2 Vol.
XXXII, Issue 14 |Wednesday, May 17, 2011
news
It’s Like Poking, But In Real Life...
By Michelle Frantino
“If you build it, they will come,” is
the quote posted on the new website,
EduHookUps.Com. And after its
launch just a few short months ago,
come they did. The new social net-
working site attracted over 10,000 col-
lege students to its forums. The
controversial site provides a place for
students to post anonymous ads, look-
ing for partners interested in having
“casual sex.”
“Jessica Cominsetta, a junior at
Chicago University, posted an ad on,
EduHookUps.com, reading, “Ready for
fun, seeking hot stud, for a bedroom
run.” Soon after the post went up, a user
named “ChicagoBigShot” responded,
and they set up a meeting place: outside
the student recreation center two hours
before midnight. They both would be
wearing red.
Cominsetta said they had “casual
sex” and parted ways. “I’m not sure
what his name was, I never asked,”
Cominsetta admitted. “I didn’t want to
know. I don’t plan on seeing him ever
again, it was just sex.”
The website is spreading through-
out colleges across the country. It re-
cently announced that the Stony Brook
University forum has gone live. “The
universities in New York are vital to our
expansion,” said one of the sites
founders, “Danny,” who asked not to be
identified due to privacy reasons.
“Stony Brook is our first SUNY School
to join the site, due to the number of re-
quests we received from students.”
The website sets up forums for se-
lect universities that allow students with
valid college emails to access their
schools page. Once registered, users can
post and respond to other ads only
within their university forum. What
makes EduHookUps.com different
from other social networks is that it al-
lows its users to remain anonymous.
“We have a strict privacy policy in place
in order to protect the anonymity of our
users,” said one of the sites founders.
Two undergraduate students, who
wish to remain anonymous, first
Screen grabs from eduhookups.com showcasing its registration system and real posts
from Yale, Northwestern, University of Mississippi, University of Illinois and University of Chicago students.
launched the website in early March at
Chicago University. “When the site first
launched it got 300 to 500 Google
searches a day,” said one of the creators.
“Now we receive over 3,500 hits on the
site every day.”
“We never expected this to take off
outside our home campus,” Danny said.
“It started only as a fun project and we
had no intention to make a personal
profit.” When asked about the sites re-
cent popularity and presence at the
school, Chicago University said they
had no comment.
The website quickly expanded to
Ohio State, Penn State, Boston Univer-
sity and Harvard within the first month
of it opening. “The more universities
added, the more news we stirred up,”
said the creators. “Our primary source
of advertising and news is split between
television news programs and Face-
book,” they added.
According to the developers of the
site, “The administration at both
Chicago University and Loyola Univer-
sity both expressed concern about the
site.”
EduHookUps is not affiliated with
any of the universities on its website, but
gives schools an opportunity to have a
link to their health centers on the site.
The site does also offer a “Safety” page
where students can get tips about using
the site in the safest way possible. “We
encourage safe sex,” said one of the cre-
ators, “but we can’t take any legal liabil-
ity to something that may happen as a
result of using the site.”
Stanford University is one of three
colleges that have a link to the school’s
“Sexual Health Peer Resource Center.”
A representative from Stanford’s Health
Center, who wished to remain anony-
mous, feels that this is the only way to
promote any kind of safe sex associated
with the site. “The website is attracting
thousands of our students and based on
what we hear, they are using the site to
have one-time sexual encounters with
an array of different individuals,” said
the representative. “Any information we
have to educate students about safe sex
is better than nothing. I just hope they
are reading it.”
Students from Stanford University
say the website has made going to class
more exciting. Andrea Paladeno, a
sophomore at the university, said she
has “hooked-up” with five different men
through the site. “I don’t think it’s that
big of a deal,” Paladeno said. “People use
Facebook and Craigslist for the same
thing; it’s just not advertised exclusively
for sex.”
The English major said that stu-
dents around campus have been
buzzing about the new site. “Everyone
is on it, and everyone is talking about
it,” Paladeno explains. “Nothing excit-
ing usually happens here, so this is a big
deal.”
Stanford University did not wish to
comment on the recent development of
the schools forum on
EduHookUps.com, but they did release
a statement stating that the University
does not support or endorse the web-
site, EduHookUps.com.
Corrine Clevensky, a senior at the
university, says the mood of the school
has changed since the arrival of
EduHookUps. “More and more people
are beginning to talk to each other on
campus,” says Clevensky. “There has
even been just ‘Hook Up’-themed par-
ties,” he added.
Matt Schneider, an avid
EduHookUps.Com user, says the web-
site has given the school a new atmos-
phere. “It’s like Northwestern got a
face-lift,” jokes the Biology major. “Fi-
nally a website where students can just
be honest and say, ‘I want sex.’”
Stony Brook students seem to be
excited about the launch of the website,
which went live on April 26. A user of
the site, who did not want to be named,
said she has already had encounters
with men through the site. “I hooked up
with a guy last week,” said the sopho-
more. “It’s a great place to meet people
who are interested in the same things as
The Stony Brook Press
you.” The engineering major said she’s
not afraid of sexually transmitted dis-
eases. “I protect myself against disease,
and I’m smart about where we meet—
always in public and I always tell a
friend.”
Stony Brook seems prepared for the
arrival of the site, having a number of
resources available to students in order
help protect themselves against sexually
transmitted diseases. Kathleen Valerio,
a health educator at Stony Brook Uni-
versity, works for The Center for Pre-
vention and Outreach, which offers
many events to promote and educate
students on healthy choices. “At the be-
ginning of each semester the RAs are
given a packet from the CPO, which
Tour de Brook
By Carol Moran
The grease stains at the bottom of
Dean Miller’s corduroy pants are a tes-
tament to the trek he makes to campus
every morning. Miller, director of the
Center for News Literacy at Stony
Brook, hops on his maroon Mongoose
mountain bike and rings the metal bell
mounted on his handlebars to warn
pedestrians of his approach, quite often
with a bowtie around his neck.
“It’s a lot cheaper,” Miller said. “I
think it’s going to cause my insurance to
go down because my mileage is nil. It’s
environmentally sound, and there is no
parking space needed.”
Students and faculty at Stony Brook
are shifting gears along with Miller to-
wards the more sustainable and trendy
mode of transportation. There are over
six miles of bike paths spread across
campus, and the more than 100 bike
racks are often filled to capacity.
“The culture is changing,” Director
of Environmental Stewardship Amy
Provenzano said. “I think everyone’s
healthy habits are improving, so I think
people think more about using a bike
instead of a car.”
With gas prices soaring, biking is a
cheaper alternative. Whether or not
people are attempting to reduce the
amount of fossil fuels they burn, Matt
Aiello-Lammens, a manager at Free-
wheel Collective on campus, said peo-
ple are trying to save money on gas by
riding bikes.
Starting within the next week or
two, the bike racks at Stony Brook will
be home to 25 custom-made, shiny red
contains condoms and information
packets to be given out in a constructive
way to residents,” Valerio said. The HIV
prevention material is funded by the
New York State’s HIV Prevention grant
which Stony Brook applied for and re-
ceived last May. The CPO also offers
HIV testing events, counseling for stu-
dents, along with training for residen-
tial hall employees, staff and campus
groups on well-being and healthy de-
velopment.
Kim, a senior at Stony Brook who
did not want to give her last name, says
the school takes steps to educate stu-
dents. “In comparison to other schools,
Stony Brook has a wide variety of pro-
grams and events all designated to
bikes equipped with bells, lights and big
metal baskets, as part of a recently de-
veloped bike share program. As a signa-
tory of the American Colleges and
Universities President’s Climate Com-
mitment, Stony Brook has promised to
be carbon neutral by 2050. The bike
share program is meant to reduce vehi-
cle traffic from commuting residents
and faculty.
Twenty-five students will be chosen
through a lottery system to participate
in the program. After a $15 per semes-
ter fee and a $15 deposit, they’ll receive
a helmet and a key that will unlock any
of the 25 bikes that are to be stationed
across campus.
“We have close to 100 applicants al-
ready so we’re so excited that there
seems to be such interest in it,” Proven-
zano said. “We’re hoping that we get a
great core of students to start because
we’re looking for what works really
great for the program and what are
some of the things we can improve on.
Our hope is to expand the program.”
But before the bike share program
health awareness.” The commuter at
Stony Brook said even though she is not
a resident, she received a packet from
the CPO that included condoms and
educational information. However, she
said the concept of the website is un-
ethical. “I think it’s dangerous and dis-
gusting that students are using this site,”
Kim said. “Even with Stony Brook’s ef-
fort to protect students, the website
gives us a bad name.”
Eduhookups.com is certainly grow-
ing in publicity, being featured on The
Today Show, CBS Chicago and on Jay
Leno. The site’s controversy has been
largely debated in the media and as a re-
sult, the website decided to add a “Wall
of Shame” where all negative press
was even in the discussion stages, Free-
wheel Collective, a non-profit bike shop
that offers students the opportunity to
rebuild donated and found bicycles, as
well as repair their own bikes for free or
for a minor cost, was harboring the
two-wheeled trend. Biology and evolu-
tionary ecology students started the col-
lective in an off-campus basement
before moving it to a community center
and then to the farthest corner of the
Stony Brook Union basement, just be-
hind the anime club. The noisy, fluores-
cently lit room is filled with bike parts
and the sounds of students pumping up
tires or brushing rust off metal bike
petals.
“Anybody—students, faculty, com-
munity members are welcome,” Man-
ager Jennifer Everhart, said. “We
provide the knowledge and a lot of the
parts, and in turn, the people come
down there and get to learn how to fix
up their bicycles—they provide the
labor, we provide the knowledge.”
The Graduate Student Organiza-
tion funds the collective. The money is
News 3
about the network can be shared. The
founders of the site want people to keep
an open mind, referring to the websites
motto, “Where fun comes to thrive.”
Stony Brook University had no
comment about the website. The cre-
ators of the site said earlier this week
that they will be including all credited,
four-year universities in the United
States to their website, resulting in over
1,807 school forums by the end of the
academic year. The creators of the site
said they are moving full speed ahead.
“We are hoping to add more features to
the site and continue expanding,” said
Danny. “We currently have over 350,000
visitors to the site a week, and we’re
looking to double that number.”
partially allocated towards safety equip-
ment like helmets and lights, and par-
tially allocated towards bike parts, such
as lubricants, chains and wires, accord-
ing to Aiello-Lammens.
But despite the increase in bikers at
Stony Brook and the safety equipment
that the collective hands out, biking can
be dangerous.
“I think it’s hard to be bike aware as
a driver in an area where there aren’t a
lot of bicyclists,” Aiello-Lammens said.
“You travel a lot faster on the roads
here...On 347 you can do 65 miles per
hour, so it’s always going to be a little bit
more difficult for bicyclists in the sub-
urbs.”
Political Science Professor Helmut
Norpoth has been riding his bike to
work since he moved to the area in
1979, and he said cars have a blind spot
for bicycle riders. “You have to be very
observant yourself, and that’s the only
thing that counts.”
New York State does not have a hel-
met law, though there are New York
State Vehicle and Traffic laws that apply
to bikes. Provenzano says they highly
suggest that participants in the bike
share program wear a helmet. Partici-
pants must also watch a safety video
provided by the National Traffic Safety
Board.
Everhart has been in two biking ac-
cidents since she came to Stony Brook,
one of which left her with two broken
ribs last semester after a student that
was texting while walking knocked her
over on the zebra path. That didn’t deter
her from biking, though she doesn’t hop
onto her green fixed-gear without a hel-
met.
4 Vol. XXXII, Issue 14 |Wednesday, May 17, 2011

