What began as a revolution in computer generated special effects finished as a national sensation over gargantuan dead reptiles (which have more in common with present-day birds) nationwide. As a child growing up in the late 90s, I was quickly infected with the same curiosity about dinosaurs which had engulfed millions of my peers, and movies, like Jurassic Park, would since always capture my imagination. It is, perhaps, the film I’ve most repeatedly watched (however embarrassingly) since the age of six. And what gave me nightmares as a child, and manifested lurking velociraptors in the dark right before bed, also thrilled and inspired me to become a hefty financial contributor to Natural History Museums everywhere. I’ll admit, it is difficult to write about this subject objectively since it is deeply layered in a swamp of childhood nostalgia. Even today, at times, it is hard for me to look at a palm tree or a eucalyptus branch without imagining a Brachiosaurus right behind it, or hearing the iconic opening John William’s score swell in my head.

After learning that Jurassic Park had first been a book, conveniently sold in airport book stores worldwide, I bought a volume which was to be one of my most loyal travel companions. It was stowed handily in my backpack and made hour-long car rides pass in what felt like mere minutes. At this point, I had already watched the movie hundreds of times, and even regularly consumed the “making-of” documentary when my eyes had become bored over from seeing the iconic T. Rex monstrously rip apart a helpless, upended yellow-green land rover for the umpteenth time. The book proved to be as easily readable as a Robert Ludlum novel, and as imaginatively colorful as a Tintin comic book. Pages quickly whipped by as the story gained momentum and, eventually, almost blurred as the story reached its unbearably tense climax. That being said, the novel will still be confined to the annals of simple-prose science fiction, one any competent reader could easily digest in a little less than a day.

The film adaptation is much shorter and emphasizes the more dramatic elements of the book, hurriedly rushing through the character development. This would make any child gleeful, since it quickly manages to skip to scenes of nerdy scientists having their guts ripped open by a poisonous Dilophosaurus; pure pre-pubescent bliss. Reading the book allows for more of a backstory for each character rather than them simply being pawns in the slaughter. Having watched the film first, the book’s stoic and courageous paleontologist, Dr. Alan Grant, already bore Sam Neil’s face, and the eccentric playboy mathematician, Ian Malcolm, reeked of the charisma actor Jeff Goldblum gave him. Envisioning the characters in the novel as the actor’s that played them in the movie showed me just how scrupulous the casting department had been when making their decisions. All the actors play their, somewhat, ridiculous roles with a great mix of humor and seriousness. Laura Dern plays the tenacious paleobotanist, Ellie Sattler, and David Attenborough is the eccentric and ambitious billionaire, John Hammond. I suppose you could call the film an ensemble performance since no one actor particularly dominates the plot, although the relationship between Dr. Grant and John Hammond’s two grandchildren, Tim and Lex (Joseph Mazzello and Ariana Richards), certainly holds most of the audience’s attention.

Some may be eager to dismiss both the book and film as pure fictional pulp. While they may think they are justified to do so, one question remains to be answered: what laymen, on earth, had ever heard, let alone knew, anything about Chaos Theory before Jurassic Park? The novel extensively grapples with trying to make highly convoluted mathematical theories clear to common readers. While the actual dinosaur-cloning science remains a bit fuzzy, I appreciate Chrichton’s attempt to educate his readers as much as he tries to engage them. The book can also pass the absurd premise by making the narrative an analogy for the folly of scientific hubris. A Titanic story with scales and teeth; showing both the wonders of discovery as well as the horrible mistakes and disasters that have always been attached to it.

The film, understandably, skips over Malcolm’s more elaborate digressions on why Hammond’s ambitious dream of creating a sauropod petting zoo will ultimately fail. But as a twelve year old this was the furthest thing from my mind. The film is more about showing off the new special effect capacities of modern computing, which before then relied on expensive animatronic puppetry. Without Jurassic Park, there would have been no Lord of the Rings, Avengers, Avatar, or any modern blockbuster.  Jurassic Park, the film, divulges almost entirely from the storyline of the book, but its mission wasn’t to be a faithful reconstruction. Like creating a dinosaur amusement park itself, it beguiled modern audiences to marvel the achievements of contemporary entertainment.

by Stefan Cartlidge

For the creative aspect is astounding.  In his ode to Prague, Ajvaz writes of a city where locusts carry typewriters, one can fight with a shark on top of a building, weasels carry televisions on sleds, and written words can be infectious.  Ajvaz borrows Borges’ affinity for labyrinths, but includes recurring motifs such as statues, fish, and the image of a man being bitten in the neck by a tiger.  This is a tale to get lost in.

