Poster courtesy of Filmdistrict

Safety Not Guaranteed (directed by Colin Trevorrow) is unique among Sundance entrants. First off, it is essentially a fantasy film. Second, it revolves around Aubrey Plaza (April in Parks and Recreation) not being a sarcastic youth…as much. Third, it takes place in Seattle instead of Brooklyn. Good ol’ Seattle: Brooklyn of the ’90s!

But all these things that make Safety stand out from the average Sundance pack are also what make it one of the most enjoyable films in this year’s roster. We see Darius (Plaza), a down-on-her-luck magazine intern treated to a work trip by her skeezy boss, Jeff (Jake M. Johnson). Jeff wants to write a profile on someone who took out a classified ad in a local newspaper looking for a companion to travel back in time (see poster). The ad advises that applicants “must bring [their] own weapons” because “safety not guaranteed”—hence the title. Darius is intrigued by the ad, and isn’t looking to make fun of whoever took it out. In a bout of investigative journalism, she becomes his perfect sidekick, and Kenneth (Mark Duplass)—the guy wants to travel back in time—may not be so batty after all.

Whereas these characters seem to be ones we’ve seen all over movies and TV before —the ironic hipster with no real emotion or loyalty; the sweaty, vest-wearing icky boss; the crazy guy with a crazier scheme—it only takes a few minutes to realize that Safety Not Guaranteed is filled with real three-dimensional people. Even the entirely unlikeable Jeff becomes sympathetic halfway through—he’s like if Brett Ratner was a human being.

Plaza’s performance (her first leading role) is a breath of fresh air. She’s great on Parks and Rec, and had small parts in movies like Mystery Team and Funny People (and can be seen in the first season of 30 Rock playing an NBC page!), but this is the first time that she really gets to show her full potential. She’s endearing, funny, slick, and sad—but not too sad. The movie has no major mopey moments (as many independent films these days do), but it is jam packed with emotion.

In the end, what makes Safety work is that as we see a group of cynics become enraptured with a weirdo’s plan to build a time machine, we are sucked in as well. Darius and Jeff present every logical argument that any audience member may bring up, but everyone is rooting for Kenneth to break the space time continuum by the end (or beginning? Dun dun dun!).

Safety Not Guaranteed is a unique low-budget sci-fi adventure with very little sci-fi. Aubrey Plaza’s slight break of type allows her to shine in a role that really could not be played by anyone else. It has a bit of action, lots of laughs, and even some awkward sexual encounters. A-

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Poster courtesy of IFC Films

The very first Sundance London Film Festival took place April 26-29. It showcased 14 movies shown at the flagship Sundance Festival in Utah back in January, combining screenings with concerts and talks from directors and industry insiders.

Sundance movies have a distinct style. They usually feature a mopey, attractive main character looking for himself/herself in some sort of quirky locale. Sure, many movies defy this stereotype (see: Pulp Fiction), but Josh Radnor’s Liberal Arts is a quintessential “Sundance” movie in almost every way—and it’s one of the better ones, at that.

The story revolves around Jesse Fischer (Josh Radnor—Ted in How I Met Your Mother—who also wrote and directed the movie), a Brooklyn-based college admissions counselor. He gets a chance to go back to his alma mater in Ohio (at a school that is all but blatantly called “Oberlin”) to attend his favorite professor’s (Richard Jenkins) retirement party. There, he realizes that he never grew out of college and gets a thing for a wily undergrad named Zibby (Elizabeth Olsen).

Sounds simple enough, right? But the beauty in Liberal Arts is how close to Radnor’s heart the story is. He’s not the best actor, and as he serves as the director there’s really no one to hone his emotions, but he has enough feeling, charm, and wit to carry the movie. He even makes the 16-year age gap between himself and Zibby seem not that creepy. There is, however, one dreadful montage of back-and-forth love letters. It starts being possibly ironic and funny, but quickly falls into cliché and almost painful. (It’s almost as disorienting as ZAC EFRON’s cameo. I could tell you what sort of character he plays…but that would ruin the fun.)

Liberal Arts’s main theme is the desire to never grow up. Professor Hoberg desperately wants to be un-retired, Jesse desperately wants to return to school, and yet Zibby wants to be mature—despite her love for a Twilight-esque book series called “Lunar Moon” (and its hinted sequel, “Solar Sun”). It certainly tugs at heartstrings, especially those of graduating seniors who cannot believe that college is already over and just want to stay.

Liberal Arts is a heartfelt comedy with a great cast and a plot to break down any current undergrad with a soul. It is cute without being schmaltzy (most of the time), and puts a new spin on the “attractive sad boy meets attractive sad girl” story. B+

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ROFLCon Panelist? NOPE. Chuck Testa. | Photo by Ashley Hansberry.

So it might be a surprise to note that overall, the conference tended to take itself a bit seriously. Some might say, too seriously.

