The Wake

The room is crammed with a rainbow of blues, greens, reds, oranges, yellows, purples and every color in-between, complete with an “underwater world” corner and two-foot-high tables. It’s so different from the “grown-up” world, which usually does its best to elbow out color and shroud everyone in somber expressions and black power suits.“What’s your name?” 3-year-old Xaviera asked me moments after my arrival. After she lost interest in a new person, she ran away to play racecar with the other children. They are a mosaic, like the colorful room, each a unique piece with a unique background that forms a …

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“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” Ever heard that line? It’s the one and only commandment in Sin City. Because if Hugh Hefner and Heidi Fleiss had a baby, it would be christened under one name only…Vegas, baby, Vegas!!! I thought about South Padre Island, considered Cancun and contemplated Panama City Beach for Spring Break, but one place always came up aces in my mind: Las Vegas. Maybe it was the Travel Channel’s Top-Ten-Bathrooms-in-Vegas special or The World Poker Tour pulling me and my wallet to a Disneyland for adults. Whatever the case, gambling has captured the interest of many …

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In his 15th year as head men’s tennis coach at the University of Minnesota, David Geatz has proven himself as a premier coach in the Big Ten. He led the Gophers to five Big Ten championships, was Big Ten Coach of the Year three times and helped clinch numerous births in the NCAA tournament. This year is not one of large successes for the Gophers, but with Geatz at the helm, Gopher fans can look forward to a team that will not give up. Players will continue to work hard and put in their time during the off-season to prove …

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Many of us traveled to the sandy beaches of Florida or the scorching sun of Arizona for Spring Break to take in the beautiful scenery including some of the best golf courses in the country. Those states may have the courses, but snowy Minnesota is home to one of the nation’s best golf teams for the last two years. And one of its best players. Justin Smith, a 21-year-old senior from Franklin, Pa., is the No. 7-ranked college golfer in the nation. The intercollege-programs major is taking half of his courses in communications, and …

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The Skeewaksur Club formed on the University of Minnesota in November 1966 which allowed groups of students to gather and go downhill skiing in Minnesota. Though the club’s members may not have know it back then, they were laying the groundwork for what now is the Center for Outdoor Adventure (COA) on the Twin-Cities campus. Until about a year and a half ago, COA operated solely out of the St. Paul Gym where students could plan trips, rent equipment and climb the walls. But now to better serve the entire student body, COA is constructing a $100,000 office …

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To declare that marriage is simply, by definition, between a man and a woman is to shroud prejudice. To say that marriage is deeply rooted in heterosexual tradition gains no moral ground either – after all, slavery was rooted in just as much tradition.I certainly don’t believe everybody opposing gay marriage is a bigot or homophobe. I do, however, think if they could step back and imagine what their lives would be like if they were denied this basic right, they might start to reconsider their stance.The very nature of the way we see love and affection is altered by …

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St. Patrick’s Day is coming up quick
Celebrate until you are sick
Drink green beer on a dare,
Wear a clover in your hair,
Dance like you don’t give a frickThough I’m not Irish, for the past three years, I have celebrated St. Patrick’s Day religiously. And by religiously, I mean drinking beer and dancing around madly with my friends. Though St. Patrick’s Day was originally meant to honor the patron saint of Ireland – born in Wales in A.D. 385 with the given name Maewyn – it has become a holiday in which we all are encouraged to let …

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Dear Fees Committee,We have met before. Most likely you do not remember me, as I was a fawning journalist at the time (and a fawning journalist still). I was asked by my friend and co-worker Tom Ford to cover one of your spring meetings while he took a midterm. My job was to get the latest updates on the state of student groups’ fiscal allocations by your committee, a group whose initial votes creates an impact, but not a final say, on the prosperity of student organizations at the University of Minnesota. Tom went on to great success at the …

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It’s shaping up to be an interesting year in American electoral politics. Underneath all the noise screaming out of the television, we seem to have a Democratic candidate who flaccidly stands on the issues “for the good of the average American” before retreating to his summer beach mansion financed by his fortune and that of his wife, the heir to the Heinz Ketchup fortune. However, he does look slightly like a shaven Lincoln-esque character, so that seems like a plus. Kerry rails against the “special interests” yet he is as much a product of lobbyists in the banking and financial …

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What is a definition? For example, how would the words, “sexual relations” be defined by the majority of people? Webster’s Dictionary defines “sexual” as “pertaining to sex,” and a “relation” as a “connection.” So a “sexual relation” be something like, “two people coming together to commit an act which is sexual.” I believe so, and I believe the majority of people in this country would come up with a similar definition to mine. But who, or what, is the final arbiter that gives unequivocal meaning to words, ideas or even institutions? What if suddenly our basis from which all our …

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I can’t sing, dance or act.Scratch that. Physically, I can do all three. I sing along to the radio when I’m driving. I do a little tap dance in the kitchen when I think my roommates aren’t looking. And we’ve all pretended we’re the next Gwyneth Paltrow or Tom Cruise.But anything beyond that and I’m out of my league.So what possessed me to audition for the “Rocky Horror Show”? I didn’t kid myself - I knew I wouldn’t get a role. I did it out of moral support more than anything else. One of my roommates, Michaela, wanted to audition …

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During the past year, I have come across a lot of great unsigned metal bands. So, I am going to expose you to the cream of the unsigned metal crop in a variety of sub-genres. From the Faeroe Islands comes T_r. On their 2003 release, Eric the Red, T_r impressed me. They are an interesting combination of power metal, progressive metal, and Nordic folk music. The music is usually fast, aggressive, but also quite upbeat. The vocals (Heri Joensen) are clean, and are most certainly of the Scandinavian folk variety with a touch of Blind Guardian’s Hansi Kursch. Though …

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Two turntables and a microphone – the staple tools for hip hop artists. Yet, these simple tools are what were turning people off to hip hop, along with its lack of highlighting both live individual and collective talents of a band. Hip hop came down to prerecorded beats, sung over by an emcee.Recently, hip hop has resurfaced and its popularity is partially due to acts that defy the norms of typical hip hop such as The Roots and local cult-hero turned idol Atmosphere.Part of the culminating show on Feb. 28 for the Minnesota Programs and Activities Council’s Hip Hop Week, …

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Woulda, coulda, shoulda.The 76th Academy Awards, otherwise knows as the 2004 “Lord of the Rings” love fest, could have been so much more. But rather than match the surprises and ingenuity of the nominations, which made headlines in themselves, the Academy’s final decisions seemed far more traditionalist than revolutionary, bestowing the statues on the big blockbusters and the big studios that one has come to cynically expect.There were indeed surprises in the audience. Keisha Castle-Hughes, nominated for best actress in “Whale Rider,” was the youngest nominee ever in the category. Djimon Hounsou and Shohreh Aghdashloo, from “In America” and …

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Breast-bearing singers and zealous right wingers: that’s what this year’s Oscars are made of. Or at least, that’s what I thought — until I actually watched the prestigious award show a few Sundays back. Here’s how it all went down: we were blind-drunk, off Mescal. We’d started drinking sometime in the middle of Billy Crystal’s epic, revivalist introduction; neither of us remembers exactly. But the truth is this: that my partner-in-cinematic crime, Dr. Lane, and I were readily enjoying what we were seeing on our 8″ Sony portable television. Somehow, we’d managed to unwittingly engage the Spanish translator on the …

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