Archive

The disturbing way of the world

Suskind’s book, when put together with Scott McClellan’s What Happened, Barton Gellman’s Angler, and Bob Woodward’s The War Within, paints an extremely dark, deceptive, and frankly, evil picture of the Bush administration. While there have been many accusations over the past eight years, these books offer fairly definitive proof of Bush and Cheney’s two terms of illegal operations. Unfortunately, with the media completely fixated on the election, no one seems to care. Bush is hardly talked about anymore (with the exception of comparisons to McCain), and outrage at his presidency seems to be dwindling.

By Brendan Brown September 18, 2008

Righteous Kill retread

I have never seen a movie that adheres to the typical cop-movie formula as strictly as Righteous Kill does. Director Jon Avnet fails to build suspense and ends up producing an overdone story, drenched in lukewarm predictability. The plot, themes, and characters are simply too recognizable to be exciting.

By Elena Solli September 18, 2008

D.C.: Drab City

This past Sunday, New York Times photojournalist Bill Cunningham chronicled the close of Fashion Week with a study on the shoes about town. While hanging out on 5th Avenue taking pictures for his weekly “On the Street” feature, Mr. Cunningham ran across studded stilettos and snakeskin stacked heels paired with super-high hemlines. Three hundred miles south, I observed a very different scene in Columbia Heights.

By Katherine Norton September 18, 2008

Burn After Reading: very un-Dude

Who didn’t see this one coming? In their twenty-four years of screenwriting and directing, Joel and Ethan Coen have bounced between dark plunges into a killer’s abysmal psyche and zany tales of boneheaded crime schemes gone awry. After last year’s bloodthirsty adaptation, No Country for Old Men, the brothers’ oeuvre seemed ripe for a few giggles, and Burn After Reading presumes to deliver the goods.

By Traviss Cassidy September 18, 2008

Avedon: power and politics in portraiture

“Richard Avedon: Portraits of Power,” a comprehensive collection of 200 images of iconic figures of the past and present spanning five decades, presents interesting ideas about who qualifies as a political figure, and what constitutes a person in power.

By Colleen Kearns September 18, 2008

It’s GUSA time again

“Welcome to the world of politics,” Brett Nadrich (SFS `12) said.

Hoping to represent Village C West’s Y-Wing, Nadrich is one of 73 students running for the 36 Georgetown University Student Assembly Senate seats. The candidates began their campaigns on Tuesday with a flurry of flyers, posters, and Facebook groups.

By Molly Redden September 18, 2008

Bloomberg: economy in crisis

In the middle of a week that has seen stocks tumble precipitously, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg had the economy on his mind. Speaking to a packed Gaston Hall yesterday, he told the audience that the government is not addressing fundamental issues at the heart of the downturn.

By John Lawless September 18, 2008

Coming (kind of) soon: Bloomingdale’s

A three-story Bloomingdale’s department store will be opening at the Shops at Georgetown Park in August 2011, according to a Macy’s Inc. press release announced last week.

By Alisha Crovetto September 18, 2008

Townhouse Transformation

Georgetown University is turning the 1400 block of 36th street into a collection of Living and Learning communities called Magis Row. About 40 students attended an informational meeting about the new community on Tuesday.

By Will Sommer September 18, 2008

City on a Hill: D.C. and the Series of Tubes

After years of serving District residents with a truly subpar website, the Office of the Chief Technology Officer is nearing completion of an across-the-board overhall of the entire DC.gov portal. And while OCTO’s plans sound promising—the words “social networking” and “Web 2.0” came up a lot in an e-mail from OCTO’s spokesperson Annaya Smith, and her office seems to have gotten wind of a trendy little thing called Facebook—OCTO and the city need to proactively reach out to residents in order to make the new website the “virtual public square” OCTO wants it to be.

By Molly Redden September 18, 2008

Prof attempts Malaysian takeover

Malaysia has entered a period of political turmoil and transformation as Anwar Ibrahim, a former Georgetown professor, seeks to take control of the government. Ibrahim, who served as Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister of Malaysia in the 1990s, announced that he has secured the support of enough members of Parliament to remove the ruling National Coalition from power. If this transfer of support comes to fruition, Ibrahim will become the Prime Minister of Malaysia.