The narrator of this tale finds a book with strange script in an antiquarian bookstore, and begins to see more signs of the unreal ‘other city’ on the fringes of his own.  He is warned, of course:

“whoever crosses the border becomes entangled in the bent wires that stick out of things that you consider broken and which, in fact, have returned to their original form, as it was etched into the surface of a glass star wandering among the constellations.  Whoever seeks to penetrate our city will never return.”

That does not discourage the narrator, and storyteller and reader wind through a surrealist world with limited definition beyond a secret cult and no creation story (the city believes there is no beginning, that everything is a circuitous loop).  The world Ajvaz creates is fascinating, and his prose is a viscous twist from odd to odder.

However, The Other City never feels like a full tale.  The narrator is nothing but a pair of eyes in that he has no backstory and no pathos as a character.  His observations are where the novel sparkles but when the novel became more focused on plot (which was rather infrequently) my interest faded.  To use examples from other translated literatures (Ajvaz is Czech), The Other City is a Borges tale from Labyrinths combined with Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler.  It has neither the depth of Borges’ stories or the urgency of Calvino’s novel, although Ajvaz’s unreal city is remarkably unique.  I found myself lost for pages in the liquid prose only to realize that I was not sure I knew where we were or what was going on.  I doubt plot was Ajvaz’s point, and his narrator doesn’t need to be well-developed for it to be a good novel.  But for a work with such original ideas and writing, I wished it had been more unique in its overall theme.

by Danielle Bukowski

I recently had a crisis of morality, darlings.  Let me preface by telling you this: I did not cave, but I did spend a long time pondering it after the fact.

When I left for work one morning, I saw on my next door neighbor’s porch a bevy of old (gasp, read: retro) furniture.  Good golly.  Unfortunately for me, it was tagged to be picked up by Family Services.  This service provides all kinds of things to families in need.  This is a wonderful service.  Therefore, I didn’t want to take these things off her porch—and by that I mean technically steal—that my neighbor had decided to donate to charity.  I’m less than flush, but not quite charity.  So, I didn’t take anything.  Still, it was hard to just walk away.  I’m still at the point where I’m trying to acquire enough furniture to fill a house, so it’s hard to imagine being able to get rid of multiple pieces.  Especially VINTAGE pieces.

Have you ever noticed this?  You spend your whole life getting things, then, once you have enough, you try to get rid of them all.  Usually, I’m there to usurp the good ones.

In college, I took a course in French Cultural Affectations, or something of a similar college-y name (I was working toward a French minor to go along with my two B.A.s, however I stopped six credits—that’s two classes—short for various reasons. C’est la vie.)  While we studied French literature and architecture and painters (we spent practically an eon studying Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, which is how I was able to lean over to my boyfriend during Titanic 3-D and say, “That didn’t sink on the Titanic!  It’s in the MoMA!”…Poor Boyfriend). But a huge influence was placed on French furniture—mostly of the baroque movement.  I can still remember taking pop-quizzes (otherwise known in that class as “expositions”) rambling on for two pages about everything I could remember about the curvatures of baroque chairs.  Ah.  Bonne chance with that to anyone enlisted for that class next semester, and every semester for the foreseeable future.

But anyway, the point about the baroque chairs is this: is it just me or is furniture one of those rare things in the course of human events that becomes more practical and functional and less ornate?  Is it possibly true?  Is it just me?  Has no one else ever thought about this before?  OK, OK, maybe you need to be familiar with what exactly a baroque chair is before we continue.  Do you know?  If not, please Google/Bing/other search engine it.  OK, I’ll wait…OK, done?  Got it?  Do you see it?  I’m sure other similar-looking furniture came up in the search also.  See all the curves and ornate-ness of it all?  Now, if we took a Retro Recon field trip (we should start doing these!) down to any furniture warehouse or store—any one from Unclaimed Freight to Pottery Barn—I feel confident saying perhaps in the oft-forgotten corner we would find some faux-gilded wrought-iron vanity chair that looks vaguely as though it were trying to be from France right around the time the harpsichord was being invented. But alas, that lonely little chair would look out of place next to plush sectional sofas and high-backed rolling desk chairs to accompany desks with many boxy utilitarian drawers instead of carved swirls.  See?  I think furniture is getting more functional and less ornate.  It’s, again, like how we spend our whole lives collecting things only to later try to get rid of them all.

