Twilight:

Summary: Angst-ridden teen Bella loves Cedric Diggory but she also loves a tan, pig-nosed beefcake.  Dilemma! Practice looking forlorn, young Stewart, you are trying to sell celibacy to a generation where sex is so ubiquitous, there are PSAs about sexting!

You’ll buy the books if: You are a self-hating womyn. This not-so-subtle attempt at Mormon propaganda is unbelievably misogynist considering it was written by someone named Stephanie. Beyond that, it is just embarrassing how bad the writing is and how pathetic the plot devices are. The combination leads to weird situations such as Cedric/Edward deciding that Bella should not be allowed to drive her own car because it is not safe. And in all honesty, women are not really genetically capable learning science — plus voting is so passé — why bother? Phyllis Schlafly clearly ghost-wrote this drek.

You’ll like the movies if: You find Frankenstein attractive and Dakota Fanning engaging, and the verb “to dazzle” does not make you gag impulsively.

Final thoughts: If you enjoy the American Empire, ignore this trash. It you desperately pray for the End of Days, the popularity of this franchise bodes well for you!

True Blood:

Summary: In the show, vampires have “come out of the closet,” as it were, revealing themselves to humanity. They are now trying to integrate into mainstream society…this is the backdrop to the antics and adventures of psychic Sookie Stackhouse, her vampire boyfriend Bill Compton, and a whole host of Southern eccentrics who would make Tennessee Williams’ curse his lack of imagination. There are also maenads, werewolves, and rock-hard naked bodies (Bon Temps has one hell of a gym!) It’s HBO, so celibacy is far from encouraged.

You’ll like the books if: everything I’ve just said strikes you as blasé. The show’s inspiration – The Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris — seems even crazier than the show. Exhibit A: the books feature twin fairy supermodels, and the guy is a fairy in both senses of the word. This could bode well for a beach read, BUT it is tough to say. I was recently on a flight and the woman next to me was reading one of them and she said it was really good. She also was flipping through a People magazine and eating DunkAroos . Where do you even get DunkAroos anymore? Has she been hording them since 1996? The whole thing seemed suspect.

You’ll like the television show if: You know you are settling in for an hour of trashy fun that does not entirely require you to check your brain at the door.

Final thoughts: This is my favorite show on television right now, and I have great taste (Death Becomes Her, hello!) so you will definitely love it too.

The Gates:

Summary: ABC, trying to cash in on this hip, supernatural trend quickly rolled out some show about a gated community with a new sheriff. Unbeknownst to the handsome lawman, his plucky wife and lovely children, this community if populated with—wait for it!—VAMPIRES, witches, and even a football star/werewolf. Not only are these gated-community folks supernatural, but many of them also are former lingerie and Abercrombie and Fitch models, so it will absolutely remind you of your high school experience. Who says Hollywood cannot come up with anything original anymore?

You’ll like it if: You are still watching “Desperate Housewives,” but you could change to Boondocks (they are black but is Japanimation and there’s also biting social commentary?!) Also, if your remote control is broken.

Final Thoughts: I was embarrassingly excited to watch the premier episode and was quite disappointed. So disappointed, I promptly when and rented Interview with the Vampire to clean my pallet. Go rent that. It has Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas, Tom Cruise (forget that one) and a young Kirsten Dunst. Remember her? Remember when she was going to be somebody? She was such a good Marie Antoinette in that really long music video the baby from the Godfather directed. Go rent this movie, buy a bottle of Chianti, think about what Kirsten Dunst could have been and forget all about that weird ABC show that will probably be cancelled by the third episode.

It might seem obvious the lack of academic diversity among the student body is holding our school back.  We are a specialized school masquerading as a liberal arts college, but too many people are not being fooled.  I don’t blame the students for this; it’s just a vicious cycle.  Our school emphasizes the government and economics programs when recruiting students.  The technique seems to be working as we get many students from across the county and around the world who are interested in these areas.  Where we are less successful is appealing to students with other interests.

I actually think that this government and economics emphasis is part of the reason we suffer a lack of name recognition.  There are plenty of smart kids across the country whose interests lie in the humanities  –history, literature, film and all sorts of other great majors precede grad school.  Those students are not looking at CMC.  Maybe they stumble across it when they visit Pomona, but unless there is some family connection or other extenuating circumstance, CMC is unlikely to appeal to them over our sister to the south if their academic interests do not conform to our reputation.

