Category — News

Andy Suzuki ’09, former Jabberwock and heartthrob, is playing tonight at The Gate until 10PM. Stop by for a slice and a song! Swoon guaranteed.

All Super Bowls have their drama: the onside kick to start the second half, the game-changing interception, the helmet catch. For the diehard football fans among us, this Sunday is a half-step short of Christmas, especially if your team is playing for the Lombardi trophy.

If this Super Bowl is half as exciting as Super Bowl XLII, the commercials won't be the only things worth watching.

For the rest of our great nation, Super Bowl Sunday is a truly American holiday: food, football, and TV. I’m not talking about the game itself, of course; I’m talking about the commercials. Advertisers still think reaching a massive national audience is a worthwhile pursuit, so the going rate for 30 seconds of air time during the Super Bowl is a preposterous $3.5 million ($4 million if you want to be right before kickoff). The companies who spend this fortune on commercials always make it worth our while (and their money), sometimes more than the game itself.

Now, in a very Black-Friday-becomes-Black-Friday at 5AM-becomes-Black-Thursday right after Thanksgiving-meal way, a lot of companies have released their ads on YouTube or elsewhere before the game; they’ve become an institution unto themselves.

So BlogDailyHerald can make even your Super Bowl commercial watching even more mindless and convenient, we’ve prepared a preview of some of the ads already out online. [Read more →]

Brown’s third annual Writing Is Live Festival, a showcase for plays written by Brown graduate and undergraduate students, began yesterday and runs through February 13^th. The festival is sponsored by the Theater Arts and Performance Studies department (or TAPS, for the more acronym-inclined) and will feature six plays over the course of the next ten days.

As if getting to experience the incredible talents of other Brown students firsthand wasn’t enough, all performances during the festival are completely free. Take advantage of the second week of the semester and check out a play – your schedule won’t always be this wide open. The festival’s website has more information on dates, times, and locations of each specific performance.

Last-minute centerpiece?

Ah football, that most American of traditions. And what Easter is for Christians, what Yom Kippur is for Jews, what Festivus is for the rest of us, the Super Bowl is for America. On this high holiday of American athleticism (and capitalism at its best), it’s imperative that we be GIANTLY PATRIOTIC by insulting each other, throwing temper tantrums over missed field goals, betting irresponsible amounts of money, and glutting ourselves on Mexican food. (Makes sense, right?) And what could be more Amurrican than New York vs. Boston? A showdown between the two in the heartland (say, Indiana…in a stadium named after an oil company). We all know that New England clam chowder trumps its Manhattan (or, to be accurate, Jersey) counterpart, but that barely scratches the surface of classic Super Bowl food. Below, our ideas for snacks you can make — be it off meal plan or completely BuDS-sourced.

[Read more →]

If you’re someone who watches the Super Bowl for the commercials, loses friends over the Marvel vs. DC debate, and saw High School Musical On Ice during sophomore year eighth grade, swing by the Meehan Ice Rink after the men’s hockey game for the Brown Band’s Superhero Ice Show.

Like, right now.

It’s everything you know and love about the band — scrambling, suggestive formations and tubas — but ON ICE! Why? Because everything is better on ice: from Disney movies to scotch.

If you miss it, there’s another ice show February 17 (the same night as IvyQ, making that weekend the biggest rainbow snow cone ever), but you’re still a horrible person without school spirit.

Image via.

The wrestling squad has two home conference matches this weekend, and is looking for its third straight win.

You think Brown sports teams are a bit boring, don’t you? That’s the underlying assumption, right? After all, The Herald ran a series about how we’re “Underdog U.”  But maybe we’re all just really attending the wrong sports. Women’s basketball coach Jean Marie Burr won her 300th game last week against Dartmouth, and the wrestling and men’s tennis teams are racking up some impressive wins. Maybe you’ll cheer them on this weekend, or maybe you’ll stick with the typical hockey. Here’s a quick schedule of Bruno’s home matches this weekend:

Friday, Feb. 3

M. hockey looks to stay in the playoff picture with a win over Clarkson at 7pm.

But if hockey’s not your thing, m. basketball will be battling Princeton next door at the Pizz., also at 7pm.

And then, if you get bored watching tall dudes run up and down a court, you can head to the indoor tennis courts in the Pizz to watch w. tennis against PC at 8pm.

Saturday, Feb. 4 [Read more →]

After taking to the streets in search of students and alums who do cool things, we have pushed forward to the new frontier: professors. Though we expect our professors to be brilliant, sometimes we don’t realize that they’re also pretty cool. 

Have you ever hesitated to dig into an appetizer at an exotic restaurant because of its odor? Sure, it looked delicious in print…but now Ratty take-out doesn’t seem so bad. Ever wonder why smell can either make or break a deal when it comes to food? Dr. Rachel Herz’s new book explores that phenomenon and more as she seeks to explain our varied reactions to the emotion of disgust. BlogDH got all the deets from Dr. Herz herself.

Dr. Herz, an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, is considered one of the world’s leading experts in the psychology of smell. Her research is focused on the sense of smell and emotion, and more recently, the emotion of disgust in particular. And if you’ve been reading the Wall Street Journal or using your nifty WashPo Social Reader recently, you’ll notice that her new book, That’s Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion, has been getting a lot of attention.  [Read more →]

Retro-style “Diamonds and Coal” from The Herald’s issue on March 7, 2003:

“A diamond to the Navy seaman who discovered the world’s biggest Cheeto. Forget Cancun – this year we’re going to Alguna, Iowa, for spring break.”

Can’t get enough D&C? Read slightly more current incarnations in today’s Herald, or submit your own at www.DiamondsandCoal.com!

Angel's deficit-busting game face

With our national dialogue dominated by talk of economic recession and the GOP circus primaries, it’s often easy to overlook what’s going on behind the scenes in our beloved city. Well, rest assured — things are going to shit here too. At a press conference Thursday afternoon, Mayor Angel Taveras stated that Providence is in danger of bankruptcy. The city’s deficit stands at $22.5 million. If the current budget stays on track, Providence could be out of money by June.

Things are looking bleak, but  Taveras — who already significantly cut the projected deficit for 2012 — has a plan. He intends to cut benefits for retirees, specifically the compensations for cost of living increases in their pensions. He’s also looking to the city’s nonprofit organizations (read: this University) to pay up. Brown doesn’t pay any taxes to the city (as some parkgoers politely pointed out last month), and Taveras stated Thursday he would support legislation that would force us to give money to the city. Seeing as our total property tax would be over $30 million, this isn’t exactly music to Ruth’s ears.

You could say Providence has run out of Flex Points and is calling up Mom for extra declining balance Bear Bucks. Taveras’ own apt metaphor is that Brown is in the middle of a “Category 5 hurricane.” And we thought the climes were calmer this year…