Editorial Board
Executive Editor
editorials
Nick Statt
Managing Editor
Carol Moran
Associate Editor
Round Two
Evan Goldaper
Here at the Stony Brook Press, we necessary to attribute that success to the readers into thinking not only that we
Business Manager are not critical of events, public figures determination and seemingly endless vi- were advising that USG should attempt
Siobhan Cassidy or campus administration simply be- sion of Student Programming Agency a Culture Shock, but also that it was even
cause we see it as our role to undercut Director Moiz Khan, the face pasted on possible for USG to do so.
Production Manager
Mark Greek everything around us. That is a sorry the primary alien of the Mars So first, let us give you said context.
definition of “alternative,” and as the Attacks! front cover of our last issue. SUNY Purchase is a drastically different
News Editors campus’ alternative paper, we would like Yes, Khan made more enemies than school encased in an equally different
Inquire Within to be trusted to go beyond the surface of he ever imagined by refusing to compro- administration, and both factors con-
Features Editor sensational negativity just to be different, mise, as he says in the graciously allotted tribute greatly to its ability to orchestrate
Alyssa Melillo despite the fact that our campus’ primary opinion space of the Statesman in a piece something like Culture Shock. Not only
publication seems content on never ris- title, “Tearing Red Tape and Breaking does the school’s undergraduate govern-
Arts Editor ing above licking the boots of the estab- Down Silos.” When he took his position ment own the space on which the con-
Alexa Rubinstein
lishment. in USG last year, it was amid the contro- cert is held, but the school is also
Multimedia Editor That said, let it be centered around the
Vincent Barone known that our last arts, including majors
Ula Gradowska
issue featuring a com- in sound production
Copy Editor parison and accompa- and other areas of event
Lauren DuBois nying editorial between planning that allow
the recent Bruno Mars them to pull straight
Sports Editor
Vincent Barone concert and SUNY Pur- from their student body
chase’s Culture Shock to organize and run the
Social Media Editor festival was not in any- event. Purchase also
Kenny Mahoney way a feeble attempt to has a long history of
Ombudsman dig up a source of criti- performing arts and a
Carolina Hidalgo cism just for the sake of number of bands have
being critical. It was deep rooted connec-
meant to highlight not tions to the school, in-
Layout Design by
Jowy Romano only differing view- cluding this year’s
points when it comes to organizer, lo-fi legend
future campus event R. Stevie Moore.
Staff planning, but also to These differences
Sam Aldenton make it very clear just make the likelihood of
Michelle Bylicky how much money is something like Culture
Lionel Chan
Natalie Crnosija being used for this cam- Shock at Stony Brook
Mike Cusanelli pus’ entertainment, to what end it is versial restructuring of SAB, but in only near-impossible due to the extreme lim-
Eric DiGiovanni
Brett Donnelly being used and how it could be im- one year in the post, he brought numer- itations put on campus events from or-
Amanda Douville proved. We stand by our decision to de- ous acts that performed to increasing ganizations like University Police, the
Lauren DuBois
Sarah Evins
nounce the Bruno Mars concert on the crowds, with Bruno Mars marking the private security firm forced onto anyone
Andrew Fraley grounds that he was a safe choice, one culmination of all his effort. who books the Sport Complex and the
Colleen Harrington
Samuel Katz
that does not represent a true college act Khan wanted to change the univer- dozens of other barriers and restrictions
Nicole Kohn and one whose success at Stony Brook on sity, and he most certainly did. However, that exist here at Stony Brook but not
Iris Lin
Andi Liao
May 6 was, from the very start, to be the changes are not always completely Purchase, as Khan himself would happily
Erica Mengouchian measured by ticket sales and the demon- positive, and not always cleanly and effi- point out to anyone who asks.
Frank Myles
Howie Newsberkman
stration of the organizers’ hard work, but ciently looking towards a better future But this likelihood would only be
Vanessa Ogle not by how much the performance for our school or its hugely expensive near-impossible if we decided to stupidly
Carlos Parreno would represent a true and calculated events, as we wanted to point out in the dive in head first. That was not what we
Gabriel Panadero
Jessica Rybak desire of the campus body. comparison. But this comparison, as it were implying USG should do, nor did
Emily Torkel Now, we recognize that it is neces- stands in our last issue, is noticeably we think that dozens of cheap bands that
Matt Willemain
sary to point out just how much of a suc- lacking context. We would like to hold no one has heard of mixed in with only a
cess the concert was, and it is also ourselves accountable for misleading any handful of recognizable names is the

Write for The Press!

About Us
The Stony Brook Press is published fortnightly
during the academic year and twice during sum-
mer session by The Stony Brook Press, a student
run non-profit organization funded by the Student
Activity Fee. The opinions expressed in letters, ar-
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Email: sbpress@gmail.com
The Stony Brook Press
Hate what you see? E-mail your letters to editors@sbpress.com
right direction for an end-of-the-year concert. We
simply wanted to highlight how a concert of that mag-
nitude manages to cater to multiple music tastes, and
for far lower price tag. The key factor was that Cul-
ture Shock was a massively participatory for-the-
students, by-the-students effort that was 100 percent
college-geared, which is not at all what you can say
about Bruno Mars.
We were not arguing that for the same amount
money, Stony Brook should try and get 42 artists,
many of which are obscure. However, Stony Brook
could have gotten 10 artists, say three or four in the
price range of Immortal Technique and six or seven in
the price range of Best Coast. But that’s not what
Khan wanted.
And here arises the ideological difference between
what Khan sees as good for the school, which is what
we at The Press wanted to highlight, and what we
think would be a step in the right direction. Khan did
not want multiple bands because multiple bands
means less notoriety for each act, which ultimately re-
duces the potential for a lightning-quick sellout of
tickets like Bruno Mars. Khan sees the success of the
Bruno Mars’ May 6 concert as “...the foundation for
the beginning of a diverse and vibrant campus life,”
according to his Statesman opinion.   steps, of huge acts just as big as Bruno Mars or Lupe
However, it would have made much more
sense to have not gunned for the obviously unrealis-
tic 42 band extravaganza of Culture Shock, which
again was not what we were implying, but to try and
get a more college-geared artist like Lupe Fiasco. Not
only is the 18-24 age range a primary market for the
young hip-hop artist’s music, but he also dropped a
new album this past March, making him far more
timely than Bruno Mars. We only suggest Lupe Fiasco
because we know that Khan tried to secure him and
failed, ending up with Bruno Mars only after Lupe Fi-
asco pulled out at the last minute to perform in New
Orleans.
But instead of trying to find someone equitable to
Lupe Fiasco, we ended up with a Billboard Hot 100
artist who is constantly played on the radio. That
shows that Khan had the right mindset to begin with,
but didn’t care in the end when he discovered that he
5
could still sell out the Sports Complex with an act like
Bruno Mars.
So Khan may dream of a concert on the Staller
Fiasco performing alongside each other, even possi-
bly at a multi-day festival. But because that is not re-
alistic, Khan sidesteps to achieve what he sees as his
goal of creating a better Stony Brook experience. That
means settling on Bruno Mars when nothing else pulls
through and making the best out of it even if it means
putting on a concert that is not traditionally geared
towards college students.
But the more you sidestep to maneuver con-
straints, the higher the chance that you will like where
you’re standing over where you were originally aim-
ing. That’s the fear. We at The Press want to make
sure those original aims are at least apparent if they
are no longer in the sights and to scrutinize the deci-
sions of those in power not just because it’s our
money being spent, but most importantly because it’s
our college experience on the line.

Goodbye, But Not Forever...

I’m not one for saying goodbyes; espe-
cially when faced with the reality that my
involvement with The Press is coming to
an end. I’m still puzzled. How do you say
goodbye to a paper that has served you
well, taught you so much and provided sol-
ace for four years?
You can’t.
Everything I’ve learned and experi-
enced within the walls of Suite 060 of the
Stony Brook Student Union has become a
part of who I am today, for better and for
worse.
For four years I’ve had the extreme
pleasure of working with and getting to
know some of the brightest, most humor-
ous and most genuine people that I have
ever encountered in my 21 years of life.
These same people were what made my
time at The Press memorable, and in the
past year alone, possible.
During the beginning of the fall se-
mester, The Press had undergone an iden-
tity crisis, which had been developing
since the previous year. Was The Press
going to continue to be the outlandish
paper to grace Stony Brook’s campus with Stony Brook Southampton, consistently provides rich I’m comforted by the fact that the future of paper
its rich satire and sharp and witty commentary? narratives on the lives and stories of faculties and stu- couldn’t be in better hands, but I am now at a cross-
Or would The Press revert back to its origin and dents and still preserving the ever-so-important atti- roads—that sudden transition into the “real world.”
highlight the work of investigatory and feature style tude of challenging authority. Looking back at it all, I’m extremely happy that it hap-
writing for the purposes of informing the campus, The pinnacle of our year probably came when we pened, but saddened that it is all coming to an end.
promoting progress and inciting debate? hosted Dr. Daniel Ellsberg of the Pentagon Papers to Until next time, I guess this is goodbye, but not
I can only hope that it has been clear that we’ve at talk on campus at a time when freedom of the press forever.
least attempted to be the latter, a process, which re- and government transparency was put into question.
sulted in a departing staff who were reluctant to such Where The Press has come and how it got there is Sincerely,
change. These were difficult but very necessary times, something I will forever cherish, but nowhere near the Najib Aminy
even if it risked being impeached. endless hours, late nights and early mornings I got to Executive Editor
Since then, The Press has managed to be at the spend with the best staff any Editor could ask for and 2010-2011
forefront of campus coverage, such as the closure of the best friends any person could ever dream of.
 6 Vol. XXXII, Issue 14 |Wednesday, May 17, 2011

