Empty Bookshelf Reviews

The academy awards nominations came out this morning. And for some reason I decided that I don’t really care this year. It’s weird because I don’t know why. In fact, I wrote most of this review on Sunday, before they were even announced. I’ve become jaded to the whole celebrity scene this year, and I’ve stopped seeing this show as an affirmation that the movies that I enjoyed over the past year are good, and more as a means of keeping up the guise of celebrity importance. (review of the near future: celebrity feuds)

Maybe it was seeing people argue about which movies deserved which awards the way I used to, and thinking, “Wow, do these guys see how completely stupid they look, rooting for something that they think they have partial ownership in, just because they kinda liked it? Did I look that stupid, phony, and in over my head when I was complaining about how undervalued “The Man who Wasn’t There� was, or how that ridiculous “THEY MAKE THE RAIN AND SAY IT’S RAINING!!!� rant from Cold Mountain won good ole squinty-eyed Renee Zellweger her academy award? Well, chances are I did for the last one, because I totally used to do an impression of that was intentionally unintentionally hi-larious, and which has since failed the test of time, seeing as how nobody even remembers the movie a mere two years later. This also goes to show the unimportance of these awards, because I highly doubt that all the people that argue about these sort of things could even tell me without looking it up, who hosted the 2001 awards (held in 2002), let alone who won best actor and actress. Whoopi Goldberg hosted by the by, and I don’t even think I could tell you what movie won best picture ( Chicago maybe?) let alone the acting awards. The only reason I remember Whoopi is because my friends and I were watching in a TV lounge filled with people who actually thought she was funny. We couldn’t take it and ended up leaving in a huff. That’s beside the point.

All this is not to say that I’m not going to look and see who’s nominated or who wins. I’ll probably even watch the show. But at this moment, writing this review, do I think it’s worth having an Oscar "party" or doing an awards pool (in which I have participated numerous times)? Not really. Do I find that a little disheartening? Of course I do. Three years ago at this time, I was in the center of celebrity culture. I was in the bleachers for the Screen Actor’s Guild red carpet. I stood by the limo security checkpoint at the Golden Globes to get a glimpse of anybody relatively famous. I can’t say for sure if I would do it again. Maybe just to say I did it. Then again, I never really got “star-struck� to begin with. Most of the pictures I took of people were either for bragging rights, or because I knew friends might want them. But still, even the following year I went in on an Oscar pool.

What’s my point in all this? I’m not quite sure. All I know is that at this specific minute of this specific day, I’m thinking to myself “Don’t we have enough other things to be interested in or worry about than awards for millionaires (I know that the tech award winners are mostly non-millionaires, and the people who make the shorts and documentaries are probably even less well-off) we’ve never met and mostly think they’re better than us anyway?� I suppose you could argue the same of sports, but to me the difference is that football and baseball are designed to be competitions, and film isn’t, or at least shouldn’t. Why should it matter to us if a movie we like wins an award? Shouldn’t liking it be enough? Maybe it’s the validation that comes with being behind something that is regarded by professionals to be the best. Maybe it’s the ability to say to our friends “I totally knew Marcia Gay Harden was gonna win for Pollack, even though I’ve never even heard of the movie because it sounds boring and was only playing in 8 cities�, thereby coming off as knowledgeable, even though you just got lucky or read a newspaper article. Maybe it’s just that feeling that you know a lot about a subject, even if you really don’t, but just know a little bit more than your friends. Besides, ten years from now, "Saving Private Ryan" will be remembered even though it lost to the completely forgettable "Shakespeare in Love", which was lauded by the pretentious set.

This pretentiousness is something that the Oscars and other awards do spur on, and I guess this is where my whole complaint starts. Soon enough, the debates will rage over which arthouse movie that nobody was able to see was more overrated, which one deserves more attention etc. And all these people will be arguing over the fact that we love a movie that we haven’t even seen, just because of the talent attached to it. And that “you’re� (the royal “you�) stupid and less important because you’ve never even heard of it. And that’s just wrong. I really don’t want to do that again. (Update: I was flipping through the morning shows today to see if anyone was talking about the noms, just to prove my case, and the new FOX morning show had on their two Oscar Experts... two women who looked to be a mere few years older than I am. Of course there were raving about how great Helen Mirren was in "The Queen"... and to make matters worse, the audience erupted in applause. Now, you have to be sure that in this situation, maybe 25 percent of the audience at most has seen this movie, and the rest are either being egged on by the stage manager/audience warm-up guy, or just don't want to seem like they don't know anything about anything. Strangely enough, I'm looking at the box-office tallies for this weekend, and "The Queen" is actually playing in more theaters than "Children of Men", "Alpha Dog", and "The Good Shepherd".)

And maybe I'm upset that somehow I've grown to see something that I used to see as the Holy Grail of Film-making achievement now as a way to sell movies that otherwise wouldn't have an audience. I mean, would anyone have gone to see "The Last King of Scotland" otherwise? It's all part of the self-promoting hype machine, and I don't know if I'm still down with that. Maybe in a case like this, yes, but that silly red carpet image stuff always seems to undermine the gravitas of the "talent-based" awards.

