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The world needs saving

December 4, 2008 in Film | Tags: , , , | by dropdeadaviv | Leave a comment

There is only one thing that I’m excited for this holiday season, and it’s the DVD release of last summer’s smash hit, The Dark Knight. I’m also the type of dork that Googled “The Dark Knight” and “Batman 2″ since July of 2007. However, the sequel to 2005’s Batman Begins became a bigger sensation than anyone could have imagined. A big part of that was the tragic death of one of the film’s stars, Heath Ledger, and the buzz around his performance – a work of art. Another tool of TDK’s success is the often overlooked fact that the film’s director, Christopher Nolan, and screenwriter – Chris’ brother Jonathan, are very, very good. Oscar-nominated good. Three of their five films are on IMDB’s top 100 films of all time.
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Growing up through the lens of Thanksgiving

November 19, 2008 in Student life | Tags: , , , | by dropdeadaviv | 1 comment

Before I start, a disclaimer: This week I’m not encouraging anyone to break the law or to cause a ruckus. This is simply my personal experience. I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and every year for the last four years I have traveled home for Thanksgiving.
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A CauTionary Tale

November 13, 2008 in City life, Transportation | Tags: , , | by dropdeadaviv | 6 comments

This is not another “ride a bike, save the environment” blog post.

Last Thursday, the weather was miserable, and I did not feel like riding my bike only to soak myself in the rain. I live near Packard’s Corner, so catching the T seemed to be my best option. I hopped on when all the doors opened.
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Now what?

November 5, 2008 in Politics | Tags: , , | by dropdeadaviv | Leave a comment

I’m torn, folks; I’m torn. For the last eight years, beginning with a crushing heartbreak in 2000 — Democrats, liberals and progressives, especially those as virulent as I am — have been marginalized and ignored. And we liberals have botched all our chances in the last eight years to make any kind of difference. We’ve screamed and screamed, or have become apathetic and closed off. Either way, we’re not used to getting what we want.
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Dress to impress for Halloween

October 30, 2008 in Student life | Tags: , , | by dropdeadaviv | Leave a comment

Halloween is one of the least socially important nights in college life. To clarify, while the 31st of October is a night of massive parties and many opportunities to meet new friends, potential mates and the inside of toilet bowls, everyone inevitably dresses like a tool and makes a complete fool of him or herself. Any faux-pas will be forgiven.
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There Ain’t No Cure for the Mid-Semester Blues

October 22, 2008 in Student life | Tags: , | by dropdeadaviv | Leave a comment

Mid-semester is upon us in full force (mid-term exams, shorter days and colder weather), and it’s is causing depression and lethargy within the halls of COM – which accounts for this blog post. The worst part of these mid-semester blues is the fact that we must register for spring semester classes very soon, a cruel joke BU plays on us – pick new classes while we’re floundering in our current ones.

However, there are a few easy ways to beat registration depression.
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A Hipster’s Guide to Allston Part 2

October 16, 2008 in City life | Tags: , , , , , | by dropdeadaviv | 2 comments

Welcome to Part II of A Hipsters Guide to Allston. (Here’s Part I if you missed it.) Today’s installment looks at Brighton Ave., the Garfunkel to Harvard Ave.’s Simon (the Hutch to his Starsky, the Hootch to his Turner). Brighton Avenue allows Allston to stretch a bit farther east than Harvard. The fun begins at the Brighton Ave./ Packard’s Corner T stop — a gateway to Allston of sorts.

  • As you get off the T you may notice a monstrous Asian market called Super 88. This superstore has miniature versions of all of your favorite Asian restaurants: Thai, Cantonese, Korean, Dim Sum, Indian, even Bubble Tea. When going to dinner in a finicky group, oft times 88 is the place that has a little something for everyone.
  • Attached to the dining area of Super 88 is the Super 88 market. With several varieties of steam-at-home dumplings and frozen Asian takeaway out the Yin Yang (get it?), the market provides delectable alternatives to Swanson frozen dinners. A warning, however, the produce and meat from the Super 88 market looks like it was imported from Asia via cargo ship, and with the number of flies buzzing around all the “fresh” food, I’d suggest sticking to frozen.