Of course, baroque is too far back to be considered “retro”—I realize this.  Similarly is Paul Revere’s house, which I recently visited in Boston.  While Paul Revere was certainly not destitute, he was not the richest of our revered (ha, get it?) revolutionaries.  Yet, the Revere family furniture is well-made and, I’ll say it, pretty gorgeous.  The fabrics are divine.  The chairs have rather delicate features.  For some reason I expected something much more primitive—but of course the 18^th Century American home is far from baroque.  I’m OK with this.  I’m not saying I disdain furniture of the baroque period.  I’m not saying I would turn up my nose and turn down a baroque chair if I was given it or, I don’t know, won it on a game show or something—I just don’t know how I would reconcile it with the rest of my belongings.

I’m not really sure what my home furnishing style would be called.  I suppose it’s shabby-chic.  I suppose it’s urban-rustic (I don’t know what that means).  Once a friend of mine said he felt like being in my abode was like being in the dwelling of a well-read, book-obsessed, WWII pin-up—I suppose I like this.  I like hardwood floors.  I like furniture made of wood rather than metal or plastic.  I like French doors and old-fashioned (shock!) kitchen gadgets.  I don’t know what to call my household aesthetic.  I usually know how to describe what I’m wearing: “Oh.  Today I am waiting-for-my-beloved-to-come-home-from-fighting-Mr.-Hitler chic.” Or: “Look at me serving 1950s housewife glam.” Maybe: “This right here is early 1960s career-gal fab.”  Sometimes: “Well, I’m wearing jeans and a cardigan…how’s it going?”  However, with furniture on such a less noticeable continuum, I don’t know what to say?  I want to create a habitat that looks like it could be a mid-century home with the polished flair Hollywood gives period-specific flicks, perhaps?  Furniture only looks starkly out of fashion when it is completely authentic…and usually it’s met with a negative response.

I’m sad that, in my youth, I gave away my grandmother’s vanity.  I have retained a post-war looking open cabinet with shelves that hung on my kitchen wall growing up—I’m not sure if my parents put it there in the 80s, or if it was there when they bought the house.  It used to hang above the stove—this big giant thing—for pots and dishes, now it sits on my floor and holds books.  Almost as dear to me is a little cabinet my grandmother brought from Norway.  I don’t know what its intended use is.  I don’t know why it was made.  My father used to store records in it.  Really, it’s a perfect record-storer.  They fit on the bottom shelves; a door opens on the top where the record player could be.  I use it to store sweaters, and for a little display on the top of etiquette books and candles.  I’m not sure how to feel about the journey of this cabinet.  I’m not sure how I feel about giving wonderful things away vs. keeping things you don’t have a use for.

Really, I also don’t know how to feel about just letting a vintage highchair pass me by when it was only on the other side of my porch railing.  Then again, as we keep saying, I don’t have children yet.

C’est la vie.

by Laura Hallman

Yarn bombing is the graffiti of arts and crafts – crochet and knit graffiti. Bringing beauty to urban landscapes, yarn bombing varies from the ornate (bicycle cozies that physically attach the bike to street signs) to the simple (mix-matched yarns wrapping around railings). The community surrounding the public art has as much variety as the craft itself, including elderly women in knitting circles, hardcore yarn artists, and those individuals looking to occasionally brighten someone’s day. Not to discredit traditional means of graffiti art, but yarn bombing typically takes more forethought and planning. Measurements must be taken, yarn must be bought, and the majority of the knitting must be done in advance – after all, despite it’s charm, yarn bombing is a legitimate, illegal graffiti, and artists often slip out into the night and secure their pre-made work to public/private property without getting caught. The result however, is often forgivable, if not favored by some. Whereas traditional graffiti techniques have a bit more permanence and are often destructive, yarn bombing bears a cheery tenderness and easy removal. I know I can’t help but smile when I stumble upon a little, knit treasure.

