Bam! Pow! Comic Con!
The New York Comic Con drew thousands of fans of nerd/geek culture in all 31 flavors to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan last weekend. The largest such convention on the East Coast, the NYCC this year shared space with the New York Anime Festival, making the attendance even larger and more diverse. The guest of honor for this year’s NYCC was Marvel Comics titan Stan Lee, while Japanese voice actress and singer Minori Chihara was the guest of honor for the NYAF.
It’s a good thing laughter is the best medicine
Oh, stand-up comedy, you sultry minx. I’d always admired you from afar, watching your constantly growing harem of intrepid men and women perform in your name. Those whom you graced with your muse-like powers constantly amazed me, but I never even dared to hope to dream to imagine of even thinking of you as my mistress. Everything changed when one of your favored disciples appeared to train me in your mysterious ways, and I at last slowly stepped into your sphere of influence. Though I am yet a novice in your seductive ways, I consider myself unspeakably fortunate to even occasionally be in your cool embrace.
You sexy thing
While waiting to board a plane to Berlin this summer, I got completely absorbed by an article printed on a foreign issue of Cosmopolitan on — get this — sex positions for a woman to camouflage the parts of her body that she hates. As in, “Hate your tummy? Try reverse cowgirl!”
VARIOUS STATES OF UNDRESS A bloody affair
Thanks to the wonders of the female body, every 28 days my cooter turns into that scene from <i>The Shining</i> where blood pours out of the elevator and into a hallway, rushing like a massive flood. I hang up a sign on the muffin shop stating that we’re closed for business and will re-open in seven days because, really, what guy wants to do a girl when she’s on the rag?
BROUHAHA RHYTHM Fifteen minutes of being near someone famous
Being the film-inclined person that I am, I’m fortunate enough to have friends that likewise enjoy watching movies and will let me know when nifty movie events happen. So naturally, I eventually caught wind, albeit at very short notice, of the Boston Film Festival that happened last weekend and decided on a whim to hop out after class on Friday and go to my first film premiere.
Playing games with metaphors
If you had told me five years ago that I would one day be interested in designing video games for a living, I would probably have freaked out that some crazy person claiming to be from MIT was trying to tell me information about my future, then laughed hysterically with skepticism. Back then, my interest in video games was almost exclusively as a player, and not an especially good one, at that. I barely even owned any video games growing up, and my awareness of the development process was limited to channel-surfing into X-Play occasionally and wondering to myself who those faceless people were that produced these parent-terrifying time sinks.
WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD Fenway-Kenmore
I grew up in a small town in West Virginia, which is famous for its basketball players and health problems. Due to the hills that surround the area, it’s very difficult to rely on walking as a primary mode of transportation. Unfortunately, I fit the Asian female driving stereotype, and even though I have my driver’s license, for the safety of others, I rarely operate a vehicle. I also have no internal compass, and relying on other people to drive you around results in them trusting you to navigate. As a result, I completely rely on GPS or Google Maps on my iPhone to get my friends from point A to point B. However, for familiar areas, I am a landmark person.
VARIOUS STAGES OF UNDRESS A hands-on tutorial
Oh man, sometimes I wish I was back in high school. College is exciting and everything, don’t get me wrong, but there is something to be said for a blossoming sexuality and raging hormones.
Too busy to be ill
Years from now, I will still remember the moment when I first stepped into MIT. It was a cloudy Sunday, and the nearly-empty campus looked like a blank slate. Though I had traveled alone, my mom still wanted to accompany me on those first minutes in college, albeit symbolically, and the digital echo of her voice was the only sound that pierced the silence.
How not to get around MIT
The new fall semester approaches, bringing with it new fashions, new television seasons, and new freshmen wearing the latest fashions they saw on television. Having been a freshman recently enough to remember all of the embarrassing missteps I made (except for the ones I can’t remember), it seems appropriate at this juncture to share the golden wisdom I’ve accumulated (both karats of it) with all of you newcomers while reader interest is still running on morbid curiosity.
Central Square
When I was a freshman, I truly believed Central Square was the “bad” part of town. My memories of the area centered on a misplaced Gap (now out-of-business) and a very “colorful” Wendy’s. Back then, I never would’ve imagined that I would eventually move off campus to live in this neighborhood. Out of all the Boston neighborhoods, it’s one of my favorites. For the time being, I can’t imagine living anywhere else.
