Culinary Delights

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The Indy takes a moment to indulge.

Transcript of Culinary Delights

THE STUDENT WEEKLY SINCE 196904.01.10

Inside: Repo Men, March Madness and cake vs. pie.

CulinaryDelights

04.01.10 vol. xli, no. 19

2 [email protected] 04.01.10 • The Harvard Independent

The Indy takes a moment to indulge.

Cover art by SONIA COMAN

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Co-PresidentsPatricia Florescu ‘11 and Susan Zhu ‘11

Editor-in-ChiefFaith Zhang ‘11

News and Forum EditorRiva Riley ‘12

Arts Editor

Pelin Kivrak ‘11

Sports EditorDaniel Alfino ‘11

Graphics EditorSonia Coman ‘11

Associate News and Forum EditorWeike Wang ‘11

ColumnistsChris Carothers ‘11

Sam Barr ‘11

Staff Writers Peter Bacon ‘11 John Beatty ‘11 Ezgi Bereketli ‘12

Arhana Chattopadhyay ‘11 Andrew Coffman ‘12 Levi Dudte '11 Ray Duer ‘11 Sam Jack ‘11

Marion Liu ‘11 Hao Meng ‘11 Alfredo Montelongo ‘11 Nick Nehamas ‘11 Steven Rizoli ‘11 Jim Shirey ‘11

Diana Suen ‘11 Alex Thompson ‘11 Sanyee Yuan ‘12

Graphics, Photography, and Design Staff Chaima Bouhlel ‘11 Kayla Escobedo ‘12 Eva Liou ‘11

Rares Pamfil ‘10 Lidiya Petrova ‘11 Kristina Yee ‘10

For exclusive online content, visit www.harvardindependent.com

SPORTS3

FORUM45

SPECIAL6-7

ARTS89

NEWS10

SPECIAL11

ThE FRUSTRATIONS OF MARCh MAdNESS

MOdERN IdOLS: CURRICULUM REFORM

NO hOLdS BARREd: CONSERvATISM ANd IgNORANCE

CLASh OF ThE TITANS: CAkE vS. PIE

Repo Men

hOW TO ORdER dIM SUM

TRUE NEWS

FROM ThE ARChIvES

[email protected] 3The Harvard Independent • 04.01.10

indySportS

By HAO MENG

For the most part, I thInk I know sports — certainly more than the average Harvardian who wears

sports attire to impress (no offense, but going to college at Harvard does not automatically make you a legit Red Sox fan). I know my suicide squeezes, backcourt violations, and flea flickers when I see them, and for eleven months of the year, I’m generally proud of my pool of sports knowledge.

Then there’s March. God, I hate myself in March.

For most people, it’s a month full of joyous events, from the delicious and sexy White Day in Asia (take from that what you may, or just read Wikipedia) to the much-revered Pi Day, which, at Harvard, might garner you a phone number or two if you play your memorized “digits” right. And of course, there’s the start of spring, when we Harvardians realize we’re pale and that we are almost — almost — able to do something about it.

But for me, it’s the month when a random Folklore and Mythology Concentrator whose familiarity with sports rivals Tiger Wood’s familiarity with Nike’s slogan (“Just do me,” right?) can make me feel like a huge sports idiot. Because whether I like it or not, March is synonymous with the NCAA Basketball Tournament, aka “March Madness,” and I — like millions of Americans everywhere — am addicted to trying to correctly predict the results of a single-elimination 64-team bloodbath.

So can it be done? Mathematically: Yes.

Practically, in our world where the Cubs always suck: Hell no.

The whole concept of March Madness is similar to trying to win the lottery, but it gives the impression that in-depth knowledge of college basketball will drastically increase your chances of winning. That’s like saying 24-hour surveillance of Isawyouharvard.com will land you a significant other who isn’t as creepy as you are. You’d be much better off just approaching random attractive strangers on the street and dropping a well-placed H-bomb (but for your sake, and that of every nice stranger in Cambridge, please don’t).

Granted, the chances of a sports connoisseur doing well certainly are respectable, but it happens much less than you might normally expect. And it’s perhaps equally likely that someone who never watches college basketball will make more accurate picks. Case

in point: notorious gossip columnist Perez Hilton has made 38 correct picks so far, more than both senior writers and national columnists that CBS Sports considers “Experts” on March Madness.

