inprint - The New School

INPRINT
• Democracy? What democracy? (Pg. 2)
• Annie Dillard is a great reader. (Pg. 5)
Fall 2006, Issue 4
Oct. 17 - Oct. 30 Serving Eugene Lang College and the New School Community
Copyright © 2006 Inprint
A skewer of vegetables on a grill in the Lang cafeteria. Matthew Mann
Fresh Food in the Cafeteria
An Exercise in Sustainability
By Rob Hartman
A crowd gathered in the cafeteria
late last Wednesday to eat
barbecued vegetables and grilled
spinach sandwiches, made by the
Sustainability Committee, Lang’s
first and only environmental
group.
While serving shish-kebabs of
eggplant and other vegetables
from the Union Square Green
Market and Food Liberation
Health Market, members informed
students and faculty of the
importance of the local farming
economy, and collected 98 signatures
on their petition to urge
The New School’s dining service,
Chartwells, to buy local foods.
“We are about mitigating the
negative environmental impacts
that we participate in and observe
on campus,” said James Subudhi,
the group’s interim president. The
committee works to implement
various greening projects, which
get the school to institutionalize
environmentally friendly practices.
The Sustainability Committee
formed in Fall of 2005 and soon
began pushing greening projects.
Last Spring, they surveyed recycling
facilities around campus
and created spreadsheets locating
where different kinds of receptacles
could be placed to maximize
efficiency, Subudhi said.
Meanwhile, the group asked
that The New School’s Facility
Department make signs for receptacles
on every building floor.
Facilities brought more recycling
bins to school offices. The group
hopes bins can be provided for
individual dorm rooms, as well,
said Subudhi.
Another recent event the committee
organized was a workshop
InsIde InprInt:
Fun in drag! (Pg. 6)
on how to compost common
waste, such as banana peels and
coffee grounds, to be recycled
into fertilizer and sold to farmers.
According to Subudhi, it is a
basic environmental concern to
understand the relationship between
the New School and its resources.
“New School has to get
electricity from somewhere, it has
to get water from somewhere. It
produces waste. That waste has to
go somewhere. These are all issues
that arise just from the day to
day maintenance of the university
that impact the environment,” he
said.
This semester, the committee is
focusing on how food is sold on
campus, said communications officer
Zeno Levy. The group plans
to highlight the negative impact
food production has on the environment
and how to improve it.
Supporting local farms is an
important part of sustaining
the environment, Subudhi said.
Large-scale industrial agriculture
creates over-processed and
under-nourishing food, and uses
large amounts of water and pollutant,
synthetic fertilizers and
pesticides, an informational print
out at the event read.
Independent and family farms
use production methods, such as
free range cattle grazing, that
make healthier food and generate
less waste and pollutants, the
print out reads. It also takes farmers
less time and energy on local
farms to transport products to
markets, reducing carbon dioxide
emissions, Subudhi said.
“We have a farmer’s market,
which is probably the best in
all of New York City, an orange
throw away from where we go to
class,” Subudhi said.
New York coyotes. (Pg. 8)
deans, new provost Look to the Future
By Peter Holslin
When Ben Lee, The
New School’s recently appointed
provost, and the
deans of each New School
division, met last summer
to take inventory of the
university’s academic offerings,
they made some
startling discoveries. For
instance: the university offers
more than 100 courses
under the heading of “urban
studies.”
“It turns out we have a
shocking amount of urban
studies going on here,”
Michael Schober, Dean
of The New School for
Social Research, later told
Inprint. But, he added, Provost Ben Lee Alexander Porter
there is a catch: most of
the courses are only available to
students in their respective divisions.
“It’s kind of weird that students
at one school don’t really
get to benefit from all of the rest
of it,” Schober said.
In many ways, the urban studies
situation encapsulates The New
School’s biggest challenge—to
function as one integrated whole
rather than eight semi-autonomous
divisions, and to prevent
resources that could be beneficial
for the entire community from
falling by the wayside because
of outdated, conflicting and redundant
bureaucratic structures.
Administrators insist that plans
are underway to rework the university’s
budget and develop new
governance strategies, which will
increase cooperation between
divisions and ultimately lead to
the development of true university-wide
programs. At the same
time, they acknowledge that unforeseen
conflicts may arise in the
coming months, as the first phase
of this ambitious and complicated
process unfolds.
One of the key agents of change
is likely to be the new provost,
or chief academic officer. New
School President Bob Kerrey
appointed Lee to the position on
July 1st, replacing Arjun Appadurai,
who resigned abruptly last
spring and is now one of Kerrey’s
advisors.
The provost office is a relatively
new and underdeveloped position
at the New School. Since President
Jonathan Fanton, who served
from 1982 to 1999, created the
post late in his term, no provosts
have yet finished their appointed
terms, Lee said.
According to Lee, when Appadurai
became provost in 2002,
he expected to find a developed
office similar to those of universities
like the University of Chicago,
where he served as a fulltime
professor before coming to
the New School. Instead, he discovered
he had to build the office
himself.
Appadurai was at a disadvantage
because the university is “budgetdriven,”
Lee said. This year’s
Campus Master Plan, which maps
out future construction plans, reports
that the university relies on
tuition for 75% of its operation.
Appadurai had to balance a growing
student population, a relatively
measly endowment that grew
CONTINUeD ON PAGe 5
Questionable Police Tactics?
By Leijia Hanrahan
On Saturday, October 7th, the
weekend was off to a cloudy beginning
as the Minutemen, a volunteer
group that rounds up illegal
immigrants at U.S. borders, and
several sympathetic and affiliated
citizen’s groups, gathered at the
Mexican consulate in midtown. A
group of counter-protesters were
there to greet them.
The scene was almost comical
from across the street: two
groups of demonstrators, both
in separate “protest pens” (areas
sectioned off by small removable
barricades), facing each other on
the sidewalk, one on either side
of the consulate’s main door, with
Mets have more fun. (Pg. 3)
The First Phase of a Complex Plan
First-Person Report
police standing around in the
blocked-off street. Signs and flags
waved, insults were shouted back
and forth. The counter-protestors
easily outnumbered the Minutemen
at least two to one. Soon,
things got ugly.
Police dragged one man out of
the counter-protest pen and into
the street, where they searched
and arrested him—for spitting on
the ground, a health code violation.
Sergeant Mirabal of the 17th
precinct pointed mace and a taser
gun point-blank at those who
calmly approached the scene to
get a phone number for the arrestee’s
lawyer.
Shortly after the Minutemen
recited the pledge of allegiance
65 West 11th Street, Rm 350, New York, NY 10011
Prefix First Mid Last
Ad dress_1 , Add ress_2
City, State Z ip
Country
and left, kindly escorted by the
NYPD, their counter-protestors
stayed on the sidewalk, pondering
the best way to get to where the
spitting arrestee was being held.
Mirabal ordered them to disperse.
One man began to respond, “this
is a public sidewa--” when the
Sergeant shouted, “Come here,
you motherfucker!” and chased
after him, across the intersection
and down the block. Counter-protestors
followed. A few minutes
later, five more people had been
arrested - including the author
of this article, who spent the following
36 hours in three different
jails.
It wasn’t until the early hours
of Monday morning that everyone
was finally released, facing
charges like “inciting a riot.” Our
court date is November 13th.

2 editorials
INPRINT
eugene Lang College,
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Table of Contents
page 3:
• Mets > Yankees
• Kim Jong-il’s nukes
• Jesus freaks abound
• Politeness, explained
page 4:
• Strategic planning
• Matt Groening speaks
• What’s the Haps?
page 5:
• Cover Stories
• Around the Courtyard
• Cheap Russian Mp3s
• Annie Dillard
• Profile: Gerney Ackman
page 6:
• Daily Show: the taping
• Rubulad mania
• Interview with Mew
page 7:
• Reviews
page 8:
• Photo essay:
Governor’s Island
• Flava Flav’s beauties
• Steven Segal’s Asian
experience
except for editorials, opinions expressed
herein are those of individual
writers and not of Inprint. Please
send any letters and submissions to
inprint@newschool.edu. Inprint does
not publish unsigned letters. Letters
may be edited for length and clarity.
Inprint is not responsible for unpublished
letters or submissions.
neXt sUBMIssIOn
deAdLIne:
OCTOBER 23
Re: At Lang Activists Wants,
By Jen Kolic, Oct. 3rd
Three weeks ago, Congress
passed President George W.
