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Leisure

Critical Voices: Vampire Weekend

Vampire Weekend began their career like most college bands: toiling away in the relative obscurity of bars around campus. Eventually, though, the indie press noticed their clever mixture of well-crafted melodic pop, African rhythms and New York rock sensibilities, prompting XL Recordings to sign them and put out their very good eponymous first album. Its youthful energy, more than its oft-touted world influence, makes it a compelling and involving listen.

By January 17, 2008

Leisure

She’s all that… jazz

Crandall hopes to introduce new music to her peers. “The two artists I admire most are Ellen Fitzgerald and Sara Vaughan,” she said. “Too often, I hear that jazz is for old people. I want to enlarge that age range. There are so many styles and ways you can approach [jazz] that I hope [people our age] will open up to it.”

By January 17, 2008

Leisure

2007’s best?

For me, the best album of 2007 was Animal Collective’s Strawberry Jam. Despite the critical gravitation toward frontrunners such as Radiohead’s In Rainbows and LCD Soundsystem’s Sound of Silver, Jam provided the most exciting batch of songs last year, effortlessly progressive in execution and more cohesive than the band’s earlier releases. I read the year-end, “best-of” lists like anyone else and compared my thoughts to other critics, but I’m a big boy—I can make my own opinions.

By January 17, 2008

Leisure

Patrician food at plebeian prices

If you find yourself forgetting how to use utensils because your diet consists entirely of finger-food favorites like bagels and pizza, you’re in luck. There are only three days left of D.C.’s Restaurant Week (extended at some places like Farrah Olivia), when the best restaurants in the city offer top-quality cuisine for a fixed price of $20.08 for lunch and $30.08 for dinner in honor of the new year.

By January 17, 2008

Leisure

Leave the “House,” ASAP

“House of Blue Leaves” wants to say something, and touches on a lot of grand themes—fame and media in society, the individual in our saturated world, the tension between dreams and reality. Unfortunately, it just ends up a mess, so nothing much comes through. One leaves feeling battered, rather than contemplative.

By January 17, 2008

Leisure

Not cool

It’s January. In January, wearing a sundress when the thermometer hits sixty degrees is the fashion equivalent of wetting your pants with excitement: overzealous, and (eventually) uncomfortably cold.

By January 17, 2008

Sports

The Sports Sermon

Last Saturday kicked off a season filled with traditions, as the 25-day countdown to Christmas began. Red and green are once again fashionable, and it’s now socially acceptable to listen to Christmas carols twenty-four-seven.

Many sports fans expected to enjoy another December tradition as they sat down to watch Saturday’s college football games. They presumed they would see top teams perform at the level of their rankings, but this expectation was turned completely upside down as the teams did just the opposite.

By December 6, 2007

Sports

Hoyas look to go 5 in a row

After dropping its season opener, the Georgetown women’s basketball team has reeled off four straight wins, the last a 67-57 come-from-behind victory over Towson. The start is the program’s best start in four years, but the Hoyas know too well that early season success does not necessarily translate into conference wins; last year, Georgetown won 10 of its first 14 games only to finish the season 13-15 overall and 3-13 against Big East opponents. This year’s team, which starts four upperclassmen, is looking to learn from the experience and carry its non-conference success into a Big East ledger that boasts five nationally ranked squads, including No. 2 Connecticut and No. 3 Rutgers.

By December 6, 2007

Sports

What Rocks

Jaleesa Butler, the 6’0” sophomore forward out of St. Louis, Missouri, decidedly increased in her productivity this year and earned her first double-double at Georgetown in a hard fought 67-57 win last Thursday over Towson. Butler’s 10 point, 12 rebound stat-sheet-filling performance came not long after a win over Gardner-Webb in which Butler notched 10 points and 9 rebounds, making each of her first five shots in the game’s opening nine minutes.

By December 6, 2007

Sports

Hoyas roll over Crimson Tide

The Georgetown Men’s Basketball Team (6-0) put the cupcakes aside on Wednesday night, traveling to Birmingham to take on the Crimson Tide of Alabama (4-3) in the Pizza Hut Big East/SEC Invitational. The Hoyas were uncomfortable at times against an equally athletic opponent, but by the time the final buzzer sounded, the Tide had gone the way of Georgetown’s lesser early-season opponents to the tune of a 70-60 Hoya victory.

By December 6, 2007

Sports

FAST BREAK

Closing the gap from last year’s 100-point loss, the Georgetown men’s swim team fell to Villanova by a score of 140-100 last Saturday. Although the men won only four of the 13 events, several individual performances caught Head Coach Steven Cartwright’s eye. Despite their winless record, Cartwright is convinced that the team is not in a slump.