For the uninitiated, ROFLCon was a two-day conference that celebrated, discussed and deconstructed Internet culture. It featured panels, demonstrations, and special guests–familiar faces of Internet superstars, (like this guy, this guy, and this lady) or the unfamiliar faces behind the familiar usernames of movers and shakers behind the web, like Ben Huh, Chris Poole and Alexis Ohanian.

Panels seemed to fall into three categories: there were those that approached light-hearted material in a light-hearted manner, those that approached light-hearted material in a serious manner, and those that approached serious material in a serious manner.

In the first category were panels like Drunk Vegan Black Metal Scanwich Chef and Super Art Fight–lively, delicious and hilarious demonstrations of cooking and competitive art, respectively. Neil Cicierega (the guy who made Potter Puppet Pals and other amazing viral nonsense) carried his solo panel by simply being his funny self. And Craig Allen, the creative mind behind the Old Spice Commercials was expectedly hilarious, and improved everyone’s day by Skyping in Isaiah Mustafa to answer our questions and while a cardboard cutout bikini-Leia stared us down in the background.

Hannah Hart and Vegan Black Metal Chef make magic happen. | Photo by Ashley Hansberry.

Panels like this brought to life the silliness and fun that the Internet truly can be. Drunk people trying to cook is funny, and so is a guy cooking vegan food to death metal by candlelight. Watching comic book artists drawing Rowlf the Dog slip into wild-eyed insanity, doubly so.

Less successful panels took the same silly concepts–memes, jokes and silly videos–and tried to discuss them in an academic or serious way. For instance, “The Distant Future, the Year 2000″ discussed old-school Internet classics like ZomboCom (a Kafkaesque Internet limbo nightmare characterized by an unending loading page, a bizarre welcome message and elevator music) Eric Conveys an Emotion and that dang Badger song. Somehow, the panel fell flat, despite having the owner of Zomboco and the eponymous Eric himself. Even Mr. Weebl, aka Jonti Picking–the most famous of the bunch, as he’s created new classics like Kenya–made an appearance. The goal of the panel was to discuss how Internet culture has changed, but this was better discussed in later panels. Still, hearing Mr. Weebl preform Kenya live was pretty worth the trip.

Saturday’s “Metameme” panel, designed to talk about the way a meme travels, mutates and morphs over time seemed to take itself too seriously as well. Lindsey Weber of Buzzfeed, Christopher Price of Tumblr and the two guys who made Shit Girls Say all tried to discuss the way recent memes have change over time. But everyone, audience and panelists alike, seemed to be having most fun when we were watching the videos and looking at pictures. So it would be at an Internet convention.

Too Big to Know, a panel that was basically about “reading the matrix” of larger sites (YouTube, Reddit and Imgur) might have met the same fate, but David Weinberger of Berkman Center for Internet and Society was an impressive moderator who kept the questions and the momentum of the conversation moving along.

That’s not to say that none of the serious or quasi-academic panels were successful. Saturday morning’s “Supercuts” panel brought together the creators of videos like this, this and this. The three panelists came to talk about their movies, but the conversation covered reality television, presidential politics, cinematic tropes, editing techniques, cinematic rhythm, and the very nature of humanity. It ended in the premiere of Duncan Robson’s supercut, Three Point Landing.

Later in the afternoon, Chris Poole (also known as moot, also known as the founder of the notorious and beloved 4chan) used his panel to discuss the trajectory of the Internet community as he knew it. He used the hour as an open discussion with the audience about what an Internet community could be in an age of Facebook, while members of the audience shared experiences from the good ol’ days of relay chat, message boards and Geocities.

Ben Huh, CEO of Cheezburger, got heckled by trolls. | Photo by Ashley Hansberry.

Not long after Poole, Ben Huh, CEO of Cheezburger Network, took the stage. He clearly intended to discuss intellectual property rights in the age of online creative remixes of images, music and video. But members of his audience had other plans, and Huh’s panel was interrupted. Cheezburger has long drawn criticism for its policy of adding its own watermark to all images posted on the site, particularly by users who feel that their content has been stolen. At least two of those users were very vocal and present, and both were asked to leave the room.

The end of the weekend culminated with one final panel, the topic of which was Internet freedom. Alexis Ohanian of Reddit, Tiff Cheng of Fight For The Future, Derek Slater of Google and Elizabeth Stark of Stanford discussed the task of “Defensing the Internet” against legislation like SOPA and PIPA. The panelists discussed the need for education and action on the part of voters looking to protect the Internet from heavy-handed intervention. There was more than one standing ovation during the course of the panel. Even Tron Guy, a Tea Party conservative, made an appearance.

It is hard to take too seriously a conference in which the phrase “Tron Guy made an appearance” carries gravitas. But ROFLCon deserved the seriousness some of the time. Because memes are fun, and so are pictures of cats, and so is getting free drinks at an after-party with the real-life  Scumbag Steve. But less fun is the threat of a Congress that knows nothing about the Internet passing legislation on the Internet.

