The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/arts_column/page/2/)
There will be two kinds of crazy on display at Slope Day. The headlining act, absurd though it may be, follows a much-trammeled (and much-bemoaned) storyline: Girl is Hot, Girl Gets More Girls, Girls Gets Record Deal. And then there’s Asher Roth.
Bonjour!
I have taken seven years of French. I can order a crepe and a glass of red wine. Additionally, I have ordered a Jesus steak, but we will get to that later.
At any rate, my French is super crap, seriously mediocre. Regardless, I have ventured to France with poor friend A in tow, in order to eat many crepes and drink many glasses of red wine. I was a bit afraid to enter the nation of macaroons and bald soccer (futball) players, not to mention that weird skunk guy on Les Loony Tunes, but I went ahead, bravely going where many tres stupide American etudiantes have gone before.
1. Crepes are awesome.
2. Wine is better.
3. Let me tell you our tale.
I have been waiting a long time to delve into the Spring 2009 Ready-to-Wear lines and to bring you the best and boldest looks and trends. The fashion world’s timeline is very confusing: These designs were dreamt of last spring, debuted and manufactured in the fall and finally shipped to stores for you to buy this season. So when I say waiting, I mean a long time. But sporadic Ithaca weather be damned: It’s April, and it’s time for spring.
My friends, I have done a bad thing. A super-confidential secret music source sent me the tracks from the new Akron/Family album, set to be released May 5, 2009, and I couldn’t help it — I listened. Forgive me Father, etc., etc.
Now that I have confessed, allow me to offer you some friendly advice. On May 5th, buy this album. Put in on your imagination pod. Play it over and over. You will like it (or I’ll know why). If at first you don’t succeed (in liking it, that is) try, try again.
Therapy. There are oh so many reasons why I’m heading your way.
When I was six, my father came into my new bedroom to tuck me in. I had just moved from sharing a room with my brother to my own room after my sister vacated it to take over the playroom. After he put me under the covers, he went over to the drapes and let them down. “What do you do that for?” I asked.
“Well, darling daughter number two,” he responded. “We pull down the shades so the robber outside can’t see your daddy standing here with a gun.”
“Do you have a gun?”
“Nope. Night night.” He turned off the lights and I stared at the dark ceiling in a cold sweat for the next 10 years.
“I Hate this Part”
I’ve heard a lot of hootin’ and hollerin’ about students’ displeasure with the choice to have The Pussycat Dolls as our main act for Slope Day. To all you haters, I say: shut it. If there were a mandatory course for complaining and griping at Cornell, I am quite sure it would have a higher mean grade than any COMM course (that’s saying a lot). Slope Day acts cannot please everyone, which only gives the upset more incentive to get blackout drunk, have the time of their lives and then not remember it the next day — just like everyone else. Win–win.
“Loosen Up my Buttons”
If there’s any figure more romantic than the artist, it’s the rebel. Just take dorm room posters — as cool as your Jim Morrison picture might be, my Che Guevara will always be cooler. But combine the two, and you’ve got a beast.
I will attempt to write this column without sounding whiny, hostile or patronizing, but I can’t make any guarantees: It has become painfully obvious to me that our generation’s sense of social decorum is sorely lacking, particularly as it pertains to our behavior in the library, and that someone needs to address it.
My final review is on Slope Day. This is a sad, dictatorial, anti-alcoholic, anti-joy allegory for the way that architecture isolates itself from the larger University. Rand is an island on the Arts Quad, into which no one ever enters or leaves. The AAP administration’s decision to completely ignore Slope Day — which is the joyous celebration of spring that the other colleges readily indulge in — is a perfect example of how architecture chooses over and over again to isolate itself. And let me take that one scale up: it is also a metaphor for the way American architecture has completely retreated into an ivory tower and academia. In this ivory tower, there are no T.I. songs and 30 racks of Keystone.
With spring break less than a week away, the most overheard phrase on campus is no longer “That’s what she said” but “Where are you going?” Most have had their plans booked for weeks, if not months, but there still remain stragglers uncertain of where they will be. To those few I say, “Dare to be different.”
The majority of spring breakers intend to travel somewhere that is the complete opposite of Ithaca: warm, sunny, not suicide-inducing and stress-free. For those of you who would prefer to do something a little less cliché, and with fewer meaty, drunk, American fratboys, I offer you the following, more unusual options: