Archive

  • By Month

All posts

News

Saxa Politica: Sexy, not Dowd-y

I’ll admit that, upon first hearing about GUSA President Pat Dowd’s (SFS ‘09) ambitious $40,000 Summer Fellows program, which would give 20 students free summer housing so that they could pursue unpaid internships that would be otherwise unavailable, I was skeptical. Given the interminable amount of time it takes most collaborative initiatives at Georgetown to get off the ground—former GUSA President Ben Shaw (COL ‘08) spent almost a year trying to get free newspapers on campus—the apparent ease with which Dowd and Vice President James Kelly (COL ‘09) were approved for funding (on April 14) and released a GUSA Summer Fellows application (April 15) was both surprising and commendable. The feat, however, would have been impossible without the cooperation of the GUSA Senate.

By April 24, 2008

Page 13 Cartoons

Play honest, not nice

It would be much more helpful for all of us if our papers left those classrooms in shards. Instead, it seems like the barrier to raising your hand is having some point of praise to help the criticism go down easier. At twenty-one, I’d rather leave this Mary Poppins treatment behind; in a writing class for upperclassmen, criticism is neither rude nor unnecessary. Even good writers sweat out bad pieces, and I hope they’d like to know it when they do. The decision we make everyday in those classrooms is to value politeness over honesty, and it leaves us victims as much as perpetrators.

By April 24, 2008

Leisure

Georgetown students making art: Senior Studio Art Majors Group Exhibition

Looking for an art exhibit to check out during study days? Art lovers and the broke alike should find just what they’re looking for in the Class of 2008 Senior Studio Art Majors’ Group Exhibition held in Gallery 101 in Walsh. From drawings and paintings to photography and pop art, there’s something for everyone, as the styles, perspectives, and forms are more diverse than Georgetown itself.

By April 24, 2008

News

Epicurean opens, finally

Worth the wait? Epicurean & Co. Restaurant officially opened its doors to the public yesterday, serving free food throughout the day. From 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., Epicurean, which has... Read more

By April 24, 2008

Voices

Collecting homes in Cairo

In the last nine months, I have shuttled between Cairo, Dublin, Vienna, and Haifa. I’ve climbed Mt. Sinai, danced in an Irish ceilidh, been force-fed schnitzel by my Austrian family, played billiards with Bedouins in Jordan, and wandered through Jerusalem at night.

I haven’t been back to Portland, but somehow home has found me anyway.

By April 24, 2008

Leisure

Drinking the Derby

The Triple Crown is considered one of the greatest sporting events on earth. Man and beast labor as one, sweating and straining to reach the finish line; everyone else hangs out at the bar, showing off their large hats and signet rings. Ponies and potent potables have always gone hand in hand, and though this weekend’s Busch-soaked festivities at Foxfields may give the casual observer the impression that horse-racing aficionados are nothing more than meatheads marauding in madras, the average adult libation at a racetrack is as refreshingly spirited as the fillies galloping around it.

By April 24, 2008

Voices

Primaries a primary lesson

As our plates steadily emptied of their honey-baked ham and sweet potato pudding last Christmas, I suddenly realized my family had nearly exhausted our usual yuletide conversation topics (including plans for escaping the grimy winter months ahead through trips to Pennsylvania’s version of the Riviera—Florida) and was headed directly for that reliably disastrous discussion topic: politics.

By April 24, 2008

Leisure

Fountains, belly dancers, and finger food, oh my!

Whether it’s a drive-in, a draft house, or a serenading mariachi band, the elusive combination of food and entertainment is dying out. Dupont Circle haunt Marrakesh, though, masters the art of bringing entertainment straight to the dinner table by pairing hypnotizing belly dancers with delectable Moroccan cuisine.

By April 24, 2008

Leisure

Just forget it, Sarah Marshall. Superbad was funnier.

Producer Judd Apatow has created a perverse (yet strangely endearing) Holy Trinity of contemporary comedy in the last few years: The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Superbad. And this machine just keeps spitting out more, with Drillbit Taylor and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story as the most recent (and worst performing) of the bunch. His latest film, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, has its charms, and certainly tries to engage in an honest examination of relationships, like the best of Apatow’s films. But unlike, say, Knocked Up, the laughs feel cheap, and so does its exploitation of the audience’s emotions.

By April 24, 2008

Leisure

High Times with Mr. Doug Benson

There is exactly one difference between comedian Doug Benson’s documentary Super High Me and Morgan Spurlock’s much lauded Super Size Me: marijuana. Benson, who was dubbed “Stoner of the Year” by High Times Magazine in 2006, uses himself as a guinea pig to examine the physical and mental effects of smoking pot non-stop for thirty days. The end result is both an entertaining parody of Super Size Me by a stoned comedian, and a meaningful documentary, thanks to the well-focused effort of the production crew as they confront many of the societal issues regarding marijuana.