Not convinced? My girl friend from high school, who still — to this day — cannot tell me how many players play on a court at one time, has 35 correct picks. She correctly predicted the ascent of little-known Butler, a team from the Horizon League (where?), to the Final Four because she thought it was funny to picture their mascot, a bulldog, as a “butler” capable of playing basketball. Of her final four teams, three of them are still alive in the tournament.

Transition to me, a sportsaholic who grew up in Alabama (a place where learning about your sports is more important than wearing shoes) and craves sports the way a Cabot House resident craves, well, anything other than Cabot, and you’ll find an embarrassing 30 correct picks and no

final four teams.Before the tournament started, I

scrutinized all 64 rosters, analyzed each team’s strengths and weaknesses, and spent over two hours finalizing my bracket. And now, I’m losing to a girl who correctly picked Northern Iowa over Kansas because she wrote a high school history paper on “Bleeding Kansas” and got a really bad grade. Who ever knew failing history could ironically lead to awesome predictive abilities?

I celebrated the occasion by ripping my bracket into tiny pieces and then trying to piece it back together because my roommate bet me that he had a worse bracket. I lost that bet too, but I definitely didn’t feel better.

So why do I, and so many other sane people, put ourselves through this madness year in and year out? You know, I don’t have a great answer. I guess that sometimes it’s fun to think of yourself as someone who has supernatural skills in predicting the

unpredictable. Or maybe it’s because March Madness is an interesting way of stamping out your very own identity on a very sophisticated-looking piece of paper.

Frankly, I really don’t care what the right answer is. All I know is that March Madness encapsulates everything I love about sports, and for that, I’m eternally grateful.

Davids beating Goliaths, last-second heroics, miraculous comebacks, diehard fans, grown men crying (I see you, Adam Morrison,) inspirational speeches, emphatic high fives, and that feeling of giddy excitement when you sit down in front of a TV and realize that nothing is impossible.

Well, except having that perfect bracket.

I guess I’m okay with that. Yep, I guess I’m okay with finding

“Perfection in Imperfection.”

Hao Meng ’11 (haomeng@fas) is Mr. Imperfect.

Call Me in April (When March is Over)

Musings on the NCAA Basketball Tournament experience.

4 [email protected] 04.01.10 • The Harvard Independent

Forum

M o d e r n I d o l s :R e l i g i o n a n d S o c i e t y To d ay

This week: Texas school curriculum reform.

a column by CHRIS CAROTHERS

Google has failed me at last. i cannot find a single positive article about the Texas Board of Education’s recent overhaul of

the Texan social studies curriculum. This is either because of rampant liberal media bias or because the new curriculum’s supporters never learned how to read and write. I’ll check for their rants on Youtube.

The board, dominated by conservatives and ultraconservatives, aims in this overhaul to combat the creeping liberal bias it perceives in American history textbooks. The package of conservative rewrites has something to offend everyone. Among other things, it severely marginalizes the role of minorities in American history, defends McCarthyism as successful, and ignores Thomas Jefferson because he supported the separation of church and state. Every historical event inconvenient for the right to remember has been dropped. What are you talking about? Republicans were always behind civil rights.

The media is screaming its disgust — and rightly so. Bloggers and columnists condemn the board’s decision on three charges. In some cases, the board is distorting history, plainly misrepresenting events such as slavery and the outcome of the Vietnam War. Another accusation echoing through the blogosphere is that the board is somehow “rewriting history,” which is inherently wrong. A third charge, especially from liberal writers, is that the board’s new curriculum ignores the positive contributions of progressivism to American society (New Deal, civil rights, etc). I think each of these charges has some merit. But I also think there is a more fundamental mistake in the Texas Board of Education’s actions.

The deeper problem with the board’s rewrite is that it slashes opposing viewpoints out of history. The ambiguities, contradictions, and alternatives that real history is made of appear only as distractions and digressions from the supposedly natural path of American history. The board is treating dissent from their view of America as if it were damaging to the study of American history. It artificially inflates historical figures who agreed with the politics of the right and minimizes the real discrepancies between the Founding Fathers’ principles and those of modern conservative Christians. Soon there will be nothing left in these textbooks to challenge the idea that America has always been a perfect, conservative, Christian nation.

