Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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THF MTY Page 10 —I— —I I u A ▼ JL I A » Monday, April 10, 2006 I What’s with all that racquet? Fast-paced game requires skill, energy lots of aggression Daniel Terrill THE GAMECOCK To some, racquetball looks simple, maybe even easy. Yet these same people have never challenged themselves to fully obtain such a dynamic skill. Racquetball players are some of the most quick and agile athletes. Even though they may not be able to prove themselves on the track or in the weight room, they make up for it with their skill and short bursts of energy. Erik Vilas, a third-year accounting student, and Patrick Kelley, a third-year political science student, avidly practice the sport at the Blatt P.E. Center and are two of the most serious racquetball players at USC. They call themselves Team Destruction because of the wear and tear they put on their bodies while playing. Racquetball branched out of its genre of sports between squash and handball in the mid-20th century. It is different from most other racquet sports because of the court and lack of boundaries, creating a fast-paced game. Daniel Terrill/ THE GAMECOCK Team Destruction, a racquetball team made up of USC students ErikVilas and Patrick Kelley, practices at the Blatt Physical Education Center. “Serving sets the tempo of the game,” Vilas said. “With a serve you can control the game because you can continue scoring from the serve.” Serving the ball will determine whether or not the round will be prolonged or ended. The server must stand between the serving box, which is designated by two solid parallel lines on the floor of the court, then hit the ball against the front-wall &nd while the ball returns to the opposite side it must land past the serving-box but not touch the back-wall. Players aim to bounce the ball off the front-wall and after it does, the ball may only touch the ground once. The goal of hitting the ball is to try and have it bounce twice during the opponents turn. If the ball touches the ground twice, depending on whose turn it is, the server either loses their turn or gains a point. Meanwhile, with the return the players are allowed to hit the ball anywhere including the back-wall, side-wall, or ceiling. And after the ball RREQUETBRLL • II ^ Blake Arambula / THE GAMECOCK Euro-rockers, The Sounds, performed at The Masquerade in Atlanta on Saturday to support their lastest album. Soothing Swedish ‘Sounds’ Scandinavian rock group’s long-awaited second album is an open letter to fans Blahe flrambula THE GAMECOCK Driving down Atlanta’s Moreland Avenue in search of The Masquerade, a ramshackle venue on North Avenue that would play host to The Sounds, Morningwood and Action Action, one thing is certain: Atlanta has to be the No. 1 consumer of Manic Panic hair dye in America. Evidenced by the crowd waiting outside for the show to begin, toes were slowly tapping to the reverberations of sound check, asymmetrical haircuts were on boys and girls alike, and color jobs with said hair dye seemed to mix like a concert-loving palette. All androgenous aside, it was the night of The Sounds On the last leg of their second headlining tour, the Swedish band has been playing fervently almost every night of the week to support their sophomore release, “Dying To Say This To You.” Moie hook-laden than ever, the new album boasts instrumentals, catchy choruses and lead singer Maja Ivarsson’s trademark throaty, yet angelic, vocals. For the band, the new record is like an open letter to their fans. “We hadn’t released anything for three to three and half years,” said drummer Fredrik Nilsson. “We just felt like we had been away for so long, and we’ve just been dying to tell all our fans how we missed them.” The reason The Sounds has been away for so long is because they were constantly touring to support 2003’s debut, “Living in America,” which was written over a long period of time in their rehearsal space in Sweden, Nilsson said. “I think the first album was very naive; we were just out of high school,” Nilsson said. “This record, on the other hand, was written in maybe four months all in all. When you go on tour for two years throughout the world, you change as a person and as a band and as a musician.” Shortly after Action Action began their set, a menagerie of dark synthesizers with pop sensibilities, Morningwood stormed the stage fronted by Chantal Claret to give the audience a set of infectious melody, sassy vocals and raunchy fun, climaxing with the crowd bouncing so hard on the floorboards of “Heaven,” The Masquerade’s upstairs venue, it felt as though the floor might break below. Before introducing The Sounds, it might help to know how they became one of the few Swedish bands that stepped foot in the U.S. and stuck here longer than a one-hit wonder. Guitarist Felix Rodriguez and Bassist Johan Bengtsson had known each other from childhood, and after a reunion a few years later, began to form the band. Johan knew that Nilsson, a friend of his, played drums and recruited him as well. Ivarsson was a classmate of Rodriquez’s and was asked to sing. Keyboardist Jesper Anderberg was found a year later at a music festival. ^ So how does a quintet of V Swedish twenty-somethings from Helsingborg get put on a label like New Line Records? “VVe played 75 to 80 shows all over Sweden before we got signed,” said Nilsson, who also mentioned that former Smashing Pumpkins’ guitarist James Iha had a hand in discovering and co signing them. This was the moment everyone had anticipated. Photographers took their places on the sides of the stage, crouching low to not impede anyone’s view of the band. Ivarsson entered the stage to the tune of^^ Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” and the rest of the band followed suit. Soon enough, they launched into sounos • h Apple’s Boot Camp opens Windows New software puts Microsoft XP onto Mac users screens Jeremy Turnage THE GAMECOCK Apple announced Wednesday the arrival of new software that allows Macintosh users to install Windows XP on their Intel based computers. In a move that has surprised many computer critics and pundits, Apple’s new program, Boot Camp, opens up Mac users to the Windows XP experience. The program appears to be a part of the strategy to get more consumers to buy a new Mac with the Intel Core Duo processors. The Intel-based Macs were released earlier this year. Boot Camp is currently a beta version of the software, and a more complete version is expected to come with the release of the next version of Mac OS X, known as Mac OS X Leopard, later this year. Ever since the release of the Intel-based Macs, computer users have scrambled to get a working version of Windows XP on the Mac. Since most Windows computers run native with Intel processors, the theory was that Windows XP could also run natively on Intel based Macs. The release of Boot Camp not only officially turns this theory into fact, but also gives users the ability to install Windows XP on the Mac without any code altering or installing any fishy third party programs. The word from Microsoft has been “silence,” as no official statement about Boot Camp has come from the company. Boot Camp could be quite helpful to Microsoft according to many critics, as sales of Windows XP could spike in the next few weeks. Currently, it is unknown whether or not Boot Camp will support Windows Vista when it is released next year. Windows Vista is Microsoft’s highly anticipated follow up to Windows XP. Vista was boot comp • II Special to THE GAMECOCK Pick an operating system ... any operating system.