Campus Culture Story: Final Draft

8 12 2014
Senior Jaimie Fast prepares for a nursing final

Senior Jaimie Fast prepares for a nursing final

It’s approaching 9 p.m. Sunday night in the Hickman Johnson Furrow Learning Center. Usually, at this point in the weekend, students have retired to their rooms to finish off the night with some of the Walking Dead or maybe a couple games of Madden, but today is different.

Three-fourths of the library tables are occupied and completely covered in study materials: chemistry books, philosophy notes, nursing study guides, and cups of coffee from the Spoonholder. Students seem to be on edge, brows furrowed as they type out that concluding paragraph to the senior thesis that is the culmination of their college career. Others look as if they’re moving closer to the “screw it” stage; heads on the desks and a blank Microsoft Word document open on their computers.

From the very atmosphere, it quickly becomes obvious that it is finals week at Morningside College. During the last week of the semester, students can be found across every college campus in the country consuming inordinate amounts of caffeine, pulling all-nighters to study, completing ten page papers in one marathon session, and sometimes even breaking down crying.

However, here at Morningside, a student’s finals week experience can vary greatly depending on his major, class load, and grade level. Some students end up using the fall semester finals week as a break from class, a time to watch movies and hang out with their friends, while others have to dedicate the entire time to work and study.

Some of the most stressed students end up being freshmen who are going through it all for the first time.

“I had a panic attack yesterday,” said freshman Jen Bentz after the end of Thanksgiving break. “We didn’t really have finals at my high school, so this is all really intense.”

As a music education major, Bentz will have five different finals, two of which are based on music performance.

Other students have it much easier. Junior computer science major Michael Andrlik just has one test during finals week.

“Pretty much, my finals week consists of procrastination and eventual work,” said Andrlik.

For Andrlik, and many other students in project and writing-based majors, the week before finals week is actually the most challenging week. His finals week is a bit of a break after an arduous penultimate week filled with deadlines and presentations.

“During actual finals week, if it’s getting close to my test, I’ll be actually doing stuff, but for the rest of the week, I’ll be playing video games,” he said.

Many professors in writing-based majors find that it is difficult to assign a true final because grades are due so soon after finals.

“There’s a short turnaround between finals week and the day grades are due,” said associate professor of mass communications Ross Fuglsang, “So, it’s difficult to assign essay tests and get them graded by the deadline.”

Other students, especially those in subjects that lend themselves to easy-to-grade multiple choice tests, find that the last two weeks of the semester feel like an extended finals week, a jam-packed marathon of studying and writing.

“For me, both weeks are pretty hard,” said sophomore biology and chemistry teaching major Evelyn Edge. “I have a bunch of papers and presentations this week [the week before finals] and then next week I have finals in every class but art. I spend finals week in my own little hovel in the library. “

Many students across campus wish that Morningside would imitate other colleges in implementing a “dead week” policy. Some larger universities (and even smaller ones like Dordt) enforce policies where professors can’t have major deadlines or tests during the week before finals. The idea is that students will have an extra week or so to prepare for finals.

“All of my high school friends are at bigger schools or community colleges, and they have a dead week,” said Bentz.

Senior nursing majors Jaimie Fast and Anna Christensen both have tests in the week before finals.

“Even if Morningside would just give us half a week off, that would help, because it would stop teachers from giving us tests right before our finals,” said Fast. “When it gets to finals week, you pretty much just have to cram because we’re too busy studying for our other tests to prepare in advance.”

Where some students like Andrlik use finals week to unwind from a busy semester, Christensen tries to use every second of her week to prepare.

“Here’s how my days go: Wake up as early as you can, study a little, eat breakfast, drink an energy drink, cram, take a test, cry, drink a beer, take a deep breath, and start to study for the next one,” she said.




College Culture Draft

1 12 2014

One of the most important times in a college student’s career comes at the very end of the semester: finals week. The last week of the semester is where students can be found across every college campus in the country consuming inordinate amounts of caffeine, pulling all-nighters to study, completing ten page papers in one marathon session, and, sometimes, breaking down crying.