news

Spending on Science:
What it Means for Our Future
By Nick Statt
For months, Brookhaven National
Lab was staring at the face of devastat-
ing House budget cuts of $1.1 billion
that threatened to cut the staff by 930,
or one third, and potentially discon-
tinue the operations of internationally
renown facilities like the RHIC particle
accelerator. But a budget compromise
released on April 8, called FY11, re-
duced that $1.1 billion to only $35 mil-
lion, marking a definitive effort to not
let science take the back seat even amid
the nation’s struggling economic recov-
ery. Photo Credit:
“We don’t yet have any new info on Brookhaven National Lab
how or if the final budget deal will af-
fect us,” said Media & Communications The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Lab. If the House cuts were enacted, operations
at RHICwould have to be cut back, which would lead to layoffs of 300 science and support personnel, according to
Manager Pete Genzer, but he stressed wesupportbnl.org, a website created by Rep. Tim Bishop to garner support against the cuts.
the words of BNL’s Deputy Director for
Science and Technology Doon Gibbs,
future growth. of scientific research must be acknowl- plea to keep it from being trampled by
who said in a statement provided by
Dr. John H. Marburger III, cur- edged for what it is: the key to our na- the elephants,” he added.
Genzer, “…We deeply appreciate Sena-
rently vice president of research at Stony tion’s future.” He also cited an estimate But Marburger, with his rich polit-
tor Schumer’s, Senator Gillibrand’s, and
Brook University, the university’s for- from economists that “approximately ical background, understands the com-
Congressman Bishop’s support for sci-
mer president and a former Science Ad- half of post-WWII economic growth is plications involved with FY11 and
ence and their willingness to protect the
visor to President George W. Bush, directly attributable to R&D-fueled asserts that the resolution did more
Lab and its programs.”
fought back voraciously when the orig- technological progress.” forestalling than it did solving by way of
Despite the drastic reduction in
inal budget cuts, which came packaged Now that FY11 has replaced the gearing itself more towards non-con-
cuts, the political intricacies of the de-
in the House of Representatives’ HR 1 draconian HR 1, Marburger can reflect troversial cuts than those to big science.
cision make it difficult to claim the po-
plan, hit the public limelight back in on his appeal to such future progress “It is hard to consider the FY11 budget
tential passing of FY11 a victory for
February. being placed in the hands of research. a ‘victory for science.’ I would say it is
science. As the economic situation fails
In a April 7 Huffington Post op-ed “What I intended to convey…was that more like a confirmation that the par-
to meet the nation’s spending standards,
titled, “House’s Science Cuts Threaten science is all-pervasive in the general ties regarded big cuts in science as too
all sectors, not just science, are taking
Our Future,” Marburger made a stand cultures and economies of modern na- controversial to push any farther at this
big hits. But proponents of scientific re-
for science research, writing, “In the ne- tions, and especially the U.S.,” he said in time. That is good news, but it gives few
search, including scientists and politi-
gotiations now underway to determine an email message. “Science, however it’s signals about forthcoming budgets,” he
cians alike, have ignited a fight to prove
what share of needed budget cuts must construed, is a small-time player in a said.
the worth of institutions like BNL in
fall to the tiny and already beleaguered budget game that is now of world-his- Rep. Tim Bishop (D-Southamp-
their contributions to not just scientific
domestic discretionary budget, the role torical dimensions. My op-ed was a ton) was another major player in the
development, but all areas of the U.S.’s
backlash campaign against HR 1
throughout the last few months. He or-
ganized a large body of bipartisan sup-
port and even set up a website,
www.wesupportbnl.org, according to
Spokesman Oliver Longwell.
Despite Bishop being in full sup-
port of federal spending cuts, which he
expressed through the voting support of
a $38 billion federal year-to-year spend-
The Stony Brook Press
ing cut, he, like Marburger, also saw HR
1 as a threat to future development. “I
recognize that we cannot get our budget
under control without painful cuts and
without compromise. The litmus test I
will apply is whether cuts are painful as
opposed to destructive and whether
they will cause real damage to Long Is-
land’s economy,” he said in a statement
provided by Spokesman Longwell. “I
will continue to advocate against cuts to
scientific research and education that
will hurt our ability to compete in the
21st century global economy and ham-
string future growth,” he added.
Longwell himself expresses extreme
concern over such spending cuts and
what they mean for the future. “Frankly,
I am dumbfounded that the Republican
majority in the House of Representa-
tives  voted to gut  federal investment
in science, which would cede the lead-
ership of the next generation of scien-
tific innovation to  China, India, and
other nations who are massively ramp-
ing up their own investments in re-
search,” he said. “Fortunately for
Brookhaven Lab, Long Island, and our
nation, wiser judgments were able to
prevail in this case,” he added.
Brookhaven National Lab, the cen-
tral focus of these cuts here on Long Is-
land, is home to more than just
expensive research projects like particle
accelerators, and the proponents of sci-
entific research as a key to our future
development make that very clear.
Hotel Lawsuit
New York State Supreme Court Judge
Ralph Gazzillo ruled last month that the
two plaintiffs trying to stop the construc-
tion of a 135-room hotel on campus had
no legal standing to bring a lawsuit against
SUNY—or that they didn’t prove that suf-
ficient harm would result from the action
challenged.
Attorney George Locker said the two
plaintiffs, Michelle Pizer, a Stony Brook
alumnus and former president of the envi-
ronmental club, and Muriel Weyl, long-
time community member and former
faculty of Stony Brook University, will ap-
peal the decision.
“We fully expect to win the appeal,”
Locker said in a phone interview. “I have
already notified SUNY through their
lawyer the Attorney General that if we win
an appeal, as we expect, and if any work is
One such example is BNL’s participation
in the Department of Energy program,
America’s Next Top Energy Innovator.
The program helps increase the number
of startup companies by reducing the
cost of options to license available
patents to $1,000, which is a fraction of
the regular cost according to the BNL
press release dated May 2. The ‘option’
refers to the ability for a company to ob-
tain a 6-month time window to apply
for a patent license for a particular tech-
nology, but only if they submit an in-
tensive business plan outlining their
strategy to market the technology.
The program, although only a pilot
that will remain in effect until Decem-
ber 15, 2011, is aimed at building a bet-
ter future in corporate science. “We
believe the program will increase the
number of successful companies and
create new jobs that our nation needs —
particularly clean energy jobs,” said
Walter Copan, manager of Brookhaven
Lab’s Office of Technology Commer-
cialization and Partnerships, in BNL’s
official press release.
Dr. Marburger, one of the most po-
litically and scientifically astute propo-
nents of this idea that science is a
principle foundation of our future, is
not too optimistic about federal spend-
ing on research down the line. “All ‘big
science’ is at risk in the coming years,
mainly because it is big and Congress is
under extreme pressure to save money,”
he said.
NEWS IN BRIEF
News 7
popular legend. People love the idea of
black holes, dinosaurs, expanding uni-
verses, extra dimensions and space ex-
ploration,” he said.
What it comes down to for Mar-
burger, and in a sense the entire scien-
tific and political community that is
pushing so hard to keep science aloft, is
the universal benefits that the hundreds
of thousands of projects all around the
world are providing to everyone, not
just the scientists doing the experiment.
“The public deserves to know why
their most talented and productive
members care so passionately about
Photo Credit: these things. The public wants to share
stonybrook.edu that passion, and it’s up to scientists to
John H. MarburgerIII help. The SSC scientists explained their
search for the Higgs boson in a way that
But he steadfastly stands by all
made it seem as if we were just looking
forms of science, even the enormously
for some more particles, like the ones
costly projects like the RHIC particle
we already found but smaller,” he said.
accelerator. “These projects are not just
Marburger is referring to the theo-
‘probing around for answers.’ They are
retical Higgs boson particle that the
part of a deep-seated passion that hu-
largest particle accelerator on the
manity has to understand the world it
planet, Switzerland’s LHC, is currently
lives in…today we have extraordinary
searching for. It is, as the Standard
tools that are revealing astonishing as-
Model of particle physics suggests, the
pects of our world,” he said. “This is se-
source of all particles’ mass.
rious stuff – as serious as the art and
“The idea of ‘explaining mass’
religion and literature that many people
seems an odd thing to drive such pas-
think are what make life worth living.”
sion, and in fact that’s not really what it’s
Marburger even makes the claim
all about. What is at stake is a vision of
that esoteric science is still supported by
the nature of all reality. Try explaining
the public, despite them not under-
that to your congressman.”
standing it. “Einstein is the world‘s most
popular scientist, and Feynman is a
done on the site, we will demand that everything be
removed and the land restored.”
The court’s decision on the appeal could take any-
where from six months to over a year, according to
Locker.
Pizer, Weyl and Stony Brook Environmental Con-
servancy, Inc., a non-profit organization, originally
filed the lawsuit in December 2009, on claims that the
special legislation enabling SUNY to lease 13 acres of
campus to a private developer, Harbor Construction
Management, had expired before SUNY entered the
lease, among other complaints, according to court
records.
According to Stony Brook’s website, it plans to
build the hotel on 11 acres of land east of the Admin-
istration parking garage. The project will undergo an
environmental assessment, and the building will com-
ply with various green building standards.
Carol Moran
8 Features
Stony Brook 2023
Stony Brook University has plans
for major renovations to begin in 2013.
And to prepare, the Faculty Student As-
sociation is digging deeper into stu-
dents’ pockets.
The FSA Board of Directors passed
a budget Friday night that includes a
$35 increase in the residential meal plan
fee and an increase in the prices of food
on campus, which will be partially allo-
cated to the construction of a new din-
ing facility between the Wang Center
and Mendelsohn Quad, and partially al-
located to extended hours at the Union
Commons, the Union Deli and Star-
bucks, according to members of the
FSA Board of Directors.
The university plans to complete
the new dining facility to accommodate
students during the reconstruction of
the Stony Brook Union. To further raise
money towards the new dining facility,
the University will close Campus Con-
nection, the H-Quad dining facility,
next fall. To compensate, the Union deli
will be open until three a.m., and the
Union Commons and Starbucks until
midnight.
On top of the $35 fee increase, res-
idential meal plans will increase by 2
percent, as they do annually, to com-
pensate for increases in the cost of living
and inflation. Since the fee is restricted
to residential meal plans, the FSA voted
to increase the price of food, so that the
burden of funding the construction
projects will also be carried by com-
muters, faculty, and students on the
“...the University will close Campus Connection,
the H-squad dining facility, next fall.”
“To compentsate, the Union deli will be open until three a.m.
budget or west apartments meal plan.
Students with the residential meal plans
that are already paying the fee will re-
ceive a discount at the registers so that
they aren’t affected by the price in-
crease.
David Mazza, Undergraduate Stu-
dent Government vice president for
communications, was the only FSA
Board of Directors member to vote
against the budget, and Froylan Enciso,
President of the Graduate Student Or-
ganization, was the only to abstain.
Mazza said he would rather see the
Vol. XXXII, Issue 14 |Wednesday, May 17, 2011
by Carol Moran
hours of the Union dining facilities stay
the same and have the meal plan fee in-
crease by half as much.
Enciso said he abstained because
“the students have not been appropri-
ately consulted” as to the allocation of
their money.
USG President Matt Graham, who
voted in favor of the FSA budget, said
students can avoid paying the fee in-
crease and the rise in the price of food
by living off campus and cooking, and
that he is supportive of renovations to
the dining facilities, which haven’t
caught up with the renovations of resi-
dences in the past 20 years. However, he
said it’s a tough decision to place the
cost of the construction onto the stu-
dents.
“It’s because the state isn’t providing
the proper support for a public univer-
sity that it should be,” he said.
The plans to tear down and recon-
struct the Union and build the new din-
ing facility nearby are only a small
portion of the outline the University has
drawn, which includes the construction
of new residences, academic buildings
and other dining facilities.
According to Barbara Chernow,
vice president for facilities and services,
the master plan will close the gap be-
tween East and West campus, move the
School of Marine and Atmospheric Sci-
ences to the academic mall and balance
student housing more evenly across
campus.
Before construction begins, the
University needs to submit a budget re-
quest to Governor Andrew Cuomo and
the State Legislature, which, if fully
funded, will cover the construction
projects until 2023.
Chernow said that the new and ren-
ovated buildings will support the en-
rollment projections for Stony
Brook—about 3,000 new students, as
well as the academic plan and the re-
search plan for the university.
The Stony Brook Press Features 9
10
features
The Stony Brook Ticket
Additional reporting by Vin Barone, Mark Greek, Andi Liao and Alyssa Melillo
As persistent as Stony Brook Uni-
versity is in attempting to get across the
image of being red hot, there will always
be one color that the thousands of com-
muters and residents on this campus
can better identify with—it’s the color
yellow and it helped contribute to
$960,590 in parking fines in 2009.
These yellow envelopes carry the
parking tickets that are issued every
year amongst more than 13,000 parking
stalls and what 22-year-old senior Car-
los Parreno angrily noticed on the
windshield of his car this past Tuesday.
“I’ve been ticketed too many times,”
said Parreno, an English major who is
now commuting after dorming on cam-
pus. “When I pay for the whole day of
parking, I want them to give me a ticket
so I can say ‘You’re finally wrong,” he
said, still angry over his recent ticket,
which he admitted to his own negli-
gence.
Since 2005, there has
been a roughly 40 percent
increase of tickets issued
and an overall 65 percent
increase of ticket revenue
from 2005 to 2009, ac-
cording to records ob-
tained through a freedom
of information act request
by The Press.
That approximates to
an average of 50 tickets
per day in 2005 compared
to 83 tickets in 2009. And
since that time, the price
of a ticket fine for parking
illegally has increased
from $15 in 2007 to $30 the following
year. There has also been an introduc-
tion of residential zones, where resi-
dents are limited to parking to the quad
Vol. XXXII, Issue 14 |Wednesday, May 17, 2011
by Najib Aminy
“I hate it. It’s such an utter
waste of my money,”
Miller said. “It’s always my
fault, but I’m always look-
ing for a break. It’s a show
no mercy policy.”
they live in.
“We do have to convince people of
the mass transit theory and go against
that Long Island 7-11 mentality where
you can drive right up to class,” said
James O’Connor, director of trans-
portation and parking on campus. “Ul-
timately, it increased the traffic on the
roadway, increased our carbon foot
print and reduced our sustainability,”
said O’Connor about the old form of
residence parking.
As for the money, it goes back to
ensuring that more tickets are issued
and safety is ensured, at least according
to Barbara Chernow, vice president of
facilities and services. “It’s used to pro-
mote safety, because if we didn’t have a
traffic enforcement staff, handicap
spaces and fire lanes would be continu-
ally blocked and the number of acci-
dents would skyrocket.”
Of the total 30,255 tickets issued in
2009, more than half were unauthorized
parking violations while there were
9,656 expired meter violations. To put it
in comparison, there were 9,190 unau-
thorized parking violations in total in
2005.
For Dean Miller, director of the
Stony Brook News Literacy program,
parking has made him ride his bike to
work as often as he can. “I use my car as
little as possible,” said Miller, who will
leave notes on his car pleading not to
get ticketed, as was the case when he
was a new professor without a permit.
“When I do drive, I find I’m going to
pay. It’s going to cost me 30 or 40 bucks.”
Miller has been ticketed for an ex-
pired meter, parking in the stadium lot
after he couldn’t find parking in the fac-
ulty lot on the day of a final he had to
prepare and for parking his car at the
train station overnight.
The bright yellow envelope is some-
thing Miller has become familiar with
quite well in his two years as a profes-
sor. “I hate it. It’s such an utter waste of
my money,” he said. “It’s always my
fault, but I’m always looking for a break.
It’s a show no mercy policy.”
That little mercy is the reality Cher-
now has come to expect out of the thou-
sands of people who park their cars on
campus, comparing it to the trans-
portation issue in any major city. “I
think if you’re going to travel to Man-
hattan, or if you’re going to any city,
you’re going to have to use mass transit
when you can or just leave enough time
to find parking.”
It’s why Miller has come to think of
James Simons’ recent construction of
the Simons Center to be one of pure in-
genuity.
“The smartest thing James Simons
did was he gave those professor gated
private parking,” said Miller. “That’s the
ultimate perk on this campus, it’s park-
ing where you know you can always
park.”
The Stony Brook Press
Parking Is Not For the Self-Entitled
As someone who has commuted to Stony
Brook for the entirety of his four-year tenure, I can
safely say that I have never had an issue parking
on this campus. Ever. Never ever.
A shocking statement, I know. For most of us,
it’s impossible to go a day without witnessing a fel-
low classmate speed-walk into class four minutes
late, muttering swear words under exasperated
breaths and cursing the express bus or the lack of
spots in the metered lots. I can only imagine the
stressful circumstances under which such an oc-
currence could happen...
After awaking from a lonely night of watch-
ing Family-Guy, your mom walks into your room
to announce that you have class in thirty minutes.
With little time to spare, you make a zombie-like
shuffle into the bathroom to clean the shame and
disappointment out of your matted locks, but not
without a Bruno Mars playlist blasting through the
speakers of your iHome.
After a lackadaisical washing, you somehow
manage to dress yourself with the outfit your
mother so kindly prepared for you. With nary a
bite if your freshly-popped Pop Tart, you sling
your backpack over your shoulder and walk out-
side to the car that your parents bought you. You
might actually make it on time today, but you just
can’t begin your twelve-minute commute to cam-
pus without a stop at the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-
through.
After cruising past every other parking lot on
campus except for South-P, you miraculously find
that every spot that doesn’t require a special per-
mit has been taken. You reluctantly circle back to
the south end of campus, park your car in one of
Features 11
by Kenny Mahoney
the hundreds of empty spaces, and wait a whop-
ping three whole minutes to get on the bus back to
the academic mall.
If any part of this story resonates with you,
you are most likely an overgrown woman/man-
child. Your belief that the earth revolves around
you and should somehow allot excuses for your
own shortcomings is what is constantly making
you late to class. It’s not the lack of spots on cam-
pus, it’s not the evil parking-enforcers and it’s not
the same traffic that you run into every fucking
day. It’s you.
But I’m not just writing this to berate you; I’m
here to offer you some advice as well. I’ll shorten
it to two words, because I know what a task it is to
draw your attention away from the book you
should have read yesterday or the essay you would
have started a week ago. Be. Early.
By giving yourself an extra 15 to 30 minutes
than you normally do, I can almost guarantee that
you will not only be on time, but you’ll be less
stressed and more focused once you get to class.
Not only that, but you’ll avoid lines at the en-
trances and for the buses because you’ll get there
before all of the man-babies who arrive at the
same time.
While I know it’s a lot to ask a student who
somehow manages to wake up before 11 a.m. to
get to class to wake up even earlier, I think you’ll
find that showing a little bit of self-control during
your Stony Brook career will pay off not just in
parking your car.
12 Features Vol. XXXII, Issue 14 |Wednesday, May 17, 2011
2 the stony brook PRESS

