Themselves shows us UNION WEEKLY
3 NOVEMBER 2009
the most aggressive thing the group has done to date, starting us off with a surprisingly guttural growl courtesy of Dose One. The rest of the songs follow in surprising fashion, showing us that Themselves’ newest record is far more of a straightforward hip-hop record than anything they’ve done yet. Most songs are absent of the more abstract beats and stylings Themselves have been known for, and Dose One’s vocal antics are as interesting as they are challenging. Picking through his impossibly rapid staccato proves a daunting task. Though we’re presented with a more accessible version of what Themselves typically does, Jel’s production is still laced with his aggressive and esoteric beatmaking, ensuring that Dose One’s chaotic rapping has its perfect counterpart. As a relatively new inductee into the world
of underground hip-hop, I just get a kick out of hearing something quite so new and different at this point. Themselves is so new and so unlike anything I’ve heard that I’ll even admit to feeling a challenge when presented with the task of observing them with a critical eye. From this standpoint, though, I can come up with few complaints about CrownsDown as a record. Drucker makes for an interesting emcee, as each song on the record carries with it a different vibe and feeling—and when you do get to the bottom of his lyrics, you’re rewarded with interesting wordplay. Record opener “Back II Burn” is good, but not nearly as interesting as “Oversleeping” which gives us a thickly doubled track of some of Dose One’s fastest wordsmithing—a real delight in both delivery and presentation; the pro-
this year? So were these guys. As I mentioned, none of this is enough to completely discredit the merits of this album—Neon Indian have made an interesting statement, if they did it on purpose, blending a lot of this year’s styles and flavors into what is truly an enjoyable goulash of the sounds we’ve heard thus far. Psychic Chasms is a fun, relaxing, and happy record. Songs like “Terminally Chill” and “Deadbeat Summer” are competently constructed and pleasantly performed. Though I enjoyed it while I was listening, I can’t say I’ll continue to give Neon Indian quite as much attention, now that my review is finished. At least, not as much attention as I gave to the bands that Neon Indian sound like.
duction is fantastic throughout most of the record. Like I said, I chalk my lack of criticisms here in large part up to the fact that I don’t have a terrible amount of familiarity with the finer points of alternative hip-hop. That being said, however, almost every song on this record has a great hook. “Gangster of Disbelief ” makes excellent use of Dose One’s cut-up, while guest star Dax even goes ahead and busts out the Auto-Tune in an enjoyable way on “You Ain’t It.” I’ll admit to the fact that I typically wouldn’t recommend Themselves to the causal listener, but with CrownsDown, they’ve created something that can be enjoyed not only for its achievements in a conventional sense, but also for the ways in which it challenges a lot of those conventions, as well.
MUSIC
album reviews
The F**king Eagles Midnight Sour [Gaptooth Jukebox Records; 2009]
Lil Wayne No Ceilings [Cash Money Records; 2009]
Lightning Bolt Earthly Delights [Load Records; 2009]
This is their second release and it’s fucking sick. Just imagine those high fucking energy The Who songs like “Can’t Explain” and “My Generation” repeated over and over again in as many ways as fucking possible throughout a 13 track album. Okay, there’s one softer song in the middle, but no biggie—just fucking skip it ‘cause who fucking cares? This music is for drinking, driving fast, dancing like a fuck, and fucking fucking. This band might as well change their name to The Fucking Awesome. The only reason they haven’t and never fucking will is due to the name’s sweet ass reference to The Big Lebowski, which is pretty fucking awesome. I hear these Tacoma boys are pretty ridiculous on stage, leveling just about any band they open for. They’re a spirited mess with fucking attitude and they don’t stop there; especially with clever covers like The Flirtations’ “Nothing But A Heartache”, featured in this fucking album. To add to the fuckingness, the album, released in September ‘09 by Gaptooth Jukebox Records, is pretty much impossible to find, even on the fucking internet, completely absent from even Amazon and iTunes. The only way I found a way to grab this fucking thing is through their MySpace, myspace.com/ihatethefkingeagles or googlin’ it up, which will take you to their fucking MySpace. So just fucking go to their MySpace. I consider myself fucking lucky as hell to have stumbled into this album. This thing’s been keeping me alive, like a goddamn fucking bag of adrenaline I.V. - Clay Cooper
