MELTDOWN

News: 3 Opinions: 4-5 Feature: 6-9 Entertainment: 10 Music: 11 Literature: 12-13 Culture: 14 Comics: 15

Issue 72.09 —Colleen Brown, Mayor of Brown Town

Vincent Chavez, Editor-in-Chief editorinchief@lbunion.com Colleen Brown, Managing Editor colleen.union@gmail.com Gabe Ferreira, Managing Editor gabe.union@gmail.com Marco Beltran, Senior Editor marcob.union@gmail.com Michael Wood, Opinions Editor opinions@lbunion.com Brianne Schaer, News Director news@lbunion.com John Villanueva, Music Editor music@lbunion.com entertainment@lbunion.com Wes Verner, Literature Editor literature@lbunion.com Colleen Brown, Culture Editor culture@lbunion.com comic@lbunion.com Duchess of Spain, Grunion Editor grunion@lbunion.com Gabe Ferreira, Art Director gabe.union@gmail.com Brian Mark, Art Director brianmark.union@gmail.com connor.union@gmail.com

Comics Editor

Nichole Daniels, Illustration Editor nichole.union@gmail.com web@lbunion.com Eric Garcia, Advertising Executive advertising@lbunion.com

Letters to and from the Editor

Assitant Editors: Camille Hove, Tyre Jones, Sierra Patheal, Katie Healy, Wes Young, Eddie Viramontes

Vincent Chavez Editor-in-Chief

Staffers/Contributors: Joseph Phillips, Jon Bolin, Ben Novotny, Amy Patton, Rachel Clare, Molly Shannon, Christy Bonham, Roque Renteria, Alia Sabino, Irene Thaiss, Nathan Moore, Tony Bozanic, Chris Fabela, Matthew Vitalich, Abraham Alapisco, Greg Krish, Jalem Maboudi, Rebecca Pincolini, Alex Miklovic, Alison Ernst The Union Weekly is published using ad money and partial funding provided by the Associated Students, Inc. All Editorials are the opinions of the Union weekly, not ASI or 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. Please include name and major 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 illustration, 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

CA 90815.

E-mail: info@lbunion.com

Good news, everyone. This week, I decided to reconcile with my editors.

If you’ll remember from the past few installments of my intro letter, I was having some difficulties keeping my staff in check, so I fired them all and replaced them with cardboard cutouts of my favorite celebrities. But my flesh and blood editors finally came to their senses and begged me to take them back. (Well, I guess technically, I may or may not have sent them a casual mass text suggesting they come back to their posts after I lost my cardboard editors in an electrical fire which I started with my curling iron. As a sidenote, having to choose whether to save the likeness of Amy Poehler or Tina Fey from a burning building is a nightmare I wish on no one).

Our reunion was a teary affair filled with apologies, YouTube videos, and back rubs.

And the good tidings don’t stop there.

For this week’s feature, we spoke with Gaston Dominguez-Letelier, the founder of Meltdown Comics and Collectibles on Sunset Boulevard. The conversation we had literally melted my brain. I honestly no longer remember where I live. We talked about everything: family, failure, the mainstreaming of nerd culture, comedy, Pokémon, and how to live an honest life.

After our conversation, Gaston invited us to watch The Meltdown Show, a comedy show hosted by comedians Jonah Ray and Kumail Nanjiani held in the room behind the main comics/collectibles room. He even mentioned in hushed tones (as hushed as

his booming, excited baritone voice could get) that the show had a special guest. How could I guess that tonight’s guest would be none other than Tig freakin’ Notaro? This woman is a fiercely funny comedian, and if you have not heard the legendary set, titled Tig Notaro: Live on iTunes, that she performed at Largo, then please, please do yourself a favor and buy it now. It will make you laugh and cry and laugh and laugh and cry and laugh, in that order. So you can imagine the joy and pain I felt when I had my already melted brain re-melted by Tig’s dynamite set at The Meltdown Show. I urge you to jump to page 6 to read our four-page feature on Meltdown and the people that make it such an exciting and multi-faceted nerd paradise. Excelsior!

Union Weekly—18 March 2013

NEWS

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Campus organizations will be on hand to answer any questions about the commencement process and cultural celebrations. For those students thinking even further ahead, there will also be resources to help you plan your life after graduation.

Whether you are planning on working right away or going to grad school, the Career Development Center, the Princeton Review, and the Kaplan Grad Course will all have tables set up to help you navigate your life after undergraduate studies.

This is also the first opportunity for seniors to purchase their cap and gown rentals, so take advantage of this opportunity as well as other discounts and promotions that are only available for a limited time.

Don’t miss your chance to learn how to make your graduation amazing.

Katie Healy, Sierra Patheal, Alison Ernst Union SOBs Can we just rename this page State of the Beach already? It would look so cute right up there in the corner. Page 3: SOB. Visualize it. Okay, now stop visualizing and find out what cool things are about to happen this week. No more whining about the lack of excitement in your life.

Your Penis Goes Where?!

Our Theater Department is putting on the award winning show Spring Awakening, which will continue until the 30th of this month. In this show, young students are pushed to excel in their academic education, but are physically turned away, and often vehemently denied, their sexual education by both parents and professors.

Ignorance is not bliss when these students turn towards their peers for the sexual discovery they desperately crave. However, their peers know little themselves; thus, they enter into relationships they don’t truly understand, and bear* consequences they can’t yet imagine.

The parents may shy away from their children’s naked truth, but Spring Awakening as a whole strips bare what adolescent teens grapple with: sex. The play is, as a whole, a darkly compelling coming of age story. Given our theater department’s propensity for excellence in their craft, and the promise of alternative rock, it will be worth the price of admission.

Tickets are on sale Monday-Friday from 9-4:30pm at the Theater Department. *Note: the bear, usually meant to be bare, is a purposeful switch. It is a play on words to foreshadow one of the major plot lines of the play—unplanned pregnancy.

“Brand U” Career Development Workshop The Career Development Center is hosting a workshop to help you capitalize on your most important career search asset: yourself. No matter what you know and what you’ve learned, if you can’t promote yourself in a way that makes interviewers remember your name, you’re way behind in the job search. So come to this workshop to learn how to create your own personal brand, stand out in the crowd, and showcase the best of who you are! The seminar is sponsored by Kohl’s and will be held on Thursday, March 21, 2-3 pm in USU Ballroom C. For more info, contact Dr. Robin Lee at rlee@csulb.edu (and don’t hesitate, because Dr. Lee is awesome).

Graduation Begins...Now What has seemed as a distant venture is fast approaching for CSULB’s graduating seniors. To help make this process as breezy as possible, Forty-Niner Shops is holding its annual Grad Fair at the University Bookstore.

Stop by between 11am to 7pm this Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday to find out all the information you need to ensure that your graduation plays out as planned.

Money Talk The Financial Management Association’s Speaker Series is bringing Steve Lindholm from Northwestern Mutual to campus on Wednesday, March 20 from 5-6pm in CBA 125. Mr. Lindholm is a CSULB alumnus who will be speaking about personal finance, retirement plans, and the ever-popular repayment of student loans. Might be a worthwhile lecture; as President Alexander says, graduation begins today, which means that tomorrow, all this real world stuff will become a pressing concern!

The 49er’s ASI Debates I think I’m allowed to promote this here. The debates are hosted by the Union’s rival newspaper here at CSULB, but they sound like a great idea nonetheless: a chance to see your ASI candidates in person and tell them what you want from the CSULB student government.

Or, you know, just check if the squirrels really are voting for, and whether John & Jon are actually as ripped as they are on the no-suits poster. I won’t ask about your motives. You should go anyway; the event will be held on Monday, March 18, at 12-2pm in the USU Ballrooms.

Remember that voting is online and will take place from March 22-27.

Show Off Those Hidden Talents On Thursday, March 21, Associated Business Student Organization Council (ABSOC) will host its first annual ABSOC’s Got Talent, Talent Show & Fundraiser. This night will include singers, comedy acts, slam poetry, dancing, and a magician! You won’t want to miss out on watching your fellow CSULB students show off their secret hidden talents.

