Student Life Archives

I am panicking. No, not I am not scared of dying young without realizing my personal potential, nor failing to make my contributions to the space program or the human genome project, nor fear itself, I am scared of eating. Last Thursday October 17th, a date that will live in infamy, every eatery in Mallinckrodt center was closed due to a “failure in the water filtration system.” Fear not, I ate at Holmes Lounge. However, many of my colleagues went hungry. Confused, they simply bounced between the Bakery and the downstairs area like a well-played ball in a Pinball machine. They turned to the Kosher Cart for sustenance but even the Rabbi’s powers were no match for The faulty filter. Hava Naglia Mosha. Lovely Bris, wasn’t it? I even saw people confusedly standing in the Gargoyle where no food has been served since the spring of ’74. The year of love, hate, peace and war. And a decent ham sandwhich.
I had first noticed the problem on Wednesday. On my way to lunch after my one o’clock class I noticed that the usual crowd of “fountain rats,” who gather around the Bowles Plaza fountain to relax in the soothing sounds of the cascading white water and to escape from the concrete and metal monotony of the campus, were not there. In fact the fountain is so naturalistic that it attracts wildlife from as near as Forrest Park to as far as Sierra Leone. These include drowned bees, algae, and other strains of single-celled organisms. The following is a direct quote from Magik Mark: “We are lucky, fortunate, and pleased to be able to share the Hilltop Campus with the unique wildlife from our neighbors in Sierra Leone.” It is such a beauty, that I make it a point in my day to stop by the blue water and breathe in the fresh air. On Wednesday, the water had been drained. That set off the first alarm.
Downstairs in the food court, the fountain drinks were out of order. While my experience in this country and abroad shows that this is usually due to a lack of syrup, cafeteria employees who chose to remain anonymous (Mary in the red sweater) told me that they had “barrels up the wazoo!” The problem in this case was a lack of pure water. The pipeline into the Mallinckrodt kitchen directly from the French Alps had been sabotaged, that was clear. What wasn’t was what had precipitated the change between Wednesday and Thursday. Was this a matter of human health? If The filter had been faulty on Wednesday, and The filter somehow affects food, then by the chances of property one would expect the cafeterias to be closed on Wednesday as well. This is where I worry.
When I stopped by the impromptu barbeque that food services threw on Thursday I saw the same man who had happily served my roast chicken the day before happily serving sausages for a hungry crowd. The man was quite happy. When I inquired as to why Mallinckrodt has been taped off, he responded with: “Do you want your food to be raw, fatty, bacteria-infested meat?” I blinked. Twice. “Umm.no.” His point was quite clear.
Needless to say the entire event raised doubts about the recent food service ranking. For those to whom this fact was not obvious by the quality of their daily meals, the Princeton Review recently ranked Washington University’s Dining Services as #1 in the country. Using the same mathematical models employed by the Princeton Review I have concluded that students must not eat in schools ranked 9 and below. Survival must rely on vending machines. Furthermore, since I had already developed the system, I took the liberty of ranking Wash U in other categories. Did you know our wildlife ranks # 3 in the nation, that the percentage of our campus that has been deforestated by the administration ranks # 17, that our Bris’ rank # 2 and that our rodeo clown training is #43. Shameful.
Indeed vending machines are perhaps a viable option on our Hilltop Campus as well. Yet, you know what they say about survival: “Don’t panic. Don’t catch that terrible disease of ‘Give-up-itis.” But you know what else they say: “you can go for days without food but you can’t go long without water.” Or milk. Or cookies. But yet, what do I know, I’m not from this country.

