Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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CONTACT US - THEY SAID IT Story ideas? Questions? Comments? " 0RS0N WELLES: “My doctor told me to E-mail us at gamecockmixeditor@kotmail.com stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.” ^ PHOTO BY MORGAN FORD/THE GAMECOCK Healthy eating in the Grand Marketplace can easily be done by taking advantage of the fresh fruits and yogurt available. Improved GMP $ helps students make healthy eating choices BY TRINA RAHMAN THE GAMECOCK If the great USC tradition of Chicken Finger Wednesdays has gone straight to your hips, or if you find yourself munching your way through bags of cookies and chips while studying, you might well be on your way to the fresh man — or sophomore, junior or senior—15. College life gives stu dents not only independence in • their dining choices, but all of the bad food habits that result from busy class schedules, research projects and after-class meetings as well. After a full day of classes and activities, one may be too ex hausted to consciously eat healthy, and that burger might sound like it will hit the spot. But the easy way out adds up faster than you think. Most undergrads don’t cook in their dorm rooms, and one can only stomach Ramen noodles or Chunky soup so many times. Thankfully, as the variety of lunch and dinner choices offered on campus shows, USC has at tempted to cater to the nutrition starved student. With the recent remodeling of the Grand Marketplace, many new, healthier choices have been added to the menu. The addition of more nutrition-conscious items has coincided with the completion of the Strom Thurmond Wellness and Fitness Center, which has been successful in promoting an active student body and a healthy self-image. The center provides all students with easy access to top notch exercise equipment. The Blatt P.E. Center is also still avail able for use. In a society that is overweight in general, college can easily be come a time when bad habits are established that are carried on throughout one’s adult life. line, such as mushroom pot pie and that other items are also aii conege served on ST&2 “Listen to your body, and men, have to don’t eat when you’re “The refriger be aware of not hungry.” ated case next to their nutri- the salad bar tional needs. MORELLI contains only Listen to vegetarian your body, and don’t eat when you’re not hungry. Include lean protein in your diet, such as lean beef, turkey or chicken breast without the skin; fish; and beans,” said Jim Morelli, author of “Ways to Fight the Freshman 15,” in an ar ticle on WebMD.com. “Watch out for ‘emotional eat ing’; don’t eat because you’re stressed and lonely. Remember that eating with friends can some times lead to eating when you’re not hungry or eating dessert that you might have avoided.” Mike Schriffer, general man ager of Sodexho, the food service used by USC, says there is often a vegetarian item in the hot food items. We are al ways trying to meet the needs of the students, and feedback is welcome,” Schriffer said. The Grand Marketplace has in deed made many changes in try ing to accommodate the healthi er lifestyle that many students are living. Offering dinners a “cultured” option, the GMP now offers sushi, in a brave venture to so phisticate the palate of college students. A “snack pack” of carrot or cu cumber and rice wrapped in sea weed costs $3.15; the cream cheese or spicy tuna rolls (sold separately) each go for $4.80. True sushi (a piece of fish on a small bed of rice, usually held to gether by seaweed) goes for $7.25 — be adventurous; try the eel roll. The great salad bar with its everything-you-could-want-in-a salad assortment of toppings was scrapped during remodeling. The GMP now has a salad “mini bar” that offers three kinds of lettuce and a lesser — but still impres sive — selection of mix-ins. A sal ad without meat sells for $3.29; for $4.29, the featured meat of the day can be added. Although the extra space to move around in is a welcome ad dition, some students have mixed feelings concerning its removal. “I am upset they took away the salad bar, and I don’t like other people making my salad,” said Jared Rapp, a third-year criminal justice student. As a true vegetarian, Pekky Marquez, a fifth-year Spanish and English student, seemingly has ♦ EATING, SEE PAGE 6 MOVIE REVIEW ‘Blue Car’paints portrait of teen artist 0 “BLUE CAR” Nickelodeon Theatre ★★★out of ☆☆☆☆☆ BY MEG MOORE THE GAMECOCK Meg Denning’s chipped finger nails give her away. As the teenage protagonist of the film “Blue Car,” she exists in a world of rough edges where the definitions of fam ily, love and understanding are tainted and obscured. And in typi cal, alienated youth fashion, she turns to writing as a catharsis, curling those black-polished fin gertips around her ballpoint pen. Her angst-ridden ramblings trans late into award-winning rhymes — although audiences may won der why her cliched verses war • rant such acclaim. Yet her quest _ f°r affirmation ultimately leaves her life in further shambles. Dark and at times difficult to watch, “Blue Car” paints the por trait of an aspiring artist as a young woman. She strives to es cape a family that she does not understand, hungry for the phys ical affection she does not re ceive at home. With a mother who works and attends night school, a father who she rarely sees and a sister who has emo tional troubles that I^eg cannot — and refuses to take the time to — understand, she feels segre gated from the seemingly normal world of her classmates. The viewer learns that while she has a knack for writing stories, her attempts at poetry have been comparatively lackluster. Regardless, her Advanced Placement English teacher se lects her to be his pet poet pro ject. With a national poetry com petition quickly approaching, he sees her as having the potential to produce award-winning work, instructing her that she simply