Archive

Burger out of Hell: Ray’s raises the stakes

My meal, the Soul Burger Number One, was a small skyscraper, consisting of two fluffy toasted Brioche buns, a large leaf of romaine lettuce, a thick slice of tomato, three slices of Applewood smoked bacon, grilled rings of red onions, a pile of Cognac and sherry sautéed mushrooms, a half melted slice of Swiss cheese and, sandwiched in between it all, a 10 ounce patty of hand trimmed, freshly ground, premium aged beef.

By Vivian Chen September 4, 2008

Critical Voices: Ra Ra Riot, “The Rhumb Line”

Ra Ra Riot is an enigmatic band. A mere six months after their formation, this Syracuse sextet worked their way to the stage of the CMJ Music Marathon and shortly thereafter played esteemed festivals like South by Southwest and the South Street Music Festival. The group’s defiance of the standard slow stagger towards acclaim is even more admirable when you take their genre into consideration. Ra Ra Riot’s indie pop niche is usually flooded with ambiguous, recycled material, but The Rhumb Line mixes the instrumental bounciness with the vocal serenity of a Belle and Sebastian ballad. The product can only be described as a tranquil yet danceable medley of sounds.

By James McGrory September 4, 2008

Critical Voices: Fujiya & Miyagi, “Lightbulbs”

The opening of Lightbulbs, the third LP from Brighton, UK, quartet Fujiya & Miyagi, is uncomfortably similar to the beginning of the band’s 2006 Transparent Things: singer and guitarist David Best chants, “Vanilla, strawberry, knickerbocker glory” much like he intones “Fujiya, Miyagi” in the song “Ankle Injuries,” as a drum beat replicates the earlier song’s bassline. “I saw the ghost of Lena Zavaroni,” Best whispers, like a harbinger of tragedy. (Zavaroni was a child star that died at 35 due to complications from anorexia.) The album only gets worse from there.

By Daniel Cook September 4, 2008

Sweet cuppin’ cakes

From an etymological perspective, a cupcake is a cake, but in a cup. A name as commonplace as cupcake, like any word said too many times, loses the emotional connection to its referent, and many have forgotten just how marvelous cupcakes can be.

By Michael Keller September 4, 2008

Mourning the demise of DIY fashion

It’s obvious that times have changed, but in past decades, people held on to vestiges of the do-it-yourself spirit. Groovy 70s gals routinely crocheted vests, and jeans of the 1980s were bathed in sinks full of bleach. No such trends exist today, though.

By Katherine Norton September 4, 2008

Muppets take over the International Gallery of Art

Jim Henson’s Fantastical World lies three levels below the unassuming dome of the Smithsonian’s International Gallery of Art. To enter the exhibit, you must walk past two or three dimly lit galleries and through a colored hall, its walls embossed with phrases like, “The only rule is that there are no rules.”

By Stephano Medina September 4, 2008

Fame, fashion, fads and fantasy: posters as portraits

College students know that posters have the power to transform a space, often choosing to adorn their walls with depictions of favorite bands or the obligatory “I Heart Beer” slogan. The National Portrait Gallery has caught onto this phenomenon with an exhibit entitled “Ballyhoo: Posters as Portraiture.”

By Scott Munro September 4, 2008

There are much better ways to go to College than this

There is something amazing about Deb Hagan’s late summer comedy, College: the fact that such an unoriginal theme was combined with a practically plagiarized story to produce a movie that has earned only a little over two and a half million dollars.

By Eliott Grover September 4, 2008

The lives of others

Podcasts of This American Life and other radio shows devoted to making real-life snippets into stories got me through my bus commute this summer. Call it voyeuristic, but I’m fascinated by the simple truths of other people’s lives. I love to hear a stranger laugh about night terrors that had him convinced there was a jackal in his bedroom, a woman talk about the time she tried to write a break-up song despite her lack of musical abilities (and got in touch with Phil Collins for pointers), a man explain how he unwittingly became a paid spokesman for California foster kids at the age of 17.

By Simone Popperl September 4, 2008

Page 13 Cartoons

McCain chose VP for style, not substance

More significantly, it seems that McCain doesn’t respect women for their qualifications but simply uses their gender for political advantage. Is this McCain’s way of telling us that he believes women can be easily manipulated for political gain instead of being respected for their own career accomplishments? McCain has shown us that he doesn’t respect women, and that he will go to desperate measures to get himself elected, an occurence that would put our country at risk.

By Sasha Wasserstrom September 4, 2008

Moscow: all grown up and out of vodka?

During our chats, I found that all but one of my workmates were married or engaged, two of them had children, and one was already happily divorced. The oldest of them was twenty-five. They spent their evenings in cooking dinners to feed their growing families, their Saturdays at the zoo in lieu of sleeping off a monumental clubbing night, and their salaries on the latest eco-summer camps and environmentally-friendly living instead of on live-in lovers and python handbags.

By Anastasia Stepanova September 4, 2008

Bullfights? “Não.” Espresso? “Sim!”

