66.05

ISSUE 66.05 “Do you see this writing? Do you know what it means?

Hospitality. And you can’t piss on hospitality!

-Michael, Troll 2

HOSPITALITY A LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

I

As most of you know, we’ve had a slew of hatemail lately. While I love this paper, and if pressed will defend it with the most venomous dick jokes I can muster, I’m tired of not being able to write my regular column. If I rebutted this guy’s claims, we just wouldn’t have had the room for it.

It should be noted that if any of you ever disagree with an opinion piece, you are encouraged to write a rebuttal—it’s your paper too. That being said, here’s an angry fan’s letter, unabridged.

Joe, seriously?! The best shit you can come up with is a psychotic girl who can’t understand why her BF is still talking to his ex-girlfriend, third hand smoke, soybeans, and guns in school? At least I still have the Grunion! While you were sitting their geek battling it out over movie theaters and the rest of the regular population is screaming to just go rent a movie and create your own dam environment, we here at CSULB want our Union Weekly back! For Ms. Cutt: do you really think us guys are that fucking stupid?! Do you think we believe you when you UNION WEEKLY

1 MARCH 2010

tell us that you are on birth control? NO! We know those phone calls aren’t about us men, they are about fostering the relationship to only include sex…duh! Have you ever heard of grudge sex?! You girls are the ones getting played, not us! Mr. Mermelstein, great point, but even the dumbasses of the world are saying the obvious like you.

Ms. Soybean, if we were all vegetarian we would actually care about Brazil and their dictatorship. Did you forget to mention that Brazil is the second largest producer of ethanol fuel in the world? Please, chase down the ACLU political correctness police while we sit here and lavish in our enslaved soybean product. Great opinion, who gives a fuck! Guns in schools…seriously? That’s the best “big idea” you are going to bring to our attention? So stupid I can’t even discuss it. Thank god Mr. Mermelstein found us an alternative to Jody Maroni’s departure and someone brought to light Adam Carolla’s new found glory after being dumped for a stupid Top 40 station that no one gives a shit about when everyone has an ipod! As Homer Simpson would say, “you know what re-

CLAY COOPER

Managing Editor

one doesn’t want to say anything, they don’t have to.

The worst part is the green shirt guys don’t really do all that much but get up in your business. One day they were damn busy and me and my buddy waited for a good twenty minutes for our food. Everyone behind the counter was working their asses off. Everyone except these dudes. They were talking.

About how busy it was.

I’m aware that I’m kind of an ass and the guys probably have the best intentions, but I just want to get my food and go to class or hang out with my friends. I’m even more aware that my picture is right above this letter and since the guys know me this is probably going to be really awkward if they ever read this, but at least then they won’t talk to me anymore. Hopefully.

Who knows? Joe knows.

Send your praise, questions and pithy comments to joeb.union@gmail.com.

STILL JOE ally grinds my gears?” Stupid ignorant shit put in my weekly paper that should be in the Daily 49er. I have a lot of built up rage, but you guys should be bashing ASI for their lavish spending or that the picture of Chris Chavez smirking on the ASI website looks like a Bush II photograph where the devil is in the background. You guys are the voice of the populous of this school and you need to bring to light the bullshit around here. Call me whatever political joke you can think of or tell me to write my representative like Ms. Soybean will unsuccessfully do. But you know what really grinds my gears about the Union Weekly: you guys have lost your wittiness and have become another boring LA Times column paper. I beg you guys to open Word and write something meaningful about this campus and give us something to care about. Take the guy playing fucking techno two weeks ago at the USU on Wednesday. Didn’t hear not one fucking mention about it! Your hot woman issue started us off right, lets just hope you can fucking end the year just as good!

-Anonymous

joeb.union@gmail.com rachel.union@gmail.com clay.union@gmail.com

SIMONE HARRISON

simone.union@gmail.com

KEVIN O’BRIEN

kevinob.union@gmail.com

Opinions Editor News Director

ANDY KNEIS Sports Editor

Literature Editor & PR

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

THIS WEEK IN HATEMAIL...

RACHEL RUFRANO

CAITLIN CUTT

JOE BRYANT has any sort of control of the company, they’re a franchise business. I expect only the driest of exchanges, nay—demand them! I want the guy to not be a dick, yeah, but I also want him to just take my order. I’ll give him my money, he’ll give me my ticket number and I’ll wait and not say anything unless my order’s fucked up.

One of the guys even went so far as to ask me why I ordered what I did. Look, I’m aware that I’m what you’d call a regular to the place and that I tend to order the same thing frequently (and when I stray, it’s usually to one of two things).

Point being I’m fairly recognizable to the people there, if not right off the bat, they’re going to remember me when they hear my order. But that doesn’t mean they actually know me and I don’t think anyone wants to have some sort of insta-survey before they pay. Hence why surveys are usually conducted via some comment card or the internet—if some-

Editor-in-Chief

Managing Editor

JOE VERSUS

spend most of my breaks in our office and will even dilly-dally around if I feel like traffic on or off-campus is going to be too much of a hassle. Because of that, I eat campus food. A lot.

Admittedly too often.

But lately something’s been bothering me about El Pollo Loco. I’m not talking shit on the food—their chicken is delicious and I eat there the most out of anywhere else on campus—but the service is awful. They’re so…polite. And for me, that’s a problem, and I think it all stems from those new guys that work there. The dudes in the green shirts.

Pretty sure they’re managers. Or co-owners. I know the type—anyone who’s ever worked for a big chain does.

Hands-on. Always smiling. Customer service: priority number one. It’s this mutation of Mom-n-Pop shop cordiality that gives me the dry heaves, because regardless of whether the person who opened the original El Pollo Loco

JOE BRYANT

JAMES KISLINGBURY

Entertainment Editor & PR

RACHEL RUFRANO Music Editor & PR

CHRIS FABELA

Creative Arts Editor

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, Cover Design

ANDREW LEE

Photo Editor, Cover Photo

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, JESSE BLAKE, MATTHEW FORD, BRIAN NEWHARD, ANDREW TURNER, TALIA MICHELLE, SHELDON GANNT, MAY ZIMMERMAN, JONATHAN TAKAHASHI, JO JAMISON, FOLASHADE ALFORD, JANTZEN PEAKE, BRYAN WALTON, AMANDA KHO, HOLLY GARLAND, CHELSEA STEVENS, STEVEN ARTHUR WOOD, JEFF CHANG, LEO PORTUGAL, ALEXANDRE RODALLEC, CHELSEA ROSENTHAL, ELISA TANAKA, KEN CHO, MARCO BELTRAN, JASMINE GAGNIER

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.

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 may or may not be edited for grammar, spelling, punctuation, and length.

The Union Weekly will publish anonymous letters, articles, editorials and illustrations, but 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.

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

EDUCATION SHOWDOWN STUDENTS ARE PISSED AND LETTING THE MAN KNOW IT

ALEXANDRA SCIARRA UNION STAFFER

In the last two seasons Long Beach State baseball has produced over a dozen Big Leaguers. The Dirtbags are good, well, as good as you can be with a name like that (prove me wrong, boys!). Watch them humiliate USC March 2nd, 6:30pm at Blair Field. For information or tickets, call (562) 985-4949.

Feeling urbane? Don’t forget that we have a museum on campus, hot-shot. Escape all the phonies by ducking into the University Art Museum to see “Pieces of 9: Reframing the Collection” The exhibition features pieces from the museum’s permanent collection that have been reworked by members of the museum’s staff.

Admission is free to faculty and students. Museum hours are Tuesday - Sunday 12 to 5pm, Thursday 12 - 8pm.