The cost to attend is only $5 for students and $8 for general admission.

Refreshments will be provided. ABSOC will also have several gift basket drawings with prizes like spa packages, gift cards, and more. All money raised from this event goes towards refurbishing the ABSOC room, which will allow us to provide a more professional environment for students.

Dr. Jeane Caveness, the Assistant Dean of Students, will be singing. Jorge Soriano and Deshe Gully, candidates for ASI President and Vice President running with the “Team JAD” slate, will be performing a musical number together. Even the ABSOC E-Board will have a surprise act at the end!

You can help make this first event successful!

It will be an entertaining night you won’t want to miss. ABSOC’s Got Talent will be held in the Beach Ballroom, USU 251 from 7:30pm to approximately 10:30pm. More information can be found online at: csulb.edu/org/college/absoc/events.

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OPINIONS

Union Weekly—18 March 2013

Work or sleep? Which is the better use of your time?

Work Sleep. What a waste, what a travesty.

Such nonsense.

Now I know what my lazy readers are thinking. “Man, how can you hate sleep?

Sleep is the only thing I’ve got going for me! What are you? A communist? Do you hate freedom?” To clarify, no, I don’t hate sleep. I actually love it, in the right doses. But let’s face it, there’s something you learn in every Econ class on the planet called opportunity cost.

In its most basic form, opportunity cost is merely the thing you give up when you have to choose between two exclusive options. A typical example of the opportunity cost would have to make a choice between going to college at CSULB or Georgia State. Now, the choice is easy for those of us reading the paper but it demonstrates opportunity cost well. You can’t practically attend two schools across the country at once, so you have to choose one. In sleep vs work, you can’t simultaneously inhabit two types of consciousness at once so you have to make a choice. The opportunity cost of one hour of sleep is one hour of recreation or productive activity, or building bonds with friends or exploration or any myriad of things. Why not sleep the least amount you can get away with when a whole world waits to be discovered and your entire life is in your hands?

It took until this semester for me to truly appreciate having a minimal need for sleep. I only need 6 hours a day, with a nap sometime in the afternoon or evening, and it’s the only thing that makes my lifestyle possible. Between a job, editing this fine page, carrying a full load of classes and still trying to make time for friends and family, every single minute in my day is precious. I waste enough time in traffic, sitting in line and watching TV shows at my friend’s insistence, while trying to convince myself they’re funny (I’m looking at you Two and a Half Men!). Why waste another minute?

Now let me just ask, what would you do with two extra hours in the day? Maybe

Michael Wood Opinions Editor

Sleep

Sierra Patheal Assistant Editor

you’d take more hours at work and make some cash. Maybe you’d read the classics, or catch up on your favorite shows, or study for your tougher classes, or even just vegetate on the couch, watching another lengthy episode of a Ken Burns documentary. I’m no doctor but many of you sleep around ten hours a day. You only need eight, put those other hours to good use.

Not to mention that a couple allnighters every once in a while have never been a bad thing. Yeah sure, your body may punish you for the sin of refusing the comfort of your bed, but from personal experience, it builds your work ethic. First off, denying your body’s most natural urges is a test and measure of will power. Do you really want that essay done? Do you really want to get through that whole season of Arrested Development? Well, your willingness to pull an all-nighter is a measure of how urgent something is to you. The D students in high school never pulled allnighters because guess what? They were never motivated to do so! You know who did though? My friends in the ivy league. Besides, the all-nighter itself, is a lesson in time management. Your body can take a few nights without sleep every once in a while, but you’ll never want to do it again if you can avoid it. There’s no way to better kick yourself in the ass and finally learn some time management and responsibility than to live a couple days as a zombie after midterms.

It doesn’t take a genius or even a halfway decent person to realize how much sleep can hinder their personal and professional development when you do so in excess. Sleep is a fantastic thing; in moderation like all other things in life. You’ll appreciate more if you go without it for a while and when you regularly sleep little, every single hour of rest will be golden.

Want to pass your midterms? Then put your textbooks down and sleep.

Contrary to common college opinion, sleep is neither a luxury nor a curse. It is a natural, undeniable component of human functionality, and it cannot be set aside or saved for a more convenient date simply because it’s midterm season. Although sacrificing sleep may save you time right now, by depriving your body and mind of rest, you are undermining your ability to succeed tomorrow.

When was the last time you slept for a full eight or nine hours? Remember the amazing sensation of relaxation and readiness when you woke up? It wasn’t a coincidence. Multiple studies have shown that sleep, apart from recharging the body’s physical ability to keep its eyes open, also acts as a reset function for the brain. Memories from the day are sorted, reorganized, consolidated, and restructured into something more accessible and usable while you’re catching your z’s.

Regular sleep during the semester will help your grades, because sleep supports long-term memory development. While you sleep, your brain goes through a process called “consolidation,” where short-term memories are solidified and organized. Kindergarteners have had it right all along. Learn a lesson, take a nap, and let your brain sort everything out.

Even in the short term, you might be better sleeping than studying the night before a big test. Researchers at Harvard say sleep spurs creativity, and adequate sleep is also proven to lower stress levels.

You can come to your midterms exhausted, stressed, and buzzing on coffee and energy drinks if you want, but you’ll probably do better rested and ready to think.

The benefits of sleep aren’t all mental, either. Stanford says sleep improves athletic performance, and a number of studies (from the University of Colorado and the Canadian Medical Association Journal, among others) point to the link between sleep and weight loss. Apparently,

people who sleep more lose more fat than test subjects following the same regimens, and prolonged periods of sleep deprivation can actually lead to dramatic weight gain.

When you’re sleepy, hormones are released into your blood—the same hormones that spur your appetite. There’s a reason no allnighter is complete without munchies, but after a while, it shows.

On a longer time scale, sleep has been linked to lowering inflammation, blood pressure, heart attack risks, mental health problems, and cholesterol. I’m not sure how direct any of those connections are—as an English major, I tend to take any scientific studies with the words “linked to” in them with a grain of salt— but one thing is clear: sleep more, live healthier. I’m not sure I can say it any simpler than that.

It’s true that if you’re measuring your success in terms of weeks, all-nighters might be worth it. I’ll admit to staying up into the early hours of the morning some days, when there simply is no wiggle room left, and the construction of this very paper keeps me up after midnight every Saturday this semester, but as a pattern, sacrificing sleep sets a dangerous precedent. It may save you today, but it will sabotage your work tomorrow. Remember that when you decide to stay up until 5:30 am reviewing your Calculus notes, okay?

Michael’s right; I’ve wasted a lot of time through naps and sleep. I’ve berated myself plenty of times for wasting half the day away with a “quick” nap that lasts four hours. That said, looking at everything sleep does, I don’t regret prioritizing it.

Memory and mental health are worth a few extra hours of rest.

Union Weekly—18 March 2013

REALLY!?!

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Marco & Rose The Daily 49er published an article written by Nayeli Carrillo titled “Campus publications are different and not in competition.” Since Ms. Carrillo seems to have only read the Union in passing, let us clarify a few things. The Union Weekly is an independent, entirely studentrun publication that, similarly to DIG, features content from a range of topics that include entertainment, culture, opinions, music, literature, and comics.

Though some of our features have included elements of creative writing, and our literature page features creative writing submissions from students, to say that our paper is a “creative writing magazine” isn’t entirely accurate. Carrilo also forgot to mention that the Union Weekly, like DIG, accepts submissions

from all students and faculty. Every editor has a personal email and we have open meetings every Tuesday at 5pm.

Additionally, we’re pretty sure nobody in the history of the Union Weekly has ever written an article about ghosts, so we’re not sure where that came from.

The section about the Union Weekly was so lazily written and researched that we don’t even see why she bothered to write it in the first place, especially coming from an author that is so bold to compare a campus publication to a national, professional newspaper like The New York Times. The only way that the Daily 49er is similar to the The New York Times is the fact that they are both printed with ink, written using the English alphabet, and start with the word “The.”

