The Wake - Fortnightly Magazine

Archive for February, 2008

Acadia’s on the Move (and bringing more beer)

Acadia
Photo by Abbey Kleinert

Inside the old Riverside Café at the intersection of Cedar and Riverside Avenues is something old, but also new. The walls have transformed from lime green to a ruby red. The booths are now made of old coffee bags stuffed with foam and lined with a coat of plastic. There is even a bar with 28 beers on tap. This old café has transformed into the new Acadia Café.

The Acadia Café, which was previously located at 1921 Nicollet Ave. in the Stevens Square neighborhood, is …

Adventure Dining With Erik: Arax

I would have a hell of a time trying to find Armenia on a map. Chances are it’s near Turkey, but the whole Eurasian area is a mystery to me. The important thing is that there is a restaurant repping the region right here in Dinkytown.

Arax Armenian Cuisine (a poorly-chosen name if I’d say so myself; it evokes images of a chemical scare) is the newest addition to the pantheon of ethnic eateries that call our campus home. Located in the Dinkydome, Arax is in good company, with Little Taj Mahal Indian food right next door.

Arax operates a lot like …

Black Mountain – In The Future

Black Mountain - In The Future
Black Mountain – In The Future

Do you ever dream of traveling back in time and experiencing a different era? Pressing play on Black Mountain’s ironically titled sophomore album, In The Future, is comparable to strapping into the front seat of the DeLorean and being whisked away into the mind-blowing 1960’s.

The opening track “Stormy High” features powerful guitar riffs imitating those of legendary Black Sabbath. Hard rock fans will be pleased to be offered an alternative from the trend of …

Pre Natal Memory

Illustration by Dustin Nelson
Illustration by Dustin Nelson

Each of us has incriminating photos from when we were toddlers. However, thanks to a psychological condition called “infantile amnesia,” we have the comfort of not remembering what embarrassing things we said or did. This condition, which isn’t true amnesia, is the explanation scientists give for not retaining childhood memories. It also explains why humans can’t retain memories from before they were born.

Infantile amnesia differs from regular amnesia, in which a person cannot remember anything that happened to them during a …

FDA Brings Home the Bacon

Photo by Angie Myhre
Photo by Angie Myhre

When asked to comment on the possibility of the presence of clone derived products in packaged foods, the manager of Harvard Market, a Stadium Village area convenience store declined, explaining, “I just don’t see that happening within the next ten years.”

A casual skim through the contents of several biotechnology companies’ websites (Trans Ova Genetics, ViaGen and Cyagra, just to name a few) tells a different story. “Trans Ova Genetics has offered cloning technology for both pharmaceutical and agricultural purposes for the past …

MC5 – Kick Out The Jams

MC5 - Kick Out The Jams
MC5 – Kick Out The Jams

With blood, adrenaline and testosterone spewing from its every orifice, MC5’s Kick Out the Jams is quite possibly the most appropriately titled album in the history of appropriate album titles. The band’s call to “Kick out the jams, Mother Fuckers,” jumps past the cliché “take no prisoners” to floor you with 40 minutes of unremitting rock.

Kick Out The Jams was recorded at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom in late 1968. The album was recorded before a …

Your Guide to the Outside…

We’re into February now, and spring is on the horizon. Soon, the snow will begin to melt and it will be time to pull the baseball mitts and footballs out of the closet for some recreational outdoor sporting action. Unfortunately, with the constant building and construction that has consumed this gigantic campus, it can be difficult to find a nice grassy field to set up shop and toss a ball around with your friends. However, during my three-and-a-half years at this school, I’ve managed to stake out some pretty good spots. Here, for your consideration, are my top four favorites …

An Elegy for “Art Porn”

While reading Dan Savage one afternoon, I stumbled upon the website of a certain high-profile porn blogger and was taken in by her rhetoric. She seemed down-to-earth about pornography, admitting that most of it sucks, but holding that it serves a purpose and should not be looked down on. Interested, I took a look at her recommendations section, and though most of what she recommended seemed fairly standard, one film caught my eye: The Fashionistas. She calls it “the best porn film I’ve ever seen, the film that made me sit up and realize that there really were porn filmmakers …

The Man, the Myth, the Internet.

Illustration by Anders Carlson
Illustration by Anders Carlson

Homer Simpson once said, “There’s as right way to do things, a wrong way, and the Max Power way.” The Max Power way entails the wrong way, but faster and we are sitting in the middle of the quintessential Max Power election. The media is saying nothing repeatedly over an 8-hour news cycle. While this is partly due to a fascination with new technology, it is largely confusion about off-the-wall election year rhetoric. Huckabee would destroy the country with values …

Shot Callin’ and Clothes Swappin’

Sometime last week I went and practiced with the Imperial College Medical Basketball team. Imperial’s actual team had already held tryouts, but the medical team was willing to give me a shot. The team was comprised primarily of Asians, Indians, a Swede named Ole, polish kid named Demitri, a British kid named Alvin, and a Portuguese coach. They all had British accents, except for the coach, and they all played the most unorthodox style of ball I’ve ever seen in my life. No fundamentals, but they could all score in some way or another.

The gym was old and cluttered with …

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