I’m being haunted by the hookup from hell. At the beginning of last year I hooked up with a guy I thought I liked. Turns out he totally “New York’d” me. Now there’s a rumor going around that I got an STI from him. The truth is I never slept with him and I don’t have an STI, although he did give me a lesson in how guys can’t think with both heads at the same time. How do I stop this rumor?

Pattie Cake,

Sometimes rumors are blessings in disguise. Take, for example, Harvey Mudd students. Most had a bad rumor made up about them in middle school that completely debilitated their social life and propelled them to eat Fritos and root beer for lunch in the science lab. That sounds pretty lame until ten years from now when they perfect nuclear fusion on earth and are forever known as those Frito-eating geniuses. If I were you I would grab that STI and run like the wind. You’re getting into Harvard Grad.

If you really can’t stand having guys avoid you like the Home section at Collins, there are a couple of things you can do. If you want it to be easy, just scan your STI test results and make copies for the gossip hounds. Hand it to them and say, “I actually don’t have [insert slandered STI].” Granted, they’ll have your blood counts and hormone levels to Photoshop, possibly turning you into an AIDS-infected hermaphrodite on paper.

You don’t like either of these suggestions, do you? Me neither. So maybe just talk to him. You’re furious right? No doubt, but I don’t think screaming insults will help. Find him alone and calmly tell him how much his lies hurt you. I know I sound like your mom in grade school when she was like, “Well tell Sarah it hurts your feelings when she calls you stupid.” And you said, “I know,” but in your head you were like there is no fucking way I am saying that. Well, you’re older now, and often genuinely informing someone how damaging their words are is far more powerful than yelling, cussing, and creating rumors about how their penis competes with your index finger in length. You don’t want to turn this into a game of tennis against a brick wall, or, rather relevantly, refuting anything Charles Johnson has to say.

Realistically, there is something to be said for the strength of a person who has the self-esteem to let a rumor run its course. You know the truth and hopefully your friends do too – why let him cut you even deeper by dwelling on this falsity?

A Mitch

Dear A Mitch,

Why are the guys at CMC douchebags?

Miss Descriptive,

In the same way Pomona boys are all pretentious, Mudders all hopelessly nerdy, and Scrippsies all scissoring humanitarians, CMC guys are just dicks. Please clump us together as a huge whale douche (the ocean?). Look, there are plenty of d bags at the 5C’s, and if we did a 5C statistical survey, I wouldn’t be surprised if CMC guys ranked first in douchebaggery. I do sometimes wonder as well – you aren’t the first person to have reoccurring issues with CMCers. If I am going to hypothesize as to why so many people think Stag=douchebag, I would need to organize my thoughts. Numbers will help. And then transition sentences are not necessary. Timesavas!

1. About thirty percent of CMC  students are athletes.  This means there’s a bevy of bros who not only have a stunning physique, but have likely been popular studs for most of their lives; they are the yeast in baking success with women (in high school at least). Athletes are not inherently douches by any means – they are simply more susceptible to the status. It is easier to disregard the feelings of another when there’s always going to be someone giving a shit about how damn good you look in crimson and gold.

2. Claremont McKenna teeters on the title of liberal arts college. This is a school popular for economics, business, and finance. We have more econ majors than Jay-Z has problems, okay, actually way more. Now this might be a leap, but I imagine the kid who wants to go to school for four years and have a $60,000± investment firm salary when they graduate is the type that prefers immediate gratification. Which translates to: Gettin’ mine tonight. Or, my deeper thoughts concerning how my actions might affect people are subordinate to my drive to be successful. But then you meet Moose Halpern and everything I just said sounds outlandish.

3. Where you are meeting these guys? TNC right? T – Thursday N – Night C – CLUB. Rasmussen’s latest poll shows that clubs are for womanizers. And menizers. Especially party clubs, where a large proportion of individuals are willing to play smoochikins at the end of the night. Are you getting my drift? If you are looking for someone who you can really connect with, maybe try developing friendships outside of the party scene. If you were to walk by the basketball suite on a Saturday night, you would probably hate all of us. But have a midday chat with Seth Winterroth and you might fall in love. Drunken debauchery is misrepresentative of who people are, and while it does define a small facet of a person, the larger fraction is more visible during Sunday’s coffee conversations, Tuesday night’s psych seminar, and green beach bathing in November.