A NOTE FROM THE EDITORS

It’s that time of year again: time to stress out over finals
and wish you’d never piled on those extra three credits or
left that paper until the night before it was due or gone out
partying until you found yourself up a tree wondering why
everyone was suddenly so much shorter than you. We’ve
been there. Especially up that tree. So we’ve assembled The
Stony Brook Press’ Literary Supplement to give you a few
moments of fun while you toil away and try to survive the
end of this semester. Because we know you will. And if you
don’t, well, we were serious about being up that tree. You
can come join us if you’d like.

CONTRIBUTOR LIST
ROMAN BELOPOLSKY
LIZ EARLY
SARAH EVINS
COLLEEN O’CONNOR
GINNY MULÉ
EVAN GOLDAPER
GABRIEL PANADERO
R.J. HUNEKE
ULA GRADOWSKA

COVER & PULLOUT ART: ROBERT POND

LITERARY SUPPLEMENT 2011
ROMAN BELOPOLSKY
Mi Tormentita
Gentle are the pillows
of the huddled little toes, peeking
playfully from underneath
the rouge sheet lipsticked on the bed
seldom still.
Gentle are the curls
Of the roads spiraling
Up the mountain
Lost in a little storm
that hovers above my face.
Gentle are the fingertips
grazing on the spine of
a whispered question
slips out in place of a snore
“Can you get me a glass of water?”
Blindly, I will.
Gentle are the slips kissed
more meaningful than anything
intended, as we are
two leaves carried to a touch
at the edge of a pond.
3
POEMS
May 2, 2011
A man is dead
and yet, millions rejoice-
Waving banners of revenge.
A darkness has imploded
and the aftermath was
the immense thump
of a collective heart.
A light switch is flicked,
spears of crimson light extend
from millions of throats-
Praising the murderer’s murderer.
Somewhere deep- a corpse lies,
a corpse the weight of
thousands.
A corpse of shards.
Somewhere a corpse lies,
it weighs down the earth
and the earth beneath it
collapses into a trench
the dimensions of a New
York City block.

A man is dead-

I turn to Donne
and I ask:
Is there an exception
for whom the bell
should toll?
 4 the stony brook PRESS

POEMS
ROMAN BELOPOLSKY
A Man That’s
Always Smiling My Mistress
in the sleepless toro, these old (forty-something-sexy) books;
there is a place that sleeps dream- my Sofias, my Esperanzas, my little poems on
less. the appendix, the pueblo Alcalá. introduction.

down the cobble callé a sign I’ve overheard (people say): “I love old books,
creaks in the somnambulant breeze, they have such character- ”
“la biblioteca,” a bar without -they are characters

a book. it does have shelves, long with eyes slim grinning

vacant shells, “maybe they read webs,” (a little white) over a
and a man that’s always smiling. slender shoulder.

David is smiling, impossibly smiling my loves, my mistresses-

in that lost place that couldn’t I “my” and imply I am
afford it’s place on a map. theirs.

David is smiling in the lint I don’t own, even if I’ve paid,

of a forgotten pocket- I haven’t bought- I’ve invited-
“because I believe in God,” we run away from their loveless marriages, so
loveless
his smile said, I smiled back and then
I spoke and his long moreno ears listened they were widows.
the way the earth listens
spine reclining against my palm they’re- their own
blankly- “find God,” his smile replied
“what the hell does that have to do with sovereignty.
anything?” he just smiled, he was drunk.
in their islands they speak freely,
I turned from David, from the smile, and in my thoughts they
from the impossibility, back out coo
onto the callé I knew so well, to find some place to
and never looked better in that leather-tight dress.
REST.
LITERARY SUPPLEMENT SPRING 2011
Below the Looming Mountain Crown
The looming azure mountains crown
the valley of the Okopipi,
the dwelling of the poets.
There: the bursting banquet,
mandolines and fiddles,
zanzibari thumps,
didgeriedoos and hang drums
(a rusted tuba hums)
along the raucous evening-
Shadows sit in silence, others
loud as howl--
Shifting figures, tracing of strange
hats, a feminine figure has
borrowed Napolean’s.
All are seated, nearly always
seated- stillness
of the body is their way.
“Attraction” - ULA GRADOWSKA
5
POEMS
Below the cobalt mountain crown,
opium fogs the distance of the eye.
the noise of slapping flesh,
a firing line of proclamations
of truths and phoenix.
Madness?!
Madness is weeping in the corner,
reeking of secreted fear
from the sight of them: these poets
Below the sapphire mountain crown,
how they celebrate the coming night,
when the open eye is closed,
when black canvas wraps the valley,
when the looming mountains vanish
and take with them their shackles-
and a word becomes a poem,
and a poem becomes a spell,
and a poet is nothing less
than a sorcerer of strange beauty.
 6 the stony brook PRESS

POEMS
Beverage Kiss
Writing a poem in ten minutes
On lots of coffee:
Modernity
Fuck modern philosophy
Sacred steaming roasts, like kisses
The case needs action
Wet grasping
Not the whining of bookish
Rejuvenating, invigorating, inspiring
Timidity!
The cup tilts
Grappling
Study the great philosophs
Like my lover’s trembling thighs
Wield the very books
Her moistened lips
To replace the dumb rulers
Her tenderest kiss
Fanaticists
Rushing and sloshing
Slowing and sweating
Sitting by idly rapes us
Bare
To burn the soft brains
Delicious…
Will file the ideas
Beverage Kiss.
(Ground) down to ash
Dust sticks to the human race
Cobwebs cling to ears
We don’t move or hear the cries
Of suffering

Sit still and rust with TV

Why disturb selfish
Contentedness, apathy,
Or greediness?

We have modernity.
LITERARY SUPPLEMENT SPRING 2011
R.J. HUNEKE
Chasms
Crossing countless chasms of Ginsbergian trials
The hand is taken the foot is scorched about the ruined
Ground Zero
Still flickering like a worn brass candle-lantern in the rusty
wind shivering that is not ignorable
The hand is taken on and up the rubble
Above
Building, building, building
Broader, deeper, taller
Below
Why have the pits grown in the open aired urban clusters
And the rural shrinking back-woods Americana
Jerky-laden teeth Fuck Me for jerky, so long as you’re not a
Yankee
The hand holds me up when all of this tugs on my sticky ven-
tricles and pulls hard and down
Yanks and anchor chains as big as circular hands lapping about
my scrawny feet and bent toes
(Now it’s personal, I know, but the third person singular will
limit no one no more!)
For I was drowning amidst despairing apathetic TV-holics,
false clergy and demonic ignorants
7
POEMS
And you took my hand from the soft silent ocean depths of
emerald flashes
And brought me up to the thick ignoble air
Terror spreads like a ruptured praying mantis egg-sack
Tiny ripples escape, sheer numbers overrun and within an
hour the green expressions are gone
In their wake one might remain to devour the outlying epicen-
ter of its masses
Unless the masses take the youth by the swiveling triangular
head and make food of this
So the mantis is surrounded on a hedge-island; a being that
was not given the time to grow
In its buried Depth
But the hand reaches into the gaping mouth of the deadly
sharp bush-cave
For faith in the risk, the difference, could mean art’s survival
and humanity’s
The twiggy abyss scratches and claws at the hand pushing for-
ward and contorting
Blood spills, inevitable in this life, but the hand moves, moves,
grasps and cradles:
The baby mantis is saved.
8 the stony brook PRESS
POEMS
R.J. HUNEKE
Individual Dawn
Give me wit give me humor:
Fuck Troilus, fox news, msnbc
Nun-fucking cleric indulgences
Are uncompromisable, but the
Whipped Troi, the tame president,
The oligarchy that is called
The United States Congress
Ruled by Insiders in the Insiders
On the Inside, without public votes,
Will fall via the most
Trojan of horses
Leap from the giant bunny
Suspend disbelief and imagine
A place without family guy
Mixing laxatives and stool hardeners,
But also a place of unforced
Artistic expression and freedom of will
Free from
The horrors, the shackles,
Of TV, democracy, apathy, hypocrisy,
Anarchy to
Wrench out the bolts of the
Dead society
For individuality
A community of the risk-taking
Individual will win peace
Praise art sunsets owl’s
Flight sunrise hoots
Beach sands sacred rites
Media shrunken head culture
Soul sharing well beyond
Warped religious damnation
That tears, claws and
Rapes the minds, bodies, spirits
And perceptions of our
Naked Creator
Scrape the page and rehash
The palimpsest in search for
A new voice
Bob Dylan, MLK, X, Lennon
Gracious Ginsberg
Need Company
Rise individuals, one by one
Pick up your dusty feet and march
Down on and upon Highway 61’s
Porcelain clay gray china
War plates
Lining the roadside from
Here to eternity
In tired twisted
Pieces
Smelling like scrambled eggs
Ere the echoes of a robin
Greet the sad sunrise.
LITERARY SUPPLEMENT SPRING 2011 9
POEMS
Jesus-Mary
Mary, you carried a god Mary, misrepresented
The masses killed him Is your son today
And it rained Bastardized

Mary, your daughter formed church Mary, the body count weighs
Fanatics use it Heavier than time
For control And it rained

Mary, lost are the teachings Mary, I pray your ears are
Do any kill in Not deaf like the New
Buddha’s name? Testament

Mary, help us love the man.

LIZ EARLY
10 the stony brook PRESS

POEMS
GABRIEL PANADERO
Wild Hours
coursing unreality is
threading its way through
my self unwinding one
sputtering firecracker
bouncing down the street
into darkness
and even though
there is all that
future
waiting
it feels like
time is hunting me down
with teeth rattling
against seconds
tearing moment from moment
separating days into
nonsense
until I won't
recognize myself or
even old photographs
where I thought this is
set in stone

LIZ EARLY
or at least paper
and can never be changed.
LITERARY SUPPLEMENT SPRING 2011 11
POEMS
LIZ EARLY
Infinite Power and Strength
Infinite power and strength,
crashing down on our bodies,
lifting our souls.
Majesty born of gentleness and beauty tempers fear.
Life. Death.
Renewal and destruction, not opposites, but half of the same whole

SARAH EVINS
Trigemenial Nerves
I feel the crush of my lips beneath my teeth,

Our words colliding into a sea of fricatives and velar plosives in the chill air of night.

Lately, the weight of my teeth can’t help but linger around the thought of you,

Settle its neuroses heavily into my bottom lip

it gnaws, unbidden,

grasping to solidify the fleeting sound of your voice

this voice which meanders through the silence of my daydreams.

But,

I realize,

as our words scintillate through the opacity of night,

for this shimmer of synapse to breath we share

I’d gladly worry my lips away.