This ROFLCon was the last, at least for a while: the creators have announced that ROFLCon III sounds like a good one on which to end. But ROFLCon IV is not out of the question down the line, and is certainly not something to rule out just yet. And who knows what ridiculous memes we might have by 2017?

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The typical term paper after 6 hours of work. | Screenshot by Allan Lasser

The deadlines that precede the end of the semster are rushing towards us at the speed of passenger trains. Unfortunately, there are many who haven’t finished—or started—their final papers. Maybe they’re a freshman still figuring out a work-flow, or maybe they’re a senior who just doesn’t give a damn. The train is coming fast; either brace for impact or get out of its way.

These deadlines don’t have be suicide. A little focus goes a long way and a concentrated effort can knock out a simple essay in just a few hours, regardless of length. But simply staring at a blank page can be intimidating enough, I know. I just knocked out my last term paper and thought I’d pass on some of the tips and tricks I learned during the process.

#1. Break it down

You got assigned a fifteen page paper on East Asian Democracy in the Globalized Hypersphere? That sucks. It might seem like there’s not enough material to fill one page, let alone the rest. Don’t worry, just break it down! Take that fifteen pager and break it down into three papers only five pages long, like the ones you used to write for high school English. Turn each argument into its own essay, then glue them together with transitions at the end. Then go drink.

#2. Print it out

It’s easy to get lost when working on a computer. The siren song of social media steals your focus and redirects it towards wall posts and retweets. It’s time to treat Facebook like the geeky kid who asked you to slow dance at the middle school formal: reject it! Slam down that laptop lid and escape from the screen—but not before first printing out your paper. Having space to think beyond a 13″ screen really helps. Cut up your paper, rearrange it, hang it on your wall; sometimes seeing it differently is enough to spark new ideas. Plus, that print quota isn’t going to spend itself.

#3. Mess up early

Before you start writing, just slam on your keyboard, filling a whole page with nonsense. Here, I’ll give you a head start:

lasefhpaweoinfaeiop fop[oqwjp asdhfo ;-r09u 90u093u o ur09wruiosdfj iosadj fiosj foishf oif8 wp9y83 as h98qy893q2t83 apwy 982y20[u09oiaj sdfoijas023 u9tuqois jd 20823 0u209u2lvn kL JDSIHEPW( 2t0u9 2q3pojpit9-]w iow htlkj o’sd

Don’t understand? Let me clue you in: nothing else you write will be anywhere near that bad. Once the pressure’s off, just start writing and don’t worry about perfection. That’s why editing exists, dummy.

#4. Submit that bitch

Here’s the situation: it’s an hour before deadline and you’ve only written a hundred words, with fourteen hundred left. I won’t sugar coat it: you’re screwed. There’s no way it’ll be good, and your professor will know you phoned it in big time. But don’t worry! It’s just a paper! There are bigger things to worry about: sharks, terrorism, pregnancy. This paper is just a drop in the bucket. So don’t stress out—do as best as you can, construct the frame for a cogent arguement, and hand it in. But really, try harder next time. College isn’t free, you know.

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Mothers and daughters were never so opposed as in this episode. Look at how different, and yet how similar, these two are. | Photo via AMC.

This week’s episode of Mad Men explored the relationships between parents and daughters and the inevitable conflicts that arise when the daughters grow up.  The episode was on point and right on time—it was time that Sally finally put on her big girl shoes, it was time we met Megan’s elusive parents, and it was definitely time Peggy and her mother finally had it out.

Sally had a stunning, albeit brief, Cinderella moment this episode. | Photo via AMC.

Sally Draper has undergone major character development in Mad Men‘s most recent seasons. As the child of the dysfunctional marriage of two extremely dysfunctional people, Sally was destined to have a difficult time growing up.

Sally has managed her circumstances admirably with the help of her wise therapist (who saw that her mother was the one who needed the most help), learning to prioritize her frustrations and define herself as an individual. Sally carries the coldness of her mother and the smooth manipulativeness of her father within her—she’s able to spin a situation or shut an enemy down at the drop of a hat (see how she stole five dollars from her grandfather and blamed it on the maid a few seasons back, or how she subtly blamed baby Gene’s toys for Pauline’s fall in this episode).

We’ve seen her growing exponentially over the course of this season, and in this episode we finally saw the “a-ha!” moment; Sally is now a young woman, not a little girl. As she glided into the room, graceful and confident in her adorable and completely 60′s-fabulous getup consisting of a glittery halter top, miniskirt, bouffant, eyeliner, and white go-go boots for her daddy’s big awards dinner, she was never more different than the innocent Sally of season one, with her cupcake dresses and pin curls. Of course, this was no fairy tale, and there was no time wasted between her time as a child and her new identity as a sexual object in the 1960′s. “Soon your daughter will spread her legs and fly away,” Megan’s father Emile said, in a line as biting and terribly funny as the show has ever had.

