Welcome to the Backpage's Journey through the Annals of History! Because the Backpage can't go online each week, we've chosen to dig up an article from the Thresher's past and put it online for the world to rediscover. We've also recorded two audio readings in case all these words get too burdensome on your eyes. Please enjoy and send any comment to backpage@rice.edu.
Mid-February is a special time dedicated to romance: setting up candlelit dinners, frolicking under the covers with a loved one, gorging upon chocolate delicacies and, of course, watching a group of horny teenagers get hacked to death by a sociopath. Don't you just love Valentine's Day?The past three years in Hollywood should be anointed the "Age of Remakes and Sequels". After the successful reboot of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre back in 2004, which was only successful in my eyes due to 80 minutes of Jessica Biel in tight jean shorts, director Marcus Nispel resurrected another iconic horror franchise: Friday the 13th. This film marks the twelfth movie featuring the hockey mask-wearing, machete-wielding Jason Vorhees. Were any of its prequels remotely good? No. Each successive film in this series has been crappier than the one before, culminating with 2001's Jason X, a sublime epitome of craptastic comedy that centered on Jason being cryogenically-frozen and sent to the future. Would Nispel's new Jason flick bring a much-needed breath of fresh air to this stale franchise? Sorta.
At midnight this morning, the six-day-long Student Association General Election period commenced. Students have until Wednesday at noon to cast their ballots, which will be available both online at sa.rice.edu and at several college sites throughout the week. Besides the SA position races, this semester's ballot includes a number of changes to SA by-laws and the constitution.Regarding the by-law changes, the Thresher offers the following recommendations:
Eyeing a ball of lint, hair and dust poetically pinned on the wall, I fully realized that the NADA exhibit, on display at the Rice Media Center until March 5th, is not figurative in its claims of "nothing" art.Other pieces of work on display include a series of metallic-foiled, rectangular canvases depicting nothing through the reduction of the human form into mere quadrilaterals; exposed film strips gradually progressing from white to black, signifying nothing becoming nothing; and a sitting, hollow doll made of splintered wood, representing nothing by defeat. Overall, the exhibit features more than fifty pieces of work spanning all sorts of mediums, genres and styles.
Voting for the Student Association General Election begins today and lasts through Wednesday at 2:00 P.M. Voting is conducted entirely online at sa.rice.edu. Candidates are chosen by voters on a preferential basis, with each voter ranking their choices in each race. Voters are encouraged, though not required, to make a selection for each race and for each amendment and blanket tax proposal.After the ranked votes are tallied, the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes will be eliminated and their votes redistributed among other candidates according to the voter's second-choice pick. This process will be repeated until only one candidate remains, who shall be deemed the winner of the contest.
It is funny how quickly members of the Rice community get greedy. Though the memories of the Owls winning the College World Series in 2003 - Rice's only national championship in any sport-are still relatively fresh, this team is itching to reach the CWS for the fourth year in a row and end what seems like an eternal five-year championship drought. Though fall ball numbers can be deceptive, they have been nevertheless encouraging for the 2009 season. After four exhibition games, the Owls emerged with a clean slate. They opened the fall season with an 8-4 win over Texas State University, then beat the fourth-ranked University of Texas 13-6 twice and capped off the preseason with a 21-2 trumping of McNeese State University.
I had the pleasure of meeting Bryce and Aaron Dessner when The National came to play here for the All Rice Picnic during homecoming week. They are both rather subdued and unassuming - almost awkward, perhaps. They both sport unshaven faces and unibrows - not the look that one would expect out of indie rock's unofficial curators.The Dessners have assembled a veritable who's-who list of indie darlings - Sufjan Stevens! Bon Iver! Yeasayer! Feist! That guy from TV on the Radio! - into Dark Was the Night, a charity compilation album whose profits go towards the Red Hot Organization, a group committed to fighting HIV/AIDS through pop culture. Since 1989, Red Hot has released 20 compilation albums to raise both funds and awareness. It's kind of like Product (RED), except without the sweatshop controversies and expensive corporate branding.
Last week's senior party, 100 Days, launched the countdown to graduation when 650 students, 150 more than last year, mixed and mingled on the dance floor at Club 26ten.Senior Committee Head Dylan Guyer said that the club was filled to capacity after selling all remaining tickets at the door.
