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(06/28/12 3:15pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Princess Merida is not a badass. In Pixar’s latest, “Brave,” the animation studio known for movies with strong stories and characters sports a heroine and leading lady — the studio’s first in its 13 films. The trailers promise a strong-willed woman who defies the fate pushed upon her to forge her own path. Throughout the film, however, we see Merida for who she really is: a petulant, selfish teenager. She is only a teenager, after all.When Queen Elinor, Merida’s mother, announces that the first-born sons from their kingdom’s three neighboring clans will fight for her daughter’s hand in marriage, as is tradition, Merida flat-out refuses. The princess goes so far in her defiance that she nearly causes a war between the clans. Not that viewers should worry. All the men in this film are buffoons who spend more time eating and arguing than making any decisions whatsoever.I know this may spoil the plot (it also spoiled any of my hopes in this movie being saved), but the film’s twist comes when Merida wishes to change her mother instead of herself, to find her own destiny. But things get hairy. Something is just missing in this film. It has magic, but it isn’t creative. It has heart, but it isn’t worn on its sleeve. It has a simple message and a simple desire — to show the strengths of the motherdaughter relationship — but it takes unneeded back roads to get there. It’s a Pixar movie, so its animation is beautiful, but Merida is a lacking character. Even with her l aming red hair, she’s forgettable.By Bailey Loosemore
(05/10/12 1:06am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The IU Board of Trustees has approved a $30.3 million increase in the 2012-13 budget, which will go toward merit-based salary increases, additional financial aid and utilities costs. Money used for the increased budget comes from the tuition increase approved by the Board of Trustees in May 2011, along with interest rates and research dollars, said IU Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Neil Theobald.For the 2012-13 academic year, in-state tuition will increase by 3.5 percent and out-of-state tuition by 5.5 percent. Theobald said though tuition is rising, the additional financial aid provided through the budget will keep students’ out-of-pocket costs down.Associate Vice President of University Communications Mark Land said students are paying nearly the same amount as they were five or six years ago. He added that the University has doubled the amount of money put into scholarships and grants during the last few years.“A lot of people are concerned when tuition goes up,” he said. “Tuition is the sticker price, and many, many people don’t pay that.”Theobald said IU President Michael McRobbie’s main focus when allocating the budget is affordability and academic excellence. To continue academic excellence, Theobald said McRobbie wanted to give salary increases to staff members who have not received them in recent years. The 2012-13 budget calls for 1.5 to 2.2 percent increases to IU employees across all eight campuses. “It’s a big University, so we were able to do as much as we could on salaries,” Theobald said. “It’s never as much as we’d like to do. But an average of 2.2 percent demonstrates the president’s commitment to academic excellence and the role our employees playin that.”Along with the budget increase, Theobald said $68 million in one-time funds will be used for deferred maintenance projects across the eight campuses. According to an IU press release, the University’s deferred maintenance backlog is estimated at $600 million.Money for the projects comes from student fees initiated for the 2012-13 academic year. The fees range from $120 to $360 and were decided upon in May 2011 along with tuition increase, Theobald said. IU-Bloomington students will pay a one-time fee of $360. The student fee will raise $25 million of the $68 million across the eight campuses, Theobald said. IU-Bloomington will receive $43.3 million of the maintenance funds, with $13.8 million coming from the student fee. IU is one of three public universities in Indiana to employ the student fee, Theobald said. Purdue University and Ivy Tech Community College have already used the fee, he said. “It’s temporary, and our hope is the state starts funding facilities and that fee will go away,” Theobald said. Though the budget will increase by only 1.7 percent, Theobald said the additional funds will be well spent. “It’s lean, but our priorities here are salaries and financial aid, and we were at least able to make some progress in both,” he said.
(05/01/12 9:28pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Police responded to an Occupy Bloomington event Tuesday morning after receiving a complaint at 8:03 a.m. that protesters had erected an Army surplus tent on a city-owned lot near the B-Line Trail between 10th and 11th streets.Approximately 20 occupy protesters gathered in the lot to kick off their May Day celebration, the International Day of Workers Solidarity, said protester Adam Watts. When more than 25 police officers arrived, including officers from the Bloomington Police Department, Monroe County Sheriff’s Department, IU Police Department and Indiana State Police, officers began dismantling the tent. BPD Detective Sergeant John Kovach said officers did not care if the group protested, but they did not want the tent erected. BPD officer Dana Runnebohm carried a pepper ball gun, Kovach said. Once officers dismantled the tent and left it folded on the green grass, they walked toward their squad cars in a group as protesters clapped and cheered.“From Bloomington to Greece, fuck the police,” protesters yelled in unison.Watts said the surplus tent was intended to act as a central meeting location and rain shelter during their day-long May Day festivities. The Really, Really Free Market, which allowed members of the community to obtain or give away free items, was supposed to take place inside the tent, Watts said. But once officers disallowed the structure, they moved the event to a location along the B-Line Trail. As such a “mild and tame event,” Watts said he was surprised it was taken as a serious threat from various law enforcement agencies.“It just shows exactly how terrified the people in control are and how much they are beginning to realize that they are losing their power, that the people are taking the power back,” Watts said. “Although the tent was the official complaint, I think it was much larger than that.”Following the Really, Really Free Market, Occupiers hosted a “teach-in” at Boxcar Books at 408 E. 6th St.Beginning at 5:30 p.m. Monday, Watts said protesters are planning a rally at IU’s Sample Gates, followed by a march to an unknown location at 6 p.m.Between 10 p.m. and midnight, Watts said the group will then convene at IU’s Herman B Wells Library to discuss alternatives to “corporate” universities.“Even though I am a student and not in a trade union, it’s a day of solidarity to show that this is our collective fight, both yours and mine, and I’ve got your back,” Watts said.
