Exercise? No thank you.

Working out is hard.
 

Just thinking about exercising is a struggle most of the time. All the mental energy that goes into picturing me going for a run or lifting weights is enough to make my stomach curl into the most uncomfortable of knots.

I used to be a “workout person.” In elementary school – and especially in high school – I was always active. Whether it was lifting weights or training on my own for an upcoming sports season, you couldn’t pay me to sit down as long as I could get up and run. I wouldn’t even get a job in the summer. I’d sign up for three or four different leagues spanning multiple sports, and I’d have an exercise-related commitment nearly every single day. A couple of hours of exercise a day equates to a full time job, right?

Then college hit. Does anybody else remember those self-pledges not to gain the freshman fifteen? What about all those New Years’ Resolutions to “get back in the swing of things” for beach season? And freshman year that was with residual motivation carrying over from high school. The deeper and deeper I trudged into the bowels of collegiate life, the further and further away from the bright light of exercise I slogged. Sure, I’d go for a swim every now and again. Hell, I might even do some pushups in my dorm room before rounding out my workout with a hearty bag of Cooler Ranch Doritos. But who was I kidding? I knew I’d peaked. My exercise trajectory slipped from working out every day, to working out a couple days a week, to – before I knew it – telling myself that taking the stairs and walking places burned plenty of calories. Now I get a little winded going up a flight of stairs. My high school self would be so proud.

Working out is hard. It’s a drag. It’s a mental and physical drain. But there are some good things about it, I must grudgingly admit. Like how, after you do it a couple times, you feel this freshness about you for the rest of the day, like you’ve done something worth doing, something to better yourself that makes you feel good. Or how it can relieve stress and help you live longer. Those two aren’t bad. I’d like a little less stress and a little more life in my life, I suppose. The best is that it curbs – and yes, possibly even prevents – depression. No one wants to be sad all the time. So the next time you think about how hard working out is, think about just how much better you could be feeling. I started working out again the summer going into my last semester of college, and I haven’t looked back. Who knows what it could do for you? Sure, this won’t make your physical workout any easier, but it might remove a few of those mental chains that are holding you back. And that’s a start.

Boston: Making Its Mark

 

Boston’s eponymous debut album deserves its place as one of the great albums of rock and roll’s rich history. Guitarist/keyboardist/producer Tom Scholz’s painstaking efforts filled this album with complex, layered harmonies as well as crushing guitar solos and lyrics that both depress and uplift. His efforts paid off in 1976 when the album debuted, breaking the record for the highest number of copies sold of all time. This was undoubtedly very validating to Scholz, who had been turned down by numerous record labels that did not appreciate his distinct musical style prior to his deal with Epic Records. All he needed was one chance, however, and Epic Records was willing to give him that shot.

Scholz was something of a perfectionist – or he was, at least, a man who knew what kind of sound he wanted. He preferred to work out of his basement studio instead of Epic’s recording studio, due to the fact that he owned equipment he had made himself that the record company did not have. These homemade devices were able to produce a sound that became known distinctly as Boston’s sound, a sound of a unique timbre in both the guitar and keyboard. 

            Boston starts off with “More Than a Feeling,” a plaintive number about a young man and his lost love. The man feels like his whole world is lost, waking up to a world where “the sun [is] gone,” where all he can think of is the girl who “slipped away.” The song has the classic Boston guitar riffs that half-rock half-whine, cutting through the verses with their mournful blaring. The song ends without any redemption, with the speaker still lonely and forlorn. The instrumentation cuts to the core of the listeners, making them feel all that the speaker does.

            The next two tracks – “Peace of Mind” and “Foreplay/Long Time” – are much more positive in nature. “Peace of Mind” follows the typical song form, with verse/chorus/verse. As is typical with many pop songs of the day – but most especially with Boston songs – there is a long musical interlude in the middle where the guitar gets to stretch its legs, giving rock and roll fans something to talk about with Scholz’s freewheeling riffs. The next song, “Foreplay/Long Time,” again illustrates Scholz’s dexterity when wielding a guitar. It is easy to hear the organized chaos, the meticulousness of the composition while at the same time hearing the unrestrained and wild nature of the piece. The chaos subsides and is followed by another well-written song with a hard snare drum in duple meter. “Long Time,” which completes the first side of the record, is far more positive, with the speaker saying that he is “just moving on,” leaving the listener eager to see what comes next.