More than a year after the landmark album The Carter III, the luster surrounding Lil Wayne has begun to wear off. His mixtape releases have dried up and he has sounded nothing but lazy on all the tracks he has guested. With the release of No Ceilings, Wayne has effectively silenced his critics. Opener “Swag Surfin’” is an iconic Weezy freestyle that measures up favorably to his Da Drought 3 heyday. The album certainly misfires from time to time, with “Poke Her Face” being particularly dreadful. Another problem with No Ceilings is the unfortunate guest spots Lil Wayne brings on from his label. Gudda Gudda fares best out of all the guest spots, but Short Dog brings an otherwise stand out song, “Break Up,” to a halt with his abysmal style. But what we get on the rest of the tape is pure gold. Lil Wayne has always been at home destroying successful radio jams and on No Ceilings, he takes on “Ice Cream Paint Job”; “I’ve Got a Feeling,” “D.O.A.” and “Run this Town” all stand-out with equal command of his talents. The amazing thing about Lil Wayne is his confidence when it comes to playing with language. On his rap over “Run This Town” he raps about almonds, walnuts, and bloods all with the same intensity. No Ceilings couldn’t have come at a more bittersweet time. On the one hand it serves a brilliant reminder that Lil Wayne still has enough intensity to last until The Carter XV. On the other hand Weezy is facing down a gun possession charge and could be facing jail time. No matter how long we must wait until the Carter IV, No Ceilings still is a wholly enjoyable return to the mixtape format from one of rap’s greats and an indication that his head is still in the rap game and not severely screwed up from his steady diet of weed and cough syrup. - Michael Mermelstein
One of this decade’s noise rock titans return after a five year hiatus with Earthly Delights, a brutal 9 song opus of chugging bass lines and drummer Brian Chippendale’s inhuman blast beats. For those unfamiliar with Lightning Bolt, they hail from the Providence, Rhode Island scene, and are centered around the art haven RISD. The band combines the spectacle of modern art with gut wrenching experimental outbursts. Utilizing a two band structure of Brian Gibson and the legendary Brian Chipendale, Lightning Bolt make the type of noise that you would expect to come from a mechanized Viking row ship or the bowels of Hell. Hypermagic Mountain and Wonderful Rainbow are essential records for noise fanatics, and this album ranks right up there with those icons. The album is centered around closer “Transmissionary”, a 12-minute noise opus that is as unrelenting and uncompromising as Lightning Bolt themselves. The rest of the album plays more like the Lightning Bolt records of the first half of the decade. The record starts strong with “Sound Guardians,” a track that is pure Bolt. It starts out in a headlong rush to the finish and only builds in intensity and never ever relents. The album manages to show some range with tracks like “Funny Farm,” that comparatively manages to chill the fuck out for a few seconds allowing the listener enough time to catch their breath for the duo’s next whirlwind jam. Earthly Delights might not be for everybody, but it is sure to please long time Lightning Bolt fans, and fans of Chippendale’s solo projects, which tend to be slightly more out there than the usual madness of LB. Some of that weirdness managed to seep into this album and the result is undeniably a Lightning Bolt classic. - Michael Mermelstein
UNION WEEKLY
3 NOVEMBER 2009
LITERATURE MINDY THE MAGNIFICENT
IS TAKING POETIC LICENSE WRITE NOW CAITLIN CUTT
F
LITERATURE EDITOR
or however many years it’s taken you to graduate, you’ve had the luxury of justifying the hours spent crafting a poem, reading about Papua New Guinea, revising short stories, taking pictures, or researching market trends (if you’re weird like that) with the promise of a degree. So what if it was random? You had a passion for it. But now, if you’re in the home stretch, like myself, getting ready to actually leave school and somehow provide for yourself, kinda feels like you’re making your parachute on the way down. Each time someone asks, “What are you planning to do with that?” the solid, unyielding earth of “the real world” rises at an alarming rate. The thing is, even if you have a great job lined up for yourself after graduation, a whole other set of anxieties begin to surface. A lot of us chose these academic paths because it gave us the ability to not only sharpen our skills, but also the chance to be part of a community of people that desired to create and learn. How many times have we all heard people say that their degree had nothing