Illustration by Jamie Morton

In this issue’s column, I really wanted to try and write a piece critical of UC student activism— and then the regents went and did something stupid again.

It’s gotten to the point where you can set your calendars by campus protests — there are always a big showings in September, November and March. Recent campus graffiti (the “FUCK TUITION” on the side of McHenry Library and “OCCUPY MY SCHOOL” on the side of the freshly painted Digital Arts Research Center (DARC) seems to be regressing the movement almost to a state of self-parody. Spray paint against a wall, see what sticks.

Activism on campus never felt more like a well-executed play without a climax than during the Hahn Student Services occupation in November. Early in the day, students listened to the teleconferenced regents’ meeting on a laptop. Applause broke out periodically during the public comment portion, but as soon as the regents started speaking, someone snapped the laptop shut — a gesture full of great theatricality, but a disappointment to anyone hoping to learn something about the UC’s future.

How surely history repeats itself. In her 1979 book “The White Album,” essayist Joan Didion writes about her impressions of student activism at San Francisco State University in the 1960s:

“As I walked across the campus that day and on later days the entire San Francisco State dilemma — the gradual politicization, the ‘issues’ here and there, the obligatory ‘Fifteen Demands,’ the continual arousal of the police and the outraged citizenry — seemed increasingly off-key, an instance of the enfants terribles and the Board of Trustees unconsciously collaborating on a wishful fantasy (Revolution on Campus) and playing it out for the six o’clock news.”

That “unconscious collaboration” Didion writes of has been palpable in the UC system for quite a while now. The regents have scheduled and canceled and rescheduled meetings and visits, playing the part of tone-deaf
bureaucrats. Students responded in kind. As appalling as the now-infamous footage of a campus police officer pepper-spraying UC Davis students last year is, it ultimately proved to be a favor to the student activist movement, fueling its fire and lending it many new supporters, at least temporarily. At the end of the day, none of this amounted to much. Until now.

In a cringe-worthy twist, the regents are organizing their own rally. The May regents’ meeting will be held in Sacramento, with one full day dedicated to rallying at the Capitol in an attempt to pressure the California government into giving the UC more money. Never mind that the growth in tuition does not at all mirror the decline in public funding, nor that there are over 3,000 people in the UC system who make over $200,000, nor that the UC chooses to keep spending money on construction projects over education — UC president Yudof and his cohorts are mad as hell, and apparently they’re not going to take it anymore.

The UC student regents are already trying to involve students in this rally, and it will be interesting, to say the least, to see who shows up. What’s even more interesting at this point is the farcical nature the UC’s decline has taken on. The May rally is a brilliant piece of political theater — deflect, deflect, deflect — but it also symbolizes a sort of throwing in the towel on the regents’ part. Anything they do is going to infuriate the student body at this point, so why not go out on a limb and try to redirect our wrath?

Which brings us back to “FUCK TUITION.” As much as I want to reprimand our more activism-inclined peers for their sloppiness, I cannot in good faith write a piece putting them in the same category as the regents.The UC student movement is flawed and often too predictable, but they have something the regents do not — the best interest of the students at heart. I hope there’s a huge turnout out in Sacramento in May, and that they’re all carrying signs that say “FUCK THE REGENTS.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at A Rally of Their Own

Illustration by Louise Leong.

Those involved with or sympathetic to the Occupy Wall Street cause might think that Black Friday represents everything they loathe — greed, mindless consumerism and corporate monopolies. But for Black Friday shoppers, the sales mean something entirely different. They mean equal footing.

It was a comparison begging to be drawn, a contradiction pleading to be exposed. This year’s Black Friday drew mobs, riots and even pepper-spraying — much of what the Occupy movement has come to be known for in popular media. And yet these two groups were fighting for such seemingly different causes and with different tactics. What Occupy wants, in a nutshell, is a political and financial overhaul in this country, as well as the right to protest peacefully in public space. All Black Friday shoppers wanted was a new Xbox. Black Friday shoppers broke out the pepper spray, while Occupy demonstraters had pepper spray used against them.

But even if they’re fighting for vastly different things, their fervor comes from the same place: the desire for justice.

The myth of the American Dream has been dead for a while. When the stock market crashed in 2008, its downward momentum managed to hammer the nails into that coffin. For many Americans, it doesn’t matter how hard they work, or how committed they are to finding a job — there’s still a chance they won’t be able to provide for themselves or their families. There’s still a chance their kids won’t get the top item on their Christmas lists. And it’s all because of the selfishness and irresponsibility of people at the top.

But on Black Friday, or as I like to call it, Occupy Sales Rack, there is an odd sense of fairness. Insane deals don’t go to people because of what families they were born into or what schools accepted them, but because of how hard they are willing to work, even if it means camping out three days before Thanksgiving or creating a 24-hour itinerary of different stores to hit up. Not everyone succeeds, but everyone has the chance to.

That sounds awfully similar to the type of society the United States erroneously prides itself in being, as well as to the demands Occupy Wall Street protesters make. Black Friday may financially support Wall Street, but ideologically, it has a little more of a progressive bent.

And not to be ignored are the deeper implications of deal-hunting. The excitement of buying something on sale is essentially the thrill of knowing that there is justice, because a discount tag is nothing more than the store admitting an item is worth less than they originally tried to pass it off as. Trying to cheat someone out of a few extra dollars isn’t going to work — at least not this time.

That is the joyful mania of Black Friday, the satisfaction that comes with cheating corporations out of a few bucks. It’s also the reason shows like “Extreme Couponing” exist — it’s alluringly subversive to watch a shopper somehow manage to not pay for $200 worth of groceries, and sometimes even get cash back.

There’s one thing almost all Americans can agree on these days, and it’s that something in the system doesn’t quite add up. From the Tea Party to Occupy, and for everyone somewhere in between left scratching their heads, discontentment is the new consensus. And everyone has their own form of resistance.

The main difference between Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Sales Rack is the former works outside of the corrupted system, while the latter works within it — indisputably supporting it in the process.

But that doesn’t mean it’s wise for protesters to scoff at or belittle deal-seekers. Because for all their faults, Occupy Sales Rack is just a group of people doing what they can to better their lives and find justice amid a sea of contradictions. Which sounds a lot like how one might describe Occupy Wall Street.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Shopping It to the Man

Illustration by Jamie Morton.

This June I will walk away with a piece of paper that somehow legitimizes me and my abilities. But I’m leaving when it seems my education is barely beginning.

And when I walk, I will be the first in my family to hold a diploma from a four-year university. I will be one of the few in my family to have seemingly escaped the traps and pitfalls of poverty. My graduation is not about me but about my family, the communities I come from, and the advancement of a group of people that has struggled to rise above the positions of store clerks and office drones.

But while my graduation means so much to so many others, it means nothing to me.

As a first-generation student, I had very skewed perceptions of what university would be like — my visions were much more akin to the things I’d seen in movies than reality. I wanted to sit in musty libraries and engage in heated conversations, take that class with the professor who would change my entire way of thinking, and find a purpose and a cause. I wanted to become passionate about my education in a way I had never been before, which I hoped to gain here.

But two unimpressive years went by, and I began to believe I was a number, a tuition, a walking dollar sign, and my successes and failures were only part of statistics and schematics.

I was not growing intellectually, but completely stagnating. No one was pushing me to question and no one was asking me to think critically — I could simply regurgitate the words my professors and TAs said and I’d be golden. It felt like high school with a much bigger price tag.

It wasn’t until last year when I stumbled my way through a City on a Hill Press interview and managed to nail down a job at the Ethnic Resource Center that I found what I was looking for.

Everything I ever learned at UC Santa Cruz I didn’t learn in a classroom. I have learned from my peers, from student organizers and leaders, from people who work hard to insure we as students get the most out of our education, because — honestly — the academic system itself isn’t delivering.

I have met students who have interests completely divergent from my own — environmental justice, race and politics, feminist studies, international relations and foreign policy — and I have grown because of them. I’ve talked to them, traded reading material with them, and engaged in conversations I am not having in the classroom. And because of these students, I have unearthed interests and passions of my own that were never explored in the confines of a class.

Where the UC — and where public education overall — has failed me is in ignoring me and numerous students like me. By being a business first and an institution of higher learning second — by raising my tuition, cutting resources and limiting my access to classes that piqued my interest — the UC put the mighty green before my intellectual growth, and I was never given the opportunity to realize my abilities.

I was too consumed with finishing my major and my general education requirements that it isn’t until now that I have the time to take the classes I’ve always wanted to — I’ve never enrolled in an anthropology class, a politics or economics or art class. The closest I’ve come is sitting silently in the back of a lecture hall, absorbing information I would otherwise not have an opportunity to learn because my name isn’t on a roster. It isn’t until now, the end of my fourth and final year, that I have the ability to round out an education that would otherwise have a very narrow scope.

There’s something wrong with our educational system, something much bigger than the UC itself, when we are only churning out students and improving our graduation rates without a second thought to what it is these students are walking away with. I was lucky enough to find peers — and eventually professors and advisors — who care about my success, but how many others will graduate without that experience?

The success of one means nothing if the collective is still struggling. The reason my professors, advisors and peers are invested in my education — and I theirs — is because my success is contingent upon their success. If the majority is stuck in a system that leaves us hungry, unfulfilled and still searching, what do the achievements of a few mean?

In the end, what I’ve learned from my time at UCSC is that in order to succeed, we must make our education our own. If we never stray away from the standard, if we never look elsewhere, if we believe the classroom is the start and end of our education, we may burn out, disillusioned and dissatisfied. As students, it’s important we realize while the institution is the beginning, everything amazing, delicious, thrilling, interesting and entirely overwhelming we could learn is outside of lecture halls. It’s in experiences and conversations.

Even as students rally and demonstrate, we’re learning. We’re embracing our education in a way the classroom doesn’t allow. We’re experiencing something that can never be experienced from a textbook: activism to create create substantial change.

Even in this climate, we as students can — and still are — defining ourselves by the education we are choosing for ourselves.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Still Hungry: An Education Unfulfilled

Illustration by Jamie Morton.

Remember, remember, the month of October.

That may not rhyme or roll off the tongue, but when it comes to national political protests, it’s been the rule of thumb for the past couple of years — and if these protests can be used as any sort of pulse of the liberal or progressive movements, we’ve gotten a lot less fun, but a lot more focused.

We started with the seed of something groundbreaking, something that had the potential to marry popular culture and politics in an effective way that had never been used before. This was was Jon Stewart’s and Stephen Colbert’s joint effort, the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Keep Fear Alive on Oct. 30 of last year. But the movement dissolved into a bland, predictable ruse that was cynical without being constructive.

What didn’t work for last year’s rally was that nobody was completely sure what it was trying to accomplish. A plea for young liberals and progressives to wake up, perhaps — and on some level maybe that worked. But once we were awake, then what were we supposed to do? Keep watching “The Daily Show” and “Colbert Report” and shaking our heads at other people’s stupidity? Reach out to people across the aisle, despite there being no common ground for us to stand on together? The Rally to Restore Sanity, so arrogantly ambitious in its title, ultimately did little more than advance Stewart’s and Colbert’s profiles.

For the left, that used to be enough: The idea that we had comedy, intelligence and the best of culture on our side was, for too long, an acceptable alternative to wielding actual political power. Because for many educated progressive young people, it’s simply not in our nature to take politics seriously. When we know that the odds are so clearly stacked against us, it’s much easier to just laugh at the fools on the other side.

The election of Barack Obama was an exciting moment to be sure, but when he made some questionable compromises with Republicans despite the power the supermajority gave him, it became clear that the president was at best a moderate, which in this case is political shorthand for “won’t put up much of a fight and wants campaign money.”

And there was Jon Stewart on the air almost every weeknight, attacking Obama and Congress for their decisions. Stewart clearly considers himself liberal, and knowing that he could criticize politicians and be so popular was a nice consolation prize. But did Stewart and the like provide so much catharsis that real action no longer seemed necessary? Facing the growing Tea Party was a joke-filled pseudo-protest in Washington with signs and slogans like “Angry Protest Sign” and “Make Awkward Sexual Advances, Not War” the best we were going to get?

Apparently not. Almost a full year later, Occupy Wall Street happened. And it’s still happening. It has spread all over the country, and some of its main goals — to take power away from big banks and to redistribute wealth from the top 1 percent to the other 99 percent — are unapologetically progressive. This truly grassroots movement, which started in chaos, is gaining organization and attention, and has a real voice. There are a few jokes coming from this occupation, but then, jokes don’t pass laws.

If anything was gained by the Rally to Restore Sanity, it was the reminder that putting all of one’s faith in a leader who relies on public opinion for his or her livelihood is a risky move. The left saw that with Obama, who is smart enough to know that if he wants to be reelected, he cannot serve any one faction too loyally. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are the same — for all their strong views and influence, their attempted “movement” showed that they value entertainment above anything else, and frankly, entertainment is what they’re best at.

What’s great about this movement is that Jon Stewart and his peers on “Saturday Night Live,” etc. still have a place — but it’s as the commentators on the sidelines rather than as the center of it all. A year ago, the young left, disillusioned with Obama, was a movement without a singular leader, and we thought we needed one in order to voice our discontent. But with Occupy Wall Street, that weakness has turned to a strength. Putting your faith in people is asking to be disappointed, but if you put faith in ideas, you remain in control. We are no longer caught up in our own self-image, reflected back to us in the detached cynicism of the Rally to Restore Sanity, but rather are focused on making ourselves heard to create a more just society.

Think of it this way: The progressive movement last year was like that cynical hipster in your discussion section who implies through his sulky tone that he’s smarter than the TA, but can’t muster much more than a snarky comment or two. Today it is the teacher’s pet, always up on the reading and brimming with insights.

Maybe both of those individuals are annoying to you, but the latter is going to get an A.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at A Tale of Two Protests

Illustration by Louise Leong

In the present-day media and political climate, there are moments when it’s hard not to feel like the entire world is in on some elaborate joke that you just don’t get. It doesn’t make sense anymore, and you’re left wondering where and when exactly everything stopped adding up.