            The second half of the album appeals directly to the rebellious teen culture that defined rock and roll. With most of the tracks in the standard song form, they speak precisely to the teen audience. They are about rebellion, escapism, and – most importantly – rock and roll, and with lyrics like “just keep on tokin’” in “Smokin’” and “[g]onna…[l]eave it all behind,” in “Hitch a Ride,” Boston makes one thing abundantly clear: this kind of music is not for adults. The last song, “Let Me Take You Home Tonight,” when compared with the first half of the album, shows a noteworthy change in the tone of the album. The speaker is now self-assured and even bold, asking a young woman to come home with him at the end of the night. It is a far cry from the man wallowing in despair in “More Than a Feeling,” leaving off on a note of hope and promise for the future.

            Boston has earned its place in the annals of the rock and roll greats. The album manages to tell something of a story without giving a direct narrative, while simultaneously appealing to wide masses of rock and roll fans. It draws the listener in to its depth while still managing to deliver a performance worthy of rock and roll. Tom Scholz’s genius in creating that futuristic, almost alien-like Boston sound with his homemade equipment is nothing short of incredible. With this album he was able to give the rock and roll community a sound that it had not quite heard before, a sound and form that would be imitated for years to come. With their debut album, Boston was able to make their mark on the history of rock and roll.

X-MEN – The Octopquel?

Ever since Batman Begins successfully reestablished the reign of the super hero, big time movie franchises have been shamelessly cashing in on their star characters. But who can blame them? Sequels, and trequels, and quadruquels are making millions at the Box Office without even rolling out of bed. And each sequel seems to be making more and more money. Take Iron Man, for instance. The first Iron Man film launched in 2008 grossed $318,412,101, a respectable amount of money for a burgeoning, narcissistic hero in what seems to be a colorful, iron Apple product. By the time the series got to Iron Man 3, however, it grossed $409,013,994. So where’s the incentive to stop?

These aren’t like the sequels of the past, where something like the specter of Jaws is resurrected to torment a new generation in a cheap movie trick that brought back to life the monster that made us fear all kinds bodies of water. Jaws was clearly killed in the first movie, restoring order to this human world we live in; I’m not sure if producers were trying to convince us of the existence of multiple giant sharks, or if they were resurrecting the old terror time and time again. Either way, they should have let the Jaws franchise alone. How could anything ever come close to outdoing the scene where Brody shoots the oxygen tank, blowing apart the horrifying creature of the deep? It was just short of insult to create each sequential Jaws movie, and it seemed like an obvious ploy to make more money.

Another clear money grabbing scheme is the idea of making a movie just to make a sequel. This is seen in everything from the Pirates of the Caribbean to the latest Bourne Legacy starring not Matt Damon. Aside from Pirates 1, these movies were made merely to set up a second or a third movie, giving you just enough detail that you’re somewhat confused and you feel that the only way to unmuddle your brain is to wait for the next movie to come out. When the sequel’s subplot is too much the part of the first sequel’s, you wonder what you paid your money for. You came to see a conflict resolved, and all you got was violence or action or more conflict. Is that worth the price of a ticket?

Great franchises, however, don’t play these money-making games – at least not overtly. Of course their main goal is to make money, but the entertainment value is not compromised. When it is, when the overarching plot is too forced and the subtlety disappears, the movie as a whole suffers. Take Iron Man 2, for example. The whole movie is peppered with the “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” plot that doesn’t just flirt with the main plotline; it stomps all over it. While novel at first, the heavy-handed hints at the Avengers gets old as the moviegoer is unable to decide which plot to settle on; Venko, or S.H.I.E.L.D.?

For a while, X-Men to me seemed like it was merely in the business of making money, producing movie after movie. However, upon seeing both X-Men Origins and The Wolverine, I have come to realize that there is still great entertainment value in each one. Feeling the thrill that accompanies seeing Hugh Jackman kick some ass again and again makes me wonder if maybe I’m missing the point with these sequels. Maybe it’s not the complexity and subtlety of the plot, the nuances and the ways in which the audience interacts with a cohesive, self-contained storyline, that make it what it is. Maybe all I need to do is sit back, shut off, and watch.

Shootin' Hoops
 

It would start with my father taking a shot, his arm extending skyward as his hand snapped to, waving to the ball as it whooshed through the sticky air on its way to the basket. The smile across his face said that he was made for no other purpose than to shoot that ball. It would bounce with a good-natured laugh off the tight rim, but Dad didn’t care. He would bound after the rogue ball, his body easing itself into the rhythmic flow of the game as though he were twenty-four instead of forty-two. 

