Under a bright afternoon sky in mid-March, Brendan Rose stood on the walkway of his sister’s Syracuse, N.Y. home fiddling with a borrowed Super 8 camera. His sister, Vanessa, eased herself onto the front stoop holding her infant daughter Akira in her lap, and then gazed back at her brother. “You kind of have to self-focus based on distance,” he explained, inching forward and back on the concrete until he reached his desired location.

Gripping the handle of the camera, the 34-year-old Syracuse University architecture graduate student peered through the viewfinder with his left eye and squinted with his right. He drew a toothy smile, creating laugh lines on his skin. When he pulled the trigger to advance film through the camera, it let out a gentle, shuttering, “click, click, click.” The clear skies above allowed him to capture quality footage on the light-sensitive reversal film he was using.

“That’s it!” Rose says, after five seconds elapsed.

And for the moment, that’s all he needed. Rose had just finished one out of a series of film portraits—tightly cropped five-second shots of family, friends, colleagues and other people he comes across in his daily routine. The movie he was making would become his first solo submission to Syracuse’s fourth annual One Take Super 8 film event. Rose developed the portrait concept when he noticed something unsettling about his still photography: his subjects were almost always buildings, not the people around him. “It would be nice for [this film] to be an archival record of something important to me,” he says.

Rose is among 19 individuals and groups from Central New York who entered this year’s event. Entrants received a single cartridge of film, three minutes and 20 seconds of creative freedom and a month’s time to shoot. Upon completion, they handed their films over to husband-and-wife event organizers Jason and Briana Kohlbrenner. Since all current Super 8 film stocks are silent, entrants had the option of turning in a CD or MP3 soundtrack. Participants could not cut, splice or even view their finished films before the screening, held April 10 at Funk ‘N Waffles café.

“You use what you have—not much is staged. Most people just go have fun,” Jason says, describing the typical One Take repertoire. “Most of it is just wacky randomness, but beautifully composed simplicity.”
Eastman Kodak introduced the Super 8 film format in 1965 as an easier, more affordable means of home-movie making. The film came in easy-to-load plastic cartridges that prevented accidental exposure, and most camera models were batter-powered. The format was so simple any amateur could pick up a camera and start shooting. Since the 1960s, however, came analog and later digital video cameras, which yielded faster, readily sharable results. It was enough to make Super 8 seem obsolete.

Through the late ‘80s and ‘90s, however, hobbyists continued to use the format and participated in grassroots festivals and events internationally. In the past ten years—the same decade that saw such digital proliferation in the form of MP3 players, pocket-sized HD camcorders and Internet-enabled cell phones—there’s been a curious regeneration of interest in analog Super 8. This year marks the tenth anniversary of the original One Take Super 8, which mushroomed from a single event in Regina, Saskatchewan to ten cities across North America. It’s part of a larger, international community of Super 8 festivals and contests—like the U.K.-based Straight 8, which annually premieres its best films at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. Super 8 has made its way into commercials, music videos, wedding films and the work of prominent movie directors like Catherine Hardwicke and Gus Van Sant. And while some naysayers have been sounding the death knell of Super 8 for years, Kodak is still producing the film stocks—in fact, it just released a new Super 8 color stock this April, Ektachrome 100D. At the film portion of this year’s South by South West (SXSW) festival and conference series in Austin, Texas, a panel discussed “The Power of Super 8 Film.”

Adam Garner, one of the panelists, has a few theories about why Super 8 remains a compelling medium today. “When you look at Super 8 it’s like you imagine you were there,” he says. “It’s like watching a memory.” This results in part from the graininess of Super 8 film, which produces an effect of warmth and haziness. Super 8—that’s 8 millimeters wide—is considered a “small gauge” format in comparison to big brothers 16 and 35mm. When its tiny frames are blown up onto a projector screen, viewers can actually see the film’s crystals of silver halide as little dancing specks. That low-tech, rough-around-the-edges feel of Super 8—along with its origins in home movies—often makes it a mental cue for “history” or “family” when incorporated into modern filmmaking, Garner says.

Garner even started his own boutique production company, Trigger Films, in Austin where he uses Super 8 to capture what he calls “life moments,” like anniversaries and weddings. “If you were to shoot a wedding on VHS tape, it’s kind of disgusting,” he says. “The magnetism’s all fucked up. It’s disappointing.” So Garner eschews the sterility and cheesiness of the average wedding video for the timelessness he can create on Super 8. To his advantage, today’s Super 8 film stocks have vastly improved since the 1960s; Kodak is now up to Vision 3 technology, which offers wider exposure latitude with finer grains.

Garner’s process exemplifies the high-end side of modern Super 8 filmmaking. He shoots on vintage cameras in the $1000 range rather than bargain models from garage sales, and he pays to have his films scanned into HD files at places like Cinelicious or Pro8mm in Los Angeles. His wedding packages cost upwards of $4,000. Last year, he shot the nuptials of tennis superstar Andy Roddick whose wedding singer was Sir Elton John.

Beyond the niche commercial market of well-heeled weddings, however, Super 8 exists as a low-budget artistic format for amateurs and experienced filmmakers alike. When Alex Rogalski founded One Take Super 8 in Saskatchewan, Canada in 2000, he’d grown tired of watching his film friends from university become frustrated by the competitive professional festival circuit. So he created his own forum.

“[One Take] was an idea I had to get filmmakers and non-filmmakers both to make something that was guaranteed an audience,” he says. He designed the event without a jury or prizes, and chose Super 8 because of its many draws . It’s portable and affordable—a roll of film costs around $15—and also has some key limitations. Super 8 lacks the instant gratification and post-production editing capabilities of digital, forcing filmmakers to plan carefully their single take. And because entrants turn their films in blind, the typical screening ends up with a grab bag of quality. “When you do see a film that’s in focus and properly lit and tells a story, it’s like a miracle. Because clearly, a lot could go wrong,” Rogalski says. “I think we want to pull back the curtain a bit on the filmmaking process. You get to see that not everything hits the mark.”

One Take spread organically, as filmmakers from the original event moved to new cities and started local incarnations. But since the late ’90s, the Internet had already been connecting Super 8 enthusiasts all over the map. Super 8 tip sites cropped up, while major websites like Craigslist and eBay facilitated the sales of Super 8 cameras, which are no longer in production. “There’s no doubt that it’s a little ironic that new technology has made Super 8 more relevant,” he says.

At the Syracuse branch, started by Rogalski’s colleague Brett Kashmere, many participants find liberation in the event’s constraints. “They might come in with this enormous script and are like, ‘Oh, we’re going to do this whole thing!’ But once they screw up, they realize they can’t rewind and shoot again,” says Jason Kohlbrenner. “I think this weight gets lifted off their shoulders.”

A week and a half after Brendan Rose finished his film portraits, his friend Mark Povinelli was hobbling around his home with a cane, preparing to film. He’d thrown out his back lifting firewood the weekend before, so Kohlbrenner granted him an extension to make his two films. On this Saturday morning, light was pouring in through the tall windows of Povinelli’s living room, along which he’d lined up a series of Ball Mason canning jars filled to the brim with junk, knick-knacks, keepsakes, memories.

“I don’t really have a plan,” he admits, hunched over and surveying the room in pale blue jeans and a faded black T-shirt. Povinelli, 49, is an electrical engineer who spends most of his free time on his artwork. Before injuring himself, he opened an art show at Craft Chemistry, the Syracuse craft store/gallery/studio owned by Briana Kohlbrenner. For roughly an hour, he dumped out the contents of the different pickling jars onto a coffee table, filmed them closely, moved on to another household object, then back to the jars. He poured out childhood toys, red clay dirt from where he grew up in Louisiana, and an assortment of sand dollars, guitar picks, fossils and other objects. He kept shooting until he ran out of film.

It became clear that Povinelli is a collector of sorts. “I was throwing out a lot of stuff, but there was some I wanted to keep,” he says, explaining his jars. “We all have this urge to hang on to the past, but that’s not always a good thing. The past can be a tricky thing, I think.”

He named his film “That Which Remains.”

After participants turned in their films, preparation for the event was far from over. Kolbrenner still had to send the films out to Pac Lab Inc. in New York City, one of a limited number of Super 8 processors in the country. When he got the processed films back, he had to splice them together and place them onto reels to project at the screening. For the first time, Rogalski wasn’t coming down to Syracuse for post-production, so Kohlbrenner had to learn it all as he went along.

On the Wednesday night before the screening, Kohlbrenner was sitting at his kitchen table wielding a small metal poker. He had metal film reels, a few adhesives and an empty tortilla bag filled with film leader spread out in from of him. His wife Briana, who had finished designing the show’s flyers and program, chimed in periodically from the next room to answer questions. Jason was threading individual films through a film viewer and taping them together on a Quik Splice, a small metal plate with raised points that latch onto sprocket holes. He was using Scotch tape instead of cement or Quik Splice tape to give the films a solid bond, but also one he could take apart easily after the screening when he’d digitize the films. The only catch about the Scotch tape: no sprocket holes. So he kept sitting there, poking the film perforations by hand. “I just need to reassure myself that, yes, I am doing this the right way,” he says.

Kohlbrenner manages the edit suites at SU’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications where he guides students in digital editing programs like Final Cut Pro. Super 8 helps him get back to the roots of film, he says. “It just has this process to it,” he says. “Your piece becomes a part of you.”

Although Super 8 has been enjoying a small renaissance in recent years, there’s always the fear that Kodak could one day discontinue the format altogether. “We don’t know how much longer they’ll be producing it because it’s a limited market,” says Rogalski. Faced with the consumer shift from film-based still photography to digital, Kodak has had to shut down plants and labs internationally and lay off thousands of employees in the past decade. Super 8 enthusiasts like Rogalski worry these economic trials might affect Kodak’s motion film sector as well, where Super 8 is low in the pecking order.

Sales of Super 8 film have declined since its home-movie heyday, and the format composes a much smaller volume in Kodak’s motion film catalog than 16 or 35mm. Still, Kodak has noticed stabilization in Super 8 sales in recent years, says Chris Johnson, product manager of Eastman Kodak’s Entertainment Imaging Division. Kodak is trying to stay sensitive to both the market and small-gauge devotees. “We do want to support these users,” Johnson says. “As long as the market continues and it’s a viable business, we will continue to support Super 8.”

At 7:15 on the night of the screening, Kohlbrenner’s face was flushed as he weaved through the packed audience in Funk ‘n Waffles carrying a bundle of blue wires. The espresso machine screamed. Kohlbrenner disappeared behind the projector screen, then returned moments later to rummage through bags in the back of the room. At 7:30, he appeared at the microphone in front of the screen with a piece of scotch tape stuck to his shirt, announcing that the show would begin a little late.

When the lights finally dimmed, the movies flowed in quick rotation separated by brief, time-lapsed interludes of film credits arranged in magnetic letters on the Kohlbrenners’ refrigerator. Film subjects ranged from Godzilla-invades-Syracuse to misunderstood robot-human love, and laughter often filled the room. A few films showed up in almost complete darkness on screen, likely due to poor lighting during shooting. Povinelli’s first film, “That Which Remains,” appeared out of focus, but produced a sort of kaleidoscope effect during close-up shots of colorful objects.

Rose’s film, titled “Portr8,” played to a soundtrack of Kanye West’s “Flashing Lights,”—the synthetic drumbeat often synching up with the shift from portrait to portrait. The movie unraveled in intimate smiles and straight-on stares from the people Rose surrounds himself with, their images flickering grainy and warm on the screen. Rose’s architecture thesis focuses on community installations, and earlier that day, he’d referred to people around him as the “material” of his work and life. Several of his portrait subjects were seated in that very room. And with Super 8’s timeless look and rumored shelf life of some 100 years, it seemed Rose would get that lasting personal archive after all, one tiny frame at a time.

Photography: Mackenzie Reiss
Styling: Lauren Tousignant
Make-up: Leah Bucher, Gabrielle Traub
Hair: Leilani Maidonado, Abisola Shonde
Models: Eva Lyons, Nifemi Ogunsuyi, Nancy Szarkowski

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Six or seven protesters stood outside Crouse-Hinds Hall — the Chancellor’s HQ — in the freezing cold, plotting where to put their protest snowmen.

“Right in the middle of the walkway that leads to the front door,” one suggested. “That’ll show ‘em,” another replied. “Show ‘em we’re serious about this tuition stuff.” The group quickly vetoed that idea. The snowmen might block handicapped access to the building.

The others nodded in agreement and began building snowmen to the side. The next morning, the snowmen still stood, but nobody was around to give a shit. Once again, the Students for a Democratic Society hadn’t made a blip on Syracuse University’s radar.

This is the story of campus activism — or lack thereof — at SU. With tuition on the climb and Mayfest, the one day of salvation, almost ripped from our hands, this is not the time to be a social loafer. Those that do care, like the liberal members of SDS who tried to give Chancellor Nancy Cantor a frosty welcome to work that morning, complain that the rest of the student body is a bunch of inert, apathetic babies. It’s difficult to determine what happened to the enthusiasm of the 70s. Back then, the campus teemed with bearded, dope-smoking revolutionaries, and the administration cowered in fear of an incipient student uprising.

Many believe it was simply a different time. America was at war while sex, love, drugs, and music overturned the stiff cultural mores of the 50s. Granted, America is currently involved in wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, but almost all the soldiers who fight choose to do so. Male students in the 60s and 70s faced the very real prospect of being shipped off at a moment’s notice to a war that claimed more than 58,000 lives.

“It became a matter of literally life and death,” said Robert Tembeckjian, a former leader in the Vietnam protests and current administrator of the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct. “Your future was either going to be in Vietnam or it was going to be protesting against Vietnam.”

“The cultural and political evolution … the music, the drugs … made us think that we were going to change the world,” said Sam Hemingway, who served as the editor-in-chief of The Daily Orange at the time. “If you’re going to change the world, you’re going to have to do some protesting, getting arrested, shake the powers that be. It was in the flow of something that seemed natural.”

Protesting violently, standing up to the man, and power-to-the-people-ing were necessary to be heard. And as we all heard on our campus tours, SU led the way.
But not really.

SU saw about a month of balls-to-the-wall protests in May 1970, but if news reports and stories from alumni are a good measure, this case was more lightning in a bottle than an indication that SU has some sort of proud, rooted tradition in activism.

On April 30, 1970, after promising America was on its way out of Vietnam, President Richard Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia. On May 4, students at Kent State University in Ohio protested, and National Guard troops opened fire, killing four students. SU erupted in earnest protest, according to archives of numerous publications, including The Post-Standard, The Syracuse Herald-Journal, and The Daily Orange. Thousands of students converged on the Quad to listen to speakers at Hendricks Chapel. Protestors sat in at the administration building, demanding an end to both the war in Vietnam and military contracts at SU, The Daily Orange reported.

Students set up barricades around campus and demanded that SU shut down for the remainder of the school year in honor of the Kent State shootings. That night, protestors firebombed the bookstore, smashed dozens of windows across campus, and repeatedly spray painted “Strike!” on the Hall of Languages. Even The Daily Orange, which was then under university control, changed its masthead to “Strike! Strike! Strike!” with a clenched fist between the “D” and the “O.” Student body President David Ifshin became the face of the movement when he draped an enormous banner with a giant fist over the student government building that read: “By any means necessary.”

How would Student Association President Jon Barnhart pay homage to Ifshin’s efforts? Perhaps by hanging a poster that reads: “Mayfest: By any University Senate-supported means necessary.”
But Ifshin-style activism wasn’t commonplace.

“When I first arrived in 1967, it was a pretty calm, quiet campus,” said William LeoGrande, the editorial editor of The Daily Orange in 1970, who is currently the dean of the American University School of Public Affairs. “There weren’t major demonstrations about much of anything.”
The university reverted back to its old ways of May 1970.

“We took a lot of shit for what we did from the administration,” Hemingway said.
He expected the same sense of campus activism when. The Daily Orange ran an in-depth article about racism on the football team in the fall of 1970.

“We thought it would bring [students] to a new sense of focus, things that are closer to home,” Hemingway said. “But in fact the passion of spring had dissipated over the summer. They just wanted to go to football games. They wanted to go back to their lives pre-strike. We walked out on a limb and we got really left out there.”

Tembeckjian argued that most of the attention SU received came from Ifshin. When commencement rolled around in 1970, however, Tembeckjian was chosen to speak and represent the strike, rather than the radical Ifshin.

The protests at SU weren’t on the radar of national media outlets. Strikes and protests hit 450 other schools after the Kent State shootings, according to a 1970 article in U.S. News and World Report. SU was no University of Wisconsin-Madison, where students blew up the Army Mathematics Research Center and killed one student, norwas it or any of the numerous campuses where violent protest erupted.

“Frankly, our [strike] was pretty peaceable by comparison,” Hemingway said.
Fast forward to today. What do we want? Mayfest. Where do we want it? On Euclid Avenue. What will we do to get it? Join a Facebook group. And if the mood strikes, update our statuses or “like” someone else’s in the ultimate show of modern solidarity.

The economy might be an issue that could mobilize students like the Vietnam War did, but it’s a double-edged sword, argued both LeoGrande and Hemingway.

“Back then, there was really not much worry that we’d be able to go out and find jobs,” LeoGrande said. “We had some student debt but it wasn’t as big a burden as it is today. All of those things tend to make students today a little more focused on their personal aspirations.”

Hemingway agreed. “People don’t want to risk their student loans,” he said. “Back then, you assumed you were going to get a job. Now, you get a reputation that wouldn’t look good to an employer, a couple arrests, maybe they figure you’re not their kind of person.”

The day after the snowman fail, SDS held a sit-in at Bird Library. They had permission from librarians, of course, who checked up on them every so often to make sure they weren’t breaking the library’s quiet rule.

The truth is, SU has always been like this — a cross-section of sports fans, bookworms, and few-and-far-between activists — no matter what you hear on campus tours. The late 60s to the early 70s was a watershed era for activism at SU, but it was the result of a rare cultural epoch that swept college campuses around the nation.

Ever the student body president, Ifshin maintained hope for the future of activism at SU. But concerns about a passive future still apply 40 apathetic years later.

“We hope that SU has not retrenched itself back into its apathetic past,” Barry Lowe wrote in a Shut-Down editorial on May 16, 1970, less than two weeks after the strike started. “We can’t live long in the glory of a mass meeting on May 4. We are slipping back … maybe no one cares … maybe someone does.”

illustration by Monica Palmer

The bearded Jesse Stiles peers at a laptop on a folding table in the middle of the Warehouse Gallery in Downtown Syracuse. Three rapidly changing projections of random images play on the whitewashed walls around him. Computer chips, microprocessors, LED spotlights, and slabs of wood surround him and his robot designer Mike McAllister. The clutter is his work-in-progress.

Stiles is a new media artist and an electronic musician. He freelances for various multimedia projects and has taught university-level courses in sound production. His first solo exhibition, “Automatic Speleology,” will be featured at the Warehouse Gallery until May 29 and includes live robotic drumming, electronic music, high-definition video and photography, and a multi-colored light show, all set to randomized algorithms. Stiles’ body of work straddles the line between the commercial and the strictly artistic.

