Lifestyle

• Stuck in a Time Warp

  Lifestyle October 16, 2012 at 2:28 pm Comments are Disabled

  The night air was chilly as a small crowd formed outside of the University Mall Theatre. It was a Saturday night, and I was waiting in line with friends to buy tickets to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show. As I glanced around at my surroundings, I saw a variety of excited Rocky Horror fans dressed in everything from fish net stockings and top hats to sparkly golden underwear and bow ties. We eventually made our way to the front of the line and purchased our tickets for the show. After buying our tickets and being stamped with a pair of lips on the hand, we went inside the theatre only to wait in another line. While waiting, we saw a big group of people ahead of us with giant red Vs on their foreheads. I thought it was just another weird costume for the show. My friends and I started to chat with people in line around us, and we met a Northern Virginia Community College student named Caroline who comes to the show every weekend. As we started talking, we asked questions about what it was like and what goes on during the performance. That was a BIG […]

   

• One if by Land, Two if by Sea, Three if by Flying Saucer

  Lifestyle October 16, 2012 at 2:27 pm Comments are Disabled

  The idea of the end of mankind in the form of an alien invasion has loomed in people’s minds since the 1940s with the beginning of space exploration. Since then, Hollywood has created countless possibilities regarding what our first interaction with extraterrestrial life may be like. Extraterrestrial creatures may be vicious carnivorous beasts like in “Alien,” or have psychic powers and be technologically advanced as depicted in Independence Day. They might even be cute and cuddly like the Ewoks of Star Wars. Perhaps they will be nonsensically violent and weak to the sound of country music as shown in Mars Attacks! Believers and conspiracy theorists alike claim that we have already been visited in places like Roswell, Stonehenge and the Pyramids. Their evidence lies in photographs of debris, strange groups of lights and firsthand accounts from the edge-of-town crazies talking about probes in their heads.  Many of these theories and sightings have been debunked with more realistic explanations or have been revealed to be frauds. “Scientifically speaking, there is no evidence to support this hypothesis,” said professor of physics, astronomy, and computational science Harold Geller. Many people out there want to believe we are not alone in the universe, and […]

   

• Escape Post-Midterm Stress at Great Falls National Park

  Lifestyle October 16, 2012 at 2:25 pm Comments are Disabled

  As the humidity and heat of the summer fade, cool breezes usher in chilly nights and dew-soaked mornings. With a fantastic, firecracker explosion of color, fall is here! Just look at the red, gold, green, yellow, brown and orange colors of the trees. It’s difficult to fully capture the colorful magic of the season without a trip to Great Falls National Park. Located on the Potomac River in Fairfax County, Great Falls Park is best known for overlooking a canyon of seething, bubbling waterfalls, particularly impressive after a rainfall. The park includes a pleasant, grassy picnic area perfect for tossing a Frisbee around, eating, and lounging about. A visitor’s center contains a colorful and informative museum about the history of the land including the Native American tribes and early English settlers that used to call the area home. Hiking trails span the length of the park, allowing you to choose your own adventure by skirting the length of the Potomac on the River Trail or by losing yourself among the many tall trees that crowd the Ridge Trail. The longest trails are 3 miles long. The park encourages mountain biking and horseback riding. Particularly adventurous sorts can go rock climbing […]

   

• The Carouser Report: Carousing Safely

  Lifestyle October 4, 2012 at 12:17 pm Comments are Disabled

  In the dodgy world of journalism, the search for the truth is a sought out commodity. Fortunately for you, I am chock-full of it. Unfortunately, the powers that be see it otherwise. Like a stray scratching at the back door, the issue of college drinking is a permanent annoyance for those who have moved far beyond their college years. They like to use statistics to mash down the peeping blisters that glorify the drinking scene. An awful tragedy weighs heavy in the truth game. To that end, I can only say that for every horrific tragedy, hundreds are prevented by good folk who understand the phrase “Live tonight to party tomorrow!”  The burden falls on us to keep each other safe. In order to avoid the pithy, over-chewed rhetoric you’ve already heard about responsible drinking, I suppose, as always, I should give you some practical real world advice. It is a bad decision every time. Drunk driving is a ghastly sin. If you really need to get home, call a taxi, ride the bus, or call someone who hasn’t been drinking.  However, staying the night is your best option. Your bed will still be there tomorrow. I’ve slept everywhere: on […]

   
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  A New Take on Prohibition

  Lifestyle October 4, 2012 at 12:12 pm Comments are Disabled

  Book Review by Colleen Wilson In December of 1930, Jack, Forrest and Howard Bondurant were crossing a bridge with cars full of illegal moonshine when they were stopped by local sheriff deputies looking for trouble. Historical accounts of the event are unclear, but the altercation quickly turned violent and two of the brothers were shot. Decades later, Matt Bondurant, grandson of Jack, learned about the shooting and of the violent past his grandfather and great-uncles had experienced during Prohibition in rural Virginia. “In contemporary society everyone sort of universally agrees that [Prohibition] was a bad idea,” said Bondurant, author of “The Wettest County in the World.” “It was a terrible idea, so the people who were breaking the law during that time are not seen as criminals today, they were just more like interesting people.” The novel, which now sells under the title “Lawless” after the movie based on the same story, is a historical fiction about Frederick County, Va. during prohibition. Though the storyline is fictionalized, the characters are Bondurant’s ancestors and their real-life associates that Bondurant spent years researching. “My work is always heavily informed by research,” said Bondurant. “I write a lot about things that actually are. Sometimes […]