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A rebuttal to the Daily 49er article regarding campus publications

Marco Beltran Senior Editor

Rose Feduk Comics Editor

Also, after consulting with the rest of the staff, we have come to the conclusion that when she compared DIG to the magazine Nylon, Nayeli actually meant to compare it to the material nylon.

By saying that our “issues are compiled mainly of witty, satiric, and sarcastic reviews or opinions about random topics,” she is actually saying that our publication is only good for a laugh.

While we do like having fun with our work and including the occasional joke, that should not define the newspaper as a whole. One of the most frustrating things for us as writers for this publication, is the idea that somehow the Union Weekly is considered by many to be just a “satirical newspaper.” We have heard it from SOAR advisers, professors, administrators, and

students in passing, but we doubt anyone really understands how insulting those two words are to anyone who has spent the time to contribute to and volunteer for the Union. It’s completely dismissive of the massive amount of free time that our staff devotes to writing, editing, illustrating, and collaborating in order to create a product that we’re all proud to call our own.

Though Carrillo may not look to our paper for news about “budget cuts,” we would hope that our readers and other members of the CSULB community see the Union Weekly as a source for interesting, thought-provoking, and quality content. If you’re looking for “a good ghost story,” try the library.

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Meltdown Comics, to put it bluntly, is fucking awesome. I’m sorry for using the f-word in the description to this place, because it doesn’t lend itself much to the imagination but I felt that any set of words that my 25-year-old brain came up with did not do the place justice. I tried. Honestly, I did. I had this whole thing about how walking into the store was like walking into a dreamscape, and that it was like how the child version of me imagined my room would look like when I grew up, but how would this help someone who’d never been there or never heard of this place?

The store also changes a lot. I could tell you about the big “Big Boy” statues or the area dedicated Star Wars stuff, but then I’d sound like a liar and jerk if you, dear reader, read this and decided to make a trip and these things were not there!

The truth about Meltdown Comics, as you’ll hear straight from the owner/co-founder Gaston Dominguez-Letelier, is that it’s the closest thing a building can come to being alive. It has a soul. It’s

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changing, adapting to the tastes of the staff and clientele, and serving as the epicenter for the LA comedic and creative scene.

Several podcasts are recorded here: Harmontown, Mutant Season, Indoor Kids, You Made it Weird, to name a few. You can take comic book writing, illustrating, formatting, classes taught by industry professionals.

It’s a hub for nerdom, nerd culture, and nerd-centric programming. It should be the first place you visit when you make trip out to Hollywood.

Hopefully by the end of this feature you’re as inspired as we were, or at least feel validated in your pursuit of doing what makes you happy. That’s why we’re all here, right? To find happiness?

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Gaston Domin guez-L etelier

Union Weekly: Give us a little history on the Meltdown. How did this get started?

Gaston Dominguez-Letelier: It’s all online man. There’s a bio. Read it. Google that shit.

UW: We just wanted to hear it from you, your perspective on the story. People could just go online to get that stuff, I’m sure you have a different take on all of it.

GDL: It’s the same because we wrote it. [laughs] I don’t know. Back in ‘93 I was managing records stores and running a comic book store and got married back then, and decided to open our own that focused on more of what we liked, like Japanese robots and comic books, particularly small press books, not just your run of the mill superhero comic books, even though we loved those and we sell a lot of them. It was basically more of a pop culture set up. My partner Ilia, we’ve been divorced for like 15 years but she’s still the founder of this store with me, had the largest Spider-man collection at that time.

You know all the toys and the tee shirts, just like a bunch of madness and we decorated the store to a point where people would come in and be like, “Whoa!” It was worth coming in to. It was right across the street like a 1000 square feet for a while, literally working 10 to 10, seven days. Maybe like three years building a massive base of customers.

We then moved further down the street to a 3000 foot, and knocked down a wall so we were at 4000 square feet. All along we were looking at the space across the street. It had this crazy name. It was a big baby store that had the name “Sid’s,” you know like sudden infant death syndrome? But it was owned by this 90 year old man named Sid that ran it. We were like “Fucking awesome. This guy has no idea because he’s old.” So we’re like, “Sid when are you going to retire? Sid. SID! Come on!” So eventually the space came up and we moved.

The rest is boring shit. I got divorced, got married again. You know, three kids. And for ten years we’ve been on this side of the street just basically turning the concept of the smaller Meltdowns into theater. You come here for the experience. It’s like a three-ring circus. We a signing with Paul Sheer tonight, we have a Meltdown University class being taught by Jim Higgins, a Cal-Arts and Otis professor who moonlights here. He does great. We have classes that teach you how to color, how to paint, how to ink, how to write. We have a life figure drawing class called “Extreme Cosplay.” Team Phoenix runs it; it’s just basically models dressed as crazy comic book characters or super heroes from the video games or Game of Thrones. Ponies!

Sometimes they dress like “My Little

Ponies.” It’s insane. And a bunch of artists from Dreamworks, Disney, all the independant houses come in here to work on their chops because it’s just crazy. It’s not just nude models, it’s a person dressed like Elektra.

UW: Did you always have in mind integrating classes and entertainment things when you founded the store?

GDL: Yeah. To me, we’re only as good as the customers that come through our front door, and everything we sell you, you can get on Amazon for 40% off. It’s a fact. We are competing against that: convenience and the fact that people now socialize online. [So] what we’ve done is taken what

we like and amped it to a point where if you’re not here to buy our comic book wares, you’re going to have to walk through the store. Like tonight with the Meltdown Show, run by Emily Gordon and hosted by Kumail Nanjiani and Jonah Ray. There will be 200 people back there tonight and they have to come through the store. They have to see the signing and the classes and they have to see all the new comic books that are out this week. [Once at a] show, when we were across the street, we had people like Patton Oswalt, Jack Black, and Brian Posehn. We had all these people that were just starting out, that were just finding their footing. All these comedians would just hang. You know Bob Odenkirk, Dave Cross. They’re now major movie stars and performers of a high caliber, and they still do our show. Robin Williams comes in and does our show. Just all these strange people that were customers first. [Then] we figured out six years ago to take that energy and give it a base.

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UW: It’s crazy. It must be exciting for you that you’re a part of this.

GDL: I’m blessed. Like I was telling you, I’m only as good as the people that come through the door. Who shops anymore?

Nobody buys shit! Everybody just orders online or gets stuff given to them or whatever. I mean, we survive.

UW: What type of people take your classes?

GDL: They’re customers. What we found is that CAA and ICN, all of these big agencies, WME, they have top writers and people that create for one medium. Once they hit a wall, they come here to crack the sequential storytelling. To make a comic

book you have to break it down and beat it out in a different way, so we get lots of creators from there. People that do video games come in to take the classes to work on the storytelling components and elements. LA is a very creative town, and it’s impacted with people who need a refresher.

So it’s just a fun thing to take.

UW: So you guys are also supporters of independent artists?

GDL: Yeah, like our gallery shows. We’ve had a gallery a good 15, 16 years and we’ve shown thousands of different artists from all over the world. Different calibers, different levels. We’re lucky, again, to be in LA where there is so much creativity and so many businesses that depend on artists, writers, and creators. Those creators, they befriend us and they tell us, “Hey man, I have a show idea. I want to get all my buddies and do a thing on balloons.” Yeah sure, why not?

UW: What makes this community different than another comic book shop?

GDL: For some reason we have this crazy

magnetism for rad people, like the Yo Gabba Gabba show creators are all friends of the store, so they do crazy events here.

We had uh, what’s the name of that actress from the Twilight movies?

UW: Kristen Stewart?

GDL: Oh yeah, we had a Kristen Stewart Art Show.

UW: Like art about her?

GDL: Of her face. It was massive, I mean, our servers crashed because we had so much traffic. KPCC did a piece on it and their servers crashed because the traffic was so massive, because everyone thought we were making fun of it. But we were deathly curious about her look, and the show was incredibly successful.

UW: So in deciding who to bring in, it’s just who you think is cool?

