==I -W V V V V UF 7U Daily - Weekend, etc. Magazine - 4B - The Michigan Daily - Weekend, etc. Magazine - Thursday, November 29, 2001 SQUIRRELS IN THE MIST The Michigan ELITE ENTERTAINMENT EXPOSITIO S o I'm walking to Hill Auditorium with my room- mates Mali and Frannie. It's yet-another one of those surprisingly beautiful days. It had looked cold, and I still hadn't figured out, after a month of days that looked cold but weren 't, not to wear a sweater and my wool coat. So I'm frying, all hot and dis- gruntled, when out of the blue a rabid squirrel dives in front of me, in some suicidal attempt for atten- tion. This is all the incentive I need to start my by-now-banal squirrel dia- tribe. Mali suggests that I make the whining into a column. And I can't tell if she's serious or if she just wants to avoid the inevitable. Fran nods vehemently reaffirming my suspicion that the two are conspiring against me; I think that they think that a good ole' squirrel-bashing col- umn will extirpate my angst, clear- ing my conversational horizon from stories about rodents who eat nuts. But I won't be satisfied until I achieve vengeance. Come on. Agree with me, here. Squirrels are the most terrible mammal around. (Besides that preacher dude on the Diag. I'd take a squirrel over him any day.) I know that they bother you. Tell me that you don't have a Sarah strange story fea- Rubin turing a psycho- squirrel. You jC o haven't lived in , An Arbor long Flairenough if you haven't had at least one close-encounter-of-the- squirrel-kind. The most striking characteristic of the squirrels on campus is their rela- tive size. I come from a nearby small town in Michigan, and our squirrel population isn't nearly as over- weight. The squirrels in my town live in trees. They jump and run on the phone wires and all of the other typ- ical squirrel behavior that looks like it'd be fun to try if I was 3 inches tall. Here, in Ann Arbor, the squirrels are always on the ground. Why? Because they're freaking obese. You have to do a double-take to see if it's a cat or a squirrel walking with you to class. They've lost their aero- dynamic powers and they're too fat to ascend, so they stagnate in the grass. This brings me to my next com- plaint. People here have managed to halfway-domesticate the damned things. They might as well be cats. They have absolutely no fear of humans. Watch sometime. Walk up to a squirrel, yell at it, shake your foot or something. No response. Yes, lethar- gy may account for this lack of trep- idation to some extent, but really it's that they've been conditioned to trust us. Why do they trust us? Because we feed them. I can shout at one, "Move out of my way, you!" And it will stare blankly, waiting for a treat. Like a dog. Except you bought the dog. The dog has a name. Squirrels here do not have names. They are not pets. Do not be cute with them. The other say I saw this hippie- lady and her kid feeding squirrels "Wonder Bread" in the Arb. What? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS? When I was little, I fed ducks. Ducks are cute. Say it. Duck. Now say squirrel. See? There's a reason why we put ducks on baby blankets. It'll be a small wonder if the kid doesn't end up in therapy when he's 30. I can imagine his psychiatrist's reaction when he describes memo- ries of these mutant squirrels that were twice his size, chasing after him for bread. So don't feed the squirrels; just because the Ann Arbor hippies do it doesn't mean that it's socially acceptable. And don't be one of those people who think that the squirrels are interesting and funny. Some bozos actually sit and watch as out fatty squirrels haphazardly attempt to climb trees. These are the people that cause traffic jams because they have this pressing need to slow down their cars and watch the cop write a ticket for the red Ferrari. (You know who you are.) If you must interact with the squirrels, yell at them. Let them know their place. I bet that at this very moment, the squirrel militia is planning a secret mutiny. They'll usurp all coffee shops in the city, knowing that by simultaneously limiting Ann Arbor's massive consumerism and expresso supply, they can successfully dis- hearten us and drain our energy to resist. Alright, alright. So, this is Sarah, signing off. I'm telling you, though, be warned. Because even if the squirrels don't actually pose a threat, then the people who are stupid enough to humor them definitely do. - If you have seen the freaky squirrel mural in South Quad's basement or are simply a squirrel fanatic, feel free to share your reflections with Sarah Rubin at syrubin@umich.edu. Good morning, I'm