In short, the board projects its current political ideology onto the whole sweep of American history and then throws out the bits that don’t fit. Didn’t they read my last column specifically telling people not to do this? The board’s reasoning seems to be that teaching any viewpoint but the mainstream conservative one already accepted by the majority of Texans will confuse students or lead them astray. In fact, it will open their

minds. Right now, you are looking at this paper from

two viewpoints: that of your left eye and that of your right eye. Each provides a slightly different angle so that your brain can analyze the subject in three dimensions. Now close one eye. You can still read this article, but your brain doesn’t have as much information. And it will probably give you a headache. Reading history is much the same (including the part about the headache). With all dissention and contradiction culled, American history looks like a simplistic string of dominoes, toppling toward an inevitable present. Whether the stance taken in this tedious approach is liberal or conservative matters little; the wealth of American history cannot be accessed through one narrow lens.

Thomas Jefferson should not be thrown out of textbooks because he supported the separation of church and state. If conservative Texan Christians revile him for that, let him be taught as a counterpoint. Engage with Thomas Jefferson’s despicable viewpoint — don’t ignore it. Engagement with the opponent’s position will always deepen one’s understanding of one’s own. What good does it do to teach our children over and over again that America is the greatest country in the world and have them chant it back mindlessly unless they understand why other countries might disagree? Indeed, how can they understand the

meaning of democracy at all without contrasting it with something else?

Teaching rival views of history gives students something much greater than facts. It hands students the power to judge, to think, and to criticize. One viewpoint on a subject matter can inform students, but not empower them. When the only thing a student knows about a subject comes from one source, the reception of information is necessarily passive. On what grounds can the student challenge the source? But if a second source, a second narrative, informs the student, then the student’s brain will go: “Ah-hah! I now realize that the truth is contained neither wholly in one view nor in another, but in the interplay between them!” The student can use one view to criticize another, one view to reveal the other’s gaps, or both views to construct a new one. It takes two people with two views to have a discussion. Without discussion, our education system is not democratic at all.

Consider the Texas Board of Education’s characterization of Japanese internment during World War II. I remember learning in my middle school history class that racism and fear motivated the wartime internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans. According to the Texas school board, however, the internment was not racist because German- and Italian-Americans were subject as well. That’s something my liberal textbook

didn’t mention. On the other hand, this new conservative textbook fails to mention that only a few hundred Italians and 2,000 Germans were put in camps compared to a stunning 110,000 Japanese. My point is not that one view is right or wrong, but that the combination of the two views reveals far more that either of them. If the conservative text does not even mention the view widespread in Japan and in America that the wartime internment was racist, it will miss an opportunity for engagement and debate. Without even knowing about the alternative views that exist (let alone the evidence for them), students can only ever be narrow-minded.

My suggestion for curriculum reform, if I haven’t made it obvious already, is a concerted move to simultaneously teach different interpretations of history. Teaching contradictory views raises problems if education is thought of in the traditional manner, as a simple transfer of information from teacher to pupil. But a modern system of education should go beyond such an approach and attempt to foster discussion and debate. A proper presentation of information by instructors should create a bias toward dialectical thinking on the part of the student and in arguments between students. Of course, teaching things twice will mean that less overall facts are covered. I believe, however, that the benefit of instilling critical thinking far outweighs the harm of teaching less. Especially if it’s that junk they’re teaching in Texas.

[email protected] 5The Harvard Independent • 04.01.10

indyForum

By SAm BARR

NO HOLDS BARRED

AN EMBARRASSMENT TO HARVARD CONSERVATIVES

Harvard conservatives, those Aristotle-citing, modernity-bemoaning, Western canon-

promoting Young Burkes, are generally an earnest and thought-provoking bunch. The seriousness and sincerity of their views help to maintain their reputation in this overwhelmingly liberal community. But in the March 15 issue of the Harvard Salient, the house organ of the Crimson Right, Patrick T. Brennan embarrassed his fellow conservatives by attacking in outrageous terms Harvard’s recent creation of an Ethnic Studies secondary field. His article represents a departure from the lovably idiosyncratic conservatism that many people, including many liberals, expect from the Salient. Brennan’s views are not idiosyncratic; they are ignorant.

To put it bluntly, Brennan’s case against Ethnic Studies is this: people of color just aren’t interesting or important, and they haven’t contributed much of value. If you assumed that this sentiment would be couched in much more subtle terms, you’d be wrong. Brennan doesn’t shy from stating outright that the experiences of non-white Americans are “not of paramount importance to a university education,” and that many cultures have been “underappreciated or marginalized, often for good reason.” Embracing the label of “Eurocentric,” he doesn’t flinch from calling Women and Gender Studies “useless” and concern for diversity “imaginary.” The possibility that there might be as much value in Latin American writers as in Latin ones is laughable to him.