However, at Morningside, a student’s finals week experience can vary greatly depending on his major, class load, and grade level. Some students end up using the fall semester finals week as a break from class during which they can watch movies and hang out with their friends, while others have to dedicate the entire time to work and study.

The end of the semester can be a tough time for all students, especially freshmen who are going through it all for the first time.

“I had a panic attack yesterday,” said freshman Jen Bentz after the end of Thanksgiving break. “We didn’t really have finals at my high school, so this is all really intense.”

As a music education major, Bentz will have five different finals, two of which are based on music performance.

Other students have it much easier. Junior computer science major Michael Andrlik just has one test during finals week.

“Pretty much, my finals week consists of procrastination and eventual work,” said Andrlik.

For Andrlik, and many other students in project and writing-based majors, the week before finals week is actually the most difficult week. His finals week is a bit of a break after a difficult penultimate week filled with deadlines and presentations.

“During actual finals week, if it’s getting close to my test, I’ll be actually doing stuff, but for the rest of the week, I’ll be playing video games,” he said.

Other students find the last two weeks of the semester to be a marathon of studying and writing.

“For me, both weeks are pretty hard,” said sophomore biology and chemistry teaching major Evelyn Edge. “I have a bunch of papers and presentations this week and then next week I have finals in every class but art. I spend finals week in my own little hovel in the library. “

Many students across campus wish that Morningside would imitate other colleges in implementing a “dead week” policy. Some larger universities (and even smaller ones like Dordt) cancel classes for the entire week before finals. Others enforce a policy where professors can’t have major deadlines or tests during their dead week.

“All of my high school friends are at bigger schools or community colleges, and they have a dead week,” said Bentz.”They don’t have class for an entire week, so all they do is study.”

Senior nursing majors Jaimie Fast and Anna Christensen both have tests in the week before finals.

“Even if Morningside would just give us half a week off, that would help, because it would stop teachers from giving us tests right before our finals,” said Fast. “When it gets to finals week, you pretty much just have to cram because we’re too busy studying for our other tests to prepare in advance.”

Where some students like Andrlik use finals week to unwind from a busy semester, Christensen tries to use every second of her week to prepare.

“Here’s how my days go: Wake up as early as you can, study a little, eat breakfast, drink an energy drink, cram, take a test, cry, drink a beer, take a deep breath, and start to study for the next one,” she said.




Nickel and Dimed Review

30 11 2014

Against a backdrop of national and local political battles to raise the minimum wage, Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed takes on a new level of relevance to American society. The book, even though researched and written during the booming economy of the late 90’s, makes a statement that even a minimal standard of living is not available to our country’s growing population of minimum wage workers.

The book follows Ehrenreich as she travels to three cities with nothing but the clothes on her back and a small amount of start-up cash and finds three “unskilled jobs” and three places to live. She then attempts to get by only on her earnings, starting with waitressing in Key West, Florida; moving on to a housework job in Maine; and concluding with working the sales floor at a WalMart in St. Paul, Minnesota.

I found the book to be very moving. Ehrenreich’s experiments show that you can’t even meet basic human needs on low wage, hourly jobs, but it was her co-workers experiences that really shook me. A woman in Maine snaps her ankle, but continues to scrub floors, another in Florida lives out of her car, and many go hungry so that their children have something to eat.

The book concludes with a statement explaining and criticizing the current state of the economy which has put an increasingly-large class of people into such an awful state of living. Her experiment shows that having a job (or even multiple jobs) is not the ticket out of poverty that many people say it is. Low income housing in the U.S. is overly-expensive, dilapidated, ill-located, and disappearing. In addition, low income jobs prevent their employees from organizing in any way to fight for their rights in the workplace.

My favorite part of the book was the section where Ehrenreich works a sales floor job at a Minnesota WalMart, mainly because I spent the past summer doing a similar job at Target. I thought that she captured the experience really well, even though out of the three, the WalMart job was probably the least physically and mentally taxing.

