The Wake

For nearly every college in the United States, football and basketball are the highest revenue-producing sports. So it isn’t surprising that football and basketball athletes are drug tested more often than others. After all, they are the college superstars of the athletic world. With recent efforts to stop all student athletes from using drugs, the University of Minnesota has come up with a new plan to combat the never-ending battle. Not only will U of M athletes be randomly selected from every sport for drug testing, the U’s Department of Intercollegiate Athletics is honing in on another deterrent for drug …

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Five innocent girls dead. A small Amish town shaken and hurt. On Oct. 2, Carl Charles Roberts IV held 10 girls hostage at their schoolhouse and ended up wounding some and taking lives, as well as his own, for what seems to be no reason at all. As with all the other school shootings, this leaves communities all around the United States uneasy about school violence. It seems we only worry about it once it’s too late and the body count has been tallied. When it comes to murder, there are many categories: homicide, gang-related activities, hate crimes and school …

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Don’t get me wrong, I’ll never pay for sex; I have a hard time urinating next to a stranger. Even with the buffer urinal and several square feet of visual barrier, I’d probably vote Republican before letting someone I don’t know see me naked. With my OCD and crippling fear of germs, I hate myself enough as it is and I can’t imagine trying to fall asleep after paying somebody to pretend to find me attractive for a few minutes.But prostitution doesn’t deserve to be illegal. The government’s vice squads, which march around locking up consenting adults engaging in acts …

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Sex—rather startling, graphic, athletic sex—is one of the framing activities of Shortbus, but isn’t really what the movie is about. You don’t have to pay very close attention to realize that John Cameron Mitchell’s slightly surrealistic film is actually about the same old themes that pop up in literature everywhere: love, acceptance, and finding yourself.Which is not to say that Shortbus doesn’t go after these themes in a funny and surprisingly tender way. The plot intertwines the lives of three couples: Jamie and James (played by PJ DeBoy and Paul Dawson), gay men who are handsome and sweet, even …

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To emo 13-year-old girls with pouty lips and trashy boys with baseball caps and peach fuzz, Oct. 9 brought shocking news: a video released on YouTube was so outrageous that it sparked (to date) 1,983,912 views, 7,211 comments, 81 video responses and a collective gasp so heavy that it may have temporarily shifted the orbit of the earth. The reason? Former owners of the Internet sensation, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, cheerfully announced to their viewers that they had sold YouTube to Google for $1.65 billion. YouTube, a website that allows users to freely share video clips using Adobe …

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In slouching checkered pants, two lengthy gold chains (one ending in a giant ampersand), and a plain cotton tee, Davy Rothbart looks like he may spout rhymes at any second. Instead, he picks through a stack of crumpled paper and recites a letter to Continental Airlines from passenger 29 E—the tortured soul whose seat is at arms’ length from the plane’s bathroom door, and who continually finds his fellow travelers encroaching on his spot as they wait for the loo.“Asses fit into my personal space like a pornographic jigsaw puzzle,” 29 E rants. “The next ass that touches my shoulder …

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With more talent in her little finger than most porn stars have in their entire phallus, the beautiful JoAnna James combines strong guitar skills with a voice that could make Donald Rumsfeld weep for forgiveness. The St. Paul native, blues/folk singer has been striking the heartstrings of audiences around the Twin Cities last month before leaving for a New York gig. But before fleeing Minnesota, The Wake had the utter joy of speaking with James for 10 minutes on an otherwise gloomy Monday night.The Wake: OK, so I am going to say you get four musical influences. I don’t …

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Who: Ben Marcus; Heidi Julavits
What: The authors/editors discuss recent works.
When: Wednsday, Nov. 1st, 7:30 pm.
Where: Sundin Music Hall. 1531 Hewitt Ave (Hamline University), FREEWho: Evelyn Klein
What: The author reads from her poetry.
When: Thursday, Nov. 2nd, 7 pm.
Where: The Loft Literary Center, FREEWho: Bharati Mukherjee
What: The author discusses American identity from a transnational American writer’s perspective.
When: Friday, Nov. 3rd, 7:30 pm.
Where: McNamara Alumni Center (University of Minnesota), FREEWho: Laurel Poetry Collective
What: Poets read their work.
When: Saturday, Nov. 4th, 2pm.
Where: St. Paul Central Library, FREEWho: Anders Nilsen
What: The comic …

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Turned onBy the charge of each and every electric packet,
winging their way from me to you and back again with
blizzards and monsters and imagination and sailing and Freud.By the sight of your shy smile leaning over my Coffee countertop
and the pair of trembling hands that made your tea and the pair of eyes
that sparkled and waited, that watched the clock, until closing time came.By the long walk that zig-zagged in circles around that square mall for hours and collapsed -
nestling gently head to head and flowing, dripping conversation back and forth and drifting …

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“aside from his defective vision, he also had constipation”
-musings on Love in the Time of CholeraWhat he ends up doing, what he’s
trying to communicate; language, we
are so
numb to everything except for …

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Nineteen years ago, half a million people marched in Washington, D.C. to fight for gay and lesbian rights. Celebrating that day and continuing the fight for rights and awareness, the University’s Queer Student Cultural Center (QSCC) holds National Coming Out Week events each October. This fall, the QSCC’s keynote speaker asked supporters not to forget the children of gay and lesbian couples – because they too are marching through the homophobic world.“QueerSpawn,” is what keynote speaker Abigail Garner calls herself. The daughter of a gay father and a straight mother, Garner is a professional advocate for not only the Gay …

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I remember my first experience with Homecoming. Excited to be at such a massive university, I was ready to participate. But the events were geared toward the Greek system, making it difficult and awkward to fully enjoy Homecoming as a newcomer and a commuter student. Without a sorority or residence hall to lead the way towards activities, I was without direction. I don’t remember a lot about that fall, but I do remember the Homecoming parade that went down University Ave. It was chilly and was raining on and off throughout the morning, and I found a spot in …

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Candidate: Tim Pawlenty
Running For: Governor
Party: Republican
Top Priorities: Economic growth, education and public safety
Experience: Minnesota Governor, 2002-present
Hometown: South Saint Paul, Minn.
Family: wife Mary and two daughters Anna and Mara
Favorite Sport: Hockey
Quote to Note: Earlier this year Pawlenty declared, “the era of small government over” in an interview with the Star Tribune. “Government has to be more proactive, more aggressive,” he went on. Pawlenty later claimed he was quoting New York Times columnist David Brooks and said that he meant he actually just wants to make government more effective. Right.Candidate: Mike Hatch
Running For: …

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Athletics Events November 1 – November 7Nov. 1, 7:00 pm Women’s Basketball vs. Winona State Williams Arena
Nov. 3, 7:00 pm Men’s B-ball vs. Bemidji State Williams Arena
Nov. 3, 7:07 pm Women’s Hockey vs. Minnesota Duluth Ridder Arena
Nov. 4, 11:00 am Football vs. Indiana Metrodome
Nov. 4, 7:07 pm Women’s Hockey vs. Minnesota Duluth Ridder Arena
Nov. 5, 2:00 pm Women’s Basketball vs. Minnesota-Crookston Williams Arena

Break out the spandex and get ready for a team of sweaty men. As autumn picks up, and we reach the midpoint of fall semester, wrestling season is quickly approaching. Nov. 11 marks the first Gopher wrestling meet — The Bison Open. This event may not seem too important to all you fair weather fans out there, but we, at The Wake, recognize that the University of Minnesota wrestling team is “kind of a big deal.” According to preseason polls, the team is ranked No. 1 in the nation right now, after finishing second at the NCAA championships …

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