The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, August 31, 2001, Page 6, Image 6
THE GAMECOCK ♦ Friday, August 31, 2001
CONTACT US \~I H , \/l I X THEY SAID IT
' i M/ ■ B / ^ JAMES JOYCE: “So be it. Welcome, O
itory ideas? Questions? Comments? B I I A I W I I / life! I go to encounter for the millionth
Vriteusatgamecockmixeditor@hotmail.com B B —B A T —B_ —B A m time the reality of experience...”
A lEftP F
BY KEITA ALSTON AND
KAMILLE BOSTICK
THE GAMECOCK
Saturdays in the fall mean
cooler weather; however, it can
only get heated up at one place
in Columbia — Williams-Brice
Stadium.
Students and fans, young
and old, crowd the stadium
during home games to cheer
the football team as they play
host to the opposing team.
Whether going to the game
is an outlet for showing school
spirit, a means of entertain
ment, or a chance to feel the
collective energy of so many,
the result is a game day full of
excitement.
Starting at kickoff, through
a well-rehearsed half-time
show, until the final seconds,
a lot of work goes into making
a spectacle worthy of so many
spectators. The countless
hours of conditioning that the
coaches, players aftd sponsors
undergo, and even the intricate
practices of the band all make
for a good show. By the time
the honking horns and gas
grills have died down, tens of
thousands have taken part of
this collegiate ritual.
Most times the expectation
preceding the game can be as
thrilling as the four quarters
of athletic action, as prepara
tion for the few golden hours
each Saturday shows.
It all centers around the
beloved Gamecock football
team. They practice four to
five days a week during the
season, not to mention the time
spent Saturdays on the field.
In addition to scheduled prac-.
tices, players also put in many
early hours in the weight
room.
Keeping fans pumped be
tween plays and announcing
touchdowns is no easy task ei
ther. The USC Marching Band
practices three days a week —
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and
Thursdays on Field F between
California Dreaming and the
Blatt P.E. Center,
playing their in
struments while
learning marches
that form pictures.
Jim Bell, a
sophomore busi
ness major in the
marching band, ex
plains how he pre
pares for a game
beyond the three
day
practice.
“I get up
and go to our nor
mal practice and make
sure I know exactly what I’m
going to be doing on the field.
Then if we have a break, I go
back to my dorm and check up
on how good the other team is
really quick to be sure we’ll
win.... Then on my way out to
the game, I tap my USC flag for
good luck.”
Fans arrive early to get good
parking or good seats, set up
their tailgates, and just im
merse themselves in the elec
tric atmosphere of game day.
Many students begin their
preparations for the home foot
ball games by tailgating with
their friends in order to show
their school spirit.
Finance senior Matt
Watterson says his friends and
he party the night before the
game and tailgate the day of.
“We usually throw a party at a
friend’s house the night before,
have a good time, and celebrate
the beginning of the football
season. Then we tailgate all the
way to the stadium with the
other students to celebrate
Gamecock victory.”
Lindsay Mauldin, junior
psychology major and member
of Alpha Delta Pi Sorority, says
she and her friends “have so
much fun preparing for the big
game day. We have such a
great team.”
Mauldin described how she
and her friends get together to
get ready for the tailgates that
many sororities and fraterni
ties participate in.
“We normally arrive a
while before the game to hang
out with friends and walk to
the different fraternity and
tailgate lots,” said Mauldin.
“The guys dress up in shirts
and ties, while the girls wear
skirts or dress pants.”
For others, this will be the
first time they will experience
a Carolina football game.
Lyndsay Knowles, an adver
tising freshman, is uncertain
from the first game.
“I have heard that the
whole experience is awesome
though, and I am really excit
ed about going. As for tailgat
ing, I have never done that be
fore either, but I am really
looking forward to it.”
For Bryan Leath, a first year
student majoring in computer
engineering, who has been
coming to USC home games for
as long as he can remember,
attending a USC football game
is a welcome routine. He dress
es comfortably and goes sim
ply to “have fun.”