Bush’s Military Commissions
Act of 2006, making a failed antiterror
strategy law and degrading
the American justice system at
the same time.
The bill defines a terrorist using
the mushy legal term “illegal
enemy combatant,” and guts the
Geneva Conventions. It suspends
habeas corpus, legitimizes coerced
evidence and hearsay and
denies defendants access to this
evidence in court. It also limits
the courts’ ability to challenge
these drastic changes.
A New York Times editorial put
it well: the bill would essentially
grant President Bush “the power
to jail pretty much anyone he
wants, for long as he wants, without
charging them.”
It is hard to fathom how a bill like
this was ever proposed, let alone
Let me speak of the anti-war
movement and its impotence.
Any thinker worth half his snuff
can see that the liberal Left and
anti-war protestors represent
only the “other half of the same
coin,” as Democratic Senators,
punk rockers, documentarians,
students and other “liberals” continually
respond to the conservative
capitalist war machine using
its same rhetorical methods.
What, then, does the anti-war
movement represent, except a
polarized country?
We do not ground our efforts
against the war in a philosophy
of altruism and non-violence.
Rather, we discuss the pretenses
for the war and the troop levels
(as though, had Saddam Hussein
possessed weapons of mass
destruction, and had we won the
war easily, then war itself is an
excusable undertaking). Talk
like, “we need more troops,” or
“we need less troops,” amounts
to little more than pleasurable
dinner conversation. These criticisms
appease the liberal’s conscience
(“I marched today, I did
my duty.”) as he or she continues
to enjoy the variety and luxury of
American life. Meanwhile nothing
is done to correct the grave
errors fundamental to our system
(namely, the dehumanizing effect
of our economy and the emptiness
caused by secularization,
the exploitation of the developing
world).
Constitution? What Constitution?
Sacrificing the American Justice System
for the Mid-Term Elections
adopted. In a recent multi-agency
report, the US intelligence community
concluded that secret prisons,
rendition programs, extrajudicial
detentions in Guantanamo
Bay and the use of “enhanced interrogation
tactics,” including using
detainees as paint-ball targets
and forcing them into humiliating
sexual positions, had done more
to embolden the international terrorist
movement than suppress it.
evidently, the Bush Administration
would rather ignore the
advice of its own experts than
admit its catastrophic strategic
errors. This bill would seem to
make these ineffective, legally
questionable and even unconstitutional
methods perfectly legal
and legitimate.
Why didn’t the Senate filibuster
this monstrous bill? Whatever
happened to the Constitution?
Did every politician in Congress
Letters to the editor
“Did the President do a good
job bringing our allies into the
war?” This line of questioning
serves to legitimize the president’s
warmongering.
Our questions only concern the
use of our giant military, not its
existence. No one asks what right
a country has to arm hundreds
of thousands of soldiers with sophisticated
equipment designed
to obliterate other human beings?
Is the existence of such a military
not proof of our intentions to use
it? Can death and destruction, in
any context, be moral?
For me, and for many people
disillusioned with our society,
terrorist attacks against the U.S.
ought to have caused a public
discussion, bringing up questions
like, “Why would anyone
want to perpetuate such violence
against the American people?”
The country’s violent reaction
and the Left’s picayune criticisms
of the war should disgust
anyone interested in peace and
happiness. The only proper thing
to do is to either ignore terrorism
all together, or politely invite
Osama bin Laden to discuss his
issues with the west. What could
disarm the terrorist threat as fully
as forgiveness?
If we are to build a worthwhile
movement against the war, it
cannot be based on exploitative
principles. Instead, we have to
seriously examine the causes of
terrorism and what an appropri-
ate reaction.
- Allen strouse, Junior,
Lang
Re: Parsons? Don’t Read
This, By Justin Lane-Briggs,
Oct. 3rd
I found the self-righteous Lang
vs. Parsons polemics published
in the past few weeks to be pretty
funny, and a convenient tool to
wipe the extra cream cheese off
my Murray‘s bagel. The student
newspaper, however, isn’t the
forum for this kind of blatantly
controversial ego-bashing—isn’t
that what blogs and the secondfloor
Lang women’s bathroom
stalls are for?
If anything, my criticism isn’t
aimed at all ya’ll haters, but at
the editors who chose to include
those letters in Inprint. There’s
a difference between legitimate
opinions and baseless hate-driven
bullshit.
Which brings me to my next
point: the self-deprecating hipster
humor constantly making its way
into this paper in some form or
other is, like, so 2005. Sorry, the
tight pants/clove-smoking jokes
just aren’t funny anymore. either
find some new material or—and
here’s a novel idea—instead of
trying to cover our bases by making
fun of ourselves before the
Princeton Review does, we could
try being a little more positive
about the fact that we’re not getting
groped at some frat party or
getting ready for “the big game.”
Yeah, being cynical earns you
street cred, but let’s face it—we
came to New School for a reason,
and it’s not because anyone
forced us, and it’s only partially
just happen to forget that, in the
United States, criminals are innocent
until proven guilty?
Of course, the Democrats’ resistance
to the bill before it was
passed just made them look
worse, thanks to silly but effective
administration catch-phrases
like “stay the course” and “Defeatocrats.”
The bill passed just in
time for the mid-term elections—
a handy tool that Republicans
can use to give Americans the
impression that they are dedicated
to fighting the terrorist threat.
In fact, they have only made the
fight more difficult.
The legitimacy of the Geneva
Conventions, and more importantly
of our own once-respected
judicial system, should not be
sacrificed for the sake of a midterm
election. Yet that’s exactly
what seems to have happened.
A Call for Change Sick of it All
because we didn’t get into NYU.
Just a thought.
- Jess sanchez, Junior,
Lang, Literature
I am not angry about the letter
printed last issue that accused
Lang students of being NYU
rejects. I’m disappointed. Well,
sure, maybe I am little angry.
If the writer made reference to a
small “Madison Ave. crew,” how
could he possibly be so hypocritical
as to claim that all Lang
students are intellectual masturbators?
Or that we all aim for the
esoteric?
And the NYU comment? Calling
us hipsters? Today, I’ll be the
pot and he can be the kettle.
In all fairness, I do tease my Parsons
friends about class on Friday
and their nearly insurmountable
workload, but I’d never be so
presumptuous as to judge their
intellect because of the college
they chose to attend. This writer
doesn’t seem to have a problem
with that. I mean, why waste his
time when he can make sweeping
generalizatioins? Why not make
the rift a little bit bigger while
licking his wounds?
I don’t love Lang. I don’t love
Parsons, or Mannes, or the Jazz
School—I love the New School.
So, I think I speak for all those
who were offended by this writer’s
letter when I say this: Piss
off, yourself.
- Hillary “Billy” Mosner, Lang,
Freshman, Undecided

What to Do With Kim’s Nuke?
By Linh Tran
Last week, the North Koreans
tested what looked by all accounts
to be a nuclear weapon.
I always suspected that Kim
Jong Il was crazy. (I mean, come
on, the man wears the same outfit
every time he’s in front of a camera—and
what’s with that pompadour?)
But, until that Sunday
night, I had never considered him
a threat. Truth be told, I had never
really considered anything about
North Korea.
This man may well have the
power to vaporize us all. But no
one has anything even close to an
effective plan to stop him. How
did things come to this?
Our leaders, evidently, have
been just as inattentive as I have:
dismissing Kim Jong-il as a
harmless paper tiger. “The world
has consistently underestimated
North Korea’s ‘Dear Leader,’”
one TIME magazine article noted.
“Of his potential to cause a bloody
war on the peninsula there is little
doubt. According to U.S. intelligence,
Kim may have at least
eight nuclear devices by now.”
Uh oh. Wait, when did this piece
run? In June of 2004—What?!
The more I read about North Korea,
the more appalled I am at the
way the international community
has refused to deal with the country—on
any level. I’m not just
referring to the resistance to military
intervention when we discovered
how their weapons program
had developed. I’m talking about
the famine that struck the country
in the 1990s, a famine so severe
that nearly two million people
Opinions
The Mets Are Better. They Have More Fun, Too.
By Josh Kurp
Nearly two hours after the New
York Mets clinched the NL east
crown, I was still at Shea Stadium
drenched in champagne,
beer and water. The Mets were
just as soaked with bubbly when
they came back out onto the field,
much to the delight of the 2,000
fans still in the stands. Squeezed
into the front row next to the dugout,
I shook hands with Jose Reyes
and David Wright, drank Mike
Pelfrey’s beer and got sprayed by
Paul Lo Duca with the hose they
use to water the field.