a corporate whore I You've excelled at Michigan... - What's Next? Spend a year in Jerusalem among a small group of extremely capable and driven young Jewish leaders, learning, working, travelling, and growing. Become one of this generation most knowledgeable and impassioned leaders. No matter what your professional interests, we invite you to apply for a Dorot Fellowship. Visit us online at www.dorot.org. WWW.DOROT. ORG ere's nothing less refreshing than waking up in the morning and feel- ing like a whore -realizing that people consider you a sub-human market- ing ploy. Richard Meltzer's latest book is a col- lection of his musi- cal musings, mus- ings some consider . misanthropic, mis- guided or a mistake. However, it may be the title "A Whore Just Like the Rest," that is the most telling piece of writ- Luke ing Meltzer's penned. Smith Art is a term thatL teeters near the realm of the indeter- Zero minate definition. Labeling Art is unfortunately not as simple as choosing a CD off the rack to drop $17.99 on. Instead, when you look down that teem- ing rack of music, realize that it is all in some form Art. Regardless of its place in slick-mainstream culture, or its enshrine- ment by cardigan wearing emo-kids or its place in the sweaty armpit of an ex-high school offensive tackle (yeah, the one that still wears his high school varsity letter- men's jacket in a crude proclamation that he used to "rock") it is all Art. It is all Art. From top to bottom everything is pro- gressing in the world of music, film and pop culture as it should. It is the natural order of music and life alike to have a top and bottom and everything in between. Music especially is no different. There will always be someone at the bottoms feed, flipping burgers at the local BK. However, corporate god McDonald's couldn't survive without that man, stand- ing begrudgingly over a vat of grease, dropping a tray of french fries in at one minute intervals. It is all essential on some level. The top to bottom processing extends further to include the manner in which music is created. A band like Boston would spend years in the studio perfecting their sound, making each note ring crystal clear to create the overproduced, oily slick sound that came to be their trademark, but the waterline changes on an artist by artist basis. Minimalist approaches in music can be called "regressions," however those regressions often have held and set standards. Rock critic extraordinaire Lester Bangs called Lou Reed's 1975 Metal Machine Music, "The greatest album ever made." Bangs cited the album's pre-punk sonic digression and dissected its importance to music as a whole, as one of the first truly "punk" albums. Lou Reed's rape of minimalism turned what conventional thoughts on "pop" taught about the verse-chorus- verse-bridge style of music into an ambling corpse in its final twitches of post-mortem. Instead of unadventurous "music" on Metal Machine Music, Reed replaced instruments with layers upon layers of feedback and 64 minutes of screaming electronics. However, the fact that no conventional music exists on Metal Machine Music, is an interesting one. Does Lou Reed's sonic meltdown merit itself as artistic or simply a ploy to fulfill a record contract? Where does a "reviewer" fit into this seemingly cantankerous equation of the artist and the marketing of Art as a com- mercialized product? Are reviewers to serve as little more than mass-produced walking, talking buyer's guides for read- ers? In one part, yes they are. People will read a CD review and say to themselves, "that sounds good, maybe I'll buy that." On a simple whim, the consumers put their faith in someone they don't know to aid, and in some drastic cases, make the decision to buy, for them. For the one part that a CD review may serve as a buyer's guide there are ten parts in which it does not. Tuesday of each week is my favorite day, hands down. It's CD Tuesday; every- thing new hits the shelves, and each CD that comes out has some form of artistic merit. Someone considers that record to a piece of Art. Whether it's Britney herself, Britney's breasts or Britney's mother, someone considers Britney to be an artis- tic work. And it is the express job of a CD review to challenge the artist merit of any given CD in the context that the record came out. I'm not reviewing Creed's new record Weathered as an excuse to stand on my proverbial soapbox with my megaphone and deter the masses from making what I consider a financial faux pas. That reeks of futility; I may as well waste my time handing out religious flyers in the Diag. Instead, albums are taken for their artist