Sally’s Cinderella moment was, as predicted, sundered quickly and shockingly, when she unwittingly walks in on exactly the type of behavior that Emile sneeringly warned of. Sally returns silently to her chair and eats the fish that she refused as a child. She is a woman now, and does what is expected of her, even when it does not go down easily.

The Calvet family dynamic is, appropriately, devastatingly academic and very, very French. Despite the fact that they are Canadian, the Calvets are continental and fabulous in a way that no one else on Mad Men is. Marie enters the room dressed in head-to-toe magenta with a matching hat and chunky gold jewelry (a bold ensemble even today), then changes for dinner at home in a chic little black dress worthy of Audrey Hepburn. She falls asleep with a lit cigarette in her hand and her shoes on in a wine-induced haze. Her husband Emile is every inch an academic, with quirky little round black frames and tweedy plaids.

Marie and Emile Calvet’s marriage is crumbling and sarcastic, all romance and passion gone, and they take their frustrations out on one another using sex, alcohol, and money. Marie’s dress at the awards dinner (black with a low neckline, sheer netting, and a bold jeweled neck piece) is the height of style, but extremely risque for the time, signifying both her wealth and her reliance on her sexuality as a tool. The tension between Megan and her parents is clear throughout the episode, not only in dialogue (“You’ve changed,” her father tells her) but in apparel. When Marie is in pink, Megan is dressed in green, opposite each other on the color wheel. At the ball, Megan wears a gorgeous and modest coral, while Marie wears daring black. Megan is on her game the entire episode, showing that she is not only a gifted professional, but that she and Don make an excellent team. “Some things never change” is a brilliant tagline, and, not coincidentally, echo the themes of the episode perfectly—family tension will never change.  Her outfits often coordinate with Don and their apartment , but always clash with her parents. They don’t like that their daughter is gifted and happy at what she does, a fact which brings them all down.

Busy patterns clash in this tense relationship. | Photo via AMC.

Peggy’s life has reached a satisfying stability, both personally and professionally. As Abe and Peggy sit together in the office in subtly coordinating outfits (grey, high collars, slashes of red) we know that they are a good match—he likes her for who she is, and respects her role as a modern professional woman.

Joan smartly advises her that Abe may propose when he insists upon dinner at seven one night, and Peggy falls into an old-fashioned tizzy. She goes out and buys the most obviously feminine outfit in the world, a hot pink cupcake of a dress (take note, Pegs: pink is not your color) but, lo and behold, Abe’s request is much more modern than all that. Peggy hesitates, her traditional Catholic upbringing weighing on her, but accepts and is overjoyed when she gets Joan’s honest (and heart-warming) approval.

All is not well, though—Peggy decides to tell her mother, and it does not go smoothly. She dresses in her most traditional 50′s silhouette, but still clashes with her mother, their busy patterns fighting one another. Katherine Olsen is horrified by the news, taking away the delicate cheesecake she brought (“I’m not giving you a cake for living in sin!”) and suggests that Peggy should have let her live in ignorance. Projecting her own loneliness on her daughter, she says “You’re lonely? Get a cat. They live thirteen years, and then you get another one, and then you get another one, and then you’re done.” Of course this was not going to go well. Peggy needed to finally hear her mother’s disapproval after years of tacit silence. They needed to have it out. Peggy’s all grown up now, however, and her mother’s disapproval can’t change her mind now.

The ladies of Mad Men are all doing all right for themselves, forging their own personal and professional identities and celebrating their earned successes, but there is no success without some force pulling them back. In this episode, that force came in the forms of mothers and fathers. We saw hints of true sisterhood among them this week, real steps forward, but the creators of Mad Men know that there will always be a struggle for these women, some insurmountable test for them to defeat.

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Despite it pushing robots towards the ability to rebel, we humans really want robots to be able to talk. Our movies and cartoons are filled with talking robots, we have conversations with our cell phones, and artificial intelligence continues to be one of the fastest growing fields in computer science. People even talk online with programs like Cleverbot, an artificial intelligence chat robot that learns from previous conversations. Despite the fact that speaking is one of the most natural skills for people, programming those same skills into robots is quite the daunting task.

An illustration of the Turing test situation where the interrogator, C, must determine whether A or B is the human. | Image courtesy of Bilby via Wikimedia Commons.

The idea to test how well robots could speak intelligently has been around for much longer than robots have had any chance in passing such a test. In 1950, Alan Turing proposed the idea for what is now called the “Turing Test” for measuring the intelligence of machines. In his original example, a human would engage in a text-based conversation with a human and an intelligent machine. After some conversation, the participant then must determine which was the person and which was the machine. Put simply, to pass the Turing Test, some significant number of participants must be convinced that the machine was actually a human.

