The Wake

Perhaps you’ve seen the Matrix-y blue posters in university halls and found them slightly vague: “EMERGING DIGERATI A showcase of UM students’ new media work.” Digerati is a millennial twist on the word literati, which referred to the elite class of educated people, often in the aristocracy, before wide-spread literacy. As someone who is electronically inept, I did not think these events would interest me. I’m “idigerate.” As it turns out, new media is a broad term including things like electronic music, artwork that reaches its audience via websites, and digitally recorded documentaries or animations. And Emerging Digerati is a …

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Jonny Greenwood has a lot of talent. With Bodysong, Greenwood’s debut solo release, he proves just how much talent he has. Frolicking in music genres such as jazz, rock, avant-garde, classical, and electronic, Greenwood constructs a makeshift sculpture out of these conflicting elements, sounding like Ornette Coleman covering an Autechre song with Philip Glass conducting. Speaking in binaries, there are two corollaries to this mode of songwriting: (1) the opposing elements synthesize into something unique and fresh, or (2) the hyper-eclecticism ends up sounding fragmented and misguided, like a song with an identity crisis. Luckily, Bodysong is the former. The …

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My friend Perry’s stereo was broken last month. For some reason, the bass on the album he was listening to was not playing through the speakers. His roommate Alec, a good friend of mine, decided to test another CD to see if it was perhaps some glitch exclusive to Perry’s CD. He grabbed Elliott Smith’s fifth full-length album, Figure 8. When the sparkling guitar and complimentary piano hits of first track “Son of Sam” kicked in, Alec and I suddenly realized just how long it had been since we had heard the album. Within a couple minutes, Alec had fixed …

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How is alt-country treating you? Are you still in love? Of course you are, thanks to albums like, Neither Here Nor There, the debut release from Los Angeles five-piece Gone Done Wrong. If more banjo is what you want, then, by golly, more banjo is what you’ll get, served with harmonica and pedal steel on a homemade pottery plate. Neither Here Nor There is beautifully dark, beautifully simple, beautifully sloppy, beautifully raw, and a definite “must check out” album for alt-country fans. Don’t forget to season your dish with warmly delivered lyrics and choppy, self-taught guitar strumming. Co-lead singer Melissa …

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For more than six years, director Quentin Tarantino has been quiet. The long break, following his underrated last movie Jackie Brown, ended with a 222-page script for a two-part film that was originally intended to be one movie.The long-awaited film Kill Bill brings back that in-your-face, mouth-dropping sense of grotesque realism that all Tarantino films embody. Yet, this time, Tarantino bends the rules by using a different form of expression: hyper-martial arts.The 110-minute film is packed with dark humor, samurai swords, high-flying martial arts combat, gory decapitation, an amazing animé cartoon and a sweet story of revenge. Even during the …

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Several University of Minnesota students marched with tens of thousands of activists in Washington Saturday against the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq.“Students realize that the war is destructive to them in every way possible,” said Caneisha Mills, a Howard University student who helped organize the event.Mills said that money spent on Iraq should instead go to keep rising college tuition rates down, fund health care, create jobs and promote child care.Police estimated that between 10,000 and 20,000 students, veterans, youth and seniors attended the event, organized by Act Now to Stop War and End Racism and United for Peace and …

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The University of Minnesota is playing favorites instead of sharing its wealth with folks at the bottom, said some Twin Cities students in late October.The accusation comes as the school absorbs a 15% cut to its overall budget. Now it plans to find almost $319 million in revenues and cuts in the next biennium to balance its ledgers.“I don’t believe that we can balance this budget unless everybody pulls on the oar,” said University President Robert Bruininks to a group of students.Student tuitions and fees are expected to go up by more than $139 million in fiscal years 2004 and …