to do with the career they ended up in? It’s ideas like this that create the fear that the more we “grow up,” the less of ourselves leftover for creativity and learning. Even more terrifying, there is the fear that these passions will fade, disintegrate without the space school has provided us to work them out in. Luckily for us, there are people like Mindy Nettifee. She’s a poet, and a woman who deeply cares about the Long Beach poetry community, and the state of poetry throughout the country. I met up with Mindy when she was featured in an open-mic night held in the Soroptomist house a few weeks ago. I wanted to talk about her creative non-profit organization Write Now Poetry Society, and a certain poetry revival I had heard was on its way to out fair city, with a name that only a group of crazy poets would come up with: The Elephant Engine High Dive Revival. Yes. But before we spoke about Write Now or The Elephant Engine, I sat in on her show. She blew my mind. Her poetry was imaginative, venerable, and funny. I spent most of her reading sitting stunned in that “how the fuck do you write like that?” writer-trance. It was of no real shock when I later found out that Mindy has been a poet for most of her life. By “most of her life,” I mean that she was featured on the cover of Next magazine when she was 15. Also, in addition to founding the Write Now organization, she’s a Grand Slam Champion of the Long Beach/ Orange County Poetry Slam, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. On top of all of this, she’s just a really great person. When I asked Mindy why she started Write Now, Mindy said: “I was inspired by the different poetry communities in the U.S. I thought there needed to be an organization to help them out.” Nettifee co-founded Write Now her friend Amber Tamblyn (yeah, the actress) , and if you take just a few
FISHING FOR CONTENT
MAKE US LAUGH, AND I’LL PRINT IT! UNION WEEKLY
3 NOVEMBER 2009
minutes to look at the Write Now site (writenowpoets.org), you see very quickly Write Now is about creating community. First, Write Now aims to generate funding for quality poetry programming, like Write Now’s Drums Inside Your Chest, which is part of Write Now’s Best Contemporary American Poetry series. However the organization also works towards providing support for communities all over, giving audiences ways to encounter up-and-coming poets, in addition to providing resources for individual writers. Mindy: “(Write Now) is especially a place for people to get help if they want to put their own tour together. We even have grant-writing resources.” And finally, for those who are gonna be in school for a little bit longer, Write Now even offers internships for anyone interested in getting involved in nonprofit leadership, literature and publishing, or production. If you want to see Mindy Nettifee in action like I did, then I suggest you spend November 7th at The Elephant Engine High Dive Revival. Yes the name is insane, but even more insane is the line-up. People like Derrick Brown, Anis Mojani, Shira Erlichman, Buddy Wakefield and naturally Nettifee are not people to be missed. With reviews like “The performance that Anis, Derrick, and Buddy put on at our festival last year was truly phenomenal (Greg Netzer, Executive Director, Wordstock Literary Festival),” and “These guys are the funniest, most charming, most amazing performers I have encountered. (Christian Saxton, Western Washington University),” it’s a hard show to miss. Plus, being there means you get to be part of a revival. Mindy Nettifee, her organization Write Now, and The Elephant Engine High Dive Revival owe their success to a common love of the written word. And that success can, in some ways, ease that “real world” angst some of you may be feeling. You may not be a poet, you may not even be writer, but the lesson to take from people like Mindy Nettifee is that if you really look for a community to share yourself with, there are people out there who want to help. And hey, if you don’t like what you see, maybe you can do something about it like Mindy did.
Illustration
MONA KOZLOWSKI UNION STAFFER
HERE’S THE BAIT 1) Batman walks into a bar, he orders a Whiskey. He turns to the guy next to him and says... 2) What would you do with a drunken sailor? 3) Do you date me? Now, here’s what you do: In exactly 100 words—EXACTLY 100 words—answer thses prompts however you want. You can be disgusting, funny, and I guess as serious, as you want. Then email me at caitlincutt.union@gmail.com and if we all like you, and we’re judging you as a whole human being, we’ll print it. After that, we’ll have your email address and we’ll harass you to comE to meetings. Just kidding....NOT REALLY!!! HA! HA! HA!...ha. Seriously we need writers. I love you!