“I go to as many games as I
♦ SEE TAILGATING, PAGE 7
USC cheerleaders and band members practice for this Saturday’s half-time show, top. Kimberly Gibbs, a Bojangle’s employee, puts
biscuits in the oven in preparation for tailgaters at the USC-Boise State football game, above right. Bojangle’s is one of the most popular
providers of chicken and biscuits for tailgating parties, photos by aaron hark and michelle williams
D’OHAND THE DEITY
THE SIMPSONS SKEWERS RELIGIOUS FOIBLES, BUT
SERIES STILL APPRECIATED BY MANY BELIEVERS
BY RICHARD N. OSTLING
ASSOCIATED PRESS
How God appeared in a
dream: “Perfect teeth. Nice
smell. A class act all the way.”
The family religion: “You
know, the one with all the well
meaning rules that don’t work
in real life. Uh, Christianity.”
Church signboard slogan:
“God Welcomes His Victims.”
This is just a very small
sample of one-liners about
religion from The Simpsons.
For 12 seasons and
counting, the animated series
has mined religious subjects
for laughs like no other show
on television.
The staple of the Fox
network has sometimes been
called sacrilegious — rather
than satirical — for its jabs at
clergy and the faithful alike.
But religious commentators,
es-pecially this year, .have
looked at the animated series
and found plenty to like.
In a rare coincidence, two
leading Protestant magazines,
the liberal Christian Century
and conservative Christianity
Today, simultaneously ran
friendly cover stories on the
show. Christian Century said
it’s appreciated in religious
circles, while Christianity
Today hailed the good-guy
characterization of the
Simpsons’ evangelical
neighbor, Ned Flanders.
An anthology, The
Simpsons and Philosophy: The
D’oh! of Homer (Open Court),
reported religion was an
element in 70 percent of
randomly selected episodes
and the major theme in 10
percent.
The latest analysis, which
will be published Saturday,
claims that — strange as it
might seem — the cartoon
“more accurately reflects the
faith lives of Americans than
any other show in the
medium.”
In The Gospel According to
The Simpsons (Westminster
John Knox), Mark I. Pinsky
notes that the characters
regularly pray, attend worship
and discuss humanity’s
inescapable religious
questions. God’s existence is
unquestioned and He
sometimes intervenes directly
in the preposterous plots.
Pinsky, religion writer for
the Orlando Sentinel, also
notes that, despite ridiculing
every-thing in sight, the show
is basically pro-family and
usually lets a rough morality
triumph.
The Simpsons may be
irreverent toward churches
and clergy, he says, but other
institutions suffer more,
particularly big business.
(Montgomery Bums, owner of
the nuclear power plant, is so
money-hungry he once
hatched a scheme to block out
the sun, forcing everyone to
buy more electricity).
Pinsky, an active Reform
Jew, is not a big TV fan. But he
was goaded into sampling The
Simpsons by his children and
got hooked.
He can only hope now that the
book replicates his publisher’s
1965 title The Gospel According
to Peanuts by divinity student
Robert Short, which sold 10
million copies.
In that more innocent era
“a lot of people were offended
by putting something as holy
as the Gospel together with a
comic strip,” says Short, now a
Presbyterian minister in
m Monticello, Ark. The New York
Times considered it “a perilous
experiment.”
Now preachers make
frequent use of pop culture.
But less often does pop culture,
especially TV, treat religion.
WWW.DAILYGAMECOCK.COM
15 minutes of fame
USC freshman
earns his time in
Othello remake
BY ASHLEY VAUGHN
THE GAMECOCK
USC students might do a dou
ble take when they watch the new
movie “0,” which opens today in
theatres. K.eivin
“Kel” O’Bryant, a
USC freshman,
plays the ball boy in
one explosive scene.
O’Bryant acted
in the film in 1999,
when he was in 10th
grade, but the film
was delayed be
cause the Columbine
shootings raised
concerns about the
movie s violent content.
The movie mentions both
South Carolina and USC and was
shot in Charleston, S.C. A South
Carolina native, O’Bryant first
learned of the part through his
friend’s mother, a talent agent.
“She put my name in, and I
read for the part. I did a second
reading, and they offered me the
job ... that same day,” O’Bryant
said. In O’Bryant’s scene, he asks
the main character, Odin (Mekhi
Phifer), for a basketball and sets
him off into a rage, took only one
full day to film. It’s one of the few
comedic parts of this tragedy,
based on Shakespeare’s Othello.
During his scene, O’Bryant
worked with Phifer, MartirySheen
(The West Wing), Andrew Keegan
(Party of Five) and Josh Hartnett
(Pearl Harbor). “They were all
nice except Andrew Keegan,”
O’Bryant said.