You might think that such prejudice is the result of simple unawareness of the world outside the Harvard Classics department. If Brennan would only read some Frederick Douglass or Gabriel García Márquez, he’d come around, right? But Brennan makes a point of showing that he

actually knows some things about people of color, which makes his dismissal of their importance all the more offensive. He makes ostentatious reference to the Abbasid Caliphate, which he says was an exception to the rule of non-white ignorance, and to Martianus Capella, a Berber man who was, according to Brennan, “the first man to delineate officially the seven liberal arts.” You’d think that kind of accomplishment would spark Brennan’s curiosity: perhaps people of color have made other important contributions? The thought doesn’t seem to have occurred to him.

But politically correct liberals, Brennan and others say, value subjects like Ethnic Studies just because of their racial provenance, not their “actual” importance. If you really think about it, they imply, that makes liberals the true racists. But they disregard the possibility that “how people of color in the United States have historically experienced social and political institutions” might be a genuinely valuable subject of inquiry. For Brennan and his ilk, nothing that wasn’t considered important a hundred or a thousand years ago could possibly make the grade now. And they always neglect the fact that racial ideology influenced those long-ago determinations of importance.

The arrogance of Brennan’s point of view is startling. Conservatives like him see creeping totalitarianism in the academy’s cultural relativism, but they are the only ones policing the boundaries of respectability, ruling some people in and others out. They see themselves as victims of a dominant liberal culture but can’t point to anybody who says white people are unimportant or that Shakespeare and Cicero can’t be worth studying. Their beef is not that they’re being marginalized; it’s that they’re not being allowed to do the marginalizing. Brennan

once told the Salient, for instance, that Virgil’s Aeneid is more brilliant “than every literary work produced in the Southern Hemisphere.” If he had said “in the history of the world,” it would have been understandable favoritism; when he decided to single out darker-skinned races for particular disapproval, it became something much worse.

At bottom, this sort of attitude stems from concern about the breakdown of authority. Yearning for clarity and simplicity, many Harvard conservatives gravitate towards traditionalism in the arts, authoritarianism in religion, and essentialism in philosophy. They came to Harvard and were dismayed to find that nobody here will tell them what to learn, nobody will dictate what they have to consider important. The Core Curriculum and General Education, as most recognize, are pale homages to the idea that there are things every smart person ought to know.

And on one point I agree with them: Harvard should get some spine and figure out what it really wants us to know and to do. But, as former Salient editor and current New York Times columnist Ross Douthat ‘02 pointed out at a recent Salient-hosted event, the idea that we need a stronger core curriculum doesn’t entail that it should be exclusively composed of dead white males. The canon can and should be broadened. The most important ideas in the world were not all written on papyrus — an invention of the Egyptians, by the way.

Brennan’s article represents the logical end point of the deliberately anachronistic philosophy of many campus conservatives. “Curricula,” Brennan says, “should be essentially conservative and permanent.” In his view, contra Douthat, the canon cannot change. It has always been the same and will always be the same, for if nothing in the last 2,000

years of world history has made change necessary, nothing will. In the mind of this type of conservative, we know nothing now that wasn’t known during the Age of Pericles or the Pax Romana. The only interesting academic debate is between those who prefer the former and those who prefer the latter.

What a shame to look at two thousand years of human history and conclude that it’s been one long decline. No sophisticated progressive thinks we’ve been marching uninterrupted towards heaven on Earth, but no serious conservative can compare the modern world to ancient times, or today’s America to that of the 1950s, and honestly long for a restoration. There might be some good traditions that we ought to bring back, some worthwhile values that modern society does not recognize. But an argument has to be made for each individual tradition and value. Nothing is good just because it’s old.

Brennan and his defenders ought to heed Douthat, whose conservative, traditionalist bona fides are unimpeachable. Asked what courses he would recommend for a conservative Harvard student, Douthat suggested finding the most left-wing professor on the faculty. He said that Harvard conservatives can get the best education of anyone here, because they can constantly be challenged, forced to discard preconceived notions and to defend what is actually worth defending. I wish Brennan could have heard this advice before he wrote his article. Maybe he would have stopped wondering why no one appreciates Virgil as much as he does, and started wondering why he can’t think of anyone interesting or important when he thinks about people of color. If this brouhaha leads him to begin that self-examination, I promise I’ll finally get around to finishing the Aeneid.