Want to volunteer your time to serve the Long Beach community, but don’t want to do anything too cliché? Consider becoming a living history docent at Ranchos Los Cerritos historic site. The museum will train individuals to adopt historic personas for living history tours and programs on Wednesday. If you are interested, call (562) 570-1755.

The 45th annual Comparative Literature Conference, “World Pictures: Globalization and Visual Culture” will examine the power of visuals in both literature and images throughout different time periods and cultures on March 5th at the Karl Anatol Center. The conference will feature W.J.T. Mitchell, professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago. For more information visit, www.csulb.edu/colleges/cla/departments/complit-classics/conference.

Every first Friday of the month local businesses along Atlantic Avenue stay open late to support community artists and musicians. It’s called First Friday, and the website promises many spectacles, like artists drawing artists drawing, ukuleles, muscle cars, and Macbeth. For details visit, www.firstfridayslongbeach.com.

If brazen displays of creativity aren’t your thing, spend your Friday night in the Walter Pyramid to see our Men’s Basketball team welcome UC Riverside to the jungle. The game starts at 7:30pm.

Every Monday night from 7:30-8:30pm Portfolio’s Coffeehouse hosts a free knitting class. I can’t think of a more charming way to procrastinate. All levels of experience are welcome.

CHELSEA STEVENS UNION STAFFER

T

he past two weeks have seen an explosion in campus protests across California. After the myriad of demonstrations last November, one would think something significant would have been accomplished up in Sacramento by now, but that’s apparently an impossible concept.

With all the issues of students in California, some unique and some shared, I think it’s time for a PROTEST BREAKDOWN. Racial confrontations have come to a peak at UC San Diego, where an off-campus demonstration group mocked Black History Month by holding an event called “Compton Cookout” Attendants were encouraged to dress like Compton gangsters while eating watermelon and fried chicken.

Several days after the event was held a noose was found in the campus library, igniting a flurry of response by the African American students of UCSD. This population consists of 1.3% of the school’s undergrads, the smallest black minority in the UC system.

School officials of UC Irvine have created a debate of free speech on their campus, after a group of Muslim students dubbed the “Irvine 11” were arrested for disrupting a speech by the Israeli ambassador. Though they were protesting peacefully, officials arguing against the students state their actions are not protected by the First Amendment because their shouting indoors was equivalent to shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre. Buuulllshit.

UC Berkeley has been in the news constantly for their protests last week, where students are furious about having their fees hiked while numerous beautification projects are in construction on their campus. Though they protest for good reason, the rallies have become violent and destructive, which has provided a dividing issue for many students who hope to actually make a difference with their demonstrations.

Last Thursday, over 200 students left a campus dance party and destroyed university buildings and windows. At least

two were arrested by the 45 officers who responded.

Meanwhile, 45 students at UC Santa Cruz have been been issued summons this week to appear before the director of student judicial affairs for their protests of fee increases last November in a twoday, on-campus sit in. Some professors of the university believe the summons will have a chilling effect on civil liberties and should not have been issued.

All of this fiery rage will culminate this Thursday, March 4th, in an epic battle for California’s future where one of the largest education demonstrations in recent history will occur across the state. Educators, students, and parents from every facet of education in California will be protesting on school campuses as well as in Sacramento to make a stand against the obscene furloughs, fee increases, and lay-offs in the K-12, CSU and UC systems. Every student who values their education should participate. If this doesn’t work, nothing will.

WHO RUBYWATCHES THE RUBYWATCHMEN? PREVENTING CRIME AND TERRORISM ACROSS THE COUNTRY BRIAN NEWHARD UNION STAFFER

A non-profit organization known as the Homeland Security Foundation of America recently launched an online database meant to prevent crime and terrorism across the country. The database, called RubyWATCH, consists of user-submitted tips that warn of potential illegal activities. Law enforcement officials can study this database to learn about threats to their respective jurisdictions. Although the RubyWatch system is said to be highly sophisticated, it is entirely free for law enforcement agencies to use thanks to tax-deductible donations from the public.

According to the HSFA, the RubyWATCH system is based off technology used in another one of HSFA’s programs called STAN, or Strategic Terrorism Analysis Network. In a press release, HSFA officials said, “RubyWATCH is a logical extension of STAN, empowering citizens to join the fight against terrorists

and criminals from the safety of their homes.” Since the database is dependent on average citizens to offer up tips, privacy is an important component of the program. The HSFA apparently has made privacy protection a high priority by not allowing users to submit sensitive information and permitting users to submit anonymously if they so choose.

The database has a number of features available to the police and federal agents who use it. When browsing through the database of tips, wide varieties of search parameters are selectable including date and time, suspect description, vehicle type, and more.

Agencies that have access to the system have the ability to create customized reports within the RubyWATCH console.

Authorities can also link a particular tip to a certain investigation or person of interest. HSFA president Eric Brown said, “I’m confident investigators will

find using the reporting system more efficient than sifting through emails [containing anonymous tips].”

RubyWATCH is not without drawbacks however. The most obvious one is that it cannot immediately respond to emergencies. On the RubyWATCH website (http://rubywatch.hsfamerica. org), it says in large red letters to call 911 in the event of an emergency. For those of you keeping score at home, filling out an online form can bring a Pizza Hut delivery car to your door, but can’t do the same for a local black and white. In addition, in RubyWATCH’s terms of use agreement they make it clear that they do not guarantee proper use of the information provided on their database. This disclosure seems to suggest that a person’s tip, provided to RubyWATCH with the best intentions, might be used by an overzealous cop to violate a suspect’s rights.

UNION WEEKLY

1 MARCH 2010

Andy’s camera died, so instead of pictures here are some doodles for your entertainment and for the psychiatrist so he can perform a more complete evaluation. The bottom circled one is the same as the top one only bigger and with a rocket.

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL LOSES TO PACIFIC 67-77 SPORTS EDITOR LOSES TO SANITY, LIFE AFTER CAMERA’S BATTERY DIES DURING GAME ANDY KNEIS SPORTS EDITOR

[Editor’s Note: The following is a transcript of the notes Sports Editor Andy Kneis took while watching the game. Seriously.]

P

acific Tigers suck/are shitty. Just kiddin’ they workin’ hard. Good work everyone. #3 [Lauren Sims] nice shot, getting the game going, bringing the party to the pyramid. #44 [Melanie Lisnock] also. #31 Tiger yelling “ball” when she’s guarding? Dumb Tiger. CSULB Brave and noble warriors. Avatar.

Tigers—matching shoes=greedy selfish humans. 49ers=beautiful catvatars from movie.

L’il girls danced for some reason. Congrats Emily—best dancer. Tigers have a steady lead but almost certainly because of witchcraft/dark

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magic. Ref blew whistle and said “not cool” and punched the air. Guy in the band yelled “basketball!!” Lot of shouting tonight. Coach giving team thumbs down. Hurt feelings all around. End Half! 49ers 28, Tigers 37.

Halftime Ponderings: What is basketball? What is life?

Basketball=earth. Hoop=life. Make a basket=death/rebirth. Halftime existentialism.

Can a cheerleader really create a cheer? Or was the cheer in us all along? No answers in sight… Cool jumprope team though. Jumpy dance. I’m clapping right now in real life. 3 jumpropes/jumpers all at once dang!!! I SAID DANG. Applicable to life? Longass jumprope spinning in space. Life. Need sleep.

Second Half: #20 shoots, gets game/party started. “Party time” she was thinking 31-37. Playing my own game. Gotta pee and trying to hold it for 17 mins. Fun game. Having fun currently.