According to the book’s Wikipedia page, it has come under some criticism for the author’s methods in her journalistic experiment. Some people say that she doesn’t accurately reproduce a poor person’s experience, since she starts off the experiment with a car and some money in her pocket.

I think that the critics’ point proves Ehrenreich’s conclusion even more so. If a physically fit, single woman with a Ph.D., a means of transportation and some start-up money can’t get by on a low-wage job, then how can we expect anyone to do so?

Overall, after growing up in an upper-middle class family, I’m really happy that I read this book. I honestly wish that more voters and legislators in our society would read it, because it points out problems that our society works very hard to hide. I’d give it four out of four stars.




Art Critique

23 11 2014

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The two pieces of art that hang in the HPER lounge are probably what some people would call “hotel room artwork.” Hotel room artwork, like elevator music, is meant to be pleasing to the eye, without making too much of a statement. These particular pieces match the warm, school-spirited maroon of the walls. They aren’t too flashy; their main purpose is to decorate the wall while refraining from drawing attention away from the main attraction: the pool facility seen through a glass wall on the opposite side of the room.

The background of each artpiece is a patchy quiltwork of different shades of beige, maroon, and a light forest green. The edges of the pieces look like the borders of states or countries, softly jagged and as if they have been erased and redrawn many times. The focus of each piece is a series of four straight-edged, defined rectangles. On the left painting, two adobe squares lay atop an adobe rectangle with a black shadow, as if light was coming in from the top left corner of the painting. In the middle of the rectangle sits a black and white striped smaller rectangle. The painting on the right features a similar design, except it looks like the rectangles have been moved out of the way, revealing a diversely colored tunnel.

The overall effect, when “read” from left to right, seems like the middle box has been rotated and unlocked, to show something more varied and interesting beneath.

The artist of these paintings seems to have used a few different techniques. Some patches look more sponged on, while others seem to have been applied with a brush. As for a critique, the art is pleasing to the eye, but it (the collected two, since I don’t think they’re meant to be separated) isn’t a piece that would stop you in your tracks. It is however, the type of thing that my mom would like to hang in our living room because she likes interior decorating and because the people in her favorite staging shows on HGTV would probably use it to bring out the color in the walls or something.

 




Happy/Angry

10 11 2014

Maybe as a Morningsider and a fellow athlete, it verges on sacrilege for me to criticize the workings of a different Mustang sports team. Or actually, not just another team, the football team. You know, the one that is currently ranked number one in the nation?

However, I feel like this editorial can bring light to something that needs to be said. Across the board, I feel like Morningside is an institution that is friendly and open toward women, especially in the upper levels: the administration, the faculty, the staff. But, the experience I had this morning, coupled with the same one a year ago, has my blood boiling.

Today, our swim team had a dual against Coe College, starting at 1:00 pm. Our coach arranged for us to eat breakfast in the caf’ at 9:00 am with the football team, under the condition that we be very respectful. The football team doesn’t usually want other teams in the cafeteria with them on game days, but we were going to be given a special privilege, so we had better be respectful to them.

When we got there, the head football coach was very kind to us. He made sure that we were able to get our food and sit down before the football team began their before-game proceedings. There were a lot of adult males in the cafeteria with the team, and, after a similar experience last year, I thought I knew why.

Once we had all gotten our food and sat down, the coach began the ritual. All of the seniors were told to bring the men who had had an influence on their lives to the front of the room. It didn’t have to be their dad, but it did have to be a male who had “made them into the man they are today.”

The seniors then introduced the adults to the rest of the cafeteria. “This is my dad. His name is John. He coached me in high school football and if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be the strong man I am today.” Some of the speeches had a little more variety; for example, a couple of guys brought up an uncle or, in one case, a girlfriend’s dad. Some said that they had learned how to be a man from their father figure.