GDL: It seems like there’s like a committee or something and there’s like a huge lengthy process, but it’s more like, “Hey bro I have this thing” like “oh yeah? That sounds dope!” you know? [Laughs] It’s ‘cause it’s

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just me, you know? It’s just us! The staff! Our base, our foundation and our core is comic book retailing. But going with the times that we live in, we have to make it a circus; we have to make it theater. Our staff are all amazing; they’re creators, they’re writers, they’re all artists.

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we have this 25-foot-tall, 40-foot-wide Star Wars-themed thing out in the front. And next week, they’re installing the bat cave, and redoing the whole front of the store in

UW: Do you think you’re ever gonna hit a limit where it’s like, this is too much now?

GDL: Oh yeah, man, that’s happened years ago. It’s just… we… we are Mom and Pop, None of us have, like, business degrees. We’re literally people…doin’ it. ’Cause no one else is doin’ it. I mean, we have a lot of product; we don’t have everything. We hit capacity sometimes and can’t order everything we want. We can’t have everything that the big chains do, we have different terms.

Everything we buy, we own. We order three months in advance, using alchemy and magic, hoping something’s gonna sell. And we own it. We BOUGHT it.

UW: Earlier you mentioned fringe and nerd culture. How do you feel about nerd culture being mainstreamed?

GDL: I think that happened in the technology and the science sectors. You know, nerds were left alone to become evil geniuses. They use all their wisdom. It’s just happened with technology: Microsoft, Dell, Apple. All these people that run these companies were fat, bald nerds who just focused on being better. Yeah! Better with what they knew to the point that they became mega moguls that have charities, and giant boats, and can be their own country if they feel like it…it’s true! I mean…Facebook!

Look at that guy! That guy just wanted to impress girls!

UW: What’s your favorite thing that’s happening here right now? Like in terms of like a class or like a show.

GDL: The success of Chris Hardwick…the halo effect that has brought into our store.

People come in and do pilgrimage photos in front of the Nerdist theatre sign, er, showroom. We don’t have a theater license.

So his reach, the fact that he’s such a public figure…he’s just an adorable nerd! You know, there are certain people that when your friend’s like “Ohh, that guy’s a fucking dick,” and you’re like “Oh yeah? Well then I can’t be your friend,” ‘cause I mean, how can you hate Hardwick?

There’s so many people that we’ve come in contact with. You know Justin Willman? He’s the host of Cupcake Wars? He’s become a friend of ours and he does a bunch of shows here, you know, Magical Meltdown. It’s funny, over the years, we’ve met generational levels of Disney and Nickelodeon TV kids that work all day, and then play video games and then intern here. They need to feel, they need contact, they need to be told to vacuum.

And like the classes, you know, every bit, our partnership with Junk Food apparel. I mean, they’re doing these giant decals. Right now

UW: Not enough!

GDL: [Well] it was like a cool email we got [from you guys], like who the fuck is this?

some crazy bang-pow thing, so that’s gonna be crazy.

UW: Do you ever feel like it’s going to get too big for the space?

GDL: We have too much space. I mean 14,000 square feet is just, I mean, we have too much space! We need less space; we could do more with less. Yeah, I think we have enough to accommodate everything that we’re doing, and make it even more fine, and compact and where you experience it better.

UW: Do you want the space to feel like a convention?

GDL: It’s more theater, not a convention, because conventions are transcendental.

[By that], I mean they’re not permanent; they’re nomadic. This is brick and mortar, we are embedded. We die by our bad decisions. Anything we call wrong, we eat. Any book we order badly becomes bonfire material because… what’re we going to do with it? We’ve collaged a seven-foot-tall Batman fiberglass statue with comic books. And either Kanye West or Jermaine Dupree bought it because they thought it was so cool.

UW: Of all the years that you’ve been open, what has been your favorite moment?

GDL: Well, my children growing up here reading comic books. I’ve lived 20 years of my life here. It’s like going out to sea on a boat and never seeing the shore. What we do is here in this space; it is specific. Like, if you make the time to be here, you see something rad, like Michael Jackson coming in and just buying everything. If you show up, you see things, but people don’t show up anymore. We’re really lucky that we have a community that wants to show up; that wants to support [and] that feels connected enough to buy our wares;

to take on our shows.

UW: Is there anything you haven’t done yet?

GDL: We lucked out and we sold a show to HBO. I mean, it’s Los Angeles, it doesn’t mean shit. I don’t need a Lamborghini, I just want to put my kids through a good school. Until [the show] happens, I’m just a guy going, “Oh, I sold a fuckin’ show.” It doesn’t mean anything. We’ve travelled the world because of what we do. We’ve been able to go to strange locations and meet fantastic people. We’re literally one person removed from the President. You know, when he was running, the first comic book store that he followed was us, and we’re the only comic store that he follows on his Twitter account, you know? Which is [honestly], I’m sure, an intern going, “Let’s follow Meltdown; it’s fucking cool!” So it’s pretty funny [that] what we’re doing on Sunset Boulevard can resonate, and [that] there are stores open in New York and other parts of the country that follow us on social media, just emulating, trying to find the rhyme or reason, and there is none. We just do. And we fail so much, but we continue to try because no one will try for us. And we don’t learn from most of our failures! [laughs] You know, “Fuck it, let’s do it again; it’s been two years!”

UW: That resonates with us because every week we have to put this newspaper together by ourselves without any help, and sometimes it gets to the point where we fail a lot, too.

GDL: Do people give you feedback?

UW: Man that feels so good! Do you not get interviewed very often?

GDL: We…just don’t do interviews. We feel that the store needs to speak for itself. So it’s never us, it’s the store. If you Google me, I’m a ghost, you know? It’s literally just the store. People know me as, like, the dude with glasses, or Mr. Meltdown. I mean, nobody knows my name. If it becomes something ego-driven and self-centered, then my failures affect the store, my moods affect the store, my public persona affects the store. Right now the store speaks for itself. It has many moving components and it’s a breathing atom that pays people’s bills.

There’s always a figurehead, but we feel that the store itself, it’s an entity that people gravitate towards, and that includes our staff. We get people from North Carolina, South Carolina, who just want to work here. They’re overqualified but they want to be a part of it. We call them our interns even though we don’t give them credit; our volunteers I guess. They WANT to be here; they’re all professionals that have jobs, but they take the time to come here. I believe most people don’t know why they’re bored because they went beyond boredom into the space of apathy for life. They want to go do something, but they don’t know how to do it, or society has made everything accessible on a phone, so more people basically just need to lose their shit and risk it all and open stores, and make them just like recreation centers.

It’s just being personable, you know. It’s easy to let one success go to your head. It’s

We’ re ’ n a MOnM one of us

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much more of a somber experience remembering all your failures and try to work from that space and try to find a base, a platform, hitting a critical mass that will let the store survive and the experiences we’re relaying to the public happen. That’s what we strive for. And on that I’ll close.

own rector d t l e M Di s, n i m g a r g i g Jim H rsity’s Pro UW: How did you get involved in teaching at Meltdown?

Unive So I came in here in 2008. And there wasn’t as much going on as there is now, but there was a lot of stuff still. They had galleries, signings, comedy, and Gaston was like, “We’ve been talking about doing [comic book classes] for a year and a half.” So we collaborated. And now, I run the program, but this is the house that we live in. We do everything, and run the whole thing in a lot of ways, together. If I wanna make changes, I talk to Gaston and I get input from him.

He’s always looking to have us do more classes. He’s like (in Gaston accent), “Dude, do more workshops. Just do more, dude.”

UW: What’s happening with Meltdown U as of right now?

The classes we’re doing right now are all comics-related, comic book writing and drawing. I teach the flagship class which is where all the students come in as a writer or a writer/artist. The writers will write a complete comic book script for a short story by the end of the class. The artists will do a complete eight to ten page story, written, drawn, lettered, and ready to go and they make a mini-comic out of it.

UW: Is there any screening process to get into the class?

No it’s really for anyone. I often get people who say, “My art is okay, but it’s not really super slick. How good do I have to be to be in the class?” I don’t care how good you are.

I will teach you to refine or find your style and to make it work. Take a look at this comic (Shows me What Would Catwoman Do?) This guy is not going to be drawing for Marvel next year, but this comic is well told, and it’s interesting. Its use of blacks is really great, the way he uses it as a design element.