By April 24, 2008

Leisure

Arty Dreamy Movies

If you’re looking for a dose of cinematic pretension (we all get that itch sometimes), Andrea Simon’s 1989 short film, The Happiness of Still Life, will take care of all your needs. The movie, which is running in the National Gallery’s Spring Film Program in 16 mm format, is a study of Austria’s Biedermeier culture of the mid 1800s—a lapse into middle class ecstasy characterized by pretty furniture and domestic bliss. While the film itself isn’t necessarily pretentious, if you leave the theater thinking you completely understood it, you probably are.

By April 24, 2008

Voices

This Georgetown Life: Crazy little thing called summer love

Elektra always wore a sailor hat on top of her short auburn hair that swayed when she drove home a contention in a debate. She was a year older than me and the hottest thing at debate camp in Cameron, Oklahoma. Best of all, she wanted me. Bad.

By the April 24, 2008

Leisure

T-Pain, on Top of the Game

Faheem Najm—sound familiar? If not, perhaps you know him better by his stage name, T-Pain. Despite being married with two children, his songs about hitting on bartenders and buying women drinks have propelled him to stardom in a pop/R&B field flooded with younger, more visible talents.

By April 24, 2008

Crosswords

Crossword Answers

By April 24, 2008

Corrections

Corrections: GUSA and SAC Clash over Club Fund

“GUSA and SAC Clash over Club Fund” (April 24) contained several inaccuracies. The Voice sincerely regrets these errors.

By April 24, 2008

News

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: Armed male sexually assaults student in LXR Saturday

A female Georgetown student was sexually assaulted Saturday morning in LXR by an armed black male, according to an announcement from Georgetown’s Department of Public Safety.

By April 24, 2008

Leisure

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: Critical Voices: Wolf Parade

The group’s sophomore release, now available in a store near you, delivers in full (and then some) with a set of longer, stockier songs that rival, if not best, their debut.

By April 24, 2008

Leisure

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: The Voice chats up Islands’ Nick Thorburn

The Voice caught up with Thorburn at the onset of his summer 2008 tour to talk about tendinitis, the occult, and why people think he’s an asshole. (And in case you didn’t know, the Unicorns are dead.)

By April 24, 2008

Leisure

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: The next Fugazi takes Tenleytown

The free event takes place at the highest natural point in the District and features a panoply of local talent.

By April 24, 2008

Leisure

Newseum: where the news comes to die

Pennsylvania Avenue’s towering new monument to journalism, the Newseum, opened last week with a six-story glass and steel atrium, a Wolfgang Puck restaurant, an interactive newsroom, a 4-D theater, an apartment complex, two operating broadcast studios and over 15 galleries.

If that sounds expensive, it was: total costs for the new museum are estimated at $450 million. Paid for by major donations from Bloomberg LP, the New York Times Company, News Corp, Comcast, Time Warner, ABC, NBC and others, the Newseum claims in its promotional material to have two major goals: to educate the public about the importance of the First Amendment, and to help “the media and the public gain a better understanding of each other.”

And if a museum of the media, by the media and for public relations purposes sounds a little fishy, it is.

By April 17, 2008

Leisure

Cabaret: what good is sitting alone in your room?

Before the audience of Mask and Bauble’s spring musical, Cabaret, is ushered to its seats, it is afforded a brief glimpse into a dimly lit dressing room. The room, populated by ladies in bustiers and hotpants and men in lipstick, is just a tantalizing taste of the raucous, racy experience ahead. While not without its serious plot points, the show is worth seeing for the erotic musical numbers alone, which almost make the storyline incidental.

By April 17, 2008

Leisure

Smart People, stupid movie

Smart People really should have been called “Arrogant and Socially Inept People”—all of the characters have chips on their shoulders proportionate to the sizes of their IQs. Characters in a film like this one should fall into one of two types: either delightfully dysfunctional (see: Little Miss Sunshine) or delightfully malicious (see: The Squid and the Whale). The problem with Smart People is that writer Mark Poirier (COL ’91) can’t seem to decide which type he wants his characters to be, so their constantly bizzare behavior comes off as disingenuous. And because its characters are at the heart of the film, Smart People falls flat.

By April 17, 2008

Leisure

Popped Culture: I can has meme?

I absolutely love lolcats.

My brother once told me that they are the worst thing ever to befall the internet, and our disputes on the subject have done almost as much damage to our relationship as the time I broke his K’NEX tower when he was 8.

Lolcats, for the unfamiliar, are an internet phenomenon that consists of pictures of cats with captions in a big ugly font, posted on icanhascheezburger.com.

By April 17, 2008

Voices

A Papal visit without pontification

On the first day—well, Tuesday—the Pope crossed the Atlantic, and he saw that it was good.

By April 17, 2008

Voices

It’s the end of the world and we know it, and I feel fine

I recently read a New York Times article about a new particle accelerator in Switzerland. Articles in the Science section don’t normally fill me with a sense of foreboding and doom, but this one succeeded where others failed. With the accelerator, scientists hope to recreate the “Big Bang” on a small scale in order to explain the origins of the universe. It seemed alright until I got to the paragraph which said that two men “think the giant particle accelerator that will begin smashing protons together outside Geneva this summer might produce a black hole or something else that will spell the end of the Earth—and maybe the universe.”

By April 17, 2008