Would fans of the Mets’ crosstown
rival, the New York Yankees,
have celebrated like this?
Ha! When A Rod breaks out of a
slump, they’re still ready to kill
the guy. But at Shea it’s another
story. When Mets’ shortstop Jose
Reyes dropped a ball an inning
after hitting an inside the park
home run, the fans actually stood
up and cheered the guy.
I’ll admit that the Yankees have
owned this town for well over a
decade, and rightly so. But let’s
face it: New Yorkers are sick of
the whole overpaid, overrated,
over-covered (by the media) act.
They want something new, and
that’s where the Mets come in. I
mean, would you rather choose
the sulky 30-year-old A Rod or
the hunky 23-year-old David
Wright? I think you’ll make the
Wright choice.
Bad puns aside, the Mets have
Jeremy Schlangen
died. When Kim Jong-il, in a
truly shocking move, appealed to
the international community for
relief, nothing happened.
Our own response is particularly
baffling. After all, the U.S.
was gung-ho about invading Iraq,
despite a heap of very flimsy intelligence.
At the same time we
turned a blind eye to North Korea,
and now they’re testing nukes.
In a press conference on Wednesday,
President Bush rejected the
possibility of holding talks with
North Korea, and instead stood
by his earlier statements saying,
“we’re not going to deal with
them as a nuclear weapons state.”
Great, let’s just put our heads in
the sand.
Unfortunately, the other choice
(invading a country that is known
to have nuclear weapons) looks
even less palatable, since it would
basically amount to inviting Kim
Jong-il to launch everything he’s
got. So, thanks, Mr. Bush: you’ve
backed us into quite the corner.
a fun-loving chemistry that isn’t
ruined by personalities like Jason“I’m-going-to-rat-on-myteammates”
Giambi or Randy
“I-stink-but-won’t-change-mypitching-style”
Johnson. No. We
get guys like Julio Franco and
endy Chavez, who took time out
of their day to pose in a picture
with my 13-year-old cousin while
in Pittsburgh.
That’s why I was so happy when
the Tigers beat the Yankees in the
first round of the playoffs, and almost
as happy as when the Mets
obliterated the Dodgers a few
days later. When I pointed this out
to a friend who happens to be a
Yankee fan, he mumbled, “I don’t
want to get started on the whole
Yankees thing.”
The New York media whipped
up quite a rivalry near the end of
the season between Reyes and the
Yankees’ shortstop, Derek Jeter.
Both are arguably the best players
on their teams: Jeter, for his
clutch hitting and consistency,
and Reyes for, well, everything.
There’s nothing that can bring a
Met fan’s spirits up quicker than
watching Reyes run the bases.
As much as I want to hate Jeter,
I’ve got nothing against the guy.
The same sentiment extends to
Mo Rivera. But that’s about where
my um…Yankee-loving ends.
And I’m not the only one who
loves to hate the Yanks. If you do
a YouTube search for “New York
Yankees,” the most popular video
Jesus Freaks Are At it Again
By Jen Kolic
Someone’s gotta say it: Religion
is making people crazy.
And I’m not even talking about
that screwy guy who killed those
Amish girls—even though he
supposedly thought their prayers
could cure him of pedophilia.
I’m talking about the serious
cases. Like people who think
they’re raising an “Army of God.”
Apparently these people haven’t
heard of the Children’s Crusade,
a movement to teach children the
values of evangelism—which
makes sense. I’m going to take a
wild guess here that the only history
book they study is the Bible.
These kids are vessels to perpetuate
their parents’ irrational beliefs.
Don’t believe me? Go see Jesus
Camp, a documentary about
an evangelical camp for kids. It
opened about a week ago, and
will hit major cities sooner than
you can say “Kids on Fire.” (Oh
yeah, I should mention, that’s the
name of the camp.) Not only are
the people running this place totally
batshit insane, they’re teaching
children that extremist behavior
is normal.
Seriously. God supposedly
talks to these people. He tells
them what to do. Sounds a little
schizoid to me. Sounds like the
people who run these camps are
just afraid of making decisions
for themselves. They’ve got their
kids thrashing around and crying
all over the place, supposedly
filled with the spirit of God.
Who’s to say they’re not having
panic attacks or something? May-
is of David
Ortiz of the
Boston Red
Sox’s beating
the team
in the playoffs.
Why
is that such
a great video?
People
don’t want
to see a topdog
win. It’s
much more
entertaining
to see them
lose.
And then
there’s the
fan base.
The Yanks
have washed
up comedians
like Billy
Crystal.
We’ve got
Jon Stewart
and Jerry
S e i n f e l d .
If that’s not good enough, we’ll
stick John Gotti Jr. on you, who
just so happens to root for the
Amazin’s.
Yankee lovers, you can keep
your 26 world championships.
But for this season you’re the
team that went home early while
the Mets became the toast of the
town. Just like when Seinfeld’s
George Constanza, in an attempt
to leave the Yankees organization
Mets third baseman David Wright.
be their parents are just making
them crazy…
But it’s not just the parents and
camps. evangelical leaders are
going to extraordinary lengths
to get kids hooked on Jesus, and
to make sure they stay that way.
Last week, The New York Times
reported that evangelical leaders
across the country are struggling
to maintain their base—only
about 30% of baby boomers are
“Bible-believing Christians,” and
they fear that the number will
shrink to a fraction of that in the
coming years.
“We’re working as hard as we
know how to work,” said Ron
Luce, founder of the youth ministry
Teen Mania, “but we’re losing.”
evangelicals have gone so far as
to organize stadium-sized Christian
rock concerts under the name
“Acquire the Fire,” complete
with pyrotechnics and the ceremonial
destruction of what they
call “cultural garbage,” like mainstream
CDs, brand-name clothes
and smoking paraphernalia.
evangelical leaders don’t seem to
realize the irony of using things
like “Jesuspalooza” or “true love
waits” bracelets for their cause.
Their rebellion just uses the same
type of brand loyalty to get kids
to conform to another set of accepted
beliefs.
It’s not that evangelicals aren’t
trying hard enough. Maybe the
majority of American teens just
see evangelism for the load of
ridiculous, hypocritical and literally
unbelievable crap it really is.
Jeremy Schlangen
for the Mets, drove around the
Yankee Stadium parking lot with
a World Series trophy connected
to his bumper, you’ll soon be taking
the 7 train to the game and
yelling, “Attention, Steinbrenner
and front-office morons! Your
triumphs mean nothing. You all
stink. You can sit on it, and rotate!
This is George Costanza. I fear no
reprisal.”
Pardon Moi?
Today’s Polite
World explained
3
By Amber Sutherland
What is
proper umbrellaetiquette?
Just don’t
use one. I
am against umbrellas in theory
and in practice; they take up too
much personal space and they
don’t keep you especially dry.
The umbrella was not even originally
intended for use in the rain.
Rather, it originated as a protector
from the sun. The word “umbrella”
is from the Latin “umbra,”
meaning “shade.” If you would
like to use one for this purpose,
just be polite and call it a parasol.
Umbrellas also seem to evoke
mankind’s primal desire for marking
territory. When armed with an
umbrella, people forget that everyone
has an equal share of the
sidewalk. They rigidly grasp the
savage weapon and graze anyone
who may come into their peripheral
path.
Traditionally, a man is supposed
to raise his umbrella above the
path of oncoming pedestrians, but
this courtesy is seldom extended.
It is also improper to use an umbrella
with exposed metal tips, as
the inevitable grazing can cause
damage.
So, unless you’re a super-villain,
try a nice trench coat and
a wide brimmed hat. You’ll not
only enjoy better shelter from the
storm, but you’ll look like a filmnoir
set piece.
What do I do with a barfly who
won’t leave me alone?
Navigating a bar is difficult.
Martinis are filled to the brim, you
have to make eye contact with
anyone very important and blow
kisses to people you should know.
To help out, delegate to your undesirable
admirer the mechanical
tasks, like carrying drinks and
waiting in line for the lavatory.
Think of the irritating barfly as
your own personal waiter.
It won’t take long for you to
get used to sneering, “fetch me a
cigarette, rummy.”
Otherwise, stick to bars with
policies about this sort of thing.
