The Wake

Let me preface this by warning anyone whose reaction to this review would be, “If this game is so realistic, why don’t you go out and actually skateboard?” Would you say the same thing if I was talking about a first-person shooter? The purpose of a video game is entertainment, challenge and (hopefully) stimulation. Video games are not meant to operate as a flimsy substitute for reality.Alright, onto the meat: the first couple Tony Hawk games were the shit when they came out; they were the first truly good skateboarding video games, revolutionary in style and gameplay. But by the third, the franchise had become tiring. Giant levels incorporating landscape-reshaping events hid gameplay almost identical to the previous two. So for the fourth game in the series, the team at Neversoft completely revamped the structure …

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Mai Na Lee’s earliest memories are of school. Living with her mother and older brother in a village in Laos, Lee spent her time playing around the village’s open-walled schoolhouse, watching her brother lead other students through lessons. He was the best in the class and she looked up to him.Unfortunately, Lee was too young for school. Hmong tradition dictated that school-age children must be able to wrap an arm over their head and touch the opposite ear. Try as she might, Lee was still too small.She was too small to really comprehend it when her father returned from the war, after 14 years of being a soldier in Vang Pao’s army. Like other Hmong, he had fought for the United States during the Vietnam War, as part of the CIA’s secret Special Guerilla Unit …

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Many people consider American football to be a barbaric sport. I can’t imagine why. The players wear full pads, there are rules designed to protect the quarterbacks and kickers, and there’s an infraction for “unnecessary roughness.” You’ll have to excuse rugby players if they roll their eyes at the notion that football is the only brutal sport played on this campus.The Gophers men’s rugby team has been around since 1968. It is a club sport, so the team receives little attention despite the fact that they are one of the better squads in the nation and just finished an undefeated regular season. Rugby, a sport that originated in London in the 19th century, is played with an oblong ball that looks somewhat like a football with rounded ends. Players move the ball up and down …

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Africa is fascinating, mainly for its relative mystery to us in the western world. We are so far removed from the culture that a trip to the West Bank can sometimes serve as a miniature culture shock.Stepping out of the car on 6th St., I was greeted by a myriad of men and women chattering in Somali and other foreign languages. I turned onto Cedar Ave., then into Tam-Tam’s African Restaurant – a safe haven from the cluttered crowds outside.The restaurant’s ambiance is peaceful, with muted lighting and a red and burgundy-tiled ceiling. The tables are a deep, rich mahogany and the scent of African spices hangs in the air. The liveliness of the exterior failed to find its way inside; at 5:30 pm on a Friday the restaurant was empty.Tam-Tam’s menu reflects all of …

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If you’re reading The Wake, chances are the government has already tapped your phones and is currently digging through your emails, trying to collect enough evidence to break out some “enhanced interrogation techniques” on your ass. With the Patriot Act in place and working splendidly (terrorism-free since 2001!), and legions of super spies equipped with high-tech gadgetry spanning the globe, the American people can rest assured that the government knows what it’s doing. Between Team America, Splinter Cell, and Tom Clancy, there should be no lack of accurate, reliable intelligence in the American government’s decision making process…right?If the American people were given raw, unbiased intelligence that hasn’t been handed down through a filtration of politics, censors, and news anchors, they could take a more informed position on global events. Unfortunately, for the safety of the …

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I recently witnessed things that no American should ever see.President Bush was eating Keith Olberman’s face off. Then he and Bill O’Reilly sodomized Olberman’s lifeless corpse as O’Reilly yelled, “Oh yeah bitch! I’m gonna cut your mike so hard!” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had gag balls in their mouths while they were being whipped by Vice President Cheney in front of Congress. I even saw Stephen Colbert giving his inauguration speech in front of a group of college stoners, while the rest of Washington D.C. was in flames and lawlessness and apathy reigned supreme. ?
Suddenly, I woke up in front of my TV with it blaring partisan punditry at around 3 a.m. I realized I had been tripping on acid and watching C-Span, Fox News, …

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Words are interesting in that if you say them enough, they lose all meaning. When certain phrases are repeated endlessly, they eventually end up as configurations of letters held in vacuum with no context to give them weight or meaning. To wit: what the hell is Islamo-Fascism? It’s an important question given that October 22-26 was “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” (IFAW) and, believe it or not, our campus was a “participant.”IFAW is the brainchild of David Horowitz, a neocon writer and activist whose Terrorism Awareness Project (TAP) seeks to bring a right-wing presence to college campuses. Of course, it’s not as simple as that; conservative coming-out day has already been done, and this was definitely not the same. Instead, IFAW is “a protest against the censorship that has come to America, and whose chief enforcer is …