Now, this wasn’t all that bad. I mean, I know that my dad has had a huge influence in my life as well, the scope of which I probably can’t even comprehend. The thing that really irked me was the total lack of women in the room (besides myself and my teammates). No player was allowed to bring up his mother and talk about how she had shaped him. And according to the U.S. Census Bureau, one in three children in America grow up in homes where their biological father is absent. What if one of the players felt that his mother had been a more integral part of his life? The implication seemed to be that mother figures aren’t quite as important, or at least that they don’t deserve a place at the table before the seniors’ last home football game.

After the introductions, the seniors and their father figures sat down, and the coach launched into a speech about “What it means to be a man.” Being a man means taking responsibility. Being a man means doing your best when you think you can’t do it any more. Being a man means leaving it all on the field. Being a man means living a life with a purpose, a life full of meaning. Being a man means having children and teaching them to live meaningful lives. We need to strive to be strong, powerful men.

I had to agree with most of the things that the coach said. I mean, men should take responsibility and do their best and live a life with a purpose. But, I left with a sense of having been wronged in some way. Are those things really specific to men? Doesn’t that all just constitute life as an adult? If being a man means being responsible, doing your best, and living a life full of meaning, does being the opposite of a man mean that you can’t do those things?

At this point, you might think that I am just nit-picking. But I think that my experience this morning points to a higher problem in our culture. The summer after my freshman year at Morningside, my best friend (a women’s soccer player at a college comparable to Morningside) and I signed up for our high school’s summer weights program. It ended up being the two of us, a couple male wrestlers and the entire Lansing High School football team. That experience taught me a lot about masculinity and football culture. Football players, some in much worse athletic shape than my friend and I, would scream at each other “Don’t be such a pussy!” or “Quit being a little girl” or “Why are you such a faggot” whenever a student was having trouble completing the exercises. And, I guess when a bunch of kids aged 14 to 17 are yelling those things at each other (not that I don’t hear the exact same things here at college), it is indicative of a culture that thinks femininity is inherently weak, while masculinity is inherently strong. If I were to call myself a “strong, powerful woman,” the connotation would be entirely different (and it would probably be cause for a listener to laugh) whereas the football coach can earnestly tell the players that they are “strong, powerful men.”

Really, had the coach allowed the players to bring up any adult who they felt was a strong influence and had he simply replaced the word “man” with “adult” throughout his speech, I think that I and my other female teammates would have been a lot more comfortable in that cafeteria. But, much more than that, I think that he could have been taking a step against an overarching American male football culture with twisted ideas about masculinity and femininity.




Biggest Royals Fan on Campus Cheers Team to World Series

3 11 2014

JacobWith their recent successes over the past season, Kansas City Royals fans seem to be cropping up everywhere across the Midwest, even in places hundreds of miles from the Kansas/Missouri border. Some are coming out of the closet, so to speak, just now ready to vocalize their appreciation for what was, from 2004 to 2012, one of the worst teams in major league baseball. Meanwhile, others are jumping onto the bandwagon while professing to have been true Royals fans all along.

Jacob Meysenburg fits into neither of these camps. Many of his classmates remember that back in 2012, one of those seasons in the so-called “dark ages,” Meysenburg, a senior math and English major, would wear a blue Royals cap all day every game day. He is Morningside’s biggest Royals fan, and he has been nothing short of ecstatic with the team’s recent victories.

“I took a victory lap after the Oakland game,” he said. “I ran down the hall, outside of Dimmitt, and then all the way around campus.”

And if you had ever watched a baseball game with Jacob, you wouldn’t doubt the veracity of his claim. After a hit, especially a double or a triple, he’ll jump up from his seat, clap his hands and let out an excited squeal, his longer-than-shoulder-length brown hair falling into his face from the shock. He taunts the on-screen opposition with a mix of baseball terms that would go over a layperson’s head (“That’s what you get for pulling your starter, Bruce Bochy, even though that was the tactically-correct decision”) to more explicit and direct commentary (“Anyone who cheers for the Giants is a communist!”). He goes beyond insults and excitement, though, and shows sympathy for the players and understanding for the game in a way that only a true fan can. (“It went off the side of his glove. Cain wouldn’t have usually missed that. You don’t see that much from a center fielder.”)

