The horror! Photo by Ramsey Haefner

Imagine if you will: You get out of your room with minutes to spare before your next class starts. You have everything you need, but are running a little late and hope that an elevator will come quickly so you can get to class on time.

Luckily, an elevator comes right away with no one in it and you push the button marked “L”, symbolizing freedom. But, after you hit the button, the doors to the elevator don’t close. It just stays there as you awkwardly stare at the people waiting for an elevator going up. Even after frantically pressing the door close button, it still stays open, until finally, it gives the annoying warning series of beeps and the doors close slower than they ever have. As you finally reach the lobby, having stopped at another floor and having the doors do the same thing, you run to class knowing you will be late and are wondering what cruel twist of fate allowed the elevator to become so slow.

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Facebook is college. It’s now hard to imagine a world without the constant hope for a new message of ‘like’ on your page, but at what cost do we allow this interaction? Well for nothing. So how do the fine people at Facebook keep earning money? By mercilessly advertising everything you can possibly think of on their site, from local cross-country teams to zombie t-shirts stylized like the Obama posters. Read more…

With such a controversial name, one would think that their wouldn’t be a large amount of people going to see the band Starf*cker. However the Vera Project was packed with fans on Friday night looking forward to seeing the Portland quartet, who started as a project in lead singer/songwriter Josh Hodges’ basement. Starf*cker has grown rapidly in the last few months, but because of their vulgar name, they have lost many opportunities to grow even more than they are, such as opening for electronic band Passion Pit in their current tour. To counteract this, the band has decided to have their listeners choose their new name, in hopes of becoming an even better known band.

However their fan base is loyal, and even though the band worries their change in name will cost them their current renown, the show almost sold completely out. The first opening band, Phaontogram, opened at around 8:30, who were a New York duo that used a mixture of recordings, synth and guitar, along with the woman’s beautifully aerie voice to produce a poppy electronic sound. The next band, Deelay Ceelay started around 9:30 and consisted simply of two drummers playing together while a recording played electronic/dance music the duo had recorded before. On paper, the band sounds fairly boring live, but Deelay Ceelay had set up a large sheet behind them which they projected a series of strange/visualizer images onto, usually of figures dressed in hoods dancing around and being warped. One of the final songs they played was a cover of T.I’s song, “Whatever You Like” set to dance music which was extremely well done, especially when put to the drummers’ creative and complex drum patterns. Read more…