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THE GAMECOCK ♦ Monday, November 26, 2001 TTTT MTY 1 i I %/ I I COWBOY MOUTH: “People may A I W 11/ coipe and go but the truly great moments survive.” ONE | eared | COW Glass-blowing store gathers momentum BY SARAH HAMMOND THE GAMECOCK Sophisticated music and track light ing drift with you around the Shelves of the One Eared Cow Glass gallery. With glass at every angle, the space becomes all curves and colors. But the place rough ens up when you walk through the door to the studio behind the gallery. Classic rock music mixes with the hum of ovens. This room is full of fire: blowtorches, black ened tools, the steam and shattering of discarded glass in a bucket of water. Tom Lockart and Mark Woodham do what’s called off-hand glassblowing at One Eared Cow. They make blown-glass art in the form of bowls, vases, orna ments, bottles and other creations. Off hand glassblowing is done by dipping a 4.5-foot blowpipe into a vat of molten glass, pulling it out and shaping it by re heating, then spinning and blowing the hot glass at the end of the pipe. If the glass cools too quickly, it will crack. At the end of the pipe, the glass radiates 2,30j0 degrees, but Lockart and Woodham, who’ve been blowing glass together for thirteen years now, can com fortably maneuver around the intense heat. They learned the craft in elective courses at USC, and, after graduating, decided to open their own studio. “We kind of based it on the fact that if it didn’t work out for us, we were young enough to try something else,” Woodham said. “After all, we were art majors; so who knows what we were going to do?” Woodham’s uncle offered them rent free space in a barn in Bishopville. They cleaned up the barn and began a busi ness. When searching for a name, they found the answer nailed to the door - it was a wooden carved cow with one ear broken off. The guys would start blow ing glass around 6 a.m. and then work all night. During the day, they would pack up the glass and visit galleries around the state to sell it. They lived off of grants in a house about a mile from the studio and ate a lot of pasta and bread. The house’s rent was only $50 apiece, but sometimes they had trouble scraping that much together. “The bam that we started in was really rinky dink,” Woodham says. “You could walk out of the studio, working in the middle of the night, and it was just stars everywhere, just incredible. Every once in a while, we’d have a local drunk come by. We actually had the sheriffs depart ment come by one time. They thought we were running some kind of still opera tion. They saw a fire and everything. They watched us for, like, two hours.” Word got out, and people started com ing to Bishopville to find the artists. So they made the move to Columbia, worked in a space on Pulaski Street for five years and moved to their current home on Huger Street in 1996. Last year, One Eared Cow opened an additional re tail space near Harbison. They keep busy, filling both ovens every day. The working studio is open to the public. Glassblowing is “an ongoing learn ing process,” Woodham says. “It’s noth ing you can learn in a set amount of time or in a class. Because there are so many techniques you can discover out there. The thing about glass is it’s kind of never-ending as far as what you can do with it.” Employees of One Eared Cow work with glaSS. PHOTO BY ANDREW ROGERS MOVIE REVIEW Story redeems Spy Game SPY GAME Starring Brad Pitt, Robert Redford BY TUG BAKER THE GAMECOCK Sometimes, it’s refreshing to sit down in a theater and watch a film that has no underlying themes, no tricky symbolism and no real redeeming value, but simply an incredible story. Case in point: Tony Scott’s Spy Game. Starring Robert Redford and Brad Pitt, Spy Game opens with a lengthy scene in which rogue CIA agent Tom Bishop (Pitt) is captured while trying to rescue a prisoner from a Chinese prison. Then we’re taken to Washington, D.C., where Nathan Muir (Redford), a CIA agent one day from retirement, hears about the arrest and is subsequently questioned by his superiors about his relationship with Bishop. Through flashbacks, the film shows how Brad Pttt and Robert Redford in Spy Game, photo special to the gamecock Muir met Bishop and how he recruited and trained him for the CIA. Muir discovers that Bishop has only 24 hours to live, and his employers have no intention of trying to save him because they think that would endanger the already shaky balance of the trade agreements being negotiated between the US and China. So Muir does what any man on his last day of work would do: He spies on his own bosses and launches his own attempt to rescue his old protege. The main draw of the movie is Redford himself. He looks and acts the part of the aging spy with credibility and style. ♦ SPY GAME, SEE PAGE 6 Llama to open at club BY ASHLEY VAUGHAN THE GAMECOCK Llama will return to Columbia on Tuesday night when it headlines at The Elbow Room. Having opened for bands such as The Zen Tricksters, Llama will have its own show for the first time in Columbia. “We’ve played at The Elbow Room twice before, but we opened for other bands. This time, we’ll try to get our own crowd out,” said Neil Mason, Llama’s drummer. Formerly