That happened for me last week when I read People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is planning on launching a porn site. I know what images that might conjure in your mind, so I’ll clarify — the pornography will feature humans exclusively (no animals), but the site will be used as a tool to draw people in and then inform them about PETA’s message: animal rights and a vegan diet.

PETA has a history of favoring the “shock factor” technique in its advertising — the organization has equated factory farming to the Holocaust, used porn stars as spokesmodels, and is perhaps most notorious for using bloody imagery to drive home their point, that “Meat is Murder!”

There are some who might not see a problem with PETA’s newest publicity tactic. As one friend succinctly said to me when I brought up the subject, “I mean, why not do this?” After all, if people are going to look at porn anyway, why not try to educate them about animal rights in the process?

And I’ll concede that pornography is not inherently unethical — it’s just the way it’s produced by for-profit American companies, with the exception of a few groups of people specifically dedicated to reclaiming porn for all types and portraying more realistic and respectable sexual situations, is often degrading and belittling to all sorts of people. The porn stars PETA has employed in the past have been plastic, mainstream figures of the adult film industry, so with only that history to go on, it’s likely their new site won’t challenge the norm.

It’s probably crossed your mind by this point that this is the ultimate irony — compromising the integrity of human beings to prove a point about the integrity of animals. Keeping all that in mind, it’s tempting to lambast the organization for a lack of ethics or common sense.

But this publicity stunt didn’t come out of thin air. PETA’s defense of its more drastic measures has always been that it’s the only way to catch people’s attention. And that’s understandable, because nobody gets in the news for being agreeable anymore. If PETA were just launching a new, standard, informative website, then I probably wouldn’t be writing this piece right now. And what that means is PETA’s decisions don’t just reflect their own organization, but also the culture at large.

It’s true PETA is an extreme group, and its bids for attention aren’t part of the norm. But what is most unusual about PETA’s overt use of pornography for gain is just that — it’s overt. Look at any commercial or magazine cover, and the odds are good it manipulates sexual desire and some form of the “ideal” body to sell products or copies. City on a Hill Press’s own beginning-of-the-year welcome guide, Primer, featured the outline of a woman on its cover this year, and while it was not the driving motivation for the concept, the sex-appeal factor was not ignored. That’s just one closer-to-home example of the nearly ancient and universal advertising mantra: “sex sells.” Other famous examples include recent Axe body spray ads and Calvin Klein ads in the ‘90s. In some twisted sense, you have to hand it to PETA: at least they’re cutting through the bullshit and telling it like it is.

Fringe groups like PETA often are the first to pioneer an attitude or ideal that later becomes the moderate norm — this is how change happens in America. Could this mean that someday straightforward porn websites — rather than advertisements that resemble porn — could be the standard means of selling products or ideas?

It’s honestly not something that would surprise me. In fact, I’d be hard-pressed to think of an advertising strategy that would surprise me at this point. It’s a strange time for advertising in general, as the Internet is superseding television as the dominant medium, and Internet users are masters at avoiding ads. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

But desperate and lazy aren’t the same thing, and ultimately, that’s what selling sex is: lazy. PETA porn is clever in a cringe-worthy way, but it’s also way too easy. It’s the equivalent of a sitcom with a laugh track — relying on artificial measures to trick people into thinking they’re being entertained. Ha, ha, ha. Sex sells.

And that matters to me because advertising isn’t just a reflection of or an influence on culture — it is culture. I’m as likely to bring up a commercial in conversation as I am a television show. Some people would say that’s sad, but I’m aware enough to know that there’s no escaping consumer culture, so the most we can do is demand the very best entertainment we can where we can get it, whether it’s hamsters driving cars and listening to hip hop or Envious Nomads who love Emerald Nuts.

Yes, sex is great, but capitalizing on that idea isn’t exactly creative. I’m all for advocating for animals, but it’s also important to advocate for standards.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Of Porn and PETA

Illustration by Matt Boblet.

The last time democracy really worked on a large scale in America was in 1985. A huge change was enacted by higher powers that altered the daily routine for millions of citizens, and many were outraged and unsatisfied with the change. Refusing to take this lying down, they made their voices heard, and the error in judgment was quickly reversed.

And just like that, as quickly as it had gone, Coca-Cola Classic was back on the market.

We’ve all heard of “voting with our dollars” — the idea that we can change the practices of corporations by choosing to buy — or more often, not buy — a certain product. This is exactly what happened to Coca Cola in 1985. The company introduced “New Coke,” a supposedly more full-bodied version of the iconic soft drink, and although sales spiked for a bit due to consumer curiosity, they eventually plummeted. There are different reasons given for the failure of New Coke, but the basic hypothesis is that Coke is somehow tied to people’s identity as Americans (especially those living in the South, where Coke was created and first flourished), and people didn’t like the idea of changing a part of their cultural heritage for no good reason. The move was seen as an act of tone-deaf corporate flailing, and the market rejoiced when Coke’s original formula was again made available, mere months after its cancellation.

And now it’s 2011, and two more American brands are under fire for changing their products. One of the companies, Facebook, is in a state of almost constant controversy, from privacy concerns, to scrutiny of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, to users’ dissatisfaction with the online chat feature. The latest surge of negative publicity comes from a feature all users see on the side of their screen — a window called a “ticker” that tracks every move of every friend in real time. It’s basically a newsfeed on steroids. The main complaint against it criticizes its hyper-voyeuristic nature, and the fact that friends of friends have too much access to information. More intense changes — such as the Timeline, a sort of autobiography of one’s life, becoming the new standard profile page — are still in beta, but one can only imagine how many complaints will be launched against Facebook after these changes take effect.

Another company under fire right now is Netflix. The online movie rental company recently raised its subscription rates significantly and announced its division into two sites — Netflix will remain for streaming video only, and a new site called Qwikster is exclusively for DVD deliveries.

Users are upset about changes to these products — earlier this summer, Facebook lost about 6 million users in the United States, and it’s estimated when all is said and done, Netflix will lose as many as 2.5 million subscribers. Why, then, are the companies forging ahead with changes that upset the very people who bring in money? If consumers are commodities, why aren’t their opinions being taken more into account? If these changes are our generation’s New Coke, why aren’t Facebook and Netflix paying attention to their customers? As “Ad Age’s” recent article’s title asks, “Seriously, Netflix, Facebook — Did You Forget About Your Consumer?”

It’s worth noting both Facebook and Netflix exist solely as online products — nobody goes to the store to buy some social media, and the whole point of Netflix is you needn’t leave your house to watch movies or TV shows. And — this might be the understatement of the year — the Internet changes everything.

One of the largest impacts the Internet has had is it has made it more and more difficult to truly impress anybody. We’ve become a “been there, seen that” culture, where it’s possible to intimately know any experience by pushing a few buttons. As a result, nothing is serious, nothing is dire, nothing matters. Because of this, a website cannot stay the same, because users will inevitably lose interest and move onto something else. This has always been the case with products to some degree — capitalism and advertising are built around the idea of selling people things they don’t need, but the Internet’s ability to provide instant gratification makes newness more necessary than ever before. And to keep up, Facebook and Netflix are anticipating users’ malaise before it happens.

There’s a chance a person might be a lifelong drinker of Coca-Cola Classic over Pepsi, but nobody’s going to stick with Facebook when all their friends move over to Google+ (remember what happened to MySpace?), which is why Facebook is rabidly trying to prevent that by making changes nobody wants (or at least, nobody wants yet). And it’s only a matter of time before something — Hulu? Redbox? — catches up to Netflix, so they’re milking the customers they have for all the money they’re worth, while they can. On the Internet, almost everything has a shelf life.

Interestingly enough, these two online Goliaths — always on the lookout for their virtual Davids — have joined forces. Users outside of the United States can now stream Netflix on Facebook and see what their friends are watching. Maybe you don’t want that to happen, but if online culture tells us anything, it’s that sometimes unlikeable is still better than stagnant.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Damned if You Change, Damned if You Don’t

But the most key move in the playbook of athletes — coaches and managers alike — is the sidestep, the practiced move of speaking generically on critical questions from the media by providing clichéd responses straight out of the “Bull Durham” postgame interview lexicon.

The realm of professional sports has been privy to plenty of black eyes as a result of a blind eye turned away from an important situation, like concussions in football or performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. But one issue that has been swept under the rug for decades that is just now starting to see the light of day is homophobia — and homosexuality as a whole — in sports.

Illustration by Louise Leong

It has become an en-vogue topic of discussion thanks to a recent rash of high-profile cases of gay slurs by athletes, combined with historic acknowledgements of homosexuality both in sports and by those who partake in them.

The first — and arguably most talked about — incident that raised eyebrows occurred when Lakers star Kobe Bryant shouted a homophobic slur at a referee after he called him for a foul in a game last month. Bryant was fined $100,000 by the National Basketball Association (NBA) and issued an apology, saying that he called the referee a “f—ing f—–” out of frustration and that this was not meant to convey his attitude towards homosexuality.

Two weeks later, Atlanta Braves pitching coach Roger McDowell was suspended for two weeks after making lewd remarks and gestures towards fans before a San Francisco Giants game. He allegedly approached three men sitting together in the stands and asked them, “Are you guys a homo couple or a threesome?” He then followed up these comments by motioning suggestively with his hips and a bat. When another spectator sitting nearby intervened by saying that there were children nearby, McDowell responded that kids don’t belong at a ballpark, then picked up his bat and asked the fan how much his teeth were worth.

Most recently, Chicago Bulls center Joakim Noah was fined $50,000 last Monday for shouting the same slur as Bryant towards a fan who was taunting him from behind the Bulls’ bench. He acknowledged his mistake, as well and said that he was willing to “pay the price” for his actions.

But what did paying the price really mean for Noah? It meant a little bad press and a few pennies from his wallet that amounts to 1.6 percent of the roughly $3.1 million he made this season. It meant having to issue an apology and receiving the ire of gay advocacy groups for a day but then having this story get lost in the swath of other less taboo, more simplistic sports news.

This isn’t something that McDowell, Bryant or Noah could have lost their jobs over, and nor should they have. Their comments were ignorant and egregious, but it’s just another reminder that athletes aren’t heroes and shouldn’t be treated as such, even though they sometimes appear to have superhuman physical abilities compared to us ordinary 9-to-5 folk.

However, that doesn’t mean that we should excuse any kind of wrongdoing on their part with a “boys will be boys” attitude. Granted, while the commissioner’s offices of Major League Baseball and the NBA did act swiftly to condemn these derisions and punish the athletes responsible, the issue of how homosexuality is regarded in sports is something that cannot be solved with a check and a forced public apology.

The larger issue at hand comes down to the cultural identifications that exist with regard to homosexuality and its countering ideology found in the concept of machismo. The undeniable core of this problem is that homosexuality in men has been forever linked to being less of a man and thereby being feminine and weak. And there’s no place where any sign of weakness is a bigger sin than on the playing fields and locker rooms of professional sporting arenas. It’s the whole “there’s no crying in baseball” temperament that had sports fans making fun of Miami Heat superstar Chris Bosh for crying after a tough loss in March, the overall locker room mentality that breeds physical and mental toughness over the display of any emotion other than anger.

Clearly, this state of mind isn’t something that can be tackled over any short period of time, and perhaps it will never fully go away. As long as there are football dads and soccer moms that disparage their kids by calling them pansies when they cry after getting hurt, this equation of emotion = weakness = bad (meaning it makes one a “queer”) will continue to live on.

That’s where it comes back to the athletes. While they should not be wholly responsible for trying to address the matter of homophobia in society as a whole, sports is such a large part of our culture that athletes can make a dent in the problem by educating themselves and others about it.

As the old Alcoholics Anonymous adage goes, the first step in recognizing there’s a problem is admitting there is one. The commissioner’s offices of all the professional sports should determine a way in which they not merely impose a fine on their players for saying these slurs, but also — or even alternatively — encourage them to seek out knowledge on the issue of homophobia by talking to advocacy groups. This shouldn’t be handed down as a punishment like court-ordered community service but should be framed in a light that allows the athletes to see it as an opportunity for them to really learn from their mistake philosophically — not just financially.

Over the past few weeks, a couple of steps have been taken by pro athletes that could have a positive long-term effect on addressing this subject.

Last month, Phoenix Suns president Rick Welts revealed to the media that he is gay. He is believed to be the first man in a prominent position in sports to have ever openly stated his homosexuality and said he did so to help address a topic that is “off-limits” in his industry. Subsequently, Suns star point guard Steve Nash made a video in support of New York’s marriage equality proposition.

Additionally, the San Francisco Giants organization recently released a clip for the “It Gets Better” anti-homophobic video campaign aimed at giving hope to gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual adolescents who are bullied for their sexual orientation. They are the first professional sports franchise to jump on board with an “It Gets Better” video.

While it is laudable that these moves have been made to step up and address homophobia as a whole, professional sports as an entity should try to improve how the sports world percieves homosexuality by dealing with it from the inside out. In this day and age, they will not be alienating people by bringing a seemingly political issue into sports. Rather, they will alienate themselves from spectators more if they continue to plug their ears with their fingers and act as if they are inside a bubble.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

It all started in eighth grade. I owe a lot to my middle school English teacher. She made us all participate in our own Toastmasters, meaning we each had to give five-minute speeches about any topic of our choosing. The point was to become competent at organizing and delivering speeches and explaining things clearly.

I was nervous but also excited by the opportunity to educate my sometimes less-than-enthralling peers about anything I wanted. But as often happens when presented with limitless choices, I was paralyzed by the possibilities. I kept a running list of potential topics, but not one idea outshone the rest.

As had often happened before and has often happened since, television gave me the answer — more specifically, the E! Entertainment channel gave me the answer. One night when I no doubt should have been doing math homework, the “E! True Hollywood Story” of Oprah Winfrey came on TV.

Illustration by Bela Messex

I’d been a casual fan of Oprah for a couple years. I was at the awkward age in my life when neither playing with toys nor going out with friends was a common after-school occurrence (it’s called middle school), and that meant that I had a lot more time to watch TV.

But that E! True Hollywood Story converted me into a hardcore fan. After seeing Oprah’s story — the story of an impoverished childhood as a rape survivor, and the story of fighting for a job at a local TV station and using it to eventually propel herself to national syndication, against all odds — I became mildly obsessed.