 12
SOMETHING FISHY
T he sun was streaming through my window as
the alarm on my cell phone jolted me awake. I
grabbed the phone to silence it, and was taken
aback by the screen that greeted me. “That’s weird,”
I thought. “It seems that no one called or texted me
last night while I was asleep. I’ve got to get to the bottom of this.”
My first instinct was to call my friend, Molly Miller, and ask
her why exactly she had not called me between the hours of 2
and 8 AM. But no, if something was afoot, that’s exactly what
they’d expect me to do. And I was sure that there was something
afoot. So sure, that I’d even go as far as to say that there was some-
thing AFEET. That’s the plural of afoot, so you know that it must
be more important. Feet creep me out, so I knew I was going to
have to be creative to get to the bottom of this.
As I got dressed, I reviewed the facts in my head. Something
was fishy about the situation; something just didn’t smell right
to me. Fish! Feet! Smell! Why didn’t I realize the connection be-
fore? I was obviously dealing with some sort of athlete’s foot-in-
fested ichthyoid. I’ll have to make a list of all of the fish I know
so that I can question them and take notes, just like real detec-
tives do.
By that time, several minutes had passed, and I realized I was
going to be late for my marine ecology class. But how could I
even think about going to class at a time like this? I had bigger
fish to fry. Mmmm. Fry. I realized at that moment that I was hun-
gry, so I looked in my refrigerator to see what I had to eat. Noth-
ing was there but a week-old tuna sandwich that was starting to
smell funky. This won’t do, I thought to myself, and so I found a
half-eaten package of Swedish Fish on my desk, and began to
chow down.
As I shoved fish after sugary fish into my mouth, I found it
difficult to concentrate because my molars were being cemented
together in a cherry-red, high-fructose corn syrup-laden mess.
As I concentrated on removing a particularly stubborn piece
the stony brook PRESS
GINNY MULÉ
from my left wisdom tooth, I snapped myself back into reality
and began compiling my list.
Cheddar (my pet goldfish)
Ninja (my roommate’s beta fish)
The tuna sandwich in my fridge.
Those were all of the fish I could think of in my life. It wasn’t
much of a list, but it was a good start. As I started thinking about
how I would get the answers I needed from these sources (who
did I know that could serve as a Fish-English translator?), my
mind began to wander, looking for inspiration. What was it that
Molly Miller had told me just the day before? “There are plenty
of fish in the sea…”- that was it! Of course, it all made sense at
that moment! I lived on an island! There were fish all around me,
and with that many fish around, the laws of probability said that
at least one of them had to know the solution to my mystery.
Feeling rather smug, I began to pack my bag for a trip to West
Meadow Beach. I looked around my room for bait and fishing
supplies, but to my dismay, I had none. Hmm, I guess this rusty
old clothes hanger and this old tuna sandwich will have to do, I
thought as I shoved them into my bag.
When I got to the beach, I noticed that I had a missed call on
my phone. Molly Miller. That’s strange, I thought. Why would
she call me during the day, but not in the middle of the night? I
dialed my voice mailbox and typed in my PIN to hear her mes-
sage. She sounded worried, inquiring why I hadn’t been in class
that morning. “You know exactly why I wasn’t there, Molly,” I
thought to myself. If only I knew.
I spent all day sitting on the beach, dangling my sandwich
into the water just like I’d seen real fishermen do in movies and
stuff (although I doubt they had used moldy tuna sandwiches).
I guess the fish just aren’t biting today, I thought to myself as the
sun went down, so I packed up and headed back to campus.
LITERARY SUPPLEMENT SPRING 2011 13
UNCONSCIOUSNESS

ULA GRADOWSKA
 16
PAINLESS
EVAN GOLDAPER
(WITH THANKS TO THE TALKING HEADS)
S
o you’re getting’ off at Kingston Station, you are?
Ah. That’s the first time I can remember someone
doin’ that in a long time. You got family there,
kid? Heh, probably. Can’t see any other reason to
stop there.
Ever been before? No? ‘Course not.
You’re in for something, kid. It’s quite the place. Places
don’t get more…less than Kingston. Hm? You confused? I can
put it this way. You got time for a story? ‘Course you do, we’ve got
ten stops t’go.
Well, this story’s as true as they come. Oh, it’s got exag-
gerations, but you know, sometimes, exaggerations got more
truth in ‘em than your straight facts do. There was this one day
that I was on this train with this crazy guy in an ill-fittin’, dirty ol’
suit, and he told me that facts are lazy and facts never do what
you want ‘em to. Then he started hittin’ himself and seizin’ and all
that, but I think he mighta known what was really up around
here. So this story’s for him, and it’s got the real truth in the same
way that the old songs had the real truth in ‘em. And it goes a lit-
tle like this.
Growin’ up, I lived in Kingston. You think y’know about
small towns? Kingston, you see, is right here in the worst possi-
ble place for a town to matter. We’re too far east t’be a part of the
big city, but too far west t’be a place where rich folks would go to
get away from all that. Who’d want to live here anyway, unless
you just didn’t have a choice? So we just got by with the same
families that always lived here, back when Kingston was just a
nameless potato farm for the big city.
Oh yeah, we used to be a potato farm, but then we all got
lazy an’ gave that up. There are farms out east, we musta figured.
We could focus on other things, like opening more bars than any
other town. Man, we had that record in the bag and we weren’t
even a real town yet, just some abandoned potato fields. Not until
they built the hospital. Even then, the town was created just t’pro-
vide some resources to the staff, which, I mean, based on what we
got, was just booze. But you need that when your day job’s
watchin’ the terminally-ill. You don’t believe me that our town
just existed for the hospital’s benefit? Lemme put it straight. You
wonder why we’re called Kingston? Kid, the name of the com-
pany that owned the dang hospital was Kings, and we were just
the town for ‘em. Kings-town. Kingston. So when the hospital
shut down, we were lost, you hear? A crew without our ship, a
platoon without our cause.
Was a good thing we had all those bars, lemme tell you.
But as time went on, we got bored of those too. Call it gentrifi-
cation if you want, but it’s not like anythin’ got better. It’s just in
a town where nothin’ ever changes, you change what you can.
And so bars became pizza places, an’ pizza places became hair
salons, and if you’re not with the mold you become either aban-
doned or a laundromat. And eventually the driers break down
the stony brook PRESS
and you find yourself sitting inside, watchin’ one of the little TVs
they got up there, and wondering if they’ll ever fix the joystick on
the old Asteroids machine.
Yeah, nothing really changes. Hell, what’s a pizza place but
a bar for a different vice? Oh, we tried, to move on, but we migh-
tas well’ve been doing nothing. One thing is nobody ever took a
stand, you hear? We had heroes, but they weren’t much to cling
to. A bassist signed to an obscure metal band, a minor league
pitcher, this pre-teen whose self-published work of high fantasy
only gets copies sold at our annual street fair. We stuck with
them, as if no other town had these specimens. Hung their pho-
tos in the old schoolhouse, emblems for the youth. This, the pho-
tos say, ‘s the best we can offer, the best you can be. Hope you
like commutin’ to your accounting job, because all we are is a
town to take the rail through. You ask anyone you meet if they’ve
heard of Kingston, and the best they’ll ever tell you is that they
rode through it once while headin’ up to the big city.
Ay, we never managed to be a town that was charmin’, like
the little towns down by the ferry docks. It was just dreary and all
that, like an ol’ Wild West ghost town. You’d walk around, won-
derin’ if you’d ever see anythin’ worth looking at. But all that was
really around were those abandoned hospital buildings looming
overhead. Yeah, no one ever took ‘em down, for whatever rea-
son. Maybe if they did, the town’d fall apart. But there they were:
Jagged edges, dark corners, and no one ever stepped inside any-
more. I mean, I like quiet an’ all, but those…mausoleums of ill-
ness just made the back roads seem a little too, uh, sepulchral. I
never wanted t’be around there anymore and kid, I suggest you
stay away too. ‘Specially after dark.
But where else can you go, eh? The main streets just seem
like they’re tryin’ too hard. “Oh,” the town said, “I’ve got stuff for
you to do. You want to play Bingo at the firehouse? You want to
look at some flowers near the library, permanently shut down
due to asbestos I’ll never clean? Hey, I got a museum,” the town
insisted. “Come down, come down, you can see a railroad tie
from 1886, you can see a potato shovel from back before we even
had a railroad. Sit outside the bank and stare at a pigeon, you
could do that, you could.”
And then, three years back, our savior came. I tell you, it
was hope for Kingston in the form of artificial sweetening and
frozen water. When they opened a little Italian ice place next t’
the old junk shop, our town changed, it did. I don’t remember
what it was before—it practically came outta nowhere, like a mi-
rage—but when the shop opened, there was no doubt that the
new place was different from anything we’d had before. On a
street of crumbling brown-brick shops with dirty windows, the
blue-an’-orange awning and smilin’ lemon mascot stood out like
nothin’ else.
Within a week, Main Street was flooded in a way it never
was before. People came out of the woodwork to spend time on
LITERARY SUPPLEMENT SPRING 2011
PAINLESS
a street they’d avoided for years, I tell ya. I saw children I had
never seen, eating a mango ice or whatever other frozen dessert
they wanted instead of keeping indoors. Young couples, old men,
a dog, teenagers, adults. Dozens of people every day, crowding
into the empty lot between the ice shop and the rail station.
We’d never had anything like this, and no one quite knew
how to react. I swung by one day after I got out of work. Inside,
the staff was friendly an’ clean, and it was a bit…disconcerting.
Where was the chippin’ plaster, I asked, where’re the sullied win-
dows an’ dim lighting? Not here, they smiled. Not here. Have a
cherry ice. And I stared at it, put a few pennies in the tip jar, and
sampled it.
It wasn’t great. I’d picked up similar snacks at the ol’ gas
station for less. But it was a change, an’ it was painless, and we
needed that more than anything.
But people came in droves. It was like the ices spawned a
bacteria culture of enthusiastic townspeople, and the town finally
got what it said it always wanted. “Ah, you like me now,” the town
smiled. “Let’s see what we can do, eh?” Puttin’ up Main Street
Park was the first public works project I can remember anyone
LIZ EARLY
17
ever finishing. Just some cobblestones coverin’ the old aban-
doned lot. A swing. Some benches. A table for playing chess.
And a pillar in the center of the square, covered in histor-
ical facts about Kingston. Did you know that the town was built
around a hospital? Course you knew that, I told you. Heh. Yeah,
the whole history of Kingston fit on one pillar, stuck there like a
poster for a lost dog. Kid, I read it a few times over while eatin’ a
cherry ice, and I can tell you that there’s nothin’ on that pillar I
haven’t told you already.
The town claimed the park was about all that, an homage
to how great it’d been all these years. Hell, all the homage was ‘s
a paved lot with benches, an’ lord knows a town like this doesn’t
deserve a greater homage than that. But look, kid. I’ll believe a lot
of things, but that’s just facts, an’ those ain’t ever what they seem
to be. Here’s the truth: it’s a monument to ices, a tribute to dessert.
The best Kingston ever offered. At the end of the day, we were
still nothin’, and nothin’ could make that better.
And that’s the real truth. That, kid, is all there ever was.
Will it ever get better? I’m still waitin’.
 18
SURVIVAL NEVER GOES OUT OF STYLE
C ome on, Chester. Just let me go, just this once. I
promise I’ll be good.”
“That’s what ya tell me every time ya get yer-
self inta trouble, Tessa,” the sheriff replied as he
chewed a piece of tobacco into the right side of his
mouth and looked over the 20-somethin’-year-old graspin’
onto the bars she was standin’ behind.
“Chester it wasn’t even my fault! Gimme a break, cut me
loose. Let me get off just this once, please.”
“Yer not the type a girl that gets off just once,” he responded,
clearly starin’ at her chest and licking his lips.
Tessa snapped her finger, “Eyes up, Chester. I ain’t your
typical two-cent bar floozy.”
“No you ain’t.” The sheriff took a step forward and un-
hooked his keys from his belt loop and dangled them in front
of the girl. She looked him in the eye and slowly released her
grip on the iron bars. Just as her hand got real close the free
man quickly retracted the extension of his arm and fastened
her ticket out of the cell back to their place. “And stop callin’
me ‘Chester.’ It ain’t my name, girl.”
“I ain’t done nothin’ wrong, Sheriff Winchester!” she called
after the man as he strolled away. “Dirty, perverted ape. I
should—what’re you lookin’ at, huh?” she yelled at the man
starin’ at her from behind the bars across the hall.
“I’m starin’ at you, miss.”
The man in the other cell was cast in shadows. He sat too
far in the corner for the sun to catch his face and for the girl to
distinguish his features. His voice was calm and quiet, either
that of a man unafraid of a death sentence, or one who has al-
ready faced it many times before. He barely moved.
“Suppose you got no clever comebacks for me then, huh?”
he asked her.
“I don’t need a comeback for every man I meet, thank you.”
“Well, ya just seemed awful chatty with that sheriff, and
you’re pretty quiet now.”
“Well I don’t like talkin’ with strangers much.”
“I don’t need to be a stranger. What’s your name, sugar?”
“It’s not ‘sugar.’”
“It’s gonna be ‘sugar’ unless you tell me otherwise.”
“Tessa,” she snapped. “My name’s Tessa. Happy?”
“Miss Tessa, ain’t no man happy when he’s trapped in a
cage.”
“No woman either.”
“But a woman’s got a much better chance o’ gettin’ outta
here.”
“Not with that castrated sheriff runnin’ the joint.”
“Castrated? Really? Seemed pretty ballsy to me.”
“He fakes it like only a woman can.”
The man laughed, but didn’t respond. Tessa paced
around her 5x8 encasement like a lioness waitin’ for a gazelle.
the stony brook PRESS
LIZ KAEMPF
Neither of them spoke while Winchester propped his feet up
on his desk and bobbed his head to the radio. Every now and
then he would give a holler when a “damn good tune” came on.
He fixed himself a hot lunch and made sure the smell of the
smoked meat wafted across the jail and slid underneath the
noses of the captives.
Tessa sat against the wall, knees closed in against her
chest, eyes facin’ the open office. Her counterpart hadn’t moved
since she first noticed him. The sun past his window and he
was thrust even further into the shadows. She closed her eyes
so as to maybe hear the man lightly snorin’, but Sheriff Win-
chester was tappin’ his foot too loudly for her to hear anythin’
distinctly.
She kept her eyes closed and all the background sounds
made themselves known; the wind rustlin’ through tree leaves,
a car’s engine lightly hummin’ around the corner, a few birds
chirpin’ happily from a nearby bush and Tessa knew them to be
Yellowthroat Warblers.
She had heard the same songs before on days when the
sun was high up and it warmed her skin to the touch. She and
Joey would steal extra handfuls of seed and throw them outside
the kitchen window. They would duck down real low so the
birds would come out. They never came out of the trees if they
could see the children. The warblers would sing and chirp and
peck the seeds off the ground, and when they had their fill and
flew back up into the trees Tessa and Joey would run down to
the lake to swim.
“Daddy doesn’t let me swim anymore,” she whispered.
Tessa woke from her daydream with a start, accidentally
smackin’ her hand against the iron bars as sirens went off and
Sheriff Winchester shouted into the station to get the men to-
gether. She got to her knees and looked out from behind her
cage to try and see what was happenin’.
“Yer gonna stay here, Monroe! Look after them, ya
hear?”
“Yes’ir,” said a lanky boy in uniform.
Tessa watched Winchester leave and Officer Monroe set-
tle awkwardly into a chair. She waited until the sirens had com-
pletely drifted off down the highway before makin’ her next
move. She had found her gazelle.
She stood up, brushed the dirt off her knees and cleared
her throat. Just enough motion and sound to get the officer’s
attention. She slid her gaze sideways to make sure he was
watchin’, and he was.
This is gonna be easy, she thought with a smirk creepin’
over her lips.
She tossed her sandy blonde hair over her right shoulder
and bent over to fix her boots. She looked up slowly and caught
Officer Monroe starin’. He averted his gaze right quick and
Tessa laughed.
LITERARY SUPPLEMENT SPRING 2011 19