Sheen especially impressed
O’Bryant. “I looked nervous, and
he came over and told me to calm
down. I called Martin ‘sir’ at first,
and he said to call him Martin. He
was real laid back and cool,”
O’Bryant said. The young actor
soon got over his nervousness, de
livering sever
al witty lines
during a seem
ingly natural
dialogue with
Phifer. O’Bryant
said Phifer “is
a great ac
tor...he ad
libbed, and I
played off of
him.”
O’Bryant first
appeared on Columbia s own wis
TV. When he was in seventh
gradp, he participated in a segment
called Double Dog Safety with Rick
Henry. O’Bryant has appeared
with Jodi Foster in The Dangerous
Lives of Alter Boys and acted in
Arrest and Trial. “I played a killer.
It was fun,” he said.
O’Bryant says he’s interested
in an acting career, but is playing
it smart. “I don’t want to pursue
it full time until I get something
else to fall back on, a degree of
some sort,” he said.
For now he says he doesn’t have
plans to act in USC productions.
“Not this semester, but it is a pos
sibility. I’m trying to get settled.
I want to figure out what college
life is like first.”
O’Bryant with Martin Sheen.
PHOTO COURTESY OF KELVIN O’BRYANT
Taking on
big issues
at college
DENISE LEVEREAUX
GAMECOCKMIXEDITOR@HOTMAIL.COM
Are we all just pathetic,
self-centered slackers?
So we’ve all dealt with the
most pressing issue on our minds
this week, right? We’ve been to
all our classes, we’ve decided
which ones are going to be a
breeze, which ones are going to
bore us to tears and which ones
are just plain going to kick our
butts.
Once the agonizing schedule
analysis has been completed,
we’ll have made it past the noto
rious drop/add date without too
much trouble.
Whatever happened to the
campaign to extend the drop/add
date, anyway? I guess it got lost
underneath the budget cut/tu
ition mess, which has since been
abandoned in favor of everyone’s
two favorite gripes, parking and
dining services.
Why couldn’t we follow im
portant causes like these through
to the end?
Are we all just pathetic, sen
centered slackers? We talk on our
cell phones, lug around laptops
and palm pilots and can’t go five
minutes without checking our e
mail. The highlight of the day is
watching Jackass on MTV.
Ruling the airwaves are corpo
rate boy bands and white guys
who consider rapping saying
"fuck" over a heavy bass line. We
rehash the same complaints
about parking and bad food every
couple of weeks to feel that
maybe, just maybe, we have
some issues that merit attention.
I hate to say it, but there are
more important things going on
around here than whether you
get the prime spot in Bull Street
Garage or have to park in the pit
by the Coliseum. There are even
more important things than
whether you should get your
turkey and provolone on honey
wheat or a sub roll.
This semester it’s going to be
my responsibility to blab at you
once a week about all things con
cerning campus life. If it has to
do with life at USC, or just the
everyday things that make up the
world of the college student —
I’m all about it.
I want to try to discuss some
of the bigger issues surrounding
student life and, though some
might think otherwise, the
biggest problems we face are not
the lack of parking and the quali
ty of the food in the GMP. Our
biggest problems are not even
whether Honors College kids get
special privileges in things like
housing, and whether that’s fair.
And picking on the Preston kids,
the sororities and the fraternities
is just a waste of ink, breath, and
brain cells. Trust me, no matter
how much we whine they’re just
not going to go away.
Of course, there are certain
things that I’m going to whine
about, too. I, like most people un
der 25, haven’t grown out of my
delusions of entitlement yei. But
I’m going to try to whine about
new issues. Of course, it has been
proposed that there’s nothing
new under the sun, but I don’t
agree with that. (I’m sure the
psych majors would say I am de
luded, too). If I want to think that,
like Raskolnikov, I have a new
word, then I am entitled to that.
The First Amendment rocks,
baby!
There are things about col
lege life that make it unique oth
er than the cliches we rehash
over and over again. I think it’s
time we stopped focusing on the
cliches and started looking at the
other experiences. Otherwise, all
we’re going to remember when
we get out of college are things
like "You remember that time we
hit Five Points and you puked
five times on the way back to the
dorm?"
i *
♦ SEE LEVEREAUX, PAGE 7