Because — no apologies to the naysayers — Oprah is awesome. And I honestly can’t think of a better mainstream famous female role model than Ms. Winfrey.

Women in the media often exist to be looked at. They succeed on the merits of their looks and sexuality, or their relationships, or their ability to perform in the role that is manufactured for them. But Oprah succeeded because of her ability to talk, and most importantly, her ability to ask questions.

Much has been said about Oprah’s ego, and I can understand how some would find her overbearing and ridiculous. But she didn’t get to the top by being obsessed with herself — in fact, it’s just the opposite. Oprah originally gained popularity by shedding light and peering into all sorts of topics, often ones that were overlooked or mistreated by the traditional media.

Through different interviews and shows, she put a human face on issues, one of the most notable issues being AIDS. Major TV news shows can conflate this epidemic into being all fear and no content, and that was especially true in the ’80s. But by having a talk show — a program whose very title implied that its purpose was to let people talk — Oprah could allow stories to be told.

In 1987, the same year that Ronald Reagan finally publicly acknowledged the existence of AIDS, Oprah, who had only been on air a few years, did a show about the town of Williamsburg, West Virginia, which had recently been rocked by a controversy revolving around an out gay man who was HIV-positive, a public swimming pool and a lot of ignorance. She traveled to the town, and the citizens were both her audience and her interviewees.

The episode showed a public dialogue that, while being very hateful and prejudiced, also served as an important narrative for the country to see. The rest of the media had covered the issue, and people had judged what they thought about it. But Oprah putting the story, the issue, the man and the entire town on television for an hour was huge because it existed as a record of what was really going on at this point in history. It wasn’t hyped up with the language of fear that many media outlets used when covering AIDS, and it wasn’t downplayed into almost nonexistence the way Reagan wished it to be. It simply was: Oprah asked the people questions, and they answered.

It was definitely a risk to do that show, as many of her viewers at the time probably still harbored deep resentment towards homosexual people and an intense fear of AIDS. But she did it anyway — why? For ratings? That probably had something to do with it. But still, she went far outside the safety net of what talk shows were supposed to be about at the time, and she continued to do so, covering things like sexual abuse, meat contamination, drug addiction, obesity and much more.

And when Oprah revisited the town 23 years later, we could see how much had changed since 1987 — and how much remained the same.

So naturally, 13-year-old me gave a speech about her. I don’t remember much about it, beyond yelling at my fellow students that they’d all won free cars. But I hope I stressed the importance of asking questions.

Because over the years, Oprah has asked a whole lot of people questions. Her style has changed, her subjects have changed, and some would say she’s grown less relevant, and worships far too frequently at the altar of consumption.

But the fact that being a dirt-poor, sexually abused African American girl who grew up to be one of the most influential people on the planet, is owed mostly to her ability to ask questions — and her persistence at doing so — remains remarkable. It attests to the power of human connection, to the importance of dialogue, and to the unstoppable force that is curiosity and the equally impressive need to be heard.

And as her talk show comes to an end, the power of conversation is more important than ever. Nobody will ever replace Oprah Winfrey, but hopefully everyone can keep in mind what she said during her final episode.

“Wherever you are, that is your platform, your stage, your circle of influence,” Winfrey said. “That is your talk show, and that is where your power lies.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at The End of an Era

As I write this, I’m just three weeks shy of my college graduation. My inevitable existential crisis, having started sometime in April, has been in a state of flux for weeks now — am I excited, nervous, nostalgic or just over it? One thing, though, is certain. For the remaining days of my collegiate career (and for as long as I can hold on thereafter), I am putting up a mental blockade.

I have erected these walls to keep out a specific, but very insidious, enemy: the onslaught of New York Times op-eds, Huffington Post blogs and USA Today or CNN polls saying that I, a soon-to-be college graduate, am doomed. Doomed to a new life of mediocre Craigslist job postings, minimum wage work and a humiliating drive home from college with a Volvo full of the same stuff I drove north with four years ago.

According to a source that I am not particularly fond of right now — a consulting firm called Twentysomething Inc. — 85 percent of this year’s college graduates will move back in with their parents due to a sub-par job market. By this measure, it seems like I should forget about hearing the traditional “Pomp and Circumstance” tune on graduation weekend and expect something a little more depressing as I walk down the aisle. Perhaps Radiohead or Jeff Buckley would be more appropriate. At least that’s what I feel I’m supposed to believe.

My purposeful rejection of this media-induced malaise isn’t a state of denial, but rather a declaration of independence. I’m distancing myself from the idea that I am a member of this supposed “lost generation.” The one who checked all the boxes to get into college (SAT tutoring, athletics, volunteering), fulfilled all the requirements once they arrived (general ed, choosing a minor, writing a thesis), and yet has emerged on the other side empty-handed.

The problem, to me, is that this view of college as an assembly line — where you take classes, build your resume and reach June with a job offer and an engraved invitation to middle-class life — is entirely outdated. What about the part where you find out what you’re passionate about doing? Where you decide not just what you want to see change in the world, but also figure out a way to make it happen. That kind of thing, it would seem, is limited to freshman year idealism.

In my time at UC Santa Cruz, I have met countless individuals who are indeed qualified enough to be hired by any number of companies, agencies or firms. But more importantly, I have met people whose ingenuity, passions, unique talents and problem-solving skills make them qualified for a number of jobs that don’t exist right now, because the class of 2011 has yet to create them.

Now, I am fully aware that in six months to a year, I may be proved utterly wrong with a healthy serving of humble pie. It’s exceedingly obvious that things out there are tough. I have spent the past five months interning alongside college graduates who, let’s face it, are ready to move from the intern cubicle to the payroll. But those same people are also building a skill set and developing a passion for something that is more than just a paycheck. It may take us all a while to get to where we’re going, but when we do, I’m confident what we will find will be less of a career and more of a calling.

In addition, moving in with one’s parents, while not ideal, is also not the end of the world. It may mean you’re not making enough money to rent an apartment, but it doesn’t mean you’re an utter failure. Did you miss that minor event in 2008 when all those wealthy investment bankers and Wall Street executives — who no doubt had a great job the day they graduated from their Ivy League establishment — crashed and burned and took the whole world down with them? The whole idea of an income bracket as the ultimate barometer of success is on shaky ground these days.

While money is certainly not insignificant when it comes to our post-collegiate success, it’s just not the bottom line. Irritatingly, the aforementioned New York Times and Huffington Post articles’ familiar story of graduates being forced to move home seems to end there. Nowhere does it say what these individuals are doing. Public service and non-profit jobs are on the rise, applications for programs like Americorps and Peace Corps have increased, and laptop-fueled entrepreneurship can be observed in many a coffee shop. I’ll give you one guess as to who is doing that meaningful, albeit less lucrative, work. And it’s not those investment bankers.

So while my pre-graduation status may mean I’m not be entirely qualified to give it, here is my advice to the class of 2011: Boeing, Goldman Sachs and Aetna are probably not going to call you, but that’s not necessarily a setback. If there’s one thing we’ve all learned in college, it’s that this world has plenty of problems, many of which were caused by the former generation. Don’t let the fact that you might have to live with your parents take away your resolve to fix those things, to pursue your passion and to stake out a meaningful life that resembles the one you’ve always wanted.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at She’s Moving Home After Living Alone

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein

The Playboy Club and Pan Am airplanes. These are the habitats women will soon occupy on television. The new shows start this fall, but they’re both set in the 1960s.

Hollywood knows how to work a decade. Just look at “Mad Men,” AMC’s award-winning drama about the Madison Avenue advertising culture.

The show’s set and costumes are meticulous — most of the props actually come from the time period they are meant to recreate, and the dress is impeccable, from men’s skinny ties to women’s corsets.

And the attitudes towards gender match the scenery. The men on the show have the upper hand in every regard. They can sleep with whomever they want, strive for any job they want and generally treat women however they want, just so long as they keep up a certain appearance. The show’s women, on the other hand, face many more obstacles and find struggles even in their victories, such as when “Mad Men” character Peggy — advertising firm Sterling Cooper’s first female copy writer — faces unabashed sexism while trying to do her hard-won job.

But that’s not to say “Mad Men” leaves its female characters out in the cold. In fact, many fans and critics alike agree that the women’s stories are what make the show. They’re all vastly different, compelling, dynamic characters whose plot lines show the difficulties women faced in the 1960s and still face today. The show is a testimonial to a history too often overlooked. The world “Mad Men” depicts is horribly sexist, but the show itself is remarkably equal and possibly even feminist.

And unfortunately, that’s still something worth noting. Because while not many shows are overtly sexist, true female perspective and character development are hard to find on primetime television. For every “Mad Men,” there are shows like “House,” which focuses on a primarily male cast and viewpoint. For every “30 Rock,” there is a “Two and a Half Men.” Yes, both of the latter shows feature women in the cast, but they fail to delve into what those women go through in their lives. They serve as romantic interests for the men, and not much else.

And a lot of the shows that do attempt or claim to represent women don’t do much better. What does it say that the program with the highest number of female characters on television right now is the “Real Housewives” franchise?

There are some shows with great roles for women — “The Good Wife” and “Bones” come to mind, among a few others — but they’re still few and far between.

This lack of representation is no surprise, given the statistics. Women made up only 17 percent of all writers in the entertainment industry in 2009, according to the Writers Guild of America. It’s futile to expect a team of mostly male writers to be especially competent at coming up with complex female characters. To the credit of “Mad Men,” a number of women have won Emmys for their work writing on the show.

Hollywood has taken note of this success. The major networks announced their new pilots for the fall season a couple of weeks ago, and a few shows stood out as trying to cash in on Mad Men’s nostalgia-fueled hype. NBC’s “Playboy Club” and ABC’s “Pan Am” focus on the lives of Playboy bunnies and flight attendants in the 1960s.

One cannot judge a book by its cover or a TV show by its promotional poster. That being said, it’s worth noting that still shots from “Playboy Club” focus pretty heavily on particular female anatomical parts. The bunnies’ faces — when they’re shown at all — reveal no emotion more complex than sexual desire and a willingness to serve men. The flight attendants of “Pan Am” are more conservatively dressed, but the portrayed power structure remains the same, with the women literally standing a few feet behind the male pilots.

Still, it remains to be seen whether the writers for these shows intend to only rip off the “Mad Men” aesthetic or if they’re looking to go deeper than that. It’s easy to recreate a ’60s-themed world of sexism and inequality, but people who actually watch “Mad Men” know loving the show means loving (and loving to hate) the characters, and seeing what they go through.

Yes, “Mad Men” star Christina Hendricks is nice to look at. But seeing her character, secretary-of-steel Joan, dealing with an incredibly sexist cartoon of her posted in the office by male coworkers is what makes her — and the show — nice to watch.

So let’s hope Hollywood doesn’t simply recreate “Mad Men” in the visual sense. Here’s hoping that Playboy’s bunnies and Pan Am’s attendants can join the ranks of Sterling Cooper’s secretaries.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Women on TV Get ‘Mad’

Illustration by Louise Leong

For me, home smells like garlic, sesame oil and briny vegetables — soups bubbling over stove-top flames and chive cakes crackling in frying pans. The early morning chill rolling in through cracked windows as life starts yawning and rumbling through hallways. Home, for me, has become synonymous with the glow of kitchen lights in the early morning, and the smells and sounds of my grandmother’s cooking: the thud of knives against wooden boards as she slices vegetables, the clang of metal pans and spoons as she concocts meals from memory — no measurements, no hesitation.

There are days when homesickness can only be cured by a bowl of kimchi jjigae. The spicy stew is my madeleine dipped in tea.

My grandmother, a native of South Korea, has been a consistent force in my life and I can’t imagine where I’d be without her. She came to America after marrying my grandfather, a member of the U.S. Air Force. Her first stop was a base in Kentucky — not the ideal location, and not exactly what she imagined when she boarded the plane.

I have tremendous respect and affection for my grandmother. She is resilient and — there is no other word for it — tough. But that doesn’t mean we’ve always seen eye to eye, and a couple of years ago, our relationship was tested. For a few months, we became estranged — something I had never anticipated ever happening, and it was difficult to wrap my mind around the consequences of separating myself from her. But in the end, it forced us to approach our relationship differently. I was no longer a child, and the generational gap was more apparent. I had to approach my grandmother as an adult, and she had to recognize that I was no longer a little girl.

And when things were mended and we were confronted with our now-altered relationship, Korean food became the bridge between us.

It served as a talking point: She’d make something, I’d ask what it was, we’d talk about the food in front of us, and eventually, while we were eating we’d talk about the little things going on in our lives. It segued into the bigger discussions we needed to have. But it also became a way for us to reconnect.

Over the last year, I’ve learned more about my grandmother and her culture and history over plates of noodles and pickled vegetables than I have over a decade of weekend visits. Sharing in food culture has become a way for my grandmother to share things she loves with me, things she thought I wouldn’t have had interest in before.

Even simple trips to grocery stores and Korean markets become a maze of ingredients, possible recipes unfolding in front of us. It becomes another way for my grandmother and I to connect. We can talk about what we like, what we don’t ever want to eat again, and what we should plan for dinner or lunch or breakfast or whatever in-between snack we want.

And there are so many things to explore in a culture’s food alone that it becomes an endless exploration of spices and flavors and textures and stories. Daikon? It can be sliced and served in soup or pickled and spiced and served as a side dish to a steaming bowl of rice. But more than that, it can be the beginning to a story of my grandmother’s memories of my father when he was eight years old.

But all of this — the cooking, the planning, the exploration — that’s not what this really boils down to. I had never realized how much I didn’t know about my grandmother — the little things that really mean so much that she just never wanted to talk about or never felt I’d be interested in, like her transition into life in the United States and the tiny discomforts that accumulate and alienate.

Recently, my grandmother told me about how when she had first come to the United States, she didn’t like American food and eventually, she craved kimchi — that national dish that has come to represent Koreanness — something impossible to find in the average grocery store when she first immigrated here.

Her solution? Try and make it from an assortment of ingredients that are not quite right, but related enough that she could throw together an imitation. In her words: “It was disgusting.”