“What’s your name, love?” Tessa stepped quietly over to the lock and turned each of
“Uh, who? M-me?” the officer stuttered, pointin’ at him- Monroe’s keys in the hole until she found the right one that
self. opened the cell door. She slid out makin’ as little noise as possi-
“Of course you, silly. Ain’t nobody else over there, ble. “Sorry, honey,” she said to Officer Monroe as she stole a
right?” lamp off a nearby desk and smashed it over the man’s head. She
“R-right,” he mumbled. “My, uh, my name’s Monroe. J- took his gun and slipped it into the back of her pants.
Jackson Monroe.” “Hey! Wait!”
“Officer Jackson Monroe?” Tessa corrected. Tessa turned and saw a beat-up, broad-shouldered man
“Hah, yeah, that’s right. I’m not so used to the title yet.” standin’ at the bars of his cell.
“That’s okay, honey. How long ya been on the job?” “Ya can’t just leave me here, sugar. C’mon, help me out.”
“Few months now.” Tessa took a deep breath. She looked at Monroe and
“A few months and ya don’t got a badge?” then at the door. “Dammit!” she hissed as she made her way
“Badge? No, uh, I got a badge, miss,” Officer Monroe quickly over to the other cell and opened the lock. “Hurry up,”
replied, gropin’ for the metal on his chest to reassure himself. she said as she made her way to her exit.
“Why now, I can’t see that from all the way ovah here. Tessa and her tag-along partner rushed out the door and
Why don’t you shuffle on ovah so I can see it?” she baited him. saw that there was one car left outside. It had to be Monroe’s.
Officer Monroe got up out of his chair real hesitant-like. “We better get outta here ‘fore Chester gets back,” Tessa
He fumbled a little bit, knockin’ over a cup of pens as he got said just before the other renegade twisted her arm and pushed
out of his seat. He picked it all back up and then made his way her against the wall of the station. “What the hell are ya doin’?”
in front of the girl’s cell. The other man left in the station still she cried out.
hadn’t moved, but Tessa could feel his eyes on her from behind “Gettin’ the hell outta here,” the man answered and
the shadows. pulled the gun out from its home near the small of Tessa’s back.
“Well, now that is a real nice lookin’ medal ya got yoself,” “You really shouldn’t be so trustin’, sugar,” he breathed down
she said to the officer and slowly placed her slender fingers on her neck. He pressed himself up to her back and he brushed
the badge. She let her touch linger and slide down the young away a tear from her cheek with the barrel of his newly ac-
man’s arm. “Ya know? No one can evuh decide what color mah quired gun.
eyes are. What do you think? Look real close now.” “Please,” she wimpered.
Monroe leaned in closer to the bars. He shook a bit, like “Please, what? Please don’t hurt you? Please don’t rape
a dead leaf in the middle of a northern winter. “They’re light. you?”
Like gray. A real light gray.” “Please don’t leave me here,” she confessed squeezin’ her
“Officer Monroe, I have always thought my eyes were eyes shut.
gray too. Thank you.” Tessa extended her arms through the The man looked at the girl for a second longer before
bars and placed one on his shoulder and one on his hip. tearin’ himself away and headin’ for the solitary vehicle. A
“Uh, miss, I think I should, uh, get on b-back to my desk shabby, worn-out waste of an engine, but it would get him
now,” Monroe told her nervously and found that he couldn’t where he needed to go.
look the girl in the eyes anymore. “Please,” Tessa cried out, standin’ meekly near the door
“That’s fine, honey,” she answered. “I understand. Ya of the station, arms hangin’ limply at her sides. “I don’t got no-
don’t wanna go and get yoself distracted now. Otherwise that body.”
Winchester will have ya badge.” The man stared at her through cold, dark eyes. He was
Monroe laughed and took a step back, tripped over his half-way in the car already.
own feet, caught himself, and then walked to his desk. He “Well that’s just too damn bad, sugar.”
made sure not to knock over anythin’ this time.
“Moron,” she said almost inaudibly.
20 the stony brook PRESS

PHOTOGRAPHY

LIZ EARLY
LITERARY SUPPLEMENT SPRING 2011 21
REACHING OUT

ULA GRADOWSKA
22 the stony brook PRESS

ULA GRADOWSKA

LIZ EARLY
LITERARY SUPPLEMENT SPRING 2011
A GHOST STORY
COLLEEN O’CONNOR
T
here are ghosts in my house. I see them every day.
They walk the halls and talk to each other like
they don’t notice me. I used to be scared of them,
but after living with them for so long, I just hate
them. I hate them so much.
I started seeing ghosts after I came down with a terrible
fever as a little girl. I forget what life was like before that, but I can
remember lying in bed and crying. I was sweating and vomiting,
and my mother was holding my hand, and I remember her cry-
ing too. I must have fallen asleep after that. When I woke up, two
ghosts were laying in my bed, right next to me. I screamed so
loud that they jumped up and ran away. I didn’t know that my
house was haunted, but let me tell you—even the most normal
house has ghosts in it, if my home is any indication.
But the ghosts in my house, they are strange. They change
their shapes to fool me, and move things around when I’m not
looking. I will go upstairs and pass the ghost of a little boy with
blonde hair, and when I come back down, the little boy has
turned into a young man with the same blonde hair. And the
couch will have been moved. I hate it, living with ghosts. One
time when they were moving a table in the kitchen, I got so angry
that I lost my temper. It was embarrassing, come to think of it! I
picked up a vase and hurled it against the wall and screamed for
them to stop. Well, the ghosts did stop after that for a bit, but it
was only a matter of time until they changed their shape and
started up again.
I can tell they’re the same ghosts because they remember
me. They know that the person who does live here is
angry at them. I see it in their eyes and the way they
steal around, as if they’re waiting for me. I rattle the
doors at night and pound on the windows so they
know that I’m still here, haunting them, they way
they haunt me.
23
I almost wish I could know more about them, because
their lives must have been so sad. I watched the ghost of a mother
putting her baby to bed, and after that, the baby ghost was gone
and the mother walked around the house crying endlessly. One
time, she looked past the veil that separates us from them, and
she saw me. I didn’t see fear in her eyes—just sadness.
I don’t care to go outside any longer, not when there are
ghosts roaming my hallways. I climb the stairs and watch them
sit at the table and mouth words to each other. I think of noth-
ing but following them, because they are in my house, and I hate
them so much for it. But when they yell at me late at night, or
when they’re alone in a room with me, I see them mouth that
this is their house now. It is not. I was here first.
Before my fever I didn’t know that ghosts slept, but now I
do. They sleep at night, or they try to make me think that they’re
sleeping. I stay up and watch them, to make sure they don’t get
up and try to move anything else. I sit at the edge of the bed, or
at the dresser across the room from them. It’s cramped up there.
I usually tuck my knees under my nose and drum my fingers as
I wait. I don’t need to sleep since I started seeing ghosts. I sit and
I watch them every night in my house. I can’t let them think that
they’ve won. They can come and go all they please, but I will stay
here and watch them, and one day, I will frighten them off for
good and they will leave me alone with the sunlight that slants
across the dusty floor of the attic, and my little bed that I don’t
sleep in anymore.
Because this is my house. My house.
LIZ EARLY
The Stony Brook Press Features 13
14 Arts & Entertainment Vol. XXXII, Issue 14 |Wednesday, May 17, 2011