A little farther west down Brighton there is a little side street called Fordham Road, which is worthy of note for two reasons:

  • The Computer Loft – a certified and relatively inexpensive Apple Computers retailer, which is much more convenient and helpful than going to the Apple stores themselves. 
  • The second reason I tout Fordham Road is Wing It. With 21 different wing flavors and wings hot enough to strip paint off of walls, Wing It has probably taken several years off of my life. Not to mention, they have the best French fries in the city.
  • Across the street from International Bike is the Hess station. Even though most students in Allston don’t drive cars, I suggest peeping the Hess station’s sign to check the state of gas prices. As of yesterday, the regular price for gas was $2.99, which is the lowest it’s been in a year.
  • Just west of the Hess station is Spike’s Hot Dogs, an Allston staple. Spike’s has several different varieties of Hot Dogs, Fries and a contest: If you can eat more than five dogs in a sitting, you get a Spike’s T-Shirt and your picture on the wall. Spike’s employees, all of them too cool for school, give you the true Allston experience. Inside you could hear music ranging from the Magnetic Fields to Death From Above 1979.
  • The next block boasts a variety of restaurants, many of them are big versions of the types of restaurants you’d find at Super 88, along with the White Horse Tavern. Remember what I said about the Joshua Tree? The White Horse is just as bad. With giant floor to ceiling windows the length of the entire frontage, walking by The White Horse is like taking a trip to the zoo. Chest beating, teeth showing and feces throwing included.
  • Next to the White Horse is the slightly more acceptable Sunset Grill and Tap, which has a huge beer selection and all you can eat ribs on Mondays and Tuesdays.

This brings us to the corner of Brighton and Harvard which I wrote about last week. Herrell’s good, Redneck’s Bad.

  • Continuing west, there is Harpers Ferry, a concert venue that hosts both national and local musicians. Similar to Great Scott only far less cozy, Harper’s is as big as a high school gymnasium. 
  • Across the street from Harpers there is The Kells, another bar along the lines of The White Horse and J-Tree. Ladies get in free Friday night at The Kells. They don’t have to pay to get rubbed up on by blowouts and listen to “Don’t Stop Believing” every 15 minutes.

Farther down Brighton Ave the ethnic restaurants continue. S&I Thai, Burritos on Fire, First Bite Pizza and India Dhaba.

  • Then we come to the Silhouette. A good bar. What makes a good bar? A free popcorn, cheap drinks and darts. The back room of The Sil is a dart area with seven or so boards in a row. The Sil provides an alcohol haven from the general douchebaggery of Allston bars. The TVs are the size of TVs, not automobiles, and not all the music played there was written by Bon Jovi. That’s not to say someone didn’t try to beat me up once, just because I took his picture. On the side of The Sil there is a mural of famous Joes. Piscapo, Pesce, even bazooka Joe, though I’m still trying to figure out what James Dean is doing on there.
  • Continuing west there is a Burger King, if the McDonald’s wasn’t seedy enough for you, and a relatively inexpensive, but huge Laundromat. A laundry emporium, this also provides wash-dry-fold service.

At the next corner, Brighton Ave meets Cambridge Street in a cornucopia of paradoxically good food. Yeah!

  • On the corner, there is Twin Donuts which, if you can believe it, sells donuts. It’s open from 4 pm to 4 am and has the exact type of patronage you’d imagine.
  • Just across Cambridge street there is the vegan corner. TJ Scallywaggle’s, a vegan pizza place touts many fake meats and fake cheeses on its real pizza. In my mind there’s no substitute for cheese, but the smoothies are, thankfully, made of real fruit and real delicious.
  • Next to TJ’s is Grasshopper, a vegan Chinese restaurant which, on every third Sunday of the month, hosts an all-you-can-eat night for just $10. Hipsters, vegans, vegatarians and their friends come out of the wood work to do more than just sample the signature dish called “No Name.” No Name is General’s Chicken without the chicken, deep fried breading in orange sauce. Oh yes, it’s good. Also, the “beef” and kale selection offers the vegans a much-needed dose of iron. It is equally as delicious. It is not rare to see people rolling 14 deep on Grasshopper nights, especially in the colder months, as it has become a monthly Allston holiday – people schedule vacation days around it, and you might just see me there this Sunday.

This has been a brief, and this writer hopes, informative guide to a special corner of the world that is Allston. If anyone discovers a new hotspot, or place to avoid, please, let us know in the comments!

A Hipster’s Guide to Allston Part 1

October 8, 2008 in City life | Tags: , , , , | by dropdeadaviv | 2 comments

This is a hipster’s guide to Allston.

I know, I know. Many of you indignantly declare – “I’m not a hipster. Don’t assign me with any labels because that then pigeonholes me and what people think about me, though I don’t care what people think about me, which is why you don’t label me in the first place.” Crap.

If you wear skinny jeans, this is for you. If you have an ironic mustache, this is for you.