Still 10 point tigerlead. Crowd saying mean things to #24 tiger. She doesn’t seem like she sucks. Seems okay. Running out of time on the clock, gotta bridge the gap girls go go go! Not allowed to cheer out loud at press table. Trying to send psychic vibes. 25 [Brett Timmons] is getting them. Whoa 50-54 yeah!

Got a foul. Time to get this one back ladies.

Big plays all around. 51-54. Numbers make it more exciting. 52-54!!! Got possession again veeery good. So good. Gotta pee p. bad. 54-

56. Still in the game girls. 7 minutes left. Took too long to shoot Tigers! So dumb. Turnover.

Yes. #12 [Ashley Bookman] did cool move to pick up the basketball. Thank you #12 thank you. #22 [Ally Wade] made free throws to tie the game 56-56. Back and forth playing now.

Tit for tat. Quid pro quo. Rock and Roll Part 2—Grary Grittel. Had to take a bathroom break. Writing from the bathroom. Came out and it was 49ers 67-Tigers 75. 1 minute left.

Clock stops. Says a lot about nature of time.

Lots of turnovers. 20 seconds left. 67-75 still.

End of game. 67-77. Just couldn’t beat that 10 point lead. A valiant, earnest effort by all. See ya!!! PS goodbye seniors! #3 [Lauren Simms] #52 [Lindsey Beckner] great playing!

JAMES KISLINGBURY

Photos

PHOTO EDITOR

ANDREW LEE

A

ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR

dam Carolla’s warehouse/recording studio is situated on an innocuous Glendale side street, nestled between a one-story house and a brick building with a patio covered in foam Shrek heads.

Inside the studio, two of Adam’s cohorts, Teresa Strasser and Bald Brian, were talking with Mayim Bialik about brain cancer, and behind them was Adam’s wife Lynette and porn star Tabitha Stevens. It was a strange room to be standing in.

I thought the studio would be bigger.

I distinctly remember the first time I ever listened to his seminal show Loveline, I even remember the first word I heard on the show, which was “Pussy!” From there I’ve heard him rant on subjects ranging from his love of Taboo 2 to his life as a rambling construction worker to his hatred of red left turn arrows.

More recently he wrote and starred in his first movie, The Hammer, and just recently celebrated the one year anniversary of his award-winning podcast. So, after he grabbed a piece of banana cream pie and some coffee we sat down next to a table saw and started talking about what he’s doing now and some of the plans he has for the future.

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5

Adam Carolla: Sorry, I’m eating pie.

Union Weekly: No, that’s fine. When did you figure out that you were going to be doing a podcast?

AC: Well, I didn’t really figure it out, that was Donny. He figured it out. “You should do a podcast.” When I figured out that I was going off the radio, I just told him, I didn’t ask him, what do you think I should do? He just said, “You should do a podcast.” And I was like, “How does that work?”

“You just talk into this microphone, and record and throw it up the next day on the internet and see what happens.”

I’ve always looked at it as talking for free. It’s one of those things that you do. I guess it’s sort of like a porn star. You fuck for free, then you get paid to fuck, but this really was free to me. I really just always felt glad to get paid to talk, but what’s a nice evening? You go out with one of your buddies, who you really like, who’s smart and interesting and articulate and this guy’s got a good sense of humor and you

“

Well, actually, my dad molested me on stage, so I’d really rather prefer to move on.

”

go out and you sit at a restaurant, have a few beers, and you talk and it’s an enjoyable evening. Obviously, you’re not paying the guy, so to me, it’s just kind of an enjoyable evening. I just thought, let’s just do it and let’s see what happens. I don’t know if we’re going to do it every night or what’s going to happen. And we started [the podcast], but then you kind of get this weird little burden.

I was watching one of those biographies on, I think, Ben and Jerry. They started this little shop in Vermont making ice cream and the next thing you know people start lining up, and now what are you going to do? You can’t shut down.

You can’t go, “Aw, no more ice cream for you,” ’cause there’s a line waiting outside the store. At a certain point for us, it was like, “Well, people want to hear it,” and you come out with a show on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and you can’t

have a bunch of people on Thursday going—“What the fuck?

I thought they were going to give us a show.” So, you get listeners and you get fans, and you start to get this somewhere between a burden and [being] indebted to. Somewhere between owing someone money and having them save your life.

UW: “Yeah, alright, I’ll take it.”

AC: Yeah, I guess we should not disappoint people. So, we started doing it and the next thing you know, we blinked our eyes and a year went by.

UW: It seems like so much longer and I mean that in a good way.

AC: [Eating pie] Yeah. I think it’s because the technology is so new. Like a year ago, everyone wasn’t podcasting and every TV show didn’t have a podcast. Now, it’s like, Lost: The Podcast. There wasn’t any of that stuff. There was a couple of shows on, like— UW: NPR. AC: Yeah, stuff like that. A couple of car shows and Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me and now there’s a million of them.

UW: By the way, last night I blew through two red left turn arrows.

AC: Mmm. Thank you.

UW: No, thank you. It’s great!

AC: It’s brilliant, isn’t it?

UW: It’s the best. It’s such a good feeling.

AC: It’s liberating.

UW: It almost makes all those parking tickets worthwhile.

Anyway, you’re doing live shows again. Care to talk about that? What’s that like?

AC: Well, actually, my dad molested me on stage, so I’d really rather prefer to move on.

UW: Are you okay? Do you want to talk about that?

AC: I rarely talk about that. The thing that’s interesting about this business, as almost all businesses, as I was explaining to everyone during my State of the Union address that they weren’t listening to about a week ago. I said, “Look we can’t

really control where this thing goes. It’s not our job to steer this river, it’s our job to jump into this river and let it carry us.” We never thought about live shows or merchandising or t-shirts or hats or selling live shows for $2.99 a download or any of that stuff. We never really thought of that end of it. It was always about advertisers. We were approaching it like a conventional network would approach it, which is: put some programming on, get some ears and some eyeballs on your network and then once you can say, “Oh, we’ve got 200,000 listeners,” then you could sell an advertisement. That’s where our head was always at. And I was never really a live performer. I never really minded doing it. I did some stand-up back in the day, but it wasn’t anything I was ever interested in. And quite frankly, it felt too much like school, ’cause I was a bad student and I didn’t want to have to learn an act, create an act, memorize an act, write down an act, and repeat an act. It always felt like the opposite of comedy to me, the repetition part. It’s that sort of thing where you go, “Have you heard this one?” And if they say, “Yes, I’ve heard this one,” then the joke is null and void.

UW: “Well, I’ll tell it to you anyways.”

AC: Well, that’s what I do actually. [Eating pie] It’s kind of like when you say to someone, “Man, I should tell you what happened to me when driving into the podcast.” And then your wife or whoever goes, “Oh no, you already told me that. That happened yesterday, right?” Then you go, “Oh, alright then, fuck it. I don’t need to say it anymore.” So, stand-up comedy is just one more version of “I’m going to tell that again,” but I’ll be in Seattle or Portland or Vegas, and I’ll keep retelling it and retelling it and retelling it. It always felt like comedy was spontaneity—the quick one-liner. When I was a kid, I’d watch with my grandpa, Hollywood Squares and they’d go to the center section and it’d be Paul Lynn in there and they’d ask him a question and, I don’t know why I remember this one joke, but they said, “Paul—” The host, Paul Marshall?

Something Marshall. Peter Marshall? Peter Marshall says to Paul Lynn, “Paul, what do you do with a lady finger?” And he says, “Ignore it and keep on driving.” And my grandfather says, “Man! That guy is fast!” Lady finger is that little cookie or something. My grandpa is like, “That guy is sharp. He’s razor sharp.” And I was like, “Whoa, man, that guy is funny.”