Anja Chàvez, the curator of contemporary art at the Warehouse, traveled to Stiles’ home in DeRuyter, N.Y., last year to try to bring his work to the Warehouse. “It was so clear,” she said, reflecting on the first couple of hours she had spent with him. “You could see his brain was just working constantly on so many very good ideas.”

Stiles titled his project Automatic Speleology, referencing the scientific study of cavernous spaces, to show his admiration for speleologists who attempt to discover the secrets of the earth through exploration. He relates that sentiment to his artwork by exploring deeper meanings embedded in the different media he utilizes.

Stiles described Automatic Speleology as a “completely generative” show. “Nothing in the show is being repeated,” he said proudly. “There are no looping patterns. Everything is being generated as you observe it.”

These algorithms constantly re-edit the five channels of video footage projected on the walls and the six channels of sound, each playing through a different loudspeaker. Throughout the videos, people walk around, snow falls on still objects, and tracking shots meander through empty roads in the night. The images loom, darkly omniscient, and display much of the past year of Stiles’ life. Outside the gallery, the LED lights — on loan from Stiles’ friend and fellow artist Carl Gruesz — strobe to the beat of the algorithm, backlighting the robotic drummers that pound on the glass windows of the Warehouse with rubber hammers, perfectly in sync.

The robots were designed by McAllister and built with help from his students at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Stiles and McAllister predict that the drummers will hit the windows almost 9 million times by the end of the exhibit’s run.

“They’re all puppets, and I’m the grand puppeteer,” Stiles said. The whole show is purposefully integrated to create a multisensory experience that hits an audience just a song would. “[When I’m] creating systems that are going to rapidly re-edit things, I’m thinking about a drumroll, I’m thinking about 32nd notes…I’m thinking about textures the way you might think about arranging a song, but the textures might actually be visual.”

Starting in August 2000, to August 2001, Stiles lived on the Watson Fellowship for a year. The grant for a post-graduate independent study abroad allowed him to club-hop in London, fight off monkeys in India, and tour the Australian Outback, all while picking up music tips and recording local music.

After returning from Australia in August 2001, he released Watson Songs, an album combining his own music with samples he recorded during his year abroad, and enrolled in graduate school at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he decided to start building his own tools to make music.

“That was really when I opened the floodgate to all these other media that I’m working with now,” Stiles said. “This idea that music is two channels of sound in stereo is this arbitrary thing that came out of the recording industry. All these programs that you get out of the box are for helping you make two channels of sound. As a musician that’s a crazy thing to limit yourself to.”

Designing his own software tools — which he had never attempted before graduate school — helped Stiles express himself while staying true to his past experiences. A graduate education gave him his first taste of creating algorithms, as well as working in conjunction with multimedia artists.

In India, Stiles learned as much as he could about classical Hindustani music — a Northern Indian musical tradition — particularly the integral concept of the raga. The raga is a series of 12 notes that a musician can use to compose a melody. Unlike Western music, which is divided into major and minor keys, the 12-note raga is further divided into seven-note “thats,” which a musician is free to use and experiment with.

“Because Indian music is improvised, it’s a great model for what I do, which is kind of improvised by a computer,” Stiles said. “A raga is really a set of rules, the way that this show is just a lot of rules … [The 12 notes in a raga] have different relationships to each other and one of them is the center. Performing the raga is about exploring the possibilities of these rules and returning to this central tone.”

Though Stiles’ equipment appears to limit his ability to express himself, he does not find his constraints debilitating. While preparing for the exhibition, Stiles worked with nine spotlights, five projectors, six loudspeakers, 12 robots, three glass resonators, and three computers.

“It’s all about building a structure that has limitations, and you find out what you can do inside of it,” he insisted. “Having no limitations would actually be a problem.”

Like his artwork, Stiles’ life moves spontaneously. He was willing to embark on impromptu, month-long electronic music tours along the Rust Belt, while making his way to and from Chicago for an improvisational music and dance presentation. He rents an old textile mill with his girlfriend Olivia Robinson in DeRuyter — just 30 miles south of Syracuse — where he lives today.

Even the rigid robots that power the live drumming in Stiles’ performances have the same element of spontaneity, according to industrial design veteran McAllister. Working with a mill typically takes a lot of precision, but McAllister talked about making cuts to metal pieces based on spur-of-the-moment intuition rather than planning. “It’s kind of this funny balance between loose and tight,” he said, describing his production style. “And I think that’s true of [Stiles’] music.”

Robinson, who worked as a production assistant on Automatic Speleology, describes Stiles’ latest project as less marketable than more traditional art pieces, which can be easily valued, bought, and sold. “The Red House sometimes brings in people who are doing things with lights and audio, but this is particularly very different from what’s gone on in galleries at SU,” she said.

Stiles said he was very impressed with the Warehouse’s openness to his project, and delighted in the resources they provided him, including the space, projectors, and sound system.

Chàvez said that the Warehouse strives to present artists that operate in various media and truly matter in contemporary art. “The larger community may not necessarily have seen [Stiles’] kind of art,” she said. She hopes that many different members of the Syracuse community will attend the exhibit.

Attendees young and old mixed it up on the dance floor at Automatic Speleology’s public reception and dance party at the Warehouse Gallery on March 25. Stiles spent the night explaining his artistic process to guests and broke up the presentation with his two-hour DJ set, using a laptop and mixing board. He played poppy, dance-oriented tunes that melded with the images on the screens around him, an effect only improved by his guests’ intermittent dancing. The windows quickly bruised with visible rubber track marks where the robots struck the glass panes.

“There were four people standing outside in the rain just staring at [the robots],” McAllister said. “Kinda one of those weird things, you know, it was like, ‘Wow, it was worth it.’”

Stiles plans to release two albums later this spring. He described one as a “bubblegum pop” record, featuring a variety of instruments as well as what he called “imaginary instruments,” or sound effects created independently that emulate real instruments.

Despite the fact that his performances can work in both dance party pop music venues and high-art locales, Stiles classifies himself as neither a mainstream artist nor an art-gallery staple. To him, those distinctions only hold artists back. “Once you say ‘This is me, I’m in this band, this is what I do,’ you’ve closed the door on a lot of things,” he said.

In the end, it all returns to Stiles’ original metaphor for Automatic Speleology. “Where everyone else in the world says, ‘All right, we need to turn around — get the fuck out of here,’ the speleologists would say, ‘I think we can go even further in.’”

photography by Devanshi Tripathi

My boyfriend is the most competitive jerk ever, and it kind of turns me on. Any idea how I can get him to release that competitive spirit in bed?
Man has incorporated competition into sex since the Stone Age. Neanderthals competed to see how many dinosaur bones they could shove into each other’s orifices. Fast forward a few millennia to a time when the King of Pop taught us all how to play tag in a king-sized bed.

The easiest way to add games to sex is spicing things up during foreplay. Strip poker is the obvious first choice, so prove your sexual prowess by choosing something a little more off-kilter. Playing hide and seek with the condom can add some excitement. Kick the can is also lots of fun when you replace the can with an open bottle of lube. Try jump rope with anal beads. (Or anal play with a jump rope, for that matter.) For lesbian orgies, Dildo Dodgeball, DilDodge for short, is also a nice twist. Speaking of twist, Twister doesn’t even need an explanation — the commercial was basically child porn.

But the most exciting way to add games to sex may also sound the most ridiculous. With the girl riding on top, whip out a board game and play it on the bed beside you. Keep thrusting throughout the game, and the No. 1 rule is that you must find a new position after each person’s turn. Just be sure to choose a simple game like Sorry! or Trouble — games like Clue may make your guy go soft. Because even if guys think with their dicks, those dicks don’t give a shit about Colonel Mustard.

My gag reflex is awful. Every time I give a guy head, I’m lucky to keep from vomiting all over him. Sadly, this has happened more than once. What can I do?
While my personal gag reflex goes bezerk every time I hear the word “abstinence,” many human beings suffers from hypersensitivity to touch in the throat region. It appears that some people are just born with smaller throats, just like some of us are born with a flat ass (yes, I’m bitter).

Luckily, just as I got over my fear of obese Latina women, your throat can get over its fear of cock. I once started sleeping with a guy with a monster dick, so my throat had some training to do. Trust me, if I could down that Kirstie Alley-sized sausage, you can down a normal one.

Start by putting yourself in control and practice with a banana: it’s a good way to trick your throat. It will think the banana is a penis, but then, your taste buds will be like, “Nah, bitch, it’s food!” Ergo, the throat will loosen up and you can deep throat that potassium rod. The key is to train your throat to remember the banana when sucking on some manhood. Your throat will get confused and open up. But if you still can’t suck without gagging, I suggest surgery. Life is too short to not suck dick.

The United States Senate, esteemed deliberative body, world’s most exclusive club, and nicest nursing home in America, is no longer necessary. While it was certainly kind of them to deliberate on our behalf — some of us more than others — for more than 200 years, their time of utility has come to an end.

Not to say the Senate a bad job, but its time has simply passed (although the multiple failures attempting to pass anti-lynching legislation or that infamous middle-finger to Wilson’s League of Nations just may disqualify them from the Medal of Freedom). Current filibuster rules don’t even require anyone to stand up and talk — they need only threaten, in order to stall the legislation of the day.

We the people no longer need the input of the Upper House on our legislative matters. We already know what will happen: squabble, dither, dather, offend, stall, sell-out, run for president. Let’s just not have a Senate and say we did, for constitutionality’s sake, if that still matters at all these days.

The recently passed healthcare reform may temporarily instill a sense of purpose and pride in the old bunch. But healthcare reform is really only a case in point. America first began debating ways to fix its healthcare system under Roosevelt. No, not FDR — Republican Teddy Roosevelt thought that a system to expand medical coverage for more Americans was probably a good idea over 100 years ago. Truman, Johnson, Nixon, and Clinton each attempted to reform the system so less people would die. The Senate, like the inane, satire-of-contemporary-bureaucracy “computer” in Little Britain, said no. Senate says no. Senate says no. Senate says no.

Part of the reason for this nay-saying is the Senate filibuster rules, which — for reasons too labyrinthine to flesh out in this article — require a supermajority of 60 senators to pass anything of substance. The fuzzy math in the Senate universe states that a majority is not simply “more than half,” but more than three-fifths. These days, one senator can place an “anonymous” hold on a bill (effectively holding the legislation hostage) and demand goodies for their state in order to secure its release. This gobbledygook isn’t in the constitution either; it’s something the Senate decided would be cool based on a suggestion by Aaron Burr, who later shot Alexander Hamilton, also known as our hottest founding father, because he also thought duels were a good idea.

As the gods of irony orchestrated, Alexander Hamilton was also the U.S. daddy with enough foresight to caution against our present situation. In Federalist Paper 75, he warned against the idea of a supermajority: “The history of every political establishment in which this principle has prevailed is a history of impotence, perplexity and disorder.” Sounds like how the Senate functions now, except for the impotence part— as Senators John Edwards, Larry Craig, John Ensign, and others can attest.

Even, worse, the Senate simply scoffs at the “one man, one vote” principal of equal representation of our citizens in government. Back in the day, when our frumpy forefathers were figuring out how to get all the bratty colonies to play nicely, they threw a bone to New Jersey with the Great Compromise. This granted which America a bicameral legislature, one of which was based on population, and one where New York received the same number of seats as Delaware. This was the Senate. (That’s probably why Delaware approved the constitution first − good fricken deal.)

This means if a small state produces a senator of particularly strong health and re-electability, and can rise to power in the seniority-based structure of the Senate, then a relatively small group of citizens might have quite a bit of power over their fellow Americans. Think the residents of West Virginia, their love of coal, their old Senator Rockefeller and ancient Senator Robert Byrd (third-in-line to the presidency), and the Senate’s general inability to do anything in regards to climate change. Believe me, these things are connected.

Some may ask, why can’t we destroy the Senate little by little, say by reforming the filibuster rule, or halting the election of new senators and letting the old ones die. These are interesting ideas, but I would counter that there is no time like the present. As Julius Ceasar, a man who worked very, very closely with a Senate that got shit passed put it like this: “Experience is the teacher of all things.” And experience taught us to send the old folks home.

illustration by Walker Kampf-Lassin

Mark Monette’s chirping walkie-talkie echoed throughout the deserted classroom in the Physics building. “I have to keep it on because in case something goes wrong, I’m technically on the clock,” he explained from behind black-framed glasses.

Monette works for Syracuse University in Business and Facilities Maintenance Services for up to 40 hours per week. But on Sundays and Mondays, he swaps his walkie-talkie for a pair of drumsticks.
Monette plays drums for three bands: Teaching Robots Fear, The Historical Society, and More to Come. He has worked with more groups than he can count (literally), from traditional rock to experimental sound waves. He purchased his first drum set at age 17 and taught himself the fundamentals of rock, basing his techniques on his musical heroes like Jimmy Chamberlin, the drummer from the Smashing Pumpkins.

“If you want the world to be a better place, you’ve got to do something,” he said. “There’s always been something inside of me that let me know if I’m going to be able to convey anything to the world, it would be through music.”

Relish the Tilt, one of Monette’s previous bands, combined instrumentals with clips from old-school radio shows. The band looped short phrases for listeners to seriously consider, even if only a few understood the message.

While fame in the music industry has appeal to many musicians, Monette isn’t looking for stardom. “I’m not a spotlight guy at all,” he confessed. “I can understand that being a performer, you’d want some degree of attention, but I just want people to pay attention and be affected.” He doesn’t play drums to pay the bills – he plays because he loves to.

He satisfies his drumming fix with weekly eight-hour band practices in Fulton, N.Y. A towering barn with peeling red paint sits on 160 acres of land in Fulton, alongside two sloping farmhouses and smaller sheds. Many local performers, including Monette and his bands, have practiced at the Barn, which doubles as a concern venue. Christmas lights hanging from the ceiling dimly lit up the basement, illuminating parts of a rusty swingset bent beyond repair, musty couches that could have been inhabited by living creatures, and a makeshift bar in the corner.

The band members must ascend a treacherous ladder-staircase hybrid to access studio space, with steps so narrow Monette suggested climbing sideways. The next floor was emptier, with residual hay covering parts of the floor. A Ronald McDonald head peered down from the loft where bats darted across the expansive ceiling.

Jokes and lighthearted banter reverberated around the plywood box of a studio space, which was comfortingly small with bright colors and cigarette smoke swirling in the air. Monette and the rest of his band, Teaching Robots Fear, sat behind his drum set and messed around with complex beats as the rest of the band tuned up and broke down chord progressions, with John Roll on bass and Mike Kennedy and his wife Jen both on guitar and vocals.

Inspired by the bands Tool, Trans Am, and Uzeda, Teaching Robots Fear hovers somewhere in the realms of “angry folk” and “progressive female rock,” a testament to Jen’s moving vocals, according to Monette. The instrumentals swelled, filling the room; Monette’s percussion carried the crackling guitar riffs, traveling bass, and raw melodies.

“Mark is a really freaking talented drummer and he’s able to find his niche in any band,” Jen said. “Playing with him has expanded my musical interests and what I paid attention to in music. And his use of cymbals really sticks out to me.”

Monette spent the past year building the room into a proper studio along with John Roll and Glenn, the former owner of the Barn. But it’s still very much a work in progress. “Mark really made it a workable space,” Jen said. “He gave it much better acoustics and rewired it completely.”

Monette has been the driving force behind the operation and has carefully planned how to rework every corner of the studio space. “I want that to be my recording space from now until forever,” Monette mused. “If I’m going to put it down and call it mine, I’ve got to be able to say it’s good.” He even installed interchangeable surfaces on the walls so that the acoustics of the room fit perfectly with any instrument.

Monette’s musical endeavors have become powerfully emotional experiences for him, allowing him to exert his full energy and continually challenge himself. His day job changing lightbulbs and picking up the trash provides him with a steady income and the opportunity for a college education. “The result of your efforts is often dependent on your intentions,” Monette said. “We’re all human and I don’t need the spotlight. I do what I love and I can’t ask for anything more than that. JM

By Evan Klonsky : Illustration by Amelia Bienstock

In May 2007, Elizabeth Slate returned to Syracuse University to finish her degree in sociology. As a new mother, she had spent the past year and a half on the road searching for a suitable environment to raise her daughter.

Slate unsuccessfully returned home with what she saw as the only solution: build her own eco-village. Coincidentally, Slate’s neighbor at the time, Frank Cetera, a graduate student at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, had similar ideas. The two quickly partnered up and founded an organization centered on permaculture, an approach to designing human settlements to mimic relationships found in nature.

The organization, known as the Alchemical Nursery, is starting to gain traction as an alternative lifestyle community in Syracuse. While its commitment to the environment is noble, it is also an unprecendented approach within the existing local landscape. Permaculture advocates practices like wetland design systems and forest gardening, which Cetera calls “on the fringe of the ideas that the public is comfortable with at this point.”

The project’s ultimate goal is connecting multiple properties to live off the same agricultural area and simultanesously creating a social stimulant. “It’s a framework that we’re trying to work on developing so everyone has that as a way of interacting and communicating with each other,” Cetera said.

Alchemical Nursery members believe that integrating permacultural methods will save energy, eliminate waste, and pave the way toward increased sustainability and self-sufficiency. The organization’s efforts also focus on providing an economic and social catalyst for urban areas by weaving agriculture into Syracuse’s inner city.

“A lot of people associate us with the green or urban sustainability movement, and we are definitely associated with those movements,” Cetera said. “But we are trying to take things a step further.”
Perhaps the best way to understand how the organization goes that extra mile is to examine its name.

While a moniker like Alchemical Nursery might conjure images of medieval preschoolers or basement chemistry experiments, it actually takes on a more literal meaning. Alchemy, in its broadest sense, reflects the metamorphosis from one material to another, while nursery refers to a careful cultivation of progress. Therefore, Slate’s coinage of Alchemical Nursery implies a nurturing attitude toward the growth and transformation of urban communities.

“In my opinion, it’s the way everyone should be living,” Slate said. “You can’t just focus on one piece of an issue and hope to make much of a change. It’s not only how you design and maintain the landscape around you, but also how to live in terms of a lifestyle.”

Given its unconventional practices and radical, often lofty rhetoric about “transforming” the community, the Alchemical Nursery may be confused with some kind of communalist cult, and critics of the movement have not refrained from voicing their opinions.

An article by Greg Williams in Whole Earth accused permaculturists of being not only idealistic, but also naively dogmatic. “Their core ideas on the productivity of mature ecosystems are both unsubstantiated and contradict ecological theory,” Williams wrote.

Emanuel Carter, a professor of landscape architecture at SUNY-ESF, disagrees. He recently brought his students to one of Alchemical Nursery’s ecological demonstrations. “It’s an idealist point of view, but it’s also coldly practical in many ways,” he said. “It’s a lifestyle that if you agree to live in, you can sustain it almost ad infinitum.”