And although it’s only a little story, an anecdote on the strange little transitions from one culture to another, it’s one she had never mentioned and one that offers me insight into her own experiences. It’s something she would have never mentioned if she hadn’t realized I am interested and I do care and I want to know as much about her and her experiences as I can before I no longer have the option to sit with her, have tea and just talk.

Food culture has become an avenue of communication, an antidote to the cold war that could have lasted between my grandmother and me. Korean food, specifically, has given us something in common and something to share with each other. While my grandmother teaches me recipes and traditions and I stumble through them — the taste usually off, and never quite right — I’m actively seeking out new things to talk about, reading food blogs and cookbooks and anything else that gives me a little insight into the culinary world my grandmother exists in.

When it’s time for us to sit and to eat, she will turn to me and ask, “What is it you want?” And the only right response? “Whatever you like. Something I’ve never had before.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Crossing the Divide, One Dish at a Time

Illustration by Matt Boblet

“People turn a blind eye when the clock chimes dinner time.”

There is a silent evil that has gripped, with unkind fingers, the whole of the United States in recent decades, spreading disease, wrecking homes and destroying rivers, land and animal vitality.

You’d think with such a large problem on our hands, we would have heard of more protests or backlashes against factory farming and the way meat is raised and produced in this country. Beyond PETA, we haven’t, or at least I can say that I haven’t.

Strangers on the street smile and wave to me as they bite into a hamburger, beef taco or slice of pepperoni pizza. Their actions contradict each other. One says, “I am a nice, open-hearted person,” and the other, them biting into tortured flesh, screams the opposite and makes their smile sinister in meaning.

Is this the world we live in?

Perhaps people are ignorant. With the way that factory farm corporations cover their tracks, I am not surprised. They do this by keeping photographers and reporters out of their “farms” so the average person can’t see the pain and torture that goes into making a seemingly simple burger. They also control every part of meat production, from an animal’s birth and upbringing to its death and packaging, running small farmers out of business. And they make sure that environmental laws are stymied in local legislatures so that regardless of the environmental damage their facilities inflict on land and rivers, they still get away with it,

Despite the knowledge gap, however, it is apparent to me that, generally speaking, people turn a blind eye when the clock chimes dinner time. For some, it is impossible not to. Who am I to say that everybody is at fault when there are families that live on little to nothing and are forced to eat the cheap meat that is served at their local McDonald’s?

And yes, factory farms prey on those and others, making use of their advantageous cheap prices and widespread system to disregard human and animal health and well-being.

But there are many people for whom finances have nothing to do with it, and when asked, will act in defense of their choice to eat an animal that was tortured. A defense I hear often: “What difference will it make if I don’t eat meat? McDonald’s will still serve those who will.”

The idea that vegetarianism or conscious eating (i.e. knowing where your meat comes from) will not make a dent in the mass production of meat is valid. Even I have a hard time thinking that I am making a change by buying only locally grown, “happy” meat. But when I sit around the table at dinner and my family asks me again why I eat the way I do, I know that in a small way, I make an impact by example.

Animal suffering aside, I’m surprised that people haven’t been outraged by factory farms’ influence on human health. Outbreaks of salmonella, swine flu and other related food poisoning epidemics seen on the news do nothing to stir human emotion for more than a short period of time. When I have children, I know that I will not be feeding them the diseases packaged up by factory farms like Tyson and Smithfield. They have the power to kill and still we surrender to them as if they were inevitable.

An appeal to the environment, although cliché, is also necessary here. Those who live next to factory farms will be the first to tell you how they ruin the land, air and water around them. There simply was never meant to be so many animals raised in factories rather than on actual farms.

Pig factory farms, for example, keep their pigs inside from birth until death in cages where they are unable to turn around and are forced to defecate on their downstairs neighbors for cages and cages below them. This excrement piles up, is liquefied and then funneled into a giant manure lake in the factory’s backyard, where it stinks for miles and miles in every direction.

Local legislatures have tried, to no avail, to stop the building of factory farms near homes, but factory farms are granted their right to property regardless of the environmental laws they break. Sometimes the large factory farm corporations would even rather pay for a lawsuit than stop polluting.

All of this goes relatively unnoticed in cities and large urban areas, where the disconnect is so great that people hardly know that chickens and pigs actually have personalities that are comparable to some pets coveted in our society. Can you imagine if our nation treated dogs the same way we treat pigs? Then, maybe, we would see some action.

I have bones to pick — not only with the corporations that have reduced the lives of animals to a meaningless, wasteful, torturous existence, but also with the people who stand by and let it happen, who even sometimes thoughtlessly encourage it.

I say it is time to make a solid effort to save the lives of our fellow creatures. We all know who the enemy is here. We are privileged enough to have voices and the ability to communicate, so now let’s use that power to help the powerless. It is possible to make a change, to cut our ties to a horrible system, but only if we work in numbers.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Factory Farming: Treating Animals like Commodities

Illustration by Matt Boblet.

The faucet is running. My compact, powder and mascara are in my bag and that girl who just came in the bathroom door didn’t see a thing.

About two years ago, I began to feel the need to be more of a ninja in these types of situations while on campus at UC Santa Cruz.

I began to pay more attention to my surroundings after an uncomfortable encounter in the Social Sciences 2 building.

A sweet-looking, button-nosed girl came up to me as I adjusted my makeup in the bathroom mirror and said, in a condescending voice, “You’re beautiful without makeup, you know?”

My first thought was, “Have you been following me? How do you know what I look like without makeup?”

I tilted my head and thought, “Wait, do you think I’m not being a good feminist? What does that even mean?”

Her words stung, and I didn’t really know what to say. I just shrugged my shoulders and probably made a funny face.

I hate to sound shallow, but I’ve always really liked makeup, especially during my adolescent years when I wasn’t allowed to wear it. It was a rush with blush.

There were so many bright blues and greens, all probably with harmful ingredients that have aged me prematurely.

I remember sneaking around with my friends and exchanging makeup that was, in my mother’s words, not for “niñas” (girls) in middle school.

At 12, I was hiding from my mother. Now at 21, I’m hiding from hyper-critical students. The digits have switched, yet here I am. I just hate that I feel so self-conscious about people seeing my makeup ritual.

I even feel self-conscious about looking at myself.

Next time you — men, women, and everything in between and outside — go into a public restroom, look immediately in the direction of the mirrors. Someone just flinched and played off adjusting their hair. I do it all the time.

I wouldn’t say I have a fixation when it comes to makeup. I just really like wearing it, and have an unfortunate glandular problem. That’s right. I’m a sweaty girl. By 2:30 p.m., half my face is an inch lower than the other side.

Like Photoshop, I get to work with my brush. I “restore” my image. It’s my little ritual.

By doing this, I risk confronting another Button-Nose.

I’d like to know: What’s the difference between society telling women what to do and a type of feminism that tells us what to do? It’s hard to please both my Beyoncé-look-loving side and Button-Nose.

At least I’m not the only ninja with this problem. My housemate was energetically telling me about having to face this fear after running short on time in the morning.

“Yeah, I put my makeup on,” she said with pride. “IN PUBLIC!”

Rebecca Walker, daughter of famous novelist Alice Walker, dealt with a similar fear of judgment. In her book “To Be Real,” Rebecca Walker spoke about her experiences with her mother.

“Young women feminists find themselves watching their speech and tone in their works so as not to upset their elder feminist mothers,” she said in the book. “Younger feminists definitely have a hard time proving themselves worthy as feminist scholars and activists.”

Though Rebecca Walker has been criticized for being self-righteous, she does make a point in saying that some have developed an overly standardized view of what feminism should be for everyone — not what feminism and empowerment means to individuals.

Feminist literature throughout the decades has pointed to the diversity among women’s wants and needs. More than half of the anthropology students in that Social Sciences 2 building could lecture Button-Nose on a thing or two about cultural relativity.

I’m not saying that there isn’t a reciprocal relationship. Outside the walls of UCSC, people are unfairly partial to “mainstream” looks, dolled-up faces and the latest season’s colors.

To be honest, I’m often one of those people who say, “You’re beautiful without makeup.” But why can’t it be both? Who am I to say what people should do?

Though I am an exceptionally good ninja, I’ll try not to flinch next time someone walks in on me staring at myself. Let’s be comfortable with ourselves, and let’s be comfortable with others’ choices.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at A Rush with Blush

Illustration by Louise Leong.

Reality TV: can’t live with it, can’t bring my lazy self to change the channel when it comes on. At least, that’s the attitude I used to have, though lately this has grown into a full, outright appreciation for the genre. I genuinely like the stuff, and a lot of it has more cultural worth than most give it credit for. That being said, it’s obvious that not all “reality” is created equal, which is why it may seem strange that I sought out the first episode of new series “Audrina” on VH1.

Before I get into defending myself, some background about the show and its star. Audrina Patridge is famous for being famous. She’s an It Girl, a descendant from the lineage of Edie Sedgwick and Paris Hilton, and with her new reality show, she’s milking that status for all it’s worth.

“Audrina” is different from Patridge’s former reality show appearances, “The Hills” and “Dancing With The Stars,” because it’s all about Audrina (get the title?) and her family. The producers are obviously going for a “Keeping Up With The Kardashians” type of show here, down to the details: It’s a family with an overbearing mother, three clashing sisters, a harmless brother and a meek father, living in Southern California and generally being a collective pain in the ass.

Here’s why I was so excited to watch the show: I love “The Hills.” Although I was late to the party, as soon as I gave the show a chance, I was hooked, because it’s real life. Not real life in the sense that what they filmed are things that literally happened — it’s obviously scripted and hyped up. But it is real life in the sense that it has some of the most realistic plot lines on television, especially in the first few seasons.

It’s a story you know — people hang out with their friends, some stupid drama or misunderstanding breaks out, and then a whole week is spent hanging out, having lunch and overanalyzing the situation to death. How many times have you had to sit and listen to the same complaints and observations from the same bitter people, and then have to respond by pretending these were highly original insights?

Also, remember when LC abruptly left the show with hardly a goodbye, and Kristin came in to take her place, and nobody on the show even commented about how weird that was? Some saw that as highly unrealistic, but when you’re a young adult, people lasso in and out of your life with surprising flexibility. It all depends on schedules and proximity and late-night intoxicated bonding or fighting sessions, so for some people, every quarter brings a new cast of characters.

“The Hills” just takes all of that to the extreme, and the results were hilarious and addictive. The writers for that show got it: people hold grudges, act stupid, make up and generally don’t learn anything from their mistakes, although they claim to. It’s real life.

“Audrina” looks like it could be building on that theme, though this time with a focus on family dynamics instead of a group of twenty-something friends. There are some obvious gender implications that come with that. Audrina’s mom and sister are shown as raving lunatics, quick to jump to conclusions and hurl insults. Meanwhile, the dad serves as a sort of hands-off voice of supposed reason, and the brother is just a friendly guy who wants to have a good time.

What I liked about “The Hills” was that everyone was basically shown in the same unfavorable light. Although it was problematic to have a show from a girl’s point of view being mostly about boy troubles and fighting with her friends, at least those boys she stressed over were equally shallow and clueless. So yes, Heidi is a terrible role model for young women, but Spencer isn’t some sort of scholar himself. The point was that these people were the worst parts of ourselves.

Hopefully “Audrina” will develop to show both genders on an equally low plane. I can get past awkward bikini photo shoots that clearly objectify Audrina, but only if her boyfriend gets into some sort of crazy voodoo crystals, as Spencer famously did. Then it can be equal opportunity idiocy.

Probably the most interesting part of Audrina so far isn’t the plot, but the way it’s filmed. Confessionals are commonplace on reality shows (though they never were a part of “The Hills”), but what’s intriguing about this new program is that it shows a wide shot of the studio room where they are filmed, before focusing in on a cast member’s face. The same studio, with a white screen in the background, is also where the opening credits takes place, which are clearly and openly posed.

These things serve as constant reminders that the show is a production, and not in any way a straightforward representation of what happens. It’s picking up where the famous finale of “The Hills” took off, when the camera pulled back to reveal that they were actually on a staged version of a Hollywood street.

Truth be told, “Audrina” just isn’t as entertaining as “The Hills,” and that’s a shame. But, hey, given the fact that I apparently have nothing better to do than watch and write about these shows, maybe “Audrina” being boring just makes it even more like real life than anything else.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at ‘The Hills’ Have Returned… Sort Of

Illustration by Muriel Gordon.

The story of Kate Middleton was a princess story before Kate Middleton was even a part of it. The excitement over the Royal Wedding (capitalized because it is not merely an event, but the event) on April 29 is hitting a feverish high both overseas and in the States. In the throes of economic turmoil, Middle Eastern unrest and political party division, we have collectively found solace in the brunette from Bucklebury, Berkshire (a real place, devoid of humor or an awareness of alliteration).

As Newsweek bombastically stated on its cover, “in a world gone to hell — thank God, a wedding.”

Thank God for a wedding, indeed. A chance to throw our collective interests and obligations out the window in order to fully immerse ourselves in the future of a government we have no part in. We’ve entered a moment where politics and media have officially collided like never before: movie stars as governors who then become movie stars again; big-business men turned television personalities, running for the presidency during a time where big business is the problem. We can’t differentiate between the real and the constructed, so why wouldn’t our method of escapism be equally as contradictory? A wedding used to shield our current political climate, ignoring the actual politics behind the wedding itself.

Because, regardless of the coverage and interest, the wedding is a political event.

From the minute the engagement was announced and Middleton jumped on the scene in her royal blue Issa dress, the intensity was palpable — a reaction I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemies’ nuptials. Within hours of announcing the plans, the press hounded William and Kate with questions of their future and of the family they have no choice but to build together.

The wedding is less plagued with questions of “Will they last?” as much as it is with questions of “Will they be happy?” Because William knows as well as Kate does — as we all do — that divorce is not a possibility, in this future or any nearby one. The reconstruction of the monarchy’s image begins with this wedding. Escapism for some, reestablishment for others. After a messy divorce that bled politics and media together in a way only the mid-1990s could, Diana single-handedly brought the visage of a unified monarchy down with her.

Now, in a moment where we are trying to reexamine the notion of fame, riches and excess, the story of an “ordinary” girl who had posters of Prince William on her dormitory wall becoming his blushing bride-to-be is a testament to a new American Dream: we don’t have to work to get everything — we just have to work enough.