As for the specific nominations themselves, they seem generally fine across the board, as far as the movies that I've gone to see, and those are really all that I can discuss.






The 2006-07 Academy Awards Nominations get two stars for being a way to generally promote smaller, higher-quality movies. As far as awards competition goes, I'm not really a fan of how devisive it makes people, including myself, about movies we like, versus ones we aren't planning on seeing, but dislike just for the sake of it . As far as this year's specific award nominees go, I've got no major complaints, other than the lack of "Children of Men", but I can live without it, knowing how the voting process, and awards campaigning go. Oh... and the fact that THREE freakin songs from Dreamgirls are nominated.... now that's something genuine to dislike... but still, does it really matter?

It's not often that colleges get called out negatively on TV. Usually, writers namedrop the college they attended in passing: "These guys were frat brothers of mine from my time at Northwestern" (a sort of quote from an episode of Andy Richter Controls the Universe); it's not really an endorsement, but it is a type of plug, I guess the screenplayer writer's to hanging one's diploma on the wall at work. Anyway, aside from some Simpsons jokes making fun of Yale (because there was a time when many of the Simpsons writers had come from Harvard), college namedrops are neutral at worst.

But, when watching tonight's episode of "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip", the following dialogue was exchanged:
note, this is more of an "I think this is what they said" than a pure transcription

Matthew Perry's Character: I'll write you a letter of recommendation.
Bradley Whitford's Character: Speaking of which, against my better advice, my nephew is applying to Northwestern, and he needs a letter of recommendation, too.

Not that big a deal, I know, but in a way, my non-donating-alumnus status just got a high five from Hollywood! Now, I guess it could be rationalized away by the writers by saying, they were getting at: "there are better such and such programs at some other college than Northwestern," but I feel like I'm part of higher educational history: The first(?) prime time dis'.



Calling Out Northwestern on National TV gets four-and-a-half stars for being the first negative namedrop of a college, with that 1/2 being deducted for the episode of "Studio 60..." being a perfect example of everything that's right and everything that's wrong with the show. *note: I don't really have any negative feelings towards Northwestern or anything like that, but considering how rarely it's brought up in pop culture, the fact that it was a negative (or pushing towards negative from neutral, at best) mention makes it quite newsworthy.

Chinese people love their basketball. Playing, watching, talking about it, assuming that the black guy that's over here for four weeks is both an engineer and in the NBA (because he's black, duh). They love it the way the same way that noted friend of The Bookshelfâ„¢ (Josh) Calloway loves ginger ale.



So, naturally, the Chinese all-stars (pulled from the ranks of security guards, engineers, factory workers, etc, etc.) from the company want to play the Americans, who they assume are seasoned basketball veterans, being that they're Americans. So, here are the requirements for a successful intercontinental basketball dominance challenge:

1. It has to be Wednesday. Selective brown-outs make it so the court is only illuminated on Wednesdays. Let's say you have some sort of conflict that can only be resolved on the basketball court... and it's Thursday. You have to wait one whole week to get it taken care of.

2. You need a court with the gigantic, trapezoidal, official international basketball lane dimensions. Well, this is the only type you'll find in China, you're all set. And be careful, if the referee (see below) feels like calling offensive 3 second violations, and you're in for some embarrassment until you get used to it.

3. You need fans. The court is between two dorms which probably house 200 people combined. These fans need to bring a drum to bang on whenever the Chinese team scores.

4. You need groupies. When you've just missed two layups, airballed a shot from the arc, and you're out of breath only three minutes into the game, you need someone to tell you that you're "number 1 basketball star."

5. You need a referee. No, scratch that. You need someone who owns a whistle. Two older (in their 40's) whistle-owning guys who live in the dorms provided law and order (and a bafflingly inadequate grasp of the concepts of the backcourt violation and team foul) for our game.

6. You need to have at least 4 of 5 players who are taller than 6'2". Otherwise, the speed of the Chinese will overwhelm the rebound and layup differentials.

7. You need to figure out which Chinese player is the best and switch to a box and one zone to cause him to take shots with an exceedingly low chance of being successful. The four people in #6 take care of the rebounds resulting from these shots.

8. You need a time keeper who keeps time by his watch and yells when the 12 minute quarters are over. Also, he should speak no English; this way, the US team is unable to know how much time is remaining. More importantly, he should arbitrary add time to the fourth quarter whenever the Chinese team slightly closes the point differential. This way, what should be 48 minutes of basketball ends up being closer to 60 minutes.

9. You need a security guard to operate the scoreboard. Because he wouldn't let anyone else near it.

10. Most importantly, the US team needs an in-shape 40ish guy who plays basketball three times a week.



Game 3 of the LaFrance China vs. LaFrance US Basketball Series receives four-and-a-half stars due largely to the fact that we won the game and that games against the Chinese team don't end up with someone from one team wanting to fight someone on the other team, like most (if not all) other competitive-in-some-way basketball games in which I've participated. And how often does someone get to represent their country successfully without doing something stupid? Minus 1/2 star for the ungodly amount of running involved in basketball.

I've been ripped off huuuuge. Conned. Bamboozled. Gypped. Screwed. And like in any con, the only person I have to blame is myself.