In the movie Juliet, or rather, Fermina Daza (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), daughter of the successful but duplicitous Lorenza Daza (John Leguizamo), is approached by the shy telegram delivery boy; Florentino Ariza (Javier Bardem). Vowing eternal love for one another, Florentino and Fermina begin a clandestine correspondence later outed by Fermina’s father, who sends his daughter off into the depths of the jungle. Florentino becomes violently ill when Fermina is taken away, and his mother lugubriously claims his sickness to be cholera. But Florentino gives a weak smile and says, “No mama, it’s just love, you’re confusing cholera with love”. After Fermina returns as a blossomed young woman, Florentino begins to wish it were cholera. Fermina’s first sighting of Florentino revolts her, and she tells him to “Forget it,” leaving Florentino to once again confine himself to bed for weeks. So Fermina marries the rich handsome Dr. Juvenal Urbino (Benjamin Bratt) into wealth and society and Florentino sinks into a deep depression, until his mother convinces her brother-in-law to take on her son into his prosperous ferry boat company along the Magdalena river. Working as a clerk, Florentino discovers sex for the the first time with a group of woman on one of his uncle’s passenger barges, and what proceeds is a long journey of sexual escapism to rid himself of his unrequited love. Fermina settles down with her husband and begins a conventional life, while Florentino bears his bachelor’s gait with painful joy.

In order for the film adaptation of Love in the Time of Cholera to be successful, it had to seduce the reader in the way the book did. Much of what makes the novel so evocative is the language Marquez employs; long flowing sentences stuffed with every adjective imaginable. The film’s cinematography more than acts as a suitable replacement for the words on the page. The South America shown is a lush and dangerous world. Disease, civil war and poverty rampage throughout the land, but there is an unmistakable joie de vivre emitting from every character. Bardem, Mezzogriorno, and Bratt have the charisma and talent necessary to pull off their love triangle even when epidemics and revolutions surround them. They are all remarkably three-dimensional, able to show both strength and weakness simultaneously. This allows for the character development for each actor to come across as authentic and poignant.

The film was shot in 2007 by British director Mike Newell, who, oddly enough, was responsible for Four Weddings and a Funeral. Newell’s background in comedy is very much present in Cholera’s adaptation. The melodrama, inherent in the premise of the story, is layered in with slapstick and witty humor, and the end result is a love story that is believable. Newell’s camera says, emotional turbulence isn’t always as black as it feels; we forget how often there is still room to laugh. And knowing how to balance drama and comedy is a trait all great films have. Despite the overall message of each film, watching a continually tortured character on screen is boring. In a novel which has so much life in it, Newell was responsible for conveying that effectively to his audience, and for the greater part he succeeds.

Although I praise the film for successfully capturing the spirit of the book, I choose to think of it as a rough diamond. The adaptation is, at times, beautifully flawed, but on mere technical grounds. Choppy editing, poor make-up, and inconsistent pacing occasionally trip up the even waltz of the story. But this is all forgivable, in fact, it is even better forgotten. I suggest to see this film in the right mood, and to read the book first, otherwise some interactions may seem caricature and nonsensical. If nothing else, the material is sexy. And whether you start seeing more of yourself in Dr. Urbino, Fermina, or Florentino, it will be hard to deny how real they seem to each one of us.

by Stefan Cartlidge

I read the 77 pages in an hour or so, watching the sun set from my dorm window.  I fell asleep at one point and woke up a few minutes later to the sound of loud music blasting from a passing car and was pulled apart with thoughts of where I was and where I wanted to be.  Nothing about the book put me to sleep; rather, I wanted to be dreaming, in the field or India or café of Smith’s description, instead of inside a giant 19^th century brick building.  And in the way the best books take you somewhere else, I forgot it was late afternoon and that I was supposed to be answering emails and organizing my calendar and just read.

