The Columbia-est Space!

The fourth floor of the 916 S Wabash Avenue building, located on the south end of campus, is the know-all be-all of Columbia College Chicago. The fourth floor houses all of the student organizations at the College, the Student Engagement offices and the world’s comfiest bean-bags. On any given day you students of every academic class, major, ethnicity, age, and gender working together on issues anywhere from interest-based to service-learning. The range of people, ideas, and interests in this one space mirrors that of the entire college community.

Today, the Student Government Association is preparing for their executive board elections at 5pm. In conference room ‘a’, ReachOUT is debriefing their alternative spring break trip to New Orleans and in conference room ‘b’, Trustee member Sam Pfeffer is talking to students about their financial stresses and how upper administration can help. And, as always, there are students exhausted from finals (or perhaps Chaos Week) resting on the various Urban Outfitters couches.

Listening to Our Planet: The Sounds of Human Nature

Monday, April 20 marked the first day of 2009’s Earth Week, and gave Columbia College Chicago students, faculty, staff, and administration alike a reason to celebrate.  For eight hours straight, artists, students, and professors working in all mediums collaborated to present Listening to Our Planet: The Sounds of Human Nature.

Presented by the Arts Entertainment and Media Management Department and the Critical Encounters Office, and produced by students of the Concert & Festival Production Management class, Listening to Our Planet sought to better understand the world through looking and listening to its natural environment.  By posing the questions: What does your environment sound like? How do we know where we are?  How does sound affect you?  How do noise levels affect people’s health and well-being? And, what will the future sound like?  The 10am-6pm event celebrated the natural beauty of our earth and raised awareness about issues relating to it – like pollution, recycling, and global awareness.  Then, connecting those themes to the general mission of Columbia, the event presented the myriad of ways that acoustic ecology can be represented through art form.

Hosted at the south end of campus in the Conaway Center, the school’s largest function space, visitors were able to weave in and out, sit and watch the performances, mingle around the coffee table, or wander through the tables with brochures about everything earth-y, from the Columbia College Recycling Program to the World Listening Project.  The schedule handed to me upon my arrival was extremely helpful, allowing me to select the presentations that best complimented my personality and what it was that I wanted to get out of the day. 

Over the eight-hour event, there were poetry readings, photography viewings, panel discussions, field recordings, short films, and other creative projects.  Adding an interactive piece to the day, was the “Essay Smash”, where students submitted essays to be reviewed.

Most notable for me, were the discussions on mountaintop removal; a coal mining technique started in the 1970s, which completely destroys surrounding communities and the Earth itself.  Not only was this a completely intriguing and relative topic to the day, but it was described through discussion, audio/visual presentations, and field recordings.  And, again, linking the larger world at hand to the students, faculty, staff, and administration of Columbia College, it was presented in collaboration with community organizers, professionals, and members of the Columbia College student organization, Topless America.

In the end, I left enlightened.  Not only about Earth Week, and realizing that there are special recycling bins that I can drop my empty film canisters in, but about the fantastic things that can happen when people of all ages, mediums, professions, and ideologies come together to discuss, challenge, and celebrate something bigger than themselves.

Look Me Up: Revision

From around the age of twelve until around forever, women are pressured to strive to fit the mold of the most desirable figure she can be. We are told by our parents, our culture, our faiths, and our friends that you grow up, get married, and get a job. Then, we are told by magazines, television, movies, music, and books how to do it all while looking fabulous.

In the fifth grade, it’s the Limited Too shirt that you must have, or you may as well be invisible. In seventh it was the white Wet & Wild eyeliner that, for me, Amber Burnette was the only one cool enough to have. Hitting high school means that the Limited Too wardrobe goes out the door, and the Forever 21 clothes that will either rip or go out of style in twelve days, come into play. It’s a whirlwind of things. Now comes the materialistic mindset: ‘I need a fake Coach tote immediately’. We discover more than just white eyeliner and Lip Smackers lip balm and go onto eyeshadow, blushes, smudge pots, lip tints, waterproof mascara and, my favorite, body sparkle powder; and we really believe the online pop-up ads about the new berries found in Africa that will help you lose fifty pounds in fifty minutes.

Oh yes, I have cried until my mom bought me the Limited Two shirt with the phrase “Girl Talk” on it, borrowed Amber Burnette’s white eyeliner, spent money on cheap Forever 21 clothes to wear to Friday night local hangout Roller Kingdom, and went through an odd obsession with Stila makeup products. I have done everything right. So what happens when I have done and bought into everything that has been thrown at me, and I am a single twenty-something that has a lot of makeup and clothes?

Well, I am here to say that I have found the answer. The same media culture that told you that all the makeup, clothes, and fake coach bags would make you popular, desirable, and most importantly (hah) make you feel better about yourself, has already found a solution for when they all inevitably fail. Online dating.

I literally cannot turn on the television or radio, or log onto the internet without hearing or reading about some sob story about two people who couldn’t find love until they joined eHarmony or match dot com. What happened to the romance of meeting your “perfect match”, at work or at college. Bumping into someone on the street or seeing a childhood friend after years and years and knowing that they’re the one? Just as quick as the media and Hollywood made us into hopeless romantics, they are convincing us that we are doomed in love, and in turn life, and cannot live happily without the help of a computerized survey.