The Milk and Honey on eldridge
Street requires that anyone wanting
to speak with a stranger must
first request an introduction from
the bartender. If the $20 cocktails
seem a bit unreasonable, or you
need your dive bar cred, bartenders
at almost any bar will surely
help deflect any undesirable advances.
When I’m dJing or playing in a
bar, should I tip on complimentary
drinks?
Average gratuity in bars and
clubs is $1 per drink. If you take
up two service periods (i.e. more
than about 30 minutes for one
drink), tip double. Likewise, tip
double on complimentary drinks.
The average price of a cocktail in
Manhattan is $10. If you come
out paying just $2 to the bartender,
rather than five times that to
the bar-owner, you win the show.
Sutha907@newschool.edu

4 News & Features
Addressing Complicated Questions in Strategic Planning
CONTINUeD FROM PAGe 1
from $129 to $151 million over
the past two years (the University
of Chicago’s endowment is about
$4.5 billion, according to Wikipedia),
and this city’s skyrocketing
real estate costs.
Nevertheless, administrators say,
Appadurai was integral in laying
the groundwork for a unified university.
He introduced joint-hiring
(faculty are hired to teach in
multiple divisions), established
a faculty senate that gives fulltime
faculty more influence on
strategic planning, and created
the university’s first faculty handbook.
According to Lee, Appadurai
continues to work closely with
the provost’s office.
Lee, previously Dean of The
New School for Social Research,
described his job as “managing” a
conversation between the university’s
deans about the university’s
future. He called last summer’s
discussions, during retreats and
weekly meetings, “unprecedented.”
In the past, he noted, deans
were “consulted, at best,” but did
not play a large part in the development
of a strategic plan for unification.
One participant in those discussions,
Jonathan Veitch, Dean
of eugene Lang College, called
Lee’s approach “artful.”
“There are advantages to forms
of greater integration and unity,
and there are advantages to maintaining
a focus on individual
missions,” Veitch said. “I think
the university see-saws back and
forth between those.” Lee is trying
to “thread the needle” between
the two, he said.
Administrators who spoke to Inprint
for this article said that the
university’s main goal is to incorporate
each division’s resources
into a unified university program
that will focus on five subjects:
urban studies, media studies, international
studies, environmen-
Matt Groening at the Y
By Josh Kurp
As one tube-socked, sweatbanded,
duffle-clutching healthnut
left the gym at the 92nd Street
Y.M.C.A. last Tuesday, he looked
at the crowd lined up outside and
wondered out loud, “Who is this
Matt Groan-ing guy?”
Among the standing-room-only
crowd, though, it was hard to find
anyone who couldn’t correctly
pronounce the name of the man
who invented The Simpsons (It’s
pronounced “Gray-ning,” by the
way).
Matt Groening spoke with
Gary Panter, creator of the comic
character Jimbo, at an event appropriately
dubbed “Comic Conversation.”
Sponsored by the
Jewish Museum, it was promoted
as a public chat between two old
friends who happened to share a
gift for visual representation and
a sardonic sense of humor.
Groening kicked off the event
by playing a clip from The Simpsons’
annual “Treehouse of Horror”
episode, which won’t be
aired until November 5th.
“It’s always fun to watch an episode
with people other than my
tal studies and a still-to-be-defined
area currently referred to as
“capitalism and democracy.”
These new programs will not
replace the university’s divisions,
Veitch said, but will exist
alongside them. Courses in each
division will be available to all
students registered in those programs.
Before the university can begin
to develop them, however, administrators
must reshape the way divisions
determine their budgets,
and develop a kind of governance
structure to form them, Lee said.
In the past, each division determined
its budget by the number
of students it had. Their revenue
typically would not increase, even
if students at other divisions took
classes there. By way of example,
BA/BFA undergrads that enrolled
at Lang but also took courses at
The Jazz School or Parsons would
count only as Lang students.
“If you’re a Lang student, that’s
it,” Veitch said. “Other divisions
would let you into their classes as
it pleased them, if they had room.
They weren’t particularly happy
to have you there.”
Administrators say they hope
the new revenue-sharing formulae
will overcome old tensions
that have long existed between
many of the university’s divisions—for
instance, between Parsons
and Lang, the two divisions
which make the most money at
the university, and NSSR, which
usually operates on a deficit but
needs money for prestigious fulltime
faculty members who focus
on research in addition to teaching.
According to Tim Marshall,
Dean of Parsons, that situation
used to lead to tension between
Parsons and NSSR, in part because
many Parsons administrators
felt that Parsons did not play
an integral enough role at the university.
son, Abe,” Groening said. “He’d
rather watch Family Guy. It hurt
my feelings that my kids like
Family Guy more than The Simpsons,”
he added, slyly.
When he said the words “Family
Guy,” the crowd booed.
Panter, known as the “father of
punk comics,” also showed some
animation clips. Formerly a set
designer for the television show
Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, for which
he won three emmys, he revealed
that he and Paul Reubens (a.k.a.
Pee-Wee Herman) had “just
pitched an animation show of
Pee-wee’s Playhouse” in which,
“Pee-Wee falls asleep and wakes
up in 1,000 years in the future and
hates all the characters.”
There was a pleasant rapport and
obvious ease between Panter and
Groening. At one point, Groening
turned to the crowd and said,
“even if the two of us weren’t
in front of you, we’d probably
still be having the same conversation.”
Later, he pulled out his
Blackberry to look at their list of
“forbidden topics” for the night,
which, he said, included “alcoholics,
terrorism, showbiz heart-
Now, Marshall said, the deans
are working to create a new model
by which the divisions can benefit
from each other. Marshall is
chiefly interested in tapping into
other divisions’ strengths in business
management and social sciences.
Deborah Kirschner, a spokeswoman
for the university, declined
to provide Inprint with
any revenue figures for the various
divisions, saying it was “not
public information.” Nancy Steir,
Vice President of Budget and
Planning, also would not discuss
details of the budget, saying the
redesign of the budget is still under
discussion. Veitch, however,
said the school is now moving
toward what is called Full Time
equivalent, or F.T.e., where bud-
groundwork for a
unified university.
get revenues are determined proportionally.
That way, divisions
like the NSSR would get revenue
for Lang students who take NSSR
courses.
On the academic side, Lee and
the deans are discussing ways in
which the new programs ought to
be implemented. “Do you create
one department across the university?
Do you just allow a kind of
cross-registration that we never
allowed?” Schober, Dean of
NSSR, asked. “There’s got to be
some administrative structure.”
Some of the thorniest questions
may be logistical ones. “It
is almost mind boggling to try to
schedule things,” said Schober,
who was chair of the psychology
department at NSSR for five years
before becoming dean this fall. In
the psychology department last
year, he said, one professor’s day
began at 9 a.m. and ended at 10
p.m., and she had just had a baby.
“Given the current structure, we
““ Lee is laying the
break, Amos ‘N’ Andy, and bad
acid trips.”
Towards the end of the evening,
Groening explained how he came
up with the idea for his most famous
creation. “I was sitting in
the Fox waiting room ready to
pitch my Life in Hell show and I
realized if it became successful,
I’d lose control,” he said. “So I
invented the Simpsons right on
Matt Groening with his son in a simulated Simpsons home.
need new tools for visualizing and
thinking about this that we don’t
already have,” Schober said.
If the university begins by developing
programs, “in which we
have existing strength, but no one
school that feels they have total
ownership of it,” Schober said,
“then we can think through what
we can do in a more coordinated
way across the university.”
In the past, Schober and Parsons
professor Sven Travis cotaught
for three years a course
that merged the study of psychology
and computer-based design.
Howard Steele is working with
Travis on a course this semseter
related to emotions.
In one past project, Schober
said, a student worked on palmpilot
and cell phone interfaces
for studying cognitive behavioral
therapy.
Parsons is also developing a
program in sustainability and environmental
studies. Joel Towers,
an architect who was once the director
of the Sustainable Design
and Urban ecology program at
Parsons, is now an associate provost
and the head of the Tishman
environmental Design Center, a
program for faculty and students
that focuses on environmental issues
and oversees the university’s
environmental studies programs.
“It’s critical for a school like
Parsons to have sustainability and
environmental issues in the future,”
Marshall said. The design
center is, “an early gesture in that
direction.”
Administrators say they would
like to create an open discussion
between faculty and students
about future programs. At
the same time, Schober says that
managing a public dialogue at a
place like The New School can
be a tricky balancing act. “It can
either be too constricted,” he said,
“or completely chaotic.”
the spot and thought, if it became
a hit, I wouldn’t mind losing control.