(04/26/12 3:26am)
WEEKEND previews this summer's big upcoming movies
(04/18/12 3:17pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Cutters Coach Jim Kirkham has somewhat of a plan for his riders in the final week before race day, but he doesn’t encourage them to deviate too much from their normal schedule. Here are a few tips for riders’ training in the final days and a breakdown of the Cutters’ last week of riding.MondayExchange day. Since the track is still open, the riders will make sure their exchanges and bikes are still in good order. They’ll do a light day on the bike.TuesdayOff day. The riders will either take an off day or a day of active recovery in which they stretch their legs and get their blood flow going if they want, but not anything to stress their hearts.WednesdayHard day. Wednesday is the last day at the track, so the riders will do last-minute exchanges, make sure all the bolts are tightened on the bikes and make sure the bikes roll the way they want them to. Then they’ll say goodbye to the track.ThursdayLight day. The riders will do maybe an hour on the bike on the road.FridayHard day. Riders will do two hours on the bike with increased efforts.SaturdayRace day. The team will do a road warm-up before the race, about an hour-and-a-half road ride, before heading to the track to warm up the riders’ legs.
(04/17/12 4:01am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>There’s more than one Kate Upton. There’s the one on the cover of the 2012 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, and then there’s the one who’s an IU sophomore in the Jacobs School of Music. Though her biography has been used along with photos of the former, our Kate Upton is shorter than the first, has brown hair and knows little about basketball or why Cody Zeller would ask her on a date. Our Kate Upton goes by Katie.An Indiana Daily Student reporter sat down with Katie to find out a little more about her.IDS Who are you, exactly?KATIE UPTON I’m Katie Upton. I go by Katie instead of Kate. My full name is Katherine Elizabeth Upton, and her name is also Katherine Elizabeth Upton, spelled exactly the same way, so obviously it leads to more confusion. Yeah, but I’m the one that’s from Des Moines, Iowa, and I was born in 1991 instead of ’92. So you’ll find some articles that say she’s from Des Moines, Iowa, and she’s not. She’s from Wisconsin. So, yeah, I’m the horn player as well.IDS So people actually use your biography on the Jacobs School website as hers?UPTON Since I’m a musician, I have my biography available on the Jacobs School of Music website and on my own, so people have taken that biography and put it with her picture instead of mine, actually, on multiple websites. There were two weeks on Wikipedia where my biography was on her Wikipedia page with her picture. My mom got so excited that she printed off like four copies to keep because she thought it was so hilarious. So I think that’s probably where the confusion started, was probably with Wikipedia.IDS How have you been mixed up with her besides the biography?UPTON I really haven’t. I mean, there have been people that have emailed me asking me on dates and to Little 500 parties. But obviously there’s not any mix-up in person. I’m clearly not Kate Upton. So it just happened because of the biographies, and people have been sending me emails. So that’s pretty much it.IDS She wasn’t really in the public eye until the Sports Illustrated cover, which was just recently. Is that about when it started?UPTON It was a little bit before then because I think I had heard about her a bit before the Sports Illustrated cover thing happened because we share the same name. So a couple of my guy friends who had heard of her before the Sports Illustrated cover were like “this is funny,” so they’d post stuff on my Facebook wall like, “Hey, I know the other Kate Upton.” And so, like, I’d heard about it before, she was on the cover of Sports Illustrated, but the cover has certainly made things pick up with odd coincidences like the emails and stuff. That hadn’t ever happened before until after the cover.IDS Cody Zeller tweeted that he was coming back next season because he hadn’t gotten a date with Kate Upton yet. If he asks you on a date, what would you say?UPTON I don’t really follow basketball, so I feel really bad. I know that he’s famous and that he’s really, really good. I mean, free food, I’d go on the date.