A few months ago my modem died. I was without internet at home for a while but I was still paying for the service, mostly because I kept telling myself that I'd be getting a new modem shortly. Eventually, thanks to Dan, I got one, and when I went to log in, there was a kindly message from People PC telling me that they added some new numbers and if i wanted to add them, I could. I checked out the new location, someplace maybe 15-20 miles from here on the other side of allentown. The area code was the same as mine, so I added it and figured that it would be thrown down at the bottom of the list that I already had.

Today I woke up to my mom crying out in frustration. She showed me the phone bill, with huge charges to a phone number I didn't recognize in a town that I didn't recognize. I realized it could only be one thing, and I went to see what number my dial-up connection had been dialing. Sure enough, it was the same number.

Since I left my internet connected (a period of 241 minutes each time), and each session for the last two weeks ranged in price from 29 dollars to 60 dollars, I managed to rack up a nineteen day total of $810. You heard me. I'm glad I have some money saved up, because that's the kind of mistake that makes you homeless. Just think, there's still another four days worth of internet connectivity to be had on the next bill!!

Still, not understanding the reason for the long distance charge, we called to complain to the Verizon managers. We spoke to higher-ups, and higher-higher-ups, and all we got was the same response. "This is not our fault". If you look in your phone book, you'll see that a call to that place is long distance. I say, "But the area code is the same; how can that be long-distance." "It doesn't go by area code. It goes by exchange number (the first three digits). In your phone book you'll find a listing of the exchange numbers that are local to your area that you can call."

Of course I went to the phone book and found that sure enough, in Bethlehem, PA, that number is not in the "local" area. If however, I were to live literally two minutes away from here, in Allentown, it would've been perfectly fine.

I can't blame the ISP because they have a waiver that you click on that says that you're responsible for all charges incurred by your phone provider. I can't blame Verizon because the phone book clearly doesn't list that area as a "local" call. And now I'm out 800 dollars because long distance doesn't go by area codes, and because that new phone number somehow got set to default.

Verizon managed to take off 20 percent, so technically I'm only out 640 dollars, but that's still a huuge chunk of money for 3 weeks of internet service that was mostly slow anyway.

One thing I can't understand, and didn't think of it until after my conversation with the Verizon guy ended, is that if they were a credit card company, and they saw that there were large, abnormal changes to the bill, they would call (hopefully) to make sure that all was right. How come the phone company, after a few days of these enormous charges didn't bother to think that something was abnormal or wrong about this. Why did they let it go on for weeks and weeks? I understand that with a credit card, there runs a risk of it being stolen, and that's why those companies do that, to provide security. I just don't understand how something like this goes unnoticed until the bill arrives. Nobody thinks that four hours of long distance calling per day is strange? In my opinion, Verizon was negligent.

But like I said, I can't really hold them accountable for anything, because it's clearly defined in small print some place I would never bother to look. Bravo legal experts and money-grabbing corporations. You suckered a man out of two weeks pay.


This may be the most humiliating, degrading, and definitely costly thing that's happened to me all year... keep in mind that I bombed at a job interview at NBC.

So here we are at the first of what may be a few reviews of our first milestone, 100 reviews. Not only is this the first review of this milestone, but of what could be very many milestones. We here at the Bookshelf like the word "milestone", and don't believe in Thesauruses. So here we go, our first hundred in a nutshell.

The first actual review happened way back in October of 2005... remember that time before the Steelers won the superbowl, before "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" movie, before Dick Cheny accidentally shot his friend while hunting, and before Bristol, United Kingdom celebrated the 200th birthday of Isambard Kingdom Brunel (actually April 9) by relighting the Clifton Suspension Bridge?

Dan's first review was aimed at complaining about post-game hype surrounding an extremely long baseball game. Of course our readers probably care about boring Astros-Braves baseball games as much as they seemed to care about my terrible review of the dictionary. Even though that picture was good, it was nowhere near the five star quality of this image. I too tried my hand at reviewing food, but it was an utter failure. On the plus side, my review of the letter to the editor is one of my favorites, and my first review actually got eight comments, including this link. The few following that grilled chese review focused mostly on music, my opinion of "Good Night, and Good Luck", a particular episode of Trading Spouses, and Dan's opinion of My opinion of "Good Night, and Good Luck". Dan also said that the Colbert report wouldn't last, which seems to have been proven false.

October seemed to be us finding our footing.





November saw Dan's Cleveland Trifecta, a diatribe against horses, a road that he liked, an episode of "Coach", and his complaints about how much he aches, now that he's an old man. I started the month strong with the Beth review, but struggled through the rest of it, with lame reviews like Thursday, a type of tooth"paste" that doesn't work for me, and an insightful, yet completely unnecessary complaint about my nosebleeds. My FAO Schwarz review kinda made up for them, but the highlight of the month involved Dan and I sparring about how Christmas is coming earlier every year, and something about me being a time-traveling sheep.

November didn't see much improvement over October, but the Christmas stuff was entertaining.