I named them after my family.”
Maggie Groening, Matt’s sister,
was in the audience. Inprint asked
her if her name ever sparks recognition.
“Sales clerks will sometimes
notice it and ask me about
it,” she said.
What’s the
Haps?
By Liza Minno
Spit? So does Lang’s feminist
group, Moxie. Come October
17th, when they host Freestyling
Ciphers at the Student Activities
Space at 55 W. 11th St., from
6:30 to 8:00 p.m., and see if they
can live up to their saucy name in
verbal freestyling form. Contact
moxie@newschool.edu for more
information.
Remember that scene in Swordfish
when Hugh Jackman is at
a computer trying to hack into
some super secure banking system
while someone has a gun to
his head and Halle Berry is under
the desk not having sexual relations
with him? Well, the 2006
Cut & paste digital design
tournament won’t be like that at
all. But there will be people sitting
at computers and a fair amount
of pressure to work quickly. On
October 21st, at Brooklyn Sugar
in Williamsburg, designers will
test their skills in front a crowd
of riled up aesthetes and judges.
Check out www.cutandpaste.cc
for details or to register.
Maureen Dowd once said that
students at The New School are
so liberal that they make NYU
look like Liberty University. On
a similar note, I would argue that
Amherst, Massachusetts, makes
New York City look like Puritan
Boston. Lee Badget from UMass
Amherst and Gary Gates of the
Williams Institute will speak on
October 25th at “same-sex
Couples: How Many partner
or Marry and Why?” The event
was arranged by Professor Alec
Ian Gershber of Milano. Bring
your family values and check it
out—12:10 p.m. at Henry Cohen
Conference Room, 72 Fifth Avenue,
3rd floor.
Boo! If you’re looking for a little
more to put you in a pre-Halloween
mood, go to the Anthology
Film Archive (32 2nd Ave. at
2nd St.) for their “extra Special
Halloween Short Film Marathon”
on October 25th at 7 p.m. They
have seven films by seven new
filmmakers who promise to deliver
that extra-special Halloween
excitement… you know, rotting
teeth, broken curfews, revving
chainsaws and all that.
Associated Press

Around the Courtyard
News & Features
A Security Guard with a Political History
By Ben Kelly
When Gurney Ackman goes to
work as a security guard in the
New School dorms, he always
brings a copy of the New York
Post.
“I have to have some distraction,”
he says. “Otherwise, I start
thinking about all the memories,
the things that have happened to
me.”
One recent weekday, Ackman, a
Guayanan of medium height and
slim build with a vaguely British
accent, sat behind the security
desk in the 13th Street dorm,
recounting episode after episode
of his fantastic life while hordes
of oblivious, faux-hawked firstyears
walked by.
Ackman was born 59 years ago
in Guyana, then a British colony
and now a small country on the
Northeast coast of South America.
Since then, he’s been a political
dissident, a soldier that saw action
in Vietnam, a high school security
officer that worked closely
with gangs, a husband (twice) and
a father of three.
Ackman grew up during a time
of great political change. Guyana
had been a British possession
since 1831 and Guyanese citizens
had limited governmental representation.
In 1955, however, the
country’s one party, the People’s
Progressive Party (PPP), split
into PPP and the People’s National
Congress (PNC). The split
was ideological, Ackman says,
but because PPP’s leader, Cheddi
Jagan, espoused Marxist-Leninist
beliefs, the CIA, under John
F. Kennedy, became involved
in Guyanese politics. CIA op-
eratives, disguised as trade union
leaders, shifted the dispute from
an ideological to a racial one:
PNC became a party of mostly
Afro-Guyanese, while the majority
of PPP’s supporters were
Indo-Guyanese.
Ackman joined PPP in 1962,
drawn by Jagan, the party’s charismatic
leader.
“In every way that you could
think, he was what you would call
an advocate of the poor people,
the working class people,” Ackman
recalls. “He fully believed in
democracy. He was someone you
could follow.”
Ackman began attending campaign
meetings, educational sessions
and demonstrations in the
party’s youth wing. But his in-
volvement with the party was
complicated by two factors: his
mother, Margaret Ackman, was a
prominent PNC congresswoman;
and though PPP was a primarily
Indo-Guyanese party, Ackman is
black.
Ackman says his mother wasn’t
bothered by his party affiliations,
but “her friends were.” Nevertheless,
they avoided debates because
they were home at different times
and rarely saw each other.
In the mid-1960s, as tension
between PNC and PPP intensified,
Ackman found himself more
vulnerable to violence. In Afro-
Interview by Liza Minno
Photographs by Matthew Mann
How do you feel about the Yankees elimination from the World Series?
Ernesto Mercado Julia Schweizer Allen Strouse
“I’m actually surprised that it affects
other people so much—it’s
like the Mayans and the spiritual
games that were such a big part
of their culture.”
“I’ve been to two Yankees games
and the beers are too expensive
and you can’t smoke in the stadium,
so I say fuck the Yankees.”
“I couldn’t be happier. I don’t
like to watch baseball except for
to see the Yankees lose.”
Guyanese neighborhoods, he
says, “people would start picking
up bottles, eggs, to throw—and
you’d have to get out of there.”
Ackman was never hurt badly
enough to be hospitalized, but
“only because I could run.”
The violence and danger escalated
until, at the age of 20, Ackman
decided to emigrate from
Guyana to the United States.
“My mother and all my relatives
told me, ‘You have to get out of
the country,’” Ackman remembers.
Ackman moved to the United
States during one of its most tumultuous
eras—the Vietnam conflict.
He registered for the draft
and in November of 1968, a year
after he arrived in the States, he
was called up. For eleven months
he served in the Infantry’s 101st
division, 11 Bravo Company.
Ackman’s memories of that time
are grim.
“Sometimes I try to describe it,
but there are no words,” he says,
“Just ‘survive.’ Will I survive after
seeing so many guys blown
up? It was something I never
thought I’d experience.”
Ackman moved back to Guyana
in 1992, then back to the States
in 2001. Today, he says this job
at The New School is, “pretty
much a piece of cake,” except
for the fact that, “one man has to
control the whole world: check
IDs, answer phones, answer questions…”
“But mostly, from my observation,
New School students
are nice,” he continues. “I’d say
ninety percent of them are coop-
Russia’s Copyrighting Woes
By Justin Lane Briggs
Like most music consumers,
the average New School student
has probably wrestled with the
ethics of downloading music
for free. But as long as you’re
buying mp3s from a well-publicized,
“Secure Transaction” type
of website, with links to Billboard
and BBC music sites on its
homepage, you’re playing by the
rules, right?
Not according to critics of
Allofmp3.com, a Russian music
downloading website that offers
entire albums for as little as $1.50
– and as a result has recently begun
to lure customers away from
Apple’s iTunes Music Store. That
success has landed the site in the
center of a major international
trade dispute that U.S. officials
say may threaten Russia’s bid to
enter the World Trade Organization.
How can Allofmp3.com offer
music so
cheaply? According
to the
International
Federation of
the Phonographic Industry (IFPI),
a group representing recording interests
for labels like eMI, Sony,
Universal and Warner Bros., the
problem is loopholes in Russian
law that allow public downloading
of music so long as companies
pay specific government agencies
instead of the actual copyright
holder.
After two years of legal battles,
the U.S. Trade Representative issued
Allofmp3.com a deadline
of September 1, 2006, to change
its business practices and comply
with new Russian copyright legislation.
But weeks after the deadline,
no real changes have taken
place. Users around the world can
still download music from the
website’s library at remarkably
low prices.
Representatives of Allofmp3.
com insist that payments do in
fact go to the music’s copyright
holders.
“Allofmp3.com does regularly
transfer substantial amounts of
royalties to the Russian organizations
for collective management
of rights,” the site’s administra-
Annie Dillard, Acclaimed Memoirist and Poet, Reads at Lang
By Linh Tran
On the night of October 4th,
Neil Gordon, Chair of the Lang
Writing Department, stepped up
to the podium in Wollman Hall
to introduce Pulitzer Prize-winning
author Annie Dillard—or
so the audience thought. Instead,
Gordon introduced Cody Rose
Clevidence, a senior writing-concentrator
at Lang.
Clevidence told an intentionally
vague story about having dinner
with Dillard the previous night.
Then she added, “Neil Gordon is
going to kill me for making this
personal, or worse, sentimental,
but I’d like to introduce my
mom.”
