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January 2007


Leisure

About town: your guide to January

Concerts Camera Obscura – Jan. 22 @ 9:30 Club Not to be confused with the California indie rock outfit of the same name, this Camera Obscura hail from the twee... Read more

Leisure

The Poverty Chic Travel Guide: three days in New York

You’ve blown through your Christmas cash, your new job hasn’t started yet, and book buyback netted you a whopping $3.80.

Leisure

Pan’s Labyrinth is a-maze-ing

For every child, the characters from fairy tales can creep from the pages of a book into the child’s bedroom and consciousness. No movie in recent memory conveys this message with as much skill and raw emotional power as Pan’s Labyrinth, opening in D.C. this Friday.

Sports

BS in BCS

I didn’t watch last week’s Fiesta Bowl in its entirety. I did, however, watch the last 15 minutes. That thrilling ending was enough to point to one conclusion: college football needs a playoff system. I had actually tuned in a bit earlier in the game, when Boise State had built up an 18-point lead. Assuming that things were wrapped up, I changed the channel. The next time I flipped back to check the score, Oklahoma had the lead 35-28 with only one minute and three seconds left in regulation. The luck of the underdog appeared to have run out, but a perfectly executed “hook and ladder” on fourth-and-18 extended the game into overtime. Something I love about college ball is the overtime scenario. Both teams get a crack at scoring, starting at the opposing 25 yard line. If the first team scores, the second team must match that score in order to continue the series, or beat the score in order to win the game. I like this scenario a lot better that the NFL rules. In professional football, the first team to score wins the game, placing an enormous amount of importance on something as small as a coin toss. Oklahoma played offense first, and scored immediately on an Adrian Peterson run. Boise State coach Chris Peterson appeared to have given up on a conventional victory, opting instead to empty out all the tricks in his playbook. Faced with another fourth down, Coach Peterson called a direct snap to the wide receiver, who rolled out to the right and completed a touchdown pass. The play he called, the “Statue of Liberty,” is almost never seen outside of playgrounds and videogames, but like everything else in the fairy tale game, it worked to perfection. Quarterback Zabransky acted as if he would pass with his right hand but instead handed Johnson the ball behind his back with his left. Ian Johnson,the running back who sauntered into the endzone for the win, proceeded to ask his girlfriend, Boise State’s head cheerleader, to marry him on national television. This game had everything, didn’t it? My understanding is that Disney is working on a screenplay as we speak. There was just one thing missing: a game against Florida to determine the best team in college football. I won’t repeat all of the arguments we’ve heard in favor of a playoff system over and over again. But the fact remains that BSU was the only Division One team to finish the season undefeated. And yet, in a recent AP Poll after the Sugar Bowl, they were ranked #5. Maybe BSU were the best team this season, and maybe they weren’t. But they deserved the chance to prove themselves one way or another. There won’t be any changes until Fox’s four-year $320 million TV deal ends with the 2010 bowls, and even then the most that is currently being discussed is a plus-one model which would create a four-team playoff. While an improvement, this simply isn’t going to be good enough, particularly with a field of teams this large. If fans want a full NFL-style playoff format, now is the time, before 2010, for them to make their voices heard. The 2007 Fiesta Bowl is all the evidence you need.

Sports

Hoyas can’t cage the Cardinals

The women’s basketball team failed to grab a second Big East home win Tuesday night. The ladies got their first BE win on the road last Saturday against St. John’s, but coming home they fell 57-54 to 17th-ranked Louisville. This dropped the Hoyas’ record to 11-6, 1-3 BE, and upped Louisville to 17-1, 3-1 BE.

Sports

The Sports Sermon

Christmas break is tough. I was forced to linger in bed well past noon and suffer the day away, trapped within the suffocating confines of an oversized couch. From that couch all I could possibly do was watch game after game of college football as I slipped in and out of sleep, rising from a prone position only to consume such awful foods as hot wings and chips.

Sports

Villanova press stumps Hoya offense

Just as Georgetown seemed to have turned the corner, the team took another step backward Monday night, suffering an ugly loss to unranked Villanova 56-52. After blowing out twenty-second ranked Notre Dame, the Hoyas looked poised to break from the pack and regain their status as a dominant team. But in a conference filled with NBA-level talent and legendary coaches, fortunes can change quickly. In the Big East, teams that don’t come to play get burned, and on Monday night Georgetown never showed up.

Voices

Carrying On: A reasonable affirmation

Affirmative action, it would seem, is on its way out. Once embraced by liberals as a way to ensure equality established as a goal by the civil rights movements of the ‘60’s and ‘70s, it now has waning support across demographics and political ideologies. The fight is increasingly polarized as people take sides for or against affirmative action with such personally and politically-charged fervor that compromise seems impossible. Ironically, this passion is often supported only by anecdotal evidence and a profound ignorance of what affirmative action actually is.

Features

Top 10 Albums and Films of 2006

1. Clipse:Hell Hath No Fury

Clipse’s sophomore release, Hell Hath No Fury, comes a full four years after their debut, Lord Willin’. The sibling pair of Pusha T and Malice comes roaring back, delivering the year’s most consistent and confrontational hip-hop album. With Pusha T’s confidence and Malice’s ambition, it’s clear the duo isn’t going to disappear. It doesn’t hurt, of course, that they’re backed by the best beats of the year, a bleak, sparse set arranged by the Neptunes. “Trill” and “Chinese New Year” are particularly strong, though the album’s most impressive characteristic is its utter lack of filler. Hell Hath No Fury never falters, hitting with a tightness seldom seen in modern hip-hop.

News

Kegs will stay on campus

After a semester’s worth of deliberation, Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson decided not to ban kegs, although he will limit events to one keg each starting next fall.