So don’t stereotype us like I have in this response. You only know what you experience –alter the environment in which your judgments occur.

A Mitch

Got a question of your own for A Mitch?  Submit it anonymously and maybe you’ll be lucky enough to be on the receiving end of A Mitch’s wise words.

It is perhaps a credit to the 5C rumor mill that Gillis, or Girl Talk as the world knows him, is actually playing a Halloween gig at Pomona College.  I first heard the rumor two weeks ago, and it sounded like something that was far-fetched to say the least.  For such a high profile artist to be playing one of the biggest party nights of the year seemed unthinkable for the colleges.  Yet Girl Talk, one of the most sought-after electronic musicians in the country, will be here to preside over the spookiest night on the 5Cs.  [Note: Though Girl Talk has currently yet to list the performance on his own website or Myspace page, the performance has been confirmed through two school-wide emails, one from Director of Student Activities Jim Nauls and another from ASCMC, and representatives from Pomona College's student government, ASPC.] [Update: It's not official until it's Facebook official, check out the event here.]

I’m excited to see Girl Talk in person.  Gillis’s shows, if they can really be called concerts in the traditional sense, are supposed to be things of legend, with audience members dancing on stage and a continuous stream of music combining every sample under the sun.  While CMC hosted another such mash-up artist, E-603, last weekend, Girl Talk is the undisputed master of the trade.  Gillis is responsible for bringing this style of music to the fore.

Night Ripper, the 2006 release that made Gillis an underground sensation, is a remarkable work; bits and pieces of songs come hurling at the listener two and three at a time.  Rap verses enter over familiar rock songs.  To hear it for the first time is a tremendously entertaining romp, with everyone from Twisted Sister, to OutKast, and Rage Against the Machine entering the mix.  All this hovers atop beats primed for dancing, with track flowing into track for the entirety of the album.  The result?  A national following and dates playing both music festivals and clubs across the country.

As enjoyable as this first release was, three years later, numerous other artists have followed in his footsteps.  Perhaps this was to be expected.  Artists such as Super Mash Bros. and Wax Audio (and yes, E-603) jumped on the Girl Talk bandwagon.  Nevermind, of course, that even Gillis was borrowing ideas from a genre formed by predecessors including Danger Mouse, The Kleptones, and the Grammy-winning Jay-Z/Linkin Park collaboration on “Numb/Encore.”

A listen to E-603’s debut, the unfortunately titled Something for Everyone, continues in the vein of these hyperactive mash-ups, with little progress being made on his followup Torn Up.  The formula, which was originally exciting on Girl Talk’s debut, now feels stale and dull.  Step 1: choose rap verse by anyone.  Step 2: pair it with ironic instruments from well-known rock and pop albums.  Step 3: repeat for the entirety of the disc.  Some combinations inevitably work better than others, and to be fair there is a particularly inspired moment buried in the middle of the disc featuring Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles.” Yet every time the music hits a stride, building up to some Frankenstein-esque climax, the adhesion to the formula requires that new samples enter the mix, with a new ironic pairing of rap and pop/rock.  Lather.  Rinse.  Tour around the country.

Of course, this isn’t music that one is supposed to listen to intently.  Mashups are intended to go on the speakers and blast mindlessly; music for dancing and huge parties and people with short attention spans.  To be fair, it does this very well.  Also to be fair, the LA area is full of disc jockeys who were creating energetic dance music long before Gillis and his contemporaries were working on their craft.

While the dance atmosphere was certainly present in Mckenna Auditorium last Saturday, despite a blown speaker and a technical malfunction, the persona of the so-called performer was all but absent.  With a local, no-name DJ opening up the set, virtually no identifiable features of E-603’s performance differentiated him from those on stage before him.  There were samples and clips of famous songs and nothing that represented any sort of artistic development of music.  If his methodology is congruent with other mashup artists in the field, then the samples were all copied and pasted prior to the moment he entered Mckenna, each activated by the mind-blowingly precise task of clicking a mouse.