Even if the organization doesn’t convince droves of Syracuse residents to adopt new lifestyles, it may offer effective solutions to many of the city’s problems. Carter calls permaculturists “urban pioneers” because their practices benefit both the environment and low-income residents. Teaching the urban poor to grow their own food or share green spaces has the potential to create noticeable savings among consumers.

“It’s a matter of communicating and understanding our concepts,” Cetera said. “Once we’re able to communicate to someone to the point where they understand it, then they accept it.”

Slate and Cetera know that radical change won’t happen overnight, and are content with starting small — at least for now. The group began a project that involves buying a property for only one dollar as part of the Near West Side Initiative. It aims to recondition its Otisco Street property and demonstrate that shared backyards are more efficient than separate areas.

Carter doubts the Alchemical Nursery will receive national attention anytime soon as an example of sound ecological living. Yet he believes it will convince at least a small percentage of residents to make more efficient lifestyle changes. Thus, Slate and Cetera view their work with a measure of success.

The Alchemical Nursery saw growth from The Upstate N.Y. Permaculture Gathering on March 13 at the Gear Factory. It brought more than 100 like-minded individuals together to share beliefs on permaculture, urban sustainability, and community resources.

“There’s no better thing that citizens can do but choose to anchor their lives in a certain place and be good to their neighbors,” Carter said. “And seemingly, that’s part of the Alchemical Nursery’s mission. It’s citizenship, what you do for your neighbors and with your neighbors, that exudes what good citizenship can be.”

For a second, the democratization of fashion via the Internet — and the questionable tastes it unleashed on the world — warranted a bitch slap, and the fading Prada-wearing devils of the industry deserved a defense. And then some anonymous quotes from Vogue hit the wires, calling Gabourey Sidibe, the Oscar nominee from the film Precious, a “joke in the fashion community” whose weight would make it “impossible” for her to fit into top designers’ clothes.

Apart from their rudeness, insecurity, and maliciousness, these statements also indicate a lack of creativity and vision from the fashion elite. Just because Sidibe doesn’t look like a coke fiend doesn’t mean she cannot grace the cover of Vogue — the beautiful (though strangely cleavage-focused) cover with Jennifer Hudson in 2007 attests to that. But for years, Vogue sent readers one message: beauty is defined by weight. This is not only damaging, but also limiting.

If designers are truly supposed to be as creative as they claim, why the hell can’t they design clothing to fit a voluptuous girl like Sidibe? There’s something rotten in the fashion world. At the core of female self-esteem issues in our society. Sidibe is a beautiful young woman who radiates warmth when other models freeze the air. Her tears during the Oscar nomination dedications when Oprah described her journey from skipping school to “being in the same category as Meryl Streep” were the most genuine moments of the evening. Sidibe is the soul that the fashion industry is missing.

It’s time to ditch fashion’s wire hangers in favor of some human models. And let’s start with Precious herself.

illustration by Keisha Cedeno

I wish I’d been around for the good ol’ days when “surrendering the tapes” meant recordings of conversations in the Oval Office implicating a crooked president undermining his opposition. But I get to tell my future grandchildren that I grew up when the media rammed sex tapes down the deep throats of the American public as Democrats and Republicans douched it out to see who could make headlines on TMZ. Woodward and Bernstein should be so proud.

From Senator John Edwards’ affair to New York’s 29th Congressional Representative Eric Massa tickling his male aides, it seems someone slipped Viagra in the water near Capitol Hill. And that was only some of the Democrats this year.

Spreading beyond the illustrious walls of our Nation’s Capitol, Governor Paterson in New York, who has admitted to his own extra-marital affairs in seedy chain hotels, has been accused of bullying his driver’s girlfriend into dropping domestic violence charges. What a champion of women’s rights he is.

At least Eliot pulled out gracefully and without all the mess. Goddamn. I wish I knew safe words for the rest of them.

Alright, so that’s only a handful Democrats. Expecting the party of Bill Clinton and JFK Jr. to be upstanding family men is—to put it mildly—naïve. But I bet those family men in the Republican Party never get caught with their pants down.

Ha! Unfortunately for the Grand Old (Key) Party, American political sexuality swings both ways.

Republican South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail when he was really chasing tail in Argentina. Family Values chump California Assemblyman Mike Duvall resigned in September 2009 after someone videotaped him bragging about boning two female lobbyists. His words: “I’m getting into spanking her.” He was just being fatherly.

But the biggest scandal of all is how the media is fucking the American public, distracting us with sex so we don’t look at our real problems. We’ve been at war for eight years, students across the country are protesting in the streets against tuition hikes and the New York State budget negotiations are at a near standstill (I’d think the budget had been handcuffed to someone’s bed in Albany, but then we’d have heard more about it).

Media outlets are the biggest whores of all of them all, repeating Massa’s claims that Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel approached him, naked, in the locker room to intimidate him into passing the health care reform bill. (Though seriously Massa, keep your fantasies to yourself and far away from health care reform.)

And while reporters are out covering Nevada Senator Jon Ensign’s affair with his friend’s wife, former mistresses can tie down those sex advice columns. We can even label the lovers of politicians “victims” of immoral men (though I make a clear distinction between those who chose to enter a relationship consensually and those who were harassed, raped, etc.—that shit’s not cool.) It’s really hard to find out if a public official is married. You might break a nail as you type his name into Google.

Let’s not pretend sex scandals in politics are a new phenomenon. Or that extramarital sex in any way negatively impacts a politician’s ability to pass legislation, represent a constituency, or kiss babies on the campaign trail. Thomas Jefferson had Sally Hemings and Ben Franklin had his prostitutes. They helped create an awesome living document known as the United States Constitution. Incompetency and scandalizing stupid political smokescreens (like sex, gasp!) are far more hurtful than the sex itself.

So let’s all shut up about who’s diddling whom in politics and leave pillow talk reporting for where it really belongs: Hollywood gossip blogs.

illustration by Amelia Bienstock

You’ve heard it all before.

“And what’s your major?”

“I’m a journalism major. Magazine journalism, actually.”

Snicker, snicker, throat clearing.

“Oh, um, wow. That’s, uh, great. This is a pretty rough time for newspapers and stuff. Good luck with that.”

I don’t care if you’re studying sociology or saxophone, it’s both the best and worst time to be in college. It’s the best because we’re delaying our entry into the job market as long as possible, but it’s the worst because our impending ejection from the wealthy hands of a massive educational institution hangs like a cloud of icy shit over us.

So what to do with a $200,000 education (which is mostly loans), a raging recession, and a degree in a field that’s virtually jobless?

Follow your dreams!

At least that’s what the people at Readers Digest, Psychology Today, and countless self-help books tell us. Recent graduates are advised to throw out their five-year plans and pursue their true passions — mostly business ventures — regardless of degrees. Apparently it’s perfect timing, but it sounds more to me like a sugar coat on, “You’re not going to make any money anyway, so why not be poor and happy?”

Sure, try your hand at making sushi. Go ahead and audition for that nudist performance troupe. Finally patent that eco-friendly toothpick. But beware: no good will come of these ventures. Dropping everything you’ve ever worked for to become a cupcake artisan isn’t going to make our country’s situation any better.

Experts like Edward D. Hess, professor of business administration at the University of Virginia, believe “down time” is great incentive to start a business, but it won’t be an easy ride. It takes commitment and worthwhile, marketable ideas.

Hess is probably right, but you need money to make money. Thousands of people with “good ideas” will jump into entrepreneurship without any training. Cold turkey CEOs make beelines to the bank and demand loans to start their “dream businesses.” No more working for the man, right? Wrong. The “man” quickly becomes the IRS. And when your business tanks, add that eco-friendly toothpick loan onto your student loans.

If you’re in an industry sucking a big one, don’t miss out on an opportunity for true innovation. The most obvious solution to your industry’s recession woes may be right at your fingertips.
So stick to your guns, be creative, and remember: you’ll make more money starting a movement than creating that eco-friendly toothpick. Trust me.

illustration by Chelsea Fierst

Comic strips make us laugh. Gay and lesbian ones make us drool.

When LGBT themes first ran in comic strips in the ‘70s and ‘80s, tempers flared in American households, newspapers gambled when choosing to run them and gay and lesbian print comics just sort of died away.

But online, a secret cult of homosexual comic lovers started to take shape. It can be argued that the Web often serves as a platform for writers and artists to experiment more freely with their liberal tendencies, thereby paving the way for more LGBT Internet comics.

And the juices certainly flow with Danielle Corsetto’s Girls with Slingshots and Greg Fox’s Kyle’s Bed & Breakfast. Corsetto started her strip in 2004 and currently updates it five days a week. Although the cartoon features a straight female protagonist (Hazel), Corsetto uses the rest of the clan to explore the many layers of female sexuality.

Jamie, a rather busty florist, spurs laugh after laugh through her uncensored speech and bi-curious adventures. After she convinces herself she had sex with Angel, the cartoon’s lesbian bartender, Jamie wanders into a lesbian bar and has a one-night stand with a woman named Thea to prove once and for all whether she’s gay. Thea, who turns out to be Hazel’s boss, hooks up (more than once) with Angel in the bar’s break room, adding a new twist of dyke drama.

But beyond a naughty librarian with an undercover S&M nightlife and the frequent nights when the strong female cast strips down to their underwear, Girls with Slingshots also manages to dig at some serious identity and relationship questions with which modern lesbians often wrestle. For one, Jamie finds she can only get lesbians to give her a second look and buy her drinks when she plays into the flannel stereotype – otherwise, she’s nothing more than a curious straight girl. Similarly, Thea lacks self-confidence as a lesbian who says she looks too straight and plain to get laid. She also argues with Angel over the true meaning of “girlfriend” and at what point hooking up becomes more than a fling.

These subtle questions get the wheels turning through over 930 pages of fun. And what right-minded lezzie wouldn’t want a desktop wallpaper theme called Boobquake? With this much fun and drama, Girls with Slingshots makes for a great read for full-blown lesbians, bisexuals and even the bi-curious among us.

On the other hand, Fox’s strip illuminates many of the issues with which gay men struggle today, through 280 cartoons featuring random hook-ups and unexpected relationships at Kyle’s Bed & Breakfast. Even Eduardo, the youngest of the bunch, manages to fuck a straight dude four times to the jealous awe of his friends. Hilarity ensues, and in sixteen-degree weather, these boys sport their short shorts and rippling muscles, feeding fans some eye candy even when the action’s low.

Yet Fox still manages to round out each of these humorous male entanglements with ex-firefighter Nick Ferrelli’s heteronormative criticism of gay culture, Breyer coping with his mother’s breast cancer and the sad truth behind Jeff Olsen, a former baseball player whose public battle with AIDS forced him to leave his major league dreams behind. Try finding these kinds of serious undertones in your Sunday paper.

But Internet comics like Girls with Slingshots and Kyle’s Bed & Breakfast more than make us laugh, and cry, over the characters in them. They offer members of the LGBT community an escape, where they can get that healthy little dose of gay they need a day in a two-minute read – and we might not find it anywhere else, at least not today…

Meghan Russell is a regular web contributor to Pride Fever

Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that Miley Cyrus didn’t invent the pop princess’ guide to fame and fortune, and that Lindsay Lohan isn’t the first young starlet to snort her way to the bottom. The modern teen diva has been around for some time now — storming onto the scene and coquettishly batting her eyelashes before eventually succumbing to some type of eating/drug/sexual/mental disorder, all while simultaneously craving and bemoaning the public spotlight.

Madonna may have been 25-years-old when she released her first album, but so many subsequent teen divas were cast in her image. Madonna propagated Britney; and Britney propagated Christina; and Christina propagated Lindsay; and Lindsay (God help her) propagated Hannah Montiley Cyrus. While these ladies have enriched our lives over the past few decades with their preening, scandals and lack of underwear, the rich tradition of teenagers attaining fame and power before they attend a prom goes back thousands of years. Now, there’s no way to recognize every pre-pubescent sassy bitch in history, but JERK would like to pay homage to a few of our favorites.

Long before Paris took us on a tour of her nether-regions, two white guys followed a teenaged Native American girl all the way across the country. Sacagawea may be revered as a feminist hero now, but just ask Lewis and Clark how they felt getting bossed around by a 16-year-old. To be fair, though, there is no way those two would have even sniffed the Pacific if Sacagawea hadn’t bitch-whipped them all the way there. Everyone knows that Merriweather Lewis wanted to sleep the whole way and William Clark kept asking to stop at a service center for some Cinnabon.

Speaking of desserts, only 30 years before Sacagawea started her trek, Austrian-born Marie Antoinette became Queen of France and tried to put her unappreciative subjects on an all-cake-diet — all at the age of 19. Antoinette ruffled some feathers as queen, due to the fact that she was known to overrule her husband, Louis XVI, on certain political decisions, and had to fend off rumors that she’d loosen her corset for anyone with an armada. Combine that with the fact that her life was bathed in opulence while the French people starved and it’s no wonder guillotine sales started booming in the early 1790s.

And, Antoinette wasn’t even the first teen diva to call Versailles home. Her husband’s grandfather, Louis XIV, a.k.a. the Sun King, became king when he was four-years-old, and his rule became synonymous with decadence, pomp and illegitimate children. The fact that he once decreed that only nobility could wear red high-heeled shoes — and that no one’s could be higher than his own, which sometimes reached five inches — is enough to earn him a place in the teen diva timeline in spite of his, um, crown jewels.

Traveling back another 1,700 years or so, we find the first teen diva of the first millennium — Jesus’ mom. The Virgin Mary was around 14-years-old when she and God decided to take their relationship to the next level. Of course, the next level meant planting one in her all the way from Heaven, as the story goes. Unfortunately for her, like with most teen divas, public interest in Mary and her magic womb began to wane with the arrival of her son The Messiah. But long before Mary’s chastity made headlines, a certain Egyptian biatch took the opposite sexual stance by screwing around with two of Rome’s biggest swinging leaders.

When Cleopatra was 18, she became co-monarch of Egypt with her 12-year-old brother Ptolemy XIII. Though she married that same brother, she avoided a major dose of cooties by spurning him for first Julius Caesar and then Mark Antony. Those affairs led to a supposed heir of Caesar, a major power struggle between the post-JC triumvirate of rulers that included Antony and Augustus Caesar, and a gruesome death scene involving snakes and promises of eternal love. Seriously, we don’t remember Hilary Duff ever dealing with that level of shit storm. And, Taylor Swift would need to screw around with all three Jonas Brothers, have Justin Beiber’s baby AND convince Taylor Lautner to take a silver bullet to even come close to those exploits.

So, remember, modern teen queens: You can flash the paparazzi, sport a shaved head and wake up covered in vomit and John Mayer, but you weren’t the first and you won’t be the last.

Tom Huddleston, Jr. is a regular web contributor of Jerk Explains it All.

After eight months, dozens of columns and one trip to see a man train surf, my time is over. No more ladder racing. No more extreme ironing. No more bog snorkeling. The Greasy Pole is officially being put to bed. In honor of the most foolish, brainless and unruly posts one blog has ever seen, let’s reminisce.

The journey started in Gloucester, Mass., just 30 minutes from my home. Drunken pot-bellied home-towners stumbling across a log, 20-feet above the ocean. Costumes from Santa to the seven dwarfs required. The maniacal event, running across a lathered log to grab a flag, served as the inspiration for the name The Greasy Pole.

We visited places in Europe so obscure, my spell check completely passed them over. We watched as people raced with their wives sprawled over their shoulders. We witnessed the world’s ultimate beard competitions. We learned of sporting events injected with a dose of insanity: polo with elephants, wrestling matches with camels and iron man marathons against horses.

Never before was pole dancing so art-worthy until The Greasy Pole dug up a video of a German princess swinging so roughly, she fell backwards, taking the pole with her. Also, don’t forget the psychotic video game players. And we can’t forget the idea of the Naked Olympics. Their original slogan was “the start of something big.” That’s awesome. Or not.

In honor of me, please go out and do crazy things. I think you should start a sledding league, upright in a garbage can. Or maybe you could start a dancing competition, in stilts on top of a moving bus. Just don’t say you got the idea from me.

Sean Sweeney is a regular contributor to The Greasy Pole.

You’ve probably heard of cock fighting. And Michael Vick attempted to make it cool to dog fight – but that didn’t work out well. I guess he didn’t realize most people would be angry if they saw blood.

Well, in Turkey and in other Mediterranean countries, they also breed animals to fight. Yet, they don’t fight for blood. That’s part of what makes these battles so attractive. The other part is the animals themselves: camels.

Camel wrestling is the football of Turkey. They set up barbeques, cook outs, and tailgate before the actual matches go down.

These camels are so treasured that many wrestling championships end in draws because their owners don’t want to risk hurting the prized animals.

Camel wrestling has drawn crowds of over 1,000 for around 100 years. During the boring winter months, breeders bring together these animals to watch them wrestle. First, they walk a female camel around, enticing the males to prove themselves – then they let them go at it.

Watching camel fighting is like observing two elephant-giraffe hybrids locking necks and pushing, trying to force the other onto the ground.

This creates a continuous circle. Think of a dog chasing its tail. Now, multiply that by dozens and you get my picture: two enormous mammals entwining their necks to do the merry-go-round. Nothing could be any more entertaining, unless you added some jello.

And when a breeder wins, it’s like his or her whole village wins. Free food and booze for everyone!

The prizes are miniscule, especially considering it takes about $1,500 a year to take care of these huge animals. But, people do it because the camels are a sign of power and respect, like a huge diamond chain in Manhattan or a shiny, John Deere tractor in Idaho.

Image courtesy of The Telegraph

After acid-wash reappeared on runways and in stores not long ago, I knew anything was possible. And so, I have warmingly warmly welcomed the return of double-denim, which began popping up in during fashion week and in magazines this September, with an American trend in international markets that included overalls and layers of denim.

From Levi Strauss in the 1800s to The Gap today, denim is classic Americana. But a single outfit that contains two (or more) denim items becomes Canadian: we call it the Canadian Tuxedo. Absurd.

Neither I, nor my Canadian insider can determine how the term arose. It just may be an American term intended to make fun of Canadians, a rather popular American pastime, jokes Justin O’Neill, a Toronto native and Newhouse grad student, in an email. O’Neill can’t recall ever seeing the look in its “alleged natural habitat.” And many Canadians actually refer to the denim-on-denim look as a Texas Tuxedo, O’Neill confirms.

The double-denim look, popular in the ‘90s, became a big no-no by the end of the decade (maybe that’s when Americans decided to blame Canada). But it was actually a hot look long before Saved by the Bell and even the Britney and Justin’s denim disaster. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, stars of the music scene like Mick Jagger, Marvin Gaye, John Lennon, and Debbie Harry all rocked double denim.

This year, Ralph Lauren, Chloe, and D&G were the first to bring it back in the Spring 2010 runways. It has now trickled down to familiar brands like J.Crew, The Gap, and Levis, and onto every celebrity, musician, and model from Jared Leto to Dave Leno, to Kate Moss, Kanye and his lady friend (Amber Rose), Alexa Chung, Rihanna, David Beckham (with crutches), and Alessandra Ambrosio.