As early as 1966, a program called ELIZA already looked like it was near passing the Turing Test. In the most well known version of the conversation, the machine posed as a doctor and talked to people about their medical problems. By looking for keywords in sentences and regurgitating information in preformed patterns, ELIZA was a very successful early chatterbot. Chatterbots like ELIZA try to simulate human conversation, usually somewhat casual small talk, by using everything from keyword recognition to complicated algorithms. Today, chatterbots are incredibly successful. Cleverbot, for example, is very close to passing the test at a 59.3% success rate for the machine and a 63.3% success rate for the humans it’s compared to.

The problem with current talking robots, however, is they don’t really have much to say. The Turing Test effectively only measures a robots ability to mimic humans. Creating intelligent, reactive speech in a robot is much more difficult. Take this common Linguistics 101 example: “Time flies like an arrow.” You probably easily determined that this is a metaphor about the passage of time. Give a computer this sentence, however, and it might end up with the much more humorous interpretation that is revealed by “Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.” Speech generation is an equally hard problem. Most of the sentences a human might speak in any given day will never be repeated in that same form again. Spending a lifetime talking requires much more intelligence, creativity, and processing power than computers currently have.

This doesn’t mean that truly talking robots are impossible, but it will certainly be difficult. Thanks to the combined efforts of computer scientists, roboticists, linguists, and even psychologists, artificial speech capabilities are rapidly improving. As the Turing Test has shown for decades, robots are already very close to carrying on simple conversations just as well as people do. The fact that you can search for “talking robots” online and find many programs that are free to use, active projects is a testament not only to the human desire for talking robots, but also to the emerging importance of speech generation as a field of study. As talk bots become more realistic, be aware of who you are really talking to when you’re online. It might sound like silly advice now, but it’s likely to become a legitimate concern in the future as robots keep getting smarter (and more likely to rebel against us).

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The Red Sox are in a competitive league to try to bring another pennant to Fenway Park. | Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Although it’s still early in the season, MLB right now is, for lack of a better description, kind of crazy. Every team is having their moments of really stepping it up, and it’s making the league all the more competitive. It’s still early enough that no team has fallen too far behind, and the ones that are behind are trying as hard as they can not to stay there, giving better teams a run for their money in the process.

That being said, it makes the Red Sox look worse than they are. The AL East is an extremely competitive league. With the usually-shaky Orioles consistently hovering around the top, it can be said that there’s not a single bad team in the league. All five teams have winning percentages at .500 or higher. It seems as though people aren’t noticing that. That, and after a six-game win streak, the Sox are sporting similar records to other solid teams such as the Phillies and the Tigers. The Phillies are in a similar situation to the Sox. They’re sitting in fourth place in the NL East, with the top three teams having a winning percentage over .500.

A Bleacher Report article from Tuesday said the Red Sox were on the verge of their worst season in years. They made some good points about the fact the Jacoby Ellsbury is hurt, our bullpen might be the least consistent in the league, and we have no solid leadership. For one thing, they fail to mention that Cody Ross and Ryan Sweeney are finding a pretty good spot in the outfield and at the plate. But either way, they’ve condemned the Sox to fail far too early. There’s still time to get the team glued back together. Even when Andrew Bailey is expected to return, after the All-Star break in July, there’s still a good amount of baseball left to be played in the season. As for the leadership, it may take fans a while to warm up to Bobby Valentine, but once he really connects with the players, the wins will start coming.

The Red Sox are usually a team that cannot really be talked about until late in the season. They tend to have trouble finding their footing at the start of any season. What it really comes down to is if they can find it with enough time to find a spot in the playoffs.

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Maybe you were just lounging around, having way too much of a nice day. The sun was shining, your classes have just ended, and you managed to get a booth during lunch at the George Sherman Union.

Suddenly, you though “Dagnabbit, I’m in way too much of a good mood. I wish I could somehow fix this and be more miserable.”

Fear not, my friends, for this week’s episode of Glee will make you feel like you did in high school: depressed, confused, and really uncomfortable.

Overall Story

There’s no way to discuss this week’s themes without getting too depressing, so let’s just dive right into the individual story lines.

Thanks to popular demand, Puck has finally received another plot line! This time around, his story revolved around him, amidst singing popular rock songs, trying to uncomfortably seduce a teacher for his own ulterior motives! Wait, that sounds an awful like his lost story line that dropped completely off of the face of the Earth.

In this slightly modified version of this story, Puck needs to pass his European Geography in order to graduate high school. At first, he’s unmotivated because he’s Puck. Then he gets motivated because his dead-beat father comes around looking for money.

After hours of studying with the New Directions dudes, he fails the test.

On a brighter note, NYADA auditions have rolled into town for Kurt and Rachel. Rachel chooses to sing her go-to song “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” and Kurt initially elects to sing “Music of the Night.” That is until Whoopi Goldberg (really) gives him a staredown and he decides to rip off his pants and sing a completely different song. This impresses Whoopi.

Then Rachel tanks her song and ruins her chances at attending NYADA. I lied about that “on a brighter note” bit.