“Watching a baseball game with with Jacob is the most stressful thing in my entire life,” said his roommate and best friend Josh Karel. “I think he’s going to freak out and break my computer or our entire apartment.”

Watching Royals games started off as something that Meysenburg did to bond with his dad. His father was in his twenties back when the Royals lost the World Series to the Philadelphia Phillies in 1980 and when they won the Series in ‘85, and Jacob’s family has followed the Royals ever since.

“I started watching them in earnest around 2007, I suppose,” Meysenburg said, “And we’d watch every single game on TV, which definitely interfered with my school, but that’s okay… You’ve gotta have priorities.”

While Royals baseball may interfere with Meysenburg’s schoolwork at times, he has found a way to use his passion to do something he loves while gaining workplace experience and building his resume. During his sophomore year at Morningside, Jacob was hired on as a blogger for the Sports Illustrated-affiliated Kansas City sports blog KCKingdom.com. His blog posts are sabermetrically-minded, that is, they focus mainly on the analysis of baseball statistics.

“I was actually awful at math in high school.” Meysenburg said, “Well, not awful, just awful relative to my other stuff. Which is why I’m a… math major?”

Meysenburg thinks that a lot of Royals fans are uniquely interested in sabermetrics.

“As a fan of a team that loses a lot, you try and find ways in which your team can not lose. It’s a very stat-minded community.”

Jacob’s articles, like this one, combine his writing skills and prodigious knowledge of and ability to crunch baseball statistics (hence the English and math double major) into an easy-to-interpret mine of information for fans. His posts are unceasingly professional, but they retain enough voice that you can feel the college student, giddy with the prospect of his favorite team making their way to the World Series, at the core.

“If I were to write an article right now and post it, it would have over a thousand views pretty quickly,” he said, “I became involved with the site because I wanted to do stat-based articles, but those don’t get many clicks. Click-bait gets lots and lots of clicks, though. I’ll go on there and see ‘Three reasons that such and such,’ and that will get a lot more views than my heavily research-based article, so that’s a bit of a turn-off, but on the other hand, it’s really cool to have a platform to publish work that you do.”

His position with KC Kingdom is unpaid, but his experience has helped him to land other internships.

“I just got hired to write for a company that makes a piece of equipment that is supposed to revolutionize the way that physical therapists treat patients with balance disorders.”

Meysenburg, a senior, hopes to use his skills in writing and statistics to become an actuary. Or at least, that’s the goal that his parents want for him.

“I would love to do work for a baseball team; that would be optimal, but I guess I need to be a little more realistic. And maybe I’m being pessimistic, but it doesn’t seem very likely that I could get a job doing stats for a team,” he says, “Alternatively, the dream job would be doing nothing… You’ve got to think of the important things… Yourself.”

The Royals almost made it through to become World Series Champions of the 2014 season, but they came up just short, losing game seven (in best out of seven play) by just one point: two to three.

“It was soul crushing,” said Meysenburg. “Watching the seventh game of the world series was like watching Harry Potter, and Voldemort wins. Actually, watching game seven was like watching Miracle, and the Russians win. Actually, wait, game seven of the World Series was like watching Old Yeller, except they don’t shoot the dog at the end; instead he just infects everyone with rabies.”




Profile Rough Draft

28 10 2014

With their recent successes over the past season, Kansas City Royals fans seem to be cropping up everywhere across the Midwest, even in places hundreds of miles from the Kansas/Missouri border. Some are coming out of the closet, so to speak, just now ready to vocalize their appreciation for what was, from 2004 to 2012, one of the worst teams in major league baseball. Meanwhile, others are jumping onto the bandwagon while professing to have been true Royals fans all along.

Jacob Meysenburg fits into neither of these camps. Many of his classmates remember that back in 2012, one of those seasons in the so-called “dark ages,” Meysenburg, a senior math and English major, would wear a blue Royals cap all day every game day. He is Morningside’s biggest Royals fan, and he has been nothing short of ecstatic with the team’s recent victories.