December got a bit better, even with a few less reviews. I busted out the old NES games, for a few reviews that I swear are not trying to copy off of XE, another personal favorite, Christmas Cards, Adam's first review, Dan throwing the hate down on Pitchfork media, and a suprising amount of people commenting on Roger Ebert's take on video games. The biggest advance in December was the pop-ins, that added added some clarity to our parentheses-obsessed-writing.

December was a highly engaging and entertaining month, even with only nine reviews.




2006 rolled around, and January saw Dan get political, review half of a book, not like warm winters a lot. I only contributed three of ten reviews that month, but all three of them were relatively alright, mostly because "Where In Time is Carmen Sandiego", and "The Simpsons" after season 9 is so easy to complain about.

January's topics fell off a little.




February, while being the shortest month, was also a monster for us, as far as number goes. A whopping twenty-one reviews. To be fair, 17 of them came in our envelope-pushing live superbowl reviews, the biggest stunt pulled in the history of reviewing anything and everything on a five star scale. The only other reviews of any substance were my Gauntlet Review of the Beatles albums, and Dan's digging up of our one-issue underground high-school newspaper.

Despite the big stunt, and two good reviews, February was kinda lacking.




March just plain sucked. Four reviews total. One by me. Three mega-reviews by Dan.





April was slightly better, with another of my top five of my reviews, Legacy of the Wizard. The other four I would give an average of 3 stars to, but since there were only four during the month, that's going to cancel out the Legacy of the Wizard bonus and take it down a half star.





For my money, May was our best month yet. Dan's contribution was the lengthy three-part TV landscape review. I threw out quality stuff with my Songs for Silverman, and Degree Navigator reviews. The shorter American Dreamz and Davinci Code video game reviews were serviceable, but my immense LOST season 2 review tops everything.





June fell off a bit. Four reviews total. Split two and two. Mine were based on a ridiculous news story, and anger at other people for coincidentally coming up with the same ideas as me. Dan tried to put everything into perspective by seeing how well the entire history of human ingenuity and artistry stacked up in the interstellar community, and complained a little about how the national geography of roadways isn't designed to suit his needs.





July was filled with the (I gotta admit my ignorance as to the relevance of this phrase... and wikipedia does nothing to help) Navel Gazing set. I was had for a few minutes by a Jimmy Kimmel hoax, and I thought the critics were a little too harsh on Shayamalan. Despite the mediocre numbers for the month, I'd give it a 3.5




This gives us a per-month average of 3 stars, which isn't too shabby.

In my first ever review, I reviewed the concept of this website. I claimed that we wouldn't be able to keep it fresh, that we'd run out of ideas, and that we wouldn't be able to stay somewhat funny at least. I believe my exact quote was "It has the potential to provide hours of entertainment for readers, and shape their lives for years to come. However, the downside is that it could get old real soon, and provide us with nothing but an excuse not to get real jobs."

Well, I think we've significantly proven wrong every single point that I just brought up. We have 29 categories, 19 subcategories, and even two sub-sub categories. We're still writing about reasonably different things, and while we may have slacked on the funny in recent months, we still bring the 'A' game on occasion. As far as my quote goes, I'd be willing to bet that we've provided maybe a few hours of entertainment for a handful of people, which probably did nothing to shape their lives for even the near fututre. On the upside, it hasn't gotten old, and we have gotten real-ish jobs.

For all of these reasons, I'm willing to up our star rating by half a star, over the average rating of 3. I've also realized that my method of calculating the rating might not be the best, so I'm gonna throw in another half star for a final rating of 4 stars out of five.



And for those of you playing along at home, yes, this technically is the 100th review and so therefore should be included. This review receives 3 stars for not having much to offer in the way of witty musings, and for having a faulty overall rating method, but for packing so many subjects and links into one review.

With the one-year anniversary of my college graduation taking place on May 16th, I figured I'd write something about my college experience, something that the few of you who read this that went to Ithaca would be able to relate to and feel nostalgic about. I decided early however, that I wasn't just going to do a review on my college experience, as that would seem too "Dear Diary" for me. I wasn't going to complain about the "food" in the Campus Center Dining hall ad nauseum, because I'm sure that's been done to death... and most people move off campus or to the Circle Apartments and don't deal with the "Double C" for their last year or two. I wasn't going to complain about the curriculum, mostly because those issues have been dealt with, starting with the class after me, and they're much better off for it. Lastly, I wasn't going to offer warm and fuzzy memories of how great all my friends were, the teachers were, the facilities were, and my extracurricular opportunities and the semester in L.A. were.

What else could there be to complain about/praise? Well if you haven't guessed by reading the title, I'll put it bluntly: The method of registering for classes that we used.

Let me preface this all by saying that before computers were used, I have absolutely no idea how a class registration system could be fair. I can assume that people wrote down on a piece of paper the classes that they needed, and the classes that they wanted and turned it in and waited for the results... sort've like in high school, where your guidance counselor spent 25 minutes convincing you to take a bunch of extra classes that you didn't come in wanting, (of course, taking some time out in the middle of the meeting to take a call from his real estate side-job) only to find that when your schedule arrived weeks later, you weren't enrolled in any of the classes anyway. Maybe that was just me. But by handing in forms that said what you wanted your schedule to look like, how were students to be guaranteed that those were the classes they were going to get? What if classes were filled? What if new sections that students were switched into conflicted with other classes the student wanted to take? How did the administration decide what order to take individual registrations? Obviously by credit amount, but what about students who were at the same grade level, with the same amount of credits?