It’s made every magazine from the cover of American Vogue, to editorials in Nylon, and Harper’s Bazaar to the French, German, British, and Chinese editions of Vogue; the Italian and Swedish Elle; and Jalouse, to name a few.

The fool-free way to get the look: a lighter denim button-up on top (oversized for girls, normal fit for guys), with a darker, fitted jean on bottom.

The Good

Warning: Double denim can be a tough look to pull off. Remember, wash is key. Mix up your denim colors, and avoid anything acid-wash or tie-dyed.

The Bad

Maybe you think the return of denim-on-denim is to die for. Maybe you’re thinking “kill me know.” Either way, there’s no denying – it’s , it’s back.

In 1948, after studying sexual behavior for some time, Alfred Kinsey created a seven-part scale to define the varying levels of sexual orientation. While some people fall on either end of the spectrum (0 being 100-percent straight and 6 being exclusively homosexual), Kinsey determined that most human beings actually fall somewhere in the middle. To this day, no one can scientifically prove his theory wrong.

This scale suggests that experimental sorority girls who make out with one another while all the boys watch, may actually be unveiling their true bisexuality. This scale of sexuality makes it nearly impossible to judge a college LUG (lesbian until graduation), or a bi-curious freshman who engages in a threesome with her roommate and her boyfriend because homosexual tendencies are natural and – dare I say it – normal.

And yet we don’t see more men locking lips at house parties or asking their girlfriends for a threesome with another dude. Unfortunately for all these men who fall along the middle of Kinsey’s spectrum, male-dominated heteronormative society only drools over girly “straight” chicks who make out with other girly straight chicks, leaving bisexual men in a state of self-loathing and insecurity.

Travis Judd, a recent Syracuse University graduate who identifies as bisexual, thinks that more women experimenting freely with their sexuality is a huge step in the right direction for the bisexual community, since mainstream LGBT issues tend to focus on gay and lesbian rights, whether it be fighting to repeal DOMA, Prop 8 or Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. However, he also wishes society would be more accepting of bisexual men as well. “Obviously the fact that it’s only females is something to take into consideration. Whether it’s true or not, it’s accepted by everyone. If a man were to do that, it wouldn’t be the same reaction.”

And it’s no wonder why men feel a sense of self-homophobia that prevents them from following any bisexual desires, when the synonyms for “homosexual” on Urban Dictionary include derogatory slurs like “faggot,” “stupid bitch,” “fairy,” “flamer,” “retard,” “butt pirate,” and “fudge packer.” Even on Thesaurus.com, related words on the same page include “bent,” “deviant,” “kinky,” “lascivious,” and “salacious.” Meanwhile, every day a new schoolgirl-on-schoolgirl video pops up on YouTube and another female celeb announces she’s bi.

There’s got to be a cure for this kind of hypocrisy, and here’s where to start: Guys, you’ve got to show up those female bi-curious show-offs, band together and run the risk of fucking whomever you want. Kiss a boy while standing at a major intersection and then hold hands as you cross the street. It’s time you took a stand against a straight male world and made it just a little bit gayer.

And ladies, the next time you catch yourself hitting on another girl at your boy toy’s party, unless you’re sincerely into that chick, shut the fuck up. And if you do mean it, ditch the dude, take her to bed and experience the full power of the pussy.

Kinsey would be proud.

Meghan Russell is a regular web contributor to Pride Fever

At first glance, Lissie may fool you. She has straight blonde hair, obnoxiously large transparent glasses and flannels, lots of them. She goes barefoot while she plays her guitar and makes funky faces while she sings. I can already see all those hipsters in Williamsburg scurrying around, trying to persuade her to join the club, but little do they know, Lissie’s got talent.

Lissie, originally from Illinois, is making waves with her latest debut. She’s been hovering in and out the music scene, recording and posting some of her originals on YouTube but also covering some classics like Bob Dylan’s “Ramona.” Her latest EP “Why You Runnin’” is a cacophony of her raw, tantalizing voice, along with soft claps and super mellow guitar strums in the background.

Her voice, which vaguely reminds me of Neko Case of The New Pornographers, is a total throwback to a time of Stevie Nicks and Joni Mitchell. Instead of singing from her throat (uhh, looking at you Taylor), Lissie’s voice overpowers while putting listeners into a mellow calm.

It’s a rare combination, but Lissie’s accomplished it easily. Her sound ‘s unique and fresh and she comes off absolutely enchanting. Classifying her music strictly as folk would give listeners the wrong impression, as Lissie adds an apparent bluesy-feel to her songs.

She’s just an artist that you can’t seem to hate. She’s humble (she said in a recent interview that she’s shocked when fans recognize who she is) and she has all the right things to say / sing. Underneath that hipster front is an unmistakable talent worth a listen.

Angela Hu is a regular columnist of Bringin’ Da Noise.

The people of the UK are just too bored; they spend their time inventing idiosyncrasies like the Eton Wall Game, the Spice Girls and competitive foot wrestling. Arm wrestling is one thing. You can go to the gym and get stronger or bigger, and the benefits may even woo a few females. But foot wrestling, aka the “feast of foot foolery,” has to be the ugly cousin.

Competitive foot wrestling started in the 1970s at a small pub in Wetton, Derbyshire, England and quickly gained enough fame to be considered for the Olympics in 1997. Key word: considered.

I wonder how many of these toe wrestlers- like the world champion, Alan “Nasty” Nash- have trainers or medical insurance. The amount of strain put onto the ankle tendons and foot muscles must be tremendous.

Every match is played on top of a “tedium.” The contestants have to take off their shoes and socks before locking big toes. Then, they do anything within their power to take down the opposing foot. In order to win, a foot has to be pinned to the floor.

Most contestants come decked out in wrestling costumes, spandex and all. Maybe it’s intimidation. Nash never competes without his signature sleeveless black top with “Nasty the Dominator” printed in white.

As far as I know, anyone can compete. But, there has to be some type of regulation as far as who is allowed to enter these specific competitions. If not, I’m sponsoring Shaquille O’Neal and his size 23s. They would squash any competition.

Sean Sweeney is a regular contributor to The Greasy Pole.

Photography: Anthony Garito
Make-Up: Terrance Smith
Hair: Abisola Shonde
Models: Porshia Derival, Vinny Graham, Kara Lubsen, Glorelys Mora

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“I felt like I was on a cloud, and I didn’t even know if I was in the building,” said Seneca Wilson, describing the night he launched the Underground Poetry spot.

The Underground is located in the New Fuji Buffet Restaurant in Syracuse, and brings students and community members together to perform their poetry on the first and third Thursdays of every month.

During the day, Wilson is the assistant director of Recreational Services in Archbold Gym, but on Thursday evenings, he unleashes his artistic side. He believed that the Syracuse community needed an outlet to share its creativity on a regular basis, and his infatuation with poetry led him to create the Underground.

The Underground began to flourish after Wilson found five other poets to join the project, and he currently has a team of eight official poets and an executive board. He stressed that after first experiencing the Underground’s positive and welcoming environment, customers ultimately come back for more.

During one performance night in February, the lights dimmed and relaxing music played in the background. Students and community members milled about, soaking up the energy in the room.

Marquis Woolford, one of the official poets and the night’s host, thanked everyone for their support but also poked fun at his tardy arrival — he had been tied up playing Xbox. “Y’all my cousins and brothers, this is where I go to when I get inspired!” Woolford shouted. “I don’t have a religion, this is my religion.”

The crowd stood as poets recited verses about topics ranging from family and relationships to education and violence. The poets showcased unique performance styles — some were bold and daring, while others were cool, sexy, and sophisticated.

Syracuse University freshman Yabel Mendez performed for the first time at the Underground in February. In her poem, she mentioned the need for people to come together to help the community. “I think there are a lot of benefits [to sharing poetry],” Mendez said. “It’s a beautiful way to express yourself, and getting the crowd’s responses is just a beautiful feeling. It’s better than getting drunk or high.”

The uncensored poets refused to hold back uncomfortable or shocking details that might offend the audience. Simone Owens, one of the Underground’s official poets, tackled the all-too-familiar topics of relationships and self-worth using a Raggedy Ann doll to express the abuse and neglect that result from being taken for granted by a significant other.

 “Just call me Annie, you know, short for Raggedy Ann,” she said. “Fold me over, bend me here, push me to another corner. If and when I get in your way, don’t hesitate to find a comforting way to say: ‘I don’t want you but I’ll take what I can from you for right now.’ And it won’t matter how you say it. My poorly-painted face will show you the same expression — dull,” Owens said.

Michael “Mic tha poet” Gaut, also on the executive board, described the art of sharing poetry in Lost and Found.

“What is it all worth in a nutshell?” Gaut asked. “Is it the obligation of the philosopher poet to prophesize and reflect with ponderous pen and nostalgic notebook? Or is it enough to entertain like metaphorical clowns?”

Gaut insisted that poetry is more than just sharing words. “Any poet would tell you that writing is a form of therapy…the most gratifying thing is encouraging someone else,” he said. “It’s great when you get positive feedback for something that you put your heart into.”

Wilson needed a main source of funding, so now he charges patrons a $3 entry fee to cover electronic expenses to bring in international poets. Wilson is also trying to draw in outside sponsors and poets with plans to branch out and open more Underground Poetry Spots. This would give poets the chance to perform at different venues, in front of new audiences.

“The Underground is like a second home,” Owens said. “Everyone says it’s like a family, and it really is.I think great poets don’t hold back, and they don’t have to rehearse — it’s just inside of them.” Encouraging others through poems lets people know they’re not alone in the desire to express their innermost thoughts, Owens stated.

The Underground has blossomed since its humble beginnings, but Wilson sees it becoming something much bigger for the community.

“Each performance leaves an impression,” Wilson said. “I see the potential, and sometimes it’s unstoppable what you can do. Every night is a bit special.”

By Kelina Imamura & Illustration by Tate Chow
For centuries, preconceived notions of the world after Y2K have caused a fixation on the future. Future-obsessed institutions made economic, technological, and scientific predictions for the new millennium: health care prayed for an HIV/AIDS vaccine, researchers thought they’d find the cure for cancer, and jet packs were expected to replace cars.

But while overly-optimistic America spun out waves of conjecture, few thought about predicting women’s progression in the oh-so-advanced second millennium. In fact, in 1967, social scientist David Riesman said, “If anything remains more or less unchanged, it will be the role of women.”

Despite much-needed direction and faith, the women’s movement simmered beneath the radar of sweeping predictions and expectations during the Y2K hype. While the mainstream media deemed it stagnant amid changes in many other fields, feminism has taken steps in the first decade of the new millennium.

Perhaps one of the most influential pieces of women’s legislation of the last decade is the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Passed in 2009, the law extends the time in which employees can file pay-related discrimination cases after their last paycheck. Ledbetter, a former supervisor at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., filed a lawsuit in 1998 after discovering a 15 to 40 percent difference between her salary and that of her male counterparts in 1979.

The average full-time working woman still earns 78 cents for every $1 a man makes per year, according to Obama’s proclamation on Equal Pay Day 2009. Even though the lawsuit was filed at the end of the 20th century, not until the Obama administration took a stand for equal pay was this brought to the forefront.

Central New York is a region rich in women’s history, playing host to many advances in the women’s movement. Seneca Falls, just an hour from the Syracuse University campus, held the convention that pushed women’s suffrage onto a national platform in 1848.

Syracuse itself is the home to former National Organization for Women (NOW) president and SU Law School alum Karen DeCrow, who was also the first female mayoral candidate in New York State in 1969. She spent her term as president of NOW from 1974 to 1977 fighting for Title IX and participating in over 80 public feminist activities, making steps toward equality rights in SU’s backyard.

In anticipation of the new millennium, the 90s marked the emergence of a new interpretation of the f-word: third-wave feminism. This new outlook banned the of women as a homogenous group. In tandem with fast-paced technological advances, the Internet quickly became a platform for feminists to discuss opinions and, in some cases, vent. Since 2000, the influx of feminist blogs like Feministing.com and Feministe.us continue to broadcast the passion within the women’s movement across the world.

The influx of powerful, successful women has risen out of subculture and into the mainstream in the past decade. Americans invite Oprah Winfrey — strong, black, and successful — and Ellen DeGeneres — a pioneering voice in the LGBT community — into their living rooms. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler write and produce their own gut-splitting shows. Many viewed Hillary Clinton’s run for president as a landmark in women’s history. Beyonce and Rihanna top the charts with songs that boast female-empowerment themes.

Even before girl power went mainstream, SU has historically been a place for female empowerment. Women have been admitted to SU since its establishment in 1870. At the first inauguration of faculty on Aug. 31, 1871, Reverend Dr. Jesse Peck, then-President of the Board of Trustees, said, “The conditions of admission shall be equal to all persons…there shall be no individual discrimination here against women or persons of any nation or color. It means more. Brains and heart shall have a fair chance…”

Since then, Syracuse set a precedence for women in higher education. SU boasts seven female deans leading its 11 colleges, and is home to two of the most important and published feminist thinkers and writers, Chandra Mohanty and Minnie Bruce Pratt.

As SU’s first female chancellor, Nancy Cantor writes and lectures about the role of women in academia among other topics. Cantor wrote a column for the Chronicle of Higher Education in September 2008: “While slightly more tolerant of considerations of socioeconomic class, we are steadfastly paranoid about race, and we prefer to deny that gender matters at all anymore,” she stated.

Open dialogue about feminism, which continues to emerge on each new social platform of the 21st century, only enrages those already passionate about the topic. But moving beyond academia is difficult. Self-proclaimed feminists like Andrea Alemany, a senior magazine journalism and women’s and gender studies (WGS) major, say the movement itself now rejects a label that was so last century.

“They’re not calling it feminism. They’re not giving it a name,” Alemany said. “It has gone to a transnational movement of empowering women and reproductive rights, but they’re not calling it feminism. There is a lot of stigma. People call it womanism or working toward equality. It’s like a loaded question: How do you call yourself? Because I know if I call myself a feminist, people are going to look at me in a certain way. If I say I’m working toward equal rights, people can’t really argue with that.”

Movements that have previously overshadowed feminism are expanding globally. And while feminism reaches to women across the globe in theory, it has yet to do it concretely.

“I think the strongest movements are those that exist outside of the US,” said Sarah Miraglia, part-time instructor in the WGS department. “Globally, women are building solidarities around a number of issues — environmental, social, political, economic — that are challenging the status quo in some really interesting ways. My hope is that the US movement becomes more aligned with the movements that are taking place internationally. As global capital moves throughout the world, so should our alliances and activism.”

Like many other movements, the women’s movement didn’t miss a step transitioning into the new millennium. As technology, the economy, and the world evolve, so should the way we think, talk about, and label women. But as history shows, unity — no matter how focused we are on a movement of diversity – seems to be the recurring necessity for generating change.

Sometimes it only takes a few minutes: one honks, the other turns his engine off and gets out. Other times they sit for hours with their headlights on, drivers’ seat windows down, curls of cigarette smoke drifting out, waiting for the other to make the first move.

Or, instead of parking, they sluggishly circle the “fruit loop” — the ring around the water tower in Thornden Park where many older gay men go to meet up and hook up.

For the 23 years that Bob Forbes has lived in Syracuse, N.Y., the water tower, just a block away from the Syracuse University campus, has been a prime site for secluded and anonymous sex-on-the-spot. Forbes, 47, learned about the park’s hookup culture when he began working as an HIV Prevention Specialist at AIDS Community Resources (ACR) on West Genessee Street.

Along with a van full of outreach workers and peer volunteers, Forbes visits several spots in Syracuse — including the water tower — that are high-risk areas for sexual activity and drug use. Men have met up at the tower for decades. It’s an enduring remnant of a time when some considered gay sex a hidden shame.

Now, however, modern technology has changed the nature of these covert hookups, and people arrange trysts anonymously online. The emergence of this strong yet subcultural flood of online activity has encouraged an intense fascination surrounding secret sex.

Forbes drives around the tower’s “fruit loop” and parks the ACR van, which is constantly stocked with items like dental dams, latex and polyurithane condoms, and vouchers for clean needles. He strolls up to parked cars and makes small talk: “Hi, I’m Bob, have you ever tried water-based lube?” he’ll begin, but he’s often cut short. “Oh, I’m not here for that,” people will say. “I didn’t know [sex] goes on here.”

But after circling the area once or twice, he sees the very same people “engaged” in their vehicles. While he regularly sees older gay men, Forbes’ encounters run the gamut: sex workers, frat guys, balding dads, women, and other community members.

Cars start to fill the “fruit loop” by 2 p.m. — sometimes earlier — on the dog days of summer. Adam Mohamed, now a senior at SU, is one of the few students to have actually witnessed the “sketchy hookup scene,” and he watches it with fascination. He spent the summer after his freshman year taking classes on campus and jogging in Thornden.

One afternoon, he followed the path up to the water tower, where he saw two older white-haired men emerging from the woods together, wearing tank tops and booty shorts. Since then, he has visited the tower countless times with friends, mostly to see who will get hit on first.

One evening, as Mohamed walked through the park, a middle-aged man asked him whether he needed a ride home. He nervously laughed and asked, “Is this the part where you kill me?”

Sometimes on weekends, headlights from the road by the tower shine into the top floors of Booth Hall until 3 a.m. Honking has become the customary “let’s hook up” call at the tower, Mohamed said. “If you honk, it’s a signal for the other guy to come into your car so you can do business.”

Water tower quickies have been commonplace since the 1970s when the city was void of any social outlets for gay men. Repressed members of the LGBT community “had to sneak around the bush so no one knew who they were,” Forbes said. It was an opportunity to network with other gay people, instead of shuttling from adult bookstores to sex shops. Thornden was — and still is — the second-largest park in the city, so it was easy to find privacy.

As human rights efforts progressed, gay and bisexual individuals gained more acceptance in the public sphere. There are now more public forums for members of the gay community to connect.

But it’s hard to measure progress when many still internalize a sense of shame. “People who identify as LGBT are carrying with them an identity that is stigmatized, which continues to be stigmatized,” said Adrea Jaehnig, director of the LGBT Resource Center at SU.

Learning about the gay history of Syracuse is part of the pledging process for Delta Lambda Phi, a fraternity for gay, bisexual, and progressive men, according to its Web site.

“Every year, one of our rituals is venturing up to the water tower at night,” said Ryan Freed, the president of Delta Lambda Phi’s Syracuse chapter. “[The water tower] is a historical site because gay men in Syracuse were so repressed. It used to be a social place for gays — a place only for married men, or for guys who would never openly identify themselves as gay. But now, it’s a designated hookup spot.”

Over the past decade, the Internet and online networking have accelerated promiscuous, anonymous sex. Hundreds of male dating Web sites — such as Adam4Adam.com and ManHunt.net — allow users to make profiles for seeking quick hookups.

Ordering sex online is similar to ordering fast food, one of Forbes’ friends told him. “If I want [a sexual encounter], I order it like Chinese food…if I don’t like it, I throw it out and order more.” This results in a lack of face-to-face conversation and of interaction in the community, Forbes said. People are simply looking for the here-and-now.

