The Wake

Stretching around Williams Arena along University Avenue and Oak Street, two enormous, single-file lines of people stood waiting in anticipation to get the chance to purchase one of the last 200 tickets available to see popular left-winged author/director Michael Moore.Originally, 5,200 tickets were available for the lecture at the University of Minnesota’s Sports Pavilion on October 11, but 5,000 sold before the show, leaving an entire mass of bodies out in the rain, praying for …

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There are a few things that rarely occur in one’s life: seeing Halley’s Comet, finding one’s true soul mate, and seeing the band Rachel’s perform live. Fortunately, I can say I have finally experienced the latter after many years of waiting, and it was everything I expected it to be and more. In order to effectively understand why I am so drawn to the band and just exactly who they are, allow me to give …

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There is a musical note fit for nearly every human emotion. Life’s ups and downs just wouldn’t be the same without melodies and rhythms to accompany them. Celebration? Music is the star. Tragedy? Music consoles. And exactly one year after the untimely death of one of Minnesota’s most beloved senators, thousands agreed that music, as a metaphorical shoulder to cry on, never sounded so sweet. “I want to remember October 25, 2002 as the day the …

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Though their logo states “Come for the eye candy, stay for the music,” Possibly Bailey has a large fan base who come for the music; well, maybe they come for the eye candy, too. The band consists of four University of Minnesota seniors: Ryan Rentmeester on lead guitar and vocals, Rob Johnstone on rhythm guitar and vocals, Ryan Muetzel on bass and Dave Hansen on drums and percussion. Describing themselves as “funk jam,” their music …

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The life of skateboarding legend Mark “Gator” Anthony reads like more of a made-for-television movie than a documentary. A young kid from a broken home decides to take part in a counter culture and ends up bringing that culture into the public arena only to forget where he came from. The difference from a television movie and the real life of Anthony is a far more tragic ending than could not have come from the …

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Hip hop culture oozed from every orifice of First Avenue in downtown Minneapolis as the Seven’s Travels Tour made its way back home to Minnesota. The Oddjobs and the Rhymesayers Entertainment crew, consisting of Musab, The Micranots, DeeJayBird and headliner Atmosphere, spun, freestyled, and rapped to a full house for their second hometown show in as many days.The Brooklyn-by-way-of-Minneapolis rap group The Oddjobs gave a tone-setting performance that left the crowd eager for what was …

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Much of the work that has been presented so far at Emerging Digerati has been web-based. If you’re like me, you’ll spend the weekend in your jammies, digging these phat websites instead of reading your fat Mass Communications Law textbook.• www.digidiva.net/uc/old/UnoffComm
In her project titled “Unofficial Communication,” Collette Gaiter explores those unsanctioned, often unsigned messages that we often walk past because we don’t ascribe authority to the communicator. “Not all unofficial communication is illegal. However, …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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