The final, and by far most impressionable, story is that of Coach Beiste and the New Directions girls. After Santana makes a domestic abuse crack about Coach Beiste’s shiner, Sue and “Black Sue” punish the girls by making them sing empowering songs. After the ladies’ performance of “Cell Block Tango,” Beiste storms out of the auditorium, revealing that she actually was the victim of domestic violence.

In response, Sue orders Beiste to get out of the house, live with her, and break away from Cooter (her husband). The girls serenade Beiste. Despite everything, it is revealed (through montage) that Beiste has taken Cooter back.

Just gives you that warm, fuzzy feeling.

We wish you the best, Coach Beiste. | Photo courtesy of FOX TV

How to Abuse a Character Respectfully

The “Character” section this week has been eschewed in favor of an educational tutorial intended to guide novice writers, both professional and amateur, on “How to Abuse a Character Respectfully.”

A strong writer has to be an absolute monster to his or her characters. They will be bruised, beaten, dumped, disabled, psychologically tortured, killed, and even intentionally be put in bad wardrobe. It comes with the territory of quality writing.

Being a literary sadist, however, is not the key to writing effectively. It’s about treating your characters and their stories with dignity, all while being a literary sadist.

Coach Beiste is the perfect example of when this is not handled well.

Her only major story line this season has been her relationship with Cooter. Over the course of three episodes, she meets the guy, gets dumped by the guy for Sue, and gets married to the guy. In season two, there’s an entire episode dedicated towards teaching the audience not to make fun of people for their appearances by making the audience laugh at Beiste’s appearance.

Then, after many months of story hiatus, the Glee writers haul Beiste back out to get emotionally and physical knocked around.

Giving a character nothing but fleeting and shallow story lines over the course of two years does not justify pulling her out of character purgatory to use her as a prop for another episode’s themed PSA.

If carried out effectively, the domestic abuse segment would not come off as rushed. Over the course of 17 other episodes, there has been nothing to indicate that this was going to happen. There has been no discussion of domestic abuse before, there has been little time dedicated to Beiste, and there has been no screen time given to her actual marriage before this episode. A topic as serious as domestic abuse should have been thought of long in advance. Glee’s quick turnaround with a Whitney Houston-themed episode shows how little advance planning there is.

Case and point, the Real Housewife of Atlanta has gotten more screen time this season than Coach Beiste has.

That being said, Dot Jones did a stellar job acting in a very difficult part.

Songs

“School’s Out” by Alice Cooper: Segueing from a student aggressively hitting on a teacher to an upbeat rock song is, and was, clunky and strange. Opening aside, the song was pretty decent. The non-challenging vocals were handled well by Puck, and the visual performance was moderately entertaining. That’s about all.

“Cell Block Tango” from Chicago: Watching “high school” students dance around in their underwear and quite visibly doing the “spread eagle” (I’m looking at you, Tina) is pretty darn awkward. The vocals were strong, but they were unfortunately not quite as powerful or nuanced as those in either the original Broadway version or the movie version. Tina’s voice acting was mediocre, as was the general performance.

“Not the Boy Next Door” from The Boy From Oz: “Then the underage boy ripped off his pants to reveal his gold, sparking, skin-tight trousers. Performing for an audience that included his teacher and brother, he proceeded to gyrate those hips like he’s never gyrated before” should NEVER accurately describe any high school performance. Ever. That being said, the vocals were impressive and well-suited for his voice.

“The Rain in Spain” from My Fair Lady: My Gleecap notes summarize this well enough (picture them in all caps): “What is going on? Where am I? Drugs? Are these what drugs feel like? This is like Schoolhouse Rock, but on crack. Who will buy this song? Help me. I’m in an alternate dimesion.”

“Shake It Out” by Florence + the Machine: This is, by far, the most impressive song of the episode. Both Santana and Tina’s voices carry the song beautifully, each carrying their own version of soul and sweetness. The Beiste montage was terrifying, yet touching.

“Cry” by Kelly Clarkson: The show needs to give up on the “Rachel Singing a Solo While Sobbing” bit. They’ve done it a thousand times and it’s the same story each time. Her voice is impressive, she makes a particular crying face, and there’s little variation.

One-Liners

“Sure I might not graduate, but gowns are for ladies and tassels are for strippers.” – Noah “Puck” Puckerman

“And yes, I have fantasized about slapping each and every one of you across the face with a sturdy, wet fish.” – Sue Sylvester

“You girls are cray cray. You were supposed to pick a song that gave women the self-esteem and courage to get the hell out of an abusive situation, but oh no, you pick a song about crazy women, in their panties, killing their men for chewing gum!” – Coach Roz Washington

Overall Score

Take the always-uncomfortable Puck story line, mix it with a wonky handling of domestic abuse and a bunch of mediocre songs and strange performances to get an ultimately disappointing episode. Credit is deserved, however, for “Shake It Out,” Dot Jones’ acting performance, and Rachel Berry’s hysterical opening facial expression montage.