And it’s hilarious.

I spent many, many years reading all kinds of comics, a lot of indie comics. And there’s a lot of indie comics I’ve read that I say, “You know what, that artist was not great, but I love that comic.”

UW: What sort of skills will students learn in your comics writing class?

So the students in my class will learn story structure, storytelling. They learn how to tell a story with pictures. Comic book storytelling is different than film because, in film, one image comes after another. [In

comics], they’re next to each other. It’s sequential art; it’s designing one after the other after the other.

UW: What other courses do you offer?

We have an inking and coloring class where they learn ink drawing. They’ll learn how to do it on paper, how to do it digitally, and then, in that same class, they’ll learn to do coloring on the computer in photoshop.

We have a life drawing class, but it’s a cosplay life drawing class. Someone was dressed like Gambit last week; another was in a Victorian gown. So it’s fabulous and fun. You can draw naked people anywhere in town but drawing people in regular clothes is hard to find, let alone costumes.

We also have a web comics workshop that’s every two or three months. We do a one-day workshop on doing a web comic: how you do it, how you make money, how you get the word out. We have a kid’s comics class, which is a comics class for kids between the ages of seven and 12.

UW: What is payment like for these classes?

They’re $25 per class, pay as you go. We do get people who drop out. Obviously, if you pay for the whole thing upfront you’re more likely to commit and stay. But we also get people who drop the class and come back. I definitely see that often. We also get people who try out the class. We also lose a lot of people to the American work week, which has gone from 40 hours a week to 60.

They realize that they just can’t get out of work frequently enough.

UW: What upcoming workshops are you excited for?

There’s a weekend workshop on March 23rd for animation. It’s so cheap, like we’re not gonna keep charging $10. But yeah, we’re crazy. It’s five hours and it includes an interview with an animator, Kyle Carozza. He’s worked on Fanboy and Chum Chum and a bunch of other shows.

And he’s at the point where people are asking him to pitch shows. He’s gonna talk about how to get into the animation business, what some of the work is, what you do. Then, everyone in the audience will break up into small groups and they will talk about what their focus would be.

It should be a fun workshop.

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If you’ve ever seriously considered writing and/or illustrating a comic book, we recommend you apply to Meltdown University. And by apply, I mean show up to Meltdown with $25 and a dream in your heart, because that’s all it takes to enroll.

Writing and drawing materials might also helpful.

Meltdown U’s mission statement is to provide its students with the tools necessary to write and/or draw a comic book. They also offer classes in animation, inking/coloring, and web comics. Students will bring in whatever they’re working on to class and exchange honest, helpful

criticism. The classes are geared toward beginners, as well as experienced writers and artists looking to hone their skills. They are also affordable and the environment is comfortable, so don’t let money, fear, or lack of talent stand in the way of your pulpy dreams.

Jim Higgins is the man behind Meltdown U. An art instructor at Cal Arts and Otis and former editor for DC Comics, Higgins is a passionate comics veteran and nurturer for creative talent. We picked his brain about all things Meltdown U, so read on for his words of wisdom.

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ENTERTAINMENT Union Weekly—18 March 2013

YouTube, Louie has another run-in with a heckler, which he promptly deals with as he displays his no bullshit attitude.

As a key accomplishment of his standup, Louie is able to fill your mind with the most terribly grotesque things possible.

You find yourself just laughing at the morally reprehensible terribleness of it.

And fans will love to hear what even he himself describes as his most rock bottom jokes. His taboo jokes about kids prove to be most unexpectedly satisfying, as he is the only comedian that will touch the subject. Anyone looking for ideas on how to be an asshole should look to him. Also,

Wes Young Assistant Editor

Cynically harsh

Roque Renteria Union Staffer

Louie’s newest stand-up special has come out on Netflix finally. This will surely please the massive fan base he’s developed from other specials and his FX series.

Anyone familiar with the cynically harsh style that has made him famous will see that he remains true to his reputation.

He immediately starts off by deprecating the audience in a straightforward and blunt style that leaves you gasping for air rather than feeling any ill will. He dishes out equal amounts of offense and humility to everyone in the audience. Religion and political beliefs especially get taken apart.

Among the already famous incidents on

Divine comedy

inflections and strategically placed pauses that build tension before each punchline.

For example, in his opening monologue, Martin announces, “Hey, I don’t want to sound like a big shot but…[pause], I get my drinks…half off. That means for every one you get...[pause], I get two.”

If you examine Martin’s delivery closely, you find that it has been adopted by most popular comedians working today. This man changed the language of comedy.

This guy was the Wittgenstein of stand-up.

And he is part of the reason why I became a philosophy major.

There are so many other great bits I wish I could describe in greater detail, but unfortunately I do not have enough space to do so. All I can say is that this album is the epitome of comedic genius.

Steve Martin blended philosophy, religion, banjo playing, non sequiturs, psychology, and everything else under the sun in order to give us something special. It’s hard to imagine where stand-up would be without Steve Martin, but luckily we don’t have to.

So find yourself a copy of this album or watch the live performance and prepare to laugh your ass off.

His hate spans from shitty little kids at the airport to over-the-hill drunkards to pesky foreign women. Yet, the whole of his comedy doesn’t solely revolve around hating things and people (which is fucking hilarious); he also cracks fun at cancer walks and uppity clothing stores with limited merchandise.

All of this he does with a very subtle style of delivery that actually relies on the strength of the jokes rather than resorting to an act. That is my favorite aspect of Buress. He’s actually funny. No arm flailing, no screaming, no impersonations.

He’s genuinely hilarious, and his material can stand on its own merit, which is only bolstered by his personality and delivery.

He is the only person that could make an abortion joke that could actually make me laugh. So go do yourself a favor and watch Hannibal Buress: Animal Furnace.

STEVE MARTIN

influenced by the philosophy classes he took here. This is evident in his special.

He tells his audience that he is wellversed in the Ancient Greeks; he says he studied “Soh-kreyts” and “Plah-toh.”

He also discusses the difference between being a geology major and philosophy major: “If you’re studying geology, which is all facts, as soon as you get out of school you forget it all, but philosophy you remember just enough to screw you up for the rest of your life.” Something that I find to be undeniable.

And here’s a crazy fact I love: Steve Martin is a certified genius (he has an IQ of 142). He is a member of Mensa. Which doesn’t surprise me after hearing this line: “It’s so hard to believe in anything anymore. I mean, it’s like, religion, you really can’t take it seriously, because it seems so mythological, it seems so arbitrary…but on the other hand, science is just pure empiricism, and by virtue of its method, it excludes metaphysics.” I honestly almost used a refined version of that line as a thesis for a philosophy paper.

Martin knows how to time or perfectly mistime his delivery. There are subtle

John Villanueva Music Editor

You know, people often come up to me and ask, “Roque, how can you be so fuckin’ funny?” Aside from innate comedic prowess, I have studied and learned from the best comedians. I’ve heard so many stand-up specials spread out over a series of time that it’s hard to pick my favorite one. But if I had to pinpoint my first exposure to divine comedy, then I would have to credit Steve Martin’s 1978 masterwork, A Wild And Crazy Guy, as my comedic foundation.

A Wild And Crazy Guy is one of the few albums in my stand-up comedy collection that is timeless. You could listen to this album right now and it would receive laughter from modern audiences. The use of language and comedic timing marks the inception of what I like to consider “alternative stand-up comedy.” And unlike my Lenny Bruce albums, which have become a little dated, A Wild And Crazy Guy has aged well like a fine wine and is accessible to a wide range of generations.

This stand-up special should resonate with nearly every student on this campus.

Former CSULB alumnus (I bet you didn’t know that) Steve Martin was heavily

Keeps it real

a situation that just occurred (the trouble he had with entering the building to film his special) and spin it on its head to get laughs. This is only one display of Buress’ quick wit, which he continues throughout the special. Delivered in his usual confident slur, Buress talks about things he hates and finds wrong with the world. Think of him as a black Louis C.K. that hasn’t yet completely lost hope.