College rankings are released just three months after new students matriculate.

Another sad truth is we do not even have a monopoly on people who are interested in government and economics.  We are competing with Ivy League schools for those students; I think you would be hard-pressed to find a student interested in government who would select CMC over Harvard University if admitted to both.  I say this not because I think Harvard has a better government program; in fact I suspect the opposite, given students there have poor access to professors and classes taught by teaching assistants.  But name recognition does count for something, particularly in government.

I transferred here from George Washington University in Washington D.C. for my sophomore year.  My friends back home in Indiana had all heard of GW and were impressed by it, but when I informed them I planned to transfer to CMC, they were shocked.  None of them were familiar with the school.  I also considered transferring to USC, and all my friends back home were partial to me becoming a Trojan simply because they had more familiarity with the school. I think objective analysis would show CMC to be more academically rigorous than either GW or USC, but that is not the perception.  GW, USC and Harvard are large research institutions.  They are inevitably going to be better known, but even within liberal arts colleges we are not especially well known.

Ultimately, I think we as a school need to consider expanding and committing resources to our other programs if we want to further increase our name recognition and rankings.  We need to make a concerted effort to better support departments like history and psychology that have broader appeal, but our recent track record is poor.

Professor Arash Khazeni in the Middle Eastern studies department was recently denied tenure without explanation.  The Iranian born Khazeni, who has taught at CMC since 2003, has a masters and doctorate from Yale.  His book was published early this year by the University of Washington Press, and he is well-liked by students.  Still, he was snubbed.  His background brought a wonderfully unique perspective to students and I, for one, would like to know exactly why the tenure review panel denied us such a great asset at our school.  With this in mind, why would any student looking to study Middle Eastern studies choose our newly minted program when its star faculty member was not even given tenure?

The best way to increase our ranking and our school’s prestige is to diversify.  Isn’t that what our stock-broker friends would recommend?  If we truly want our school’s rankings to go up, the student body should encourage more resource allocation to programs that will bring in more diverse students.  The only other option is to settle with our good– not phenomenal– ranking within the world of liberal arts colleges.

Like other holidays, there’s an entire culture that surrounds Halloween. There are only two types of music you should listen to during October: Béla Bartók’s Hungarian/Transylvanian folk music -inspired string pieces, or the music of Bernard Herrmann. The only appropriate cookies to eat this time of year are ginger-molasses, the only appropriate beverage is apple cider, and the only appropriate movies are horror movies.

The following films are not all terrifying, though some are genuinely scary. And all are camp classics that are perfect for the Halloween season.

Evil Dead Trilogy (Evil Dead [1981] Evil Dead II [1987], Army of Darkness [1993]):

Before Sam Raimi did the god-awful Spiderman movies, he made these bizarre, low-budget films. They follow the misadventures of Michigan State student Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) as he fights demons from ancient Sumeria that have been released by the Necronomicon ex-Mortis, flashes of H. P. Lovecraft.

Plot: In the first, lowest budgeted, film Ash and his three friends go into a remote forest cabin in the hills of Tennessee. There they find “The Book of the Dead” (which does not become the Necronomicon until the next film), a book whose pages are made of human flesh and inked in human blood. They also find taped recordings of the professor who initially found the book reading incantations from it. The recording, in turn, releases a horde of demons upon the house and surrounding woods. One by one, Ash’s friends are picked off and possessed until he alone has to fight the evil spirits (with moderate success).

Thanks to new funding, the sequel is more of a re-imagining of the first film than a traditional sequel. The events of the first film are sort of ignored and it begins with Ash and his girlfriend going to the same cabin and, again, finding the book and tapes and releasing the demons, all in the first fifteen minutes. His girlfriend is taken over by the demons and he must battle her until the aforementioned professor’s daughter comes looking for her father, along with a few locals. In the course of this everyone except for Ash becomes possessed and Ash loses his hand and replaces it with a chainsaw. Eventually he seems to defeat the demons…but is then transported back in time.

The third film, “Army of Darkness,” finds Ash back in the Middle Ages, where Lord Arthur and his men are searching for the Necronomicon so they can defeat the demons that are plaguing their land. A wise man declares that only Ash can find the book, so off he goes, eventually accidentally releasing the Army of Darkness. Obviously he and Lord Arthur’s small band of soldiers must now fight this demon army, yada yada yada.