So are these hundreds of websites successful at what they do? I am a single 20-year-old college student who has not even bought into the whole concept of marriage yet. No, I am not a bra-burning feminist; but I do have goals that would indicate (unlike my clothing and makeup collection) that I have no desire to fit into a box that anyone decides for me, especially mass media.

I have an account on eHarmony.com and match.com.

I can honestly say that there is nothing, not one detail of myself, on either of the accounts and that I have not looked at them since their creation (which I tell myself was a joke); but does that really matter? They got me.

The good news is, that eHarmony’s survey actually made me feel like a decent person, a little over the top sometimes, with too many options to answer the question: How far are you willing to search to find your life-long love? But overall, I wasn’t too self-conscious and I actually comfortable with the situation. The bad news: after spending thirty-five minutes filling in electronic bubbles revealing myself to the entire online community, I can only see other people’s profiles if I pay twenty bucks a month. Oh, and apparently lesbians don’t exist.

Taking an opposite stand, match.com’s website was very easy to find my way around. Immediately after finishing your profile, the option for a “quick search” is available. The search engine will bring up profiles that match your age and location requirements, and from there the profiles will tell you how they match your requirements and how you match theirs. The only problem was that I didn’t want to because I felt like a piece of meat. The first half of the profile questionnaire is about your appearance: your height, weight, body type, hair and eye color, body art, piercings, and best features. The first question that actually seemed meaningful was my favorite color. That was on page five.

The whole mood of the website seemed directed more toward my single twenty-something status. Simple questions were forced to be sexual like: “What kind of eyes would you like to stare into?” and “What kind of hair would you like to run your fingers through?”. eHarmony, on the other hand, was clear with it’s intentions with the first questions being if I have kids, if I want kids, and if so, how many kids would I like.

So what it really comes down to is if you want a lifetime connection (and are straight), then eHarmony.com is for you. Looking for a hookup within a 10 mile radius? Use the quick search option on match.com. In the meantime, I will stick to saying “hello” to people who I think look interesting.

Want to try it for yourself?  Or see what other people have to say?

The Simpsons... or The Valerios?

There were three television shows that I was not (and still not) allowed to watch under my parents’ roof.  Charmed, Ren and Stimpy, and The Simpsons.  Charmed became the highlight of the week, every week, with me sneaking out of my bed and into my older sister’s every Thursday night at ten. The Ren and Stimpy ban I weaseled my way around because it was the show of choice at daycare after elementary school.  The Simpsons, however, was never one that I took to.  With it’s discolored characters, demeaning attitude towards children and a dysfunctional family life; I never tried to dodge around my mother to tune in.

Being the longest running comedy on television, the topic of many high school and early college year conversations, and the subject of a three credit humanities class at my own higher education institution – I thought I’d give it another go.  And let me begin by saying, that I am not so sure if the outcome would have been so terrible if my mother had permitted us to sit and watch ourselves on television for thirty minutes every Sunday evening.

Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire aired in December of 1989.  The pilot show began with two parents arriving late a to a school production showing the different origins of Christmas and ways that it is celebrated in different cultures and countries.  Setting the stage for the all-American family, we see the proud mother, the father snoring in his auditorium seat, the misbehaved child, and the conservative one.  The plot develops when Homer, the father, loses his Christmas bonus and comes to the realization that it will be a meager Christmas that year.  Lined with undertones of the typical middle class American Christmas, the pilot comes full circle with Homer saving the holiday by bring home a lost puppy.

Instead of the vulgar and demeaning humor that I expected, the moments that were funny, and that were meant to be, were all too familiar – especially around the holidays.  The impersonal Christmas cards with my annoying smiling face plastered on it, that my mother had to send to three dozen people that we hadn’t been in touch with since the form letter sent the year before, the annoying in-laws and great aunts that completely took over my bedroom when they came to stay Christmas Eve, and the intense frustration that comes with untangling all of the Christmas lights (and the humor that comes with watching my father attempting to do it.  We see Homer try and recite the eight reindeer that drive Santa’s sleigh (does anyone really know all of them?) and his attempt at the impossible Christmas shopping list.

Not only does the episode allow the audience to laugh at themselves for these incidents that everyone is guilty of, but they also laugh at their ordinary plot line with the son, Bart’s, plea, "Come on, Dad, this could be the miracle that saves the Simpsons' Christmas. If TV has taught me anything, it's that miracles always happen to poor kids at Christmas. It happened to Tiny Tim, it happened to Charlie Brown, it happened to the Smurfs, and it's going to happen to us."

It was clear, too, that many of the writing is drawn from outside the shows context.  Airing just sixteen days after the popular holiday move A Christmas Vacation, many scenes appear to be similar: the missing Christmas bonus, the cutting down of the wild pine tree for the living room, and the friendly competition with the neighbors to produce the most impressive yard light show.

With a little humor and a little love, The Simpsons surprised me.  I didn’t laugh out loud, but I do appreciate the show revealing humor in my everyday agony. 

Other reviews of the Simpsons, season one.