This is meant to be helpful, so don’t do the hip thing and take a dump all over it. Don’t hate it because it tries to make popular that secret corner of the city that you like to keep all for yourself. Or that it lessens for others the painstaking search you had to go through to find a place to hang out.

This is for people new to Boston who don’t drink Jager bombs, who don’t wash their hair, and who don’t go to frat parties.

The Southern tip of Allston is only a block from where I live, so I shall start there.

Allston, truly begins at the Harvard Ave. T Stop on the B line. Great Scott, a cute little club stands, nestled on the corner of the street, like a welcome sign.

You are home.

  • Great Scott is one of the neatest venues in Allston, hosting big national acts such as O’death, The Pipettes and Neva Dinova, as well as smaller local acts. There is music almost every night of the week, and dancey Friday night with DJs and live acts, called “The Pill.” This bar is sort of an anomaly in the area, for it has good sound, cheap drinks and 18+ shows.
  • On the other side of Harvard Avenue (one of Allston’s two main drags) sits Inbound Pizza. They put bacon on their Hawaiian pizza. Bacon.

Up a block on Commonwealth Avenue stands a metaphor for Allston itself, two bars located directly across the street from each other:

  • The Joshua Tree (eastbound) and Our House (westbound). J-Tree, as the blow-outs call it, is a mammoth, two floor bar that boasts the bro-iest dude-bros that have ever walked the earth. An example of what I mean.
  • Across the street from J-Tree is “Our House.” While bars in general are havens for smarmy, drunk mass-holes, Our House is a bit quieter, has nice bartenders who are usually more than happy to talk to you about their tattoos and board games like Battleship and Connect Four.
  • Back on Harvard Ave., continuing north there is just about the shadiest McDonald’s outside of Central Square (across the river in Cambridge), and Marty’s Liquors, the cheaper of the two main Allston liquor stores. Both of them card, so freshman, don’t email me asking which store doesn’t.
  • The burned down shell of a building next the McDonald’s is the remains of the Grecian Diner. Before burning down last June, the Grecian was the best place to go to get traditional, greasy diner food in the area.
  • Half way down the block there is Mr. Music, which, on its steel grate signs, claims Boston’s widest selection of guitars. This is not true. The entire staff of Mr. Music consists of weird middle aged dudes with long hair and bald spots. The type that you might see roaming the back corners of Guitar Center. Yuck. That being said, Mr. Music has a lot of more interesting and rare guitars, like Jaguars and an extensive wall of Gretschs.
  • Across the street is Dragon Wok, one of the cheapest Chinese places in America. You shouldn’t eat there unless you’re looking to catch a tapeworm.
  • At the end of the block is Blanchards Liquors, across the street from Redneck’s Barbecue. If you’re thinking of eating at Redneck’s, circle back to Dragon Wok.

The epicenter of Allston lies at the intersection of Brighton and Harvard Avenues. There one can find many great ethnic restaurants. Korean, Thai, Vietnamese and Indian.

  • Standing proudly on one corner is Herrell’s Allston Café. If you like vegan breakfast or crazy homeless people, Herrell’s is for you. They have homemade ice cream and really fabulous coffee, but those are just about the only things you won’t have to wait for.

Harvard Ave. ends just one block farther north and sports a costume shop, Korean bakery, and a place called Pizzawings.

  • One block east of Harvard on Linden Street, the three big Allston party streets — Ashford, Gardner and Pratt — begin. On weekend nights, young people spill out into a confetti of drinking, kissing and hailing cabs. Every September there is the new crop of freshman in herds of 20 looking for parties.
  • The corner of Harvard and Cambridge streets is just as fertile as Harvard Ave. and Comm. Ave. Obrien’s pub, a small dive bar with cheap drinks and three dollar Monday concerts called “Premature Mondays” rubs elbows with Stingray Body Art, which not only offers standard tattoos and piercing, but also, really weird permanent makeup.
  • That last top on our mini-tour is only a block up Cambridge Street. It is the Allston Sound Museum, a practice space for local bands. There is no mandate on the quality of bands at the practice space, so if you’re a brand new band starting out, or the greatest band to ever walk the earth, the sound museum will have you. Just beware, many of the bands are pretentious, loud and awful, and the practice rooms reach more than 110 degrees in the summer. It smells, decidedly like rock ‘n’ roll.

We’ve merely scratched the rich surface of Allston in this installment. Tune in next Wednesday for part two of “A Hipster’s guide to Allston.”