“Choke:” C+

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BU has taken steps against sexual assault culture (like the Take Back the Night rally in March, above) but President Brown's letter represents a truly significant step on the part of the University. | Photo by Kara Korab.

With reporting and contributions by Allan Lasser.

Yesterday, the Boston University student body received a letter, via email, from President Robert A. Brown. Usually these letters contain tragic news; this time the campus had cause to celebrate. In his letter, Brown announced the establishment of a new student center, set to open at the start of the next semester. Brown wrote that the center will be “specifically dedicated to preventing sexual assault through training and outreach and to providing support to victims of sexual assault as well as other forms of abuse, such as hazing.” Additionally, incoming freshman will be “bystander educated,” taught how to care for dangerously drunk friends or strangers. The administration finally proposed a concrete solution to problems that have plagued campus all semester.

Campus news throughout the 2011-2012 school year was riddled with incidents of sexual assault, violent crime, and boys tied up naked in basements. Every month, at least once, students received a letter with some piece of bad news from President Brown, the most recent of which concerned the tragic murder of a graduate student. BU students have come to expect bad news, and many outside the campus community have noticed the worsening climate. Jezebel, a popular online tabloid, went so far as to accuse BU of having a “sexual assault problem,” claiming a complacent attitude and lack of commitment towards any solutions.

It is true that complacency of rape culture has existed at Boston University, and the administration had taken some steps to solve this problem. A task force was implemented to investigate the cases of sexual assault within the men’s hockey team. Students led a Take Back the Night rally on March 30, hoping to bring to light the seriousness of rape within our community. Although resources for victims of assault and abuse existed within the University, they were mostly implicit and unofficial, wrapped up within other student services.

This is precisely why President Brown’s announcement has relieved many students. By acknowledging the University’s unsatisfactory provision of crisis services, by finally appropriating significant funds to its remedy, and by officially educating students about rape culture, BU has taken a turn in the right direction. Even Jezebel commended Brown’s announcement, proclaiming, “Universities, take note: this is how you respond to rape culture on campus.”

Of course, there are still plenty of unaswered questions. When asked about plans, Colin Riley, BU’s Executive Director of Media Relations, explained that he couldn’t make any unfounded assumptions, since “the Center’s location and staffing are still undetermined. There are many questions yet to be resolved.” Riley stated that President Brown’s letter “speaks for itself”—the University is actively working to resolve the problem, but no plans are yet concrete. While the announcement is a big step in the right direction, it is important to remember that it was just that: an announcement, not a binding promise.

The University’s plans may change, and nobody knows what this center will actually contribute to campus. But hopes are high and celebration is deserved, since today it seems as if the darkest days on campus are behind us.

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On Saturday, April 28th, 2012 at approx. 6:35 p.m, an intruder assaulted a female student in Warren Towers. Photo via the Wikimedia Commons.

On Saturday evening, Warren Towers was full of police officers. Both uniformed and in plainclothes, security professionals from BUPD and the Boston Police Department were seen patrolling the halls of Warren Towers.  Some even questioned students, both in common areas and in the middle of the dining hall as they ate dinner. The atmosphere in the entire dorm facility was tense and uncertain. Why were they here? Why were there so many? Hours later, around 9:30 p.m., a BU News alert was issued to residents of Warren Towers that an intruder (male, 5’10, of Middle Eastern descent) had been caught in Warren Towers after inappropriately touching a female student at the 4th floor elevators of A Tower at approximately 6:35 p.m. No other information has been released yet. Evidently, the offender was not apprehended, as police officers were seen questioning students about him. The handling of the situation has left many students feeling at risk and under-informed.

Students are shocked and frightened by the news that an intruder was able to access Warren Towers and commit such a terrible offense, especially after a string of assaults and other crimes in the area of the school this year. As a university that prides itself on its security, it is shocking to see that such a breach occur unnoticed, and—for an inordinate amount of time—unreported on. Throughout the evening, students were anxious and unsure of what had happened—rumors of crimes of escalating heinousness were passed around for the three hours between the crime and the security alert. When the news finally broke, there was little relief to be had.

As a current resident of Warren Tower A, I am used to seeing police officers in and around the building. Security is tighter than any other dorm on campus, and on weekend evenings it’s not uncommon to see one or two police officers around to mitigate a dispute or handle an out-of-control student. Most of the time, seeing one or two blue uniforms makes me feel safe. I thought of Warren Towers as an impregnable fortress. Being surrounded by police officers, however, creates quite the opposite effect. It was obvious that the situation was a serious one, judging by the sheer amount of personnel on site, but it was impossible to know what had happened. Especially after waiting for hours in a sea of stony-faced uniformed officials for an explanation of the night’s events, Warren Towers did not feel like a safe place to be.

Even more curious about the situation is the fact that only residents of Warren Towers were alerted to the intrusion and assault. Many students in Warren Towers at any given time are not residents of Warren, and all students at BU deserve to be alerted when security is at risk. For many students, Saturday night and Sunday were full of rumors—a fact which led to vast misinformation and some harmful rumors being spread.