In any case, it seems like as an incoming freshman, they had just recently implemented a computerized system by which all the students would register for their next semester's classes, presumably to solve all of these problems. The program, "The Degree Navigator", itself wasn't that terribly hard to understand. There were multiple tabs to take you to different views. The most important three (as i can't remember what the other two were) were the class selection tab, the schedule tab, (i'm sure they were standard on registration software for everyone at every school), and the strange "island" view, which conveniently showed you what your different requirements were (as in communications, non-comm, liberal arts [a phrase whose meaning still eludes me], and the various requirements within each major) shown in the form of colorful islands floating on a bright blue background. When you rolled your mouse over them, it showed what you had completed and what you were still required to take. I believe that those might've been shown in pie chart form, but I could be wrong.


You would go to the registrar's website, and there would be a link to register for classes. Clicking on it would open the application, as sort've an advanced pop-up window with forms. This was the degree navigator. You'd go over to the selection tab, type the course number into the spot for it, and hit enter. The course description and section times would come up, and you were allowed to add the classes to your schedule. You would then have to go over to the side where all the selected classes were and individually finalize the registration for each class. If there were time conflicts between sections, the program would tell you, but in an unhelpful and very computer-like way, by course number. I wouldn't expect the program to give me the course name, so I'm not really complaining about that. In fact, once you used the program the first time, you realized it was actually a pretty easy application to navigate around... provided you could understand the whole "island" thing, which was more for telling you what classes you had done and what you needed to do, rather than for registering.

The problem was in the actual method by which the whole student body was meant to register. It happened during the course of a week and a half every semester. A different group registered every day, starting with students in the honors program (i don't know that i ever met any of them), then freshmen, then seniors (yes freshmen got to register before seniors), juniors, and sophomores... of course all of those were divided up into first and second semester students, via credits. So each day of registering saw students within about a 12-18 credit window signing up at the same time. Not too huge of a problem. We weren't a terribly large school, so it wasn't like there were more than a few thousand people registering per day. There was no breakdown however, within each day, and so you had a couple thousand people trying to get on the system at the exact same time. That shouldn't've been a problem... after all, there's at least four times that amount that use the internet at one time, any other time of day or year. The problem however, was that our residential computer network was incredibly unstable to begin with (blamed by the people in charge on the proliferation of computer viruses on the network.... cause I'm sure that other schools don't have to deal with viruses, and they manage to be fully operational), complete with fits of shutting down at the most inopportune times (a subject for an entirely different review, and someone more knowledgeable in the area of computer networking than I am). That coupled with the fact that everyone was going to the same site and trying to open the same web-based application proved not the best way to handle things. Rather than giving us a program that we could install on our computers, bundled with the initial netware software that we had to use to be able to use the network, and the antivirus stuff, they figured that opening it from the registrar site would be the most viable option. Of course they were completely wrong.

It was an epic disaster. The residential network just couldn't handle the sheer number of people attempting to log on (if you managed to open the program prior to the start time you could open the application, just not log on to actually register). And of course rather than just telling us that we couldn't be logged on because something somewhere along the line was too busy, it just kept trying to log everyone on. Of course, in the best possible scenario of it not working, the program froze. In the worst, it caused people's computers to crash, freeze, and quite possibly be thrown out of windows in fits of frustration.

In fact, only serving to exacerbate things more was the registration time. Because classes started at 8 a.m., and the people in charge wanted to make sure that everyone had the same opportunity to get to classes before the seats were filled, the registration window opened at the extremely early 7 a.m. That's right. Imagine thousands of frustrated college students pissed off at the idea of being shut out of classes and screwed over by the system, dealing with a program that isn't going to work correctly, having to reboot their computer numerous times, and on top of that, having to get up before 7. At least we had the opportunity to register from the comfort of our own computers, if we could ever get this demon program to operate correctly.

The worst year that I remember was the second semester of my freshman year, registering for sophomore year. It was early April probably, and it was also probably really cold and rainy outside. I just remember sitting at my computer, my comforter draped over me, waiting, complaining to neighbors across the hall and next door. I sat there, knowing I was going to miss my 8 a.m. class. Everyone that I had recently added to my AIM buddy list was in the same boat as I was. People had away messages up about how much they hated the degree navigator, how they wished it would die, and how they were so tired and pissed off in general. Having just gone through a phase of creating new screennames and harrassing people with them, I saw this as an opportunity to pose as the Degree Navigator through IM, asking people why they hated me so much. I was THAT bored and pissed off. People who managed to log on were offering to register other people for classes via phone, but others were skeptical about giving out their registration password for fear that their schedule might be tampered with. It wasn't until 10:15 that I was able to log on and register, making me late for my 10:25 class. Of course, I got the bottom of the barrel when it came to classes that weren't course requirements. I can't remember what I had, but I'm pretty sure that it wasn't anywhere near what I had in mind the night before.

The following semesters were much of the same, but not taking as long, as more people in my class (year) decided to move off campus, or use the computer labs, which were on a different network, to do their registration. Knowing that I'd probably have to wait in line to use a computer for as long as it would actually take me to register from my room, and not wanting to get dressed at 6:50, and instead go back to bed when I was done, I decided for next few semesters to just ride out the storm in my room. Unlike the people in New Orleans, my decision wasn't really all that detrimental to my health. Sure it took forever to get logged on, but none of the future attempts took more than an hour. Still, the away messages were up, the people were complaining across the hall, and there was a feeling of bonding.

Without a popular sports team to rally behind (save the one game a year where the entire school went crazy for the football team, mostly because it was an excuse to get drunk at 8 a.m.), or, fortunately, some tragic event that effected everyone at the school (save the September 11th stuff), the universal hatred of the degree navigator registration system brought everyone together. In fact, I'd wager that had somebody decided to sell T-shirts that said "I survived Registration '02", they'd probably make enough money for the school to fix the actual problem. To prove my point even more, I typed in "Degree Navigator"+sucks in google, and these are the first two pages it came up with: here and here.

Of course, what this 7 a.m. east coast egistration time meant for me when I was in L.A. was that I had to register at 4 a.m. Pacific Time....and we didn't have the internet in our apartment. I'm not sure how we got around that, but I know I didn't walk 3 blocks at 4 a.m. to register at the Ithaca L.A. student center.

The Degree Navigator was a good system in theory, but they say the same thing about communism. There were bigger problems that everyone pretty much blamed on the Navigator, giving it a bad rap.


The Degree Navigator program itself gets three and a half stars. It was mostly easy to navigate, and I'm sure it was a bit more fair and, yes, less of a hassle, than however they did it before it was done by computer. It was pretty much the scapegoat for the entire student body's issues with registration, and served to bring them together with something unified to complain about.


The actual process of class registration gets one star for not having the foresight to see, especially after it happened numerous times before, that the network would get log-jammed by allowing so many people on at once; for not allowing people to get into classes that they needed; and for intruding on the sleep of thousands of students who schedule their earliest class at 11 a.m. for a reason.

For those unfamiliar, please peruse this PDF of the first (and only) issue of the publication in question. Feel free to right-click and "save as" on that file so that you end up reading both it and my review. If you've used the internet before, you probably already have Adobe Reader installed, but if you don't, you'll need to download it here.

The year was 1999. It was sometime in early Winter. It was also just about the end of the "good old days," and arguably, our little foray into journalism accompanied the starting of what are now known as "the bad old days." Similar to what kicked off this very site, I (and the "others") were feeling very opinionated and somehow disenfranchised for disenfranchisement's sake. We were fed up with our high school's policies and felt like we were getting the short end of the stick. We also had free time. Lots of free time.





Being that we have now conquered all media (similar to the "King of all Media," Howard Stern), it's important to remember that there was a time when the only conquered medium had been VHS tape. And by conquered, I mean "Let's write a review entitled, '13 and Oblivious: The 8^th Grade To Kill a Mockingbird Video'." Anyway, 1999. I said, "Why don't we make an underground newspaper?" Yeah, no one's done that gem of teenaged rebellion before.

We rounded up a crack team of writers and gave them free reign on topics. As always, the topics seemed wonderfully, well, topical for the time, but needless to say, they haven't aged well and bare a striking resemblance to the articles found in any "underground" high school newsletter. Topics ranged from complaining about the (then new) ID policy, complaining about the prospects of having to do a High School Graduation project (that's basically just what it sounds like), complaining about the cafeteria foods (way to go, me. very original), complaining about obnoxious teachers/security guards on "lunch duty," and finally one senior student complaining about his fellow gifted/honors classmates.

As you can see, none of these are pressing issues; in fact most none of them are particularly, well, anything. The issue would be that we really thought we were getting something done. As if the principal would read it, and say, "ahh, so that's the pulse of the students." In fact, we thought it/we would be/were so important that we devised pseudonyms, for, you know, "just in case." Hindsight makes it obvious that not only were our points of contention of the "tough sh*t" category, some were just complaining for the sake of complaining, any remaining legitimacy lost due to the "editor in chief's" name being Jarvis P. Fundlebottom. My (er, Jarvis') take on school lunches is probably the worst offender if only because it's a topic that's been beaten to death since the invention of the tray/plate combo. What makes it worse is that I wrote pretty much the same article when I was in 5^th grade, except in 5^th grade I didn't bring up Chaos Theory incorrectly (read the article in the PDF to see me butcher Jurassic Park).

Little of the "expected" controversy manifested itself with the "publishing" and distribution: keeping in mind that we used fake names (though we were so proud of our accomplishment that we gladly told everyone and anyone, teacher or student, of our involvement, usually at great detail) and, again, to anyone that would care about what we thought was "controversial," what we wrote about was simply inconsequential. BUT, what did cause some controversy (according to the word on the 1999 street) was the opening article, titled, "Skip the IQ Test, We're All Dumb Anyway." Ian Cofre (under the "Spike Spiegel" alias) wrote the article, but I'll very much take credit for the headline.

