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THE GAMECOCK ♦ Friday, September 19, 2003 5 CONTACT IIS w THEYIT IjLLN LA\j lo KATHERINE HEPBURN: “What you Story ideas? Questions? Comments? "See before you, my friend, is the E-mail us at gamecockmixeditor@hotmail.com result of a lifetime of chocolate Discover the best f.spots in Columbia to satisfy your craving for sweets BY CRYSTAL SHELLEY THE GAMECOCK Do you ever get that in credible desire for something sweet, that longing to be at grandmother’s house where chocolate cake is always waiting, fresh out of the oven and topped with sweet, homemade icing? The desire sometimes hits you while in class, or it waits to attack you as you study. It even surfaces at flight, as you sit in your dorm room or apartment watching television. Concentration be comes impossible; not even a cheese burger from Wendy’s—your favorite — can satisfy this type of craving. Your sweet tooth cries out, yet making the jour ney to grandmother’s house for a slice of chocolate heaven is out of the question. Thankfully, Columbia has an assort ment of places that cater to that incessant craving for homemade-tasting sweets. Those looking for that grandmother made taste need to look no further than Nonnah’s, which features freshly-pre pared slices of cheesecake pies and even various types of tarts. Situated in the heart of the Vista on Gervais Street, the restaurant is conveniently located, and the desserts are reasonably priced. Nonnah’s gallery-like design creates a very classy atmosphere, and those who enjoy a little art with their pie will rel ish admiring the many paintings that hang on the wallsjCeorge Geckle, a pro fessor in USC’s English department, de scribed Nonnah’s as the “hidden charm of Columbia.” The desserts served are equally enchanting. One of the best selling selections', Chocolate Temptation, consists of chocolate layered cake with a vanilla cream filling. Other desserts include Turtle Cheesecake and Apple Praline Pie. Along with great desserts, Adriana’s in Five Points serves up coffee and chess — what could be better? The*cafe offers a variety of cakes, gelatos and sorbets. According to Adriana's employee Rachel Helwig, the gelatos — Italian-style ice cream — and sorbets are the most pop ular desserts among students. She also noted that the restaurant is “a great place to study.” Adriana’s has a coffee house-style atmosphere, and many older customers enjoy coffee and dessert in the evenings while playing chess on the ta bles. The cafe is open until midnight and all desserts are under $5. Another great place for studying and desserts is Barnes and Noble. Many stu dents enjoy this popular bookstore be cause it lets them escape the drama and noise of the college campus. Although the cafe within the bookstore is known for its coffee, it surprisingly also sells many de licious dessert items. Cheesecakes are shipped to the cafe straight from The Cheesecake Factory. The caramel brown ie is another customer favorite. The cafe is open until 11 p.m., which allows students to indulge late into the evening while also getting their homework completed.4 And no matter what time of day that dessert Graving hits, Sonic on Assembly Street is open 24 hours should you need a chocolate milk shake at four a.m. Wherever you decide to satisfy your sweet tooth, bon appetite! Comments on this story?E-mail gamecockmixeditor@hotmail.com Trans Am shifts gears from partying to politics BY CHARLES TOMLINSON THE GAMECOCK If you mix ’70s rock with new wave and Kraftwerk, the results ^ could seemingly be as disastrous ^ as plugging your electric guitar into your laptop and blowing your speakers. But Washington, D.C. based Trans Am, who will play at New Brookland Tavern Saturday night, has been combining these influences for almost 10 years. As the band’s extensive discog raphy proves, the mix must be working for them. “A lot of stuff sneaks in sub consciously,” Trans Am guitarist Philip Manley said during a phone interview. “We try not to think about it too much and just go with the feeling because it seems less contrived when we do that.” Manley said the band’s influ ences include such classic rock bands as AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Rush and Yes. Trans Am’s re liance on analog synthesizers and programmed rhythms, however, has caused it to be compared to German “robot pop” band