6 [email protected] 04.01.10 • The Harvard Independent

Special

My acute powers of observation have revealed to me that, to many people, sports are a big deal, something meaningful. Unlike my

impression that sports are a mildly entertaining sideshow to the otherwise not athletic focus of life in general, many people just get riveted. Now, for example, the time of March Madness, sports hype is at a peak and everyone is discussing the basketball tournament incessantly; I often have no idea what they’re talking about. Kansas beat the Fightin’ Gnomes in round two, but Notre Dame is up against the Roarin’ Ringlets, that great southern legend, and the suspense is thick and the brackets are filled out and the money is quivering.

If it’s not obvious, I’m pretty unconcerned about this whole affair. I suppose, with my own school uninvolved, I might come around to saying something vaguely positive about the Illini, the team from my home state — but really, I don’t care. Like every year, I was wandering through March Madness aware that something is going on but never paying attention — until at last I found something that caught my interest. It is a restyled March Madness, something I can really get behind. Cake vs. Pie, the ultimate contest, is going on right now, and let me tell you, the Sweet 16 are out, and the competition is fierce.

The essence of this competition involves two different divisions, Cake and Pie, with 16 entries, each and a final battle between the best cake and best pie for Champion of March Madness. Face-offs are decided by a vote on the website, and the excitement is deep. The Cake bracket has gone as expected (for a full listing of the contenders and the current status of the bracket, check out Jezebel.com) but Pie has come up with some upsets: number 12 raked Boston Cream beat out number 5 ranked Peanut Butter, and number 10 French Silk whipped number 7, Cherry. As if this weren’t exciting enough, the quite literally Sweet 16 has yet to start round two, and speculation is rampant. Emotions are running high at this

stage: an impassioned follower of pecan pie and pound cake (over apple pie and birthday cake, respectively) of the event posted on the website, “If I brought an alien to earth and gave him a taste test of each cake/pie in the polls, he would say, “You’d have to be a mental patient or another species to think birthday cake and apple pie are better in any way”.” In other words, this person feels that an alien completely new to our world and existence would still have the presence of mind to choose easily between two types of completely foreign foods and degrade those who dismiss the “worlds better” options of pecan pie and pound cake.

But the hilarity goes further. One commenter cried that the exclusion of Devil’s Food from the Cake bracket was a “CONSPIRACY,” and there are several emotionally charged blurbs in support of different contestants. Who know that desserts could elicit this kind of emotion? Perhaps the most earnest are the In Defense-type assertions about the symbolism, deliciousness, and meaning of apple pie. Who needs basketball when you can argue over whether pecan or apple pie better represents the fiber of American society?

I played basketball when I was kid (and I was a foot taller than everyone else because the other children hadn’t yet hit their growth spurts), and it was often terrifying. People would hurt you to get the ball away. Now, I’m not trying to say that people wouldn’t hurt you to get a slice of their mother’s classic red velvet cake — they very well might. However, I feel that there’s a tangible reason for it. Tongue-tingling, wonderful sweetness, the warm feeling in your belly, being able to ignore the health consequences (you can’t ignore a basketball injury — that thumb’s just going to swell bigger while you try to twiddle it) are far preferable to paying attention to sports teams. Thanks to this new vision of March Madness, I can finally argue about something meaningful!

Riva Riley ‘12 (rjriley@fas) has finally found a bracket she can get behind.

A Bracket to Care About

By RIVA RILEY

A battle for hearts, minds and stomachs.

CAKE PIE

vs.

[email protected] 7The Harvard Independent • 04.01.10

indySpecial

My acute powers of observation have revealed to me that, to many people, sports are a big deal, something meaningful. Unlike my

impression that sports are a mildly entertaining sideshow to the otherwise not athletic focus of life in general, many people just get riveted. Now, for example, the time of March Madness, sports hype is at a peak and everyone is discussing the basketball tournament incessantly; I often have no idea what they’re talking about. Kansas beat the Fightin’ Gnomes in round two, but Notre Dame is up against the Roarin’ Ringlets, that great southern legend, and the suspense is thick and the brackets are filled out and the money is quivering.

If it’s not obvious, I’m pretty unconcerned about this whole affair. I suppose, with my own school uninvolved, I might come around to saying something vaguely positive about the Illini, the team from my home state — but really, I don’t care. Like every year, I was wandering through March Madness aware that something is going on but never paying attention — until at last I found something that caught my interest. It is a restyled March Madness, something I can really get behind. Cake vs. Pie, the ultimate contest, is going on right now, and let me tell you, the Sweet 16 are out, and the competition is fierce.