One of the best bits is when he starts talking about how he received a ticket from the Montreal police for jaywalking. Buress is unafraid to come off as a bit of an asshole, making jabs at the cops for things like their native language, and even asking one of the cops how much he makes, just as a way to slight the cop due to his overreaction. His mocking impersonation of the cop is the best: “I’m a dumb guy, my world view is limited.” Buress is unafraid to totally rip apart people he feels have wronged him.

HANNIBAL

Hannibal Buress is without a doubt one of today’s funniest comedians. Bar none. No exceptions. He’s so funny that my description is relegated to common bullshit phrases that people overuse. He’s so funny that one of his monologues about getting robbed not only reduced me to tears but also rendered me mute for an hour, the hilarity having fried my brain.

He is smart and has a style all his own, breaking away from the mold of the obligatory black comedian. His subject matter is not so obscure as to cause a disconnect, but his spin is smart enough to rise above usual bullshit observational comedy. That is why his special Hannibal Buress: Animal Furnace has quickly become one of my favorite stand-up specials ever. I don’t think I’ve had as many gutbusting moments with a special as I did with this one.

Out of the gate, Hannibal is able to take

LOUIS C.K.

STAND-UP MELTDOWN

Gushing reviews of our favorite stand-up comics

as race is one of his recurring themes, he was able to successfully make me ashamed to be white.

The thing that makes Louie loveable after all is this is his pathetic nature.

He makes believe that when I’m his age I’ll be perverted and obsessed with masturbating, too. What’s most admirable is his philosophical way of criticizing society’s tech and sex obsessions. He has quite the way of pointing out how shitty life is. Louie’s intelligence as a comedian really leaves you thinking.

Union Weekly—18 March 2013

MUSIC

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Company Spotlight: Q Drums Los Angeles native Jeremy Berman talks drums John Villanueva Music Editor As a musician, instrument choice plays a crucial part in defining an individual’s sound. As a drummer, I like to find the perfect sound that suits my needs in any particular musical situation. Having a great sound not only helps within the musical context, but spawns creativity and helps develop musical ideas that can’t be concocted with any other sound. Jeremy Berman, the owner and builder of Q Drums, understands that point completely. Foregoing cheap gimmicks, Berman crafts pieces that not only look great, but sound fantastic as well. I sat down with him at his shop in San Pedro to discuss the company’s history, his methods, and the future of his brand.

Union Weekly: Can you tell us how you got started? I know you started off with Orange County Drums and Percussion.

How was the transition from working with that company to having your own startup and what were you trying to accomplish with this move?

Jeremy Berman: It’s been a very difficult transition. When I started working with Orange County, they were already established as the premier custom drum maker in California. I really didn’t want to start my own drum company, I wanted to continue building drums for them; but unfortunately their custom drum building side dwindled due to the economy and it didn’t afford me enough time to make drums. So while I was making drums for a friend of mine, he keep bugging me to start my own company and he happened to become my first endorser. I started to do things on my own, and I talked to the guys at Orange County and they were okay with it. My whole idea of drums is a lot different than what it was when I was working for Orange County, so I wanted to bring in my ideas and start my own brand. It’s been difficult, especially getting your name out there, because unless you have huge artists playing your drums no one really notices your company. And I’ve been in the industry long enough to know plenty of drummers that are in enormous bands and doing really well for themselves, but those guys are already endorsed. So that has been a really difficult and very humbling task but we’re getting there. So far things have been looking up. We have Ilan Rubin on board,

and he’s become part owner, and with his success comes success for the company, so that definitely has helped out a lot.

UW: Can you explain your relationship with Ilan Rubin? Ilan Rubin has reached quite a level of fame playing with Nine Inch Nails, and he just recorded with Paramore.

JB: Not only has he recorded with Paramore, but he has also been touring with them for the last couple of months. Anyway, Ilan used to be an endorser for OCDP, and I met him when he was about eleven years old, when he had a drum kit built by us. From then, I’ve become friends with him and all of his family, because his family is all a part of what makes him and what he is. I’ve built almost all of his drum kits myself. In 2008, while I was working with Nine Inch Nails, Ilan was playing drums with Lost Prophets, and Nine Inch Nails had gone through a slew of drummers, about four at this point, and we needed someone who was on top of their shit. At the time it was Josh Freese, but he decided to leave to do his own thing, and Trent Reznor was having a difficult time trying to find somebody because it’s not an easy gig. I suggested Ilan, because I had introduced them at Reading and Leeds, the festival in the UK. I sent Ilan a couple of the tracks, and he sent video back the same day of him playing over the tracks, which Trent saw. Then, Ilan came out the next day for an audition and got the gig. After that Nine Inch Nails thing, he’s just been sought after, and from that came the Paramore stuff. All of the press that he has and the fact that he uses our drums has really helped promote the company.

UW: When you’re making your drums, what do you try to model them after? I remember reading your bio where you stated that you were really inspired by the vintage Gretsch and Ludwig kits; is that your main source of inspiration? How are your drums different than all the other boutique drums out there?

JB: For me, it’s always been the fact that vintage drums win the battle in the studio and even live because they are so warm and project so well. It’s weird, because even back then, they didn’t really give a shit about the craftsmanship so much as most drum makers do now, but for some reason,

whatever it was that they did to those old drums makes them sound phenomenal.

So I try to mimic it with some sort of craftsmanship involved. Cutting the edges the way they used to cut edges is a big thing, how I finish the insides, and obviously the aesthetics are an important part of the drums. I’ve always loved the look of vintage drums, even when I worked at OCPD. I played vintage Ludwig’s because I thought they looked cooler and were more fun to play, and I try to mimic that with Q Drums.

As far as what sets me apart from other companies, I do a few things that I don’t think any other drum company does. I hand make my own metal snare drums and metal drum kits, and I know other companies do that, but the way I do it is different, especially in the drum kits. I use galvanized steel, copper and brass. It’s really thin gauge material, and because of that the note is so much deeper and bigger than your standard wood drum kit. The problem with metal is that it is pretty brassy sounding; if you have a metal edge it sounds tinny and ring-y, and the way I have combated that is by putting wood reinforcement hoops in them. What that does is make them a little bit more subtle in attack, warms it up, and you can still get that big deep sound with a little bit of a metallic overtone. So far, people have been really enjoying the metal drums, and they’re a blast to make.

UW: I’ve noticed with a couple custom drum companies, it’s a lot of crazy finishes and gimmicks, and the drums themselves sound like trash. How do you feel about the whole style over substance issue?

JB: Yeah, I’ve heard that before. The problem with a lot of custom drum companies is that they go after the cosmetics of the drum, rather than what the drum is supposed to be, which is something that sounds good.

It’s a tool to make music, not a tool to make you look cool.

UW: How did you come up with the name Q Drums?

JB: I went through about twenty-five names I wanted to use. I went through my list and picked out the top three. One of them was “Quality”, but the more I thought of the name the more I thought about the fact that a lot of the import drum companies

have names like Perfect Drum Company, and I was like, “fuck, that sounds really bad and really cheesy.” I thought if I just drop everything and just keep the Q, I know what it means to me, and that’s all that matters.

UW: Is there anything, sound wise, that you prefer? What is your favorite material?

What kind of bearing edges do you use?

JB: Well, my favorite bearing edge (I put on all of my drum) is 45 inner with a radius outer. It’s the percentage of inner cut vs. outer cut that makes it kind of my own thing.

My favorite wood kits now are mahogany with maple reinforcement rings; I think they sound amazing. A lot of low end, yet still really warm, and the tone decays fast enough where you don’t have to EQ a lot or put a lot of muffling. As far as snare drums, I love the heavy brass and copper sound. I’ve always been a huge metal snare drum fan, and the metal snares I’ve made have been my favorite.

UW: You said mahogany is your favorite, which is kind of new to me, because the usual is maple or birch. How did you decide upon mahogany?