Here is the average college student’s well-rounded diet: microwavable frozen foods, canned foods, pizza, beer, and boilable starches which include but are not exclusive to: spaghetti, Rice-A-Roni, and Ramen Noodles. There are sub-categories which include toastable foods like Eggo Waffles, Pop Tarts, and Bagel Bites. There is also what I like to call the “lazy” category of foods. For example, the “lazy grilled cheese” is toasting a piece of bread and then eating it with a slice of cold American cheese. The “lazy Eggo waffle” is when I don’t want to dirty a plate so I painstakingly fill all the waffle squares with syrup and eat it with my hands. My favorite is the “lazy chicken parmesan” which is when I microwave a bunch of vegetarian chicken nuggets and toss them in a pot of spaghetti with Ragu. And, finally, there’s the occasional “lazy breakfast” catered by Anheiser-Busch.
These dietary standards are primarily applicable to students living off-campus without a meal-plan, and are further applicable to someone like me who once scorched her hair while heating soup on the stove. That was back when I had long hair. Did you know that burnt human hair smells oddly like burnt yak hair? No? Obviously you haven’t set enough yaks on fire. Since my hair is short now, to set it on fire would require me to fall asleep on the burner.just wait until finals week. Just you wait.
Ramen Noodles have been my warm, economical friend for quite some time, and I have reason to believe that it is one of the world’s most perfect processed foods. Ramen Noodles are packaged in geometrically sound Noodle Bricks. Their shape is second only to the arch in architectural design and aesthetic. In an emergency, you could build some sort of crude shelter out of these bricks, and when it rains and then gets really hot, you could eat your shelter. Second, Ramen is frightfully inexpensive. Schnucks will occasionally sell packages of Ramen at 5 for one dollar. That is twenty cents for one package. Washington University tuition is $26,900 per year; if you spent a year’s tuition on Ramen, you could buy 134,500 packages of Ramen. This would be enough Ramen to build the Versailles of Ramen Noodles. Since you are sleeping through Orgo anyway, why not drop-out of school and aspire to architectural greatness? Third, Ramen is a great source of vegetables if you consider those little green flecks in the broth powder vegetables. Fourth, the excessive sodium content in that astronaut package of broth powder is the food industry’s way of saying that you should be drinking more water anyway.
For such a simple food, there are quite a few different ways to prepare Ramen. Do you break the brick into quarters? In half? Do you boil the brick whole against all rational judgment? If you are in a dorm, I understand that you’re basically getting by on “hot pot Ramen,” which is essentially boiling water and dumping it in a bowl with the Ramen noodles and letting it sit. Even though we have a perfectly functional stove at our apartment, this is the way my roommate Laura still prepares her Ramen, but I don’t tell her outright that she is preparing her Ramen incorrectly. I also don’t tell her when I knock her toothbrush into the toilet.
Chainsaw Calligraphy recommends that you boil the living hell out of a brick of Ramen Noodles broken into four pieces. Boil it until it screams. I sometimes leave my Ramen boiling on the stove for a quality fifteen minutes. At some point during the cooking process, a portal to another dimension will open and out will come a voice who will warn you that you are cooking your Ramen for too long. Ignore this portal, no matter how exciting it looks, and continue boiling. This excessive cooking time insures maximum water intake of the noodles, and in a symbiotic return, the noodles enhance the future broth-water with starchy goodness. Once this has been completed, add the atomic broth powder, stir, and enjoy.
Cooking Ramen Noodles properly is quite an art and requires some mad skills. Look for my new series on Food Network called “The Naked Ramen Chef.” I believe I have enough material to make it to the first commercial break.

My friend Beth and I had a long conversation last night and I want to share a couple snippets of it with all of you. I have a tape recorder illegally hooked into my phone so I can record calls of a journalistic, educational, or oedipal nature and I covertly recorded last night’s heart-to-heart about the new love of Beth’s life. I have decided to transcribe the juiciest parts of the conversation here because it is titillating and fancy ticklin’ and I can receive internship credit from the Olin School of Business toward my Bachelor of Science in Home Transcriptionist Studies.