The essence of this competition involves two different divisions, Cake and Pie, with 16 entries, each and a final battle between the best cake and best pie for Champion of March Madness. Face-offs are decided by a vote on the website, and the excitement is deep. The Cake bracket has gone as expected (for a full listing of the contenders and the current status of the bracket, check out Jezebel.com) but Pie has come up with some upsets: number 12 raked Boston Cream beat out number 5 ranked Peanut Butter, and number 10 French Silk whipped number 7, Cherry. As if this weren’t exciting enough, the quite literally Sweet 16 has yet to start round two, and speculation is rampant. Emotions are running high at this

stage: an impassioned follower of pecan pie and pound cake (over apple pie and birthday cake, respectively) of the event posted on the website, “If I brought an alien to earth and gave him a taste test of each cake/pie in the polls, he would say, “You’d have to be a mental patient or another species to think birthday cake and apple pie are better in any way”.” In other words, this person feels that an alien completely new to our world and existence would still have the presence of mind to choose easily between two types of completely foreign foods and degrade those who dismiss the “worlds better” options of pecan pie and pound cake.

But the hilarity goes further. One commenter cried that the exclusion of Devil’s Food from the Cake bracket was a “CONSPIRACY,” and there are several emotionally charged blurbs in support of different contestants. Who know that desserts could elicit this kind of emotion? Perhaps the most earnest are the In Defense-type assertions about the symbolism, deliciousness, and meaning of apple pie. Who needs basketball when you can argue over whether pecan or apple pie better represents the fiber of American society?

I played basketball when I was kid (and I was a foot taller than everyone else because the other children hadn’t yet hit their growth spurts), and it was often terrifying. People would hurt you to get the ball away. Now, I’m not trying to say that people wouldn’t hurt you to get a slice of their mother’s classic red velvet cake — they very well might. However, I feel that there’s a tangible reason for it. Tongue-tingling, wonderful sweetness, the warm feeling in your belly, being able to ignore the health consequences (you can’t ignore a basketball injury — that thumb’s just going to swell bigger while you try to twiddle it) are far preferable to paying attention to sports teams. Thanks to this new vision of March Madness, I can finally argue about something meaningful!

Riva Riley ‘12 (rjriley@fas) has finally found a bracket she can get behind.

A Bracket to Care About

By RIVA RILEY

A battle for hearts, minds and stomachs.

CAKE PIE

vs.

8 [email protected] 04.01.10 • The Harvard Independent

Arts

A bout six or seven years ago, I went to see the movie P a y c h e c k , s t a r r i n g B e n

Affleck. It was a pretty run of the mill sci-fi story about a government engineer who has his memory erased after every job, but after one particularly long contract he discovers he left himself clues he must follow to avoid some kind of terrible demise. It wasn’t a great movie, but Affleck shot a whole bunch of people, there were some cool effects, and the acting was good to decent. At the time I was glad I went to see it.

Repo Men, released last Friday and showing around Bos ton , but not at the Harvard Square Theater, is similar on a certain level to Paycheck: Jude Law, Forest Whitaker, and Liev Schreiber give good performances in a relatively mundane sci - f i f i lm, with the prerequisite shooting, a sufficient number of fight scenes, and a clever ending twist. The problem is that with tickets to Repo Men selling at ten dollars today instead of the six dollars I paid for Paycheck, it’s just not worth going to see an okay movie.

For those of you who missed the trailer, the premise seems topical given the healthcare bill: Remy (Jude Law) and his childhood friend Jake (Forest Whitaker) work as repo men for a company that sells artificial organs for exorbitant pr i ces , “ recover ing” company property when buyers fall behind on payment. After an accident, Remy is given an artificial heart and he himself eventually falls behind on payments, becoming the target of his old coworkers. In response, he sets out to bring the whole system down.

Not a bad premise. The problem is that the director doesn’t really know what to do with it or how

t o m a k e i t r e a l . T h e m o v i e , unsurprisingly, is filled with gore and blood, but isn’t brutal enough to elicit horror or stylized enough to elicit interest. The plot follows suit. It moves along, hitting the necessary points, but doesn’t draw the audience in. Law and Whitaker do an excellent job of displaying the obvious brutality of anyone in the business of repossessing organs, but Law’s realization as Remy that these people have families seems so straightforward as to remove any emotional weight from the moment. The seemingly relevant question of how a society would allow companies to kill people in order to repossess organs is never answered, adding another level of disconnect and another missed opportunity.