This instant gratification philosophy may prevent people from taking safety precautions. New York State has the most cases of HIV/AIDS in the nation — a nation that sees 60,000 new infections annually. Male-to-male contact (MSM) accounts for 24 percent of HIV/AIDS transmission, according to ACR’s annual report in 2009.

“I had friends who were getting buried every week because of HIV/AIDS,” Forbes said. “I knew it was time for me to take action.”

The peer volunteers at ACR know which areas of the city to target since some are former sex workers and drug addicts. They work with supervisors to identify high-risk areas in Syracuse — such as Armory Square, the Southwest neighborhood, and grocery stores and gas stations along I-81 — and then conduct outreach to test their success rates.

Together, the Syracuse and Utica vans those areas and AIDS Community Resources covers a nine-county radius. They travel a total of 63,276 miles to serve their clients.

During the spring and summer, the Syracuse ACR van winds up the hill to the water tower about once a week. On a good day, workers will distribute materials — free of charge —to about 20 sex cruisers. Other times, they won’t have a single customer. But the van trips are less frequent when the air turns frigid.

Regardless of season, the volunteers are always well-equipped with latex condoms that slide over the finger, known as “finger cots”; vouchers that are exchangeable for clean needles and syringes at local drugstores, like Harvey’s Pharmacy on East Genessee Street; and other contraptions to prevent clots when injecting substances into the vein. Gary Brothers, the supervising pharmacist and owner at Harvey’s, works with approximately 40-plus customers per month through the ACR voucher program.

Most van trips are during mid-afternoon, since Thornden Park officially closes at dusk. The Syracuse Police Department can technically arrest anyone in the park after-hours and patrol the area on a nightly basis to make sure nothing is going on, said Patrick Driscoll, the Syracuse Parks Commissioner. Several years ago, after an article in The Post-Standard discussed promiscuous activity in the park, the Syracuse Police Department issued a crackdown.

“The crackdown made our jobs as educators harder,” Forbes said. Building a rapport with the sex cruisers at the water tower is the first step. “Working with them gets us much further than resisting or overpowering them. If we kick them out, they’ll just go somewhere else to have unsafe sex or shoot up — so instead, we try to help them out,” Forbes said.

According to Mohamed, however, nighttime at the water tour is the witching hour. He often sees the same older guys in sweatshirts and trucker hats when he uses the park as a shortcut to a friend’s house on Ackerman Avenue. Sometimes he sees three or four cars parked in the loop — and sometimes more, if you count those loitering at the fork leading up the hill.

But Thornden Park isn’t the only game in town. The personals on Craigslist.org lure locals to Archbold Gym, Marshall Street, and Armory Square for secluded, anonymous sex. Society’s fascination with these hookup spots comes with a stigmatized view of gay culture.

“People are going to meet people,” said Jaehnig, the director of the LGBT Resource Center. “It goes unnoticed when heterosexual people do it — it’s not even seen. But when gays meet gays in secret, it’s scrutinized at a different level. It’s seen as a spectacle.”

Illustrations by Elizabeth Latella

A 40-year-old single mom who never married, Lori Gottleib, chose to use a sperm donor to get pregnant because she thought it would help attract a man. Her article in The Atlantic advised women “not to worry about passion or intense connection,” but instead to settle for whatever they can get when it comes to marriage.

Hidden among rants about the double standards of men and women growing older, she claims that by the time women realize they’re never going to find “the one,” they’re too old to attract a good one and have already passed up some good(ish) options.

In Gottleib’s words, settling when you’re young before marriage involves “selling your very soul in exchange for damaged goods.” So, Cinderella should have married the farmer with halitosis because Prince Charming would have been too busy running the kingdom and impregnating the ladies-in-waiting.

I should point out here that my friends call me the dream-crusher. I’m freakishly realistic and point out the flaws in any fairy tale or love story — but even I am horrified at Gottleib’s message. It’s unhealthy to recommend that girls settle for a guy they don’t truly love, just to have someone. She admits that settling isn’t ideal, but in her view, it’s better than being alone.

It’s a challenge to keep that “spark” alive. But Gottleib asks: “If you get a cold shiver of disgust down your spine at the thought of embracing a certain guy, but you enjoy his company more than anyone else’s, is that settling or making an adult compromise?” I believe that’s called giving up, Ms. Gottleib.

The bottom line here is that we all know (or learn) that fairytales are just make-believe. But that doesn’t mean we should settle for someone who we aren’t attracted to both physically and mentally.

So here’s my advice as a damsel who’s been rescuing her own ass for years: find somebody you love, not just someone who’s available.

Illustration by Keisha Cedeno

So here’s my Victoria’s secret: I don’t wear anything between my crotch and my jeans. That’s right. No underwear — no thongs, no boy shorts, no granny panties, nada.

I often receive questions from the less enlightened elastic-bound set: “Don’t you get urinary tract infections?” or “Don’t you have to wash your pants every day?”

I’ve refused to slip into knickers ever since I first experienced the freedom of life without diapers. I know what I’m doing. Of course I’ve had a UTI before — and you probably have too, if you’ve sat in a wet bikini for an hour — so let’s not point fingers.

And no, I don’t do laundry every day. I just take the pants to the sink, expose the crotch area to the faucet, dab on a few pumps of detergent, and rub a few times. Rinse and repeat. Voila! No one will ever know you grinded on your Sevens.

Besides, ladies only spend money on fancy elastic because they can’t wait for their idiot du jour to catch a glimpse at the string making its way up their backside.

For the sexually confident, going commando is just another way to connect with your body. But if you’re not ready to embrace your own sexuality (or you abuse it by trying to find love from a penis), then fine — stick to big-girl panties and I’ll continue to revel in my commando confidence. But I know who’s having more fun.

Illustration by Monica Palmer

If you’ve seen the movie The Core, you know it sucked. Its Hollywood skid mark of a plot — where scientists decide to save the stalled planet by drilling into the Earth’s core and setting off an Earth-spinning nuclear blast — bears a terrifying similarity to a recent scientific proposal.

In an article in Nature, a group of scientists called for a multimillion-dollar study to trigger and control volcanoes with the intent of covering the atmosphere in a layer of sunlight-blocking ash. As the scientists put it, they “think that the risks of not doing research outweigh the risks of doing it.”

The experts may have an interesting idea, but I’ve got a better one. Instead of volcanoes, let’s take one of the largest nuclear arsenals (America’s) and bomb the nature-loving hell out of the world’s largest consumer/polluter (America). This would result in no more pollution and no more nukes — wins all around. It’s called killing all the birds with one giant radioactive stone.

In all seriousness, instead of spending our little-remaining time on Earth researching more ways to end life forever, let’s examine the system that created the problem. Until the world puts real pressure on corporate polluters (think Lake Onondaga’s 12-eyed, four-armed fish-monkeys) and on consumers to rethink how they live, we may as well get out the tanning oil for the old Kentucky Shore this summer. At this stage, we’re probably cooked anyway.

Illustration by Chelsea Follett

Perhaps you saw Betty White in that Super Bowl commercial for Snickers, or watched her accept the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, or recognized her in The Proposal when she steals the movie with a three-second boob search on Sandra Bullock.

I don’t give a beetle’s toe where you saw her, you comedic philistine: you can’t send Obama back to Illinois, you can’t send Stephen Hawking back to second grade, and you sure as hell can’t force Betty White to host Saturday Night Live.

Betty White is a subversive comedic genius. She’s not the frickin’ novelty item for those who think “that’s what she said” lines are hilarious, and love Judd Apatow humor and obvious satires. SNL actually ran a parody of Snooki from Jersey Shore — who much like Sarah Palin, is a parody in real life— and labeled it comedy. That’s like hiring a caterer and pretending to cook.

Betty White has made classy double entendres and winked suggestively at American Puritanism since the invention of television. She was funnier as a guest-host on The Match Game than all of the SNL hosts of the past 10 years combined.

Sending Betty White into the Will Ferrell-tainted, obnoxious character-infested, STD-infected Dick in a Box that is the SNL studio is like sending Marilyn Monroe back to the trailer park. It’s not an honor — it’s obscene.

So if for some reason Betty decides to grace SNL like a daffodil in a pile of dung, know that she has no reason to be grateful to your insufferable Facebook group. As she advised Maggie and Kathy Griffin on My Life on the D-List: “It’s what you don’t say that’s funny.”

Yeah, that’s what she said. So do her a favor and shut up — Betty is not amused.

Illustration by Crystal White

Two years ago, Andy Gruhin got dumped. So, he picked up his guitar and wrote one of his first songs. Now, at 18, he may become the new face of Hollywood Records. This self-proclaimed “brand new kind of singer-songwriter” is attempting to single-handedly save the dying genre before the end of his freshman year of college.

While attending Berklee College of Music for a five-week summer program in 2008, Gruhin qualified for the school’s songwriting contest with “Little Piece of Summer.” It was then he first heard the name David Perl, a promotions executive at Hollywood Records. In a strange coincidence and stroke of luck, Perl happened to be Ben Berman’s (Gruhin’s best friend) uncle.

Gruhin describes Berman as his biggest supporter. “If you’ve seen Entourage, this kid is like ‘E’ to me,” Gruhin quipped. Berman describes his best friend’s music as a “jaggedly emotional sound that resonates with anyone with a pulse.”

Each of Gruhin’s songs comes to life with a lyric. His songbook stays in his backpack in case he has a burst of inspiration, and he’s even started to think in stanzas. Each lyric comes from the heart and the music that accompanies the words writes itself, he said.

He is currently growing as a musician, undergoing the transition from amateur to professional that begins with the search for a record label. For Gruhin, this search was easy. “First try. Man, I got way too lucky.”

Gruhin mourns the loss of passion and storytelling that used to be a staple of all singer-songwriters. “I want to bring that back and I feel like it’s my responsibility…I don’t see anybody else trying to,” he said. He models his style after the likes of Tom Waits, the Avett Brothers, Damien Rice, Conor Oberst, and Max Bemis.

But his respect for these musicians pales in comparison to Gruhin’s admiration for Bruce Springsteen. His father Mark Gruhin sang “Thunder Road” as a lullaby, and Springsteen’s influence has had a lasting effect on Andy’s musical style. “I have a pretty good sense of talent,” Mark said. “I recognized it in Bruce way early in his career before he became the superstar that he is today. I see that same gift in Andy.”

A testament to Gruhin’s “old rock ‘n’ roll soul” is the purity of his songwriting. Bob Halligan, Jr., Gruhin’s songwriting professor at Syracuse University, describes his sound as “angry,” “raw,” and “passionate.” Gruhin tries to be honest about his feelings in his songs: “If I’m writing an angry song, it’s going to sound angry, and it’s going to be loud and in your face,” he explained.

His EP, World Out There, is a reflection of his honesty. Although it is jam-packed with uninhibited emotion, Gruhin strives to distance himself from the “emo” label by stressing the importance of sending a message through his songs. He describes songs like “World Out There,” “Little Piece of Summer,” and “Sore Losers” as developments of his understanding of the world.

“When I say ‘It’s a fucked-up world out there,’ it’s saying that something so good or something so bad could create the opposite of one another,” Gruhin mused. “There’s no other adjective to explain the whole growing up process. It’s just fucked-up.”

After Berman heard “World Out There,” he sent the song along to his uncle, which started the collaboration process with Hollywood Records.In a rare turn of events, Perl requested that Gruhin come to New York City at the end of the summer to play a few songs for the label. Following this audition, Gruhin became a “development project” for the record company, one of the first steps in the process of getting signed. He has been asked to return in six months and has since built a strong relationship with Perl.

For Berman, this comes as no surprise. “I had passed through hundreds of other artists, but none really measured up in the raw emotion and old school I had been searching for,” Berman said. “Andy Gruhin changed all that. I knew he was talented, but over the last year, his musical climb has been astronomical.”

Gruhin then decided to recruit his father to be his unofficial manager. Mark Gruhin, a business lawyer, happily accepted the offer and is currently the primary banker for his son and manages his Web site. Yet he is quick to remember his primary role: “I am always his father first. That job is mine forever; a new manager he can always get,” Gruhin said.

His job as a father will be especially crucial if and when Gruhin needs to decide whether to stay in school. “I sincerely doubt that my dad would ever let me leave school, nor do I really want to because I love Syracuse so much,” Gruhin said. “But if it had to come to that, it would have to come to that,” says Gruhin. He described being both a student and musician as a hectic balancing act, but also welcomes the challenge.

“I have never been truly happy unless I was either playing or in the studio or just writing a song. I love it,” Gruhin said. Gruhin cherished advice from Ricky Orbach, a high school friend of his father’s and talented musician: “Embrace the word no. Because the more no’s you get are going to build you up toward eventually one day getting a “yes.”

Now that a major label has shown interest in him, Gruhin may feel pressure to alter his sound in order to cater to Hollywood Records’ “tween” demographic. Artists such as Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers are both signed to Hollywood Records, and have openly admitted to embracing a more pop sound as a means of adhering to the Disney image that coincides with the record company.

For Gruhin, these industry pressures aren’t an issue. He insists that people will understand who he truly is simply by listening to his music. The blunt anger, sexuality, and pain in the lyrics of songs like “Sore Losers” and “Without My Wings” express his raw and honest nature.

“I hope that Andy is able to spread his heartfelt message of [the] love, longing, and surprisingly compelling struggle to understand the human condition in this crazy world to a truly massive audience and that he can get the recognition as a real rock ‘n’ roll artist that he most definitely deserves,” Berman said.

Gruhin’s ultimate goal is a career based on longevity and a strong, devoted fan base. Becoming a one-hit wonder like MC Hammer is utterly unacceptable for him. “If I ever do make it in the music industry, I don’t want to burn out,” Gruhin said. “I want to do exactly what Bruce did and that’s play as much as possible and write music that has meaning to people. I want to inspire people. I want to bring that fire back into people.”

Photo of Andy Gruhin by Max Jackson

Though it hasn’t always been the case, personal hygiene plays an undeniably important role in our society — just ask the guy who smelled your hair while you slept on the bus last week. The charmingly disheveled look may get some people laid, but there still isn’t much of a market for fashionable body odor — aka Reek Chic.

While bathing was once reserved for special occasions in some cultures, today it is not uncommon for a person to take two, or even three, showers in one day — especially if a Jock Jams-inspired gym session is on the docket. And no post-shower ritual is complete without a date with everyone’s favorite stick, spray, or weirdly wet rollerball of smells.

Deodorant is society’s favorite way to pretend that our armpits don’t smell and our sweat glands don’t sweat. Whether you want to avoid showing off your shirt’s pit pools on a first date, or you’re trying to enflame your friend’s Mountain Fresh allergy, your friendly neighborhood deodorant will be there.

Even though bathing was not always such a frequent practice, people have always looked for ways to make the smells they emit less gag-worthy. As far back as ancient Egypt, cultures have combined heavy, pleasant scents — like cinnamon, citrus, and anything else that masks the smell of camel dung and papyrus smoke — into perfumes that could be applied to their most offending crevices.

But despite such a long history of enterprising smell reduction, it wasn’t until 1888 that the first commercial deodorant hit the market. Mum was patented in Philadelphia and sold as a cream that could be applied by hand. The product was eventually bought by Bristol-Myers and, in the late-1940’s, an employee of that company named Helen Barnett Diserens combined that product with the mechanics of the recently invented ball-point pen — thus creating the first roll-on deodorant while also taking Diserens’ longtime rivals at the ball-point pen factory down a notch.

Ban Roll-On was released in the U.S. in 1952, but a decade earlier Jules Montenier patented the modern formula for antiperspirant, which would eventually combine with deodorants in an effort to make the average person both dry and pleasant-smelling.

Unfortunately, the antiperspirant factor in deodorant is the one that comes under the most fire today as its formula usually calls for a decent dosage of aluminum. You don’t have to be Mendeleev to know that aluminum is the thirteenth, and thus coolest, element on the periodic table. But, while it may give us recyclable soda cans and campfire-baked potatoes, excessive exposure to it has also been linked to both Alzheimer’s Disease and allergies that cause dermatitis — not to mention that you’ll no longer be able to put yourself in the microwave.

Of course, it is up to you to decide whether or not avoiding such downsides is worth the pit stains on your favorite ironic-slogan t-shirt. One alternative is to opt for all-natural crystal deodorant products, but unless you ride a longboard to “work” and more than 50% of your wardrobe is hemp, then that option might not be for you.

Besides, assuming we can trust AXE commercials, any guy who eschews a little olfactory helper under the arms will miss out on his obligatory, daily molestation by an insanely hot passerby/girlfriend’s mom/Meter Maid. After all, anything less would be uncivilized.

Illustration by Amelia Bienstock

Tom Huddleston, Jr. is a regular web contributor of Jerk Explains it All.

I hate ironing. Honestly, I couldn’t iron a shirt if someone set up the iron and shirt on the board and told me they would take me out for a buffet at Pizza Hut if I got the wrinkles out. It’s just a needless thing to me.

Yet, the world is full of weird, eclectic people like Phil Shaw, an avid rock climber who turned boredom into adventure. One day coming home from work, Shaw decided to spice up an annoying chore like ironing by taking it to the rocks.

Now, extreme ironing has people all over the planet doing the household chore in exotic places. To describe how big the wacky sport is becoming, it is actually going to be featured in an upcoming video game. Get that. Soon you will be able to pretend to iron outside while inside.

Extreme ironers have tried just about anything – always on the lookout for another thrill. Perhaps the most famous attempt was by a man in Sydney, Australia. The short clip begins with the man jumping off of a cliff, iron board in hand. He parachutes down the side of the rock face and slowly combs over a shirt on his board, ironing away as the ground gets closer. Impressive.

Extreme ironers have done the deed underwater. They’ve done it on top of moving cars. They’ve even done it suspended from a rope latched to two neighboring cliffs, their feet dangling right along with the shirt.

So far, no one has died from this. But, eventually you know some lunatic is going to try to iron on the wing of a plane or iron a shirt while sitting on top of a stampeding elephant.

My momma always told me irons could burn – but no one ever thought ironing could become this dangerous.

Sean Sweeney is a regular contributor to The Greasy Pole.

Screw the economists, look outside! No, really, look at the nature that surrounds you! Watch the mountains of snow in your driveway sparkle like fairy-dust. Walk outside and expose yourself to the bitter cold and feel alive. Listen to the silence of the shut down factory down the street, and revel in the diminished pollution! Breathe in, and out, and smile: you live in New York State. What a wonderful world.

I’ve always loved New York, even before the ad campaign existed. Hell, I inspired the ad campaign.
We have all four seasons, complete with autumn apple- picking opportunities and splendid colors, winter wonderlands and snow days, spring flowers and summer storms. Not many earthlings get to experience the rapturous thunder of all four seasons, but we New Yorkers do. Feel blessed. We’re America’s chosen people.

Oh, and the rolling hills! The Adirondack Mountains! All New Yorkers know that if you swim in an Adirondack lake, you won’t have to deal with seaweed or animal life, because acid rain killed it all. New York’s the only place where Mother Nature basically chlorinates your lakes for you. Not even Louisiana (supposedly the “happiest state”) gets pampered like that.