known as Dalai Llamas, the band signed with MCA records in September 1999. Its first album, Close to the Silence, was released May 2001, and it plans to start recording its next album in January. Llama has been touring since February, but its mem bers don’t seem to mind. “Being on.the road is great. It puts you back in perspective, and you’re constantly meeting new people,” Mason said. He said the band’s members enjoy performing because it gives them a chance to impro Llama with Entrophy Tuesday, Nov. 27 The Elbow Room vise. “In a live setting, my fa vorite is when we combine two or more styles. We’re able to take it somewhere else and combine the best of both worlds.” Mason shies away from ad mitting his band is famous, saying: “We’ve got a few fanat ic fans. It’s/pretty funny,” but he gets excited when he talks about working with other fa mous musicians, such as leg endary banjo player Bela Fleck. “He’s such a great mu sician,” Mason said about play ing with Fleck. “It was really cool.... We basically just called him up and invited him to play.... He’s a friend now. It’s awesome.” The band’s shortened name is only one of the changes this fairly new band has gone ♦ LLAMA, SEE PAGE 6 :jlh i You pick up a lot of important survival tools in ROTC. Starting with a tuition check. First things first. Pay the bills, get through college, then get on with the rest of your life. Fortunately, joining Air Force ROTC can help you do all this and more. You could earn up to 100 percent of your tuition, fees and book costs — plus up to $400 of additional spending money every month. Not to mention gaining skills you'll use your entire career — like leadership, team-building and physical fitness. To find out how, visit afrotc.com or call 1-800-522-0033, ext. 2091. ■■. it U.S. AIR FORCE R*0*T*C . Harry Potter sparks product frenzy BY DAVID STAGG THE GAMECOCK If you’re anything like me (or the rest of the American public), you’ve seen the newest major motion picture release Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. And as Americans, we all know a blockbuster movie (with a target ' audience of children and a secondary audience of EVERYONE) can never get away withjust beinga movie. Major companies must find any way to get their piece of the free enterprise pie. Inevitably, J.K. Rowling and her brainchild Mr. Potter have set off a massive wave of merchandising. It’s the capitalist spirit at its best: With Christmas just around the comer, the biggest picture to come out this year (in a year of disappointments, it’s supposed to be a breath of fresh air) is making major companies’ CEO’s eyes turn green and their hair begin to curl into the shaDes of dollar siens. But who would have thought Pottermania would reach this far? Well, once again, if you’re anything like me, you’re contributing just as much to the free market as is that little boy who just has to have a fake lightning bolt tattoo for his forehead. That’s right, I’m talking about what I did, you did and probably anyone who saw the movie or read the book did, with gift-wrapped packages dancing in their minds: You asked for a pet owl for Christmas this year. Suffice it and sadly to say, you and I aren’t the only ones who’ve thought of this. According to some sources, this is the No. 1 gift asked for this Christmas. Tickle-Me Elmo, move Over. A talking Furby? No more—we have magical owls. (For those of you who haven’t yet “lived the magic,” witches and wizards are delivered their mail via their feathered friends.) The second Hedwig, that adorable, fluffy, snow-white bird, popped onto the screen (in the form of a birthday gift from Harry’s first non-human friend), we did what all females did when Austin proposed to Kari on Days of OurLives: We aww-ed. We realized the owl-perks that humans had been overlooking for way too long: They’re cute, they pan hrina nnr mail tn ik thpv only cost about 25 pounds ($35.32), you don’t have to meet any requirements to buy one and they can turn their heads in weird directions. Well, all the “experts” in the field say owls make terrible pets. Just our luck. What do they know? They obviously don’t know what they’re missing. According to them, no bird of prey makes a good pet; they hate to be handled, make fearful noises, can’t be kept in small cages, blah blah blah... In spite of this, soon enough, the suburbs will be in shock, infiltrated with screeches, then airspace invaded by new owl owners letting their new pets into their new “aviaries.” There just seem to be too many Dudley Dursleys in this world, asking for anything and getting it. And you better believe this (as if owls weren’t enough): Jelly Belly has finally christened its newest marketed product: Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans. I’ve always had a craving for those Grass, Black Pepper and Sardine beans mixed with an original Bubble Gum, Blueberry or Buttered Popcorn bean. And also, thanks to Jelly Belly, when you buy your Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, you get a Harry Potter Flavor Guide to help you decide whether to eat one of the new 38 flavors or leave them in the bag. Just don’t waste all your luck discerning between flavors; you’ll need some left to keep vour owl quiet late at night.