But, if you realized that he had a whole team of writers who put that joke together for him in advance and then he picked through the questions that Peter Marshall was going to ask, now how funny is it? Or how impressive is it? It’s not really comedy now. It’s the illusion of comedy, so, [I was] never interested in doing the live thing, also [I was] just lazy and not really into standing in front of people and all that stuff.

[Takes bite of pie] It so happens that my CBS contract ran out and I needed a job, and all of the sudden these clubs were clamoring for it and you know we’re going to do a live podcast, and I was like, “What’s that going to be like?” Like at a club. I could understand going to some Mexican bar and setting up and doing a live radio thing, but stand-up on a stage for 90 minutes, you gotta be funny, you can’t just be interviewing the local talent, but I was like, “Yeah, we’ll give it a try. We’ll get Dana Gould or whoever and a couple of comedians we know, get ’em to come out and we’ll give it a shot.” It was a big success. We sold out two nights on a Wednesday night, which they never do and they gave us some money and it was like, “Alright.”

UW: “This is cool.”

AC: Yeah, I don’t have a job, so let’s do it again. So we kept doing it and now we’re going to play our first theater on Friday, the El Portal.

UW: I heard on the podcast a couple of days ago that you’re writing a book.

Adam Carolla pontificates on the wonders of pie.

6

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1 MARCH 2010

AC: I’m actually supposed to be working on that right now.

Again, what’s happened with me and a lot of show business is

Adam Carolla, comedian Richard Schimmell, Teresa Strasser, and Bald Brian record a podcast on the infamous orange dais (couch). that the paradigm has changed. Nobody has their big holding deals or their big, long-term, lucrative radio contracts.

It’s completely changed. It’s sort of like the music industry, you have to go out and play now. You can’t just go platinum and sit back and wait for royalty checks. The cancellation of the radio show was a blessing in the sense that it caused me to go out and do things that I wouldn’t have normally done.

It was a growth experience. It was like, now you can go and write that book. I didn’t want to write that book, but someone said, “Hey, do you want to write a book?”

UW: You’re not going to say no.

AC: Right, when you don’t have a job you’re much more apt to say, “Yeah.” Like, “Hey, do you want to go commit insurance fraud,” and when you don’t have a job it’s like, “Alright!

Let’s do it.” Now I’m getting into it and I’m glad that I’m collecting all my stories and anecdotes and all that stuff. Back when I was making a nice living doing a morning radio show if someone told me, “Hey, do you want to drive out to Irvine and do a couple of shows?” I would have been like, “Fuck that. I’m tired. I’m going home. I’m cool, I don’t need the money.” Now, I do need the money, so I do go out to Irvine, but it’s actually just like the book, it forced a little growth. I’m enjoying being an author and I’m enjoying being a stand-up, when I was never any of those things.

UW: I remember you saying that back when you were my age, 22, back in the ’80s, there were no jobs or you were banging a hammer. What advice would you give to yourself if you were my age right now?

AC: You’re 22? Oh, with the beard and the frames, it’s hard

to tell these days. I would say, follow your dreams, but let’s be realistic, there’s a very good chance that you may not be good at whatever it is you’re dreaming of. By all means, I don’t want to squash your dreams, but on the other hand, let’s not follow a dream for 20 years that ends up in heartache and disappointment for your parents.

UW: We all saw The Wrestler.

AC: I’m saying, hey man, if you think you can be a rock star, by all means, go for it, or if you think you can sell out Madison Square Garden doing stand-up comedy, go for it, or if you think you got the next Swiffer or Dust Buster or Sham Wow in you, if you’ve got the next great American novel, by all means go for it, but let’s be realistic about this endeavor.

By the way, usually people will let you know. If you’re funny, someone will go, “Hey man, you’re funny,” or, “Hey man, you can sing.” If you want to be a professional singer and you go up to sing karaoke over at Dimple’s in Burbank and when you leave the stage none of the 65 people in there go, “Wow man, you can sing,” you probably can’t sing. It doesn’t matter how much you want to be the next Madonna or whoever, you should be realistic. Maybe, you’re not going to be the next Madonna, maybe you’ll be a producer or a choreographer. There’re ways to be involved with the things you love without being smack dab in the middle of things. As the great Casey Kasem said, “Keep your head up in the clouds and your feet planted on the ground.” And, hey, look, there’s a guy, an Armenian midget who made millions of dollars just talking—about nothing. Reading letters from veterans and some KC and the Sunshine Band songs.

UW: So far, what are you most proud of?

AC: Hooooo.

UW: I mean as a— AC: Oh, you mean professionally?

UW: Yeah.

AC: I wasn’t going to bring my kids up anyways. Um, jeez.

Well, I’ll tell you, I really only go off of the responses of other people. I’m not one of these guys who goes, “You know what?

I don’t care what other people think. I’m an artist and my soul was satisfied when I did X, Y, or Z.” If I do something that I think is really great and five people come up to me and go, “Not your best work.” I’ll say, “Sorry,” and that’ll be the end of that. I don’t argue with them. For me, artistically, if I go up and tell a joke and nobody laughs, then it wasn’t a very good joke, I guess. I’m not going to be proud of it. People seemed to like The Adam Carolla Project, the home improvement show, a lot and people really liked The Hammer a lot—probably because it was unexpected and people didn’t think I had that kind of thing in me and they were expecting to see something else. To me, I would say, without trying to sound like a dick, the thing I’m proudest of is that the people I work with and the people I know, when my name comes up, they go, “That’s a funny guy.” They don’t go, “That guy’s lucky to be here” or, “That guy is an imposter” or, “That guy is a bullshit artist.” I think that’s how I’m regarded and I like that. Even if you don’t get rich off of that, I like the respect. I like that the other comedians that come on the show respect me and think I have ability.

GET IT ON!

You can download The Adam Carolla Podcast on iTunes or head on over to AdamCarolla.com for all things Adam.

UNION WEEKLY

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OPINIONS THOSE WHO CAN’T TEACH, SHOULDN’T PROFESSORS ARE MAKING IT HARD TO LEARN GOOD RACHEL RUFRANO MANAGING EDITOR

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here’s this funny little saying that goes, “Those who can’t do, teach.” As much as my optimistic heart doesn’t want to believe it, I’m finding it to be more and more true each day. I go to classes with fascinating subject matter, opportunities to inspire students to have an open discourse about things they’ve never considered before, all squandered by professors who love nothing less than the subject they are teaching. More often than not, I find myself trying to inspire my professors to teach. “Professor Blah Blah! You have before you minds for molding! Impressionable young people to inspire, to encourage to be productive people in the world, to, oh, I don’t know, educate! Look me in the eye! I’m as hungry for knowledge as a student can get and you’re starving me of the education I showed up for!” But I feel like I’m speaking into a void. Thank God for professors like Dr. Mohr who once gave an hour-long lecture about iambic pentameter in which I have never been so mesmerized or felt so inspired. Mohr could teach a class on physiology and have me just as enthralled.

Yet, most professors couldn’t make a lecture interesting even if they handed out LSD to every student beforehand.

In a class where we focus on the French Revolution—one of the most exciting periods in history—I felt like throwing my desk across the room and screaming, “Give up!” If you can’t make the French Revolution inter-

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BRYAN WALTON UNION STAFFER

esting, what are you doing?

You’re forcing your students to stare at the clock until their minds turn to mush.