JB: Well, mahogany is kind of an old material for drums. A lot of companies were using it back in the ‘20s and ‘30s because it was abundant. These shells are a bit different because they are mahogany with a poplar middle, which is really soft. Personally, I like maple a lot, and I play maple kits a lot.

Tonally, they resonate and sustain a little longer than I like, so I always had to put tape or moon gels on no matter what, just due to the nature of the material. I have really never been a fan of birch, they just sound too EQ’d. So you have maple on one end of the spectrum, and birch on the complete opposite side of the spectrum. The thing that I like about the mahogany is that you get the best of both worlds. It lets me utilize the kit in all types of situations and music types, so mahogany has sort of become my go to.

UW: You’re having a lot of success and building a reputation. Where do you see yourself in five to ten years and what do you want to accomplish?

JB: We want to take over the drum world.

That’s really all there is to it.

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LITERATURE Union Weekly—18 March 2013

Closer Than You Think

Photos by Wes Verner Literature Editor

Wes Young Assistant Editor One of the great paradoxes of growing up is the development of a thirst for knowledge of the outside world, but one which goes unfulfilled due to our ever dwindling amount of free time. After studying and working is done, we have scarce time to fit everything else in. When this is combined with the effects of rapidly expanding technology in our daily lives making things available at our fingertips, we see instantaneous gratification becoming more valued. Knowledge is something that we only have time for if it’s available on our phones in between classes. Why learn about anything completely when you can read a “top 10 list of things you didn’t know about random crap”? It’s no longer knowledge that is valued by society, but having the ability to find answers on Google or cha-cha. With instant queues pushing us to watch dozens of movies and shows a month, who really has time for the written word? What’s there to value

in ancient relics like libraries besides their computers? I went on an exploration of our campus library to find what about them, if anything, is still relevant.

I immediately make my way to the maze of books on one of the upper floors.

One thing I love about libraries is you don’t have to have any direction in looking. If you wander down the aisles long enough you’ll come across what you need instead of what you want. In fact it’s better if you don’t know the Dewey decimal system, which we all know no one does. You’re presented with the chance for adventure and knowledge that can’t be simply shown to you as it is on the Internet. To quote the greatest movie of the 90’s, The Pagemaster: “I was nearly torn to shreds by a crazy doctor, I was made a slave to a bunch of mangy pirates, and eaten. Got that? Eaten!

By a fire-breathing dragon!”

“Yet you stand before me.”

At this point I reflect on how funny it is how much effort was put into us as children to make us use the library. Matilda and so many other movie heroines made the library seem like some place of refuge from the ignorance of Man. Our favorite celebrities even took the time to appear on posters to advocate for reading. We were encouraged to read, play, imagine, and listen.

As I walk down the aisles of forgotten books I can’t help but feel like their efforts were in vain. I begin to feel completely alone in the graveyard of words until I turn down an aisle and jump back at what looks like a motionless corpse. But really it’s just someone catching up on sleep. Just as discouraging, pick any book at random and open it up and you’ll probably see a most recent check out date from the ‘80s or ‘90s at best.

With every aisle I step into, the cacophony of colors calls out to me. My eyes glaze over at most of the technical manuals and government weather statistical analysis handbooks, as they would for most people.

My eyes seek out the books that are obviously from another century. The older and uglier, the better, even if they eject plumes of dust that make me sneeze. These ones offer a primary source of history that I am able to hold in your hands, the very book other generations held in their hands.

That’s a feeling you can’t achieve from any document online. Being able to pick the brain of someone from another time offers a truth not distortable.

I’m eager to see even more of what lies in the library. I begin moving down the aisles so quickly that the colors of the covers whirl by me like a dizzying, psychedelic rainbow. I see things that would appeal to everyone. They’ve got everyone covered from anarchists to alcoholics and sexaholics. They even have a section for every major offered at this school. The lines of NASA documents and Aerospace Engineering books particularly call my name.It’s the one place I could see myself coming back to long after I graduate from here.

Union Weekly—18 March 2013

One of the most peculiar sections is that little occult section on the second floor. Upon picking up a book and reading one of the satanic lines, my friend promptly dropped the book and ran out of the library. Few things can be as realistically frightening as something read in a book.

Somewhere in the back on the third floor, you can go down one aisle and let your fingers stroll across the entire works of Matisse, Picasso, and Van Gogh. On just the other side of that, the rhymes and rhythms crafted by history’s master poets will speak out to you. We’re privileged to have so many other great things at our library. It’s the equivalent of the Library of Alexandria, which served as the center of knowledge of the entire ancient world. Now, like many of the other books in the library, they are forgotten relics, only symbols for what our species once treasured.

The Children’s section is also one of the best places in the library, as it contains the majority of the books I’ve read in my life. The librarians prize this collection for having a marvelous display of books banned and challenged during times in our history.

People are more afraid of books than any

other media because of the concrete truth they can communicate to readers. As they tried to communicate in Network, “Television is not the truth! Television is a Goddamned amusement park! Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion tamers, and football players.”

Seeing these books here reminds me of their importance as a tool of freedom.

Hitler and every other dictator struggling to control the citizens always went straight for the books to crush people’s liberty. Now all they have to do is turn off our internet to shut us up. How easy it is for propaganda to manipulate us now. In some ways, books are the last defense against corruption.

What John Steinbeck wrote in a letter regarding books reminds me how great it is that we have all these books available to us. You can read a book and pass it along to someone else, creating an experience that cannot be replicated by Kindles. There really is no media substitutable to a book. As he said, “There is something untranslatable about a book. It is itself—one of the very few authentic magics our species has created.”

LITERATURE

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CULTURE

Union Weekly—18 March 2013

The hidden meaning behind your god-awful mass of facial hair Michael Wood Opinions Editor

Illustration by Rose Feduk Comics Editor

Muttonchops: Oh man, that’s pretty uhhhh….unique? I have to say, props. It takes some serious guts to try to bring this one back. I mean, the civil war general look generally isn’t a very popular one, but that doesn’t deter you! Anyway, looking like a mix between an Elvis caricature and Martin Van Buren tells me that when you decided to grow this sort of facial hair, you weren’t even thinking about style. I imagine the only thought in your mind was, “Screw looking good. I just want some totally extreme sideburns that will ensure everyone knows I’m unique.” And for the most part, that goal was well accomplished, except for when you’re in a crowd at a Dropkick Murphy’s show with a bunch of white guys with shirts that say “Kiss me, I’m Irish!” Then you’re just another history major, nostalgic for the days of slavery and the potato famine. But anyway, I won’t keep you any longer. You probably have to go somewhere, possibly to your Pogues cover band rehearsal or the 19th Century Presidential Scholars meeting.

Porn Mustache: Now this is just horrendous. This just shows that you’re clueless to how you look. You completely disregarded the subtle and classy John Waters mustache AND the somewhat ironically badass Magnum P.I. mustache to ride the middle ground which makes all the people who sees you think they’re in a dingy porn theater in ’70s New York.

I can hear the funk guitar whenever you’re within 1000 feet of me, which is, coincidentally, the distance of your several restraining orders (including the ones that keep you from living anywhere near an elementary school). Either way, the last time your mustache style was popular among people who weren’t huge hipsters was in the late ’70s, particularly if you were an MLB pitcher for some odd reason.

So please, just shave and leave that style where it belongs: next to disco, bad horror movies, and the Jimmy Carter presidency.

Hipster Beard: Ahh, there’s nothing like walking down 4th Street and counting the number of people rocking these. Between this beard and your extensive collection of flannel shirts, you probably think you look like an urban lumberjack, but dude, lumberjacks don’t typically have art school degrees and work in coffee shops.

Even if they did work in the city, they probably wouldn’t concern themselves with a soy caramel latte with two pumps of vanilla syrup. But either way, ladies seem to fawn over this sort of beard, so props on that. Then again, most people try to choose their personal style without relying on the opinions of 20-year-old women. But you’re smarter than that; you’re going to remain current and keep up with the times. Just enjoy explaining your trendy beard to your kids when they come across pictures from your youth and start laughing at your beard. Time makes fools of us all.