A grand adventure
Traveling is the best geography lesson. No matter how glossy the photos and detailed the descriptions, textbooks give the impression of flatness and uniformity to a multidimensional and diverse land. Nowhere was this more apparent than in my family trip to the Grand Canyon this summer. I’ve lived in Florida my whole life, so it was a change of scenery to see pine forests give way to bayous, the landscape buckle into hills and valleys before giving way to immense plains of wheat.
BROUHAHA RHYTHM It’s hot, humid, and stormy; must be summer
Six semesters in, and I’m only now spending a summer at MIT. I’d heard tales that unlike the brutally cruel winters of New England, Boston summers were actually fairly reasonable as far as climate was concerned. I can’t remember where I heard it, but I’ve decided that whoever told me so was clearly suffering from heat-induced pathological lying. Oh, sure, it’s not so bad anymore, but summer is summer no matter how you slice it, and summer can be downright uncomfortable on physical, emotional, and meteorological levels.
Rebuilding the Machine Man
Trying to figure out where I stand on the line between “good taste in movies” and “cinema snob” has been a bizarre process. Looking through my movie collection, the balance between “mindless but enjoyable fluff” and “underappreciated gems that I spend most of my time trying to show other people” is surprisingly even. One of my recent purchases, a blockbuster action-comedy starring Dwayne Johnson (while he was still credited as “The Rock”), even manages to fall into both categories.
What MIT taught me
After spending all these years walking across 77 Mass Ave, it is only natural that I should ask myself what I have learned from the Institute. The more interesting question would be to ask what I “haven’t” or “couldn’t” learn. I’ll go with “haven’t,” because it puts more weight on personal responsibility — definitely learned about that at MIT!
Crisis on multiple majors
Well, that’s it for junior year. Grades are in, sighs of relief have been released and blood pressure is back down. Yet a single understanding hangs over my head like an incontinent pigeon: in a matter of months, I’ll be a college senior. High-pitched, hyperventilated screams of panic abound. It’s not just the looming graduate school or reality, or the fact that I still don’t know which one it’s going to be. It’s not my inability to decide what I want to do or why, either. Nor is it the knowledge that many of my best mentor figures are going off to do with confidence aplenty the very things I’m panicking about. It’s...well, actually, I’m not entirely sure what it is, but it most certainly isn’t any of the above. No, sir, most definitely not one of those.
Dear Institute, I will miss you
This is my third to last week at MIT...<i>ever</i>. I am excited to be graduating, but I definitely will be missing a lot of the people here and many things about this place. In particular some of the things I will miss include: Dancing in Kresge Auditorium, food at MIT, and sketchy activities in the Student Center.
BROUHAHA RHYTHM Mapping out the Friend Zone
I was watching a movie with some friends the other night when the topic of a woman’s “friend zone” came up. Presumably, the Friend Zone is a Bermuda Triangle-like region from which there is no exit, inside which a male is considered a non-romantic entity, like a brother or a pet rock. I’ve never believed in the Friend Zone, although I suppose it’s only fair to disclaim that my experiences may differ from others’. Maybe it does exist, and I’ve simply never been placed in it, but I haven’t been quite vain enough to assume something like that since I was 15 — it seems much more likely that it simply hasn’t come into my mind as important.
Cinema in the Third Dimension
I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the resurgence of feature films being presented in 3-D. On the one hand, it’s probably the most sensible response to the demand by moviegoers for novel and interesting cinema experiences, as the witty dialogue and compelling character-driven narrative of films like <i>Bounty Hunter</i> (unfortunately not the Boba Fett biopic I was hoping for) doesn’t seem to be cutting it, for some reason. On the other hand, I’ve always enjoyed being removed from the cinema experience — not in the sense of being kicked out by ushers, but of being an impartial observer who can relate to the characters on the screen (sometimes) without having to inhabit their world. <i>300</i> was cool, but I think I’d feel a self-conscious need to work out more (or at least shower) if I saw Gerard Butler’s sweaty pecs popping out of the screen at me.