It isn’t that students aren’t motivated or ambitious and, if they wanted to learn, they would. I believe that everyone has a desire to learn, because there’s nothing more exciting than expanding your mind, but you can’t throw a textbook at someone and expect them to become bright young scholars.

If that were the idea, professors would be obsolete. All we would need is textbooks and the ability to regurgitate them. I’m not saying professors should ask you to rip out the pages of your text book and stand on your desks in a fit of passion, but passion should certainly be involved. You create smart, important people when you let them know that they are smart and important. When you tell people they’re Stormtroopers, they become Stormtroopers; then they’re at the mercy of every enlightened Obi-Wan who wants to control their every decision. I know it isn’t easy to stand in front of a class and inspire them to have

opinions and to use logic, pathos, and evidence to back them up. But if you love what you do and let your students know that, they might feel the urge to love something, too.

I’m not taking any personal jabs at these professors—I won’t tell them I’m sorry their life turned out to be a sad string of trivial tragedies that led to them reciting a textbook

for the rest of their life, but what I am saying is, I believe in you. You still have time to become a professor that a student respects and admires for years to come. I highly recommend you have a conversation with someone like Dr. Mohr, Dr. Goldin, Ms. Pennington, Zepeda, Seyburn, Kaiser, Graham Thomas, or Emmitt Clark.

PISS POOR ATTITUDE

LEAVING THE TOILET SEAT UP IS A MAN’S GOD-GIVEN RIGHT MIKE PALLOTTA UNION STAFFER

Have you ever fallen into a toilet ‘cause the seat was up? If you said yes, then shut up. You’re talking to a newspaper. Also, I hope you were either drunk or half-asleep and didn’t want to turn the lights on. Well, a month or so back, in this year twenty fucking ten, I was leaving the bathroom at a friend’s apartment after using the toilet (standing up), and a friend of this friend went in after. She, like some monocled biddy from a 1930s movie, became aghast and immediately called me back into the bathroom. I peeked back in, only to have her scold me for leaving the seat up. She UNION WEEKLY

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then stood there, waiting for me to put the seat down. Swallowing my pride, I put the toilet seat down and instantly regretted it.

I was violated. I couldn’t believe I ignored my instincts to just walk out, without a word. I left soon after, but it was too late.

I was made into a servile bitch by some old-fashioned prude who grew up in the House of OCD. I could’ve easily looked at this ageold piece of etiquette, and the argument that I’m proposing, as an issue between the sexes. In this post-racism Obama age of all-equality, I can just as easily let out

a shrill when I enter a bathroom after a woman and see the toilet seat down, when I, a man of propriety and rented land, am in need of the seat being in its upright position. HOW LEWD! All of you dignified folks know that it takes a fraction of a second to glance at the seat to see if it’s down, so you don’t fall in.

You know it’s best to check, not only to see if the seat’s in the position you need it to be in, but to also check for hairs, piss, dirt, and the plethora of other ickies that accumulate. What’s worst about my situation is that she did look, and instead of using her own

two hands, she demanded I do it for her.

Ladies, you know that if a man puts it down before leaving the bathroom, it’s a courtesy, and if he doesn’t, it’s nothing to fret over. You’re not some hag who yells “Heavens to Murgatroyd!” when you see the underside of a toilet seat. You have the common sense to open your eyes. You have the common sense to put your own seat down like an adult. You don’t need anyone to wipe you. So ladies, if you run into any of your confidants who say or act otherwise, please tell them to shut the fuck up and join the rest of society in twenty fucking ten.

OPINIONS

GIVE ME TELEVISION OR GIVE ME DEATH THE WINTER OLYMPICS ARE THE WORST THING TO EVER HAPPEN TO TELEVISION

SIMONE HARRISON OPINIONS EDITOR

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fter a long day of school, work, and dealing with annoying morons there is one saving grace that makes my life worth living and that is prime-time television. Growing up, I never had television, so now thanks to the magic of the World Wide Webs, I can watch all of the brain-rotting shit I want. Take that, Mom and Dad. I love television so much that I have the entire schedule from 8 to 10pm on any given day worked out in my head.

Monday nights: How I Met Your Mother and House. Tuesday: American Idol and White Collar. Wednesday: American Idol, The Real World and soon to be America’s

Next Top Model. Finally, the best day of my week, Thursday: 30 Rock, The Office, Bones and Project Runway. These are the shows that I wait with bated breath for during my day, whose plotlines I discuss in depth with my friends and whose characters I have come to know and love as close friends. Is that sad? I think that’s a little sad.

However, all of this joy and anticipation comes crashing down every four years when the Winter Olympics comes to town.

For two painstakingly long weeks I have to endure a life without television. NBC has already given me a serious case of PCSD (PostConan Stress Disorder), why can’t they just

leave my television alone? I understand that the athletes who participate in this “sports event” are amazing, but that’s not the point.

The point is that the Winter Olympics are basically a masturbatory event for all of the richest nations in the world to gloat over all of the other countries that don’t have snow.

It’s as if they’re saying, “Does it snow in your country? No? Well, you fucking suck then.” If you look at the total medal counts, the United States, Germany, Canada and Norway are in the lead by 7 medals. That’s just stupid.

Why do people even watch? Well, because THERE IS NOTHING ELSE ON TV. The networks think that time and space

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RACHEL RUFRANO MANAGING EDITOR

stop when a sporting competition is happening. Well, I’ve got news for you, no one cares. Instead of interrupting the genius of Tina Fey and Tim Gunn, why don’t they put the Winter Borefest on during the day?

That way everyone is happy. The old biddies who sit on their couches talking about the heated controversy over figure skating outfits can go to bed at a reasonable time and the rest of the world who don’t give a shit about the Olympics can have the happiness back in their lives. Thank God there’s only one more week of torture and then it’s all over. I can finally come home, open a Pepsi, curl up and watch my stories.

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1 MARCH 2010

MUSIC MUSIC IS FOR LOSERS ANDY KNEIS SPORTS EDITOR

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day-um!

BEFORE

AFTER

kay, I lost weight and I listened to music while doing it. You might think this is just an excuse to toot my own horn while boosting my already substantial indie cred, but you are wrong and stupid. Actually, how I lost weight is a pretty pathetic story which is quite fitting due to my overall demeanor/writing style being pretty pitiful. My inspirational weight loss story is as follows: I locked the door of my room, grabbed two 5-pound weights, turned on some unbelievably lame music and flailed around until I got tired. Eventually I somehow got skinnier. I haven’t weighed myself in a while, but I will say I went down five belt holes.

To prove just how embarrassing this whole ordeal was, I will admit that the main song I flailed around to was Meshuggah’s Prog-Metal Opus “I.” Twenty minutes of some foreign guys dicking around with time signatures, super low 8-string guitars, and throaty vocals.

And I liked it. How dare you judge. If we could put a mirror onto the music page somehow I would tell you to go look into it to see if you are truly above judgement. Go find one though and look into it soon because you are not even close. Okay, now that those jerks are gone looking for a mirror I can continue. The song worked well for my flail routine, it starts out with a nice

GANGSTAGRASS:

various artists to please various gangstas KEVIN O’BRIEN A REAL STAND UP GUY

I only have 400 words so I’ll get to the point. Gangstagrass is an album with bluegrass and country sample driven beats produced by Rench, featuring lyrics by rappers including Deep Thoughts, T.O.N.E.-Z and more. It’s bluegrass and rap and it’s not a gimmick, it’s not a joke, it’s just what I deem to be damn good music. While there are references to each genre’s respective culture there is no animosity between the two.