The memoir is prose and poetry combined.  Some sections of prose are more poetic, while there are standard poems included as well.  The photographs are mostly Smith’s own, unless they are old family portraits.  The dedication page is for her father, and the “To the reader” section explains her father’s reaction to the volume when he read it, years ago.  There is his authoritative presence hanging over the poetic lines, as many of the sections describe scenes from Smith’s childhood, and others diverge into travels.  Where she is on these travels is deliberately vague, and description comes in the form of mellifluous metaphors and phrases as movements instead of placemarkers.

What she is describing is much less important than how she describes it.  The sections on her childhood are full sensory experiences.  A young Patti Smith asks an old man in the town about the dead in the cemetery, and he responds that they were “woolgatherers.”  This motif travels through the book, as when she dreams she wanders among them, “with no task more exceptional than to rescue a fleeting thought, as a tuft of wool, from the comb of the wind.”

The memoir does not recount the famous parts of Smith’s life, the way the 2010 National Book Award Winner for Nonfiction Just Kids does.  I didn’t expect it to, although the author’s name probably drew in more than a couple curious readers.  It stands on its own, for someone who can only name two Patti Smith songs, as a dreamy memoir by one who is an artist above all else.

This book is tiny, and I struggled to find any words more luminous than those within its pages to review it.  It’s the type of book to reread, and the type that I (a big fan of marginalia) did not mark up.  Not all of the sections meet the tenor of others, but every new passage surprises.

“I had a ruby.  Imperfect, beautiful like faceted blood.  It came from India where they wash up on the shore.  Thousands of them—the beads of sorrow.  Little droplets that somehow became gems gathered by beggars who trade them for rice.  Whenever I stared into its depths I felt overcome, for caught within my little gem was more misery and hope than one could fathom.”

 

by Danielle Bukowski

I’m being as nice as I possibly can here.  I’m at my wits’ end with my particular postal carrier.  I just…cannot…abide this mail abuse anymore.  It’s one thing that I have, on frequent occurrence, met my neighbors out on the street to exchange mail slipped into the wrong door’s slot; however, it’s another whole level of annoying when I realize packages addressed to me have ended up at other mysterious destinations.  This has happened multiple times in the last few weeks.  I’m on the verge of storming the post office, sitting in and crying until they find my belongings I never beheld in their mislaid places.

Aside from the facts that I paid money for these things (or other people paid money for these things), and there may be sensitive billing and account information contained in the packages, and maybe this is indicative of a trend and makes me nervous about the bills and mail-order medications my insurance company makes me order getting to me when necessary…it’s just annoying.  It’s flustering me.  It’s taking up a considerable amount of my energy to deal with.  Hell!  I’m writing a column about the US Postal Service because of it!

These events, while driving me postal, have caused me to wonder about the history of the postal service.  Who really thinks about this kind of thing?  We always just had mail delivered as long as we can remember, why worry where it started?

That’s because yes, as a country, we always have had a postal system.  Back in centuries of settlement before our Independence, mother royals made sure their messages got around the new world.  During the 2^nd Continental Congress in 1775, Ben Franklin—the shining star of my commonwealth—set up a national post office system in my beloved Philadelphia.  (Just like the Marine Corps, the USPS can brag that it is older than the U.S. of A.)

This invention of 1775, later authorized by the Constitution, is basically the same institution that we know today.  Of course, there are more little changes (and big changes) than we can feasibly count between then, now, and the retro in between.  For instance, waterways were technically declared post roads in 1833 (which changed how mail was delivered), and stamps were introduced to send letters in 1847 (which changed how mail was delivered).  Both these things happen about a century (and a little change—a little less than it costs to buy a stamp now) before the time period this column is concerned with.  However, as the adage goes: we have to know from where we’ve come to know who we are.

I suppose, this includes the United States Post Office.  I suppose no one instilled this kind of pride about his employer with my mailman.  Sigh.

But really, during those years I mentioned our column here is concerned with, some very interesting things happened in the postal system—things, in fact, I was completely unaware of.  Recently, I found myself having several conversations about the distrust and fear of banks in the beginning of the last century.  I don’t know how this happened so coincidentally, except that higher powers must have known I would need it in column material.  The hows and whys are not what I’m discussing here, but it is first important to note that many people—the influx of immigrants among them—were suspicious of banks’ holdings.  It makes sense.  Of course, there are plenty of economics-of-the-day reasons, but also, if you arrive in a foreign country to a banking system that works nothing like you are used to, why would you trust your money to it?