Skyscrapers, waterfalls, sleepy, small towns — Sleepy Hollow! Ithaca! Watertown! Eh, maybe not Watertown — New York is the Garden of Eden. Or it is for me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be going downtown to the wonderful market of pills and powders that make this rose-colored perspective possible. Excelsior! Higher and higher! I love New York.

Few trends have dressed as many prominent people as the Panama hat. It links the wardrobes of Ernest Hemingway, Hannibal Lector, and Madonna. Winston Churchill, FDR, and a young Obama all wore one. Today we’ve seen the classic (and practical), light, woven-straw, black-banded hat on everyone from Sean Connery to Mischa Barton to Yoko Ono.

But much of the Panamas’ true saga remains hidden beneath the brim of this legendary hat. Its name a misnomer – the original Panama hat is hand-woven in Ecuador, dating back to the 1600s and is made from the Ecuadorian coast’s native Toquilla plant. It takes anywhere from a day to several months to weave a single hat, depending on the quality of the Toquilla straw, the weave, and the skill of the weaver.

Before the 20th century, the hats were exported and sold internationally from Panama, a great trading center at the time (and part cause of the misnomer). Hats left Panamanian markets to grace the heads of European royalty, including Napolean Bonaparte and King Edward VII of England. In the same markets, the US government bought 50,000 hats for American troops to wear while fighting in the Spanish-American war.

The hat’s improper name spread after 1903, when President Teddy Roosevelt became the first president to visit the Panama Canal, and the first American president to visit a foreign country. There, Teddy saw workers building the canal, all in the same light hat so he put one on too. A news photograph of Teddy wearing his new hat in Panama circulated in America, extending the revere (and false name) of the Panama hat across the US.

And it’s been a summer staple ever since.

Buying Tips:

- If you’re looking for an authentic, real deal “Panama” hat, make sure the label reads, “made in Ecuador.” While most come from the Ecuadorian town, Cuenca, Montecristi is known for finest-quality (and most expensive) hats. A Montecristi can cost around $1,500 but you can find an authentic version for under $40.

- If you can avoid buying online, always try it on before you buy. Each hand-woven hat will look and fit slightly different. Panama hats come in a variety of shapes, but even hats of the same shape will vary (whether the brim is slightly wider, or curved more upward in the front) – it makes a difference.

J Crew currently carries an authentic line of Panama hats in tan and white with the classic black ribbon for $58. But if you want the look, want to spend less, and don’t care about authenticity, Urban Outfitters offers a selection for under $30.

Slideshow produced by Mallory Passuite

Mallory Passuite is a regular contributor to Jerk Wear.

I like to sit in Pages between classes and write poetry. I get a window-facing seat and a half-moon cookie, turn on some Metric or CocoRosie, and write about strippers, dead horses, or girls making love to the cosmos. I overuse words like “coruscate” and “serene.” But when the hour is up, I close my notebook and go to class. I don’t bother with a Blogspot and I don’t set my verses as my Facebook status.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend asked if she could borrow a pen — or if it was too sacred to lend because I’m a writer. Others poke fun at my regimental efforts with this creative outlet, as though by writing purely for my own sanity and not for recognition, I am wasting time.

I’ve observed other students clutching coffees and shamelessly promoting their Blogspots like Campus Crusade pushes Christ. They act as though writing, reading, and loving words aren’t enough; they need followers to justify their musings.

A very wise, very anonymous lecturer at the Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) conference in February said this of anonymity: “We’re moving towards persistent identity, we’re moving towards a lack of privacy. We’re sacrificing a lot of that, and in doing so, we’re losing something valuable.”

Technology insists that we attribute everything we create. Facebook, Twitter, Formspring, Tumblr, YouTube, MySpace, Wordpress, Blogspot — each begs for our identity, image, likes and dislikes, dating interests, and favorite music. People’s lives have become works of literature, and in order to stand out, one has to demonstrate that they’re worth listening to. In effect, we’ve created a digital world full of Truman Capotes and Lord Byrons, mugging the camera and seeking attention to justify work.

The information age has diminished the beauty and simplicity of a single piece of work. Modern readers need context, scandal, and background. The age of Emily Dickinson sticking bits of genius into teacups has ended — and so has an essential aspect of writing.

I felt a surge of anticipation when J.D. Salinger died, the universal feeling of entitlement: now we can finally find out what he’s been keeping from us. But Salinger has contributed so much already. He’s done his societal duty. Let him keep his mystery and rest in peace.

If the ideal writer is not a recluse but a tabloid-gracing media whore dishing out prose like candy to children, then identity doesn’t even matter. Society has created these attention-seeking machines, and their words — which come from the same cogs and wires — mean nothing.

illustration by Mark Carey

Ah, New York, the Empire State. The home of Lindsay Lohan, David Paterson, the Yankees…and the Son of Sam. It’s no wonder that economists Andrew J. Oswald and Stephen Wu found that New Yorkers are the saddest people in America.

Let’s start with geography. If you don’t live in “the city,” then congratulations; by American dictionary standards, you live in “upstate New York.” That’s right: Binghamton and Plattsburgh are in the same category, thanks to obnoxious NYC. The Upper East Side and Greenwich Village are distinguished, but upstate New York is all-encompassing. Fuck you too, NYC.

Secondly, unlike a cool state like Florida that shares the same ocean as the Bahamas, or California that shares a border with Mexico, New York doesn’t share anything. Oh wait, it does — the northern border with Canada, a country so vastly unpopular that it doesn’t even label its land beyond “territories.” If Canada was planet, it would be Pluto, which isn’t even a planet. And our state is conjoined to it, like a Siamese twin with a second shriveled head. Lucky us.

New York is simply a mess of lameness. The state’s highest peak is Mount Marcy, which you have probably climbed. Congrats, you can also probably count to 10, thanks to our awesome New York State Regents exams. Our state drink is milk, which is why it smells like manure 80 percent of the time. Our state animal is the beaver, probably because we’re governed by dicks.

Hell, this state is so depressing that residents frequently travel to our least-lame natural wonder, Niagara Falls, and throw themselves to their deaths. Fuck it, I’m moving to Jersey.

illustration by Jake Colquhoun

I arrived at Spark Contemporary Art Space a little after 8 p.m. As I walked into a room full of self-proclaimed hipsters and beers being passed around generously, I took a quick glance and realized that this was going to be a much more laid back scene than if it were to take place on Syracuse University’s campus. The party was already getting started and I was more than ready to participate in the fun, claiming a spot among a crowd full of SU students in anticipation of the show.

The opener, Mouth’s Cradle, filled a tight, dimly lit room with the synthetic noise of a keyboard and electronic beats. The sound was infectious as the fans squeezed through a wall of shoulder-to-shoulder students, bouncing to the beat as they snuck closer to the stage. Both oddly paired, identically dressed band members in red and black suit jackets and blue jeans, didn’t exactly look the part of an indie opening act, but they certainly brought a well-received sound.

Then Sleigh Bells took the stage. The crowd exploded into a mosh pit as the lead singer, Alexis Krauss, and her ex-hardcore guitarist, Derek Miller, brought enough energy to entertain a venue ten times the size of Spark’s 20-by-12 room. The band included some of their most popular songs in the night’s lineup: “Crown on the Ground,” “Ring Ring”, and “AB Machines”. Even following the show, the duo’s energy was apparent during a one-on-two interview in which they admitted, Syracuse (yes, Syracuse, N.Y.) goes down as one of their favorite shows thus far.

Catch some of the show, and hear what else Sleigh Bells had to say in this exclusive interview with Jerk.

Kristian Matsson is The Tallest Man On Earth.

Okay – that’s not even close to being true as he’s only 5 foot 9, but that is the moniker of Kristian’s one-man band, “The Tallest Man On Earth.”

To describe Mattson’s act would mean for me to sway like a damn hippie with a joint in one hand while I hold up the peace sign with the other. I know I shouldn’t make the comparison (and you can hate me now that I do), but Matsson reminds me a little bit of Dylan, with his scratchy voice and the acoustic-y, banjo-ish strums on his guitar. It’s a drastic comparison, I know, but there’s just something about his Matsson’s voice that makes me get into the whole “1960’s-protester-with-flowers-in-my-hair kind of groove.”

When I first heard him sing, (and I am embarrassed to admit it was through one of those 25 free new tracks! from Urban Outfitters) I wanted to cut my ears off – Van Gogh style. There was something about his voice that I couldn’t stand; it was as if he were wailing like a banshee for the majority of the album. So I ignored him and the album for a couple of months, until he came up on my shuffle list and I heard Matsson’s voice again.

This time – it stuck. I heard him sing “The Gardener” and I was hooked. Matsson put me in a trance with his raw, titillating voice and I envisioned myself driving down the 405 in a green Mustang heading towards Phoenix, Arizona with my guitar and cute boyfriend in tow. Somehow, listening to “The Tallest Man On Earth” reminded me of those summer days where all I had to worry about was where I stashed my sandals and those daily trips to the meadow where I laid on the mud-drenched grass with my friends, listening to music, talking about life and you know, the cliché-est things possible youngsters can do before real life started creepin’ up on us.

Tallest Man on Earth – The Gardener – A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

Other than the fact that he does cool vibratos with his voice and plays the guitar like a pro, this Swedish export is pretty smokin’ hot too. I love his rolled-up shirts, tight skinny jeans and his nonchalant “I-really-love-my-music-and-my-fans attitude” that he’s been reppin’ since La Blogotheque did a Take-Away-Show on him a year ago.

I will say listening to Matsson may be an acquired taste, but seriously, don’t take my word for it, check him out yourself.

Angela Hu is a regular columnist of Bringin’ Da Noise.

After delving into the sensual realm of female euphoria, I dedicate this column to all you sexually playful, experimental gay men out there. To do this, I’ve strayed from practically all I know about my own gender’s sexual preferences and asked around to get the gay male perspective on what products work wonders for the prostate and anal areas. I then enjoyed browsing the darkest corners of the Internet and checking out these toys for myself.

Finally feeling equipped, I’m now setting out to endorse your revolutionary views on gay men’s sex toys. Boys, this one’s for you.

There’s probably nothing quite as comparable to romping around in the sack Brokeback Mountain style. But if you’d rather pitch than catch, no sex toy comes as close to the real thing as Fleshlight, which comes in the form of either a vagina or anus (the original found here). Disguised as a flashlight, the Fleshlight fits right in among your regular apartment or dorm room objects. But as soon as your roommate heads off to class, it transforms into a simulated incubus of sexual delight. Just lube up, insert your penis into the fleshy opening and move the toy around with your hand to achieve a pace and feel that’s right for you.

You can even make your own if you’re feeling creative. This dude made one out of a “Hot and Spicy” Pringles can. Not even kidding, folks. Once you pop, the fun really just don’t stop.

Once you graduate from the toy’s orgasmic pleasure, try the Pink Stealth Vortex, an advanced Fleshlight with spiraled chambers on the inside. Ask your partner to control the depth and speed for you, and you’ll moan like a diva in no time.

If you prefer to stay on the receiving end of anal ecstasy, visit one of the most popular online adult stores since 1995, and peruse through their endless list of anal and dildo products. For those who want to keep it small, anal beads can offer a variation of fun experiments in the sheets. These little “power balls” slide in and out of your anus, sending waves of pleasure through your body. Try the vibrating beads, as well, and let your partner control the intensity as he tugs the little rungs in and out of you, notch by notch. Admit it – you’re quivering already.

But if size matters, lay off the balls and take your pick of any silicone or cyberskin dildo instead. One surveyed student recommended the Ron Jeremy simulated penis. It took me awhile to find what he meant, but I’m pretty sure this is it. If you can get past the porn superstar’s disturbingly outdated mustache and ‘do that’s sure to sit right on the front of the box, little rivals the size of this dick.

And if even that’s not freaky enough for your tastes, don’t worry. God made animals so we could mold sex toys out of them. Check out sextoy.com’s “unnatural” page and choose from a twisted assortment of oddly-shaped dildos and dongs, some of which resemble members of the animal kingdom, like the scorpion, serpent, cobra, octopus, and even the horse. Now you can literally bring wildlife into your home and tear it up beneath the sheets.

Only you can figure out what works best for you and for your partner. But once you do, you’ve got a seemingly endless world of options to pick from, guys. If I were you, I’d buy myself a toy chest and go exploring.

Have fun!

Meghan Russell is a regular web contributor to Pride Fever

Alexander Richter tightens the belt around his waist. He fastens it to a vacuum lifting pad, a sort of suction-cup device that weighs no more than a young child. After jumping onto the front of a subway car, Richter is given just seconds to scuttle through multiple steps before the locomotive takes off with his life.

He dons his patented “trainrider” pullover sweatshirt, connects the lifting pad to the car, the belt to his waist, and Richter is at ease. Everything around him is a blaze of blur.

The ICE, Germany’s Inter City Express, is a subway system that can reach speeds of 205 miles per hour – and this strange, masked man has conquered it.

The Greasy Pole has previously described the fascination some people have with solo climbing cliffs. Legions of people have tried climbing up a vertical rock face sans rope, but Richter is on his own with this one. He’s a one-man maniac train rider who excels at taming the ICE beast and maneuvering past the German police force.

Richter said he started casually, riding slow-moving trains in the hopes of one day perfecting the craft enough to ride the most ugly bull of all, the ICE. He’s done it. The rush of feeling his legs dangle across the sub’s windshield has completely drowned out the danger.

With barely anything keeping him connected, Richter’s head snaps back and forth against the current of the wind on every ride. The sub is going so fast a stray branch would end his life on impact.

You can only be free…when you have nothing to lose. Richter has something to lose: a four-year old daughter. Except nothing gives him the rush the same way this does. He doesn’t plan to stop – probably until the subway flings him off towards a brain-smashing death.

Sean Sweeney is a regular contributor to The Greasy Pole.

I was working as a fashion consultant the summer I planned my first visit to Istanbul.

While I loved the clothes and shoes of retail-land, my favorite part of the job was always schmoozing with the women who let me pick their outfits. As I prepared for my first trip to a 99 percent Muslim country, I probably told everyone I brought to a fitting room about my impending overseas adventures. Many of my customers warned me to pack my long sleeves.

Burcu Acem, a Turkish fashion blogger for Istanbul Fashion Addict and one of Sabah Newspaper’s Most Fashionable Turks, laughed when I told her about the warnings.

Burcu’s favorite magazines are the Turkish editions of Elleand Marie Claire, though she loved Seventeen as a kid. In March, Vogue launched an international edition in Turkey. Despite some cover controversy involving the use of a blonde-haired pale-skin cover model, the thick, premier issue has been a success.

Many Americans hold a misconception about Istanbul, and how women dress there. While there certainly are very conservative parts of Turkey, Istanbul is a modern, European city, and a growing fashion capital. Some fashion followers expect Istanbul Fashion Week, which started in 2009, to grow to the status of those in Milan and Paris within the next five years.

The images we associate with Istanbul are from the old district, Sultanahmet, home to stunning historic sites like the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sofia, and the Spice Bazaar – a fascinating and beautiful place to visit. But Burcu said she never goes there.

Neighborhoods like Nişantaşı, the main fashion district, and Taksim, considered the heart of modern Istanbul, present a completely different character than that of their historic counterparts, as do Istanbul’s huge, beautifully constructed, luxury shopping malls like Kanyon, a four-story open-air mall.

Istanbul is the only city in the world to cover two continents (Europe and Asia). It has a long and rich history but that is only part of its story. There are conservative Muslim parts where you may have to keep your body covered, but contemporary Istanbul is a vibrant, even sexy place. Women actually wear slinky dresses to clubs. I do not intend to paint a certain image of Istanbul for you, but only to add to the picture.

Multimedia produced by Mallory Passuite

Mallory Passuite is a regular contributor to Jerk Wear.

If you asked students on the Syracuse University campus what their favorite kind of music is, you’d be sure to find a large variety, but you’d likely be hard-pressed to find someone that says bluegrass and folk. However, The Northbound Traveling Minstrel Jug Band is spreading the gospel of bluegrass throughout Syracuse. Far from the typical perception of a college band, their well-received music provides a masterful take on the musical styles of the past. We talked over the phone discussing bluegrass’ rep, their songwriting process, douche-bags, and herbal musical stimuli.

Who do you cite as your biggest musical influences?
Aaron Gittleman: I would say that the band that is a huge influence is Little Feat and open blues music.

So more music from older generations?
AG: Yeah, definitely some older generation stuff and how it applies to us.

Being that your music does a new take on older styles of music, do you think that affects how you are received when you perform at shows being that you’re not the typical college band?
AG: Yeah, I mean, one time I was called grandma cause I was playing a banjo. But I think that everyone has a really good time when they listen to us because everything that people listen to these days is influenced by something cool that happened 40 years ago, 30 years ago.
Adam Cohen: I think a lot of people at first that have expectations about bluegrass music think they’re going to hate it. I think when they see us playing that kind of music those notions of what bluegrass music is like are tossed out the window. We give it a new revitalization. I think people dig it when we pull out the mandolin and the banjo.
The name of your band is kind of a mouthful. Who came up with the name and how did they come up with it?
AC: I actually came up with the name randomly at an open mic back when it was just me and Aaron goofing around on mandolin and guitar – before Aaron played banjo and before I even really knew how to play mandolin. Someone just asked what our name was and I just made it up. I thought it sounded funny and for whatever reason, it stuck.

So how exactly did the band form?
Lucas Sacks: The band basically formed because three of us –Aaron, myself, and Dan – are all in the Bandier program here at Syracuse. And then Adam basically heard Aaron playing guitar through a window and that’s how we met. Then we just started jamming and have been playing together ever since.

What’s the songwriting process like? Does someone write a song and then the band fleshes it out or is it more of a collaborative effort?
Dan DiPasquale: The songwriting process revolves around, generally speaking, one individual and that’s Aaron. We all come in and put our parts to it and during that time stuff gets worked out as far as how the song progresses and all those different creative things that happen when people play together.
AG: Just to add to that a little bit, I was just going to say that we all help each other with our own parts, too. If one person has an idea to add to somebody else’s part, we’re all pretty receptive to each other’s ideas. We’ll work on a song for a while –even small little parts of a song—until we all are happy with it and how each instrument fits together.

I noticed you guys did a cover of the gospel song “I’ll Fly Away” Why did you choose that song to do a rendition of?
AC: There was a senior making a movie and we used to play that song live and he saw it. Then he wanted us to record it for his movie so we did and we’ll probably start playing it again. It’s a good song. We played it a lot and then got bored of it.
LS: In the movie O, Brother Where Art Thou? there was a version of it and that was kind of the inspiration for us to start playing it in the first place. A lot of people know the words so that was a fun part about it – a good sing-a-long.

What’s the best show you’ve played?
AG: We’ve played two sunrise, sunset shows that O, Morning Records basically put on, on Ackerman Street and the one we just did a few weeks ago was probably our most fun show. We literally broke the floor so they moved everyone out of the attic and down to the basement.