Or maybe it would start with me stepping up to the foul line. One dribble, two dribbles, a deep breath, and a perfect shot, a shot that was flawless until the moment it loudly hit the rim in a way that hurt my pride more than my ears. My father would pluck the ball out of the air and pass it back to me, the silent “try again, and again, and again” apparent on his face. I might take fifty shots from that foul line before, frustrated, I would take a break and let my father take his turn.

But it actually would start with me searching the garage for a pump, raiding the drawers and buckets for the needle that would squeeze life into the rustic brown basketball. I would feel the rough contours of the ball in my hands, the dirt of bygone practices rubbing off on my dry palms. My father would meet me out front, walking across the lawn in the sweat of an August day, the white paint splotches on his black gym shorts like distant moons surrounded by thousands of tiny stars. He might have spent the day painting the kitchen just to make my mother happy, or he might have started a new project in the backyard, laying bricks on which to rest the fire pit we sometimes sat around, talking until we ran out of wood to burn. The best part about him was that if Dad went to bed exhausted on Thursday night – the three hour commute he traveled every day visible in his eyes – by Friday night he would be cracking the jokes and telling the stories that could make me laugh until my stomach hurt. Even though he had woken up at four forty five every morning of the previous week, he would still stay up late with me to watch the old Batman movies that bridged the gap between our generations. Even though I was the young one, the one who was supposed to have all the energy, Dad would still get up before me on Saturday and spend the morning raking leaves out from under the tree house we built together or picking up a box of doughnuts for his sleeping children. That afternoon, he would rescue me from my tiresome world of impossible homework – a world of fractions and worksheets and grammar exercises – and take me down to “our” court with the sole purpose of helping me improve my game. Or maybe it was more about the company.

I would bounce the ball on the coarse sidewalk and it would loyally bounce back into my ready hands, resilient and predictable, each dribble pronounced by an earnest thwang. We would walk in silence to the schoolyard down the road, jokes cutting through the heat, laughter punctuating the gunshot of every dribble. We would reach the court, the just-setting sun shining straight into our eyes. The three-point line wasn’t painted in; rather, it was a crack in the pavement, arced around the hoop as though someone had diligently taken a hammer and chisel to it, driven by a desire to hit a deep jumper and be justly rewarded for his or her efforts. Grass poked up through the ancient asphalt, the lonely iron rim lacked a net, and the backboard was smattered with rust, all of which merely reminded us that this court was our own, that we would not be interrupted as we battled our way to miniscule greatness. I would take a shot, eagerly listening to my father tell me of how he used to practice when he was a child, telling of the fences hopped and the rules broken, all so that he could experience the pleasant loneliness of a boy with his basketball.

My first shot would bounce off the backboard, the second might miss the hoop altogether. I would start to show signs of anger, but Dad would quietly critique my shot. “Follow through straight,” or “Bend your knees a little bit more.” It was always some minor adjustment that would make the difference, and there was no problem that Dad couldn’t fix. I learned to follow his example, seeing how he laughed if he took a particularly awful shot, seeing how he hustled after every single rebound. “See? This game’s easy.” Looking back, I’m not so sure he was talking about basketball.

            Sooner than soon, the sun would squat behind the houses, the sweat would slide down our faces, and my father and I would make our way back home, walking in a silence that said more than words ever could. I would toss the ball back in the garage, and it would bounce off the baseball gloves and the lacrosse sticks and the soccer balls and the football cleats before settling next to the bicycle my father taught me to ride.

Obama Faulted for Old Woman's Plight

            Late Wednesday afternoon, Hillside resident Natalie Jefferson was faced with a moral dilemma. Once a day when she gets out of work, Ms. Jefferson goes for a walk along the local pathway atop Windy Pike. This Pike is a protected park, overlooking the gorgeous Bottleneck Bay. It is a haven for wildlife and those who wish to escape city life for a while. On Wednesday for Ms. Jefferson, it transformed from this walker’s dream into a living nightmare.

            At 4:00 every day, Ms. Jefferson punches out of her job at the post office. She drops her lunch bag off at her home two blocks away and proceeds to the pathway on the Pike – called “the cliffwalk” by locals. She generally makes the two-mile long trek with a bag of birdseed in her purse, resting at the end to feed the birds before beginning the walk back. By this time the path is usually deserted and, as she says, “It’s just you and the birds and the wind and the water. It’s beautiful.”