   
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  Nutrition Impossible: A Guide to Eating Healthy, Even When on Campus

  Lifestyle October 4, 2012 at 11:47 am Comments are Disabled

  For many students, college is the first time away from home and their first real taste of freedom. It’s also the first time students do not get to sit down to a home-cooked meal every night. While most colleges offer healthy eating options, students tend to reach for the faster, unhealthier options, which can quickly lead to the freshman 15. Studies have shown that there are a number of reasons as to why students tend to gain weight at college, especially during their first year. College is a whole new social setting, and our culture associates being social with eating. When meeting up with friends, students almost always go to get something to eat. Southside is popular because you can swipe in and spend the whole day there, doing homework and getting up to grab something to eat every once in a while. Pilot House and Ike’s are popular for late night hang outs, giving students a chance to eat and chat early into the morning. Meal plans are designed to give students a wide variety of options as to what they can buy and how many times a day they eat. With a meal plan, a student can decide […]

   
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  End of the World: Zombie Apocalypse

  Featured, Lifestyle, Multimedia September 24, 2012 at 3:24 pm Comments are Disabled

  Fifty-eight years after the United States government launched Project 4.1 to study the medical effects of nuclear fallout, Justin Watson and his friends have continued working on the experiments, with disastrous results. Watson, who graduated from Mason in 2010 with a degree in government and international politics, has opened an urban haunted house called The Warehouse with four colleagues in Rockville, MD. The Warehouse features an imaginary scenario of a continuation of Project 4.1. The haunted house centers on the story line of Atomic Advancements, a private pharmaceutical company that decided to continue the work on the decades-old research project to study the response of human beings who were exposed to significant radiation from high-yield weapons. That is when everything went horribly wrong. The Warehouse, which is located a block from the White Flint Metro station, is a 37,000 square foot department store in a dying shopping mall. Watson and his company have transformed the space into 17 rooms with zombies, decaying bodies and armed guards. A hospital wing, jail and laboratory are all included, but Watson has kept the final room a secret. He promises that it will be different than your average ending to a haunted house. “Our […]

   
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  Former Mason Basketball Player Teams Up with Joe Jonas on Reality Singing Competition “The Next”

  Featured, Lifestyle, Multimedia September 24, 2012 at 3:20 pm Comments are Disabled

  A crowd of several thousand of his newest fans roared with excitement as Jordan Baird was called to the stage. It was early August and Baird had just been announced the winning contestant on the Baltimore show of “The Next”. He glowed with excitement as he paced across the stage to thank his mentor, Joe Jonas, and acknowledged the crowd for allowing him to move forward in the competition. The moment was surreal. “I was pumped,” Baird said. “The whole place was going crazy. But then I got backstage and they told me they were not actually disclosing the winner.” Not knowing his standing within the competition, Baird was forced to watch the show on television to find out if he would be advancing. As senior co-pastors of The Life Church in Manassas, Baird’s parents hosted a viewing party at the church where many members of the community gathered, awaiting the results. For a second time on the show, Baird sat with his family and anxiously anticipated the announcement. Finally, after enduring the hour-long show, Baird heard the news he had been waiting for: he would be moving on to compete in the semifinals at Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles. […]

   
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  Book Review: No Easy Day

  9/11 Commemorative Issue, Lifestyle, Special Issues September 16, 2012 at 2:38 pm Comments are Disabled

  Everyone remembers exactly where they were and what they were doing on Sept. 11, 2001. But what were you doing on May 2, 2011? Former Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette, under the pen name Mark Owen, describes how he spent his day in detail in his new book, “No Easy Day”, the firsthand account of the mission that killed Osama bin Laden. Despite my reservations about being lost in a book that detailed the military, a topic I don’t usually find myself interested in, I downloaded “No Easy Day” on Kindle. By the end of the first chapter, I was hooked. Bissonnette is a brilliant writer and vividly captures his emotions and memories of his training as a SEAL and the missions that led to the capture and killing of bin Laden. In between chapters, I frequently stopped to remind myself that the story I was reading was a true first-person account and not a fictional account of the throes of war. But as I continued to read, I became concerned about the content of the book and its nature. In the preface, Bissonnette stresses that he went to great lengths to avoid disclosing sensitive material and military secrets. Though it […]

   

• The Not-So-Lucky Ones

  Lifestyle April 23, 2012 at 3:20 pm Comments are Disabled

  After weeks of wonderful outings to the box office, it was only a matter of time before a weekend arrived without any appealing films to be seen. Of course, that’s just one opinion, albeit one shared by many. Of the two films opening this weekend, “Chimpanzee,” the documentary about a chimp separated from his family, will easily elicit the more heartfelt, emotional response from moviegoers. But when your competition is a lifeless, soulless “The Notebook” wannabe (irony?), accomplishing such a feat is not hard. “The Lucky One” stars an all-grown-up Zac Efron as a Marine who manages to survive three tours in Iraq, thanks in no small part to a photo of a mysterious woman who Efron thinks is — you guessed it — his good luck charm. It’s impossible to pinpoint exactly what aspect of this film doesn’t work. Maybe it’s the early -90s/late-‘80s tropes of creating unwarranted tension by simply not doing the right things. Everyone watching knows where the tension lies, knows what’s coming eventually. Yet, like the season six reveal in “Dexter,” it’s just too drawn out. You’ll realize you’ve checked out before the opening credits have finished rolling out. First of all, as a veteran […]