As the plot moves along into what is no doubt supposed to be a tense climax, I couldn’t help feel l ike an observer. Fitting, perhaps, given its truth, but any movie worth its salt works hard to destroy that feeling of remove from the plot and characters. And that is the problem with Repo Men. I left feeling the same as before, no “That was awesome” or “Interesting” or even “Ewww…,” just “eh.” It’s just a movie about taking people’s organs. It doesn’t pull you in or push you out. It doesn’t do much of anything. When it comes out on DVD or you see it on TV, maybe give it a try if dark humor and gore is your thing and you don’t have much to do. Otherwise, feel free to take a pass on Repo Men.

John Beat ty ’11 ( jbeat ty@fas ) demands value for his money.

By JOHN BEATTY

NOW in THEATERS

Not Worth the Price of AdmissionRepo Men fails to live up to its interesting premise.

[email protected] 9The Harvard Independent • 04.01.10

indyArts

Four months ago, friends and I celebrated the beginning of winter vacation over dim sum,

the customary Chinese brunch. We toasted and feasted until we grew round bellies of good fortune. It was an afternoon of many good things — good company, good food and good times.

But before I go on, let’s clear up the first question. What is dim sum, you say? Well, dim sum is family style dining around many small dishes. It is meant to be fun and not — as some people suggest — bizarre or confusing. “Dim summing” is, in fact, a very simple craft and easily mastered with these 10 simple rules.

1. Bring company.If you try to dim sum by yourself,

you and your digestive organs will fail. Dim sum is not a solo sport; it is a team effort. The main idea is to fill the table with many small dishes and to have a little of each. Each dish has approximately three to four sample-sized bites, so it’s best to bring a crowd of three or four. A larger group (four to nine) is still doable, but you will need more plates of the same dish to feed everyone. A group of ten or more leads to massive chaos — no one knows exactly what to order or how much to order, so in the end, everyone leaves a tad grumpy.

2. Ask for tea.

Once seated, do not ask for ice water, because you will mostly likely gulp it down like a fish and lose your appetite. Ask for tea, but more importantly, ask what kinds of tea they carry. If you forget the latter, you will be stuck with imitation red tea that actually looks and tastes like soot. My mother is a major tea snob, so trust me when I say there is more than just tea-flavored tea. Green tea for instance, has a cleaner, softer taste and will cleanse your palette after oily dishes. Chrysanthemum tea is sweeter and leaves a nice wildflower tingle on your tongue. If by some chance the restaurant carries white tea

— expensive and tedious to brew — get it; it will give you longevity. Once your group has finished the pot, just flip the lip upside down and a waiter will come and refill it.

3. Prepare for clatter.

Dim sum is really not the place for a professional tête-à-tête or a romantic rendezvous. Please do not expect velvet tablecloths, burnished utensils, or quiet voices, because you will most likely encounter plastic film table coverings, disposable chopsticks, and squawking servers. The moment a group sits down, servers pushing carts besiege the table. Each cart stacks dishes in mini bamboo steamers; each server barks out an unintelligible hodgepodge of Cantonese, Mandarin and English — Cantomanglish? Accept the language barrier; it will not improve with repetition. Most of the time, servers will open steamers with shiny metal tongs so that you can survey the dishes. Click clack, their metal tongs go as if to say Yes yes? You want? You want? But really, take your time.

4. Watch the bill.

Keeping track of money during dim sum is a challenge, because it feels like you’re just plucking dishes off of carts and eating them for free. This is not the case. Once you are seated, the waiter places an unfilled bill on your table. The bill divides dishes into three sizes — small ($2-3), medium ($3-5) and large ($5+). Each server carries a stamp. Once you take a dish from a cart, the server stamps the bill for the dish’s appropriate size. Most dishes fall under medium to large, so if unchecked, the bill grows very large very quickly.

5. Avoid heavy starches.

Some dishes fill you up in one go. Zongzi, or glutinous rice wrapped in reed leaves, is a very heavy dish; one zongzi is equivalent to a modest lunch. Also, large plates of flat noodles or fried rice are both filling and expensive.

Instead, indulge in light starch dishes such as dumplings; both wrap dollops of filling in thin chewy skins. There are steamed dumplings, soup dumplings, fried dumplings (potstickers), open dumplings (shaomai); there are shrimp dumplings, pork dumplings, leek dumplings, lobster and sweet corn dumplings. The Chinese know their dumplings; so don’t leave dim sum without trying one. If you are like my father and must have rice with every meal, try the rice porridge; it is more soup than rice, making it less filling. Rice porridge can be either sweet or salty. The sweet kind, with corn and sugar, is more dessert than entrée. The salty kind, with shreds of pork and preserved egg, tastes better than it sounds.