“I took a victory lap after the Oakland game,” he said. “I ran down the hall, outside of Dimmitt, and then all the way around campus.”

And if you had ever watched a baseball game with Jacob, you wouldn’t doubt the veracity of his claim. After a hit, especially a double or a triple, he’ll jump up from his seat, clap his hands and let out an excited squeal, his longer-than-shoulder-length brown hair falling into his face from the shock. He taunts the on-screen opposition with a mix of baseball terms that would go over a layperson’s head (“That’s what you get for pulling your starter, Bruce Bochy, even though that was the tactically-correct decision”) to more explicit and direct commentary (“Anyone who cheers for the Giants is a communist!”). He goes beyond insults and excitement, though, and shows sympathy for the players and understanding for the game in a way that only a true fan can. (“It went off the side of his glove. Cain wouldn’t have usually missed that. You don’t see that much from a center fielder.”)

“Maybe a quote from one of Jacob’s roommates?”

Watching Royals games started off as something that Meysenburg did to bond with his dad. His father was in his twenties back when the Royals lost the World Series to the Philadelphia Phillies in 1980 and when they won the Series in ‘85, and Jacob’s family has followed the Royals ever since.

“I started watching them in earnest around 2007, I suppose,” Meysenburg said, “And we’d watch every single game on TV, which definitely interfered with my school, but that’s okay… You’ve gotta have priorities.”

While Royals baseball may interfere with Meysenburg’s schoolwork at times, he has found a way to use his passion to do something he loves while gaining workplace experience and building his resume. During his sophomore year at Morningside, Jacob was hired on as a blogger for the Sports Illustrated-affiliated Kansas City sports blog KCKingdom.com. His blog posts are sabermetrically-minded, that is, they focus mainly on the analysis of baseball statistics.

“I was actually awful at math in high school.” Meysenburg said, “Well, not awful, just awful relative to my other stuff. Which is why I’m a… math major?”

Meysenburg thinks that a lot of Royals fans are uniquely interested in sabermetrics.

“As a fan of a team that loses a lot, you try and find ways in which your team can not lose. It’s a very stat-minded community.”

Jacob’s articles, like this one, combine his writing skills and prodigious knowledge of and ability to crunch baseball statistics (hence the English and math double major) into an easy-to-interpret mine of information for fans. His posts are unceasingly professional, but they retain enough voice that you can feel the college student, giddy with the prospect of his favorite team making their way to the World Series, at the core.

“If I were to write an article right now and post it, it would have over a thousand views pretty quickly,” he said, “I became involved with the site because I wanted to do stat-based articles, but those don’t get many clicks. Click-bait gets lots and lots of clicks, though. I’ll go on there and see ‘Three reasons that such and such,’ and that will get a lot more views than my heavily research-based article, so that’s a bit of a turn-off, but on the other hand, it’s really cool to have a platform to publish work that you do.”

His position with KC Kingdom is unpaid, but his experience has helped him to land other internships.

“I just got hired to write for a company that makes a piece of equipment that is supposed to revolutionize the way that physical therapists treat patients with balance disorders.”

Meysenburg, a senior, hopes to use his skills in writing and statistics to become an actuary. Or at least, that’s the goal that his parents want for him.

“I would love to do work for a baseball team; that would be optimal, but I guess I need to be a little more realistic. And maybe I’m being pessimistic, but it doesn’t seem very likely that I could get a job doing stats for a team,” he says, “Alternatively, the dream job would be doing nothing… You’ve got to think of the important things… Yourself.”

Despite Meysenburg’s passion for the game, his own personal baseball career went no further than elementary school.

“I stopped when we went to player pitch, and the reason I stopped was because I always forgot my cup at home, and we had this player, his name was Brandon, and I’m not going to name last names, but it was Skadoris, and if the ball was made out of metal, then my testicles were made out of magnets, because that thing hit my testicles every time he threw it… I’m not joking. He hit me in the balls every time I was up. And so, after a while, instead of saying ‘I should bring my cup,’ I said, ‘I’m done with this…’ And so now I swim.”