Now, at the time (and in very different way, now) comparing the intelligence of the student body to that of a fictional canine boarding school in Wisconsin was hilarious. I'd hate to think of myself as being "politically correct," but I would think twice about "publishing" something with all of my accumulated maturity. I don't mean to speak for Ian (and I'm sure that he hasn't put much thought to it since then-- heck I only re-read the whole issue because I recently re-discovered it on one of my backup CD-Rs), but I'd assume that he (or anyone, really) might think twice about the content. In his article, aside from the references to the MCOS (Milwaukee Canine Obedience School), he very much and very directly called out his classmates. Granted he was probably right, but (again, 1999 word on the street), it didn't go over well with said classmates. Obviously it's beyond water over the bridge for everyone at this point, and even then, it probably wasn't a big deal. The significance is that as sort of "editor" of the whole thing, I didn't think twice about why that might not be the best sort of thing to include in a "publication" we really thought was going to "make a difference." I didn't even think in terms of "most of our articles our less than five paragraphs; that doesn't sound like in depth, hard-hitting commentary."

Nate, as "Martin Stephenson," wrote two features, one of which detailed the (then new) graduation project process and actually did contain some disturbing facts about how different school districts and even schools within districts interpreted the "state-wide" guidelines differently. Nothing wrong with including that article, but it's just funny that back then, we really thought it would affect something. Now we look at it and say, "of course it didn't, why would it?" but they call it hindsight for a reason. In classic move common to inconsequential journalism, his second article about cafeteria "issues" managed to highlight the supposed unfairness in having students and teachers follow different codes of conduct (namely: a student yells, he gets in trouble; a teacher makes a lot of noise, no big deal). Again (more of that "hindsight" stuff), of course this is the case, but back then, we thought we wouldn't stand for it. No, I'm not calling out the Junior Staff's article; if I remember correctly, we had jointly brainstormed ideas for that article, and I definitely didn't see any issue in that very immature/uneducated/etc. line of thinking; maybe it was even my (bad) idea, and I'd think that Nate would agree that the "angle" of the story was merely a product of being a subjugate in an high school environment.

Wrapping up the articles discussion, Josh Shaffer (spelling?) wrote a well-organized, very coherent (click on the link on his name to understand why I'm including that adjective) take on having to wear ID's while in school that pretty much covered all of the issues, and showed how ridiculous and reactionary the policy was. Naturally, my 10^th grade self decided that was by far the most boring of the articles, while it would be the first one I'd hand to someone if I said I was involved in an "underground newspaper" in high school.

The first issue of The Husky's Bite was also the last issue though we promised future issues and even future years of it by including not only "issue number" but "volume" on the header. The last page of the issue included a call for submissions, which generated one actual article the very same day we distributed copies and one promise of an article about the Jr. ROTC program. Needless to say, the publishing of something about Jr. ROTC probably wouldn't have been a good idea (and we were never given an article anyway), and the first/only article submitted was a vulgarity-filled and particularly detailed rant about how all the cheerleaders were sluts. Needless to say, the author (hey, we respect our promise of anonymity!) had been wronged (in his opinion) recently by his cheerleader (ex)girlfriend. I can't remember the details of the letter, but I do think it included this gem: "All [the cheerleaders] are good at is spreading there [sic] legs and yelling 'Yeah!'" No, that wasn't going to make it into issue two.

Of course, there was no issue two. Not long after distributing the copies of the first issue and the "buzz" had left, we realized that we were basically just looking for something to complain about, and we hit pretty much all of the big, non-complicated, non-nuanced ones in that first issue. I don't remember if we even got to the point of discussing details of what would be in the second one after we realized we didn't have anything easy to complain about anymore and recognized how much work putting together an issue was. Sure, a lot of that work was waiting for the "writers" to be done writing their articles, but having been tasked to put the issue together, that was a "not wanting to have to do this again" amount of work. Not that it's the most demanding program in the world, especially in its Office 97 form, but I learned to use Microsoft Publisher while I was laying out the issue, and as we've learned, some companies don't like to hear that you've learned to use a program by teaching yourself as you've worked on a project. Making the charts (well, chart), headlines, etc. all took considerable effort (check out the barfing stick figure on page 3!), so made me understand that future issues would not be released in any short, regular length of time.



When Your Reach Exceeds Your Grasp (aka "The Husky's Bite") receives two stars due to the ridiculousness of the content that made it into the debut issue: whether the use of pseudonyms, general concept of the articles, or the "just plain dumb in hindsight" highfalutin attitude we had about it. (To be fair, we got past that within a school week or two of distributing it.) Much of my current opinion on the newsletter can be attributed to hindsight, but that doesn't mean it's unfair. Part of the whole "reach exceeding your grasp" thing is that you don't realize it until after the fact. With that in mind, the font selection is uninspired (there's an obscene number of different fonts throughout it). When I couldn't figure out formatting, I just let it go. Check out the sexy horizontal rules that just plain cover-up some lines. All that isn't to say that we didn't finish it or that we didn't have some measure of fun while doing it. It's what we use as our "newspaper example" when we call ourselves "Kings of All Media." Simply, it was once. It was fun. It was done.