Mountain Man Beard: Holy shit man, are you all right? Have you been left on an island after a terrible plane crash, left to fend for yourself? No, wait, that’s Castaway, never mind. Well there’s not much to say here. Besides the tired old jokes about your beard making an impromptu storage space or birds nest at least. Seriously, I’ve got a lot of respect for anyone who has the patience to grow a beard like that, no matter the reason. Or is just so profoundly lazy that they don’t bother to shave for several months. Either way, you, sir, have earned immunity from my snide comments.

Bathing Beauties

Babes of The Beach, are you as stoked on summer approaching as I am? We all know that the prettiest neon bikini shades pop on freshly sun-kissed skin, but unfortunately that glow comes with a price. It is astonishing to think that even spending fifteen minutes in the sun walking to a pilates class has the ability to wreak havoc on your epidermis, let alone spending all day in the Pacific.

Skin cancer is now the most common form of cancer (yikes!), so long gone are the days spent getting golden outside by using baby oil like our moms did back in the 1970s.

In fact, even The Skin Cancer Foundation states that skipping the sun between midmorning and early afternoon is integral in keeping the chances of skin cancer low (somebody should tell that Coppertone Baby to cover up those cheeks now, huh?).

A major buzzkill for sun lovers, I know, but that is why sunscreen should be part of your beauty regimen during the summer solstice, and also year-round to boot! Hit up your local Sephora to snag some SPF samples to try. Wearing at least an SPF 15 will help tremendously, and each beauty brand carries multiple variations of this skin staple, so there should not be any excuse. Whether you are bronze and toned like yours truly or have a porcelain surface, SPF it, ASAP, because skin cancer does not discriminate based on color.

When it comes to fun in the sun, it is always key to remember to reapply and to not overlook areas like hands and feet! Make certain to bat an eyelash at a beauty mark that you feel is looking rather questionable, because checking your body

for any new additions is also part of living a fabulously safe-skinned life.

There are other options in addition to sporting the ’screen that will help keep you safe, too. Cover that ’kini up with your Wildfox Couture t-shirt when taking a breather from splashing in the waves.

Shading that pretty moneymaker by donning a floppy hat not only shows how chic you are, but how sun-smart you are as well! Make packing sunscreen in your beauty bag a priority this summer (and everyday for that matter!), even if you are running late for your beach date with that super cute boyfriend of yours down in Huntington Beach.

How you can avoid becoming an old leather bag this summer Rebecca Pincolini Contributor

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Rose Feduk Comics Editor

My Cat From Hell Nathan Moore Union Staffer

D-9 Tyre Jones Assistant Editor

Hogfart$ Union Weekly—18 March 2013

COMICS

15

Volume 72 Issue 9

Monday, March 18, 2013

LBUNION.COM

DISCLAIMER: ¿Qué pasa, calabaza? I am not sure if that is a saying in los Estados Unidos.

But if it’s not, it means “Upside-down question mark what raisin, pumpkin?”

It’s a joke. My husband managed to transport my soul into a VHS. I have no idea how that happened, but it’s better, I guess. This page is satire and I do not represent ASI nor the CSULB campus, but, if you consider yourself to be of the funny “ha ha” persuasion, you can submit articles via email to grunion@lbunion.com.

Stephenie Meyer Apologizes to Kpat and Rstew

HEY GURR BY JAEGER Hey, it’s Jaeger, like the drink but not spelled the same. I’m a little sad that the Karate Kid’s Master Miyagi and his pubepile relationship we’ve built for the last couple weeks is

by Jaeger coming to a close.

It’s like I feel like I ?????? still have a life time and a half of experience that I can impart on you, but, you know, if I gave you all the information in the world; then we would be equals and there can’t be two lady masters. I mispoke, masters of ladies. fans wanting to have so much more, and many regarding the content of my articles being hella sexist and demeaning toward women, but whatever. I don’t care. I YOLO. You know what that means? I only live once, which means if I died, I would be dead. No take backs, no do-overs, no life. It’s my motto. You can’t make me live more than once. It’s just how I roll and if you’re not down with that, I got two words for you: Why? So this week, since you’ve made some big steps as a macdaddy and are pros at making all the ladies damp, we’ll switch to advanced.

This step takes a lot of commitment and if you don’t have the guts then you should not do this at all. It’s pivotal to the movement that you make it a priority to follow everything I say.

Okay.

Step 1: Remember how I told you to be a jerk and do all those things to alienate some ladies? It was all a ploy so there would be no girl on campus that would date you. You’re all alone, stranded on a deserted island with your favorite CD and some novelty dog tags that say, “Straight up Beast.” You look to your left, there’s nothing. You look to your right, nothing. Suddenly, this huge shadow blocks the sunlight that was originally hitting you and I didn’t tell you it was the daytime because I thought it was too important to the story to give away. You reach up and feel my boner. You’re now gay.

LOL. No homo, but I came up with that story to get rid of all the dudes that weren’t committed to the cause of getting the puss.

LOL. I got you again. I don’t actually know how to get chicks. If you were stupid enough to follow my advice or even read my articles than you are a stupid fool, and you deserve to be alone in a cloud of turd dust.

LOL. Dude. I got you again. Man. I am like the master prankster with the written word. I totally tricked all you chodes. getting all the ladies, you must look inside need in order to do that is get all the issues of Playboy, Men’s Fitness, and Flex Magazine around your nude body. Next, you have to sing the lyrics to that “September Ends” song. Works every time.

As a writer, I hold myself to a set of standards that I feel I haven’t lived up to. I, despite my millions of copies sold and my billions made at ruined the lives to

by Stephenie two people that I am Meyer eternally indebted to: Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart.

I ruined their lives. If I had not created the sultry art of romance, if I had interfered with their love by endowing them with my din of love, they would not have these problems.

You see, I, Stephanie Meyer am a genius.

That’s not me being arrogant. It is simply who I am. My mission in life is to be a weaver of beautiful romances. I am the modern day Aphrodite, a role bequeefed to me through the goddess’ very own shapely vagina.

Through Twilight I have introduced the world to the lovely truths of the pure sensuality of a vampire’s sparkling thigh against a drab girl’s unshaven calf, the stiff drip of a werewolf ’s orgasm, and the cool sting of an ice-cold penis. And what is more beautiful than that? Nothing. Those that condemn Twilight for being mere trash can never know what it feels like to know real, steamy, sweaty love.

To Kristen and Robert, my dearest dears, my star-children, my fuckable 20-somethings, you have done a service to the world. This is something that you must understand. I made you two fall in love because this was

something that had to happen. J.K. Rowling and Amy Tan had predicted it through all of their books. And like all great female authors, I, too, have mystical powers.

A few years ago, in my personal velvetsupernatural erotica, my pen possessed me to write of a steamy hook-up between Kristen and Robert. It panned out that the two made sweet love over a bear-skin rug, after looking sweetly into a reproduction my very presence that inspired Robert and Kristen to get it on betwix the sheets, as the young teenie boppers say in this age.

But I must reveal to you, readers, that there is another reason that I have ruined their lives. I remember a windy night on the beach when I was standing alone in nothing but my muumuu, I was swept off my feet by none other than the handsome and rugged Robert J. Pattinson. He lifted me up with his manly arms, butt-muscles clenched and arm-hair softly billowing in the wind and whispered in my ear: “I’m a dude, she’s a dude, he’s a dude, cause we’re all dudes.

HEY!” And with that I felt my lady-parts engorge with the juices of passion and my feet lift off the ground for he had thrown me. My face hit the hard sand, my gelatinous bosoms reverberating against the bottom of my chin. I was smitten, but our love was not to be, for I am a Goddess, and Goddesses cannot fall in love with humans. Like in my novel Pushius: Based on the Novel by Sapphire

by Sapphire. I am Sapphire. I am Mo’nique.

Inside

CARDINALS FORM POP SUPER-GROUP, iKRYST, TO COPE WITH SOURCES SAY UGLY BUMPKINS BUMP UGLIES ONCE AGAIN POST-POPE-SECLECTION LIFE

MILA KUNIS TAKES ON NEW ROLE AS TIRED GIRL STUNG BY BEE