Was breaking the floor what made it so good?
AG: Yeah, I mean we tore the house down, you know? It was just one of the little factors that went into why it was so much fun. And there were a lot of people there who had seen us and were singing along to our songs and people that had never seen us before that started singing because other people were singing. The audience was very receptive and it was just very fun for us. House shows are very organic and it’s a good place to play.

What’s the biggest act of douchebaggery you’ve ever experienced at a show?
AC: Our friend and tour manager was at one of our shows just making sure everything was going down smoothly and somebody kept pushing everybody to the front. He was just pushing and being a douchebag. Then he shouted to “play some black people music.” That was kind of strange. So our friend Marty literally took his hand and punched him in the face and then he came back with his boy, but we had more friends than they did so they just left. Sometimes people step on cords. They just don’t know what they’re doing or they try to take the mic and make announcements. Just stuff like that.

So when you guys are writing music, are there any substances that you like to use to inspire you?
AC: Beer. Maybe a little bit of green shrubbery. Aaron is probably one of the bigger stoners I’ve ever met in my life. He pretty much smokes a lot of pot.
AG: It’s so worth it!
AC: It’s so organic. We have cannabinoid receptors in our brain. Pot was put on this Earth so we could smoke it and use those cannabinoid receptors.

Absolutely. How about before shows?
AG: Yeah, I’d say it’s more like we have to before the shows because it brings a certain energy. We usually make point to pound some beers or partake in some southern comfort. And personally I like to smoke a joint. But yeah, I think it brings a good amount of energy in the shows that we want to bring to the people in the audience so we can have an intoxicated, fun, loving experience.

Does being in a band affect how the ladies approach you?
AC: Every once in a while there will be a couple girls who think we’re bigger than we are and get excited, but usually, at this point, not really. Yeah, phone numbers on napkins, but nothing more than that usually.

Last question. Do you have any plans for the band beyond college?
AG: I think the mentality right now is we’re going to work as hard as possible to take this as far as we can. Right before we started talking to you we were sitting down with our liaison to O, Morning Records and we were working on a 15-day tour during the summer. If things are still looking good for the jug band at the end of senior year I think we’re going to try to do what we can.

The Eton Wall Game is enough to convince anyone that the English have little better to do than invent weird sports. Schoolboys, clad in soccer gear, trying to find the most awkward way possible to move a ball against a tilted, stone-wall, have never approached calculus with the same lust. Mosh-pitting until nightfall, matches can take hours or even entire days.

The point of the game is to chase down the loose ball and get it into marked scoring positions. Yet, those quick enough to actually get there first are the ones who end up getting a butt crack on top of their nose.

You might see this bundle of testosterone every once in a while in the average college dorm. Except these Ol’ English boys go at it until their blue and black shirts match their complexions. There are no breaks. Those unlucky enough to end up on the bottom get to eat dirt until they are literally green in the face.

Yet, it’s almost better to be on the bottom of the pile because the boys who are up against the wall end up with shredded elbows and scarred forearms. The pile barely moves; think of a bloated cow, tipped over and unable to flinch, sitting its hiney directly on your face. That’s what these kids endure in order to have some school pride.

Many places around the world don’t need rules to have good competition. They have fun in other ways, you know like chasing a ball of cheese down a hill or weaving around an obstacle course with their wife lofted atop their shoulder. Americans like to score, which is why the shot clock in Armory Square saved basketball, so I doubt the Eton Wall Game would ever catch on here. The last goal was scored over 100 years ago.

Sean Sweeney is a regular contributor to The Greasy Pole.

Ke$ha aside, not everyone wakes up the morning after a booze-fueled bender feeling like P. Diddy. In fact, if your first thoughts of the day are along the lines of, “Didn’t I used to have eyebrows?” and “Why am I outside?” then you’re probably feeling more like MC Hammer, circa 1996.

An affliction that inspired both the wildly popular 2009 movie with Zack Galifianakis and the 1888 Toulouse Latrec painting on which that film was based, the hangover is one of the few known downsides of binge drinking outside of cirrhosis of the liver and shirt misplacement (and maybe herpes). Though hangover remedies have been around for as long as man has had firewater to stoke the flames of insobriety the term itself was not used in its current context until the turn of the 20th century. According to Modern Drunkard Magazine — not your father’s drunkards — the term previously referred to “unfinished business” of any sort. Kind of like when you think you were done puking last night, but here comes some “unfinished business” that is determined to get you reacquainted with your toilet bowl.

With symptoms that include dehydration, fatigue, headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, anxiety, and, of course, irritability, one of the primary causes of this phenomenon is the fact that alcohol intake ceases the production of vasopressin in your brain, which then causes your kidneys to send water directly to your bladder instead of it being reabsorbed. In 2005, the British Medical Journal published a study that claimed no known cure for hangovers existed and that the only way “to avoid the symptoms of alcohol induced hangover is to avoid drinking.” Nevertheless, centuries before that study even came out, people were preemptively telling its authors to screw off by trying their hand at relieving the second-worst type of morning sickness.

In ancient Rome, Pliny the Elder suggested raw owl eggs and fried canary to do the trick, but that cure is probably about as effective as any other folk-remedy — unless, maybe, the canary is beer-battered. After all, in 1957 a survey by Wayne State University folklorist Frank Paulsen found that many people believed in the curative powers of tomato juice, heavy fried foods and sexual activity — though that very well could have been a dubious ploy to ensure that a certain folklorist could score some tail at his local booze barn with just an order of onion rings and a can of V-8.

Other food and drink purported — often speciously — to have curative properties when it comes to hangovers, include artichokes, borscht, pizza, wheatgrass, tomato juice, and “the hair of the dog” aka more hooch. A Bloody Mary is one of the more popular morning-after drinks, though author Ernest Hemingway was known to mix tomato juice with beer instead of vodka to cure his grogginess. And, if you are truly desperate to cure those breakfast shakes, one supposed natural cure involves making yourself a bath with wasabi or hot mustard to draw the toxins out of your body. Unfortunately, though, most people would probably rather emit a full-bodied aroma of vomit and cheap vodka than smell like a hot dog’s best friend.

Of course, the real secret is to keep yourself hydrated by drinking plenty of water before, during and after alcoholic consumption. Every college freshman with a Nalgene bottle knows that. It’s just hard to remember to take that advice when you’re powering through your second rendition of “Manic Monday” at late-night karaoke.

Tom Huddleston, Jr. is a regular web contributor of Jerk Explains it All.

Looking straight down out of a skyscraper is scary. Staring down at the ground from so far up that people appear as diminutive as ants and other buildings barely reach half your altitude will bring the toughest SOB to grab the railing. Free-soloing, that is, rock climbing straight up cliffs, without a rope, is as dangerous as scaling up the side of a skyscraper.

One of my friends is a self-described crazy man. He tries everything, even scuba diving in frozen lakes, believing he will be dead within ten years. One of his favorite “passions” is watching people free solo.

Not using a rope provides a rush, knowing you have no safety. One misstep or slip and you are probably dead. This guy in the video is like a real-life Cody from Disney’s The Rescuers Down Under. Speed soloing – he’s literally running up the cliff.

Every ledge, every protruding rock can be used to lighten the pressure of gravity. And don’t even think about looking down. Without 100 percent focus, bad things are going to happen.

Every person I’ve ever known who has even thought about the possibility of doing this – about two people – believe they are “one with nature.” Well they certainly will be if they fall.

They believe this one time won’t be their last. Those that free solo forget what exactly they are doing, so entrenched – they are in the moment.

And I don’t think there is any real league or establishment for this sport. All you really need is a place to climb and the balls to do it.

Sean Sweeney is a regular contributor to The Greasy Pole.

Ladies, don’t just go at it like rabbits – go at it with Rabbits. I’m not radically trying to convince you that bestiality is the next logical step from female homosexuality, I’m talking about mutual masturbation for lesbians.

If you’ve ever attempted it, you know it doesn’t happen in thirty seconds at the exact same time to the climax of a pornographic beat like in nearly every episode of The L Word. YouTube search those ladies and be awed, They don’t even need a double-dildo strap-on to make simultaneous pleasure possible–their hands actually manage to do it all. Somebody find me one of those chicas.

Reality check, lezzies. Unless you’re super flexible, can concentrate on both your handiwork and your own vagina, and your bodies fit together exactly right, chances are you’re never gonna fuck like “Tibette” in bed.

Screw scissoring. That shit’s damn near impossible. And as for that double strap-on business, saddling up with plastic dicks poking and prodding every which way – get rid of it. Let’s talk about what happened to good old-fashioned wetness, to satisfying two clits at once. Put aside the heavy, messy phallic instruments for a night and invest in a masturbatory sex toy that is too often overlooked: the Rabbit.

Named for the animal it resembles, the Rabbit may sound like a sketchy, albeit comical, plaything. But feed it a couple batteries, adjust the vibration intensity, place the two “ears” at 10:00 and 2:00 around the clitoris and wait for results. It’s so easy a straight man could do it.

The rabbit also comes in many variations, so you never cum disappointed. Try a three-pronged rabbit for more kick. Experiment with them, and with your partner. Once you know what works for each of you, get comfy together and pleasure away.

You can take turns sitting on top of one another with the rabbit pressed between you in just the right spot. The person on top can also help the one on the bottom by holding rabbit number two in her favorite place. Or you could always use them as foreplay to work up to vaginal intercourse. Watching each other touch yourselves and witnessing the clitoral reactions can be an extremely sexy warm-up to a very fun-filled evening.

Trust me, it’ll take awhile for this act to get old. But if you start craving a little variety, look into a tongue dinger. It’s a vibrating nucleus that fits around your tongue with a loose-fitting rubber strap. I don’t think you need me to further explain what this little guy does. Similar to the rabbit, but minus the rest of the body, the dinger cures all female oral sex complications, especially the unfortunate short tongue curse.

These and other vibrating options for mutual masturbation exist at any adult shop, and even in Spencer’s at the Carousel Center in Syracuse. So quit suffering with frustrating lesbian bed death, treat your relationship to a shopping spree and try raising some rabbits.

Meghan Russell is a regular web contributor to Pride Fever

I am an awkward person to photograph alone. I blink a lot. I don’t know where to look, or put my hands. But when my friend and roommate Samantha Tobias approached me about doing a photoshoot, she threw in words like sunsets, witchcraft, and wine. And I had to say yes.

Though Sam studies advertising design, she has recently toyed with the idea of styling photoshoots. She had a vision:

“For this shoot, I was really inspired by Native Americans, witchcraft, and nature. I wanted it to look feminine, and romantic, yet animalistic,” she says. So the fur coat (a vintage piece that belonged to our photographer’s mother) was as much a focal point as the bright yellow tribal face paint, she adds. “And I wanted it to be somewhere woodsy at sunset.”

She enlisted Dayna Carney, a senior, art photography major, and mutual friend, to photograph the shoot. And on a cold, February afternoon, we wandered into Thornden Park, with a camera, a fabulous fur coat, and a few props. Sam colored my face with neon tribal paint, and gobs of blue glitter.

We found a perfect little woodsy ditch, where Dayna spotted a special tree with throbbing wood blisters the size of basketballs bursting from the bark. Dayna asked me to stand by the tree art and to look off into the distance as she began shooting. The sky was white when we started. And as the sun began slowly setting, my camera qualms numbed with the rest of my body.

“The sunset cast this beautiful blue, purple, and pink sky, and gave the snow covering the ground this blue glow. The lighting gave it an ethereal ambiance,” Sam says.

We moved onto a branchy dead bush. I climbed it. I hid inside of it. Squatting in the middle of it, the artsy duo had me pouring speckles of hot-pink glitter from an empty skull-shaped vodka bottle into my hand. Sam asks, “what if you had the glitter covering your tongue?” COOL. I licked the pink glitter from my palm. The sparkly specks felt gritty in my mouth. I struggled to hold back laughter. Oh, how I love the creative process.

Dayna (who forgot to wear socks) snuck in at least one hundred shots before the cold forced us home. I swear I couldn’t feel my feet as I ran home, pounding my yellow wellies into the ground.

Once home, we uploaded the photos immediately, ordered Indian food, and bought a jumbo bottle of vino to warm up.

Styling: Samantha Tobias
Photography: Dayna Carney

To know Karen Greenfield is to know a fantastic contradiction. A nine-to-fiver with a free spirit, Greenfield’s administrative assistant job at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications complements her flare for peacock button sculptures. But don’t let her bashful smile and soft-spoken tone fool you — Greenfield has modeled nude for figure-drawing classes since her college years.

Engulfed in a bulky violet and fuchsia coat, her face half-hidden behind a mess of golden curls, Greenfield balks at conversations about her life — until you get her talking.

“I would like to paint the world,” said Greenfield, as she circled the second level of the Gear Factory where her art is on display and her son River — “my name is R-I-V-E-R,” he explained with confidence uncommon from a dimpled three-year-old — rides a squeaky, fire-engine red tricycle.

Greenfield speaks expressively, rambling in a sort of stream-of-consciousness that causes her to forget where she first began. She breaks out into song at will. Her seductive, vibrato-filled voice is perfect for impressing audiences during karaoke nights as well as for the backup singing she did on Roosevelt Dean’s album. The crooner prefers rock ‘n’ roll and blues music — “what the ‘salt of the earth’ people listen to” — but she surprises listeners with her opera-singing chops, belting out French lyrics at will in the middle of her petite, cerulean kitchen.

Chatting, rocking out, and drifting mindlessly around bottle art, discarded chip bags, and empty boxes, Greenfield possesses the type of absent-mindedness that one needs to create large, nameless, rainbow-colored pieces that fill her space at the Gear Factory, as well as all parts of her house.

Greenfield’s sister, Sally, who works at in SU’s Warehouse, said her big sister’s creativity developed at birth.
“When we were kids, our favorite game was to draw pictures of people, mostly girls, and tell stories about their lives.  What they were eating, what they did for a living, etc.  Her stories were always a lot more fun than mine,” said the younger Greenfield.

“I am inspired by culture,” noted Karen Greenfield, who recently started showing her art. “I am inspired by colorful, pretty things. For me, art is a departure from reality. I try to bring beauty into the world. I am not trying to make a social commentary.” Greenfield pointed out one of her newer works depicting her son lying in tall grass between two psychedelic-looking trees. The night sky twinkles above him as a ghostly bear stands on two legs surrounded by water.

Greenfield’s pieces for each show differ because she refuses to restrict herself to one genre. “I had a photo concentration in college, but the foundation of everything is drawing, she said. “My sculptures are drawings out of buttons. I really like found art, so I usually use whatever people give me.”

Greenfield’s sister said she either adores or loathes her sister’s pieces with no gray areas in between.

“The button pieces have special meaning to me, since when I think of Karen and buttons, I think of our grandmother who passed away when we were very young.  She used to hide buttons all over her house for Karen and me to find,” said Sally Greenfield.

For the button pieces, two peacocks and a medieval dragon, Greenfield used spray paint, pastels, and every variety of button she could find on eBay or obtain from friends and family. While the buttons on the dragon create scale patterns, the contrasting shades, tones, sizes, and shapes help form the peacock’s wings, causing certain body parts to pop while others fade into the background.

With two shows under her belt, Greenfield’s growing collection extends beyond buttons and paintings, filling her house with color and diversity. “My problem is that I like too many things,” Greenfield explained. “It’s hard for me to stay focused on anything so I end up dabbling. I also have a hard time putting names and prices on my work. For me it’s more about what it looks like.”

Though Greenfield would love to create art full-time, she is the sole provider for her son and needs the stable income from her job with the university. “I wear the pants, and I do art,” said Greenfield. While her son attends SU daycare, she works pushing papers.

The desk job, however, often places Greenfield in an uncomfortable setting. “My friend told me she found the perfect fortune cookie for me. It said ‘You will become increasingly confident with people in your workplace.’ I was like, ‘How did you know?’” recalled Greenfield, who often gets intimidated by the professors and people she meets at work. “I have a hard time talking to them without sounding ridiculous.”

After the hectic workday, she comes home, cooks dinner with River, and finds the time to do what she loves. But life didn’t always follow such a straightforward routine.

About three and a half years ago, Greenfield “freaked out” while working in a marketing job she despised. There she met Matt Damon, River’s father and Greenfield’s ex-lover (think less Bourne Identity, more Westcott Nation-type). When he told her he would lose respect for her if she refused to quit her boring, dead-end job and travel with him,

Greenfield believed she successfully “stuck it to the man” by leaving her job and forfeiting many of her possessions.

“I was totally drinking the Kool-Aid,” mused Greenfield. Damon, whose current project is a “create your own adventure” story, wanted to fulfill his dream of traveling to Florida to be with the Rainbow People, a peace-loving group that congregates at Rainbow gatherings all over the country. Together, Damon and Greenfield traveled across the continental United States and illustrated the book Space Chicken together.

Driving from Virginia to North Carolina to Florida, the two lived off the land, doing whatever they could to get by. At one point, the couple found a cat, lost it, and then reclaimed it from a random trucker. Traveling west to Santa Fe, the pair exhausted their funds. To avoid begging for money, Greenfield stood in the town square singing opera, something she began in high school. Damon described the moment as the type of instant in which “everything shut up and all of humanity came together as one.”

The journey may have lasted longer, but soon Greenfield felt that something was off. Annoyed with Damon’s antics, Greenfield realized she “got knocked up on the side of a mountain in Boulder, Colorado.” and wanted to return home to reality.

All this from a woman who cuts loose by doing laundry and describes herself as somewhat snooze-worthy.
Realizing that her lifestyle wasn’t conducive to supporting a child, Greenfield decided to reprise her role as a part-time nude model (at least until River was born). After River celebrated his first birthday, Greenfield decided to apply for a university position and finally landed a steady job she loves. It’s a career that pays for the expenses of taking care of River, and sometimes even Damon as well.

“Karen was an incredibly supportive friend to me during a lot of dark times,” Damon said. She’s the kind of person who puts others above herself often, perhaps to her own detriment at times. “She’s a superhero.”

Greenfield also doubles as a board member for figure-drawing workshops at the Westcott Community Center, further expanding the amount of time she expends on creative energy.

“I show people how to see. The organic ability to see things is a skill everyone can learn,” Greenfield said.

As for her own art, Greenfield concentrates on making things she can be proud of.

“I’m trying to get to my favorite,” Greenfield explained. “I’m trying to make my favorite.”

Photography by Riley Woods

Closer Still stayed optimistic even though The Lost Horizon appeared nearly empty. The place looked like a deserted Mexican cantina; a mere twenty people had shown up to see them play during a snow-swept January storm.
But, as they say, the show must go on.

Maggie, Maynah, and Millie Goble took the stage with confidence and performed an intimate and simplistic show. These three sisters — two of whom are twins — make up the majority of the band. They prefer a coffeehouse vibe and three-part harmonies accompanied by acoustic guitars. They write songs about love, friendship, and life experiences — songs that could play on the soundtracks of romantic comedies.