needs to be willing to look fur ther within, to “go deeper.” Enticed by this apparent chance at securing something more for herself, Meg seeks not only artistic advice but also com panionship from her teacher. As a result of this creative partner ship, however, Meg’s life takes a self-propelled, disastrous turn to wards the destructive. The film begins as a portrait of people struggling to hold them selves together, however, it soon degenerates into an abstract col lage of twisted motives, scattered hopes and the wreckage of too many chances gone awry. In a 90 minute flurry of bad decisions and unraveling lives, “Blue Car” bar rages viewers with the suicide of Meg’s sister, the spiraling depres sion of her mother and Meg’s own sordid transformation from a stub bom adolescent into an aching* ex perienced teen. Her involvement in criminal and sexual activities strips her of her innocence, yet she remains decidedly juvenile in her hatred of the world. Granted, Meg’s life is anything but ideal. But after her relentless streak of bad, bull-headed decisions, she comes across as far too selfish and self-isolating to warrant genuine sympathy. In many ways “Blue Car” tries to make Meg a victim — she has been forced to deal with an over whelming amount of loss and alienation in her life. However, Meg’s unwillingness to devote herself to anything but her own interests overshadows such strife. She is not solely responsi ble for the mess her world is left in, but she is certainly not im mune from blame. Attempting to turn the dark chronicle of a troubled girl into a formula piece with a happy end ing, “Blue Car” eventually sends its sordid spiral of events screech ing to a halt. Viewers watch as Meg has a moment of repentance and reconciliation with her moth er that seemingly arises out of thin air. And then the audience is asked to believe that all of Meg’s troubles could have been avoided if she had merely had her father in her life, (flearly, she has craved a father figure in her life, but she ^---1 PHOTO SPECIAL TO THE'GAMECOCK Agnes Bruckner and David Strathairn star in “Blue Car,” a film that chronicles the struggles of aspiring poet Meg Denning. has also craved constant attention and willfully neglected the needs of her sister and mother. Meg’s troubles in “Blue Car” are ulti mately not as simple and not as externally caused as the film at tempts to make viewers believe. The film’s awkward ending ex udes not a sense of optimism but of disappointment in its struggle to turn this powerful — if painful — drama into something audi ences can smile about. A neat end ing can not erase the anguish en dured by the players in “Blue Car”—instead it slights them, at tributing their pain to a single event and atoning for their an guish in one closing scene. The audience knows that personal suf fering cannot be explained or as suaged so cleanly—slivers of self are broken off in the process. The surface is changed, the neatness chipped away just like the dark polish on Meg Denning’s finger nails. Comments on this story?E-mail gamecockmixeditor@hotmail.com THEATER REVIEW *Tartuffe’ features Theatre talent “TARTUFFE” ..Theatre South Carolina ★★★★★ out of BY GRAHAM CULBERTSON THE GAMECOCK Last season, Theatre South Carolina concluded on a strong note with a powerful production of the American masterpiece “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller. Now, director Jim O’Connor has put together a production which opens this year’s season as excellently as “The Crucible” ended the last one. The play is “Tartuffe,” a 17th-century French comedy by Moliere. But don’t • look for stark realism this time; in “Tartuffe,” the talented actors ham, wink, and mug their way through an over-the-top experi ence so perfectly ridiculous that it’s impossible not to be swept up in the revelry. O’Connor opens the play with a curtain call, letting the audience see the entire cast onstage together in an assemblage of French peri od clothing done mostly in blind ingly bright colors. All of the ac tion takes place in a single area, an open ballroom-type room with three entrances in its only wall. The floor is slanted towards the au dience as if the entire play is about to slide offstage and into the seats at any time. No curtain hides the backstage area, so we see the ac tors walking around as they come on and offstage. Once the show be gins, the players who aren’t in an upcoming scene watch the action with us from the sides of the stage. The whole setup makes it clear that no one is striving for a realis tic theatre experience, and that is whprp all thp fun lips The play itself, translated into rhyming couplets by Richard Wilbur, is about a French aristo cratic family dealing with a hypo critical clergyman, Tartuffe. Tartuffe has convinced the patri arch, Duke Orgon (Richard Jennings), that he is a noble and pious man, but the rest of the fam ily knows better. Orgon’s mother, Madame Pemelle, is the only other family member duped by Tartuffe, and she spends the entire opening scene trying to convince the fami ly, in Orgon’s absence, of Tartuffe’s sincerity. Patrick Mullins’ screech ing, slapstick presentation of Pemelle, as she leaps in and out of a wheelchair pushed by the hap less Flipote (Patrick Kelly), is the play’s early highlight. As Mullins rants, minces, and shrieks around the stage, the rest of the characters seem to be struggling just to keep up. The plot is a confusing set of intrigues involving multiple ♦ TARTUFFE, SEE PAGE 6 > .p ~ .—..i.—■—s TOP 10 These were the 10 hottest releases in college audio from Sept. 14-21. * 1. “SUPERSONIC GUITARS IN 30” Los Straitjackets 2. “SHOW ME YOUR TEARS” Frank Black and the Catholics 3. “KATONAH" Apollo Sunshine 4. “RINGODOM OR PROCTOR” Head of Femur 5. “BORNAtlON” __Danko Jones 6. “ATOMIC RITUAL" _ __ _Nebula 7. “WHENEVER YOU’RE READY” __Swell 8. “HATECREW DEATHROLL" _ _Children of Bodom 9. “WONDERLAND” Radiation 4 10. “THE EARLY WHITNEY EP” , Why?