ing beforehand. Also, tual mask? In addition, the writers seem

haven’t we had to be trying too hard to make Hal into
enough X-Men DC’s version of Tony Stark, a choice that
movies? Even Marvel has no basis on comics and seems like a
seems suspicious of blatant way to try to cash in on an ac-
this film, as evidenced claimed film.
by sparse ads. I mean,
people tell me this ad Captain America: The
didn’t even play before
certain screenings of First Avenger
By Evan Goldaper Marvel’s other film Release Date: July 22, 2011
The summer of 2011 is shaping up Thor. I worry.
to be the greatest summer comic book
fans will ever have. For the first time Green Lantern
since The Dark Knight, DC Comics is Release Date: June 17, 2011
giving us a summer blockbuster, and Basic Plot: DC Comics’ first movie
Marvel is delivering with not one, not in three years is about Earth’s first Green
two, but three bouts of heroics. If you, Lantern, a type of intergalactic police
like me, have your very own Sinestro officer with a willpower-fueled magic
Corps ring, Xavier Institute pin, and ring. Hal Jordan must master his new-
more Captain America T-shirts than found abilities with the help of his men-
most men have shirts in general, you’re tor, Sinestro, in order to defeat the
probably already quite familiar with villainous Dr. Hammond and the
what to expect from each of these films. spreading fear caused by Parallax.
Well. Um. Who doesn’t love X-Men? Basic Plot: Unfortunately missing
However, as I’ve mentioned in Why You Should See Green
Professor Xavier and Magneto are two out on a July 4 release date, this film tells
some of my previous articles, I am told
of the greatest comic book characters the story of America’s greatest ridicu-
some people have what are known as
ever, and any film focusing on them lously-patriotic champion, Captain
“lives,” and thus are more involved with
should be good. In addition, First Class, America. Steven Rogers is a weakling
the goings-on of “actual people” than
the X-Men spinoff series this takes its who wants to help his country win
the unquestionably more important
name from, was one of the most solid World War II so badly that he signs up
lives of superheroes. Thus, my editors
X-Men series in a long time; it’s the only for a top-secret Super Soldier experi-
have tasked me with presenting a sum-
hardcover trade collection in my per- ment that turns him into the buffest,
mer superhero movie preview. So with-
sonal comic library, so that says some- toughest soldier ever. Then he fights
out further ado…A Summer Superhero
thing. Nazis in order to control some cosmic
Movie Preview!
Why You Shouldn’t See First energy.
Please note that I’m only consider-
Class: For one thing, the trailers have Why You Should See
ing DC Comics and Marvel Comics
been doing a pretty half-assed job of Captain America: It’s campy stuff, but
protagonists to be superheroes for the
making me believe it’s the 1960’s, which the film seems to know it. The World
purposes of this article. If you want to Lantern: Green Lantern is a cult-fa-
is unfortunate. If Marvel’s going to at- War II setting should make this film no-
know about other “superheroes” who vorite hero, whose Blackest Night comic
tempt to make this a period piece, they tably different than other superhero
have films this summer, like Optimus miniseries last summer took the super-
should go all out. For another, this is a films, which is good in a genre that
Prime or Papa Smurf, you’re going to hero world by storm. His powers are
movie where the best-known X-Man sometimes feels stale. Plus, as the title
have to help yourself. ridiculous, but in the best possible way.
featured is Beast, and if you’re a casual indicates, this film is basically a set-up
After all, there’s a reason every nerd you
fan, you’ll probably be very confused by for next year’s Avengers film, which
know has a lantern pin somewhere on
everyone else unless you do some read- should basically be the greatest, biggest
X-Men: First Class their person. For what it’s worth, Sine-
comic book movie of all time.
Release Date: June 3, 2011 stro is among my favorite comic book
Why You Shouldn’t See Captain
Basic Plot: First Class is the first of characters, though admittedly that’s
America: As anyone who’s seen the
many reboots Marvel has coming down largely because of his Salvador Dali
1990 Captain America film, a movie
the pipeline. In this, they explore the mustache.
renowned for its 20% approval rating on
origin of Professor X and Magneto’s Why You Shouldn’t See Green
Rotten Tomatoes, can tell you, it’s some-
friendship-turned-rivalry, as well as the Lantern: This film seems to be plagued
times tough to make a film about a non-
formation of their respective super with a few key problems that make me
Batman superhero without interesting
teams. Also, did I mention that it’s ap- wary about how enjoyable it will be. For
powers. Sure, it’ll be easy to top any
parently the 1960’s, and the mutants one thing, the special effects appear un-
movie that features rubber ears, but
have to stop the Cuban Missile Crisis? believably cheesy at times, the biggest
Captain America had better wow me if
Yeah. It’s the 1960’s. problem being Hal Jordan’s CGI mask.
it wants me to forget that.
Why You Should See First Class: Seriously. Why not just give him an ac-
The Stony Brook Press
Summer is almost here (finally!)
and most people are probably dreaming
of amazing vacations in exotic locales,
barbeques by the pool, and days at the
beach. As amazing as all that is, Holly-
wood is churning out a pretty long list
of movies to also keep us entertained for
the 101 days between the last day of fi-
nals on May 23, and the first day of fall
classes on August 29.
So what exactly is Hollywood plan-
ning on treating us to this summer?
Plenty of fresh material seems to be
coming around, as well as adaptations,
sequels and the absolute final install-
ment of the Harry Potter franchise (a
bittersweet moment for those who have
followed the books and films religiously
since they first came around).
So when you’re looking for one day
to get out of the sun, or hey, if it’s just
raining, head to the movie theater, and
see something! Here are the six movies
I’m looking forward to most over the
next few months.
Bridesmaids
(Comedy starring Kristen Wigg,
Maya Rudolph and Rose Byrne; In the-
aters May 13, 125 min.) Picked as her
best friend’s maid of honor, single and
broke Annie looks to bluff her way
through the expensive and bizarre ritu-
als with an oddball group of brides-
maids. The real treat this movie has to
offer? It’s the first to come from the Judd
Apatow School of Just Plain Hysterical
Comedies in that it’s actually centered
on a group of women and targeted at a
female audience. Bearing in mind that
even though his “bromance” kinds of
comedies of the past have been guy-
centric, but still funny to women, I have
high hopes for this one.
The Hang-
over Part II
(Comedy star-
ring Bradley
Cooper, Zach Gali-
fianakis and Ed
Helms; In theaters
May 26, 102 min.)
Right after the bach-
elor party in Las Vegas, Phil, Stu, Alan
and Doug jet to Thailand for Stu’s wed-
ding. Stu’s plan for a subdued pre-wed-
ding brunch however, goes seriously
awry. The first Hangover movie earned
the status of the highest grossing R-
rated comedy of all-time, and for good
reason. This film managed to top every
other in terms of situational comedy—
seriously, how could these guys get into
that much trouble in one drunken
night? The film also pretty much
launched the stars’ careers, earning
them spots on Hollywood’s supremely
elite A-list. Is it possible they could hon-
estly top their original success? All signs
point to….yes!
Bad Teacher
(Comedy starring Cameron Diaz,
Jason Segel and Justin Timberlake; In
theaters June 24, 92 min.) Centers
around a foul-mouthed junior high
teacher who, after being dumped by her
sugar daddy, begins to woo a col-
league—a move that pits her against a
well-loved teacher. This movie is ap-
pealing mainly for its star power.
Cameron Diaz has generally managed
to at least entertain me in any movie
she’s been in (even ones that aren’t the
kind I’d be proud to put on an acting re-
sume), so it’ll be interesting to see her
Arts&Entertainment 15
By Lauren DuBois
in a role that doesn’t quite seem to be about their mission, the biggest battle
like any of her past ones, where most of begins and life as they know it will
her characters have been wholesome never be the same again. This is the end
and good. And much to my surprise, of another chapter of many college stu-
Timberlake has actually begun to prove dents lives. Last year, we bid goodbye to
himself as an actor as of late, so it’ll be the Disney Pixar Toy Story franchise,
interesting to see what he can pull off and this year we finally bid a fond
here. farewell to the Harry Potter series that
started with books back in the late 90’s,
Larry Crowne when most college students were still in
elementary school. I myself had only
(Dramedy starring Tom Hanks,
just turned nine years old when they
Julia Roberts and Bryan Cranston; in
were first released and the books truth-
theaters July 1, 99 min.) After losing his
fully defined much of my teen years. I
job, a middle-aged man reinvents him-
seriously don’t know what I’ll do when
self by going back to college. While this
this is officially over. Just thinking about
kind of storyline is pretty old, I’m a
it makes me want to cry.
sucker for any story that showcases this
kind of character. Maybe I’m also a softy
for occasionally seeing films that star Friends with Benefits
older Hollywood vets who are generally
known more for the films they’ve been
a part of than they are known for their
adventures as tabloid staples. It’s possi-
ble.6
Harry Potter and the
Deathly Hallows Part II
(An Action/Adventure Fantasy
starring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint
and Emma Watson; In theaters July 15)
The end begins as Harry, Ron and
Hermione go back to Hogwarts to find
(Comedy starring Mila Kunis,
and destroy Voldemort’s final hor-
Justin Timberlake and Patricia Clark-
cruxes, but when Voldemort finds out
son; In theaters July 22) While trying to
avoid the clichés of Hollywood roman-
tic comedies, Dylan and Jamie soon dis-
cover however that adding the act of sex
to their friendship does lead to compli-
cations. I really just want to see how this
compares to January’s No Strings At-
tached, which starred Kunis’s Black
Swan co-star Natalie Portman and Ash-
ton Kutcher, and was actually decently
funny.
16 Arts&Entertainment
By Kenny Mahoney
Summer is here, and what better
way to spend your freshly earned free-
dom than to sit inside all day alone and
play video games? Seriously. The sun is
out there. Do you know how hot that
thing gets? And sunburn? Forget it. I’ll
take my comfy chair and air condition-
ing over flaky skin and sand in my
shorts any day. That said, here’s a few ti-
tles sure to eat away your summer.
Ocarina of Time - 6/19
- 3DS
If you’re one of the few who made
the upgrade to 3D from your trusty
Nintendo DS, you’d be crazy not to get
your hands on the remake of the Nin-
tendo 64 classic, The Legend of Zelda:
Ocarina of Time. A seminal title in the
history of the Zelda franchise, this iter-
ation marked the series’ first foray into
3D-polygonal graphics, with a great
story and radically fun action/adven-
ture gameplay. This fan-favorite has
been completely remastered for Nin-
tendo’s new portable, with touch-screen
controls and enhanced graphics. If you
haven’t had the chance to play what I
consider to be one of the greatest games
of all time, find a garage-sale N64 and
get yourself a copy of the original if you
can’t stomach the hefty $250 price tag
for the handheld (I know I can’t).
L.A. Noire - 5/17 -
Xbox, PS3
From the Rockstar Games, the stu-
dio that brought you Grand Theft Auto
IV, comes L.A. Noire, a film-noir crime
story set in a post-war Los Angeles.
L.A. Noir puts you in the slick shoes of
Cole Phelps as he progresses through
his law-enforcement career, solving
mysteries in a gritty criminal under-
world inspired by the black-and-white
detective films of that era. Despite com-
ing from Rockstar, don’t expect the
same type of action you’d find in a GTA
game; you’ll be spending a lot of your
time investigating cases, driving around
L.A. and questioning subjects. The
game features breathtaking facial and
motion capture technology, affording
some of the most realistic human fea-
tures I’ve ever seen in a game. Couple
that with the more than 20 hours of
voice-over dialogue and meticulously
recreated L.A. landscape, and you’ve got
a game Humphrey Bogart himself
would be proud of.
Vol. XXXII, Issue 14 |Wednesday, May 17, 2011
space-hammer, but instead of slamming
Duke the EDF above ground, you’ll be wildly
swinging away at the gruesome alien
Nukem For- denizens of the planet’s core. Couple
ever - 6/14 - that with a great physics engine and a
bevy of non-hammer weapons at your
Xbox, PS3, PC disposal, and Armageddon should be
another quality romp in the series.
Wait, what? Duke
Nukem Forever? Seri-
ously? This game has
been in development
hell almost as long as I’ve been alive,
and I can’t believe it’s finally seeing a re-
tail release. If you’re too young (or too
old) to remember the original Duke, he
was the guy shouting curses and mak-
ing lewd gestures in your first-person
inFamous 2 - 6/7 - PS3
inFamous 2 is the anticipated sequel
to the PS3-exclusive that shocked play-
ers with it’s electricity-bending game-
play. This game picks up where the first
game left off, placing you back into the
role of Cole MacGrath as he struggles to
shooters in the early 90’s, before Bullet-
storm did it. deal with the monstrous entity known
as “The Beast,” while taking into ac-
The classic Duke Nukem games on
the PC were distilled FPS excellence count the various moral choices he en-
counters as the story progresses. The
with a ton of satirical humor and taste-
less jokes thrown in. Can the latest it- first title was acclaimed for i’s innovate
and original sandbox elements, incor-
eration capture the same sophomoric
magic that the originals held, or will the porating fluid combat mechanics and
immensely enjoyable electric powers.
over-the-top gameplay and theatrics be
lost on today’s crop of gamers? Find out But with such incredible power at your
disposal, will your moral compass push
when Duke’s balls of steel hit store
shelves this June. your hand towards good or evil?
Red Faction: Armaged-
don - 6/7 - Xbox, PS3
The latest entry in the Red Faction
series takes place deep below the open-
world surface of Mars, seen in the last
title, to a more linear, subterranean ex-
perience. While I’m a bit saddened that
I’ll no longer be able to be the mischie-
vous bastard I was in Red Faction:
Guerilla, the horror-inspired setting
that Mars’ mining tunnels hold in-
trigues me. Rest assured, you’ll still be
whacking the crap out of stuff with your
The Stony Brook Press
Summertime in New York City is a
magical time. All the pretty girls come
out of hibernation and from under-
neath their layers of wintry clothes. The
street vendors roll out their seasonal de-
lectables to droves of adoring foodies’
delights all huddled around tiny food
trucks. Summertime in New York City
is the best time. There’s no other city
like it, but one can argue that the best
part about it are all the free shows that
go on all throughout the five boroughs.
New York City is blessed to be such an
important cultural center that we don’t
need festivals to attract fans. There are
literally hundreds of shows going on in
every corner of the city—It would be
impossible to put them into one page of
text. From Death by Audio to Prospect
Park and Shea Stadium to Lincoln Cen-
ter, there is never a shortage of amazing
music to get down with.
So without further pomp and
adieu, I present you with the best of the
best of summertime music in New York
City. (Oh did I mention that each and
every single one of these shows is FREE,
with the exception of Northside Fest?
Because they are!)
Celebrate Brooklyn
Prospect Park
Andrew Bird - June 10th
The Books - June 17th
Raekwon / Smif-N-Wessun / Large Pro-
fessor – July 9th
The Feelies / Real Estate / Times New
Viking – July 23rd
Ra Ra Riot / Buke & Grass / Delicate
Steve – August 5th
Seaport Music Series
Arts&Entertainment 17
South Street Seaport
The Ghost of a Sabre
Tooth Tiger (Sean
Lennon) – June 24th
Lower Dens – July 1st
The Wake / Weekend –
July 8th
Asobi Seksu – July 15th
Pow Wow! – July 10th
By Andi Liao
Central Park Priestbird / Family Band – July 31st
Summerstage
Frankie Rose & the Outs / Chief / Releases
Minks / Total Slacker – August 14th
ZAZA / Motel Motel / The Stationary
And now, I present you with an ab-
Set – August 28th
breviated list of all of the albums (the
Currensy – September 4th
noteworthy ones anyway) that are com-
ing out this summer. I like these bands
and so should you.
Northside Festival
Arcade Fire / Scenes from the Suburbs –
Various venues, North Brookyn August 2nd
June 16th – 19th Battles / Gloss Drop – June 7th
Ava Luna / Beirut / Deer Tick (per- Beirut / TBA – Summer TBA
forming as Deervana) / DOM / Eternal Bon Iver / Self-titled – June 21st
Summers / Frankie Rose / Grooms / Death Cab for Cutie / Codes & Keys –
Guided by Voices / Javelin / Sharon May 31st
Van Etten / The Sleepies / Surfer Blood Brian Eno and Rick Holland / Drums
Yo-Yo Ma / Silk Road Ensemble – June
/ Teengirl Fantasy / Terro Pigeon Between the Bells – July 5th
Dance Revolt! / Theophilus London / Handsome Furs / Sound Kapital – June
7th
Twin Sister / Wavves / Xray Eyeballs / 28th
Medeski, Martin & Wood – June 11th
Dream Diary / I’m Turning Into / Rad- Memory Tapes / Player Piano – July 5th
Reggie Watts – June 22nd
ical Dads / Iceage / Atlas Sound / Thurston Moore / Demolished Thoughts
Hugh Masekela – June 26th
Woods / Mount Eerie / Eleanor Fried- – May 24th
Jim Gaffigan – June 29th
berger / The Babies / Delicate Steve / Yacht / Shangri-La – June 21st
Friendly Fires / Cults – August 7th
Marie Stella / and more… Washed Out / Within & Without – July
Rakim / EPMD – August 21st
12th
So, I guess this summer music pre- Cults / Self-titled – June 7th
Red Hook Park (BK)
view is a bit misleading, as even on Friendly Fires / Pala – May 24th (US)
Talib Kweli – June 21st
nights when these shows aren’t happen- Jeff the Brotherhood / We are the
Ozomatli – June 22nd
Champions – June 21st
We Are Scientists / Milagres – June 23rd
Reggie Watts – June 24th
Crystal Antlers / Two-Way Mirror – July
12th
Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi /
Crotona Park (BX)
Rome – May 17th
Slick Rick – July 12th
Depeche Mode / Remixes 2: 81-11 –
June 7th
Tappen Park (SI)
Jane’s Addiction / The Great Escape
Sugarhill Gang – August 2nd
Artist – August TBA
Budos Band – August 3rd
Junior Boys / It’s All True – June 14th
ing, you can always walk into any ran- The Rosebuds / Loud Planes Fly Low –
dom venue in New York and find a June 7th
Rock Yard band playing. I don’t care what excuse My Morning Jacket / Circuital – May
you may be able to come up with to not 31st
Williamsburg go to a show, your ass is getting out and Jill Scott / The Light of the Sun – June
The Beets / Xray Eyeballs – July 17th you will have fun. 28th
18 Arts&Entertainment
Tyler, the Creator - The Whitest Rapper Out
By Vincent Barone
Somewhere through the lyrics
about rape, suicide, murder, depression
and fire in Tyler, the Creator’s second
LP release Goblin, the Los Angeles-
based rapper became the whitest ever.
Whiter than Lil B.
Some blame his system of dress—
the Supreme five-panel, the socks, the
flamboyant shirts, the cut-offs—others
blame the unfunny Jimmy Fallon, or the
white man’s ironic tendencies (yeah,
Free Earl!). Heck, maybe it was during
the moment when Sway nervously
stumbled over the name of Tyler’s outfit,
Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All,
during the MTV profile of the group. (I
doubt that last hypothesis. Granted, it is
MTV we’re talking about, but the last
relevant thing Sway has done was prob-
ably around when The Slim Shady LP
dropped 12 years ago.)
Maybe white people are just tired of
that cookie cutter rap out there. We all
have our theories, but most are simply
reading too far into Tyler’s success. Es-
sentially, white people really just love an
album where the artist rhymes about
bad things in a different sounding way.
It’s just fun for us.
On the 15-song album, there wasn’t
much fun, though. Many white people
thought that “Sandwiches,” “Tron Cat,”
and “Yonkers” were pretty neat—the
“Yonkers” video where Tyler stages his
Vol. XXXII, Issue 14 |Wednesday, May 17, 2011
suicide, especially. White people loved
that. But the rest of the album was a big
disappointment for this white guy.
Really, though. I give kudos to Tyler
and the gang for pursuing a unique
style. His homemade production is ad-
mirable—but the brash, in-your-face
concept gets stale before the album is
through. There aren’t enough
clever or introspective lines (de-
spite the whole therapist motif) to
give Tyler’s abrasiveness any depth.
I would say that Goblin is like a re-
grettable tattoo that the 20-year-
old Tyler will be embarrassed
about in ten years, but he’ll be too
busy counting all the money white
people are throwing at him to even
care.
And I say that not to sound
like an asshole, but because I think
Tyler is smarter than the album he
released. Lyrically speaking, there
should have been more
songs like “Her,” where
Tyler raps about swallow-
ing his pride after getting
dismissed by a girl. He
shouldn’t be rapping about
rape. Yeah, I know he does
it in such a cartoonish way
that it’s not offensive, but it
doesn’t have any value, ei-
ther. Eminem did all that
more than a decade ago.
And Eminem sucks.
Tyler’s grave delivery
and sloppy flow made the
longer songs like “Fish,”
“Radicals,” and “Golden”
especially unbearable. The
beats on those tracks are
too minimal and Tyler’s
verses aren’t interesting
enough to keep me enter-
tained passed the 3:50
mark.
Interesting tracks were few and far
between, which was such a let down. I
mean, the Golf Wang videos really built
me up for greatness.
In all seriousness, the OFWGKTA
crew has a lot of promise. When Tyler
hits (i.e. “Yonkers”), he hits hard. The
production on the album is top notch.
Tyler paints dark, moody scenes with
one-handed synth leads and washed out
drum beats. But when he misses, which
was most of the time on Goblin, it’s
largely unlistenable.
The group must get through some
growing pains before they can release
the truly great album that is hinted at
here in Goblin, which was released on
XL Recordings, the label of major artists
like Radiohead and M.I.A. And with the
youth and prolific nature of
OFWGKTA, I’m certain that they will
reach that height eventually.
The Stony Brook Press 19

