The Wake

Living in a dorm feels like being stuck on a huge ocean liner. You’re confined to a stuffy cabin, the winds sound like dogs fighting against your window and since the kitchens already got your money, the food gets increasingly more apathetic. It’s similar to staying at an all-inclusive hotel, where the drinks are watered-down and the fried ice cream is simply a scoop of vanilla stuck in a defrosted puff pastry. By the end, your family is sick and you’re surviving on sugary cereal. All students who are living in University housing without a kitchen in their room are …

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Today I rushed toward Cooke Hall 308 where the University of Minnesota Vo Lam Kung Fu workout takes place on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7 p.m. Knowing nothing about the true nature of Vietnamese Vo Lam kung fu, I envisioned bloody boxing matches and street brawls that looked like screenshots from my two favorite fighting video game series, Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. In point and actual fact, many of the philosophies that I have encountered in books on Shotokan karate and Shaolin kung fu highlighted the importance of harmony and self-defense. Until chatting with Josh, the instructor, about the …

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So good-ol’ George W. ain’t so good-ol’ no more. Not too popular, as it happens. The public’s general distaste for the war-monger-in-chief has spawned a mega-glorification of the most recent non-Bush Republican president, who happens to be Ronald Reagan. Been following politics? Ever since presidential campaigns started kicking off 30 years in advance, there’s been a wave of Reagan idolatry.“I’m a Ronald Reagan conservative,” says John McCain, over and over again, and again and again. He’s not the only one. A few weeks ago at the CPAC, a political conference for right-wingers, a whopping 79% of poll respondents identified themselves …

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There have been few symbols throughout the course of history that have become as universally recognizable as the American flag. Though the number of stars on the flag has changed over the last two and a quarter centuries, the message that it conveys has remained unchanged, and the flag itself has become almost synonymous with freedom and liberty. For the past few decades, the issue of flag desecration has become increasingly controversial and has been the focal point of many debates within the United States Congress. These disputes mainly revolve around the constitutionality of the burning of the American flag …

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“Everything is bigger in Texas;” a cliché that could not be better demonstrated than by the explosive instrumental quartet known as Explosions in the Sky. From ripping apart melodies drowned in droning feedback to quietly plucking a single string, Explosions have mastered a tension that makes for easy and enjoyable listening, even for the lyrically inclined. Starting off barely audible, the band slowly builds up the rhythm, adding guitar after guitar until the song seems like it’s going to burst. It’s no wonder that the name Explosions in the Sky fits these four Texans like a tight …

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Duluth heroes, Low, have been offering sonic escape to land locked Midwesterners since the early 90’s. Their new album, “Drums and Guns,” is another step in a new direction as they continue to expand upon their trademark, minimalist sound. Breaking to electronic beats, their crashing, ethereal harmonies float into new and uncharted territories. I met recently with the trio in uptown at the Café Barbette to discuss their new album, their popularity in Europe, cake (the food not the band), and the great Beatles vs. Stones debate.Wake: Your “CD release show,” [was] Saturday at First Avenue. Why there and …

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Learning that 39.5 million people in the world have HIV or AIDS activates one part of your mind, but watching just one sufferer take a cocktail of medications and then retire to the couch with a lemonade will probably engage you completely. It may be a fault of humanity that a statistic alone does little for our sympathies, but by presenting issues of cultural indifference and isolation through stories and faces, art is created. The Walker Art Center’s Global Lens 2007 program presents films from the mountains of Chile to the markets of Mozambique, intending to open our minds not …

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First Avenue’s side-room, the 7th Street Entry, is small and dark; David to the Main Room’s Goliath. Lit by an exit sign, four candles and a few colored spotlights, 7th Street is intimate and seductive. However, it can pack a mean punch. It’s an ideal venue for the highly acclaimed but sparsely known indie-pop group Headlights, who performed on April 4 with Page France and The Winter Blanket. Headlights is Tristan Wraight, Erin Fein and Brett Sanderson, three Midwesterners who wouldn’t look out of place on a European stage, the sort you find in back-alley clubs not mentioned in Fodor’s. …

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Take my hand and
Walk under the archways
That lead to the shadiest part
Of the east-cityscape.
Where the dryness
Is not so bad as before
When you met up with me
Near your broken door.
Since you have slept
On the floor in the sand
That covers us all, I thought
I would help you stand.
So, now once more
I introduce you here
Where the sun does not
Sink in or sit so near.

As I brush past
This elegant hall
I ask that you take it in
And absorb it all.
There are a …

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I was once subject to a dream
Recurring, yet always new
In a dark abandoned room, once bright
It appeared in a subjective view

Outside there stood a woman
Indistinguishable inside her hood
The face of a mirror, reflecting not me
But only the earth on which she stood

Sometimes at night, I chase her
Hoping her presence she’d construe
But, with my objects, I built each door
To lead into another room

She never returns to my dreams
For now she is the stars and moon
And every night, although it hurts
With my objects, I …

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I was once subject to a dream
Recurring, yet always new
In a dark abandoned room, once bright
It appeared in a subjective view

Outside there stood a woman
Indistinguishable inside her hood
The face of a mirror, reflecting not me
But only the earth on which she stood

Sometimes at night, I chase her
Hoping her presence she’d construe
But, with my objects, I built each door
To lead into another room

She never returns to my dreams
For now she is the stars and moon
And every night, although it hurts
With my objects, I …

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Once outside I light a smoke, “Marlboro No. 27”, and its tobacco is that which my brain might actually crave, wisp clouds pull depth from the blue and some water cascades down stairs leading to God—. No, only leading to Northrup but at least I’m looking and now I feel alive again, much less dead than this morning when upon waking I cursed the day. Next class is too close, too easy to find, too little time to waste walking and wishing I wasn’t going to class. Winter was a waste of time, for anyone looking for warmth, too few …

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What do graffiti, feminine hygiene and globalization have in common? Not much, except they’re all on the menu at the Women’s Student Activist Collective’s weeklong The Revolutionary Art Thing, or RATH for short. From Monday, April 16 to Sunday, April 22, the Collective will attempt to inspire serious discussion and perhaps even social change within the university community. RATH this year zooms in on community art and includes discussions, films, how-to seminars, live music, appearances by local artists and more.“It’s a week dedicated to looking at art as social change,” senior and three-year member Kelly McCarthy says of RATH. “The …

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If you ever need to assemble Walter Mondale, Al Franken and about 183 other people in a pinch, just call Senator Amy Klobuchar.On Monday, April 2, Klobuchar came to the University of Minnesota campus as part of a new program series from the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance (CSPG), drawing a crowd of almost 200. The series, called “Connecting With Government,” will bring a number of Minnesota’s elected officials to the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute to speak at Cowles Auditorium. After a short introduction by Political Science Professor Larry Jacobs, Klobuchar took the stage. …

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Democracy Matters, a student organization on our campus, is fighting for fair elections locally and throughout the state. Founder Jim Forrey believes that getting money out of politics is the only way there can be fair and open elections.Democracy Matters is a non-profit and non-partisan national organization that works toward electoral reform. The U of M chapter is the local chapter of this national organization. The group currently has 20 active members. The U of M chapter first started in the fall of 2004 by then freshman Forrey.Forrey thinks that issues like the war in Iraq can be traced to …

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