CULTURE TAKING OVER THE WORLD
are you pondering what I’m pondering? by kathy miranda culture editor
I
’m onto something. I can feel it. A revelation of brilliance has come over me. Culture is ready to take over the world, and by the world, I mean your total attention span of three minutes. During an enlightening rendezvous with the beloved Interweb, I felt the sudden urge to conquer the world. Cut to my childhood—a comforting exchange between a certain Pinky and The Brain, a memory that would inevitably change my life. We live in a state of innate suffering, of war, bad fashion statements and irresponsible life decisions made by millions of college students across the nation, but at the very least, there are two ambitious young mice ready to change everything. Those young mice are us, can’t you see? We can’t let the economy, Balloon Boy, or H1N1 drive us to the grave—we’ve got to keep this rat race goin’! And the Union is here to help. Read on for inspiring incentive on pushing the rebellious youth one step closer to complete domination. The Brain would be proud!
time travel.
taking advantage of daylight savings time And here you thought time travel wasn’t real. Oh, it’s real, and it’s not something to be wasted on laziness and/or a measly extra hour of sleep! We are here to take over the world, remember? So don’t just press snooze or watch re-runs of The Simpsons in your underwear—use that hour toward something revolutionary, you under-achieving sloths! We are in our prime, people, our salad days! Take your 60 minutes of leisure and recognize the potential that pulses through our bones! Ideas! Dreams! Bubble baths!
ruling class. most likely to succeed at world domination
1. How can Google not run the world? With Gmail, Google Earth, Google Docs, Google Voice, Maps, Blogger, Chrome, and now, Google Wave, the best internet search engine ever is humbly taking control of our lives, one program at a time. All we need now is Google Life, a simple application to help us make the harder decisions in life, like where to eat for dinner or how to fix our relationships—oh wait, Google already does do that. Hmm. Neat.
the year of the beard
The cause of the influx of total beards grown in the last year is still unknown. The only conclusive evidence found is that every man should not be without beard. Just like a woman should never be without a man with said beard. So, grow one. Now.
3.
1. Build your own fort 2.
Kayak to jelly fish cove,
naples
3. Brew your own beer (begin the fermentation process)
4. Take a well-deserved bubble bath 5. Make cupcakes, share with friends 6. Re-upholster an old piece of furniture 7. Become your own self-proclaimed playwright, write a short play 8. Turn your phone off... For the entire hour. 9. Start a sincere conversation with a stranger 10. Place glow-in-the-dark stars on your ceiling, turn lights off, stare into
space stoned
2.
vampire empire Teenage vampire melodrama is annoying. Period. But we might as well accept Twilight and Vampire Diaries and the fact that we’ve all had vampire fantasies. New Moon is out soon, and when I saw the trailer in the theater, I’m pretty certain the entire room was ready to suck Kristen Stewart’s blood, in a good way. Or Robert Pattinson’s. Mmm. Might as well get our share, right?
HEALTH CARE REFORM
4.
This debate will probably never end. It will probably drive us all mad, but there really isn’t a solution without severe compromise. Funny how simple that sounds written out. In an unsettling way, this compromise will consume our world and the future of our children. But the word “reform” demands some kind of change, a change neccesary to truly overcome the inevitable obstacle. It only takes a few clicks to be in the know, so be in the know. www.healthreform.gov
5.
retro ART
Our generation is embracing retro trends in every way, especially through art. Since the 90s, artist Charles Phoenix has enthusiastically lead this march backwards. Collecting old Kodachrome slides from thrift stores, Phoenix publishes books and hosts retro slide shows in which he calls attention to the ironic and absurd. “Most of the slides,” Phoenix guesses, were “shown in the family room once or twice, then put away, destined never to see the light of a projector’s bulb again…until I found them.” -alexandra sciarra, union staffer
UNION WEEKLY
3 NOVEMBER 2009
COMICS Crossword puzzles provided by BestCrosswords.com. Used with permission.