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“Ethnic” buffets are a strange animal; on one hand they are a nice sampling of a restaurant’s signature dishes, but conversely, they don’t allow for tongue-raping spiciness. Buffets have to please as many people as possible, so they tend to be middle of the road when it comes to flavor.With that in mind, Little Taj Mahal is a quality Indian restaurant, based on its buffet.Walking into the Dinkydome, despite the bevy of other eateries, the aroma of spices coming from “Taj” makes tender, passionate love to your nostrils. Entering the tiny corner shop adorned with Indian décor, it’s hard to imagine that it can deliver authentic cuisine – its size and location make it seem like a common food court stand.To your immediate left you’ll notice five metallic buffet trays shining like the eyes …

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Take a look up and down the roster of the Gophers men’s hockey team this year and you’ll notice that all 25 players have one thing in common: each and every one of them is from Minnesota. Should we be surprised? After all, this is the “State of Hockey.”That motto should ring true to anyone who has attended a game at Mariucci Arena, which was ranked by Sports Illustrated this summer as the No. 8 college sports venue in the country. While that undoubtedly has a lot to do with the fact that Gopher men’s hockey has achieved far more success over the past decade than any other major sports team at the University of Minnesota, you don’t have look any further than the attendance records for the Wild and the impressive popularity of Minnesota …

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Beyond its delicious fully vegetarian menu and hearty French press coffee, Hard Times is a cross section of the depth and extent of Minneapolis individuality - a rough sketch of the people and style that compose the city’s charm. Located in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, Hard Times is the eye of the storm that is Minneapolis culture, a meeting ground and a refuge for anyone who needs somewhere to go. One only has to sit for a minute and listen to the caffeine fueled conversations to fully appreciate the diversity of its patrons. Students, bums, punks, hippies, suburbanites, hipsters, gangsters all meet and eat in the same café, each representing their respective style and crowd. Closed only from 4am to 6am, Hard Times is a haven to the nocturnal and late night wanderers, offering a safe …

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On a rainy Saturday afternoon in late September, an exhibit called “A Refugee Camp in the Heart of the City” is in the middle of its third day of operation in Loring Park. Describing the location as the heart of the city seems apt, considering that the historic park sits just west of downtown Minneapolis and nestles noisily between freeways I-94 and 394. Within the gated event, various professionals – from doctors to logisticians to public relations specialists – lead tours around a simulated refugee camp and answer questions from umbrella-carrying visitors.The workers are from an organization generally referred to in the United States as Doctors Without Borders – better known around the globe by its original French title, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). It is an independent international humanitarian organization dedicated to providing aid …

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Adrienne Nick listens to indie rock and has Beatles posters on her living room walls. Fairly commonplace, yet Nick is somewhat exceptional in her music tastes because she is active in bringing the bands she loves into town. Nick books concerts for the Whole Music Club, working under the Minnesota Programs and Activities Council, the same organization that runs Gophers After Dark and the movies at Coffman. Motivated by her desire to be involved in music, Nick began volunteering at the Whole her freshman year. The work she did was not exciting; she sold tickets and stamped hands, mostly. But the chance to see all the bands that came through and be involved in the community was more than enough compensation for the boring, unpaid grunt work. And the work began to pay off big-time …

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Thai Rocky Spring on 13th and 5th has all the makings of a good “ethnic” restaurant; the exterior is broke-ass, it’s in an area that boasts diverse tastes in food, and its patrons appeared to be of the same general lineage as the menu’s offerings (which is usually a good barometer of authenticity).With that in mind, I wish I could say that the cuisine and dining experience match the façade.Thai restaurants can typically be judged by their curry and traditional iced tea (regular, spiced iced tea mixed with coconut milk). Unfortunately, Rocky Spring didn’t have the generally delicious beverage on their menu.The rest of the relatively small menu was odd for a Thai restaurant. It seemed more like they were going for a general Asian “omnicuisine” by featuring sushi in addition to the other, more …

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For a student who is currently a junior or senior here at the U, there are plenty of reasons to be ambivalent about the new football stadium, which is in its early stages of construction on the East Bank campus. The stadium is not scheduled to open until the 2009 season, and by then it is likely that I (and probably many of you) will be long gone. To move a few steps beyond ambivalence, many people – particularly those who don’t really care about football – are vehemently opposed to the idea of pumping $288.5 million into a stadium designed primarily for a team that will play only six or seven home games per year.Regardless of your feelings on the matter, it’s tough not to get excited about one measure that is being taken …

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On the east side of downtown Minneapolis, a large black insect crawled during Saturday dusk. With cockroach and crab-like features, the mammoth pest paced with the sluggish rate of a tortoise. Perhaps it had had better days. “Damn, what the fuck is that?” asked a confused twenty-something football fan.“I don’t even know,” said a drunken college student on his way to the Gate C entrance of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome.“It’s a water-beetle!” said a middle-aged woman walking up the same entrance.The vermin’s likelihood of being stomped by football fans on their way to Minnesota’s Big Ten conference opener was similar to the Gophers’ likelihood of being stomped by the Purdue Boilermakers. The Minnesota Golden Gopher football tradition is almost as old as the state itself, dating back to 1882. The team has had a …

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