Walking up to the Moorish-style stadium in Lisbon, camera in hand, I was prepared to see a small drove of burlap-clad animal-rights activists banging on tambourines and chanting about respect for all living beings. What I did not expect to see was a group of average-looking citizens of all ages, standing respectfully behind barricades and police lines, holding signs reading, “Bullfighting is neither art nor culture.”

By Lynn Kirshbaum September 4, 2008

Features

Ward War: 9.09.08

On Saturday afternoon, Cary Silverman approached a Foggy Bottom rowhouse with three bright red Jack Evans campaign signs decorating the lawn. The 32-year-old attorney and challenger for Evans’ Ward 2 City Council seat paused when he saw them.

For the past 17 years, Jack Evans has represented Ward 2—which includes Burleith, Downtown, Dupont Circle, Foggy Bottom, Georgetown, Sheridan Kalorama, Logan Circle, Mount Vernon Square, Shaw, and West End—on the D.C. City Council. On Tuesday, he will be up for re-election for the fifth time. If Evans, the Council Vice Chair and Chair of the Finance Revenue Committee, wins and serves out his term, he will be the longest serving councilmember in the District’s history.

By Juliana Brint and Molly Redden September 4, 2008

Campus mourns Davis

Georgetown students and faculty held two services yesterday for Terrance Davis (COL ‘10), who went missing on Monday after a giant wave knocked him into the ocean in Harkerville, South Africa.

By Will Sommer September 4, 2008

New District website fights for student renters’ rights

For many students, the start of the school year includes the excitement of moving into off-campus housing. For the Department of Consumer Regulatory Affairs, it means just another year of going unnoticed. According to DCRA spokesperson Michael Rupert, each year his office kicks off a new campaign to encourage students who rent off-campus housing to make sure their homes are up to code, and each year, the response is lackluster. So last week, his office and the D.C. Fire Marshall tried something new: launching a “student-friendly” website, thisshouldbeillegal.com.

By Molly Redden September 4, 2008

GU profs bankroll Barack

Georgetown University employees donated the fourteenth largest amount of money to Obama for America, Inc., over the summer, based on a ranking of employee groups released by the Center for Responsive Politics.

By John Lawless September 4, 2008

City on a Hill: Cops, not Cameras

As the Metropolitan Police Department, Mayor Adrian Fenty (D), and the D.C. City Council consider another high-tech program for MPD–this time one that would put video cameras in police cars–they should think about whether they have begun to accept technology as a substitute for real police presence in D.C. communities.

By Molly Redden September 4, 2008

Riding on rays

Waiting for the Sun: The Solar Taxi, an experimental in sustainable transportation, rolled into D.C. this week. The brainchild of Raphael Chimes, the Solar Taxi runs on renewable rather than... Read more

By admin September 4, 2008

Hoyas ride a bounty of goals to Hollywood

This won’t be a relaxing three-day weekend for the members of the Georgetown men’s soccer team. With just a single day of school behind them, the team boarded a plane early this morning to participate in the Cal State Northridge Tournament in Los Angeles. The Hoyas will open up regular season play against their hosts—who knocked off the University of California 1-0 in an exhibition last week—before taking on Cal State Fullerton on Sunday and boarding the red eye back to D.C.

By Anthony Francavilla August 28, 2008

Sports Sermon: First Annual D.C. Cup

As a freshman in Harbin Hall who couldn’t see anything but the football field outside of my dorm room window, I would probably have been considered a shoe-in to attend the 2006/2007 season opener against Holy Cross. I didn’t—I slept in. For me, a football fan with familial claims to powerhouse programs like West Virginia and Tennessee, Holy Cross was just another name in our outdated fight song and Georgetown football barely even existed at all.

By Anthony Francavilla August 28, 2008

Field hockey rebuilds

Despite the fact that more than half the team is new to college, Georgetown field hockey has high hopes for the 2009 season. The squad welcomes eight freshmen to its ranks, as well as new head coach Tiffany Marsh and assistant coach Emily Beach. Both joined the team as interim coaches during the first week of August last season.

By Liz Kuebler August 28, 2008

Little big league

While Lebron James and Carmelo Anthony led fans in a chant of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” after Sunday’s gold medal game in Beijing, a far more unlikely group of heroes were treated to the same cheer half a world away. After flirting with elimination a day earlier in the semifinals of this year’s Little League World Series, the team of seventh-graders from Waipahu, Hawaii emerged triumphant in the title game, beating the opposing squad from Matamoros, Mexico, 12-3. Hours after China sent off the world’s athletes with an ambitious closing ceremony, the fans in Williamsport, Pennyslvania—most of them face-painted parents or sunburned little sisters—departed as well. There were no fireworks or lip-synching nine-year-olds, only tired dads loading poster-boards bearing messages of good luck and empty coolers into their RVs.

By Walker Loetscher August 28, 2008

Women’s volleyball looks to bounce back

The Georgetown volleyball team is anxious to improve after a disappointing, injury ridden 5-27 season last year.

By Nicole Bush August 28, 2008