Kraftwerk. But Manley said Kraftwerk was an influence most ly in Trans Am’s early stages. Trans Am’s most recent album, “TA,” is the band’s party album — “the least ‘Trans Am’ of any of the Trans Am records,” Manley said. The album wasn’t completely a group effort, unlike previous re leases; Manley said that, out of the three band members, he had the least to do with the album. Producer Jonathan Kreinik P| grabbed the creative reins on “TA” and made it ultra-slick by forgoing the analog keyboards and using newer, more sophisticated technology. Bassist Nathan Means sings on five of the 14 tracks on “TA,” and drummer Sebastian Thomson sings on three songs, while Manley sings on only two. “We decided we wanted to make a party record, and we did, and it’s been mixed reactions be cause a lot of people expected us to continue making more myste rious post-rock,” Manley said. No mystery shrouds “TA.” The band has been using vocals since 1999’s “Futureworld,” but the ma jority of vocals on that album were computerized through a device called a Vocoder. Now, the band generally sings its songs with no robotic vocal effects — it’s the members’ actual voices coming through. Manley said vocals allowed the band to give more obvious mean ings to its songs, whereas before it could only express ideas through interviews. “Not that we really had an agen da,” he said. Indeed, the “lighthearted, frivolous” record, as Manley de scribes it, is all about having fun. The album art depicts the band members wearing all white and Photoshopped onto beach scenes, with drummer Thomson wearing gold chains, a bottle of champagne on ice in the background and an enlarged photo of a white toy Trans Am — the car. The band’s next album, which will come out in February, won’t be so happy-go-lucky. Manley says it will be “very political” and more like previous albums “The Surveillance” and “Futureworld:” mostly instrumental, darker and heavier. In addition to the new album, Trans Am has just finished its sec ond collaboration with San Francisco’s The F—ing Champs, and that album could be released as early as next spring, Manley said. The bands’ first collaboration was called The Trans Champs; so, appropriately, this time around the record will be called The F—ing Am. The guys in Trans Am also run National Recording Studios in Washington, D.C., where they record themselves and other bands as well. But the band might be slowing down its schedule, Manley said. He said he will soon move to San Francisco and that Means will move to New Zealand while Thomson will stay in Washington, D.C., to look after the studio. After some time off, the band will recon vene and tour again, Manley said. Manley said Trans Am’s tour ing has brought the group to Columbia once before: to the Hunter-Gatherer in 1996, when the band was just getting started. Trans Am shows are “high en ergy; it’s usually loud,” Manley said. “It’s not like an electronic show, so don’t expect us to be star ing at laptops.” “Expect to have a good time and drink some beer, that kind of thing, dance, get swept away in the music,” he said. Doors at the New Brookland Tavern open at 9 p.m. Saturday, and tickets are $8 in advance. Call (803) 791-4413 or visit the venue at 122 State St. for more information. Comments on this story?E-mail gamecockmixeditor@hotmail.com “Expect to have a good time... dance, get swept away in the music.” PHILIP MANLEY TRANS AM GUITARIST 1 PHOTO SPECIAL TO THE GAMECOCK Trans Am is, from left, drummer Sebastian Thomson, bassist Nathan Means and guitarist Philip Manley. The band refers to Its latest album, “TA,” as Its “party album.” Get swept away in the history of hurricanes Ancient Mayans writings record earliest Atlantic coast hurricanes BY MEG MOORE THE GAMECOCK June 1 marks the beginning of one of the year’s most tumultuous seasons, a season that turns mete orologists’ eyes toward the trop ics and causes anxiety among ^ coastal locales. Television weath ermen incorporate tropical up dates into their evening forecasts, and local hardware stores adver tise bottled water and storm preparation supplies. For those living along the Atlantic and Gulf Coast seaboards, June marks the beginning of hurricane season. Mother Nature churns out her most monstrous storms during the summer months — storms that have the potential to deluge and devastate. The hurricane season official ly runs from June 