Katy Mayde Creek product/Rice senior Rodney Foster led Rice with 22 points ... he matched a career high with 6 three-pointers and was 7-for-14 from the field ... he also had seven assists and two steals.UCF's Jermaine Taylor scored a career-high 45 points ... he had 26 of the Knights' 30
Good things come to those who wait. Unfortunately for the women's basketball team, good things are also said to come in small packages, and despite winning their first conference game of the year last week, their efforts may be too little, too late.With four games left before the Conference USA Championship, scheduled for March 5-8, the Owls (6-19, 1-11 C-USA) still have much to do before they can be taken as a legitimate contender at the end of the season. But their solid effort against the University of Texas-El Paso Feb. 12 and subsequent victory over the University of Tulane two days later came with more than just a sigh of relief.
It looks like the women's tennis team is finding some resolve. The Owls traveled to the McLeod Tennis Center in Lubbock, Tex., last weekend, where they lost a back-and-forth battle with the University of Arizona 4-3 before showcasing their rebound power with a 5-2 route of Texas Tech University. The team is now 8-2 on the year.After a slate of marshmallow opponents and easy home matches, last weekend's lineup was perhaps the toughest three-day stretch the Owls will have during the regular season.
So long as Lennie Waite is running, it appears as though the women's track and field team is practically unstoppable. At only the second full-squad meet of the year, theOwls finished fifth overall while downing a handful of nationally-ranked teams ranging from Texas Tech University to Arizona State University, which was especially impressive since the Sun Devils won last year's Indoor National Championships.
Sophomore architecture students may have to incur a larger percentage of the funding for their annual educational trip to Paris, France, than in previous years due to the economic downturn and problematic timing of their main fundraising party, Archi-Arts. Baker College sophomore Aya Matsumoto, an architecture major, estimated that 300 people attended Archi-Arts, the annual formal hosted by sophomore architecture students, short of their expected attendance of 500-600 people.
Perhaps Rice's most successful professional athlete, Lance Berkman, chatted with the Thresher's Yan Digilov about Head coach Wayne Graham, three-mile runs, couches thrown off Sid and Orientation Week. Rice Thresher: A lot of people look at the 1996 campaign as a turning point in Rice baseball history. Could you tell us about that legendary campaign, in which the Owls won the final Southwest Conference Championship, despite entering as the bottom seed?
While spring break will only keep students away from Rice for a week, trays will be taking a permanent vacation once spring break is over. Residential dining will go trayless beginning Sunday dinner on Mar. 8, which is immediately following Spring Break, Director of Residential Dining and Catering David McDonald said. On Feb. 9, the Student Association passed a resolution to support the removal of trays from serveries in an effort to reduce food waste by up to 33 percent and reduce ever-tightening budgets. The change is also expected to lead to a reduction in water and chemical waste when trays no longer have to be washed after every meal.
Admit it: The choice to use animation seems counterintuitive for a movie that sells itself as a documentary. Wouldn't a more typical, less fantasy-like form be more appropriate for a film that seeks to uncover past events? Wouldn't a normal documentary be more objective, more realistic, and more, well, true?This film challenges this kind of thinking and the notion that truth is specific to a certain kind of filmmaking. Actually, one can argue that it is impossible to be completely objective or "truthful" in any artistic medium.
For the first time since their founding in 1995, the Rice Philharmonics will advance in an international competition. After competing in the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella south quarterfinals last weekend in Athens, Georgia at the Morton Theatre, the Philharmonics will advance to the semifinals on March 14 in Greensboro, N.C., where they will compete against first- and second-place winners from each south quarterfinal.Also competing at the quarterfinals were the Accidentals of the University of Georgia, who took first place, With Someone Else's Money and Noteworthy, also from the University of Georgia and Clemson University's TakeNote.
The women's basketball team closed out its home season with a rough 63-41 loss to Southern Methodist University on Sunday afternoon. LeShandra Hill led SMU with 14 points, followed by Christine Elliott with 12. No one on the Owls was able to muster double-digit points, although the team had five players score a total of 36 points.The win leaves SMU tied for first place in Conference USA with a 10-4 conference record, while Rice's two-game winning streak comes to a close. The Owls are now 2-11 in C-USA.