Cast: Oh sure, there is a cast, but do you need to know about anyone other than Bruce Campbell?

Highlights: If you only have time to watch one of these movies, I recommend the second most highly. It has the perfect mix of comedy and horror, plus the stop-motion animation, head-less body (of who I won’t say) doing a ballet dance is pretty hilarious. Also inspired is the casting of Sam Raimi’s brother Ted as the head demon “Possessed Henrietta,” mortem wife of Professor Knowby. That said, all these movies are classics in their own right and deserve your attention at some point.

Scariness Rating: 7/10 Sure, things jump out at you a lot and a tree rapes someone (don’t ask), but honestly, these effects are so hilariously bad you should not get that scared.

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

For a truly scary movie perhaps I could have recommended “Mommy Dearest,” but instead of mocking Joan “Eyebrows” Crawford, I decided to include one of her most sympathetic roles on my list. Anytime you get Betty Davis and Joan Crawford in the same movie you know that you are in for a treat. Throw in murder, intrigue, and sadism, and you just might have a perfect Halloween camp classic.

Plot: In the prologue we learn that back in the old vaudeville days, Baby Jane Hudson was a star, worthy of a Sarah Siddons Award. She was spoiled and cruel and picked on her sister Blanche. As the two grow up, Jane’s celebrity fades and Blanche becomes a film star. One dark night, a car accident, seemingly Jane’s fault, cripples Blanche and permanently forces Jane to take care of her hated sister. Cut to the “present” (the early 1960s when the film was made) to a dilapidated Hollywood mansion where reclusive Jane (Davis) is a cruel keeper to her crippled sister Blanche (Crawford). Blanche is a virtual prisoner in the manor and we quickly see that Jane is losing her grip on sanity as she shows increasingly violent, murderous tendencies. Obviously this movie has a twist ending. Obviously!

Cast: Not since Paris was forced to decide which goddess to give the golden apple to have two divas of such magnitude competed in so close a forum. Bette Davis and Joan Crawford are both powerhouse actresses and titans on the screen. Victor Buono, Anna Lee, and Maidie Norman are all on hand, but they are little more than set pieces, eclipsed Davis and Crawford. That’s generally a good thing.

Highlights: Jane serving the horrified Blanche cooked rat for “din-din” and Jane’s disturbing rendition of “I’ve Written a Letter to Daddy” certainly typify this film.

Scariness Rating: 7/10. Betty Davis’ make-up, a cross between a banshee and Medusa, will make even the manliest, red-meat eating lumberjack cry for his mama.

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

When I was little, I would peruse the horror section of my local video store, Video World. Usually reading the backs of the boxes would give me a sort of cheap thrill; at 6, 7, and 8 I was too young to rent the movies, but the pictures and descriptions on the back were usually enough to freak me out. “Sleepaway Camp,” I remember, had a particularly hokey motif for its back-of-the-box summary. It was written as a letter home by some poor camper who is implicitly killed midway through writing. Even as a 7-year-old I knew this was lame. This movie, however, is terrifying — by far the scariest on the list. I watch a lot of horror films and this is the only one I can remember since I was about 12 that really unnerved me.

Plot: Made in that heyday of slasher films, the early 1980s, the film has a really strange beginning. Young Angela is at the lake with her brother Peter, her father John and her father’s male lover (this was pretty shocking for the ‘80s). In a freak water-skiing accident, Peter and John are killed, and the orphaned Angela must go to live with her weird Aunt Martha and her cousin Ricky. Eight years later, Angela and Ricky head off to summer camp where Angela is subsequently harassed by the other kids, though she does find a summer crush. A string of murders hits the camp, and young children and employees alike are brutally murdered in graphic and sadistic ways. Honestly the movie is all pretty standard fare until about the last 5-10 minutes, when this bizarre trolly takes a sharp turn from “ho-hum horror” to “What the eff just happened?! Get Dr. Rosenzweig on the phone; I need to talk to her now or I won’t be able to sleep tonight” territory. I don’t want to ruin anything for you; just watch the movie and prepare to be traumatized (although this warning might be enough to pre-empt the otherwise traumatic shock).