Across 1- Kernels 5- After John in the NT 9- Mocks 14- Other, in Oaxaca 15- Baht spender 16- Pays to play 17- Put back 19- Gold measurement 20- Commentary 21- Cavalry sword 22- Not friendly 23- British nobleman 24- 401(k) alternative 25- Lounges 28- Hard outgrowths 31- Ridge 32- Finish first 34- Inter ___ 35- Beer mug 36- Actress Turner 37- Are we there ___? 38- Check recipient 39- Tall and thin 40- Pressed together 42- Fabled bird 43- Helps 44- Miscreant 48- The Hindu
Destroyer 50- Bring into existence 51- Sweatbox 52- Subsequent to childbirth 53- Atoll unit 54- Gaelic language of Ireland or Scotland 55- Like some orders 56- Willow provision 57- Call for 58- Switch ending Down 1- Compass point 2- In ___ (unborn) 3- Attempts 4- Short composition 5- King of the Huns 6- Pursue 7- London gallery 8- Sprechen ___ Deutsch? 9- Capital of Indonesia 10- Make possible 11- French 101 verb 12- Back 13- Concorde, e.g. 18- Agitates 21- Glossy fabric
23- Causing goose bumps 25- Spirited horse 26- McGregor of “Trainspotting” 27- Gravitate 28- Cut and dried grass 29- Corrida cries 30- Baptism, e.g. 31- Eye sores 33- Negative vote 35- You ___ mouthful! 36- Tear roughly 38- Personal 39- Actress Sophia 41- Showered 42- Leased 44- “Siddhartha” author 45- Golden Horde member 46- Author Calvino 47- Big fiddle? 48- Scarf 49- Hawaiian native dance 50- Clotted blood 51- Bro’s counterpart 52- Compose
Forgotten Fall by Jeff Chang
Garage Sketchbook by elisa
The Kids Are Alright by Ken C.
Fer-low? Oh.
e-mail editor Victor Camba: victorpc.union@gmail.com Or drop off comments at the Union office Student Union Office 239
ANSWERS Crabby Times by JANTZEN
UNION WEEKLY
3 NOVEMBER 2009
jeff.chang.art@gmail.com
www.elisa-tanaka-garage.blogspot.com
CREATIVE ARTS
Poetry
ALEXANDRE RODALLEC CONTRIBUTOR
Hunting I’ve pictured you like a storm shredding thru trees sometimes, or the souls rising in the sun over Hiroshima; a light bulb above a typewriter with wings, or as the one leg left of a broken chair; sometimes you smile like the skin on a red old carpet, show your teeth in the crescent moon; as if an arrow in the eye of a heartbeat, as if the vent fumes now made of monarchs; I’ve seen you plunge like the beak of a squid, splash like a full glass of wine, as a cradle of swords with a pillow, or the kelp in the air of the Rockies; STEVEN GARCIA
I have heard you scream like a desert, like a table with all but the plates,
CONTRIBUTER
as a stack in the daylight of Venus, as a cave in the moonlight of Mars; some nights you ripple the air as we return, in that snap of the smell of a wolf,
Art
as our lips on the wings of a moth, but a rose to the brain of a bat; I’ve felt you burn near old papers to wind, like the light like the touch of the hollow night; And then you dawn in effusion of thought, leaving only some odd things to uncover your tracks.
UNION WEEKLY
3 NOVEMBER 2009
Disclaimer:
This page is satire. We are not ASI, nor do we represent the CSULB campus. Get Zwinky! Send rags to bear.grun@gmail.com
“My ass smells like somebody else’s fart.”
Volume 65 Issue 10
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
Kids Make the Darndest Abuse Allegations
LBUNION.COM
I Have Entered a New Realm of Consciousness BY JEFF BRIDGES, ACTOR
Young scamp Johnny Higgins points a shaking index finger at the jury who ruled in favor of his father, the charming Paul Higgins.