merit and analyzed as a place in the greater context, not to serve as a buyer's guide for the Lemmings of Commercial Commerce. The new Michael Jackson CD isn't supposed to be reviewed in terms of how many units it will ship, or how "well" the first single is doing on the Billboard Hot 100. Jacko's Invincible is to be looked at in the wake of his back cata- log and his state in music's strata. He is not the exception, looking at his work contex- tually isn't the exception - it is the rule. When consumers read reviews of any- thing (films, television shows, video games, music) and go out and purchase a copy of said item on the merit of some- one's word who they don't even know, they relegate the role of the reviewer to lit- tle more than an unpaid marketing whore. And in that commercialized look at music, Art ceases to be Art, and becomes a commercial product geared at consump- tion. I woke up this morning and realized I was just a whore, a whore just like the rest of them. But, since I'm getting the CDs for free, and you're dropping the money, who's really the whore? -Luke Smith can be reached at lukems@umich.edu Billboard t 1. Scarecrow, Garth Brooks - ...Insert your own fatjoke here, we're tired. 2. Britney, Britney Spears - Her boobs liked it. 3. Laundry Service, Shakira -She's busy cleaning the sheets of her young male fans. 4. Invincible, Micheal Jackson Invincible? Tito could kick his ass back tc the Stone Age. M liii 5. A Day Without Rain, Enya - Back to number five? We're not speaking BMG/Jive to any of you ever again So hot ... snarkiness waning... 6. Escape, Enrique Iglesies - Weekend box office Figures in millions of dollars. 1. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (57.5) Riding a broom without a cup make you a better man than I. 2. Monsters Inc. (24.1) "Little Monsters," now that was a movie. Frank Whaley rules. 3. Spy Game (21.7) More fun than Twister with a fork. 4. Black Knight (15.4) Martin made $15 mil and I can't sell my bike for $30. God is dead. WHAT'S NEWS IN ENTERTAI NMENT I 5. Shallow Hal (8.5) JUNIOR Western Bacon Chee. 6. Out Cold (4.5) Both "Ski Patrol' and "Ski School" are rolling over in their suck-graves. 7. Domestic Disturbance (4.0 Bastard makes his wife go on "Fea Factor!" That ain't Scientologyrific 8. Heist (3.1) The only top ten filn that actually has a screenplay. 9. Life as a House (2.1) Darts Vader. 10. The One (2.0) Yeah, th LAST one. Hahaha. Oh, my sides. THE DOROT FELLOWSHIP IN ISRAEL ROwLING MAY BECOME BILLION- AIRE - The Internet Movie Database reports that Philip Beresford, writer of the Sunday Times of London annu- al Rich List, predicts that J.K. Rowling will become the first billion- aire writer. The author of the highly successful "Harry Potter" series is worth an estimated S100 million. Rowling will be receiving one percent of the gross from the "Potter" films and five percent from the revenue from the sale of toys. FILMING TO RESUME AFTER DEL TORO/JONES FIGHT - Filming for Paramount Pictures "The Hunted" .. fTHE GRAPES OF WRATH From the novel by John Steinbeck Adapted by Frank Galati Directed by Darryl V. Jones From the dust bowl of Oklahoma to the sands of California, a sweeping epic of the American experience including music of the period. December 6 - 8 at 8pm - December 9 at 2pm Power Center for the Performing Arts Tickets are $20 & $15 - Students $7 with ID League Ticket Office 734-764-2538 UM School of Music Dept. of Theatre & Drama photo by Walker Evans from the FSA/OWI collection at the Library of Congress. will resume on Jan. 7 in Portlan< Ore., after shutting down while sta Benicio Del Toro nursed a broke wrist. Del Toro was injured whil filming a fight scene with co-sta Tommy Lee Jones. Zap2it.cor reports that insurance will cover th entire delay and that the Williar Friedkin ("The Exorcist") film wi be released in Oct. 2002. The filr centers on Del Toro as an assassi hunted by tracker Jones. COEN'S "MAN" FILMED IN COLOR - The Coen brothers latest film "The Man Who Wasn't There" is now being played around the country in black and white, but USI films had the brothers film have an alternative print in color, according to Entertainment Weekly. The studio was afraid that the black and white film would not sell in the foreign video market. In order to get the movie made, the brothers agreed, bi with the stipulation that all theatrica prints would only be black and white. "STARSKY AND HuTCu" UPDATI TO FEATURE SNOOP DOGG AS HUGGY BEAR - Snoop Dogg is slated to star in the film version of the '70s TV series. The film will be directed by Todd Phillips ("Road DCuresyof'Wreimaege Doctors don't give me no respect.