One such example is the use of an auctioneer in the track “Dirty Picking,” featuring J-Funk, the speeding voice of the auctioneer acts as an eerily fitting supplement to the lack of rap lyric. Another standout is the track “Pain” that blends the smooth female background vocals of R&B and lays them seamlessly behind a homesick guitar and violin kept up to pace with a hip-hop hand-clap. “Pain” leaves you with the knowledge that it is not a mash-up or a remix; no, it was made to be this way and couldn’t be better any other way. The natural synchronicity of the album is consistent for the most part, it only trips on the track “What I Need” where the vocals seem estranged from the UNION WEEKLY

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WEIGHT LOSERS, THAT IS!

bluegrass accompaniment.

On the whole, Gangstagrass allows me to listen to both rap and bluegrass at the same time. That may seem like a simple idea but I am usually forced to cycle between separate periods in which I listen to a lot of rap or a lot of bluegrass. I’ll listen to the quick, light banjo of bluegrass in my car until I catch the neck vibrating sounds of 50Cent booming out of an adjacent car window. Then I am forced to look at what is left of my week and ask myself, “Am I going to listen to Outkast or Fiddlin’ John Carson?”—which doesn’t make any sense because, while time and ethnicity may have separated them, they both call Georgia their home.

I’ll admit that I stumbled upon Gangstagrass after I watched an advertisement for FX’s new series Justified starring Timothy Olyphant of Dead Wood fame. Only after furiously searching online did I find the track “On The Run” featured in the ad as well as the entire album, which is for free as a download. Just point your browser towards www.gangstagrass.com, but you best hurry because all the tracks will be taken down on March 7th. Giddy-up, playa.

chugga-chugga kind of buildup so I could get a nice flail going. Then about two and a half minutes in, there’s a long scream and just a bunch of noise. That’s the cue to go nuts! Run in place real fast! Lift the embarrassingly light weights above your head! Flop onto the floor and do some crunches! Anything goes. That’s why the door is locked. Do anything possible to get your disgusting overweight body tired. Then there’s verses and solos and all that kind of stuff that goes on and you just keep a base flail going, make sure to keep the feet moving! You have to get the muscle tone and cardio so you can be the whole package like me (package of shit). Anyway, after that, the song calms down for a few seconds so take that time to work on a muscle group you haven’t worked on yet, do some curls or crunches or maybe just swing your arms around, absorbing the Meshuggah xxxperience.

Okay, a couple times I did listen to indie-friendly bands like Melt Banana and Mastodon, so you can try those if you want, but how will you retain your cripplingly low self-esteem if you’re skinny with good taste in music? Seriously though, don’t get any misconceptions that you need things to get in shape. All you need is the drive to do it and some lame songs to get you motivated. Stay fit y’all. Peace.

ENTERTAINMENT

HUMAN TARGET TURN ON, TUNE IN, BONE OUT SEAN BOULGER

UNION STAFFER, DIVERSITY HIRE

H

uman Target is interesting in that its opening sequence is an effective reflection of the show itself.

Blooming ink stain style art gives us a nebulous and shifting credit sequence that is artsy and tastefully done. Problem is that the opening sequence pretty much cribs a lot of ideas from effective credit sequences and just kind of mashes them together. You’ve got the curvy women firing guns from James Bond, the freeze-frame, and colorful palette of British filmmaking, and the twisting momentum of Andrew Kramer’s brilliant Fringe and Star Trek credit sequences (opening and closing, respectively). So once again, we have something that is nice—and arguably the most well-done aspect of the show —­­but turns out to be more or less borrowed from superior work around it.

Such is Human Target. You’ve seen it before, plain and simple. This isn’t to say that the show doesn’t have its redeeming qualities; it certainly does. It’s just that appreciating those redeeming qualities takes ignoring some of its more glaring negative ones.

For example, in one episode main character Christopher Chance, played by Mark Valley,

is attempting to make an escape with a female companion on a motorcycle, while the two are handcuffed together (I know what you’re thinking: “Wait, this is the description of an action sequence from a James Bond movie to a level of specificity that is almost comical.” You are correct). Chance, with all his Special Forces training, spy experience, and battle-hardened smarts, decides that when confronted with a roadblock of cars in front of them, the best solution is to simply crash his motorbike directly into the obstacle, allowing he and his cohort to be catapulted off the motorbike and onto a grassy knoll, free of harm. This is exactly what happens. There are no horribly broken arms, no compound fractures, no faces that get scraped raw beyond recognition. Somehow the lady’s boobs stay in her evening gown, and the two are able to climb over a wall the very next moment, and nobody shoots them.

Yes, that should bother you. It bothers me. And if television cost me money, it would bother me a lot more. But television doesn’t cost me money, and Human Target is there for me when I want to turn off, settle down, and be entertained. And here are

where the positive aspects come in. Mark Valley is fantastic. I totally want to have a beer with that guy. Effortlessly charming and consistently affable, he somehow manages to not be annoying in playing the trained killer who doesn’t take himself too seriously.

Further bolstering Human Target’s case are Chi McBride (whom I will always watch, no matter what he’s in) and Jackie Earle Haley (whose mere voice scares the shit out of me in the Shutter Island radio spots), two seasoned veterans whose chops and likability almost make me want to ask them what it is they’re doing on this show.

But then I remember—the show’s actually not that bad. Sure, it’s laughably stupid

at times, but for the most part it’s a fun, engaging rollercoaster of a show. The pilot’s climactic fight scene totally got a combination of exhalation and laughter out of me, right before I rewound it to watch it over again; moments like this are peppered throughout each episode. This is not a show that takes itself seriously. It sets out to be a fun thrill ride, and for the most part it succeeds.

While it might not try as hard to stick to realism as another action show like 24 might, it won’t upset you nearly as much when it fails. These failures are never serious enough to warrant a change of channel though, and there are just enough moments of sheer fun to keep me tuned in.

THE OSCARS JUST WANT TO BE LOVED AND MIGHT ACTUALLY BE FUN THIS YEAR HOLLY GARLAND

CONTRIBUTOR, VAMPIRE WRANGLER

If you’re like me you’ve wondered what happened to your dead grandmother’s ugly jewelry that you mailed off in a Cash For Gold envelope. The answer: it was melted down in Chicago and used to plate this year’s Oscar statues, thus making them “green.” In order to revive ratings with a fresher ceremony the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has made a number of changes this year. I am crushed to report that this will be Barbara Walters final Oscar Special, including clips from her past specials and an estrogen-fest of interviews with Mo’nique and Sandra Bullock. Non-competitive awards have been removed from the televised program, skimming twenty minutes off of the program for audience’s shrinking attention spans. So instead of receiving recognition for things like Lifetime Achievement in front of the world, a small private dinner will be held. Banishing “the single most-hated part of the show,” thank-yous are now frowned

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JAMES KISLINGBURY ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR, DUDE

upon and should be saved for the backstage webcam, instead winners are encouraged to “share your passion on what the Oscar means to you.” Let’s face it, if there’s one thing Americans dislike more than cinematic achievement it’s someone showing appreciation…or Barbara Walters.

Hoping to broaden the Best Picture Category which is usually reserved for dramas to include space for more foreign films and perhaps even a documentary, the Academy has restored the number of nominations from five to ten. Yet failing to silence you snobbish crybabies from whining that good films are never nominated, at least your ammunition against the corrupt, money-hungry fascists has been doubled. Dismissing the Queer and Mom demographics, the elaborate live performances by Best Original Song Nominees are a thing of the past, the songs will now be played over montages of footage from their films. On the bright side with all this loss

comes a huge gain, this year’s show will be cohosted by Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin.