By Eric Pilch September 18, 2008

Features

The Murphy Code

It was a dark, rainy afternoon in Bamberg, Germany, but Fr. G. Ronald Murphy wasn’t about to let inclement weather thwart his quest. The Jesuit priest, a professor in Georgetown University’s German Department and scholar of medieval literature, was not looking for an obscure manuscript or a quiet refuge in which to spend his sabbatical. Rather, he was seeking the single object that has had the power to capture the imaginations of men and women for centuries, a relic which has inspired works of art ranging from the Arthurian legend and The Da Vinci Code to Indiana Jones and Monty Python. He was looking for the Holy Grail.

By Traviss Cassidy September 18, 2008

Law, order, and crappy coffee

As impassioned soliloquies ran through my head, my mother sought to bring me back to earth. She explained the mind-numbing boredom that accompanies jury duty of any duration. Worse, she explained that it is incredibly unlikely that I would ever be chosen for a jury because my father is a lawyer and I have an aunt and an uncle who are former members of the NYPD. No matter how reasoned her thinking, I dismissed everything mother dearest said, and began to prepare my remarks for the other members of the jury.

By Dan Newman September 11, 2008

How I almost became a saint

It was time for dinner with my parents, and I had something important to tell them.

“I’ve decided to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” I said. “The baptism will be on Saturday.”

By Traviss Cassidy September 11, 2008

The Dark Night: walking home alone

I hadn’t felt safe at night since the eighth grade, when I was taught to be afraid of the dark. The class was technically called self-defense, but it focused much more on fear than survival skills. Our co-ed gym class was divided for the month or so it took to teach us girls to cross the street, walk with our keys in hand, and not talk on the phone. Not to mention the Miss Congeniality-esque defense maneuvers that I would never, ever use. It became clear that the point of the class was to learn how to avoid dangerous situations, not to learn what to do if such a situation actually occured. It’s a valid point, and many of the pointers were useful for teenage girls growing up in a big city like Chicago. By the end of the unit, though, we were all convinced that we would get mugged if we took the El after dark, and God help us if we didn’t have a twenty in our wallets for the mugger.

By Allie Reiner September 11, 2008

A fan’s eye view of the first ever D.C. Cup

When Tropical Storm Hanna left the D.C. area this weekend, she did so in style. After a long, gray day filled with constant rain, the Sunday sky was blue and cloudless. There was nothing to impede the midday sun from lighting up Howard University’s Greene Stadium, where two of the area’s most storied schools met on the gridiron for the first time in history. The scenery, the history, and the blinding sun were so powerful that they threatened to obscure one of the day’s most important truths:

By Anthony Francavilla September 11, 2008

DC get’s a bowl game

At a press conference held yesterday, Mayor Adrian Fenty (D) and other D.C. officials announced the city’s newest sporting event: the EagleBank Bowl. The game is one of two new post-season college bowl games approved by the NCAA for 2008.

By Caroline Kuehn September 11, 2008

Roger’s back

When he bowed out to Novak Djokovic at the Australian Open, they attributed it to mononucleosis. When he lost to Rafael Nadal in three dismal sets at the French Open, they said he wasn’t the same anymore. When Nadal conquered him again on his own turf—the fabled lawns of Wimbledon—they said he was done. Washed up. A month ago, on the eve of the U.S. Open, Roger Federer relinquished his number one ranking to Nadal, and it looked as though the sun had set on his tennis empire.

By Walker Loetscher September 11, 2008

Sports Sermon: the EagleBank Bowl

In case you haven’t been paying attention to D.C. sports in the last few weeks, the hot topic in town is college football relevancy. This past weekend saw the first time in history that the District’s only two Division 1 programs, Howard and Georgetown, ever met on a football field. Yesterday morning, Mayor Adrian Fenty and a team of D.C. officials, including Councilmembers Jack Evans and Vincent Gray, officially announced the creation of the first ever college bowl game in the District: the EagleBank Bowl.

By Anthony Francavilla September 11, 2008