Dillard, a tall woman of 61
years from Pittsburgh, is a prominent
poet, memoirist and novelist
whose work deals with nature,
theology and the human condi-
A political dissi-
dent, a Vietnam solider,
a New School
security guard
““
tion. The capacity crowd, which
appeared to be comprised mostly
of writing students and professors,
was responsive to her relaxed
manner. “Did you all get to
eat?” she asked at one point. “Are
you doing this instead of eating?
That’s rough.”
Slightly stooped over, wearing
a red sweater and reading glasses,
Dillard began with a short poem,
“The Sign of Your Father.” Pacing
in front of the audience, she
paused after every few words to
indicate her use of parentheses,
drawing laughs.
She followed the poem with a
short story, “Living Like Weasels,”
which compares a weasel’s
way of life in the wild to human
behavior.
“I wouldn’t write this as strongly
today,” Dillard said, by way of
introduction. “I was
young then, and much
more resolute.”
Dillard won the Pulitzer
for nonfiction in
1975, when she was
just 29, for Pilgrim
at Tinker Creek, a
Walden-like account
of a year spent living
close to nature in
rural Virginia. The
book’s two sequels,
Holy Firm and For
the Time Being, also
addressed the connection
between ecology
and theology. Other
noteworthy efforts include
a memoir about
her parents, entitled
An American Child-
CONTINUeD ON PAGe 6
5
tors said in a press statement last
month.
But the music industry tells a
different story. “The website is effectively
stealing from those who
create the music,” read a press
release from the IFPI. “Allofmp3.
com is not what it seems.”
Allofmp3.com’s Web site is
glossy and simple, has Russian
and english interfaces and links
to international Billboard charts,
but making payments is complicated.
A user usually has to use
a separate website, dubbed all-
Tunes.com, to purchase credit.
Yet, Allofmp3.com’s Mp3s are
higher quality than iTunes’ AAC
files, and can be shared and copied
at will once they’ve been downloaded—unlike
iTunes files.
Thus far, only about 300,000 of
Allofmp3.com’s downloads have
gone to the U.S. market. In england,
however, Allofmp3.com is
more popular
than
Napster.
allofmp3.com
The Web
site has
faced many court cases, to little
effect, because the site claims it
does not have international patrons.
“What we’re doing may
not be 100% up to Western business
ethics,” said Ilya Levitov, a
spokesman for Allofmp3.com’s
parent company, MediaServices.
“But no one has ever proven that
we are operating illegally.”
The most serious flack comes
from the U.S. government. Recently,
a congressional caucus advised
against admitting Russia to
the WTO until they had improved
intellectual property rights, referring
specifically to Allofmp3.com
as an example of Moscow’s unwillingness
to abide by changes
in its newly adopted intellectual
property law. Russia cannot join
the global trade group without the
backing of all existing members,
including the United States. Right
now, the U.S. plan seems to be to
hope that Russia will back down
and begin to enforce its copyright
laws, shutting down Allofmp3.
com for good. Until then, the
website will stay open for business.
Kaitlin McQuaide

6 entertainment
If You’re Underground, You Already Know
Two revelers gear up for Rubulad.
By Insane Viola Jam
The average person living in
New York usually needs to come
to terms with the fact that they are
constantly missing out on some
big, fabulous event. But on Friday,
October 6th, the big fabulous
event was for average people
only. Most probably missed out,
anyway.
The party was the ever-elusive,
carnival-esque Rubulad, staged
every three weeks, with intermittent
venue changes, for twelve
years. Known for its participants’
often-illegal antics, it shies away
from media coverage. It’s been
listed in L Magazine, for instance,
but without an address, so as to
preserve its underground vibe.
Two weeks ago, I broke the surface
of secrecy for the first time,
in an endeavor to understand this
mysterious event. As I walked in,
Monica Uszerowicz
I was overwhelmed with art and
glitter. The theme was “Homecoming,”
and there was a “make
your own crown” table. Men
were queens—except for some of
the older ones, who were naked.
“I feel like I just took acid, but
I didn’t,” one first-timer said. She
stood inside an igloo on one of
the building’s floors. Outside the
igloo, there was an explosion of
Christmas lights, an absinthe
bar, a special brownie stand, and
many, many, intoxicated people.
On the roof, which was accessible
by means of a rickety metal
ladder, a man named Gary ran
projections of French musicals
from the 1960s. Asked to share
some stories of Rubulad’s past,
he gave a vague response: “Sex,
drugs, and rock and roll.” Judging
from the action in the igloo
Waiting for Ferrell at the Daily Show
Chilling Out With Jon Stewart
By Almie Rose Vazanno
Jon Stewart is a short man.
But out of shortness often comes
greatness. Napoleon. Michael J.
Fox. R2D2. It should have come
as no surprise to me when I went
to a Daily Show taping and saw
just how funny and quick-thinking
Stewart really is.
Before the show began, he informed
us, his adoring studio
audience, that we were in for a
treat. After the show, Stewart was
planning to tape a segment with
Will Ferrell live via satellite (Ferrell
was in LA) for a sketch for a
Comedy Central special Stewart
was hosting, “Night of Too Many
Stars: An Overbooked Benefit for
Autism education.”
The show ended, we applauded.
Stewart checked with pages for
the Mets game scores. Then we
waited for Ferrell’s charming face
to appear on the monitors. And
we waited. And waited.
Finally a producer informed us
that Ferrell was still in the makeup
chair. Apparently, he needed
quite a lot of make-up for this
segment. Stewart promised we
would love it, and that it would
be worth the wait.
So we waited. A DJ who played
loud 80s music while we waited.
Then he stopped, because Ferrell
was ready. Or so we thought. Ferrell,
in fact, was still not ready.
Stewart apologized,
telling us that
we could leave if we
had plans. “I’m sure
some of you have
tickets to Mama
Mia,” he said. A P.A.
tapped him on the
shoulder and gave him a baseball
update. It was good news
for Stewart. He pumped his fist
in the air. His team had won. We
cheered. A man from back-stage,
obviously a friend of Stewart’s,
crossed the set and him gave him
a huge hug.
He again apologized for making
us wait, and asked us if we had
any more questions we wanted
to ask (Stewart does a brief Q&A
before every show to warm-up
the audience.) “I could have loud
music playing while I sit here
and have you guys stare at me,”
he explained. “But that would be
awkward. Do you guys just mind
hanging out?”
Did we mind hanging out with
Jon Stewart? Was he kidding?
The studio was suddenly transformed
into a comfortable living
room, and the audience into his
friends. It actually felt as though
we were all just hanging out.
“Anyone doing anything fun
tonight?” he asked. A few of us
shouted, “Lost!” It was the night
and on the roof, things haven’t
changed much.
Carlos, a Brooklyn hipster,
described the scene as “a cluster-fuck
of weird people.” That
certainly applied to Fitz and Joey,
two students in the throes of acid
trips, who talked about being
stripped and handcuffed.
Vinnie, wearing an old Italian
motorcycle jacket, requested
Black Sabbath from the man behind
the jukebox. Carl, in a room
labeled “Photo Booth,” wore a
poofy pink dress and snapped
pictures. A raver, with neon hulahoop
in tow, wowed the crowds
during an M.I.A. song. everybody
loved it—and at Rubulad,
unlike most New York parties,
nobody was afraid to show it.
Among the four floors, the music
ranged from Metallica to salsa.
People shifted on and off the
dance floor. Some, craving stimulation,
traveled upstairs to hear a
live band. Others went to the rooftop
grill to ease their munchies.
Insane Viola Jam is an under
cover Inprint correspondent who
writes about youth culture.
Monica Uszerowicz
Under the sea?
No, a scene from Rubulad.
Almie Rose Vazzano
Will Ferrell and Jon Stewart
of the season premiere of the surreal
drama, set on a deserted tropical
island. “I said fun,” he teased.
We asked him why he was not a
fan. “I don’t need to watch James
Joyce on television,” he said.
Shows that he does like? “Project
Runway.”
“It’s my first night in town,
where should I go tonight?” one
woman asked. Stewart, his writers,
producers and even the DJ
suggested a myriad of different
restaurants. Another person asked
if the man who hugged Stewart
earlier was Robert Smigel. It
was. And another person asked
the question in the back of all of
our minds. “How much make-up
does Will Ferrell need?” Stewart
laughed.