 

 




Profile Sketch

21 10 2014

I’m not completely sure how this whole profile sketch thing goes, but I’ll outline what I’m planning on writing for my profile. With the World Series going on this week, and with it being an incredibly historic year for the Royals, I thought that it would be a kind of timely topic to write about Jacob Meysenberg, senior English and math major, and probably Morningside’s biggest Royals fan. He is the type of person who lives and dies with the Royals’ every victory and defeat.  You can always tell how the day’s game went just by looking at his face. Back during his freshman year, he wore a Royals baseball cap all day every game day for good luck.

Over the last twenty or so years, being a diehard Royals fan meant being dejected from March until October every year. But that’s obviously not so right now. Jacob is on cloud nine with the Royals’ recent victories.

The really cool thing about Jacob is that he has taken his love of baseball and combined with his writing and statistical skills to become a featured blogger on kckingdom.com. He’s been writing blog posts on the Royals for two and a half years now.

For my story, I’m going to watch the second game of the World Series (this Wednesday night) with Jacob and describe his reactions. I think that will be a pretty good lead-in to the story. It will set the scene and describe the subject of the profile. He’s a really unique kid, so I hope to capture his voice. I’m also going to interview him pretty extensively about his job writing for the blog (I think that’s the most interesting part of the whole thing) and how he got started loving baseball. I’ll probably talk to his friends and maybe his coach (swimming) or one of his professors to get another couple opinions.




Film Review

21 10 2014

When I picked up In and Out, a 1997 semi-romantic comedy, from the stack of DVDs on the desk in our classroom, my expectation was that it would land somewhere in the realm between unwatchable and solidly good. And honestly, it ended up right on the line. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, but I also wouldn’t try and stop someone who was about to press play on her VCR (you know, back in ’97).

In and Out opens with Howard Brackett (Kevin Kline), a Shakespeare-loving English teacher in the small town of Greenleaf, Indiana, preparing for his wedding to fellow teacher Emily (Joan Cusack). When Cameron Drake (Matt Dillion), an actor and one of Brackett’s former students, “outs” Brackett on live television at the Academy Awards, Brackett’s life swings out of hand as he tries to convince the town, his fiancé and journalist Peter Malloy (Tom Selleck) that he is, in fact, straight.

Most of the movie felt really hokey to me. From the flat characters to the over-the-top, feel-good ending, the entire film felt insincere, even for a comedy movie.

None of the actors’ performances really stood out to me as being particularly good; however, I absolutely hated Cusack’s portrayal of Emily, a performance for which she (astonishingly) was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Emily’s only real character attribute is that she used to be fat, and the movie milks it for all that it’s worth. For example, at one point she is in a state of anguish, for very good reason, and she immediately grabs a bowl of peanuts and says she is going to “gorge herself.” You know, because peanuts are basically the most terrible and unhealthy thing you can possibly eat. And because, once you know that a woman used to be fat, then that’s really the only thing you need to know about her. During this same scene, she runs around screaming in an awful whining voice for what felt like fifteen minutes in a very unconvincing portrayal of her sadness.

Despite its low points, there are places where the movie shines. Through satire, it does a pretty solid job of conveying the silliness of both the media’s focus on trivial things and its treatment of gay celebrities. During one scene, Brackett finds himself backed up into a corner by journalists yelling out ridiculous questions about his sexuality (“Do you know Ellen?”) Moments like this are where the movie finds its high point. These scenes verge on satirically-biting and hilarious cultural criticism, although they end up missing the mark overall.

There’s a lot of potential for comedy in the main premise of this movie, but it didn’t quite make it. Maybe it could be good if it were remade today with funnier actors and more edgy writing. In and Out is the type of movie that I wouldn’t turn off if it were the only thing on television, but I definitely wouldn’t seek it out at the Blockbuster (again, 1997) or recommend it to a friend. 2 out of 4 stars.