And then there’s guitarist Jason Checkla, Closer Still’s newest and only male member. He doesn’t mind all of the estrogen. He joined the group last fall and believes they are the most talented band with whom he’s worked.

“It’s mostly because this is the first band that I think is actually good,” Checkla said in front of Maggie, Maynah, and Millie. “I think we have a good sound, and [the girls] are pretty fun to work with.”

On cue, the Goble sisters rang out a synchronized, resounding aww. All three girls’ eyes focused on Checkla. He blushed slightly, gave a hint of a smile, and shrugged his shoulders modestly. Checkla embraces the girly songs and giggling, the rehearsals at the Gobles’ family residence, and being the butt of jokes.

On the Lost Horizon stage, Checkla stood silently behind the sisters, who were front and center, his guitar stringing their voices together. Later in the night, he wove solo instrumentals throughout the sisters’ three-part harmony and performed a folk cover of Timbaland’s “The Way I Are” while the Gobles gazed at him admiringly.

Maggie joined Checkla on acoustic guitar during several songs throughout the show, and occasionally stepped in on tambourine. Maynah played the triangle for “Big Mistake,” chuckling every time she tapped the miniscule instrument.
The Gobles’ soothing vocals undeniably drive Closer Still’s sound. Their voices, led by Maggie, meld together to create a pseudo-lullaby effect.

The girls smiled as they performed, clearly pleased with the sound of their music. They swayed in sync, looked to each other for guidance, closed their eyes, and scrunched their brows when hitting the high notes. Checkla stayed hunched over his guitar and remained mostly stationary, engrossed in his sound.

“We apply the intricate guitar lines with the three-part harmony, and that’s what really gives us our sound,” said Millie, the youngest sister. “That’s the key to what makes us work.”

The Gobles started harmonizing as kids. On family road trips, they sang along to the radio. With practice, the sisters began to sound more cohesive and less like individual singers. In 2003, they finally dubbed themselves Closer Still after transporting their act from the backseat of a car to a real stage.

The twins started writing their own music in high school. Maynah composes the lyrics while Maggie and Checkla write the music, and the three sisters collaborate to develop the harmonies.

“We’ve had a lot of interesting life experiences,” Maynah said. “We’ve lived in a lot of different places in different parts of the world, which kind of fostered a unique appreciation of life and what motivates people. That kind of motivates me to write.”

These shared moments have made the Gobles’ ties even stronger; they finish each other’s sentences and use funny nicknames. They live together at their parents’ home in Oswego and at college as roommates.

All the members of Closer Still have attended SUNY Oswego. Maynah, who graduated this past December, is moving to China in the spring to teach English. Maggie, Millie, and Checkla are graduating in May, and each have career goals outside of music. But they still dream about making it big.

“We talk about moving down to [New York City],” Millie said. “We played a show there just last week, and it went pretty well. There’s a lot of opportunity there — a lot more than in this area.”

Closer Still is releasing a new EP soon, and, in the meantime, does studio work and backup harmonies for friends recording albums in Rochester and Skaneateles.

“I think the studio work is something we can really get into,” Maynah said. “When you like writing harmonies, being creative for other people and helping them sound good is really fun.”

Yet Closer Still’s plan to move is still just an idea, and a record deal of their own will have to wait until after graduation. As Maynah leaves for China, Millie, Maggie, and Jason will have to readjust.

“We aren’t necessarily looking for this to take off,” Millie said. “We’re not looking to be the next Lady Gaga.”

“Speak for yourself,” Checkla said, grinning. As the girls crack up, that familiar red hue fills his cheeks once again.

Photographs by Ben Addonizio

One raised hand started the class talking. Rows of journals sat open until one brave volunteer shared a personal entry.

“My room is very pretty, but it hardly gets a visit. The thing is, I’m afraid to sleep alone,” she said. Another student’s hand flew up in the air and she offered, “I took a picture of my room because I like my room. I like being alone half the time.”

Supportive feedback swelled into the original cacophony of side conversations, curt expletives, and cries. For an outside witness in this public high school located in the poorest zip code in New York State, the scene felt strikingly raw.

But for Stephen Mahan, this scene defined every Friday morning. Dressed in loose-fitting jeans, a sweater with rolled-up sleeves, and a plaid newsboy cap, Mahan stood at the front of the classroom, speaking over 31 chattering students. “We are going to write an American Pop,” Mahan said, referring to Jack Kerouac’s three-line alternative haiku with no syllable limit.

One student played with the point-and-shoot Nikon used for the photography portion of the class and — flash — lit up one half of the classroom. Uninterrupted, Mahan bounced through the room, scripting his own colorful three-liner off the top of his head, encouraging his students to think creatively and start writing. “If you feel more comfortable writing in a language other than English, do it,” he announced. Journal entries, verbal expression, photography, and open dialogue are the tools for Mahan’s Literacy, Community, and Photography (LCP) course, showing students their voices matter.

Mahan teaches photography in the Department of Transmedia in the College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) at Syracuse University. Through an outreach portion of the LCP course, SU students join Mahan in mentoring kids of all ages throughout the community.

The LCP program uses photography as a starting point for students to tell their stories. Mahan believes the camera creates a level playing field and a healthy sense of self-esteem. He’s right on track — teaching through photography has become a growing national trend as institutions embrace alternative tools for a greater understanding of self and academia. “I’m not out to play Mother Teresa,” Mahan said. But it’s good that it allows kids that learn differently and think differently to see that they can achieve a high level of praise and worthiness.”

The photo/literacy residency in the class builds on approaches modeled after Wendy Ewald’s “Literacy through Photography” program, developed at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. Ewald works with children and encourages them to communicate their aspirations and experiences creatively. Like Ewald, Mahan challenges every student to use the camera to express themselves and “look at things sideways,” a rule he stressed since he began teaching the LCP course in 2005.

The student photography projects center around thematic questions: Who am I? Where am I from? What are my dreams? The photographs then prompt writing. Like Mahan’s students, the answers come in all forms — from a few simple lines to a compelling poem, like “From the Shadows”:
I’m from nights with no food
Crying with mom
Raising my brothers
From ‘I brought you in this world and
I’ll take you out …’
I’m from liquor and parties
Drama and fights
Police (‘We have a report of a disturbance’)
I’m from flames
Hospitals family reunions
Phony family members
I’m from the house
I’m the glue

Tenth-grade English teacher Adam Lutwin directs the writing component of the course at George Fowler High School in Syracuse, N.Y.. He notices student improvement as the program progresses; the photographs grow in depth, the writing becomes more personal, and the students branch out in sharing their work. “They tell me things that I don’t think they would ever say if we weren’t doing things like this, if they hadn’t written it or taken photos of it,” Lutwin said.

Even the SU mentors detect improvement in the students’ work and their overall academic performance. Stephanie Appleby, a junior communications design major, believes that before being exposed to the LCP class and its alternative teaching approach, the children viewed education with a limited perspective. She thinks this course ignites the students to move forward, attend class, contribute, and consider pursuing higher education. Appleby once overheard one of the more outspoken boys in class announce, “This is the kind of shit that makes me want to come to school!”

Mahan resumed his place at the front of the room, ready to assign the next writing project to a full classroom. His honest energy commanded their attention and admiration. “That’s my dude!” sophomore London Odistor exclaimed.

“He’s not like other teachers. He takes teaching to another level.” The mentors attest that the children respond especially well to Mahan as a teacher. “He’s real to them,” said junior communications design major Stephanie Hart.

Mahan began teaching photography in Buffalo, N.Y., in 1993. His experience proved useful in his ability to connect with the students, and foster an open relationship based more on friendship than the hierarchy imposed by the authoritative position of teacher. Mahan, who once struggled with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), relates to the challenges that learning poses for many children. “Those kids, the worst kids in school — those were me,” he said. “I was the one thrown out of schools all the time just because I learned differently.”

SU also offers services to the LCP students in the form of Light Work, a nonprofit photo center and community darkroom located on campus. Through scholarship funding, Mahan’s students can attend classes and workshops on Adobe Photoshop as well as on black-and-white and portrait photography. The scholarship gives them all the necessary resources: access to a camera, a fully equipped digital lab, a darkroom, and bus tokens for transportation to and from the center.

One particular student inspired this scholarship when she found a positive escape from her life in journal-writing and photography. In 2008, Cherron Patterson’s boyfriend beat her 20-month-old child to death using metal rods, tubes, and a metal spring. Mahan said most of the students he works with come from backgrounds of drugs and violence — a harsh reality of Syracuse’s West Side. Although Mahan recognizes he cannot save everyone, he hopes to make students aware of their potential to transcend their issues through education. “All I do is do what I can,” he said.

The course visibly impacts the entire community. This past July, the Near Westside Initiative sponsored the installation of 10 large-scale photographs on the exterior of a building on West Fayette Street in downtown Syracuse. The images measured 48 inches by 64 inches and were sealed with a protective shield to ensure their permanence in the community.

Mahan recently received funding for another community installment downtown, which will feature text imposed on images of children’s hands. He expects that further public displays will attract statewide recognition. “It’s impressive,” he said. “Especially when somebody goes through the poorest neighborhood in New York State, and the third poorest neighborhood in the country, and there’s student art all over the place.” Mahan cited statistics given by mayoral candidate Alfonso Davis.

As Mahan concluded his Friday lesson, students reluctantly turned in their glue sticks that they used to paste images from their contact sheets into their journals. “Okay, now pass in your books,” he announced, much to the student’s disappointment. “You’re taking my journal? But then I can’t write in it and I’m going to get all sad and stuff,” said a humble voice over the shuffle of children anticipating the final bell. Mahan suggested writing on a scrap piece of paper and reassured the student he could paste the writing in his journal next time.

The student surrendered his journal and said goodbye. He went home to an empty room to spend another night alone, writing on a piece of paper.

Once upon a time, a heavily-armoured, red-haired Troll named Vrai met an emaciated Undead named Shirasabro. They talked about their likes and dislikes — namely killing members of the Alliance and avoiding their homework.

Okay, so maybe this Hunter and Death Knight didn’t have homework, but their human alter egos certainly did. Even though Vrai and Shriasbro exist only in the World of Warcraft, their characters helped unite two real human beings who are physically hundreds of miles apart.

World of Warcraft, commonly referred to as WoW, is a computer game connecting players from around the world through a fantasy realm, making the transformation from bona fide human to fictional Guild member unnaturally fluid. WoW and other similar role-playing games lend themselves to a high-level interaction on both a real and fictional level with other players — on the other side of the couch or thousands of miles away. When fighting monsters and demons until the early morning, bound to make a connection.

That’s exactly what happened to 19-year-old Taylor Baker. The sophomore drama major, who spends over 20 hours a week playing WoW in her Winding Ridge apartment, sets specific gaming times for each day. She plays with other Guild members every Monday through Thursday from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. and extends her hours on the weekends when she has more free time. These hours are an upgrade — or rather, a downgrade — from her freshman year and her life before gaming.

Katie Yates, a current sophomore at Wells College in Aurora, N.Y, is one of Baker’s former friends. “In high school, I remember that she was always game to do whatever,” she said. Some people change when they go to college, but Yates noticed significant changes in her friend’s behavior.

Baker entered college like a typical freshman, making friends on her floor and going to parties. But as WoW became a bigger priority, Baker fraternized more with fictional friends than with frat boys. More often than not, Baker stayed in to game with her new “close friends,” most of whom she had never met in person, removing herself from her friends, good grades, and real life. “Now when I talk to, her she just seems completely uninterested,” Yates said. “She’s usually at the computer.”

As virtual relationships grow, more and more people are struggling to sustain real-life relationships, according to CNN. Libby Smith, a trainer at the Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery, said that symptoms of frequent online gaming include anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem; Baker however, nonchalantly chalks it up to losing touch. “It doesn’t really bother me that I don’t have super-close friends,” she said.

On the surface, Yates understands Baker’s point. “[Gaming] can be entertaining, but it can also drain you of your life,” she said.

“Without seeing each other all the time or being together, we just grew apart,” Baker retorted.

But Baker is involved in her second relationship with a guy she has never physically seen or met in the 10 months they have been together. Her first relationship was early in her gaming experience with a man named Jeremy Jennings, then 25 and living in Florida. He visited Baker in Syracuse once while they were dating — the only time they met face to face — but the relationship fizzled after three months.

Baker met her current boyfriend, 19-year-old Brandon Frazier from Arlington, Texas, while adventuring in the magical world of Azeroth. Frazier is currently earning his high school degree and hopes to move to Syracuse to become a cop and to be closer to Baker.

Their relationship blossomed through rich conversation, not from the actual game itself, Baker and Frazier agreed. “It’s not like we started playing the game to find each other,” Frazier said. “I don’t see how that’s any different from going to a party and finding someone.”

It’s true that interacting through online gaming communities share some commonalities with face-to-face interaction. However, according to ScienceDaily.com, forming relationships online creates perceptions about people that gamers cannot necessarily verify, such as translating emotions. This is Frazier’s biggest challenge in their remote relationship.

“I base a lot of my actions off gestures,” he said. “At times, it’s just impossible to tell what [Baker is] really thinking.”

Their relationship, like any nontraditional one, has its fair share of issues. Baker’s parents don’t approve of their relationship, and have blocked Frazier’s number from their daughter’s phone to cut off communication.
Baker never expected to find a love interest while gaming; she actually thinks it’s weird to look for an online relationship. A slew of dating sites help gamers seek out a cyberspace connection, such as DateCraft.com and GamingPassions.com. The latter boasts the tagline: “meet other video game lovers who ‘get it’.”

But Baker is skeptical. “I think that if you really want to be in a relationship, you should go out and meet people,” she said. “I see the WoW situation differently because that’s not what I was looking for. It just sort of happened.”

Baker’s reality comes with a “don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it” mentality. “I can see where people would think it’s not as real,” she said. “But at the same time, those are people who don’t game. They don’t understand how immersed you can get in it and how much you can actually learn about someone.”

Frazier was also supportive. “Sure, our relationship might not be normal,” he said. “But I love Taylor. She means the world to me, and I couldn’t imagine a day without her.”

Illustrations by Keisha Cedeno

I love nerds. And geeks. And all other individuals whose interests transcend applying toxic chemicals to their hair. Nerds pack knowledge. If you manage to coax them out of their states of paralyzing mutism, they’ll dispel little tidbits of knowledge like how Christopher Nolan only used CGI in The Dark Knight for about three effects. Hot.

Unfortunately, nerds and geeks are under tremendous social pressure to conform to the ritualistic dating practices of “getting laid at any cost.” Even Wired (the nerd bible) recently told the stammering men of my dreams that they need to act less socially awkward.

Fine, Wired. But maybe the techies and trekkies should seek advice from a publication whose focus is excelling in social situations and landing babes. Men’s Health directs young males to “wander away from the crowd, take in the scene, then find a painting, book, or view out a window” so women will find them more interesting. Everyone knows lying to get women into bed cultivates meaningful and lasting relationships. Just ask Tiger Woods.

Repressing geekiness isn’t just bad for the quality of one’s love life. The stereotypical social awkwardness that “plagues” nerds is what helps them create amazing things that “normal” people take for granted: Facebook, the iPhone, and some of the best cinematic adventures ever filmed (LOST, Star Wars, etc.).

So here’s a Big Bang Theory for the Leonard Hofstadters of the world: Try rockin’ it out with your horn-rimmed glasses and see what happens. I’m way more interested in your social awkwardness than that suit-wearing asshole pretending to be Ted Mosby, architect.

Illustration by Gabrielle Hastings

First they took away candy bars. Then they snatched the soda. Then they recalled recess. And just when you thought schools couldn’t do anything more counterproductive than removing exercise time and excess calories, educators took away the dictionary.

That’s right, the Menifee Union School District in Southern California confiscated all the dictionaries from an elementary school because one child’s parents complained their son found the definition for oral sex. Specifically, the kid learned that oral sex is “oral stimulation of the genitals”— a definition that was first included in the dictionary in 1973 after the release of the mainstream porno hit Deep Throat. Educational, indeed.

Call us 90s relics, but when we were younger we used dictionaries for spelling and, you know, learning useful nuggets like the definition of borborygmus. Future generations may never know that this is the name for the rumbling sound your stomach makes.

These days, kids have unlimited access to the Internet, and they are but one Google search away from perhaps a more educational, multi-media definition. With words like bootylicious slowly bastardizing the English language (and officially entering the dictionary), parents should be more worried more that their kids will grow up to be illiterate morons than knowledgeable pervs.

Regardless, this is America, and we don’t punish people for being curious about oral sex until they’re in the oval office with an overzealous intern.

Illustration by Monica Palmer

The battle for gay marriage is likely headed for the Supreme Court. Not that you asked (because it would be illegal to tell), but this lowly gay rights soldier is pissed.

Theodore Olson, George W. Bush’s first Solicitor General, is a brave and talented man. Like a true World War I hero of the trenches, he’s an expert at defending barren terrain; he rescued President Reagan from the Iran-Contra battlefield and successfully argued Bush into the White House in Bush v. Gore. But now this renegade conservative soldier has found something substantial to fight for, and he’s planning to ambush the enemy.

Throughout January, Olson led an attack on California’s gay marriage-banning Proposition 8 in the epic showdown of Perry v. Schwarzenegger at the U.S. District Court in San Francisco. Olson’s team argued for comprehensive gay marriage rights, harkening back to the evolution-versus-creationism faceoff in the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1926.

A decision has yet to be announced as of press time but, District Court Judge Vaughn Walker is expected to overturn Prop 8, and opponents will likely appeal to the Supreme Court. Advocates hope the case could become a modern Loving v. Virginia, which legalized interracial marriage in 1967.

I’m not exactly over the rainbow about the prospects.

I have no qualms about conservative Olson arguing for the “liberal” position; gay marriage is not a “liberal” position, and I believe his intentions are honorable. But in cultural battles such as this, planning, organizing, and strategizing are vital. Legal-empire-building Olson marching gay marriage to this conservative Supreme Court is reminiscent of a heady Napoleon rushing into a wintry Russia. As in Nap’s case, ego conquered logic, and I fear ABBA may just crash Ted Olson’s victory party with a rendition of “Waterloo.”

The winner is largely up to Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Court’s latest indecisive, geriatric swing-vote. Although Kennedy has expressed pro-gay rights positions in the past — notably in the 2003 Texas consensual sodomy decision Lawrence v. Texas — he was also appointed by Ronald Reagan.

Instead of diving in head-first, I wish Olson had taken a more incremental path with baby steps such as in Gill v. Office of Personnel Management, which focuses on elements of the Defense of Marriage Act. Brown v. Board of Education desegregated public schools only after smaller victories primed the justices for sweeping change.

I used to have a “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” standpoint on gay rights, but I’ve come to recognize the importance of strategy in ensuring long-term success. Though it seems there’s no stopping Olson, there is also no need to anoint him a hero of the gay rights movement. This man’s heart is in the right place, but his ego is out to make history. He’s gambling with millions of peoples’ futures before an antagonistic Court.

An ambush on the justices was a move of passion, but it lacked sweet reason, and may be headed for a cold, bitter end.

Illustration by Crystal White