This whole thing reeks of an unsustainable fad.  Even Girl Talk himself changed virtually nothing of the formula on the 2008 release Feed the Animals.  Perhaps this is understandable.  Artists like Girl Talk and E-603 are merely glorified DJs, and now that the idea of cramming samples together has become so mainstream, anyone willing to take the time to cut and paste other people’s music together can come up with something at least in the ball park of Night Ripper.  The music provided by amateurs who don’t carry the national name recognition (and higher costs of bringing to a place like CMC) has already become identical to the stars they emulate.

It’s heartening that the 5Cs are still bringing some original artists to play on campus.  The upcoming performance by the Cool Kids at the 5C music festival will showcase original music and carry the high energy environment of a true live performance.  Still, the next time that ASCMC or ASPC want to host a campus-wide party, I would strongly suggest they take a page from the highly successful Mudd Suds party: an original concept combined with with great music.  And great music sometimes means professional DJ services as opposed to glorified amateurs.

Other than horse racing, deep fried pickles, the world’s largest mobile grill, and a slew of classic rides, the fair is hosting an end of summer concert series featuring everyone from the Beach Boys to Jessica Simpson.   Tickets to the shows range in price from $18.50 for the nosebleed section to $125 for stage side seats. If you’re willing to wait in line the day of a show, the fair hands out a limited number of free tickets.  Don’t be afraid to sit in the back section, the venue isn’t that big, and pretty much everyone has a good view of the stage. Follow the fair on Twitter @lacountyfair. Sometimes you can get upgraded seats or free stuff for correct answers to trivia questions. Although it’s too late to see Peter Frampton and Kansas, you can still catch the Mariachi USA Fiesta (complete with a fireworks finale), Pat Benatar with Berlin, Donna Summer, Ciara, the Beach Boys, and special motocross and demolition derby events.

This fair has the most carnival rides in the nation, including the largest mobile Ferris wheel in the Western Hemisphere.  The rides can get pretty pricey, so try and go on a Wednesday, when you can get fair admission and an unlimited ride pass for $20.

All in all, the fair is a great way to see a wide assortment of crazy, kitschy things and people without having to drive very far.   If you’re still not convinced, just think of all the fun(nel cake) you’ll have checking out the Budweiser Clydesdale horses and acting like a kid again.

“In addition to writing two original short stories, students are required to submit “creative responses” … Note: Genre stories (e.g. science fiction, fantasy, action adventure, mystery, crime) are not considered “literary,” and are therefore not acceptable as submissions.”

I almost laughed out loud when our Professor read that statement — or rather, I almost said “L-O-L” out loud (SLOLOLed?).

And I hope you can imagine with me the way one must pronounce “literary” when making a statement absurd as this. Because you don’t just trivialize the work of thousands of writers offhandedly. No, you need to say “literary” like the monocle you’re staring through depends on it. Like Dan Brown will become editor of The New Yorker if you don’t. Like someone just called your “foy-yay” a “foy-yer.”

Gosh, I hope Ray Bradbury’s feelings don’t get hurt when he learns he isn’t a real “literary” author. Hey Ray, do you think you could give back that National Medal of The Arts back?

Oh and Edgar Allen Poe. Sorry about this but I kind of need to FYI ya — you’re not a real writer. What I mean is, like, you write … but it is basically cheap pornography.

Actually, I’m going to need to CC: George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon, Albert Camus and Salman Rushdie on this one too. Sorry guys, I guess you should have written about your childhood.

And I wouldn’t have found this so funny if it weren’t coming from the very department who, up until last year, employed one of the greatest contemporary writers of science fiction, David Foster Wallace. I wonder how DFW would have felt about having his work lowered to the same literary tier as an episode of “Two and A Half Men.”

I don’t want to make this article into some anti-Pomona diatribe, in fact I try and avoid resorting to school stereotype humor but this display of pretentiousness is just too extreme to go without note. It boggles my mind how one can honestly relegate so many works of fiction to a lower realm of academia simply because they aren’t emotional (read: emo) memoirs about a writer’s struggle against discrimination/depression/their own insecurities/poverty/hypocrisy and the American Dream/etc… Downers!