6. Avoid too much fried food.

As with the heavy starch, fried dishes ruin appetites; a few are okay, but an all-fried meal will leave you burping oil bubbles in your sleep. Fried dishes well worth the health risk include sesame balls — chewy buns with sweet red bean fillings — and vegetable cakes — pan-fired squares of water chestnut, turnip or taro. But avoid dishes that look like burnt tempura or those swimming in their own oil. Try steamed dishes instead; pork buns and custard buns are traditional favorites.

7. Be bold, but be clear.

Don’t stick to the familiar and don’t dismiss something because it looks funny. You should at least give chicken feet or tripe a try before passing judgment. Be adventurous, but at the same time be very clear about any food concerns. If you can’t eat pork, interrogate the servers on the pork content of all their dishes. If you have more complicated concerns like a laundry list of allergies, then it may be best to go with a friend who speaks Chinese. Many vegetarians have complained to me that dim sum offers no vegetarian options; this is only

true for savory dishes. Sweet dishes, constituting the other half of dim sum, are all vegetarian friendly.

8. Do dessert.

Desserts take people to happy places. I have already mentioned a few — sweet porridge, custard buns, and sesame balls, among others. Sweet tofu is another traditional dessert. Servers ladle out smooth chunks of chilled tofu and drench it in tangy syrup; you then eat it with a spoon. Some dim sum restaurants serve chilled red bean or green bean soup; both are slightly sweetened and quite refreshing. Dim sum also offers a mind-boggling array of pastries, but avoid those with unnaturally brilliant hues because that is food coloring at its best — taro flavored anything, for example, should be white and not purple. In terms of pastry favorites, egg tarts and sponge cakes are your safest bets.

9. Pay cash.

With groups of people, it is now customary to split the bill amongst many cards. Dim sum cashiers do not recognize this custom and will give you the stink eye if you hand them a stack of cards. Since dim sum rarely goes over $15 per person, it’s much easier to pay in cash.

10. Tip?

To tip or not to tip, that is the question. Truthfully, no one really knows, so develop your own policy. I only tip when forced. Some restaurants haul me back for not tipping, others let me walk out like a free man.

The ten commandments of dim sum

never fail. So the next time you wake up with a craving for succulent soup dumplings or red bean mochi balls, trek down to Boston’s China Pearl or Hei La Moon or Chau Chau City (personal favorite), and be seated.

Weike Wang ’11 (wwang@fas) knows a good thing when she sees it.

The Art of Dim SumHow to dine on dim sum like a pro.By WEIKE WANG

10 [email protected] 04.01.10 • The Harvard Independent

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[email protected] 11The Harvard Independent • 04.01.10

indyNews

In a s u r p r i s e a n n o u n c e m e n t yesterday afternoon, Winthrop and Cabot Houses have decided

to merge into Winbot House. The two houses, apparently sick of being on the bottom of the House totem pole, see merging as a positive way out of their lackluster state.

“Merging seems to have worked well for Goldman and Sachs, so we thought we would give it a try,” said Winthrop junior Thomas R. Cavanaugh VI . He added that Cabot would present Winthropians with alternative rooming options in case those in Winthrop were not satisfied with n-1 housing.

“We’re very happy with the decision, because hopefully their violent intramurals spirit can help us revive what little house pride we have,” said Cabot resident John “Leighton” Meester ’12, whose hands had just been taped to a squash racket by the Winthrop IM

Reps.The group considered calling the

new House “Cathrop,” but that, according to Meester, “seemed like the sort of sound you hear when someone throws poo on the ground,” whereas Winbot sounds like it could “win a really nifty robotics competition.”

“The Winbot shield is going to be really cool,” said freshman Judy K. Pang, originally assigned to Winthrop House. “I hear it’s going to be three lions with fish heads, and our House song is going to be ‘Fish Heads’ by They Might Be Giants. I can’t wait to hear it every formal.”

The merger was handled by overeager freshmen who did not receive recruiting offers for the summer. Cabot and Winthrop residents have until April 2 to fill out their rooming questionnaires in preparation for the new housing situation.

Winthrop and Cabot Houses to Merge

By Alotta Krapp

Both sides hope suckiness will decrease with move.

captured & shotBy PATRICIA FLORESCU