This doesn’t mean Kate Middleton has followed this credo — it just means that everyone else secretly wishes they had. Lost for words and without context, Middleton is the most under-the-radar star to have been on the radar for nearly a decade. Why didn’t we care about her before, even when the wedding was enough of a foregone conclusion that souvenir makers had wedding memorabilia ready to ship out on the day of the announcement — whenever that day might be?

It’s because it’s always secretly been about the wedding. How intensely depoliticized the event has become is itself a fact worthy of acknowledgement. Because although she’s probably going to look more gorgeous than anyone else who’s joined the ranks of her future in-laws (can we just face that she’s the closest thing earthlings have seen to an actual angel?), Middleton could have really been anyone. It’s true: I often imagine her to be me (or me to be her — whichever puts me in a wedding dress).

What the wedding is is a chance to escape the perils of politics by witnessing an event so deeply embedded in politics that it’s almost hilariously impossible to spot. True, William would have to leapfrog his father for a chance at the throne any time soon. And considering the queen’s history with aging (meaning she literally refuses to), William and Kate will remain poster fodder for some time to come.

But the royals understand just as well as we do that such a job is more than enough on its own. Running a party is easy — being the face of a party is hard. Maintaining the beauty of newlywed bliss when a country is finding solace in your newfound happiness is a bizarre dose of reality for a boy who never knew reality to begin with, and a girl who has now completely abandoned it by donning a sapphire ring. With it, she carries the legacy of the mother-in-law she will never know, one whose absence from the festivities is, partially, the direct result of the kind of media hounding with which the wedding itself is infused. The point isn’t to care about the wedding — it’s to stop caring about everything else.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Citizen Kate

Because, I hate to say it, but nobody can make me feel as good as the Food Network.

And who is anybody to judge me for that? In college — a world of dining halls, cups of noodles and reheated leftovers — just watching the careful preparation of a beautiful meal can be a comforting experience. Moving away from home means leaving any sort of domesticity, and watching Ina Garten of “Barefoot Contessa” make potato salad and peach tarts became a replacement for helping my dad make spaghetti or tacos.

Illustration by Muriel Gordon

The Food Network became popular by showing hosts in their kitchens cooking meals of varying skill level and taste. But viewers like me tune in as much for the witticisms and encouragements the chefs serve up as for the food — it’s both virtual sensory satisfaction and emotionally soothing.

When Ina says at the end of every task, “How easy is that?” she’s talking about cooking, but I know she’s also transmitting a life philosophy that I can get behind. Despite all our problems, life is ultimately easy, as long as you don’t try to complicate it too much. Just put faith and integrity into what you do, and you’ll yield perfect cupcakes every time. Ina isn’t just a celebrity chef for me. She’s a second mother.

And now the television industry is trying to ruin that for me. Case in point: “Last Cake Standing.” Here’s how the Food Network’s website describes its new show:

“Eight talented pastry chefs face off in a cake competition unlike any other. With crazy twists and eliminations looming each week, only one will prevail and take home $100,000.”

Competition unlike any other? Crazy twists? Eliminations? Only one prevails? When did my beloved Food Network become so apocalyptic? I’m pretty sure Ina wouldn’t approve of a world where anything “looms,” except maybe the scent of freshly baked lemon squares.

Seriously, I’m upset that such chaos and ferocity is coming to the Food Network, my one oasis of peace while flipping channels. Guy Fieri’s enthusiasm over every single cheesesteak he eats is enough excitement for me, thank you very much. I can’t bear the thought that reruns of “Last Cake Standing” might cut into my time with the Neelys or Paula Deen. But although I’m saddened, I can’t say I’m surprised.

After all, competition shows like “Cupcake Wars” and “Iron Chef” are already popular on the Food Network, and TLC’s “Cake Boss” takes the proverbial cake when it comes to high-octane baking. And there’s a reason all these shows are happening right now.

“Last Cake Standing” and shows like it are the perfect recession entertainment for a couple of reasons. It’s senseless escapism for sure — watching people have to walk their eight-layer cakes through swamps isn’t going to trigger real-world worries for anyone. But at the same time, the competitions to make money and earn jobs are plot lines people can understand and relate to now more than ever. It’s their lives unfolding onscreen, except fun an

d delicious.

The shows are also putting a new spin on luxury. They’re taking cake, something so banal and familiar to people of all classes, and making it the star of the show. But this ain’t your grandma’s cake, unless your grandma routinely takes Adderall. The whole point of baking in these shows is to create something so mammoth, so unusual and so stunning that it can serve as both a dessert and a conversation piece at a party. It takes cake decoration way beyond frosting and into the realm of construction. If you can dream it, there’s a way to make a cake that looks like it.

Just about everyone has had the experience of baking a cake, so the shows are accessible in that way. By combining the common task of baking with the exciting new design elements, “Last Cake Standing” and “Cake Boss” can be exotic without being arrogant, unpredictable but not condescending. In these tough times, nothing beats entertainment that is both glamorous and universal.

So although I prefer the comfortable Hamptons home on “Barefoot Contessa” to the crazy competition of “Last Cake Standing,” I understand the latter’s necessity at this time.

We’re a nation of consumers, and TV is where people go to both see their own lives and live out their fantasies. We’ll have our cake, and we’ll watch it, too.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Let Them Watch ”Cake Boss”

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

I learned recently that Rachid Bouchareb, a Franco-Algerian producer-director, is taking on the biopic about Angela Davis, political activist and professor emerita of UC Santa Cruz.

His choice for the lead? Beyoncé Knowles.

I’m really interested in seeing what this will look like. It’s a film about an African-American woman activist during the ‘60s and ‘70s, directed by a man who wants the role to go to a former Destiny’s Child member, with a screenplay written by Mohammed Moulessehoul, a former Algerian army officer.

Hearing about the film got me thinking about what would be the best way to represent such an important figure. Although Beyoncé is “ a whole lotta woman,” it would be kind of a shame if images of Beyoncé with an afro conjured up more associations with Foxxy Cleopatra from “ Austin Powers in Goldmember” than Angela Davis during the middle of the American civil rights movement.

I’m not knocking Beyoncé’s acting abilities. I also don’t have a xenophobic suspicion of the creators’ motives for the film. Just the opposite.

The movie will have an outsider’s perspective of American history, given that the filmmakers are Algerian. Some might worry that this means less authenticity. However, after learning about writer Moulessehoul’s life, I realized that in the end it’s more about making a link or connection with others across international barriers.

You’re probably wondering, “ What could a former Algerian army officer possibly have in common with an ex-FBI fugitive who wants to abolish the prison system?”

Though Davis’ and Moulessehoul’s experiences with prison fell on opposite sides of the line, Moulessehoul dealt with a different type of incarceration in Algeria.

After his father left him in a military academy at the tender age of nine, Moulessehoul comforted himself and sought escape through literature. As a grown man, Mohammed Moulessehoul adopted the pen name Yasmina Khadra (Jasmine Green) to avoid censorship from the oppressive military regime during the civil war in Algeria.

While on the military man worked amid the brutality of civil war, Yasmina Khadra wrote against the corrupt and idle leaders of Algeria and the Islamists on the other side of the conflict.

“ The day was divided in two,” Moulessehoul said in an interview with The Guardian. “ Most of the time I was at war. The rest was for writing.”

After revealing that he wasn’t an oppressed Muslim woman, Moulessehoul exiled himself to France.

He still uses the pen name Yasmina Khadra for most of his work, including the Angela Davis script.

It’s interesting that Moulessehoul would even choose to write a screenplay about Davis’ life.

Maybe Moulessehoul sees in Angela Davis the strong woman he envisions in Yasmina Khadra. When Moulessehoul could not find the courage to speak out against the brutality in Algeria, Yasmina was there to express her opinion in print.

Given her history of resistance and perseverance, Angela Davis is the perfect model for strength in trying times. And Moulessehoul’s own story is all about strength, as well as the power of art and entertainment as a way to spread ideas.

Though Moulessehoul was technically in a position of power during his time in the Algerian army, these women — Davis, a real life inspiring political figure, and Yasmina, a fictional person with the power to move thousands of readers — are much more powerful than the army officer could be on his own. As the old saying goes, the pen really is mightier than the sword.

If Yasmina Khadra could have such an influence in the literary world, why not ask the same of Angela Davis in film?

Maybe Bouchareb does want Beyoncé solely for her notoriety — entertainment is a big part of the film industry. The outsiders’ perspective that Bouchareb and Moulessehoul could bring to this film has the potential to show the human ties that transcend borders and time, and entertainment is a good vessel to carry messages.

Davis will be at an event hosted by the Inside Out Writing Project this Tuesday at 7 p.m. I wonder what she would have to say about Beyoncé playing her in a role.

Either way, the film deserves a chance. Although Rachid Bouchareb should know that Halle Berry told Jet magazine in January that she wants to play Angela Davis “ badly, so badly.”

Beyoncé isn’t the only African-American actress in the world. Just saying.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at They Want Who to Play Angela? Outside Looking In

Illustration by Louise Leong

When it comes to the UC system’s budgetary crisis, any news is typically bad news. Consider the $620.8 million fee hikes imposed on students in 2009 and 2010, the $28 million one-time cuts dealt to UC Santa Cruz staff and faculty, and the rapid extinction of “non-standard” programs such as UCSC’s American studies major.

The UC regents have come to view the budgetary crisis as gangrenous, hacking away at the UC system until either it dies or the crisis ends, whichever comes first.

But our financial woes as UC students are closely tied to, if not exacerbated by, the state’s ongoing budget crisis. Yet the give-and-take relationship between the UC and the state bears more resemblance to Adrian Lyne’s “Fatal Attraction” than Rob Reiner’s “When Harry Met Sally.”

In a plan to close the state’s budget deficit, the $305 million that former Gov. Schwarzenegger restored to the UC system in 2010 was trumped by the $500 million cut made by Gov. Jerry Brown. Brown’s self-described “tough budget for tough times” additionally included a $400 million slash from the California Community Colleges system and $500 million from the California State University system, all part of $8.2 billion worth of cuts made in total.

And that’s only half of the bill the state owes.

Brown’s plan to close the budget gap also included extending taxes that were set to expire in June. The extensions, which included a 0.25 percent increase on personal income tax rates, a 1 percent boost in the retail-sales levy, and a reduction in the state’s annual child tax credit from $309 to $99, would have helped close the state’s budget deficit by roughly $12 billion.

Barring the approval of the tax extensions, the burden to make up the $12 billion would rest on a second swing of the axe — further cuts to health, education, and other public services. For the UC system, this could potentially make our $500 million cut into a hefty $1 billion.

In the last meeting of the UC regents, UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau stressed that further cuts to the UC budget would all but capsize the higher education system.

“We have no model to accommodate that $1 billion,” Birgeneau said. “It would devastate our staff and faculty.”

UCSC Chancellor George Blumenthal supported Birgeneau’s sentiments.

“There is no way we cannot cut academic enterprises at this point,” Blumenthal said. “The amount of our campus’s cut is equal to the funding of our largest department.”

Throwing their support behind allowing voters to vote on the tax extensions are over 250 local school boards, the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, and the Bay Area Council, which represents many of the biggest and well-known businesses in northern California.

Barring the ballot initiative, however, are four votes from Republicans — two in the House, two in the Senate — in the state legislature. Republicans presented the governor with a list of 53 demands, which included additional budgetary cuts, the elimination of redevelopment agencies, and limiting legal damages that can be sought in environmental lawsuits filed against businesses, among other things.

With the Republicans unwilling to budge on their list of demands, the hammer dropped. Negotiations to put the tax extensions on the ballot have crumbled and with it, my faith in the California state legislature. The legislature has chosen not to let its citizenry decide whether our colleges are worth keeping.

In his Tuesday announcement, Brown said he was committed to “coming up with honest and real solutions to our budget crisis.” But what’s left are legally questionable maneuvers to force the extensions on the ballot or an all-cut budget with virtually no chance of passing the legislature.

In retrospect, I’m reminded of the character Corey Giles from “The Crucible,” having stone upon stone piled atop his chest in a peine forte et dure (hard and forceful punishment). Unable to move, unable to breathe, Giles had no choice but to staunchly bear the pain from being increasingly crushed. In a morbidly appropriate context, his last words — perhaps ours as well — before his chest caved in were grim.

“More weight.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Moths in My Wallet, Axes in Their Hands

Illustration by Louise Leong.

My best friend Davey called me in the wee hours of Día de Los Muertos, but his voice sounded strangely altered — think Strom Thurmond after a fifth of Wild Turkey.

He said that he had been kicked out of a party for poking people with his cane. And worse than that, all his friends were angry at him.

He told me he had not broken from his “old man” character for the last 28 hours.

“They just don’t understand,” he said. “Halloween is 10 percent costume and 90 percent character.”

I laughed then, but as I’ve wrestled with the comment these last four months, I’ve come to finally understand its wisdom. Go ahead and put on your Popeye costume next Halloween. But if you can’t squint and mumble gibberish, you are far from a sailor man.

But this is bigger than a once-a-year truth nugget. Now that March has arrived, I offer you this: “Mustache March is 10 percent costume and 90 percent character.”

Now, some bare-faced Santa Cruzans may question what a furry upper lip has to do with attitude. But the true greatness of a mustache is about more than dexterous trimming and inventive style. A ’stache is a statement about what kind of man you are, and the statement stretches well beyond the inch between mouth and nostrils.

If you keep your lip warm with a thick, Ron Burgundy ’stache this month, you have a responsibility to exude an air of mahogany and leather-bound books.

If your taste tends toward a heavily-waxed and curly Aristo-stache, then you’d better drink your tea with pinky raised and comment on the oaky hints in your wine.

And if you wear a Mark Spitz mustache this March, be a patriot and wear a stars and stripes Speedo like the man himself. Let your lip-sweater be a reminder of a simpler time when the biggest vice plaguing America’s gold-medal swimmers was an addiction to the power and class afforded by a perfectly-kept mustache. A time when the nation came to understand that nothing frames seven gold medals better than a thick, brown mouth drape.

