Students gathered at the Barn last Wednesday, but instead of rocking out to an indie band or rap artist, they gathered for an emotional night of spoken word. For three hours, Franny Choi, Rudy Francisco, Dante Basco and Gemineye shared their poetry revolving around racism, love, fatherhood and culture. I thought it was going to be a quieter show...
Now that the Olympics are over, “Community” is back, but I’m not sure this was the best episode to come back with.
It’s good that the show is trying to work in its new characters — Professors Duncan (John Oliver) and Hickey (Jonathan Banks) — in a way that feels organic. They’re part of the Save Greendale Committee, and it...
I guess it was destined to happen. Any great television show has to have a couple of weak episodes from time to time. This week’s episode of True Detective, “Haunted Houses,” was slightly disappointing. I’m doing my best to not write these words, but I have to. We saw the usual gold involving Marty Hart and Rusty Cohle, but...
I first heard NO about two years ago — roughly late 2011 or early 2012 — on a car ride home late at night listening to a KROQ local music show. It had been a late night finishing production at the newspaper when the song “Stay With Me” came on the radio and almost immediately struck me. After arriving...
As soon as I walked through the doors of HUB 302 last Thursday night, I felt home. It may have been the Spanglish I repeatedly heard from conversations all around me. Perhaps it was the classic Spanish dance music playing in the background, or maybe it was the joy I saw in all the faces of UCR students as...
As the first mainstream Latino Broadway play written and created by Latinos, and as a direct response to the critically acclaimed “West Side Story,” the highly anticipated musical “In the Heights” has enamored UCR faculty, students and community members. Tickets were scarce to see UCR’s first musical in seven years, revealing an immensely apparent thirst for the kind of...
There’ve been nine previous apocalypses at the Barn and somehow we’ve survived all of them. How did they come to be, though, and could the Comedy Apocalypse succeed in finally annihilating the human race? Prior to the show, I asked an eager attendee what his feelings were before it all began. He said, “If I don’t laugh, there’ll be...
Japanese role playing games (JRPG) have a reputation for clinging to the past when it comes to gameplay. Square Enix, the long-loved developer of the “Final Fantasy” series, has been accused of this practice for a while now. This all changes with “Bravely Default” on the Nintendo 3DS, which feels like an homage to the classic turn-based JRPG with...
This week’s episode of “True Detective” officially makes it the most unique detective narrative I have ever witnessed. Time becomes the ultimate motif in this episode, titled, “The Secret Fate of All Life,” as the philosophical Rusty Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) introduces his view on fate and how everyone is reincarnated to relive their lives over and over again in...
A small stage draped with scarlet and large-bulbed lights gave way for nostalgia-filled high notes, guitar riffs and that one vocoded bassline we’re all familiar with as Ginuwine serenaded an eager crowd last Thursday night at ASPB’s Winter Soulstice. Despite an initially lyric-shy audience, sharing the moonlit evening with Ginuwine was a warming experience. With love in the air,...