So instead, in 1911, a savings system was implemented within the postal service.  This works.  This makes sense.  This was a popular system the world over, so it worked well for the working immigrant.  Also, this is one-stop-shopping at its most convenient.  Your early-to-mid 20^th centurion probably needs to hit up both the bank and the post office weekly.  Bam.  Done.  The United Postal Savings System did get deposited into a local bank to accrue interest, but shh, we don’t need to tell our fore-bearers this.  This system was disbanded in 1967, just about the time all kinds of other things in our country were changing.  I don’t think those changes are related.

Initially I thought that this might be a neat system for us to have.  Then, I remembered my current plight that got me to thinking about the postal system and I realized I can’t lose any more money to misfiling.  (That is mostly, I think, a joke.)

While we’ve come back to it, if you received any of my lost mail and/ or packages (including a birthday gift!  Gasp!  Wait… Vintage INSPIRED birthday gift), would you please contact me here to return it?  I have a pretty rad TeenBeat misdelivered to my house to exchange for it.  I’m sorry, it’s someone too young for me to recognize on the cover.

Along with how the USPS used to be a place you could store your money, it was also a place that received tax dollars to run.  This makes sense.  It is a government agency after all.  Then again, in 1970 it became an independent government agency.  I’m not entirely sure what that means, but to me it sounds like complete financial dependence on the national government is ipso facto.  The USPS stopped receiving what’s called “direct” tax support ten years later in 1980.  I still think it’s strange.  I would almost expect part of at least my local taxes to go to the postal service since services of the post office are supposed to apply to all (recent misfortune not withstanding).

It’s not that I’m attempting to be particularly political today—I’m just merely typing facts.  Please, there are more problems to fix than I have answers and applicable vintage pin-up images.

I don’t know where all of our tax dollars should be going.  I don’t.  I have opinions.  I see validity in many arguments for or against programs and recipients.  However, I do think this is worth a moment of pondering: the USPS is a government agency, albeit an independent one, responsible for serving the people.  (In fact, the postal service is legally obligation to serve all Americans equally.  I like this idea, not sure about the application.)  Until 1980, the postal service received some direct tax revenue.  Now, no more—with a few grant exceptions that I can tell you as an employee of a government-grant-run job is not as lucrative as it sounds.  So now what?  Maybe it’s no wonder that with less financial backing, and less mail-sending in general, things aren’t going smoothly.  Though, with such advanced technology in the world—including being able to electronically follow my package while it’s in possession of the USPS, it would get to the correct address that matched the label.

Who has my makeup anyway?  I should hold that TeenBeat hostage until I know.

Public space is a funny thing.

Ideally, it is meant to be shared—we each have the right to use it for whatever we need, provided that we respect it and leave it in a condition so that others can use it as well. As long as humans have been living together, they have worked on finding a satisfactory system of sharing the land. As more and more individuals needed to share the land, it became the responsibility of the local governing body to maintain and manage public property. We’ve now reached a point where any space that is determined public or shared is exclusively managed by the government, and anyone who wishes to use it for special purposes needs to gain their permission.

I mention all of this because the evolution of the idea of public space and the evolution of street performance go hand in hand. Gone are the days where any wandering performers could set up a stage wherever they wished to try and seek their fortune. Many street performers are required to choose a specific location in order to apply for a permit; should they wish to try their luck in a different place, they must go through the entire permit-acquiring process again. Some cities and districts even require performers to audition in order to gain permission to perform there. Additionally, there are noise ordinances and vandalism laws that must be abided by.

Everything that I’ve read about street performance culture as I began working on this column has pointed out that although these new rules and regulations have certainly dealt a heavy blow to the small but persistent network of performers, performers are in turn taking several steps to fight back. There are advocacy groups that exist to help performers navigate the legal processes, and there have even been consistent rumblings of a union. The vitality of public art is tremendous, and it gives me hope when I hear about these artists working as diligently as they can to maintain the integrity of their profession.

There was recently a controversy over public art right down the street from where I live, when a memorial to the victims of the Boston Massacre was tagged with a bright red “Kony 2012.” Almost instantaneously, the internet divulged into debate—what right did the tagger have to leave that message? To whom does the monument belong in the first place? Does this message and the way in which it was displayed count as art, or does it fall into the crass-associated category of vandalism?

