Students begin to dance at the Wash Friday night to the grooves of Los Pingous, the main event atthe Hispanic Herritage Festival.

Hispanic Heritage Festival Triumphs
By Misha Chellam
Staff Writer

Hispanic culture is in vogue. The taco is replacing the hamburger. Enrique sells more records than Justin. TV is just talking heads anyway, and Univision is way more exciting than CNN. Who doesn’t like the Buena Vista Social Club?

With all this going for them, the organizers of last Friday’s Hispanic Heritage Festival must have been feeling pretty confident. They were bringing in a world-class band, serving homemade guacamole and sangria, and utilizing the best venue on Pomona’s campus, the Sontag Greek Theater. The event was being co-sponsored by five on-campus organizations, and one of the most visible students on South Campus, Andres Lopez ’04, had put together a salsa band to open the show.

Apathy Toward Hate at Borg
By Emily Field
Staff Writer

A week ago last Sunday, I was in the French section of Oldenborg to visit a friend. Walking up the stairwell between the French and Chinese lounges, I noticed three blank pieces of white paper taped to a wall. Underneath the papers, someone had written “I HATE FAGS” in huge sprawling letters.

I was shocked of course, and a little sad; I expected better of Pomona students. But then I figured it would probably be painted over in a couple of days, with maybe an angry Digester message thrown in there for good measure. So I let myself forget about it for the rest of the week. After all, I had an article to write and a midterm to study for; I was a busy girl, all right?

Carnies on HBO
By Emily Field
A&F Staff Writer

Carnivále is the latest dramatic series to be produced by HBO. The series begins in Oklahoma during the Great Depression. The premise is that Ben Hawkins, the lead character played by Nick Stahl, ends up with a traveling carnival when the death of his mother and seizure of their farm leave him penniless and stranded.

Intercut with this storyline is the story of California preacher Justin Crowe, whose upper-class congregation is invaded by migrant workers looking for jobs. While it is unclear what the two men’s connection is, they both share the same recurring nightmare: a series of disturbing images of war, legless children, and farms. The show follows the carnival as it moves from town to town and the preacher as he attempts to build a church exclusively for migrant workers.

Computer, Texas Dreams Broken in Czech Republic
By Michael Owen
Contributing Writer

Lately I have not been as much of a news addict as usual, in part because almost all of the news printed in the Czech Republic is in a language that, though ostensibly based on the Roman alphabet, includes at least a dozen additional characters, three of which are unpronounceable. Luckily my study abroad program provides us with high-speed Internet access in our rooms (an unspeakable rarity here), and so I keep up on current events using the New York Times (e.g., "New York City police are trying to determine where a Harlem man got a tiger cub and how he managed to raise it in a public housing project.") and Harper's Weekly Review (e.g., "President Bush was photographed falling off one of the $4,950 scooters in June, though he had simply neglected to turn it on.").

Pure Comic Bliss
By Tony Tiu
Staff Writer

Unless you already read comic books (or graphic novels), you’ve probably never heard of Blankets or Craig Thompson. The last graphic novel that had this much mainstream appeal is Art Spiegelman’s epic Maus. This is completely different than Maus, and very few stories are as important as that book, but nevertheless, this is an important work of art, and you would do yourself great service to pick this up. If you liked Daniel Crowes’ Ghost World or the movie that it inspired, you will definitely like Blankets, because it is so much better. You can order Blankets or see preview pages at topshelfcomix.com or amazon.com; it is worth more than your time or its $30 cover price.

Beckinsdale Flick Vamped Down
By Tim Anderegg
A&F Associate

Underworld, a new movie featuring an epic war between werewolves and vampires, sets up a premise that should imply gruesome battles, “Matrix style” fight scenes, and a badass soundtrack– much like one might expect from Blade 3.

Unfortunately, this movie’s budget and the ambition of its producers seemingly were nowhere near that of either of the two Blade movies. A generic-looking Scott Speedman plays the leading male role, a human man sought after by the werewolves for a reason at first unknown to the vampires. Kate Beckinsale, who you may or may not remember from Pearl Harbor, plays the leading female role of Selene, a vampire whose family was killed hundreds of years ago. Her life is only spared because one of the vampire elders, Victor, who is played by a somewhat monotonous and uninteresting Bill Nighy, decides she’d make a good vampire.

Dick on Food: Mmmmm! for Nada
By Eddie Dick
Staff Writer

If a burrito and a calzone managed to copulate, the resulting culinary offspring would likely be an empanada. While the outer shell is more puff pastry than pizza dough, the filling and its spices are cribbed straight from the Latin American cookbooks.

And it just so happens that Claremont houses an establishment that specializes exclusively in the creation of empanadas. M!panada, just down Bonita Avenue from campus, is a recent arrival to the Claremont restaurant scene that has people all over campus talking. I decided to check it out for myself.

$5 Review

Sunny Rockers Sound Muddy
By Kate Brokaw
A&F Associate

Promoting a new album of surprisingly gloomy resplendence, lush pop rockers Beulah played for two hours at the Troubadour last Friday , a fan-friendly set that was also notable for its unfortunately muddy sound quality. The darker selections from the new Yoko were able to hold up in this live setting, but the carefully orchestrated individual parts of many other songs were all too often lost in a wall of sound, a glaring change from the the rich, crystal-clear production of the band’s records.

MLA Format A Necessary Evil
By Sam Cross
Staff Writer

Louis Menand, graduate of this fine institution and author of many a serious and prize-winning book, wrote an article for the New Yorker recently about the pleasures and aggravations of formatting and what’s becoming of those in the era of Microsoft Word. Menand begins his article by remembering, or possibly imagining, a late-night tussle with a final essay here at his alma mater. He describes the absolute impossibility of formatting a bibliography in the days before computers, but hastens to add that computers have really just made the difficulties more intransigent and various.