BY THE FROTHY SEA In September of 2008, Paul and Cindy Higgins were torn apart by their youngest son, Johnny, after he made disconcerting, but ultimately hilariously allegations. The rousing, real life courtroom drama of the Higgins family has finally ended after 14 months, 3 of which were due to a stalemate within the jury. Fortunately, despite damning evidence presented by the prosecution, the jury finally came to
a verdict of “not guilty.” Relieved and beaming on the courthouse steps, Paul Higgins embraced his visibly strained wife and told reporters, “Gee whiz, kids sure make the darndest allegations.” The press chuckled at Paul’s obvious firm grasp of pop culture from the mid-1990s. “Obviously we’ll be looking for an appeal,” says Johnny’s lawyer Theodore Bonaparteski. “Johnny cannot be in Mr. Higgins’ custody, regardless of how many winks the man can do in a single minute.” “One hundred-twenty three,” said Paul Higgins, his smile a half-
moon of dreams and sparkles. “That’s how many winks I can do in a single minute. My wife here, the beautiful Mrs. Higgins, counted for me. Personally, I think she may have missed a dozen or so.” Mr. Higgins’ grasp of the English language is not to be dismissed, as his words float effortless from his smooth, mostlikely soft lips. The way he speaks is the exact opposite of the way his son does, the little devil. “Please, please don’t make me go back there,” said young Johnny, trying to make light of an awkward situation. “[I should never again take my amazing, loving father’s generosity for granted again],” the boy most likely would have added, had he not been ushered hastily into the family Hudson by his mother. If all goes well for the Higgins family (especially Paul; wonderful, beautiful Paul), they will be left alone by their crotchety neighbors, the old and wrinkle-riddened Webers. The Webers urged the rascal to go to the police when they saw Paul using his belt as a whip in a game of Indiana Jones with Johnny in the Higgins’ front yard. “Don’t worry,” said Paul, brushing away a lock of black, greydashed hair, winking. “I’ll make sure they never bother Johnny again.” What a great dad.
Jeff Bridges that actor here to shoot some cosmic rays of good journalism out of the page and into most of your face holes. I have trained my brain muscles for years now and I have finally done it, my brain is at a new level or dimension or something. Let’s just say it’s smarter than yours. With this new power I can travel to distant dimensions and comprehend some crazy crap. Take a cosmic journey with me as I provide real world solutions for you and yours using my cool cosmic knowledge (pronounce that cuh-nowledge for alliteration fun). The other day I traveled to a fascinating universe. It was almost identical to our own earth, but dogs were doctors instead of humans. These Dogctors used their loyalty towards humans and their love of bones to show care to all the sick people. I learned a little something from the Dogctor universe, which is surprising because I know pretty much everything. I learned that maybe if we could cast aside our prejudices, we too could share in the fantastic healthcare that dogs provide to our counterparts in the dimension I’ve been talking about. Also, it was cute
as heck. People couldn’t wait to get sick or have surgery done, seriously. Some even requested no anesthesia so they could feel the Dogctor’s masterful work. Simply astounding what I can experience and you can’t. I party hard and I work hard. Of course, not every universe is as fun and flirty as the Dogctorverse. When traveling through a wormhole with prisms and clocks everywhere. I dropped into a dimension where some things were going down. Thangs, even. Instead of me being a lovable and basically critically acclaimed journalist, I was a handsome tyrant. Everyone was forced to enjoy my articles and they had to sculpt my face and abs out of the purest inter-dimensional marble. They liked it but whatever. So I had to go find him and have a big final battle showdown with him. Or did I? I did. To Be Continued…
A Dogctor.
INSIDE
Overly Ambitious Parkour Stunt Results in Suicide Jacques Green, 28, died Tuesday afternoon after jumping off a twelve-story building. Seconds prior to the jump, a few of Green’s friends approached him telling him this was definitely suicide. Green’s only response was, “No bro, it’s going to be fine man, you see it’s so simple, I’ll just roll when I hit the ground. I know parkour man, PARKOUR!” He died. He’s dead. PAGE FNS
Prisoner Rests Gut on Cellmate’s Lower Back Jacob “The Club” Jackson, a convicted murderer at the Federal Supermax Prison Shady Meadows, was placed into solitary confinement after his cellmate Wallace P. Snivel accused him of crudely breaking the prisoner’s code of conduct pertaining to cellmate relations. Snivel had made more accusations towards Jackson in the past, but recently decided to keep quiet due to a crippling fear of being punched in the face by prison fists. When asked for a quote on the recent events, Jackson stated, “He [snivel] was asking for it by having such a provocative stare and empty asshole. ’Sides, it’s his fault that his ass fits so well in the nook under my gut.” PAGE #BF8713254
Geologists Discovers World’s Largest Pork Deposit PAGE 433LB