1 through Nov. 30. According to the National in early- to mid-September. Although hurricanes can certain ly occur outside of the prescribed date range, 97 percent of such storms occur during this period. With Isabel currently striking the east coast, hurricanes have again become the focus of news broadcasts and dinner table con versation. Today, meteorologists are aided by several devices de signed to track, record and moni tor a storm’s every move. Yet coastal inhabitants of ear lier periods were not so techno logically advantaged. Previous civilizations have documented and described these destructive storms, and modern science has uncovered new evidence of their earth-shifting effects. The earliest record of Atlantic hurricane activity was uncovered in ancient Mayan hieroglyphics. The Mayans purposefully con structed their cities inland in or der to avoid the direct effects of a hurricane’s fury. In fact, the term “hurricane” itself references the Mayan creator god, Hurakan, who created dry land by blowing acros& and shifting the waters. The Carib, who inhabited the -Carihhean.region further infin Hurican was their god of evil. A continuous record of cyclonic activity, now maintained by the National Oceanic and At mospheric Association, can be traced back to the late 1400s. Hurricanes have changed the course of European colonization by destroying armadas at sea. More intriguingly, the settlement of the Bahamas actually resulted from a 1609 storm that wrecked havoc on a fleet of English ships en route to the Americas. Without today’s advanced warning systems and protective measures, the storms of centuries passed often resulted in an im mense loss of life. The Great Hurricane of 1780 ravaged the Lesser Antilles, inundating the is lands of Martinique, St. Eustasius and Barbados. The storm swept through the region between Oct. 10 and 16, causing more than 22,000 deaths. The practice of naming hurri canes has religious roots. Inhabitants of the West Indies originally began naming these monstrous storms after saints — each day was attributed to a saint, and a hurricane would take the name of whichever saints’ dav practice was officially recorded during the 1800s with two storms including hurricane San Felipe, the first, and San Felipe, the sec ond. Eerily, both storms made landfall on Sept. 13 of 1876 and 1928 respectively. A similar practice was adopted in Australia during the 19th cen tury when Australian meteorolo gist, Clement Wragge, began as signing storms female names. Such documentation continued into the 20th century and was used by weather forecasters during World War II to identify and track storms in the Pacific Ocean. American weather officials be gan using women’s names soon af ter; the National Weather Service started to assign hurricanes fe male monikers in 1953, after aban doning a previous plan based on phonetic spellings. Storms were named solely after women until 1978, when men’s names were added to Pacific storm lists. The next year, male names were also incorporated into Atlantic as signments. Today, six lists of hurricane names are in rotation. They are kept and revised as needed by the World Meteorological Organiza United Nations. Certain hurricanes destined to go down in history as particularly infamous storms often have their name retired. Currently, 37 names have been placed into retirement. This practice, however, only be gan in 1950—the list excludes pre vious storms — and only includes those names that countries have requested to be retired. During the second half of the has predicted that 12 to IS tropical storms will form — seven to nine of which will become hurricanes. Three or four of those storms are predicted to develop into major hurricanes. Last year, the Atlantic only spawned 12 named storms in all, four of which evolved into hurricanes. Comments on this story?E-mail Hurricane Facts: Most Intense Gilbert (1988), 888 millibars (mb) Strongest Winds Camille (1969) and Allen (1980), around 190 mph Most Costly Unnamed (1926), $83,814,000 Most Rainfall (24-hour period) Dense(1966),71.8’ Longest Lasting Ginger(1971), 27.25 days 2003 Danny Kate Sam Hurricane Erika UnV Teresa ! Names Fabian Mindy Victor Grace Nicholas Wanda j Ana Henri Odette Bill Isabel Peter Information based on statistics I Oai iriotto gathered by the Nabonal Oceanic I uauaene. Juan Rose and Atmospheric Association. . •