The fallout from the crime has been remarkable. While discretion on the part of the victim and delicacy in breaking the matter are paramount to handling the situation, I object to the manners in which the crime was investigated and the news was broken. Ideally, a horrifying incident like this one would be discreetly and promptly investigated, and then released quickly to those it affects (namely, all BU students). Instead, students were subjected to hours of uncertainty and tacit silence on the part of the numerous and obvious police officials, followed by a delayed and unclear alert that left students outraged and full of questions: how could an intruder access Warren Towers? How could one escape? Why were more students not alerted, and why did it take so long? Why was the investigation so indiscreet?

After a year marked by numerous crimes on or around the BU campus, including several sexual assaults,  it is more important than ever to consider safety and security at BU. Raising awareness of ways to stay safe (never walk alone at night, learn basic self-defense, have easy access to your cell phone at all times, etc. Read more safety tips here.) and employing them in one’s daily life are of great importance. It is of significant concern, however, that an assumed safe haven like Warren Towers was invaded despite its heavy security. It is equally alarming that the matter was handled with so little discretion or regard for the sense of security of the students. Now more than ever, students need to feel safe and be safe at BU.

Edit: The alert sent out by BUPD did not indicate that the offender was an intruder or a middle-aged man.

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HBO's Veep | Promotional photo courtesy of HBO

But cleverly positioned curse words aren’t all that Veep has to offer. Julia Louis-Dreyfus (do I even need to mention her past work?) returns to TV as Vice President of the United States Selina Meyer. Selina tries haphazardly to keep her office in order despite political squabbles, underlings with cutthroat ambition, and general incompetence. Alongside Selina is her trusty chief aide Gary (Arrested Development alum Tony Hale), chief of staff Amy (Anna Chlumsky), and press secretary Mike McClintock (Matt Walsh).

Veep, like its British predecessors does a fantastic job of humanizing characters with careers that often make them seem like robots. Dreyfus is as strong as ever, keeping her character sympathetic even when accidentally letting slip a wisecrack about one of her staffers being a “retard.” Dreyfus has a great charisma that adds a lot to her character. Iannucci’s fast-paced script certainly helps as well. He keeps the jokes flying by the viewer with no discernible attempts to circle what should be funny and what shouldn’t.

I’m looking forward to seeing how Veep fleshes out its characters in meaningful, personal ways. From the first episode alone, we know that Selina is a recently divorced mother of one and has already run for President and failed. Characterization flies by almost as fast as jokes on a comedy like this. This is the nature of premium cable programming, especially on HBO. Veep merits multiple viewings—there’s always something new to discover the second time around.

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Layering different weights of fabrics not only looks great, but gives warmth and versatility to an outfit. Photo courtesy of theonlyfashionprincess via chictopia.com

1. Layer Up!

Layering is never more important (or fun!) than during the transitional seasons. Donning multiple garments will serve as protection from the elements, but also allow for cooling off when a random heat wave comes through. Start with a simple foundation: a slip dress, jeans and a tee, or a simple blouse. Then add a warm layer with a sweater or scarf (they haven’t exhausted their use quite yet). Adding a light jacket further insulates the outfit without sacrificing style or versatility; the Quad recommends denim or utility jackets for a perfect amount of warmth and light weight. Accessorize with tights, jewelry, and some killer shoes, and hit the town.

2. On your feet

Deciding what shoes to wear is tricky when the weather is so unsure. Rain could hit at any time, but a sudden burst of warmth is equally likely. Now is the time to retire fuzzy and suede options (although suede is having a moment right now–reserve that skin for positively sunny days, or protect them with a waterproofing spray) and opt for more versatile fare. Don’t jump the gun, however, and spring right for sandals, since it’s still a bit too cold for them. This is a perfect time to get the last bit of use out of the booties and other closed-toe options available: oxfords, lace-up ankle boots, cool kicks, and pumps are just right this time of year, because they protect the foot from wetness while avoiding suffocating your legs in excessive warmth.

Layer springy pastels up to stay warm and seasonal. Photo courtesy of stefaniekuncman via chictopia.com

3. Indulge in spring colors

It might be too cold now to wear the springy sundresses that April and May evoke in memories, but that’s no reason to sacrifice seasonal fashion. Pastels like mint and lavender are incredibly hot right now, and many stores are stocking them in a variety of cuts and fabrics. Florals, another spring staple, are also quite versatile, and look just as good layered with warmer fabrics as they do with bare skin. Why not don a piece in a striking pastel and layer it up with a leather or utility jacket? Or pairing a floral sundress with a nubby sweater? Celebrating the season is not limited to those beautiful breezy days.

Ideal weather is hopefully right around the corner, but as long as nature continues to be fickle, following these tips for transitional dressing will preserve warmth and comfort while celebrating the season.

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