            On Wednesday, however, Ms. Jefferson’s daily routine was broken by the piercing yell of a man in trouble. Ms. Jefferson had already fed the birds and was walking back, enjoying the feeling of quiet, reassuring solitude when the shouts reached her. She rushed to the edge of the Pike and looked down, where she saw a man balanced precariously on a dangerously narrow rock ledge.

            When the man saw her looking down at him, according to her report, he was “absolutely relieved. He yelled up to me that he had fallen and couldn’t get a good enough hold to pull himself back up. His legs were getting tired and he said he did not know how long he could last.”

            This situation was all too familiar to Ms. Jefferson. The exact same thing had happened to her two years before. After an hour of standing there, helpless on the ledge, she finally managed to find the energy to hoist herself back up to the top of the cliff.

            Ms. Jefferson told reporters that she “saw no reason to help this man” having been able to save herself all those years ago. “If I could do it, so can he. Why should I expend my energy and resources to help this guy who was clearly too lazy to help himself?” Such were her thoughts when she inched back away from the edge, stood up, brushed herself off, and continued on her way. “There I was, just minding my own business, when that man had the gall to ask me for a handout. Honestly. Some people are just so conceited.” She said she hardly had a second thought about it. When our reporters questioned her about this “moral dilemma” she faced, she laughed a bit and said “Oh, please. It was hardly a difficult decision. Anyone would have done the same.”

            Upon telling her neighbors of her encounter, they were utterly shocked.

“I’d be embarrassed, if it were me,” said Mr. Petersen, another Hillside resident. “What kind of a man asks a little old woman for help? It’s disgraceful. People need to get off their backs and start doing things for themselves.” This growing problem of people asking for help can be seen everywhere in America today, with people left and right asking for handouts, bailouts, and even healthcare. As usual, it can be traced back to the White House. President Obama is known to be an advocate for universal healthcare, and many believe this notion may have had some effect on the stranded man.

            Ms. Jefferson in her final comments showed that, if presented with the opportunity, she would not have done anything differently. “Why should I give up my benefits and risk my wellbeing to help this man I don’t even know in a situation he should get through himself? This is America people. Anyone can work their way up if they’re willing enough. Anything is possible with the right mindset. It’s just pure laziness and I for one won’t stand for it.”

            The man has not been seen since, and locals are calling Ms. Jefferson a “champion of the people”, being able to stand firm in what she believes in the face of such hardship. Her neighbors have been noted saying, “I wish some politicians had the courage she had. She didn’t waver for a second. She stuck by her principles to the very end. Talk about admirable.”

Comments? Email us at www.atlanticquarterly/news.com

This story may sound familiar to you. It is the sad story of an unhealthy relationship, a relationship each and every one of you has experienced at some point in your life.

My senior year of high school, all I could think about was one thing. It was all anybody asked me about. They all wanted to know who I was going to date next year. They wanted to know what she looked like, where she came from, what she was interested in, etc. I wasn’t really sure who I wanted to date, so I got to work checking out as many girls as I could. My parents brought me to girl after girl, showing me pretty ones with lots of spirit, ugly ones who were good at soccer, and young ones that looked clean but didn’t have the best reputations.

            Then that day came when I saw her for the first time: Brenda Crawford. She was just what I was looking for. She had the looks, she had the personality, she was good at sports. There was something regal about her, something pristine that bespoke a majestic kind of nature; she was filthy rich. It was clear she spent an absurd amount of money on her appearance, and it paid off.

Brenda was just what I needed in my life, and I decided to make her mine. I went back home to sit on my decision for a while, to make sure I’d made the right choice. She haunted my dreams. Anyone I told about her congratulated me, and someone always seemed to know someone else who had dated her. Apparently she really got around. I visited Brenda a few times over the course of the year to get to know her better – I learned about who she was, I learned about her past (she had more than one father…don’t ask), and I learned about the girl that was going to come to define my life for the next four years. 

            Then, the big day came. I’d never felt anything like it, like the excitement I felt for her. Brenda and I were in love. So we did what any young couple who thinks it’s going to last does: we moved in together. She became my days and nights. She was a part of everything about me; she was what I called home, she was the air I breathed. I couldn’t get enough of her. We started hanging out all the time, and I gradually talked to my friends from home less and less, and I stopped seeing my parents altogether.

            It evened out though, because then I got to meet Brenda’s friends; she had thousands of them. Some of them were pretty nice, but a lot of them did that thing where they made eye contact with me, and I would start to say hello, and then they’d look away as if they didn’t recognize me. Also, some of them needed to wear more clothing when they went to the gym. Other than that though, they seemed like great people.