I have chosen to celebrate this March — a month when baseball, our most-mustached pass-time, begins — with a horseshoe ’stache. The style, worn by cowboys and gas station attendants who spend their lunch breaks at the local strip club, forces its wearer into a certain brand of old-school gruffness.

I would like to claim I can control the ’stache, but the power of the lip-hair has taken control of me. The horseshoe becomes badly misshapen when I smile, and even when I try to show my teeth, the weight of the mustache forces my mouth back into a frown.

There is an English proverb: “A man without a mustache is like a cup of tea without sugar.” But in my case, my mustache is more salt than sugar — or maybe even cayenne pepper.

I walk down the sidewalk, and my mustache will not allow me to move out of the way of coming pedestrians. I can’t help but rev the hybrid engine of my carpool-privileged Prius while stopped at a red light. I’m plagued by a powerful new desire to wear sleeveless flannels and pick up a chewing tobacco addiction.

People tell me I’m changing, tell me to shave it off.

All I can say in response is that I’ve tried. I’ve stared into my bathroom mirror during the frigid hours right before the break of day and thought it over. I’ve even lathered my face with shaving cream.

But try as I might, I cannot force the razor onto my upper lip.

My ’stache has ceased to be just a bit of well-groomed facial hair. It’s become a symbol of great mustache wearers of years gone by.

It is as if Charlie Chaplin and Groucho Marx, Frank Zappa and Rollie Fingers, Yosemite Sam and so many other great men of generations past have taken responsibility for protecting my furry upper lip.

Every day, my mustache grows thicker, and it becomes harder for me to recognize myself.

So, I apologize if I bump your shoulder on the street or challenge you to arm-wrestle. I don’t mean anything by it — my lip hair has taken control.

Please understand: In March, the mustache is king.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Mustache March About More Than a Furry Lip

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

I’m broke. Worse, I’m broke and out of work.

Being penniless in college is hardly a new phenomenon. I’m awash in a sea of people who are in far greater debt than I am. Truth be told, I’m doing pretty well, all things considered.

One month, I was short on rent, so I sold my car. One week, I was strapped for cash, so I started volunteering over at the St. Francis Catholic Kitchen for a couple of free meals. Deferring payments on my credit card charges — for groceries, electricity, water and so on — has left me $800 in debt and with a whopping -$31.65 dollars in my bank accounts. I thought about writing a check for $0.25 yesterday just to revel in some masochistic pleasure of watching it bounce.

It’ll be a cold day in hell before I even dream of dialing up my house’s thermostat.

Sure, I’m frustrated that I’m unemployed, especially considering how many applications have come back with that “thanks, but no thanks” response. Even while my work study hours idly waste away, I realize I could be much worse off.

When I pick up the paper, tune into the news, or even walk downtown, I’m reminded just how poor the condition of the job market is out there. Just the realization alone is enough to send shivers down my spine.

A broken economy that has resulted in rampant unemployment — nearly 30 percent in places like Watsonville — has created an enormous budget deficit at the national, state and local levels. With cuts like Gov. Jerry Brown’s $500 million to the UC system being implemented, joblessness threatens to be exacerbated, not remedied.

At the national level, the budget deficit has crippled federal funding to nearly every program imaginable. Everything from public education to health clinics faces the axe. With many national programs in the budget getting wrung for every dollar they’re worth, it should come as little surprise that HR 589, which would have retroactively extended already exhausted unemployment benefits by an additional 14 weeks, was shot down in Congress.

We’re doing no better here in the Golden State. Compared to the nation’s 9.8 percent unemployment rate, California limps along at 12.3 percent unemployed. The Associated Press ranked 15 out of the nation’s top 20 most economically stressed counties in California. Eight of Forbes magazine’s top 20 most “miserable” cities, based on factors such as unemployment, crime and tax rates, are in California.

The state, which faces enormous budget deficits, high unemployment, plunging home real estate values and rising taxes, continues to break the backs of the jobless and leave those on the cusp in a nervous sweat. Soon enough, my Golden State will need to trade in its title for silver or bronze.

In other words, it gets worse.

Advocates from the National Employment Law Project testified before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission earlier this month that people without jobs are being discriminated against. According to the NELP, potential employers are overlooking people who have been out of work for six or more months in favor of those who are transferring from one job into another. Employers have either flat-out denied this claim, have stated that they prefer potential employees’ skilled labors not be rusty, or have jumped to the conclusion that those who have been out of work for so long must possess a poor work ethic. After all, there couldn’t be any other reason 6.3 million people would be out of work for so long, could there?

Here’s another twist to our story: Minorities are a disproportionately represented demographic among the unemployed. 15.7 percent of African-Americans and 11.9 percent of Latinos are unemployed, compared to 8 percent of the white population, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Although race- and gender-based hiring discrimination is illegal, it is not illegal to discriminate based upon present employment.

The punchline: There are few jobs out there and even fewer employers who will hire those who need them. I am all the more blessed to be able to attend an accredited university and nab my degree while the nation weathers the worst economic period in 70 years. Every statistic, pamphlet, Magic 8-Ball and fortune cookie suggests that a bachelor’s degree will land me a job — one I’ll probably like, for that matter.

But no amount of assurance ever put food on my plate, paid my rent or made me feel any better about being told I was “overqualified” for work. I’ve looked around and as far as I can tell, once I step out off campus, my job problems will only get worse.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Dreams of Luxury, Not Necessity

Illustration by Bela Messex.

“I don’t know what I did in this life to deserve all this. I’m just a girl from a trailer park with a dream.”

Who said that? Was it the main character at the end of an inspirational Lifetime original movie — something with a title like “Semi-Precious” or “The Fire Inside Her”?

It wasn’t.

The line was delivered by Hilary Swank during her 2005 best actress Oscar acceptance speech for her leading role in “Million Dollar Baby.”

I was in eighth grade when I heard the speech, and fell instantly in love — not with Swank but with the Oscars.

The ultimate awards show had always been in my life, though I never paid much attention before. Before they divorced, my parents had a tradition of eating takeout in front of the TV during that special Sunday night every February or March, and my older sister has always loved seeing the red carpet outfits.

But until I was old enough to appreciate some of the nominated films, the Oscars was just an empty spectacle — an excuse to stay up a little later than usual and hear my mom cuss when the actor she liked didn’t win.

That all changed at the blissfully awkward age of 13.

As my peers were stressing over acne, discovering excess body hair and obsessing over their first boyfriend or girlfriend, I was begging my parents to drive me to a movie theater — any movie theater — to see any and every new release.

Every weekend I would dissect the entertainment section of the newspaper, reading every single review, from the token mediocre romantic comedy to the sadistic foreign horror film. As much as I’d love to claim this was because I was mature for my age, in reality I was just rabidly trying to prove myself too cool for my classmates and family.

But however self-serving the reason for my infatuation with cinema, it led to a pure love for the Oscars.

Yep, call me cheesy, but I loved the Oscars then, and I still love it now.

I love the glamour and excitement of the evening. I love watching someone’s childhood dream come true in real time. And it may be sadistic, but I also love the disappointment losing brings.

The Oscars is like the Superbowl for the kids who prayed for rain because it meant they got to stay inside during recess and watch “Forrest Gump.”

The Oscars get a lot of hate, and some of it is surely warranted. The nominations process is formulaic and biased, and plenty of great performances get snubbed. If you look at any awards show as an end-all decider on what was truly the best from the past year, you’re going to come up short.

But there’s more to it than that. I love the Oscars for the same reason I love movies: the drama, the excitement and above all, the laughs.

The Academy prides itself on honoring the most seriously brilliant films, like “The King’s Speech.” But if the Oscars were a movie, it would be probably be more of a cheesy guilty pleasure, like “Country Strong.”

It has all of the ingredients for a blissfully terrible blockbuster.

The nominees are a crazy cast of characters, including heroes, villains, underdogs and always at least one pregnant lady. The host provides an over-dramatic and irritating voice-over. And the beginning and end are the most exciting parts, opening with a somewhat funny monologue and ending with a disappointing, yet comfortingly predictable finale.

But the greatest part of all, the climax of the movie, will always be the acceptance speeches for the best actors and best motion picture categories.

Swanks’ is one of my all-time favorites, as is any one in which the winner forgets to thank his or her spouse or tries to get political. Some winners are sobbing, some don’t give a damn, and some speak charming gibberish, but really, they’re all great to me. And seeing the losers’ faces right after the award is announced is always frosting on the sickeningly sweet cake.

So this Sunday, I’ll be tuning in. And though I know awards shows aren’t any sort of legitimate measuring stick, I hope “Black Swan” wins in every category.

But what I want most from the Academy Awards is to be entertained. What else could I ask of a crappy made-for-TV movie?

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Deigning to Watch the Oscars

Illustration by Louise Leong

Rapper Nicki Minaj knows who she is. According to her lyrics, she’s Nicki Minaj, Nicki Lewinsky, Nicki the ninja, Nicki the boss, Nicki the Harajuku Barbie. She’s not Jasmine — she’s Aladdin. She’s the best, and she can single-handedly annihilate every rap bitch in the building. Nina Sayers, the ballerina Natalie Portman skillfully portrays in “Black Swan,” isn’t as sure of herself. The main character in Darren Aronofsky’s much buzzed-about psychological thriller secures the lead in “Swan Lake,” though her director doubts whether the innocent dancer can convincingly play the role of the mysterious and sensual black swan. She’s timid and reserved, a grown woman who still lives with her mother and sleeps among her stuffed animals. She’s one of the best dancers in the troupe, but she never stops punishing herself long enough to enjoy that fact.

These two cultural figures seem to be opposites. The outlandish firecracker Nicki Minaj and the staid perfectionist Nina Sayers are clean, net stereotypes who probably don’t have much in common.

But they do.

Both women achieve their own form of greatness by embracing every part of themselves, which are personified in the form of different alter egos. Because of this, they manage to show the depth that every human has but that few people — especially famous women — are allowed to reveal.

Feminism is an overwhelmingly broad topic. I took a feminist studies course last year, and the only thing I learned for sure is that it’s hard to know anything in a world with such mixed messages. But if there is one unifying problem women in the modern United States face, it’s the issue of “having it all.” To succeed in anything, women have to fragment themselves. They choose to be the business bitch, or just a sweet, good-natured friend. They can’t have it both ways. And nowhere is that more apparent than in pop culture.

But Minaj is known for her multiple personalities. In her songs, she is all confidence and bravado, switching her voices back and forth with ease and theatricality. She goes from being “Barbie,” a soft-spoken it-girl to “Roman,” a gay man with an attitude, to Nicki Minaj, her purest self, whom she describes as “more street.”

At first, Nina doesn’t embrace her alter ego and resists her dark side, personified by Lily, a fellow ballerina who emerges as Nina’s main competition. But as the film progresses, we see Nina commit small acts of evil, such as stealing jewelry, in her quest to become the perfect lead in “Swan Lake.” In one scene, Nina has sex with Lily. That scene is recalled later when Nina stabs Lily while trying to stop her from performing. In both instances, it is revealed that Lily was never present at all — Nina was making love to and killing herself. Lily was a hallucination symbolizing Nina’s own desires and ambitions.

And it is not until she embraces her dark side that Nina can give the performance of her life. She is both protagonist and antagonist in the film, and that helps her to achieve brilliance before dying.

Minaj’s music sends the same message: Her genius is in her multiplicity. Using alter egos allows Minaj to have conversations with herself, making for some of the most entertaining and frightening verses in the music industry today.

Both Nicki and Nina are at their best when they seamlessly weave all parts of themselves into their performances. Although their alter egos are presented as separate entities, it’s no question that they come from and represent the two women.

Plenty of other people in the music industry have tried the multiple personality thing, but most stars present their doppelgängers as completely separate entities. Sasha Fierce was specifically designated to perform Beyoncé’s more energetic club hits, and she and Beyoncé never collaborate. Nicki and Nina get it right by using all parts of themselves at once to achieve greatness.

“Black Swan” and Nicki Minaj are two of the most talked about things in pop culture right now. Is this simply a coincidence, or does embracing the full self demonstrate a step forward for women in the media?

Such one-dimensional female superstars as Ke$ha and Taylor Swift dominate the charts. Movies like “Sex and the City 2” and “Twilight” portray devastatingly shallow and simple female leads. Conversely, Kanye West gets respect for both showing his feelings and being a cocky douchebag. The vulgar Eminem gets love every time he raps about wanting to be a role model for his daughters.

So beyond providing entertainment, maybe Nicki Minaj and Nina Sayers can serve as inspiration, at least on some level, for the women who just had kids but want to return to work, or the teenage girls who want to get straight A’s and give hand jobs in the bathroom during homeroom, to embrace both sides of their selves. Maybe these pop icons can show that nobody is simple, and being one-sided is boring and nothing to celebrate.

Today’s media culture tends to skirt away from anything meaningful, so maybe that’s expecting too much.

Or maybe not. I’m generally cynical about these things, but my optimistic alter ego is telling me to have a little hope.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Self-Realization in a Minaj à Swan

Illustration by Louise Leong.

Last Thursday, I let my gaze wash down a river of people who ran from Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk’s Coconut Grove all the way to the wharf. I felt impassioned — my fellow Giant fans were wasting their time waiting in line to get a picture taken with the World Series trophy.

I had urges to play Moses and berate them for their idol worship.

I know I have my memories of Pacific Avenue exploding with every run and every win. I know that Tim Lincecum’s hair, Brian Wilson’s beard and Matt Cain’s striking resemblance to Bobby from “King of the Hill” will forever be burned into my mind. I felt it dishonest to pose by a trophy that could never encompass the magic of a season.

I’m a Giants fan, which means I’m cynical, yet painfully loyal. My relationship with the team is a haphazard clip-show of defeats grasped from the brink of victory. I still can close my eyes and see Scott Spiezio’s three-run homer in 2002, or José Cruz Jr. dropping the can-of-corn fly ball, or J.T. Snow getting thrown out at home plate.

The fact that the team won this year still boggles my mind. It’s the only incongruity in a history of heartbreak.

I’m a Giants fan, which means I felt certain the team would get swept in the final series against the Padres and miss the playoffs. It means I gripped tightly to a whiskey double during every playoff game to ease my nerves. It means I believed no lead was large enough, that Brian Wilson would blow every save.