Me: So Beth, what’s new?
Beth: I think I have a problem.
Me: If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times: an Oxy Pad cannot be used as a contraceptive.
Beth: Yet somehow my diaphragm cleared up those pesky blackheads.
Me: Yeah, circle of life, whatever. Why did you really call me?
Beth: [Excited] I have a huge crush on someone-
Me: What a surprise, you crush more people than a Chinese tank at a Falun Gong rally.
Beth: But, but-
Me: But what? Those PRC tanks are ruthless, the analogy stands.
Beth: Well, I don’t think this crush will ever fall in love with me-
Me: Yeah, the fact that Wittgenstein died in 1951 does pose a problem for you.
Beth: No, listen! I an in love with Father Martin.
Me: The new priest? But, he’s so, um-
Beth: Dreamy!
Me: I was going to say celibate.
Beth: [On the verge of tears] Even though Father Martin and I are both so young and full of life, our love can never be. [Crying] Never, never, never.
Me: [Not helping at all] Yeah, and let’s not forget the celibacy.

At this point, Beth went into a rant about how much she is attracted to him and how he is perfect for her. I did not interrupt her because she conveyed his priestly aesthetic in an agonizingly long series of heroic couplets and I was afraid she would lose her place and have to repeat the insipid verses or go into some impromptu explication. The poem was horrible, though I did find it amazing how she rhymed “in the Holy Spirit’s care” with “hung like a bear.”
So she finished her sinful love lyrics and I tried to think of something to say. In a perfect world, I would say something instructive or constructive but my boat isn’t exactly on the correct tack if you follow my conceit. Beth was reaching out to me and I had to help her through this problem. I started with a question.

Me: So how attached is Marty to this whole priest thing?
Beth: Excuse me?
Me: This is just like a trial appointment, right? Nothing permanent.
Beth: No, he’s made the vows and committed for life.
Me: No, I think Martin’s doing that thing where priests go to some poor area for a couple years and help poor people find Christ-Jesus. Yeah, it’s called, uh, Preach for America.
Beth: No you dungwhistle, that’s Teach for America. And those are teachers, not priests.
Me: Are you sure?
Beth: Is the Pope Catholic?
Me: Do you want to ride his jock too?
Beth: No! Back to my problem, ok?
Me: Martin is only a minor figure in the religious scheme of things. If he defects to our side no one will miss him.
Beth: He’s the spiritual leader of our parish!
Me: So what?
Beth: And he’s the rector!
Me: Rector? Damn near killed her!
Beth: What?
Me: Rector? I just met her!
Beth: You are the worst friend ever.
Me: Hey, at least I don’t steal your underwear and pour calves’ blood on your most precious family heirlooms.
Beth: I forgot about Sandy.
Me: You better recognize.
Beth: Sorry, second worst friend ever.
Me: I’ll be taking my silver medal now.

In the end, Beth decided to resolve her dilemma on her own because my solutions weren’t good or culturally imperialist enough for her liking. Let’s all pray that this priest thing works out for the best and Beth confirms why all the nuns call Martin “The Grizzly.”

Dear Lucky,

Remember back in high school when you sat on your parents’ couch in the basement or in the backseat of a car parked on lovers’ lane and made out with your girl for hours? Remember oral sex? My problem is that the last 3 girls I’ve dated at Wash U. don’t seem to remember oral sex. They both went straight from kissing to sex. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love intercourse as much as the next guy, but I love giving and receiving head too. And not once in any of those relationships did the girl let me go down on her, or go down on me. What’s with Wash U. girls? Is this what happens after you start having intercourse? I mean once I started driving a car I never rode my bike again, but oral sex is a bit different, isn’t it Lucky?