Finally, Ferrell was ready. He
appeared on the screen dressed
as Robert Goulet. Stewart, in his
signature deadpan, explained:
“That’s why it took so long; he
needed to put on sunglasses.” He
asked Ferrell if he was ready.
“Let’s nail this bitch,” Ferrell
grumbled in his Goulet voice.
Annie Dillard Reads at Lang
CONTINUeD FROM PAGe 5
hood, and a collection of “found”
poetry called Mornings Like
This.
The last reading of the night
was an excerpt from For the Time
Being, a poetic exploration of human
compassion and cruelty, and
whether such is the work of God.
She was reluctant to begin—“A
little bit of a story doesn’t do
any good, but what the hell,” she
said—but proceeded with a vivid
account of an archeological dig in
China that unearthed ancient statues
of an army of soldiers.
At the end of the reading, Dillard
addressed students’ questions—“Have
at me,” she said.
One woman asked Dillard why
she had described her forthcoming
novel The Maytrees, about a
Mew2, the Interview
By Almie Rose Vazzano
The first rule of any interview
is to make sure your tape recorder
works.
I check it in the cab on the way
to Webster Hall, where I have
an appointment to interview Bo
Madsen, lead guitarist of Danish
“space pop” band Mew. It seems
to be in perfect shape.
But when I sit down to begin the
interview, the tape recorder takes
on a mind of its own and stubbornly
refuses to work.
As I fumble with the device,
like a kindergartner learning how
to write, Bo asks if he could have
a look at it. “I know what it is
like when one of these little guys
dies,” he says, mournfully, taking
apart the tape recorder to fix
it. “This guy looks like he’s been
with you for a long time.”
Madsen, tan, with a mustache
and a smile that would make
James Bond-era Sean Connery
envious, is inviting and relaxed.
He removes the batteries from
the dead recorder, just to make
sure they’re in correctly, and I
point out the Whitney sticker on
his striped collared t-shirt and ask
him if he enjoyed the museum.
He glances down, perhaps realizing
for the first time that he’s still
wearing it, and peels it off. “Modern
art is not my personal favorite,”
he responds. “The Hopper
exhibit is more to my liking, it’s
more in tune with european traditions,
very melancholy.”
Mew is no stranger to melancholy.
Madsen describes their
latest album, ...and the Glass
Handed Kites, as “darker and bigger”
than their previous record,
Frengers. “We wanted to challenge
ourselves,” he says. “At the
time we were living close together
in a house in London. We were
loving and hating each other.”
What can we expect from their
next album? “More swing. Last
time we wanted to do more of an
idea-based album but this time
we want to be maybe more open,
positive. It’s going to be good.”
What is Mew’s collaboration
process like? “We write together,
group oriented. Someone comes
up with one part, two parts, it mutates,
forms. We record music in
rehearsal space to catch off-mo-
family living in Provincetown in
the 1940s and 50s, as “the best
book I’ve ever written.”
“When I was younger I would
have been showing off,” Dillard
replied. “Now I just want to tell
a story.”
Later, when another audience
member asked Dillard to compare
her current self to her younger
self, she offered an analogous response.
“Now I go to readings to
be moved,” Dillard said. “When I
was younger, I wanted to be impressed.”
Dillard ended the event with one
final tidbit of advice for the many
aspiring writers in the room: “Go
to the library,” she said, “because
you know life, you live life. What
you need to know is literature.”
ments that can be great. There’s
not a lot of crying,” he says, grinning,
“but a little bit.”
AOL Music described the band
as “space pop innovators.” Does
Bo agree? He shrugs. “We’re the
only indie stadium band in the
world.” He pauses. At this point,
he has abandoned the tape recorder
and taken up with a stray tennis
ball, spinning it around the table.
“I don’t care for anything else but
pop music.”
Mew’s videos often present bizarre,
downbeat scenes. Where
does the inspiration come from?
“Dream scenarios and David
Lynch. David Lynch is a God in
europe.”
Surely a band that models their
style after David Lynch must
have a few strange stories. I ask
him about the strangest thing
that’s ever happened on tour. He
pauses to think. He’s silent, his
chin rested on his closed hand.
“Wait…wait,” he says, “I’m really
digging deep down.” He
laughs. “Let me get back to you
on that one.”
Who are his influences? “Prince.
80s music is genius. It’s the golden
age of pop. It’s like relationships.
You fall in love, you listen
to every album, you get to know
them, but it’s rare to fall in love.”
What’s the one thing we need
to know about Mew? “We’re not
like any other band. That’s it.”
Back to the strange tour stories.
He pauses, shaking his black
Conversed foot. Finally, he looks
up, ready with his answer. “I’m
not going to tell,” he says mischievously.
Bo Madsen of Mew
Sony Records

Your Guide to the Best (and Blurst)
in Today’s Fine Art
The Bridge, Dir. eric Steel, Opens Oct. 27th
By Almie Rose Vazzano
eric Steel’s documentary, The
Bridge, opens with beautiful wideangle
shots of the Golden Gate
Bridge that almost look computer-generated.
The sun is out, there
is a light breeze, and the bridge is
crowded with people. The camera
zooms in, and we see a man talking
on his cell phone. He laughs,
hangs up, climbs over the railing,
and jumps to his death. The camera
follows him all 225 feet down
into the water. The splash is surprisingly
quiet.
In 2004, twenty-four people
committed suicide on the Golden
Gate Bridge. This film shows the
deaths of at least three of them in
close-up, a few others from a distance,
and a few failed attempts.
To make the film, Steel set up
cameras in two key locations.
One camera captured wide-angle
shots and the other had a strong
telephoto lens for closer shots. He
left the cameras running all day,
changing the tapes once every
hour, for one year.
The Bridge is not just about
shocking footage. In interviews
with family and friends of the deceased,
Steel explores the forces
that bring people to such dramatic
deaths at this historic monument.
He also speaks with witnesses,
Film
Driving Lessons, dir. Jeremy
Brock, starring: Laura Linney,
rupert Grint, rated-pG-13,
Opens Oct. 13
Do you enjoy preachy and predictable
stories about stereotypically
repressed teenagers? Then
go see Driving Lessons, Jeremy
Block’s new car wreck starring
Rupert Grint, that red-haired
doofy kid from the Harry Potter
movies, as 17-year-old Ben.
Let’s count the clichés: overbearing
Christian mother, an outof-his-league-style
teenage crush,
and an uplifting coming-of-age
journey. Yup, this film’s got it
all—except for a meaningful plot
and original script. Pretty much
the only thing that redeems Driving
Lessons is Ben’s Harold and
Maude-esque (albeit a-sexual)
relationship with the 65-year-old,
out-of-work actress evie (Julie
Walters).
Truly devoted to theatrics, evie
coerces Ben into accompanying
her to the edinburgh Theater Festival.
There, even teenage Ben’s
awkward deflowering, set to blaring
Scottish samba music, falls
flat.
Rating: 2 surly driving instructors.
- Julia Schweizer
Sony Pictures Classics
CORReCTION: Copying
Beethoven, reviewed last issue,
has been pushed back to
November 10.
including the Figueroa family,
who, while on vacation with their
children, watch a woman smile at
them before leaping to her watery
death.
The premise of The Bridge is
fascinating enough, but whether
the film can hold the audience’s
interest is another question. The
beginning and end are captivating,
but the middle is drawn out.
every family, it seems, has the
same story to tell about the those
they lost: the deceased were mentally
unwell and spoke openly of
suicide.
The most interesting scenes in
the film are of the jumpers—not
necessarily as they are committing
the act, but as they contemplate
it. They walk back and
forth, they pause, some talk on
cell phones, others stare out into
nothing. Witnesses often remain
motionless, perhaps pretending
that they do not see what is unfolding
before their eyes. This is
the most depressing aspect of the
entire film.
To watch these people actually
die is both sobering and surreal.
The last scene in the film is one
that, like the postcard image of
the bridge itself, will be permanently
stamped into memory.
Rating: Timothy Treadwell’s hat
Conventioneers, dir. Mora
stephens, Opens Oct. 20
The only interesting thing about
this movie is the fact that it exists.
The documentary/drama was
made during the 2004 Republic
National Convention in New York
City. The actors took part in the
actual convention—some as protestors,
some as attendees—and
also tried to play out a modern
day Romeo and Juliet, where the
Capulets are Republicans and the
Montagues are Democrats.
It’s an interesting and original
idea, trust me. I’m genre-bending’s
biggest cheerleader. And the
RNC?! Come on! If any subject
deserves to be deconstructed in
art, it is that human atrocity.