Perhaps it’s this same mentality that made me doubt the trophy celebration.

But halfway down the line of fans, I met Larry Werner and John Means, and I started to believe there might just be some value to this event. The two 40-something-year-old men were grinning and giggly, and they wore matching T-shirts. The front said, “The Negative Brothers.” The back explained: “Two Negatives Make a Positive.”

Werner and Means are Giants fans, which means they are cynical, yet painfully loyal. They watched every game along with Werner’s brother-in-law, and they have nicknames for each other.

“Our names are Bitch, Whine and Moan,” Werner said, chuckling. “So we were pleasantly surprised this year.”

We stood reminiscing, laughing at tears gone by. Means remembered Willie McCovey’s line drive not quite clearing the leaping Yankee shortstop in Game 7 of the 1962 World Series. I mentioned Steve Finley’s grand slam that knocked the Giants out in 2004. Werner recalled the Loma Prieta earthquake that helped the Giants get swept in the 1989 World Series.

I respected the men, so I had to ask why they would spend hours in line. What did the trophy really mean to them?

“It means a lifetime of waiting for it,” Werner said. “I was 10 years old, and my father was taking me to Seals Stadium in San Francisco. I’ve been around for a long time.”

At first I was confused why these self-proclaimed Negative Nancys would spend their afternoon waiting for a cheesy photograph. But then I started to understand that the draw was less about the gold and more about finally owning a tangible representation of something we’ve always lacked. The picture was a guarantee against forgetting, a safeguard against ever losing sight of the fact that in 2010 we really did win.

“Don’t Stop Believin’” played through the speakers as I walked back towards my car. The music was loud, but I could still overhear a man standing next to a stroller say, “He’s two years old. I felt like I needed the picture. This could be his last chance.”

I realized that every person in that line was a Giants Fan. They were cynical. But they were also painfully loyal.

The scene was festive, with music blasting and every fan wearing their colors proudly, but what really led them to spend an afternoon in line was the nagging thought that the Giants might not win for another 56 years.

Yankees fans don’t wait three hours to take a picture with a trophy. They don’t need a photograph as a safeguard against time. They can rest assured that their team will win again soon.

But we are Giants fans. We know what it feels like to wait 56 years. We’ve watched a team blow games in every conceivable way. We are cynical, yet painfully loyal.

So why not spend a mid-winter afternoon waiting for a photograph and basking in the victory?

Who knows when it will happen again.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Celebrating the Bling and the Ring

Illustration by Muriel Gordon.

What’s more important: civil rights or the perfect pair of pants?

That’s the question I was grappling with as I walked into Urban Outfitters a couple weeks ago, intent on spending the gift card I’d received for Christmas.

Upon entering the store, I was reminded, as I always am, of high school. The first Urban Outfitters in Sacramento city’s limits opened when I was 15, and I was instantly taken with the retail chain.

Compared to the American Eagle polo shirts and Bermuda shorts that my friends and I had so proudly been wearing beforehand, Urban Outfitters offered something few teenagers can resist: an edge.

Among all the skinny jeans, colorful flannels and ironic books, there was a youthful and progressive magic, and it felt undeniably hip. Maybe that’s eye-roll-worthy now, but who among us did not pledge allegiance to a particular brand or style in our youth? Skinny girls with jagged bangs wore Hot Topic wristbands. Skinny girls with straight bangs wore Abercrombie jeans. Suburban white boys rocked Vans with the price tags and stickers still on them.

And I found my niche, my home, at Urban Outfitters.

I didn’t become aware of the seedy underbelly of my beloved “Urb” until starting college. I was browsing the store on Pacific, drinking in the experience of being a broke college student for one of the first times. As I picked up a book lying on one of the tables, I noticed a scrap of paper that said something to the effect of “The owner of Urban Outfitters donated thousands of dollars to the ‘Yes on Prop 8’ campaign.” After looking around, I saw several more notes scattered throughout the store.

The first thing I did when I got back to my dorm room was turn on my computer and start researching.

After a little Googling and a bit of Wikipedia-skimming, I learned that although Urban Outfitters owner Dick Hayne has no public financial ties to Proposition 8, he has donated money to former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum, who has made comments linking homosexuality to incest, bestiality and pedophilia.

I had come out of the proverbial closet less than a year earlier, but as I looked into my literal closet, I realized that at least half my flannels, jeans and V-necks supported bigotry and ignorance.

I felt angry, and confused, but more than anything, I felt embarrassed. How could I have let this happen? How could I have been so stupid as to give my money, my time, and most importantly, my loyalty to a major corporate brand without first doing a little homework?

And putting politics aside, wasn’t it predictable of me to be spending $50 on a sweater that was made by underpaid workers to look like it might have cost one-tenth of that at a thrift store?

I had been lured in with bright colors and witty T-shirts as a young high school kid, but now that I knew better, I was never going to give the dealer of fake authenticity that was Urban Outfitters another cent.

And then the weather got warmer. And a few friends wanted to stop in the store for a few minutes after seeing a movie next door. And they were having this sale on colorful V-neck T-shirts, and … I caved.

“You’re against pollution, but you eat meat,” I reminded myself. “You don’t believe in religion, but you close your eyes and bow your head respectfully when relatives say grace. You can’t be completely principled all of the time, and besides, it’s not like 100 percent of the profits is going towards stopping same-sex marriage.”

So I made a deal: I would still try my hardest to shop at other, more affordable and morally sound places — which is how my thrift and vintage store habit got started — but I wouldn’t completely deny myself if I saw a cute sweater or great rain boots on sale at Urban Outfitters every once in a while.

And that’s why I was glad to get a $25 gift card to the store, but equally glad the gift card wasn’t worth more. I would get in, pick out a pair of pants, and get out, hopefully keeping my originality and beliefs intact.

So I dodged books about Polaroid cameras. I was only briefly distracted by vinyl records from bands I’d never heard of but had probably claimed to like at one point. I merely lingered over the multi-colored striped T-shirts. Instead, I found some jeans that fit well and made my way to the check-out.

The guy working the cash register rang me up, I paid, and then he sheepishly apologized for the bag he was about to give me. In the after-holiday rush, the store had run out of regular bags, and so in desperation they’d started giving customers plastic garbage bags to tote their overpriced merchandise in.

“Sorry about that,” he told me with genuine concern. “Hope you don’t mind.”

I looked at the bag, and I couldn’t help laughing. Giving away trash bags could have been a sales gimmick, another way to look cool. But instead, due to its lack of preparation, Urban Outfitters had mistakenly stumbled into something that was actually pretty cool, in a hipster way. It might have been the store’s first authentic moment.

“Seriously, don’t worry about it,” I told the cashier, as I grabbed the bag and left.

As I made my way to the Metro Center, I didn’t feel great about my purchase. But I decided that it wasn’t worth beating myself up about. Maybe I am just a mindless slave to consumer culture, but I’m at peace with the idea that nobody’s perfect.

Everyone has a little garbage we have to carry around sometimes.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Dressing for Your Life

Illustration by Patrick Yeung.

We live in the age of the smartphone. A time when more and more Americans walk around with the history of the world in the hip pocket of their jeans. An era when the space between cutting-edge and out-of-date is constantly shrinking.

The Internet has changed the way that people shop, communicate and learn. The way that countries interact. Really, the way in which people exist within the world.

But until the Blackberry and iPhone made smartphones the norm, the Internet was something you only accessed at home. Now, it is everywhere.

This progress does not come without sacrifice.

Merriam-Webster defines faith as “a firm belief in something for which there is no proof.” Now I’m not going to go so far as to claim that the smartphone has weakened our faith in God. But it has chipped away at the art of casual argument, the ability to make another believe that which cannot be firmly proven.

The beauty of banter, the magic of myth, fades when too much truth is too readily available. We’ve become addicted to facts, and sadly, in our obsession, we have lost something. We have lost the tall tale. We have lost faith in our storytellers.

I used to be the guy who resisted the smartphone. I had my flip phone with the scratched screen and broken camera, and I was damn content to keep it. I was of the belief that “I don’t need to always be online. I’m fine with sitting around and watching the world go by.”

But a couple months ago, my flip phone cracked, and on the trip to the Verizon store, I cracked as well. I’m not proud to admit it, but I went down to the crossroad and sold my soul for a Blackberry Bold.

The first few weeks, I was hooked. I loved it. Bus rides would melt away as I escaped into my New York Times app. The long lectures went by like a breeze. I used one app to scoreboard-watch and another to read anything and everything about the San Francisco Giants.

It’s not that I didn’t realize I was being dragged out into the deep sea of information — I just saw no reason to struggle against the 3G undertow. I viewed my old self as stubborn, thought I was just being idealistic and gruff.

I was only 21: How could I already be the grumpy old man reminiscing on a simpler past?

But now, two months after my entrance into the new age, the glow has started to fade. I look at my beautiful smartphone and feel dirty. Was it really worth trading away exaggeration and fiction for access to cold hard facts?

Bar banter is the modern day tall tale: more about passion and color than truth. Taverns ring with harmonies of historical fictions, fighting tales and dramatic renditions, all too enthralling to be tethered down by truth. But unfortunately, the smartphone is the antidote to myth.

Before the smartphone, on a Friday night in a smoky tavern, someone with the right amount of passion, reason and social lubrication could convince a group of patrons of anything. He could face the hazy-eyed masses and confidently claim something as far-fetched as the familial connection between Aretha and Ben Franklin.

Sure it would strike some as unlikely. Perhaps the facts were not always perfectly in order. Maybe the arguer’s claims rested too heavily on Ben’s penchant for extra-marital affairs and Aretha’s line “Let yourself be free.” But hey, for that one night, the patrons really could have faith, really could believe in the knowledge and expertise of another.

Nowadays, if that argument began, someone would quickly pull out an iPhone, Google the topic and end the conversation.

As Aretha Franklin, the alleged great-granddaughter of Ben, once said, “You had better stop and think before you think.”

So next time you’re about to take your smartphone out to fact check, stop. Think about why we now need to know everything with absolute certainty. Think about why the word of our fellow patron isn’t truth enough anymore. Think about what the smartphone really gives us.

And, more importantly, think about what it takes away.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at The Age of the Smartphone Is Upon Us

Illustration by Kristian Talley.

Last Sunday, the former head of a dogfighting ring threw a late interception that sealed his team’s defeat. Next Sunday, a twice-alleged rapist will face off with an ex-convict who once stood accused of murder.

So it goes in the NFL, which probably should stand for the Notoriously Felonious League.

Every Sunday, millions of Americans watch football without a second thought about the morality of the masked brutes. Football is a violent game, and fans have come to accept that not all the violence will remain on the field.

But as the drama surrounding Michael Vick has proven, America expects more from our quarterbacks.

Because of his position, Vick’s involvement in dogfighting offended football fans who casually ignore the scores of linemen, receivers and linebackers who have been charged with battery charges and drug offenses.

People could not believe a quarterback would commit such a heinous crime. It didn’t fit the classic storyline of the quarterback as a wise leader of men.

The quarterback is the field general and the face of every franchise. He touches the ball on every play and he, more than any other football player, is recognizable and relatable to the average fan. He is not 6-foot-6 or 300 pounds and he usually can speak coherently and read at at least a high school level.

But what if Vick played linebacker rather than quarterback? Would the public even care that he’d killed a few dogs?

Vick missed two years during the prime of his career, spending 182 nights in a federal prison cell. Still, many fans do not feel the punishment was harsh enough, calling for a lifetime ban from the league.

Jeff Benedict and Don Yaeger’s 1998 book “Pros and Cons: The Criminals who Play in the NFL” found that one in five NFL players at the time had been charged with a serious crime. Twelve years later, players continue to be arrested at an astounding rate. In November, a month when teams practice five times a week and play games on Sundays, three players found time to get arrested for DUIs and one for a brutal domestic abuse charge.

Ray Lewis, middle linebacker and team captain of the Baltimore Ravens, was accused of murder and charged with misleading police in 2000 and did not even receive a suspension from the NFL. He was awarded the Superbowl MVP the following season and Defensive Player of the Year in 2003.

If anything, the murder allegations added to Lewis’s mystique. Linebackers are big, bad bullies meant to be feared. They are behemoths who run like gazelles, crushing quarterbacks and running backs with violent force.

But Vick isn’t a linebacker and because of the public’s desire to frame quarterbacks as heroes, he continues to be admonished for his actions.

However noble, it should be irrelevant that New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees gives money to cancer research. However pious, it should be immaterial that former Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner publicly thanked God for his success.

The perception that a quarterback, or really that any athlete, is a man to be looked up to and followed is a foolish mistake that our country continues to make.

Charles Barkley famously said, “I’m not a role model. Just because I dunk a basketball doesn’t mean I should raise your kids.”

As long as we continue to expect poorly educated men blessed with superhuman strength to show us how to be good people, we will continue to be let down.

Last Sunday I rooted for Vick, the convict, Lewis, the alleged murderer, and Brees, the philanthropist. I cheered for Vick’s knee-buckling jukes, for Lewis’ bone-rattling hits, and for Brees’ perfectly placed passes. Morality had nothing to do with it.

Football players are entertainers. They are gladiators born out of time. But they are not heroes.

Vick treated pit bulls in an unforgivable way. Lewis may have had a hand in the death of another man. But on Sundays, they’re just two more face-masked monsters, no different from any other NFL player.

Check your moral compass at the door. It’s playoff time.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Playoff Time in the League of the Anti-Hero

Illustration by Muriel Gordon.

Some friends and I have been watching “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” lately, because — well, what else is there to do on Sunday nights during the off-season of “Mad Men”? The show is hilarious, ridiculous, infuriating and repetitive — basically any word you can think of to describe Palin also works for her reality program. But there are a few moments of each episode that I can enjoy in a completely un-ironic fashion, and those are the panoramic shots of the snowy mindfuck that is the state of Alaska. All I have to do is shut out Sarah’s grating voice-over explaining for the umpteenth time how nice it is to get the heck away from evil bloggers and enjoy some quality time in the great outdoors with her family and her rifles, to remember what really matters in life, and I can appreciate the unfathomably huge and beautiful mountains and glaciers.