Yours,
Sophomore Nostalgic for Blow Jobs

Dear SNBJ,

What’s with WU Girls? Sex, like any wholesome activity, has two halves. So let’s take a look at WU Guys first. You played a part in your relationship’s progress from kissing to sex. If you miss head so much, you could have held out for it before you boned her. Of course, there are some reasons why your lady might have been uninterested, and none of them have to do with WU.
Girls want to give good head. One reason girls don’t give head more often at this age is because they are afraid they are going to, pardon the expression, suck at it. Guys can try to relate by taking a good look at their penises the next time they get a chance, and then trying to imagine how intimidating it would be to have someone thrusting that in your mouth. You just can’t expect a girl in her second year of college to be dying to do that. It takes time and practice to be good at most things, and that includes blow jobs. Maybe if you ask your girlfriend to “kiss you there” she’ll know you’re interested. Then you can coach her a bit and build her confidence. Communication makes everything less awkward.
Also, you say you’ve “dated” three WU girls, and you’re a sophomore. It sounds like these relationships were less than committed. That’s fine; no one wants you to get engaged. But oral sex, especially to women, is, as you say, “a bit different.”
Sex can be physically gratifying without necessarily being intimate. But when a man gives a woman head, there’s no way for that not to be intimate. Many girls just need to feel incredibly comfortable with their partner before they want his head between their legs.
You can also think of it as a sort of sexual inflation. Oral sex was popular in high school because no one wanted to “go all the way.” In college it’s socially acceptable to have sex, therefore sex loses its value and oral sex becomes something reserved and special. Don’t despair though; no matter how much you drive your car, you never forget how to ride a bike.

Dear Lucky,

This guy I have an on-and-off thing going with is Catholic, strictly adhering to the ‘no sex before marriage’ rule. However, in talking with him further he explained that the Bible only specifies vaginal intercourse, making anal sex the pure and holy alternative. Can you confirm I’m not the only one that finds this logic just a little bit screwed up?

Sincerely,
Confused

Dear Confused,

Do you know any Catholics? Your friend doesn’t exactly fit the bill. In fact, he sounds like a wolf hiding behind a soutane. The real reason most young Catholics abstain has nothing to do with the Bible, trust me. It’s about the guilt. Upside to being a Catholic: Your religion is rich with symbolism and meaning, Saints are awesome, cathedrals are beautiful, the Pope is amusing. Downside to being a Catholic: guilt. If your on-again off-again friend abstains for religious reasons, it is because he has been taught that sex is a holy act, sacred in the eyes of God, and sanctified only by marriage.
Anal sex is never going to be seen as the pure and holy alternative for Catholics. The Bible, last I checked, has a few choice words about sodomy. Most people these days are rational enough to know that those who enjoy anal sex aren’t going to burn in a fiery pit; however, the guilt attached to the act is enough to prevent any good Catholic boy from putting anything in your out hole.
You might be better off making this friend more off-again than on. He obviously wants you to give up your ass, and isn’t above using his faith to proselytize you into acquiescing.