But, unfortunately, the acting,
writing and background music
is intolerable. The acting is so
forced and uncomfortable that you
will actually feel embarrassed for
the actors, but only after you get
tired of making fun of them. The
dialogue serves only to stereotype
communication patterns and
oversimplify the idea of political
obligation. And the music—have
mercy.
I would not suggest that anyone
subject themselves to this debacle.
However, the movie does
have some good footage of the
RNC and the protests that surrounded
it. If you’re in a nostalgic
kind of mood, go ahead and see it.
Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Rating: “Merely a two word review:
shit sandwich.” - Spinal
Tap - Liza Minno
tV
Heroes, dir. Greg Beeman &
Allan Arkush, starring: Ali
Larter, Milo Ventimiglia, Airtime-
Mon. 9:30pm, nBC
Reviews
The Golden Gate Bridge, where 24 people committed suicide in 2004.
There’s something wonderfully
amiss in the world. Instead of being
slapped in the face with trash
like Invasion or Point Pleasant,
you can actually find TV shows
worth watching on a Monday
night. Heroes is one of them.
Things start to get hairy for the
unacquainted heroes—one a prophetic
painter, the other a nimble
time-jumper—in the second episode.
Together, they discover a
conspiracy to visit a nuclear holocaust
upon New York City. The
painter tries to cut off his hands to
prevent further prophecies, while
the jumper openly accepts his
newfound destiny.
Heroes follows Lost’s example
on a superficial level—it withholds
plot development from the
audience to generate intrigue. But
what really hooks the viewer is
the phenomenal ensemble cast.
From Tokyo’s space/time bending
(and aptly named) Hiro to
nigh-invulnerable Texas cheerleader
Claire, Heroes hosts a slew
of characters who are more than
ready to sustain viewer attention
for 22 episodes.
Sure enough, there are plenty
of “omigod!” revelations as the
series progresses. Just imagine
an amalgamation of Lost and X-
Men with fewer characters but
more potential for development.
excited yet?!
Rating: 4 stylish tacos
- John Zuarino
dVd
Vice Guide to Travel
The VICE Guide to Travel DVD
(based on VICE’s travel issue)
covers short documentaries about
seven places nobody wants to
visit, other than the people that
made it.
Music
Cinema Libre Studio
Among the fixings: VICE cofounder
Suroosh Alvi visits an
illegal arms market in Pakistan,
where people hand-make guns,
and sell AK-47s for hundreds of
dollars. Trace Crutchfield, a VICE
correspondent, goes to Rio, where
he gets shot at by the police and
films a drug lord’s private party.
And Boy Scouts in Beirut sing
songs about the glory of death.
It’s not vapid eye-candy—they
are situations taken from a youth’s
perspective, just slightly more absurd
than The Darwin Awards.
Rating: AEROBATIC!
– Najva Soleimani
Xiu Xiu, The Air Force
Beneath Xiu Xiu’s angular guitar
lines, skeletal drum-machine
beats and splattering
electronics
on The Air Force,
there lies a true
diligence to pop
songcraft.
“The Pineapple Vs. The Watermelon,”
about a loved one’s suicide,
juxtaposes a gentle acoustic
guitar and piano with songwriter
Jamie Stewart’s anguished halftalks.
As forlorn and pitiful as it
sounds, it’s beautiful. But it’s not
as infectious as “Boy Soprano,”
an electro-clash ditty with a bouncy
bass line, a skittering beat and
fluttering flute accents. Or “Save
Me Save Me,” engulfed in electronic
squeaks, gongs and overdubs
upon overdubs of Stewart’s
melodic, enraptured call. This is
pain at its most danceable. One
wonders how long it’ll be before
Xiu Xiu’s twisted language loses
steam, but Stewart will always
have a place in the darkest corners
of the pop universe.
7
Nadia Chaudhury
nbc.com
(Above) The precocious and supernatural
teens of the TV show Heroes.
(Left) An actor from the film Conventioneers
gets an phone call during a
protest.
Rating: Gary Karp’s approval
-Peter Holslin
Books
The Mystery Guest. By Gregorie
Bouillier. trans. By Lorin stein
Who knew that a neurotic with
a bottle of ’64 Margaux could
discover the meaning of life at
French photographer Sophie Calle’s
birthday party? In Grégoire
Bouillier’s new
memoir, anything
is possible.
The story
begins in late
1990 on the
day of philosopher
Michel
Leiris’s death. Bouillier receives
a phone call from his ex-lover
inviting him to attend Calle’s
birthday party as that year’s mystery
guest. Suddenly, Bouillier’s
narrative leaps from Leiris to the
space probe Ulysses to Bouillier’s
current lover (who, as he recalls,
“loved me despite my turtleneckundershirts”).
Bouillier writes in a stream-ofconsciousness
style that delves
into every nuance of his life. He
draws parallels between his ex
and Mrs. Dalloway, putting his
former relationship to rest and
finally changing the bathroom
light bulb. “What was the point
of living,” Bouillier writes, “if we
spent our lives fulfilling the desires
of inanimate objects?”
While taking forty pages to describe
a ten-minute party might
seem to make for some seriously
daunting reading, every word
Bouillier writes somehow flows
cohesively. It’s magical.
Rating: More stylish tacos
– John Zuarino

8 Closing Time
Neighborhood Profile: Governor’s Island
By Magali Pijpers
The U.S. Coast Guard used Governor’s Island as a base until it closed its facilities in 1997. In 2003, the Federal Government returned the island to New York State
and City, under the Governor’s Island Preservation & education Corporation (GIPeC).
Twenty-two acres are now devoted to the Governor’s Island National Monument. Visitors can tour the island’s National Historic Landmark District—which includes
forts, the Historic Parade Grounds, mansions, and views—by taking a ferry from Manhattan. Meanwhile, intrepid Inprint staffers can break some rules and
find the other Governor’s Island, full of fiberglass coyotes and abandoned elementary schools. The island is open only during the summer.
A Flavaful Wrap-up of Flavor of Love
By Nora Costello
This week marks the end of another
Flavtastic season of boobs,
booty, and brawls on VH1’s Celebreality
hit, Flavor of Love. For
those of you who missed it, here’s
a Flavolicious Whitman’s Sampler
of all the nuts, cream, and
nougat.
After a sleepy start, Love regains
some of last season’s heat when
veteran “New York” (pre-Flav
name Tiffany) returns and brings
Krazy with her. New York wastes
no time whipping the ladies into
shape, criticizing everything from
breast pertness to “white trash”
hairlines. Ass cheeks ever so
slightly protruding beneath the
hem of her skirt, New York is the
perfect picture of class and decorum,
and the ladies are rightly
intimidated when Flav invites her
to stay. But New York only serves
as fuel to an already roiling fire.
Herewith is a sketch of each of
the leading characters:
Buckwild: An offensive but
sweet white girl borne of an unfortunate
identity crisis. “I’m so
black my pussy tastes like menthol.”
Ahem. enough said. Selfeliminated.
Krazy: A doe-eyed hottie with
packaging peanuts for brains.
Willing do to whatever it takes
(wink wink) to win over record
produc...ahem...Flav’s heart.
eliminated when Flav discovers
her true motives.
Bootz: The first to call out the
“fake-ass hoes,” especially Krazy.
Most likely to be remembered
for her triple-e breasts, bikiniclad,
captured in slow-mo in the
pool. “I wanna slip through her
molecules of wetness like an eel
through the seaweed,” Flav muses
wistfully. But alas, the lovers
must part—Bootz was eliminated
when she informed Flav of her
celibacy.
Deelishis: One of the more
bootylicious candidates, but with
unfortunate globules on her arms
that are truly unsightly and just
strange. She seems genuinely
interested in Flav, and he seems
genuinely unfazed by her mustache—although
the dinner with
her parents during which dad
orders a “carton of pigeon milk”
may hurt her chances. One of the
final two.
Buckeey: Crop-topped cutie
with a penchant for having her ass
grabbed. eliminated for almost
killing Krazy by pushing her over
a balcony.
Ah yes, a lovely array of true
class and culture…’twas a shame
to watch it dwindle. But dwindle
it must. One by one these gems
must rejoin their charm school
brethren. Whether it be Deelishis
or New York, whoever finds herself
writhing under the gold lamé
blanket at the end of the night
should consider herself a truly
lucky gal.