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6 THE GAMECOCK ♦ Wednesday, July 28, 2004 CONTACT US THEY SAID IT UUiMAUl UO AL FRANKEN: “It’s easier to put on slippers than E-mail us at gamecockfeatures@gwm.sc.edu to carpet the whole world." GOIN’TO CALIFORNIA JBk FOURTH IN A FOUR-PART SERIES MUlUBL. A • I finally slept in on the fourth day of my journey, content with the 2,500 miles I had just traveled in three days. I braced myself, got back on the road with California’s worst and finally found my Mecca: the Fender Guitar Museum. My Mecca turned out to be a poorly run hole in the wall with some interesting guitars but no real charm. I paced around the tiny place a million times to get my fill, “acci dentally” snap ping a picture even tnougn flash photogra phy wasn’t al lowed. The place gave music les sons to lots of children, which was commendable, but cramming the whole operation into one build ing was a crappy idea. The museum had guitar, bass and electronic drum stations set up for anyone to play. I took my sweet time hogging each instru ment, trying to get'my money’s worth for going across the coun try for such a demeaning tribute to Leo Fender. If the museum had n’t featured Kurt Cobain’s hand written instructions for his “ Jag stang” signature guitar, I would’ve hurt someone, even the bright-eyed kid trying to play “Jingle Bells.” What did I do then? I got in my car, got back on Interstate 40 and headed home. I was in California less than 24 hours. While much of the return trip has faded in my mind, I remem ber taking in the beauty I had orig inally skipped, all while trying to beat back my crushing loneliness. The hotel in Kingman, Ariz., was the best on the whole trip. The price was low, the shower had great water pressure and the sun set was a marvel. Some doors even ♦ GOIN’, SEE PAGE 7 STEVEN VAN HAREN Second-year mechanical engineering student PHOTO BY STEVEN VAN HAREN/THE GAMECOCK The Grand Canyon sits about 60 miles from Interstate 40. iT ' *"* “ '“** M ™ftel PHOTO COURTESY OF FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES Napoleon Dynamite’ is an endearing story about high school losers trying to fit in. NAPOLEON DYNAMITE 3 out of 5 stars | BY MEGAN TREACY 1 THE GAMECOCK “Napoleon Dynamite” be gins with its star character be ing asked what he’s going to do that day, to which he responds with exasperation, “Whatever I want to do. Gosh!” This opening dialogue sets the tone for the rest of the film as viewers w'atch actor Jon Heder’s eccentric Napoleon do just that: whatever he wants. Napoleon is the stereotypi cal small-town dork that gets picked on by the jocks and dissed by the pretty girls, but the unique thing about Napoleon is his confidence in himself and his “skills.” He considers himself the best at sketching warriors and ani mals (his favorite being a “liger”: a cross between a lion and tiger), he unabashedly plays tetherball by himself and tells elaborate stories of hunt ing wolverines in Alaska. None of this wins him any friends until Pedro (Efren Ramirez), a shy transfer stu dent from Mexico, arrives at his Idaho high school. Napoleon and Pedro join forces to accomplish their tasks, such as finding dates to the dance and starting a campaign for Pedro when he runs for stu dent body president. Napoleon’s family is just as strange as he is, if not stranger. His older brother Kip, who is 32, still lives with Napoleon and their adventurous grand mother and spends all his time in Internet chat rooms talking to women. Their sleazy Unde Rico (Jon Gries), who comes to live with them when their grandmother is injured in a four-wheeler accident, is ob sessed with finding a way to time-travel back to his football glory days of 1982 and sells Tupperware door-to-door to make money. A family llama tops off the household. Writer Jared Hess uses all the characters and images to create the story of a small town that, without the use of Internet, would appear to be set in the 1980s. The clothing consists of acid-washed denim and polyester, and Napoleon’s romantic interest, Deb (Tina Majorino), wears a side pony tail and crimps her hair. It seems Hess is trying to create a sense of nostalgia for the view ers’ own high school days while depicting the slow pas sage of time in rural America. The climax of the movie is the election-day speeches for student body president, when Pedro, who has to go against popular Summer (Haylie Duff), realizes he has to perform a sKit alter tus speech. Napoleon spontaneously steps up to help his friend by performing the best dance number in teen comedy history. Napoleon’s awkwardness is one everyone felt at some point in high school when everything depended on try ing to come across as normal as possible, but it’s Napoleon’s honesty in being abnormal that is so charming in this movie. Comments on this story? E-mail gamecockfeatures@gwm.sc.edu