In Cold Blood Review

14 10 2014

When I scanned the list of books available for this review, one name stood out among all the others. I had heard it called “the great American novel” and the first real piece of literary journalism, it was written by my favorite author’s best friend and I had heard that many pieces of the book took place in my hometown of Lansing, Kansas. The audio version of In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (published in 1966) was a no-brainer, and I clicked the play button on my iPod on a drive back home in happy anticipation.

The book started off in full descriptive mode, painting Holcomb, a small, sleepy town in western Kansas to the very last detail. The town was vivid and full of dynamic characters, a postmistress, a sheriff, the owner of the local restaurant, all speaking in a distinctive western Kansas dialect that I knew well from visiting my grandparents on the other side of the state as a kid. Holcomb was the type of place where each person knew every one of the other 269 people in town, and they never felt the need to lock their doors at night. That is, until the gruesome murder of the Clutter family, father, Herb; mother, Bonnie; daughter Nancy and son, Kenyon.

In Cold Blood carefully examines every single aspect of the case, starting with the victims by scrupulously accounting for their last days on earth and then moving on to the townspeople’s reactions, the detectives on the case, and, most importantly, the murderers themselves, Richard “Dick” Hickock and Perry Smith.

One of the things that most amazed me about the book was its ability to keep me reading, even though I knew (and all of Capote’s intended readers knew) exactly what was going to happen next. Throughout the first section, the one highlighting the Clutter family’s last day, Capote reminds the reader over and over again that they are going to die soon. By the time the neighbors find the bodies, the reader already knows who the murderers are, and the back cover already tells us that the murderers will be convicted and executed. (In fact, I can distinctly remember one of my elementary school teachers telling the class about the Clutter murderers being the last two people hanged at the Kansas State Penitentiary, just three blocks from my elementary school.) But yet, Capote’s storytelling and pacing kept me interested in the book from start to finish. At first, I wanted to know exactly how the Clutters died. Then, I wanted to know the motive. Why did Dick and Perry kill them? Why in such a gruesome and terrible way? What was the connection between the murderers and the Clutter family? Then, I wanted to know about the murderers’ lives. Capote sets up a situation where the murderers are characters that you feel sympathy for, which given the depth of their crimes, is no easy feat.

Capote, already a successful author of Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958) and many short stories, plays, and pieces of nonfiction, became inspired to write In Cold Blood when he read a 300 word article in the New York Times about the Clutter murders. He was captivated by the story and traveled to Holcomb with his best friend Harper Lee (author of To Kill a Mockingbird) to learn more about the story. He ended up taking four years to research, interview, write, and follow the story to its end, the execution of the murderers. To write the story, he had long conversations with everyone involved, without taking notes, as he claimed his memory retention for quotes was “above 90 percent.” Harper Lee helped him by befriending many of the townspeople that he wanted to interview.

Capote started off writing the story just because, having never been to Kansas, he thought he could write it in a fresh perspective. At first, he just toiled around in the city for a long time, interviewing, finding out every possible detail of the case, until the detectives started to make some breaks in the case. Then, he interviewed the detained suspects in their cells at the Finney County Courthouse in Garden City, KS, covered their trial, then followed them to their final home, death row at the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing. Over four years, he was able to determine almost every single detail of that fateful day, and then to trace the two murderers around the country during the time that they were on the run after the crime. He even went back into Dick and Perry’s personal histories, talking to their family members and people who had known them in their past lives.

Although the story is written from a journalist’s perspective, the reader can tell that the author ended up being very emotionally involved. Capote evokes a sense of sympathy not only for the victims, but also for the criminals, a feat which requires an unparalleled emotional connection to the story and its characters.

For me, this novel definitely lived up to the hype. Its pacing and characterization kept me engaged for all 384 pages, and it is the type of read that will stick with you long after you finish it. In Cold Blood truly deserves the title of the great American novel, and I highly recommend it.