Cast: Sienna Miller, Matt Damon, Lily Tomlin, Lucy Liu, Sir Ian McKellan, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jane Lynch….just kidding. “Desiree Gould, Christopher Collet, Felissa Rose etc.” Have you heard of any of these people? Obviously not. They’re completely irrelevant to the point of this movie.

Highlights: The end; this moving is nothing without the end. Well that and Aunt Martha, who should have gotten her own spin-off.

Scariness Rating: 10/10. I considered honoring the hokey VHS box with a “666/10” rating, but that seemed a little much.

There you have it, a number of films to go out and watch. Just head on down to Video Paradisio in the Village (support local business!) and fill your Halloween weekend, all with varying levels of laughs and loathing. Thanks to daylight-savings this week you all have an extra hour, which means there is no excuse for not watching one of these to get into the spirit of Halloween.

Quick Side Note: Most people pronounce the museum “LACK-MA,” but I like to pronounce it “LAWK-MA.” This may seem trivial, but I think LACK-MA sounds stupid — like the museum is lacking something. LAWK-MA, on the other hand, sounds much more tasteful. It conjures images of the opera Lakmé by Léo Delibes, which is quite classy. “Not good enough,” you say? Well the score of said opera is featured prominently in both British Airways and Ghirardelli chocolates commercials, which ups the class quotient into positively posh territory. At least this is what we think of as “posh” in humble Indi-“REAL AMERICA”-ana, but enough ellipses and digressions; back to the actual exhibit.

Pompeii, as you may know, was a resort city in Ancient Rome that was destroyed in 79 CE when Mount Vesuvius erupted, burying the city in volcanic ash. All this can be learned from the exciting water ride “Escape from Pompeii” at Busch Gardens theme park in scenic Williamsburg, Virginia. Book your flights today at Kayak.com. But what Lakmé-MA can teach you that you will not learn at an alcohol-funded amusement park is that Pompeii was quite the chic place in its day. Trés chi-chi, in fact. The Amalfi coast was to the Romans what the French Riviera was to Dick and Nicole Diver, or what the Hamptons are to Blair Waldorf (don’t pretend you don’t know all about Blair Waldorf because I know you do). Basically the Romans built opulent villas, filled them with priceless art, and had wild orgies. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Part of the exhibit examines the cult of Bacchus and his retinue filled with maenads, satyrs, sielni, and panthers. These merry beings got drunk and pranced through the woods, just like Republicans do at the Bohemian Grove in the Northern California redwoods. (That’s not just me taking a cheap shot, by the way. See “Bohemian Tragedy” by Alex Shoumatoff in the May 2009 issue of Vanity Fair). To honor this delightful revelry, Roman families filled their homes, villas and gardens in Pompeii and the surrounding Bay of Naples with art and decorations that emphasized these less inhibited creatures.

Highlights of the LACMA exhibit include busts of some of Rome’s most “colorful” – read polite euphemism for “f**king insane” — emperors including Caligula and Nero; a gladiator helmet decorated with images of the Fall of Troy; garden statues with comical hermaphroditic twists; and miniature home temples and god figurines. The final rooms showcase art from the Romantic era, which, thanks largely to Edward Buwler-Lytton’s 1834 novel The Last Days of Pompeii, produced many Pompeii-themed pieces in multiple artistic mediums. The tour ends, like all museum tours, in the gift shop, where I was suckered into buying “Roman Numeral Birthday Candles” with all the Xs, Vs, Ls, and Is you would ever need for a 21st birthday party.

Certainly the subject matter is interesting, but it should also be noted that this is a phenomenally well-done exhibit. It is organized, clever, and the audio tour is really very interesting. The Muses are even on hand – well, five of the nine anyway — to sing gospel songs about the Greco-Roman artwork on display. Oh wait, I mixed up the exhibit with Disney’s Hercules. Alas, if only there had been musical numbers. But this exhibit was certainly the next best thing, and this is actually a crucial point to make. The previous exhibit in this same hall at LACMA was on William Randolph Hearst, and while it featured all the prerequisite medieval tapestries and Medici crests you would expect to find at Charles Foster Kane’s Xanadu, the exhibit fell sort of flat; it was like walking around a warehouse. That exhibit was not well conceived or executed, which is a levy no mortal would dare to make against “Pompeii and the Roman Villa.”