Nice seeing you at the rave, brah!

20 AA E-ZINE Vol. XXXII, Issue 14 |Wednesday, May 17, 2011
The Stony Brook Press ADS! 21
22 Arts & Entertainment Vol. XXXII, Issue 14 |Wednesday, May 17, 2011

SBU’s Breathing East at Bamboozle

When Harrigan, a 2009 graduate of
Stony Brook University, and Standish,
By Siobhan Cassidy who attended Hofstra University, would
drive home from college on the week-
Stony Brook band Breathing East end, they said the first thing they would
won a spot to perform at Bamboozle— notice is a fresh, salty breeze that dis-
again. tinguishes the East End from the city.
Breathing East, whose members at- “It was a sigh of relief,” Standish
tended Stony Brook, played at the festi- said. “We are breathing the east.”
val for the second year in a row, Many music artists have begun
performing with artists like 30 Seconds their musical journeys locally: Brand
to Mars, Taking Back Sunday, Motley New, Taking Back Sunday and, of
Crue and more at The Bamboozle Fes- course, Billy Joel are just a few. While
tival last week on The Break Stage. The many of them hail from New York City
east-end band, which has made appear- or Nassau County, the members of
ances Rock Yo Face Case, were fever- Breathing East feel that hailing from the
ishly trying to perfect its sound to win East End of Long Island makes them
The Break Contest, a battle-of-the- stand out in the competitive music in-
a senior. The band had a glimpse of life producing music together for two years.
bands style of competition at The Crazy dustry. There is a certain feel of the East
as a rock star, from professional road- The band said their influenced by 90’s
Donkey, last month. End, said Stevens. “It’s calm and airy.
ies, to agencies contacting them and, of music, but has a pop-dance vibe to its
Just a year ago, Breathing East had We carry that within the band.“
course, the groupies. “To perform at a new EP, The Successor.
won fourth place in The Break Contest, Performing for a massive crowd at a
musical festival? It is one of the best ex- In the days before Bamboozle,
giving them a chance to perform on a music festival or not, Harrigan said
periences a band can ask for.” Breathing East was in the top five
side stage at Bamboozle in East Ruther- there is nothing like playing at Stony
Breathing East is made up of four downloaded bands on
ford, N.J. Since their alternative sound Brook University. There is a local fol-
self-taught members: AJ McIntyre (vo- PureVolume.com, a website where ris-
blew the rookie bands away, they won, lowing on the campus that regularly at-
cals and guitar), Mark Standish (lead ing artists upload their mp3’s for pub-
again. tends Rock Yo Face Case to see
guitar and vocals), Will Stevens (bass licity, surpassing 30 Seconds to Mars.
“It refreshes the reason why we Breathing East play.
and vocals), and Conor Harrigan All members live on the east end of
work so hard,” said Will Stevens, who is
(drums), who have been writing and Long Island and practice in Jamesport.
The Stony Brook Press
Thor: God of Fun-der
By Mark Greek
Before we judge Thor as a stand-
alone piece of work, we must admire the
glorious mosaic that awaits us right be-
fore Armageddon in 2012. I’m not talk-
ing about a remake of the Ben
Affleck/hurtling meteor flick; I’m talk-
ing about The Avengers, due out seven
months before the Mayan calendar
ends, so we should have plenty of time
to enjoy it.
Understanding that Thor is meant
to be the foundation for something
larger, we can excuse things like corny
dialogue, and a less-than-Oscar-
worthy performance from Natalie Port-
man. That is not to say it is not a great
film; actually it’s quite competent as a
standalone origin story for one of Mar-
vel’s greatest heroes. Unfortunately, we
know that bigger and better things are
on the horizon, so if Thor must be
looked upon as a necessary stepping
stone, at least it’s a shiny one.
Chris Hemsworth, previously seen
for four minutes as Captain James T.
Kirk’s father in 09’s stellar Star Trek, is
cast perfectly as the Norse god of thun-
der. Thor is portrayed as a vain, muscle-
bound, arrogant muttonhead and heir
to the throne of Asgard, exactly as he
Rain and mud are among the God of Thunders most fearsome enemies
was in the original comic book. The
Odinson leads a band of friends on an
unsuccessful and unauthorized mission
into Jötunheim, land of the Frost Gi-
ants, and proceeds to kick some serious
ice.
His other friends, though war-
riors, are not so lucky, and his father
Odin (Anthony Hopkins) comes to
their aid. The allfather banishes Thor to
Earth to find his hammer and humility.
He meets the inexcusably attractive as-
trophysicist Jane (Portman), her annoy-
ing friend Darcy (Kat Dennings of Nick
and Norah’s Infinite Playlist fame) and
Erik the obligatory Norwegian mythol-
Arts & Entertainment 23
ogy expert (Stellan Skars-
gård).
Successfully portraying
mythology as a realistic al-
ternative to our own di-
mension is not a new
concept. Stan Lee and the
rest of the geniuses at Mar-
vel have been doing it for
ages. And in many in-
stances, combining them to
create awesome situations
where Thor can team up
with Hercules. Taking these
concepts and putting them
on film could have been
difficult, but director Ken-
neth Branagh handled it
very well. The special ef-
fects were well done and
believable, which was very
important considering the
outlandish subject matter.
Comic fans and Thor
enthusiasts will either love
or hate the adaptation, even
if they’re just biding their time till The
Avengers. Casual viewers will appreciate
the action, if not the story. Fans of at-
tractiveness will enjoy Hemsworth and
Portman accordingly, no one will ap-
preciate Kat Dennings and many will be
counting the days until the release of
Captain America this July.