Web Master

Andy Warhol’s Silver Clouds might be the first art installation to successfully fuse spirituality and the tactile pleasures of Chuck E. Cheese. Currently on display at Saint Louis University’s Museum of Contemporary Religious Art (MOCRA), the exhibit has a disarmingly simple set up: twenty fans placed around the perimeter of a 30 x 20 ft. space gently push huge, silver balloons around in a graceful, weightless dance through the air. A plaque at the entrance of the exhibit invites crowd participation, and the result comes off as a playful mix between the beautiful pirouettes of that heavenly plastic bag in American Beauty, and the famous moment of The Great Dictator when Charlie Chaplin, in a parody of authoritarian egotism, whimsically tosses around a giant, inflatable globe. In short, Silver Clouds is equal parts chance, beauty and childish fun.
It might seem a bit surprising that Warhol’s work would be featured at a museum of religious art, but although he never allowed it to become a part of his carefully-crafted public persona, Warhol was in fact devoutly religious until his death in 1987. Raised in an insular Czech immigrant family as a Byzantine Catholic, even as Warhol emerged as the godfather of the decadent drug/art/music scene of the late 1960s and 1970s, he reputedly maintained weekly (and sometimes more frequent) visits to St. Vincent Frerer, the Byzantine church a few blocks from his Manhattan townhouse.
Indeed, an often-ignored facet of his oeuvre is its overt and implicit religious connections (explored thoroughly in Jane Daggett Dillenberger’s The Religious Art of Andy Warhol). Most notably, the last major project of his life was a series of 100 variations on Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” the classic depiction of Jesus’s final meal with the apostles before his betrayal by Judas. More often than such obvious referencing, though, Warhol’s work also bore subtle religious and spiritual undertones, such as his “Gold Marilyn” print in which we can recognize the golden light illuminating Marilyn’s head as the halo of Catholic iconography.
Silver Clouds is hardly a religious work, but it has an undeniably spiritual aura. Simply walking through the billowing, translucent curtains that open onto the exhibit space produces a feeling of heaven-like relaxation. The “clouds” themselves, propelled lightly by air currents, carve out lethargic and beautiful loops and dips that have an instantly soothing and calming effect on the viewer. The balloons seem to improvise in an endless and entrancing dance, sometimes lying peacefully inert high of the ground, sometimes coming to a delicate stop on the ground before twisting around and sliding back up into the air.
The curators also made the excellent move of accompanying the exhibit with peaceful, melancholy classical music (including plenty of Erik Satie), even though the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh presents the exhibit in silence. The soft strains of a piano or some shimmering strings compliment beautifully the elegant motion of the balloons.
And since the exhibit doesn’t offer much in the way of rich subtext or obvious visual variety to tease the intellect, the curators also wisely provide several different vantage points from which to appreciate the movement of the balloons. For example, the visitor is invited to lie on the tiled floor, from which she will see herself mirrored as a receding, liquid reflection on the balloon’s silvered surface, or she can climb up to the second floor, where a balcony allows a wider perspective on the space of Clouds. Indeed, those expecting a traditional museum-going experience will be a bit taken aback by the format of this exhibit. It is meant to be appreciated on purely aesthetic and experiential grounds, more like a beautiful sunset or a starry sky than a collection of paintings. This should hardly be taken, though, to mean that Clouds is a somber, sobering affair.
On any given day, a viewer walking into MOCRA might hear childish screams of delight and the loud rustling of mylar. Indeed, kids tend to appreciate Warhol’s creations more playfully, running delighted through a glimmering cluster of the big, soft balloons, swatting them upwards or grabbing them like a stuffed animal.
But given a moment alone with the clouds, or sharing them with just a few other peaceful gazers, the viewer can feel a non-denominational spirituality in the carefree meandering of the clouds. It isn’t a piety-inducing spirituality but simply one that makes the subject forget her troubles, relax, and admire the simple beauty of free motion-all things we would be lucky to experience a little more often.

Andy Warhol’s
Silver Clouds (through Dec. 14)
@ Saint Louis University’s Museum of Contemporary Religious Art

Museum hours:
Tuesday – Saturday
11:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Admission is free
Call (314) 977-7170 for directions

Web Master

HOT

By Cody Elam

Gene Dobbs Branford, longtime emcee for Jazz at the Bistro, came before the audience with an ear-to-ear grin on his face late Saturday night. It was time to introduce a future legend for his second set on the last night of four at the Bistro. “We’ve just bought extra insurance on the building,” said Dobbs, “because Josh Redman said he’s going to tear down the place tonight.” Sitting on the stairs beside the stage with sax in hand, Redman couldn’t help but crack a smile.
The sold-out crowd at the intimate Bistro sat quietly in amazement as Redman, the 33-year old phenomenon, exalted his soul in a 70-minute set of jazz, bop, funk, fusion, experimental, and electric grooves. Opening with “Still Pushin’ That Rock,” Redman and his Elastic band managed to build a song that started as a simple funk tune with an unconventional time signature into an enormous wall of noise. Redman, at the climax of the song, had to release his mouth from the grip of the saxophone a few times to scream with passion, as if releasing his soul into the air. He continued to push the limit of musical boundaries into the night, as he combined traditional jazz with modern technology and rhythm. In a long voyage filled with ambient organ chords and Eastern flavored drums played with mallets, Redman explored the next song using a rack of saxophone effects. Echoes swirled through the air and harmonized lines looped in the background as Redman played with his foot pedals.
Organist Sam Yahel was enough rhythm to make the trio sound like a full rock band, footing complex bass lines on the Hammond B-3 while chording with the left hand and improvising on the right. Drummer Jeff Ballard knocked out a steady beat, maintaining a strict groove throughout the set. Even though Redman was the featured performer, each member played off of each other, mirroring licks and rhythms.
Although the night was mostly variations on fusion, a few standard swing tunes rounded out the performance. Redman navigated through modal jams just as well as he constructed arpeggios across rhythm changes. He astounded with lightning fast runs, stretching the saxophone to the limits of its tonal capabilities in a freakishly terrific fashion. His improvisational melody-making then soothed the ear. It wasn’t only Redman’s technical and creative abilities that gave him his presence-he was truly moved by the music. Often he would sit and smile, nodding his head to show his approval of Yahel’s organ solos. Redman filled the room with an enormous energy that left the audience vibrating for hours afterward.
Redman’s sax and Yahel’s organ sounded wonderful through the Bistro’s speakers, but the drum set left something to be offered from the sound technician. A cross-microphone set up was not enough to hear the drums over the PA, instead they could only be heard off of the echoes of the walls of the Bistro. Redman also seemed to be playing with, rather than using, his effects at a few points, but he has the liberty to do so-he’s a brilliant musician. By the night’s end, the crowd left wanting more from Redman, eagerly awaiting his return next season to the Bistro.