By December 6, 2007

Sports

Rookie Watch

With the NBA season in full swing, it’s not too early to judge how well last year’s college stars are doing in the big league. This discussion would probably begin with Ohio State’s Greg Oden, the number one draft pick, if he were healthy. However, the Portland Trail Blazers’ new big man found out shortly before the season started that he needed micro-fracture surgery on his knee, and he won’t be ready until next year.

By December 6, 2007

Features

Top Ten Movies and Albums of 2007

TOP TEN MOVIES 10. American Gangster Based on the life of Manhattan drug lord Frank Lucas, American Gangster is a memorable entry into the gangster film canon. Starring Denzel Washington... Read more

By the December 6, 2007

Editorials

It takes more than two to study

Pity the members of Professor Jennifer Swift’s organic chemistry class.

By the December 6, 2007

Editorials

Student rights a primary issue

Home is where the vote is.

By the December 6, 2007

Editorials

Scholarship deal fit for a prince

Georgetown’s School of Continuing Studies recently signed an agreement with Prince George’s Community College which will allow qualified Prince George’s graduates to enroll in Georgetown’s Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies Program.

By the December 6, 2007

Voices

What we have here is a failure to communicate

“You just don’t have a soul.”

It hurt when she said it, but I understood why my best friend was so upset. Braving arctic January winds, we had hiked a mile from Chicago’s downtown Loop to the only theater in the entire metropolitan area that was still showing Pride & Prejudice. She had spent two months threatening, begging and bribing me to see it, and I had caved. Now we were about to board a Green Line train at 10:30 p.m.—essentially asking to be robbed—all because she had been sure that this movie would finally make me a chick-flick lover.

By December 6, 2007

Voices

This Georgetown Life: Happy Holidays from the Family

This Georgetown Life is a collection of stories written by Georgetown students all based on the same theme. [Cue trendy jazz music.]

By the December 6, 2007

Leisure

Decaying Photos

Christopher Myers’ “Standing on Two Eyes” is a refreshing departure from the modern-day overkill of digital photography, confronting the unrest of urban gentrification with a collection of hauntingly beautiful and nostalgic black and white giclee (a type of fine-art ink-jet) prints.

By December 6, 2007

Leisure

El Pollo Rico: a taste of Peru

Some restaurants do everything decently, others do a few things well and a small number do one thing spectacularly. Just as Ben’s Chili Bowl is all about the chili, El Pollo Rico earns its customers by serving delicious chicken.

By December 6, 2007

Leisure

Performing LGBTQ Awareness

In the wake of the two hate crimes against LGBTQ students that occurred at Georgetown earlier this year, Nomadic Theater’s Square Pegs Productions will present a staged reading of Moises Kaufman’s The Laramie Project tonight.

By December 6, 2007

Voices

Carrying on: A light in the dark of Darfur

Underneath the Christmas star that seems, in the dark, to float on the Healy building, a small group of students gathered for a candlelit vigil last night. They were members of STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition, marking the end of a day of fasting to raise money for refugees displaced by the genocide in Darfur. Far be it from me to inflict a journalistic cliché on you, but as the group worked together to light their candles in the freezing cold while other students shuffled numbly by through the slush, there seemed to be a bit of metaphor in the air. Not a million points of light, but enough.

By December 6, 2007

Leisure

Golden God?

The Golden Compass, which comes out nationwide on Friday, has all the ingredients of a standard big-budget fantasy epic. Complex fantastical universe, surprisingly like our own—check. Talking animals—check (several times over). Ian McKellen and/or Christopher Lee—check and check! Shadowy, evil villain bent on controlling the entire magical world—check.

And that’s where things get complicated.

By December 6, 2007

Page 13 Cartoons

UN needs effective adaptation policy

As representatives from over 180 countries, intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations and the media fly to Bali, Indonesia for the thirteenth United Nations Climate Change Conference, they prepare for two weeks of what has been perceived as “make-or-break” negotiations on the future of international climate change policy.

By December 6, 2007

Leisure

Critical Voices: Ghostface Killah

Ghostface Killah’s third release in two years, The Big Doe Rehab, proves that he’s quite the prolific rapper, but does little to silence the cries of inconsistency that have plagued him since his breakthrough Supreme Clientele. With its lack of innovation and absence of any true standout tracks, The Big Doe Rehab doesn’t live up to its colossal expectations as the follow-up to 2006’s excellent Fishscale.

By December 6, 2007