Alaska is a cool place, and I should be able to acknowledge that without the implication that I also admire its former governor. But that’s impossible, because what Palin is attempting to do with her show is associate herself inextricably with Alaska — the title even suggests ownership, as if the state wouldn’t be the same without her — and that worries me. TLC constantly shows the Palin family camping, hunting, dog sledding, rafting and climbing all over the expansive and dangerous terrain, as well as humbly interacting with everyday folks, and the message is clear: Sarah Palin embodies Alaska, and therefore is independent, extraordinary and unique. Never mind her obvious ineptitude and divisiveness — she’s just misunderstood by the lower 48, much like her beloved home state.

The idea of letting origins define politicians is certainly nothing new, and in recent memory the GOP specifically has excelled in this endeavor. “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” is basically one long, extended sequel to the clip of former President George W. Bush clearing brush on his Crawford, Texas ranch, which made the rounds during his presidency. And that video was probably inspired by pictures of President Ronald Reagan relaxing on his own ranch, leaning against a white picket fence and wearing a cowboy hat. Reagan and Bush both played at the image of the independent, strong, American cowboy, and it worked well enough to get them each elected for two terms. Palin has a lot going against her for her inevitable 2012 run, but she definitely has the same down-home persona that could help her defeat sterile competition such as fellow Republican Mitt Romney. Her reality show is helping to solidify that image.

While Palin’s show is helping her, politicians can also use a location as a negative issue to poison their enemies. The remarkably low approval ratings of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi probably have something to do with Republican rhetoric constantly linking her to her district in San Francisco. Since we all know the City by the Bay is full of nothing but unscrupulous queers, homeless people and potheads, it isn’t any surprise that Nancy Pelosi and San Francisco were negatively featured in ads for Republican House candidates all across the country during the past midterm elections.

President Barack Obama’s election was historic for racial reasons — and also because he was the first urbanite to be elected president since President John F. Kennedy from Boston took office. As the backlash against Obama grows, led by Republicans and especially the Tea Party, the biggest binary divide in America might turn out to be not black versus white, religious versus secular, or straight versus gay, but urban versus rural. Palin’s Alaska signifies integrity and strength, while Pelosi’s San Francisco means arrogance and strangeness. And often it isn’t even genuine rural values that are being put forth by conservatives. The Tea Party is a facade of excitable citizens being manipulated behind the scenes by businessmen such as the Koch brothers, who want nothing but money, money and more money, as well as politicians seeking personal gain. This concerns me as a liberal city-lover, but it also concerns me as an American, because people with good ideas should be respected in Washington, no matter how many crevasses they’ve climbed over or lattes they’ve sipped.

When choosing whom to vote for, the question shouldn’t be where a person comes from but the direction he or she is looking toward, and despite the incredible landscapes, Sarah Palin isn’t looking toward anywhere I’d like to be.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at How Palin Took Alaska

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

I dutifully work through 10-page articles about foreign aid agencies, get lost in short stories that I forget are actually fictitious, read about uptown gallery openings that I will never be cool enough to go to, and smile at the subtle yet smug humor of its famous cartoons.

My affinity for The New Yorker is indicative of a particular attitude of mine. The belief that yes, technology is great, but no, I don’t need any more of it in my life. Often, it makes me feel like somewhat of a luddite, putting me at odds with my more tech-savvy peers.

But there’s something about my New Yorker exercise that brings me a kind of satisfaction that cannot be replicated in any other format. Turning the text-laden pages with the knowledge that I really should be reading for a class, wiping the crumbs off the page as I eat my burned toast, and, most of all, reveling in the unmistakable pleasure of taking the time to read something that’s actually in print.

Yes, I use Gmail and Facebook, and I’ve gained an unquantifiable amount of knowledge from the Google search box. I am aware of the incredible impact that the Internet has had on my social developmental and educational life, as well as my status as what my father calls a “digital native.” But no, I don’t like it when my friends are searching something on their iPhone while we’re having a conversation, I don’t want to know every thought that exits in your head via Twitter, and I do think it’s sad that an over-reliance on spell-check has diminished my peers’ ability to spell words like “conscientious” and “maintenance.”

It’s not surprising that our generation has developed this dependency on technology, as it echoes the consumer culture we grew up in.This idea — that more is more, bigger is better and instant gratification trumps delayed satisfaction — reigns supreme. But with this ever-increasing stream of global data, we’re simultaneously losing some things: a familiarity and appreciation for simpler pleasures, an awareness of local knowledge, and perhaps even a portion of our common sense.

It’s not that there isn’t room for both the print and digital media in the modern world. The quality of a piece of journalism remains intact regardless of the format. But technology’s offer of unlimited options and immediate access to any publication or information source doesn’t supersede the value of reading something in print. There is a tactile and time-tested value attached to this activity that technology simply can’t replace.

When was the last time you used intuition and a good sense of direction to find your way around or talked to a living, breathing librarian while researching a paper? How about taking the time to write a note to send to a friend, or making yourself unreachable for an entire day? These activities may seem blasé in a world of e-mails, tweets and apps, but they’re all things that have been done by human beings long before there was a place known as Silicon Valley.

Technological progress is good. I am not advocating a life of Internet abstinence or a reliance on the Dewey Decimal System for all of our informational needs. But the benefits we accrue from these technologies are not unlimited. There is a point at which one more iPhone app that calculates the number of steps until your next latte is not making your life better — but rather, making you duller. How about looking at a real map, or reading a real book, or buying a real newspaper in which you might actually stumble upon a whimsical or thought-provoking piece of local journalism that can’t be found on the Huffington Post?

For now, I will stand in a crowd of a few. And when I see that smug person sitting next to me and my New Yorker, who appears unable to complete a full article because his or her iPad/Kindle/fill-in-the-blank device provides too many options, I will smile to myself and do a quiet, though revolutionary act: turn the page.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Your Kindle May Be Convenient, Your iPad Sleek, But My Crinkled Magazine Is Better

Illustration by Patrick Yeung.

OK, so we’re not the same gender, and he’s at least 50 years older than me. But Woody understands me the way nobody else, in show business or otherwise, does. With his awkward looks and cynical views, he’s the actual embodiment of a theme Hollywood loves to make crappy, unrealistic movies about: the underdog story. Woody Allen is no charmer, and his paranoia and constant questioning of “what it all means” keeps him from being what anyone would describe as a natural people person. But he managed to make it big in comedy and film while staying true to himself, using his wit, and most importantly, his word. My idea of a fun evening is staying in and writing this column, so you can imagine how inspiring Allen is for me.

I was 16 when I first watched “Annie Hall,” the story of a relationship that doesn’t work out but sparks dialogue about the pointlessness and paradoxes of relationships and life in general. The friend I viewed it with reacted negatively. He saw it as just a self-indulgent, whiny movie about two neurotics. Maybe that’s true, but that’s also exactly why I liked it. My parents had divorced a year earlier, and I had turned bitter and exasperated with life before reaching voting age. The experience of watching my family, the only constant in my life, split in two exacerbated the usual angst any teenager will go through. Being a teenage girl who had a head with plenty of opinions inside it, and a mop of impossibly thick, frizzy hair on top of it, didn’t help things. I didn’t think anyone could understand me, but then I found my cinematic soul mate in Woody Allen.

Here was the most honest piece of cinema I’d seen — it is the story of Alvy Singer and Annie Hall, but it is also the story of my parents and the story of me. It also happens to be hilarious. The sarcasm Allen uses to eviscerate things he, and I, don’t like — Hollywood’s mentality, pretentious intellectuals, suburbia — inspired me to hold out hope in high school that, sometimes, it’s the kids who mutter witty comments under their breath, rather than the ones who run down the hallways yelling moronic mottos, who succeed. Woody Allen essentially legitimized anxiety and cynicism. I spent the next few years covering most of the Woody classics and his recent flicks, which brings us up to “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger.”

Allen’s most recent effort is by no means his best work, but it’s still a treat. I enjoyed watching it because, like all his films, it struck a near-perfect blend of intelligence and entertainment. “Stranger” opens with the narrator quoting Shakespeare: “Life is … full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Cut to the story of Helena, a woman in her mid-60s whose husband, Alfie, has just left her and plans to marry a prostitute, Charmaine. The plot is a classic Allen set-up, full of characters who aren’t sure what they want but tend to gravitate towards the opposite of what’s best for them.

The film wraps up with the same quote it began with, although I’m not sure the whole thing didn’t mean anything. There is poetic justice, in that the person who ends up happiest in the end is Helena, the most innocent of the characters. However, most of her happiness is based on illusions, so maybe the only things that matter in life are the things that don’t exist. Looking back on all the bad things I’ve gone through in my life, I realize that most of them were done to me instead of by me, so I can relate to the feeling of having no control over one’s life that prompts Helena to solicit the advice of a fortune teller. Having watched my parents suffer the effects of infidelity and having gone through it myself, it was cathartic for me to watch all the damn cheaters receive their due, even if it wasn’t realistic.

Let’s go back to another Allen classic, “Hannah and Her Sisters.” Woody plays Mickey, a suicidal man who finds solace in the movies.

“I’m watching these people up on the screen and I started getting hooked on the film. I started to feel, how can you even think of killing yourself, I mean isn’t it so stupid?” Mickey tells his friend about a trip he took to a theater at his lowest point. “Look at all the people up there on the screen, they’re real funny, and what if the worst is true? What if there is no God and you only go around once and that’s it? Well, you know, don’t you want to be part of the experience?”

The pains of growing up and learning lessons the hard way caused a lot of stress in my life, but as long as there are people like Woody Allen out there, I still want to be part of the experience.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at What I Learned from Woody Allen

Illustration by Louise Leong.

“We did it!”

These three simple words echoed around the state and beyond on Monday night. They resonated from the shores of McCovey Cove in San Francisco to the ballpark in Arlington, Texas and wound their way through the bars and boulevards of Santa Cruz. The improbable had at long last become a reality: The San Francisco Giants had won the 2010 World Series.

I found myself repeating that three-word phrase over and over to myself as I stood in a deserted downtown parking garage with my friend Michelle around 10 o’clock that evening. We had sought out this spot of seclusion to celebrate a victory over half a century in the making by passing a bottle of $6 champagne back and forth, taking turns toasting the players who performed best in the Giants’ postseason run. We gave kudos to Cody Ross and Edgar Renteria, lovingly lauded the pitching staff, and heaped accolades on the coaching staff and front office management.

As our joyous voices bounced off the concrete walls and into the quiet solitude of this early November night, I found myself thinking back over a span of eight years, to the point in my life where my orange-and-black fanaticism first began until now, and about all the people along the way who encouraged — and tolerated — my passionate and sometimes dysfunctional love affair with this baseball team. They deserve a toast as much as these players do, I thought. Because, as silly as it may sound to the casual fan, this championship means as much to the players as it does to the diehard fans like me, the hundreds of thousands of people who stood by their team amidst all the heartache and torture of the last several decades of Giants baseball.

For those of you who may not be privy to the Giants’ history since the team moved to the Bay Area from New York in 1958, it can be summarized rather succinctly with one word: zero. That’s because, despite fielding some of the best players in the history of baseball — Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Barry Bonds, just to name a few — this franchise just couldn’t win a national title on the West Coast. The few times the Giants did manage to make the World Series since the westward relocation, they were always sent home empty-handed, thanks to some cruel twist of fate — a ball that was hit six inches too low, an unprecedented bullpen collapse, a tragic earthquake that delayed the World Series for over a week.

But, despite all the so-close-but-no-championship seasons, as well as the multitude of losing years, so many fans stayed true to the Giants franchise. The slogan “Wait till next year” became a mantra of the loyal and diehard spectators.

These are fans like my ninth-grade biology teacher Owen Lucey, who stuck with the team since the Giants first came out west when he was in middle school. I spent countless afternoons in his classroom discussing the previous night’s game or evaluating an offseason acquisition, and when he retired at the end of my junior year of high school, his parting words to me were, “I’ll be thinking of you when [the Giants] finally win it all.”

Sure enough, I received an e-mail from him on Monday night that read: “The agony began when I was in sixth grade and finally ended tonight. [It was] certainly an emotional evening for me — I truly believed the Giants would never win a World Championship in my lifetime.”

But, if a lifetime of loyalty deserves a toast, so does the development of fandom as a means of getting closer to people you care about. So here’s a toast to my parents, who at first tolerated my obsession with baseball and eventually got caught up in the craze themselves. I loved seeing how emotionally invested my parents became in every game this postseason as they went along for the ride with me. My dad suddenly began texting me in-game commentary as he watched from home, while my mom started high-fiving fellow orange-and-black-clad fans in the grocery store after a win. It felt great that they started to support the team as a way to support me as their daughter, then fell in love with the scrappy Giants themselves.

Speaking of how baseball can bring people together, here’s a toast to my older brother Ryan, who has accompanied me to roughly 20 Giants games over the past few years, including the first game of this year’s World Series in San Francisco. AT&T Park was the backdrop for the start of our sibling relationship back in 2007 after more than 30 years’ estrangement (see the previous column “For the Love of the Game”). Our mutual love of baseball proved to be a stepping stone to help build the sibling relationship we have today, and I couldn’t have asked for a better person to help me navigate through the ups and downs of a baseball season and to celebrate a championship with.

All these thoughts continued to ruminate in my mind as Michelle and I wound up the evening on the front patio of 99 Bottles, tipping the remnants of champagne into paper cups that she snagged from the restaurant. As Giants fans began to trickle out of bars at closing time, we leaned back in our chairs for one parting toast.

“Here’s a toast to all the San Francisco Giants fans in Santa Cruz and around the nation who endured half a century of torture and stuck by this team through it all,” I crowed.

Because, when it came down to it, this championship wasn’t merely about obtaining bragging rights over the rest of the baseball world for a year. Rather, it was a testament to all the diehard fans of the team who took decades of ridicule from other spectators of the sport who told them that their team was cursed, a hopeless abomination, a train wreck waiting to happen. This was for all the lovers, the dreamers and me.

“To the World Series!” Michelle called out, clinking her cup of bubbly with mine.

I’ll drink to that.

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