While I don’t have any of these answers, the event made it clear to me that there are individuals who still feel limited in their means of self-expression, and as a result are willing to act out in more drastic ways. While our governing body certainly holds tremendous power and responsibility when managing public space, it bears asking who really has the right to determine whether someone is allowed to use such a space for their own purposes. I believe that the relationship between artist, space, and government is much more complicated than we like to pretend it is, and it will take a while for the three entities to reach a peaceful agreement.

I would now like to invite you to enjoy the conversation—should artists have free use of public space without punishment? Or do we need to rely on the government to maintain the cleanliness and integrity of our parks and sidewalks?

by James Kennedy

I usually try to keep my eyes straight ahead while walking through the college center; frankly, I’m almost never in mood to get called out—let’s just call it like it is: harassed—by student organizationss who want me to attend their events or  buy their merchandise or send a daisy to a friend on Valentine’s day (come ON). But the Veg Pledge table set up by the Vassar Animal Rights Coalition caught my eye last week, so I stopped… and stayed for the next thirty minutes.

I met Alan, who explained to me that Veg Pledge took place during Earth Week (is that a thing? I thought it was only Earth Day). Basically, people sign a pledge to go meat-free for a week. Great, I’m already a full-time vegetarian, done! But then I decided to go the extra mile and pledge to go vegan for a week. Which was probably partly influenced by Alan’s monologue about the hypocrisy he felt in being only a vegetarian and not a vegan, prompting him to switch over permanently.

I must say, Alan was pretty convincing, so as I walked away with some pamphlets and a few book recommendations from him, I felt pretty confident about my vegan week.

Until it started.

OK, so perhaps I’m being dramatic, but this is not the most fulfilling week I’ve had food-wise, to say the least. I forgot to set ground rules for myself concerning dairy products in things like bread, chocolate, etc. Which pretty much equates to: I may or may not have unknowingly or semi-knowingly cheated over the past few days but the principle is still there.

Here are some things I’ve learned at the halfway point:

1. If this is ever going to be a permanent lifestyle, I’ll need some intense cooking lessons and a fairly generous budget. But mostly cooking lessons.

2. Not all vegan cheese is created equal. And most shouldn’t be created at all. Seriously, not worth it.

3. Chinese and Japanese food are great options. Dairy is pretty much not a thing for these cuisines, so as long as you’re careful about other animal products sneaking their way into your food (i.e. lard), it’s a nice way to get a normal, filling meal. I went to sushi tonight with some friends; I had seaweed salad and an avocado and cucumber roll. It was by far the most satisfying meal I’ve had all week.

4. WATCH YOUR PEANUT BUTTER INTAKE. Peanut butter consumption is at a whole new level for me with this week’s vegan stint. I tried to lay off today, since having a varied diet is pretty much the most important diet rule of them all… so instead I had sunflower seed butter.

5. Find alternatives to soy. An excess of it does not bode well for my digestive system. I’ll spare you the details.

6. Pack the protein in. I’m not sure if this newfound drowsiness is solely the result of the allergy meds I’ve started taking, or if it’s also a failure on my part to get all of the nutrients I need in a day. Either way, I shouldn’t be crashing for three hours at four in the afternoon (though it was a glorious nap). Although vegetables are wonderful in so many ways, they can’t be all you eat. Again, it’s balance. I’m really trying to eat only whole foods, but it’s difficult with college cafeteria options, even at a college that is aware of the slew of vegans on campus.

7. Let your body adjust. As amazing as the human body is, we can’t expect it to immediately adapt to a lifestyle change as significant as the elimination of all animal products. Just because I may be experiencing some adverse effects (that may or may not be caused by this diet) does not mean I shouldn’t be a vegan, or that it’s not a healthy lifestyle, or that I should pull a full stop DO NOT PASS GO DO NOT COLLECT $200. A week isn’t really sufficient time to test out a way of eating. But it’s probably about how long I’ll last. For now.