Presidential politics and the iPod

October 1, 2008 in Politics | Tags: , , , , | by dropdeadaviv | Leave a comment

My car was recently broken into. The window — smashed. My iPod — stolen. Now, on the short T ride to work every morning, I have nothing to do but stand and stare at the three-quarters of the people on the train who have iPods. I noticed something the other day, however, even though the trip to work is just about 10 minutes. People click at their mp3 players so frequently that it would be impossible for them to have listened to a whole song (unless they were listening to An Albatross). iPods, Blackberries and iPhones seem to have reduced the average attention span to less than a minute. Some evidence: the 2008 Presidential election. The nominees of both parties have switched positions or changed his/her message, just hoping that the American public will forget, or not notice, or listen to their iPod instead. And guess what? That strategy is working.

What the hell are the candidates saying? (Full disclosure: I am super liberal… with a cape… who’s still holding out for the Gravel/Kucinich ticket.)

Let’s first take listen to JOHN MCCAIN. The Republican nominee seems to be working from a strategy designed to evoke visceral, knee-jerk reactions. Example: John McCain picks a relatively young, Tina Fey look-alike as his running mate.

Sounds like a great idea! Most liberals probably thought it was a great tactic at first. I know the overwhelming reaction my liberal friends and I had, as we huddled together in our communist love bus, was damn.

Obama had just beaten a white woman in the primaries, alienating many of her Democratic supporters. John McCain picking Palin was an obvious power play at Clinton supporters.

But then we slowly discovered that Sarah Palin was about as qualified to be vice president, and as well-spoken, as a pile of Alaskan snow.

In another controversial move, McCain recently tried to suspend his campaign to go back to Washington and help with the economic bailout talks.

America’s knee-jerk reaction? Yay McCain! Even Bill Clinton gave the republican candidate his propers.

His Democratic opponent, Barack Obama thought for about 45 seconds and realized a president should be able to do more than one thing at once, which became his talking point on the subject and seemingly turned the tables on McCain.

The Democratic candidate, BARACK OBAMA, I don’t know if you’ve heard of him, has been doing a better job of not switching positions on issues. The reason: He just got them.

Obama did a cracker-jack job of beating Hilary Clinton in the primary without really saying anything. His policies of HOPE and CHANGE and YES WE CAN and his magnificent orations allowed him to dispatch the New York Senator in only 22 easy months.

And after all the clamor, Obama won over a lot of undecided voters and Hilary supporters at the Democratic National Convention when he said something. He talked, somewhat vaguely, about what he would do as President, and it swayed a lot of undecided voters.

So, what’s Obama’s problem now? He’s trying to stretch those vague policy ideas given in his stump speech like he did the word HOPE. HOOOOOOPPPPPPPEEEEEE.

However, the American people’s attention spans are short, and Obama started them down a slippery slope of giving them things. A strategy of appeasement.

America wants more. Obama has to deliver now. He’s already given us a taste. Instead of doing this (or in addition, depending on whom you ask) Obama has released a viral marketing campaign to highlight that we don’t want the opposite of hope. It’s a scare tactic reminiscent of the Barack Obama, a Muslim? videos of yester-month.

Alaska Governor SARAH PALIN, the Republican Vice Presidential candidate is taking a cue from Obama and trying not to actually say anything. This is not working for her. As a country we are so late in the political season that cutely dancing around questions will not stand. And Palin’s performance has not been that cute. She seems to turn into a spastic John Madden whenever she’s asked a question.

In a recently released, new segment of the now infamous Katie Couric interview, Palin is unable to name a newspaper. Follow that?

Last is Delaware Senator JOE BIDEN. Arguably the smartest and most qualified of any of the four mentioned, Biden has one main stumbling block: He knows he’s the smartest kid in the class. He spoke in a condescending tone to Barack Obama in the primary debates, and that didn’t get him very far.

Now the Democrats are playing the expectations game.

For a long while, I’d been looking forward to seeing a sharp, qualified and sometimes downright mean politician go up against Palin. However, many people expect a bloodbath Thursday night at the Vice Presidential debates, and for Biden to win he has to give the American people more than a bloodbath. He has to do better than destroy her.

Uh oh.

So the Democrats are using a tactic that seems straight out of the third season of The West Wing: They are touting Palin’s QUALIFICATIONS and releasing memos and statements on how well she debates and how she commands a room.

The ploy is to raise expectations on Palin so that Biden can annihilate her and be liked for it. As a reward for those of you who’ve stuck with this article for this long, here is a short video on what happens when people break expectations.

So, as I ride the T to work again today, I shiver and mourn for the people with no attention spans, the people who are fooled by the photo-ops, the media blitz and the publicity stunts. I fight the urge to run up to them and pull the buds out of the ears and scream, “For the sake of the country, put down the damn iPod.”