NOT

By Brendan R. Watson

I’ve seen a number of great electric shows, the two best being the pre-game, starting line-up spectacular at the Chicago Bull’s games during Michael Jordan’s reign, and a dazzling laser show at the Parthenon in Athens, Greece. Jazz Saxophonist Dewey Redman’s second set this last Saturday at Jazz and the Bistro, failed to live up to either of these standards, despite the multitude of gizmo’s at Redman’s fingertips, the least of which was the saxophone the audience came to hear.
Redman’s electronics were at their best on the second tune, “Unknowing,” which was nothing more than the same two notes, played in several octaves, repeated over and over. How could a serious musician mistake this for music, let alone intelligent music? Redman apparently thought the audience would be impressed if he used one of his toys to record the two base notes, then play them an octave higher, while playing back the first notes, repeating the process until he had created racket, which sounded like nothing more than a electronic recording industry trade-show gimic.
The overall problem with the set was that Redman built his tunes around catchy, oversimplified rifts-the kind that provides the track for the multitude of late-night talk shows-instead of a more complex motif. In the first tune, “Still Pushin’ that Rock,” as the band worked up to a good jam, the listener was poised, waiting for the band to take a turn in the road, a mood shift, a chord shift-anything. But the band employed the broken record technique, trying to decieve the audience into thinking that their music was more complex and dynamic than it really was, by putting up a smoke screen of electronic distortion. Redman further tried to deceive the audience with a series of ill-placed yelps, and excited movements with his upper body, which rarely corresponded to what he was playing, and seemed haphazardly thrown into the mix to make up for the lack of anything real in the music to be excited about.
Redman did, however, give the audience a couple of brief allusions as to the introspective and dynamic virtocity that makes him a jazz-super-star (to the extent that such a thing exists). Redman played a tune by the organist, Sam Yahel, which because it was built on a modal piece built on a series of scales, not on a simplified rift, left the musicians more to experiment with and build upon. Redman linked together a couple of exciting runs, which showed off his impressive stamina (though he was strained in the upper register), and drummer Jeff Ballard, who’d been banging away incessantly the whole night, finally slowed up to show he had some restraint and that he could swing. Yahel also linked together a couple of groovey R&B inspired phrases on the organ. Overall, however, though the song was solid, the solos lacked the imaganative creativity that’s at the heart of compelling jazz.
The problem is that part of Redman’s experiment with electronic fusion, also includes what he calls “extended compsoition”-an attempt to script when the climax will should come in a song instead of letting the direction of the solos dictate when that moment comes, which is an apt description of Redman’s experimentation as a whole. He’s trying to force something that is unnatural, and his attempts are clumsy at best. Maybe it’s time for his fourth tune, “Can a Good Thing Last Forever.”