I understand that there is a difference between traditional “genre fiction” (pulp fiction, eg. Michael Crichton, Stephen King) writing, which is primarily plot driven, and traditional “literary fiction” (academic fiction, eg.  Richard Yates, our own Jamaica Kincaid), a style marked by internal conflicts and more stylized writing. But I see no reason why there can be no blending of plot and style, why the inclusion of action or adventure would somehow strip a story of any academic value.

…Or maybe I’m just pissed that I don’t get to turn in that soft-core robot-western I’ve been working on.

Although my liberal guilt deterred me from eating, I have a number of bones to pick with this boycott. First, why did the students think the boycott will be effective at all? The boycott simply transferred traffic to other dining halls for one night and in all likelihood made the jobs of the already overworked employees at other dining halls that much harder. Additionally, Pomona’s food service provider has monopoly power and long-term contracts–do the students really expect substantial change? The economy is still terrible and companies will probably need to make budget cuts no matter what students say. Furthermore, the boycott would have likely been more effective (and less frustrating for me) if it had been properly advertised to students at the other Claremont Colleges. I have been informed that it was well advertised at Pomona, but why was not more of an effort made for 5C outreach? Although the majority of students who eat at Frary are probably Pomona students, it gets substantial traffic from students at the other 5Cs, particularly from CMC.

Additionally, the tactics used by the students blocking the entrance to Frary left a bitter taste in my mouth. Rather than politely explaining their cause and telling me why a boycott was the best way to address their grievances, the students poured on the social pressure and deliberately tried to make me feel guilty for continuing with my normal routine. I don’t doubt that these tactics are effective, but are they worth the cost? Maybe it’s just my aversion to ethical consumerism in general, but I think that guilt tripping students is the best way to conduct a targeted campaign and build allies in the long run. We liberals should make standing up for various causes (including the welfare of food service workers at the 5Cs) fun and inclusive, rather than engage in heavy-handed tactics.

Most importantly, Pomona students are in no position to get on their moral high horse when it comes to handling budget cuts. Pomona students were recently asked for their input on how Pomona College should make budget cuts in order to save money during these hard economic times. The students said they would be willing to make the incredible sacrifice one night of snack a week. Armed with this noble sacrifice, they then suggested Pomona should save money by cutting professor salaries. I am not joking. Pomona students, who attend one of the best liberal arts colleges in the country, believe their college should jeopardize its most important asset: the human capital that professors bring to the institution. You get what you pay for when it comes to professor quality, which means professor pay should be the absolute last thing reduced during budget cuts. I spoke with a recent Pomona alum who was embarrassed that Pomona students would be so short-sighted. When Pomona students are willing to sacrifice more than one night of snack a week to help with budget cuts, I’ll start listening seriously to what they have to say about boycotting dining halls.

Check out the new exhibition at the Pomona Museum of Art.  No, really.

• Free posters. The first piece in the exhibition is a stack of posters.  There are four different versions, featuring
  a random individuals and flickr tag-esque text at the bottom.  Way more original than that poster of Pulp Fiction you were going to buy at the poster sale.  Seriously…the artist wants you to take a poster.  There are even rubber bands supplied so you can roll it up and take it home.
• An axe in the wall. Another piece consists of busted-up drywall and the axe that responsible for the busting up.  Go complain about how you could do the same thing and no one would call it art.  Then realize  that he did it first and get over it.
• Interactive audio/visual installation. Further along in the exhibition.  This one somehow combines a audio track of views at Mono Lake, heat censor cameras, and the artist’s childhood (….what?). Changes depending on where you are within the installation.

The show is called suddenly: where we live now, so all of the pieces are supposed to do with a sense of place, the artist’s environment, surroundings, landscape, etc. Lots of stuff by artists based in or influenced by Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon.  Huge range of media (video installation, painting, performance, photography).  Official info from Pomona here.  Official exhibition website here. Pomona College Museum of Art is at the southeastern edge (close to the village) of Pomona’s campus.  And of course, admission is FREE.

Picture: ©Reed College Fritz Haeg , “Animal Estates:05 Portland, Oregon ” 2008 Installation Detail

Some were placed in Stark, Fawcett, Phillips, Beckett, Marks… and some are on Pomona’s campus (south campus).