I started eating dinners Brenda cooked, I started signing her name to my emails, I only joined clubs she approved of, and I got so infatuated with this girl that I even started wearing her clothing. The first few months were a blur. All I remember were crazy hookups, late nights, and skipping class. And Brenda was there for it all.

            Then, things started getting tough. All of a sudden, it got to be a lot more work. Mid-October rolled around and things really started kicking in. I found myself staying up late and waking up early, working my ass off to so that I could keep the relationship going.

Sometimes I wondered if I’d made the right decision, if I wouldn’t be happy elsewhere.

            So I started drinking. And I hid it from Brenda. I drank my weight in the finest cheap vodka the world could offer, vodka that I smuggled into our home in backpacks or old water bottles, hid under my bed, and didn’t dare put in my refrigerator.

            Soon, though, Brenda found me out, and boy was she mad. She yelled at me, made me go to a bunch of meetings about drinking, and even threatened to kick me out of the house. Those were dark days. After that, I couldn’t even have a casual beer with friends without looking over my shoulder.

            When I talked to my friends from home, it sounded like they were having a lot more fun than I was. Everything was “the time of their lives” this and “omgosh” that. Sometimes, I thought about what it would be like if I had their girlfriends. Just for a second, I would picture it. I even thought about acting on these fantasies once or twice, if only just for the weekend. Brenda just had too many rules she expected me to follow. It’s like she never wanted me to have any fun.

This went on for another four years. We’d date, break up for weeks or even months at a time and have literally no contact, and then we’d see each other and fall right back in love before falling into the same old routine again. It was madness, but we were young and in love. What did we care what the world thought? Then the sad day came when we parted ways for the final time, both of us tearful that it didn’t work out. Our last night together, I got severely drunk and stayed up all night with her. And then she was gone. The relationship became nothing but a memory.

            I visit Brenda on occasion, just to see how she’s doing from time to time. She still writes to me monthly, asking for money and donations and the like. It’s gotten pretty annoying. One day, things took a turn for the weird. I was sitting at the kitchen table paying bills or using aftershave or some other adult thing when in comes my son; “Dad. I think I’m in love. I’ve been talking to this girl. Her name’s Brenda Crawford.”

A New Beginning

Goooooood Morning Chestnut Hill (Newton? Brighton? I’m still not sure),

As we get settled in to start another thrilling semester full of exciting “just memorize the slides” lectures, crazy “I’m not going to dress up for that” theme parties, and unexpected post-pubescent  “I thought I had escaped back hair” discoveries, I thought it might be nice to sit back on my RA-approved, recycled piece of plastic bed and share a few things with all you BC guys and gals.

So. Senior year. What a rush, amiright? Along with all the thrills of not getting a mod (or of getting a mod and realizing the rooms are small, the AC doesn’t work, and a closed back door is an invitation to freshmen), along with the loss of the thrill that comes with drinking alcohol illegally, and along with our mundane (oh, you still celebrate those?) twenty-second birthdays, comes the quiet satisfaction of having made it this far without screwing up yet. We can now appreciate the subtle peacefulness that surrounds frantically searching for a job (you CSOM’ers) or looking to get a how-have-you-not-had-one-of-those-yet internships (all you English majors out there).

There also comes that calm assertion that yes, we are indeed the BMOC’s (Although this sounds like a gender-specific term, I mean for it to apply to both men and women alike. However, I don’t recommend directly calling a girl a “Big Woman On Campus”). We can spot freshmen from a mile away on Student Activities Day – now renamed “Student Involvement Fair,” for political correctness – we know exactly who’s not allowed into the mod party, and we know just who to beat up when we run out of lunch money.

With senior year comes the ability to navigate the abyss that is SPO. Don't you just love those dinners they keep inviting (cough forcing) us to go to? As the oldest on campus we also have the responsibility to be the “mature” ones in our clubs, the ones who “set a good example” for the underclassmen and who don’t “always make fart jokes” during meetings. We are respected – nay, adored across campus, and this year is to be the cherry on top of our academic career, the icing on our cake, the fries at the bottom of the bag. For there is only one more year to go, only one more round to fight, only one more nail to clip off of the foot of our education.

As the great Western lyricist Onika Tanya Maraj says, “Starships were meant to fly.” Class of 2013, I raise my non-alcoholic beer to you. Go set the world aflame.