These two wild and crazy guys are sure to add some great comic relief and pizzazz to the ceremony. I’m willing to admit I laughed through every minute of their performances in this year’s It’s Complicated, so hard in fact that I had abs for a week.

Perhaps the greatest motivation for female American viewers is the parade of anorexic gluttony known as the Red Carpet.

Squeezed by Spanx into designer gowns, actresses are doused in spray tan, diamonds

and false eyelashes so that audiences can praise and punish their appearances. The real awards of the night are announced the next morning on the best and worst dressed lists. Bringing me to my two favorite things about the Oscars: Salma Hayek’s Breasts. You can see them live this Sunday the 7th, starting at 5pm on ABC. For jaded viewers, if you were looking for an awards show with high integrity, you should have watched the BAFTAs. UNION WEEKLY

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CULTURE

{ MITSUWA JAPANESE MARKET }

Clockwise: Maneki Neko, cute plush monster, the best Miso Ramen you’ll ever eat!, mini food erasers and me with my new lucky cat!

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ff the Bristol exit in Costa Mesa, a Japanese playground awaits you. Though its unassuming and rather bland exterior is hardly appealing to wanderers, the inside of Mitsuwa is a maze of foreign delight. Filled with the gaudy accents of cute cartoons and flourescent Japanese characters plastered around every storefront, Mitsuwa Marketplace may as well be Japan proper.

My excitement to finally scour this place was only compounded by the hectic and colorful atmosphere that greets you as soon as you walk in. To the left: the freshest, most vibrant produce aisle I’ve ever seen. And the right: radiant stacks of Japanese comic books, stationary, and magazines covered with the most beautiful half-Japanese girls on this planet. Now, where to go first?

Well, that all depends. What’s great about Mitsuwa is that, like the Japanese, it’s very efficient in satisfying your needs as if it was your one stop for everything. And clean! For one, it has a full supermarket with every ingredient, rare or common, you need for perfecting any Japanese dish. Tip: Visit their candy/snacks aisle. If you haven’t already experienced the wonder that is Hi-Chews or Pocky or Yan-Yan, you are totally UNION WEEKLY

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missing out on life, guy. Seriously.

They also have an enticing food court, serving one of my all time favorite comfort foods: ramen. And this isn’t your Maruchan-pour-somewater-stick-it-in-the-microwave ramen, this is authentic ramen with bamboo and real miso (not to mention, the most tender pork you could make in a stew). For seven bucks! Unreal!

There’s so much more, too. Go to J-Style and stock up on adorable stationery stamps and a new Maneki Neko bobble-head (the Lucky Cat) for your car. Get lost in Sanseido Bookstore with all the manga you could read and all the girls you could drool over. Nibble on Asian pastries while shopping for gifts or just splurge on something for yourself. (I suggest monkey house slippers.)

There’s also a hair salon, a video store, a wireless service store, and Shiseido Cosmetics for the ladies. Everything you could ever want is in this market place, and by everything I mean tasty candy, good Japanese food, and a surplus of frustratingly cute cartoon goods. (How do they manage to make even pencils look cute?!)

Mitsuwa Marketplace is more than just a novelty in Orange County, it’s a landmark oozing with polychromatic Japanese culture. And it’s just a lot a fun. Hurry up and Go. To. There.

words and photos by kathy miranda Mitsuwa Marketplace is located in Costa Mesa of Bristol Street at 665 Paularino Avenue Hours: 9am-8pm Everyday

LITERATURE NOT EXACTLY A REASON TO DRINK COMEDIAN DAVID CROSS’ I DRINK FOR A REASON MIKE PALLOTTA UNION STAFFER

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espite spending the last couple of years focusing on acting and sticking his dick in Amber Tamblyn’s traveling pants, comedian David Cross has managed to find time to write his debut book I Drink for a Reason. Cross, who cool kids know from Mr. Show and Arrested Development, and who retarded adults know from the Alvin and the Chipmunks movies, has been a stand-up comic since the tender age of 17. His stand-up is easily some of the most original and ballsy humor around.

Cross’ comedy albums Shut Up, You Fucking Baby! and It’s Not Funny, cemented him as the contrarian comedian for modern right-wingers everywhere to hate. With his funnylecture style of stand-up, his opinions are often seen as antiAmerican. The Arrested alum touches upon this along with many other subjects in I Drink for a Reason, a book made up of essays, anecdotes, lists, stories (as told by fictional characters), and generally observational bits that all never seem quite good enough for his stand-up.

Looking for something to help pass the time when driving, I got the audio book of I Drink for a Reason.

What’s good about the audio book is that it features asides that aren’t present in the text, such as Cross intermittently berating the listener for being rude, lazy and contributing to the downfall of society for listening to the audio version of his book over reading the actual text. Cross also takes advantage of doing an audio version of I Drink for a Reason

by having certain segments read/performed by friends of his. In one instance, Cross takes what would be an otherwise boring reading of a 6-page list (the list being one of “quirky” characters that indie directors are free to use for their next award-winning film) by having New York indie rockers Les Savy Fav performing the list over a jam sesh.

Many of the bits are funny, but the rants and opinions that David Cross is known for in his stand-up routines are few and far between. Not to mention, when they are there, they’re less structured and meander into unfunny territory, something foreign to his fans. Thus, much of the work comes off as a collection of side-notes that aren’t cohesive enough to be performed. I Drink for a Reason often lacks direction, and ultimately loses steam when Cross writes lengthy sections as fictional characters. Even with Cross doing voices on the audio book throughout these parts, the characters’ stories are dull and run-on without ever really going anywhere, or accomplishing anything (whether they’re trying to go for a laugh or not).

Numerous laugh-out-loud anecdotes and one-note jokes are what keeps I Drink for a Reason readable (or listenable, for me). You get a feel for what Cross is like when he’s off-stage—the normal guy who has funny thoughts when he’s taking a shit, then jots them down on a notepad. If you don’t care to read that notepad, then don’t bother with this book.

THE FINEST FRENCH NOVEL IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE FORD’S (RELATIVELY) New Modernist novel The Good Soldier ALEXANDRE RODALLEC UNION STAFFER

With a name so nice they dubbed him twice, Ford Maddox Ford (above) helped pioneer the Modern style.

The title of this review is slightly misleading, because a guy named Ford Madox Ford (what a sexy name) couldn’t possibly have been French. Or could he? No, he wasn’t. The title of the book is a quip that was made by writer/publisher/ friend, John Rodker.

On the 17th of December, in the year of Our Ford 1913, Ford sat down, maybe after his 40th birthday party, and started writing his first serious book—the one where he would put to use everything he knew about writing (which more than likely surpassed the sum total of the literary knowledge of CSULB, staff and students included). His working title was The Saddest Story, but in 1915’s postwar England, when the book was to be published, the publisher, through a telegraph, let it be known he would not accept the title and “in hasty irony.” On a return paid for note, Madox suggested The Good Soldier. “To [his] horror, six months later the book appeared under that title.”

The Good Soldier a great book for many reasons. In it, Ford pushes modern conventions, such as the unreliable narrator and the flash back narrative, thus producing the fast moving, modern style we are all familiar with now.

Academic pomp aside, what makes this book truly enjoyable to me is the dry humor, which reads as stick-upthe-arse, proper-Queen’s-English. Even the narrator, who’s actually supposed to be an American, seems to speak in a stuffed, hyper-British manner.

In Soldier, we follow our “trusty” narrator/character John Dallow through the saddest story he has ever known.