Post a comment if you hear any funny stories.

Claremont McKenna College
Rank List
#15      Best Campus Food
#2        Best Career/Job Placement Services
#11      Dorms Like Palaces
#4        Happiest Students
#13      Lots of Beer
#18      Lots of Race/Class Interaction
#11      Most Politically Active Students
#11      Most Accessible Professors
#5        School Runs Like Butter
#10      Students Happy with Financial Aid
#15      Best Classroom Experience
#5        Best Quality of Life

Why are we on the race/class interaction list?  See our humble neighbors below…  (couldn’t ask for more appropriate from Scripps or Pitzer)

Pomona
Rank List
#12     Dorms Like Palaces
#14     Happiest Students
#1       School Runs Like Butter
#3       Students Happy with Financial Aid
#14     Least Religious Students
#3       Best Classroom Experience
#10     Best Quality of Life

Pitzer
Rank List
#1      Lots of Race/Class Interaction
#12    Reefer Madness
#12    Least Religious Students
#16    Most Liberal Students

Harvey Mudd
Rank List
#6      Least Beautiful Campus
#17    Intercollegiate Sports Unpopular or Nonexistent
#8      Professors Get High Marks
#13    Most Accessible Professors
#5      Students Study the Most

Scripps
Rank List
#13    Best Campus Food
#4      Dorms Like Palaces
#6      Most Beautiful Campus

Update 7/31/08:
CMC.edu has a press release on this here.

“Journalism is the heart of democracy,” said McChesney, who went on to declare that a well-informed public is imperative to the success of a free society. Journalists have a significant role to play in educating and informing the populous on relevant social concerns. He referenced founding fathers James Madison and Benjamin Franklin’s zeal for complete freedom of the press, as they considered it a cornerstone ideal on which the success of the United States would rest. Unfortunately, the press industry is failing to deliver on its constitutional responsibility of enlightening the public sphere on the problems pertinent to society.

One particular trend in the journalism industry is that important social issues are losing ground to trivial entertainment, such as the personal lives of celebrities. McChesney stated that mass media outlets have been feeding viewers with “a steady diet of crap” rather than effectively informing them. It is regrettable because it diverts people from what actually matters.

Citing an example in Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, McChesney noted the failure of the media to challenge the administration’s intentions and ‘intelligence findings,’ and went on to suggest that a misinformed public was the prime catalyst that gave the president a free ticket to carry out one of the greatest foreign policy disasters in the history of the United States. Rather than contesting the shaky grounds on which the decision was made and evaluating its potential consequences, the media simply reproduced and dispersed the voices of the deciders. Accepting – if not embracing – the agendas of people in power has become the norm as of late. This is not what journalism should be about.

Increased commercialization of the media has largely contributed to an ineffective press. It is becoming more and more difficult to establish a career in the journalism industry if one has a habit of challenging the status quo. Advertisers and promoters ought to be distinct from writers, said McChesney, so that the quality of issues journalists raise is unobstructed by commercial interests. It’s not that there is a shortage of individuals fit for the job. It’s that due to growing commercial pressures, publications have begun to hire writers and anchors based on their bottom line and not on the relevance of issues he or she brings to the table. “Writers only seem to be allowed to raise a question if someone in power is talking about it,” lamented McChesney, “or else the perception is that they’re not being objective, they’re simply pushing an agenda.” Journalists must be allowed to raise questions and spark new debates. Just because an issue is not currently being talked about, doesn’t make it unimportant.

While the internet has revolutionized the manner in which people all over the world receive their information, McChesney believed that this change is neither a cause of nor a solution to the current dilemma. He remarked that large phone companies are pushing for the privatization of the internet, which would allow them to exert a greater stranglehold over the flow of information and other intricacies such as the speed at which websites load. If they succeed, it would be a disaster for the concept of free speech. He urged us to reverse these efforts by supporting the House Internet Freedom Preservation Act (HR-5353), which has been endorsed by Representatives Chip Pickering (R-Miss) and Ed Markey (D-Mass). As a part of his efforts, he co-founded freepress.net, an organization dedicated to the freedom of press and media reform.