The exhibit runs until October 4 of this year. Tickets are $25, including the audio tour, and you can save five dollars by going at “twilight,” which just means after 5 p.m.
Pictures:

While many of us were elated Tuesday night by the election of Barack Obama as our 44th president, there was one glaring piece of irrational legislation that also passed. No, it was not Proposition 2 (damn that animal lobby!) I lament, but Proposition 8, which Constitutionally banned gay marriage in the state of California. I could use this space to discuss the horribly misleading campaign launched by “Yes on Prop 8” — which included wantonly lying to voters about kindergarten and the California Education Code, purposely confusing voters, and in some instances even using automated phone calls that said, “If you support gay marriage vote YES on Proposition 8” — but I am too lazy to write such a long piece.

I could also use this space to discuss the moral argument for gay marriage. A friend explained to me that she feared the cultural damage of dramatically changing “an old institution” such as marriage, but she never answered my lingering questions on precisely how. Would gay marriage make the gay lifestyle decision so much more appealing to impressionable youths that they would forsake heterosexuality? Shouldn’t moral authorities prefer encouraging monogamy in the gay community? And wouldn’t loving, long-term relationships discourage the cocaine-induced orgies complete with greased up Adonises — or would it be Adonii? — in Malibu mansions that people in middle-America — and I guess middle California — envision as the most offensive, or maybe secretly alluring, part of the “gay agenda.”Furthermore, the afore-mentioned young lady and many like her claim to support “civil unions” that would be identical to marriage in everything but name. Separate but equal — I seem to recall that working pretty well in the past, didn’t it? Honestly though, I just do not understand how anyone can think that gay marriage will have any true moral bearing on society.

However, I do not mean to insult you all with notions of morality and justice. This is, after all, Claremont McKenna, whose patron saint is Mammon. We all hope to be titans of industry one day so naturally our first love is money — not justice. This is the real reason gay marriage was good for California, it was economically profitable. Civilization prospers through commerce, bitches, and the gays were bringing us that glorious commerce.

A big stink was made about Apple donating money to “No on Prop 8,” but frankly, I’d rather have Steve Jobs – a successful businessman –  influencing my state than the creepy Mormon cabal that pumped $20 million into the “Yes on 8”campaign. I read one view-point that argued it was bad business for Mac to donate that money because it would discourage conservatives from buying their product. But I think it was brilliant business! Gays statistically have more discretionary income than any other social group. Sleek Apple designs go perfectly with chic modernist WeHo homes. Mac was just pandering to a more lucrative base, although I guess I can’t completely dispel the notion that they may actually believe in universal civil rights.

Back to my main point, though: gay marriage was good for business in California. Having a reputation as a progressive gay-friendly state helped the tourism industry. Think about it: pretend for a minute you are a well-toned, sun-loving, narcissistic dandy –  or for that matter, a middle-aged school teacher, retired corporate lawyer, small business owner etc. –  from the Midwest. Would you rather vacation with your life partner in A) creepy Jed-Bush electing Florida or B) gay-marriage allowing California? Two weeks ago the obvious chance would be B, but following the November 4th election, there’s hardly as much appeal.
You might as well go someplace else to spend tons of money buying antiques, investing in property, shopping at high-end boutiques, and visiting theme parks since California now seems a tad more hostile and a lot more expensive. Those Midwest dandies don’t want to walk down the street knowing that every other person they see voted against their happiness in the November election! Even if the gay pilgrimage to California is not completely decimated the gay marriage ban will still disrupt the free-spending. Instead of a lot of frivolous impulse buys – “Well of course this Erté would go magnificently in the foyer Karl!”— they’ll be fixated on guessing who voted for and who voted against Proposition 8. Everywhere they look they will either see a supportive local or cartoonish villain. This would obviously detract from their purchasing power.

My point is this, people. Sure there are moral arguments for gay marriage. Sure we may have a conscience deep inside of us trying to tell us, “Gay people have feelings too,” and we may even have a sense genuinely telling us to believe that equality is guaranteed by our Constitution. But forget all that “tyranny of the majority” crap. The real reason to support gay marriage in the state of California is because it’s good for business. It helps the clothing industry, the cake industry, the miniature figurine industry, department stores wedding registries, and, of course, the tourism industry. So please, to all of you reading this out there: work to bring gay marriage back to California to help boost our state’s economy and bring money in for all of us to enjoy, it’s what Milton Friedman would want you to do!