His wife, Florence, appears to be a woman of questionable character. But he marries her in the first part of the book under questionable circumstances, which just makes you ask all sorts of questions really. Then there is Dallow’s friend, Edward Ashburnham. Ashburnham is the soldier, but whether he is the good soldier is…you get it.

What all this ambiguity adds up to is the real appeal of The Good Soldier for any modern reader: you get to decide who’s an asshole. Is it Leonora, Edward’s wife? She puts up with a lot, but like everyone else in the book, she’s far from blameless.

The characters are utterly human, you feel with them, and you pick your favorite. There’s travelling around the world, there’s silence, and then there’s a lot of holes in the story for you to let your wild imagination run amok. And then there’s death. Yes, three characters die. But don’t worry, I didn’t mention all of them. As far as setting goes I feel that the book chooses a boring one, having said that I still enjoyed it, and do acknowledge that that British frostiness is essential to the novel, and our Ford makes use of it as a device to create conflict, extensively. All in all, The Good Soldier got the Modernist century going. Read it, and then find someone to answer all your questions.

UNION WEEKLY

1 MARCH 2010

Art

CONTRIBUTOR

STEVEN ARTHUR WOOD

CREATIVE ARTS

UNION WEEKLY

1 MARCH 2010

COMICS You’re STUCK Here! by Vic! Perfecto

yourestuckhere@gmail.com Dad Pun Comic by The Guilded Terror

“Con Artist.”

SUDOKU

Garage Sketchbook by elisa

http://elisa-tanaka-garage.blogspot.com/

Crime Fighting Fetuses by MTHR F.

Any requests?

e-mail editor Victor Camba: victorpc.union@gmail.com Or drop off comments at the Student Union Office 239

jeff.chang.art @gmail.com

ANSWERS

Forgotten Fall by Jeff Chang

UNION WEEKLY

1 MARCH 2010

Disclaimer:

“Rah rah ah-ah-ah!

Ro mah ro-mah-mah Gaga Ooh-la-la!”

This publication is satire. We are not ASI, nor do we represent the CSULB campus.

Bumbaclot mouth. Send rags to bear.grun@gmail.com

Volume 66 Issue 5

Monday, March 1st, 1431

Suspect: Murder Tops Bestsellers List for 53rd Week in a Row

BY SEXUAL RANDY DETROIT, MI – Once again, convicted murderer-turned bestselling murderer mystery novelist Benjamin Plasbury’s novel Suspect: Murder has topped The New York Times’ bestsellers list. This is the novel’s fifty-third straight week in the number one slot and the author’s seventh time breaking the top ten.

Before Plasbury was convicted of 14 counts of first-degree murder, he was infamously dubbed “The Murder Killer” by the press during his killing spree in the fall of 1967. Since then, Plasbury has enjoyed enormous success writing first-person murder mysteries from the killer’s perspective.

“When I was sentenced, there was a stipulation saying I couldn’t write about my exploits,” said Plasbury. “Nothingbut-net-loophole! Ka-chingalingaling, am I right? Yeah, it’s all ‘fiction.’ Right.”

Plasbury then high-fived a fellow inmate. “So yeah, my first book, I Bleed the Fifth: A Murderer’s Tale, is totally ‘not’ the story of my first kill and the ensuing media circus. Promise.”

Soon after the publication of I Bleed the Fifth, which garnered notoriety when women across the nation found it in Vons, Plasbury released Nine-Millimurder, a hardboiled romp

through the streets of Detroit as the protagonist from Plasbury’s first book, Dan Rasbury, claims his second and third victims using his dead-on accuracy with his nine-millimeter pistol. “God, ‘Dan’ loved that gun,” said Plasbury.

Nine-Millimurder went on to become a national sensation, the first of Plasbury’s novels to garner the number one slot on The New York Times’ bestsellers list, shooting him to celebrity.

In fact, Plasbury is the only imprisoned celebrity three out of five middle-aged, unappreciated moms flick their beans to every night of the week. “What can I say, cougars love the Plazz’ murder juice,” said Plasbury, licking his mustache hairs.

“Ain’t no bars can hold this Ro- Plasbury’s current #1 hit among undersexed, submissive wives. meo back from a wrinkly vajay. Oh, and With this Ring, I Thee Murder. So and by murder juice, I mean semen, what’s next for America’s favorite writnot blood. I just wanted to clarify that, er of first-person murderer narratives? because I get ‘blood’ a lot. And then “Well, I’ve written 14 books now,” they get both. Right. In. The. Butt.” said Plasbury, smiling with pursed lips.

Suspect: Murder has been com- “That’s how many people the courts say mended for raising the bar for the I killed. So, naturally a lot of my readmurderer mystery genre. This comes ers assume that’s how many people decades after Plasbury’s incarcera- Dan Rasbury has killed. Wrong! There tion and on the tails of other hits like: are so many stories left buried in the Murder She Murdered; Moorder in the backyard of my old hou—my mind.

Red Room; Murder for One, Please; In the backyard of my mind. That’s a Unlawful Murder; A Touch of Murder; metaphor. You wouldn’t get it.”

LBUNION.COM

Area Man Petitions Oscars to Add “Just Good Clean Fun” Category

BY STATLER WALDORF ROOSEVELT SP R I N G TON, CA – Philip Gomez, father of two, and husband of zero, collected 76 signatures outside of the Springton Adult Education Center. The signatures were collected as part of a petition to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences demanding a last minute addition of a “just good clean fun” category to the 2010 Oscars.

When asked to explain why he would petition the Academy for a seemingly inane category, Gomez was quoted, “It all started in 1998.

How did Men in Black not even get nominated? And Titanic won over Men in Black?

I took my kids to that ‘film’ and was shocked by the gross [putting his hands over his kids’ ears] depiction of the female chest area. It triggered my two boys’ first filthy erections. We were all crying.”

It should be noted that Gomez is known to hold a MFA in Creative Writing more commonly known as

“professional lying.”

Gomez continued to ramble on about other movies that demonstrated proper levels of “fun” in proportion to “goodness” saying, “This past year has been such a let down you know? I mean I thought Up would be nice, but a flying house? Can you say witchcraft? I can, in fact, I screamed it in the theater until that progressive usher made me and my kids leave. I don’t know where he is, probably Hell, but I’m still here on the PTA, so that says something doesn’t it?”

The Academy has yet to respond but Gomez is optimistic. Every night since he mailed in the petition he has held a group prayer with his kids and a picture of his mom in the basement. When asked whether he thought of himself as a hero Gomez responded, “Some call me a hero, I call myself a soldier in God’s Army.” Candidly his kids described him as “as good an excuse as any to bring in a social worker.”

INSIDE

CORRECTION Here at the Grunion we try to maintain the finest of journalistic standards. With that said, the staff of the Grunion would sincerely like to apologize for an editing error we’ve made in the date on our newspaper.

For the past three weeks running we’ve printed that the date was 2009. Silly us. As devout Muslims what me meant to state was that the year was in fact, 1431.

Allahu Akbar.

“FUCK SHIT FUCK!” Declares US Marine During the combined Afghan Army and US Marine Operation: Ass Kicking Boot, Corporal Ernest “Tiny” Gutierrez declared “FUCK SHIT FUCK! HOLY FUCK! SHIT!” after an enemy round narrowly missed his head, knocked the cigarette out of his mouth, and landed on a dartboard behind him. This comes fresh on the heels of General McCrystal’s declaration, “HOLY SHIT? WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? JESUS!” upon seeing a local Afghani Poisonous Spider-scorpion-rat. That place is crazy fucked up.

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Area Girl Goes on Date, Makes ExBoyfriend’s Camouflage Run

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