8. You don’t need to know it all. I am not an authority on healthy vegan eating. I’m not an authority on anything, if we’re being honest. Research is a must. A lot of it. And using common sense, of course. It’s just about having a heightened sense of awareness. Which is—I won’t lie—a bit annoying, but mostly refreshing and gratifying.

Above all, I have learned… I can’t do this full-time. Not yet. But I think I’m going to make the commitment to cut down on the dairy intake substantially, and go vegan at least one day a week. Like Meatless Monday, but… Animal-Products-less Monday. I’m happy I’m doing this vegan week, and I’m confident in the difference I’m making. Perhaps one day I’ll go vegan permanently, at least in my home. I believe, ultimately, it will be the right decision for me, but I know it’s going to be a slow process, so I’m taking it day by day. When it comes down to it, though, I’m finding fewer reasons not to.

by Sarah Zickel

While the book was largely ignored upon it’s publication, it has since been ranked among the leagues of Ulysses, Catcher in the Rye, Farewell to Arms, and many more. Naturally, a film adaptation followed (in truth, three), but I will be writing about the first in the series, scripted in a time before “remake” or “reboot” was in the film industry’s vocabulary. Produced in 1934 and directed by John Cromwell, the film begins roughly halfway through the novel, when Philip is a starving painter in Paris deciding whether to give up his career in favor of a more practical pursuit in medicine. He is played by the wounded-eyed Leslie Howard, the classical film actor best known for starring alongside Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind. Starting the film at this point was a practical decision, and possibly the only choice given time constraints, but it eschews the seventeen years of character development critical to the novel. You enter the film having no knowledge of Philip’s joyless beginnings as an orphan in Southeast England, or the torments that lead him to disobey his Uncle’s authoritarian outline for him to live a pragmatic lifestyle. This turmoil that Philip undergoes during those first hundred pages is essential in understanding what leads him to pursue becoming a pediatrician.

Shortly after returning to London and enrolling in medical school, Philip acquaints himself with fellow students and starts building the social circle which was denied him as an adolescent. All is well until a friend introduces him to a scornful waitress named Mildred, who works at the school cafe, and poor Philip falls hopelessly in love with her. Mildred is played, with malicious glee, by Bette Davis, who is best known in the public eye  for her leading role in the Academy Award winner, All about Eve. As Mildred, Davis’ acerbic wit continually punishes Philip as he tries, desperately, to win her over by accompanying her to the theatre, adorning her with many gifts and paying for expensive meals he can’t afford at the Ritz. The introduction of Mildred is where the film begins to pick up traction. Davis and Howard play off each others’ emotions well, and Howard does his best to bring out the range in Philip when his thoughts and feelings are largely interior.

However, the hurdle the film can’t seem to surmount is addressing the internal strife and self-doubt Philip carries. The book has the focus entirely on Philip and his feelings, not in the clipped sardonic manner of, say, Holden Caulfield, but in the longwinded inner discussions that revolve around his constant chagrin towards his deformed foot, coupled with a lonesome childhood and inexperience in matters of romance. Without this prior knowledge, the audience can’t be expected to understand why Philip is so attracted to the plain and cruel Mildred, and while she does play a significant role in the book, her relationship to Philip is not the crux of the story. It may be, however, the most interesting part of the novel, but to really understand the extent to which Philip makes sacrifices for Mildred you have to read through the hearty midsection of the book and realize that while the film’s Mildred may forcefully prod Philip from time to time, the novel’s Mildred cuts open his spine and plucks at his nerves like a banjo.

There’s no further point, really, in expounding on other parts of the novel since they are all ignored in the film. The question that constantly irritates me though is why, out of all the other, simpler stories which Maugham later gave treatment to, was this one ever thought of as the most likely candidate for Hollywood scrutiny. A prime difference between book and film is a book’s ability to convey the worldview of each character as if it were in his or her own words. Film, with the exception of voiceover, does not have this luxury, and therefore must find other, subtler, means in which to convey these words. All of Of Human Bondage is ripped, verbatim, right off the page, albeit from perhaps the wrong one.  The adaption process that attempts to find the common ground on which to build a film comes across as lazy and unattended. It may, however,  come down to a simple equation: A five hundred plus page book, tracing the journey of a young man, stuffed into an hour and twenty two minutes. You do the math.

by Stefan Cartlidge