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The Mafia Club doesn’t sit around in three-piece suits. Its members don’t tote around guns, rope or wire, either. They do kill people though–figuratively speaking.The Mafia Club is a group of students, currently all Frontier Hall freshmen, who gather in Coffman room 305 every Wednesday from 8-10pm to play the party game “Mafia.” The game is best played with eight or more people. Players are labeled as mafia, civilian, police officer, or as a moderator nicknamed “God.” During the game, only the mafia knows the other mafia members. The rest of the players only know their character’s identity. The game …

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Lauren Aurelius, Maggie Boeck and Rachel Willems, seniors at the ‘U,’ have been friends since their freshman year in Territorial Hall. Aurelius, Boeck and Willems live with four more of their close friends in a cozy upstairs complex on 6th Street in Dinkytown. So far, they say it has been a great experience having seven friends under one roof, but that might change.Due to the recent “housing sweep” by the Minneapolis City Inspections Department, the tight-knit group of seven might be two less if the city has its way.“(According to city zoning), we are over-occupying this house,” Aurelius said. “There …

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The ‘U’ campus is full of shady legends: one in five students claims to live in Bob Dylan’s old apartment; a labyrinth of steam tunnels supposedly runs underneath campus; and, of course, rumors of ghosts and haunted houses run through the student body like a streaking frat boy on Thirsty Thursday.Hadley Anderson believes in ghost stories, though. In fact, she lived with a ghost for a semester. And she swears she’s not crazy.Anderson, a senior studying French and global studies, first met the ghost last semester. Soon after moving into her Dinkytown apartment in January, she started hearing some …

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The clerical workers on campus are not striking alone. Across the country, 98,000 workers are involved in labor disputes over health coverage, according to Ken Jacobs at the University of California Los Angeles’ Institute for Labor and Employment. According to a report issued by the nonpartisan Washington-based Center for Studying Health System Change, health insurance premiums have gone up more than 10% each of the past three years. This fact, combined with the cyclical economic downturn, has caused employers to shift costs aggressively to employees. Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, said that he is concerned the shift in …

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I think I’ve figured out why people drink: there’s a lot to hate about this world.’Hate’ sounds a little bleak. Maybe it’s better to say there’s a lot to hide from. Drinking’s just an acceptable way to escape from the more pressing life issues. And it’s excusable. Think about it: if something doesn’t get done, saying “I was going to mow the lawn, but then we started drinking…” is somehow more excusable than a simple “I didn’t feel like mowing.” Why is that?I thought about that while we toured the West Bank bars a few nights after my 21st birthday. …

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When night falls, Coffman Memorial Union begins to look like a shopping mall that’s about to close for the evening. The gates come down on all of the storefronts. A vacuum hums along the dining room carpet. Lone security guards make their rounds through the often-empty corridors. Perhaps beer could turn this humdrum vacancy into a 1980’s Budweiser commercial, one of those ads that they don’t make anymore because they were just a little too unrealistic. This is a debate that has been pouring through the halls of Coffman for years: should alcohol be sold in the university’s student …

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“Gutter Punk”
Hard Times Cafe
1821 Riverside Ave.
The Hard Times Cafe is the kind of place where you would ask for your drink in a dirty glass…if you were a 1940s gangster, that is. The music’s a little too loud, they smoking is allowed and black coffee is cheap. “It’s a hole in the wall,” said Katie Tharp, a junior at the ‘U.’ She comes to Hard Times because it’s open 22 hours a day and she likes the “tons of cheap vegan food. There is a downside, Tharp, 20, admits: she often gets asked out by 60-year-old men …

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A wave of splashes rippled through the pool at the University Aquatic Center Saturday, October 18 as the men’s water polo team took control of the ball early in the first period of the Division Championships 4th place game versus Iowa State. Amidst the splashes, Iowa’s defense couldn’t hold up captain Chris Hasling. He ducked his head in the water, quickly swam around the defense and went for the kill. The ball flew past the Iowa goalie and Hasling had the game’s first goal.Minnesota had the upper hand throughout, defeating Iowa 5-3 to claim fourth place in the Division Championship. …

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