Note: I originally rated my final subject as a 1.5 star performance due to what I felt was excessive plagiarism. However, before I could publish this, our dictator chose to steal my triple-review format (though he admits this freely). Therefore, I awarded myself another half-star. Damn, Commies.

Okay, I’ll be honest…I’ve been slacking it on this website. Many (meaning the eight dedicated readers we have) may remember when Nate even semi-demanded me to start posting. Maybe it was because I was a little too proud (probably not), but mostly it was due to time constraints and the simple fact that I have very little occurring in my life that I consider worthy of rating or that I could make it remotely entertaining. Now that I’ve graced the pages of this website, does this mean that I’ve overcome these obstacles? Absolutely not. Unfortunately for all of us, this probably won’t stop any of our readers from continuing. So, now that I’ve managed to take advantage of what little downtime is so rarely presented to me during my endless pursuit of a respectable career, what have I chosen to review? I knew my topic had to be gripping, with bouts of violence, wit, romance, all while being constantly intelligent and entertaining. Of course, I threw all of these notions out the window when Dan decided to yet again pansy-fy me publicly (again, having readers in the single digits makes it no more public than usual, but it’s the principle that the public could eventually read it). So gather ’round as Adam recounts his version of the story.

So we were playing football the day after Thanksgiving. There were about ten people there, which is a pleasantly complete number, as any larger might encourage Dan to set up real offensive and defensive lines and eventually result in a lot of cussing. All of the Goletz siblings were there: Greg(g), Dave, and Tim. The significance being that they all share the same genetic foundations and therefore it can be inferred that Dave and Tim possess judgement skills about on par with Gregg. Dan duffed a pass (not unusual in the cold) as I was crossing over, but not looking in the general direction of the play. Following my QB’s directive I picked up what I thought to be a fumble and was quickly pushed down by my defender, one Josh “Barney” Clark (notice that had it been a fumble, I would have been ruled down by contact at that point). Landing flush on my right side, I took a moment to make sure the ball was secured, only to see Tim Gloetz run up, and jump into the air before landing on my left arm and pushing it into my chest.

To say the least, the pain was exquisite, but seemed well-focused in the upper left of my ribs, much more so than just having the wind knocked out of me. The downside to having completed the anatomy intense portion of a sorta-medical program and having not yet started the physiology intense portion is that when an injury occurs, you automatically think of everything that may have gone wrong, but have no idea how to definitively diagnose it. Big words like atelectasis, hemomediastinum, and pneumothorax began running through my head, though I couldn’t quite remember what any of them meant. Anyway, I shook off the pain after a few plays of minimal movement and went on to have Barney fall on my chest as well as Gregg, during a sports-blooper reel-worthy post-interception clobbering.

Skip ahead to the following Tuesday. By this time, all of my bruises had healed, yet the chest pain persisted. Worse yet, it had seemed to intensify beyond my perception of a deep muscle bruise and prevented me from accomplishing much in the department of physical activity.

All of this lead to the following conversation between a physician and me:

Dr (compressing 3rd rib): Does this hurt?
Me: Yes.
Dr (4th rib): Now?
Me: Yes.
Dr (5th rib, as I watch my chest push inward): Now?
Me: Christ! Don’t do that again!

So…yeah. I broke my left fifth rib about three centimeters from the sternum; my first professionaly-confirmed broken bone. It hurts like Hell and never seems to get better given that both treatments for it only seem to worsen the condition. Local heat, meant to increase blood flow to the area and thus facilitate healing, also increases pressure on the chest. Icing the area, meant to bring down the swelling, does so but results in the bone becoming more mobile, irritating the area and swelling yet again.

Block I (the Animal Body) of Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, receives 3.5 stars for it’s ability to cram 1.5 years of anatomy into a 2.5 month curriculum and still manages to assist students in retaining the information. Unfortunately, the program loses points due to its questionable layout in teaching students locations and relationships of organs and body systems, but waiting to explain functions/dysfunctions of said systems until well into the students second year. This inevitably leads to worry over the numerous conditions that may occur without having any information or knowledge to confirm or disprove those worries.

The 1984 model of the human ribcage receives 3 stars, based purely on its stellar reputation for protecting vital organs, yet its apparent (and hopefully rare) failure to hold its integrity after only 21 years of use. 3 stars may seem like a generous score for a product that, in all honesty, failed to meet my expectations. It’s also a scary thought to consider that the first component of the structure to fail was located in an area that, had the break been more serious, could have compromised my trachea, esophagus, heart, and lungs. However, it gains a few points given that its only failure to this date was at the hands of the Goletz brothers…who, as history has proven, serve only to destroy all that is good and bring misery to the world.

Adam’s first review receives 2 stars on account of its complete lack of focus and inability to capture the true, judgemental spirit of this website by serving to tell a story more so than constructively reviewing a topic. I mean (come on!), what’s with all the cheap shots at the Goletzs-es? Throw in the blatant plagiarism of Dan’s earlier post in an attempt to mock him, and you’ve got a pretty piss-poor review. It’s only saving grace is that it was a decent inaugural effort and displayed a touch of originality in its (once) unprecedented uber-triple-header format. Let’s hear it for obnoxiousness.