(04/12/12 12:58am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Anyone can start a food cart.All you do is make some food, put it in a cart and sell it to drunk people outside bars. It’s simple.Nick Palmiotto disagrees.“A lot of people have the notion that, ‘Oh, it’s a lot of drunk people who go out there. You’ll make a killing,’” Palmiotto said. “Drunk kids are surprisingly frugal. They go after the best deal.”Palmiotto co-owns Naughty Dog, a local hot dog store on Bloomington’s west side.Shortly after the store opened in 2009, the owners started a food cart to serve hot dogs Thursdays through Saturdays at the corner of Seventh and Walnut streets.They’ve been doing well, Palmiotto said, but the cart doesn’t take in enough revenue to stand on its own.“Actually, we had the idea of just doing vending carts, but you have to build a kitchen anyway,” he said. “Commercial equipment is so freaking expensive, but it’s worked out nice for us.”While the food cart industry is on the rise — Entrepreneur.com reports more than 5 million food carts in the United States as of July 2011 — Palmiotto said the Bloomington food cart scene isn’t as large as some think.Palmiotto said most food carts that stand alone without a storefront don’t last long. There are only two places to put them that would get enough foot traffic — on Kirkwood Avenue and at the corner where Naughty Dog is set up — and new food-cart owners are surprised when they don’t make as much money as they thought.“They go out there from midnight to four in the morning, and they’re not making as much as they thought they could,” Palmiotto said. “You can’t ignore the health department, you can’t ignore the city, you have to play by the rules. They just start doing it.”Naughty Dog’s food cart serves as advertising for the store and gets the restaurant’s food closer to campus and east-side residents. But even with the benefit of having a store, Palmiotto said the food cart faces competition from restaurants near the bars that also sell food until 3 or 4 a.m. and maintain high food costs.“What most people think is it’s a gold mine, and it’s really not,” Palmiotto said. “It’s definitely nice. It helps. It’s one more revenue stream that helps, but we couldn’t survive on it, by no means.”
(04/05/12 3:41pm)
What to do if you think you have been sexually assaulted and information on how to get help.
(04/05/12 3:37pm)
Senior Caroline Shurig and Middle Way House Prevention Programs Coordinator Cierra Thomas-Williams share their stories of sexual assault and helping other survivors. Also, hear audio of their experiences with sexual assault.
(04/04/12 4:34am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>An anti-Semitic act of vandalism was found Monday on a poster in the offices of the Robert A. and Sandra B. Borns Jewish Studies Program in Goodbody Hall.The word “Hitler” and a swastika were drawn on the poster in black Magic Marker.While IU police have responded to the incident and have identified two persons of interest, the vandalism highlights a larger issue in Indiana. The state is one of five in the nation that do not have a law regarding hate crimes and cannot sentence offenders for committing such acts.“Indiana is lacking in that sense,” said Rabbi Yehoshua Chincholker, director of the Chabad House Jewish Student Center.The lack of a hate crime statute came into play March 27 when Mark Zacharias pled guilty to criminal mischief for throwing a rock at a glass display case at the Jewish Studies Program office Nov. 30, 2010. He was sentenced to 40 hours of community service.“It really indicates how desperately we need hate crime legislation,” said Rabbi Sue Laikin Silberberg of the Helene G. Simon Hillel Center. “We’re one of the few states that don’t have it.”Zacharias, a former scholarship coordinator for Hutton Honors College, was originally charged with institutional criminal mischief, a Class-D felony. But an official from the Monroe County Prosecutor’s Office said the charge was lowered to criminal mischief, a Class-B felony, because the institutional mischief law defines a school as K-12.Monroe Circuit Judge Teresa Harper sentenced Zacharias to six months probation in addition to the community service. He also had to pay $300 in restitution for a theft case that was dismissed.If Zacharias had been charged with institutional mischief, he could have faced up to a three-year jail sentence.Currently, no one has been charged with the additional acts of vandalism that occurred around the same time as Zacharias’ act.On Nov. 23, 2010, members of the Chabad House Jewish Student Center found a rock thrown through a back window of the center. Four other incidents, including the Jewish Studies Program vandalism, took place in the following week.The incidents shocked IU and Bloomington community members and sparked a campus- and city-wide conversation about hate crimes. But because there is no hate crime statute, whether the community classified the incidents as hate crimes, offenders cannot be charged with committing them.“You can give it a label if you want, but it’s something we cannot and should not tolerate on campus and in our communities,” said Mark Land, associate vice president of University communications. “It’s the same thing with the anti-Semitic graffiti that we saw on campus this week.”IU Police Department Chief Keith Cash said in an email that police believe the two suspects are juveniles and not IU students, but until they have completed interviews with the individuals, the incident remains under investigation.“We’re happy,” Land said. “We’re satisfied that authorities are all taking these things very seriously because we take them very seriously.”Mary Kenney contributed to this article.
(03/26/12 3:59am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The Forest all-rookie men’s team makes up its own practice techniques. They don’t take them from anybody.“It’s a pride thing,” junior Zack Clark says.They’ve never done this before, never trained, never competed. Four of the six team members have never even seen the race — they’ll watch a tape of the 2004 race to prepare. But as they sit in the Forest Quad recreational room a few days before Little 500 qualifications, the team is all smiles.They’re ready.“Until we qualify, quals is our race day,” freshman Bo Henderson says.This past year, team captain Neal Ward started a team for the residence center, but it failed to qualify. They were the only team to fault out of quals. When he decided to restart the team this year, two of the original members had switched to other teams, and the fourth member had quit. Ward needed fresh riders.Clark and sophomore Jon Silverthorn, both transfer students, live in Forest and joined the team early in the year. Three freshmen — Henderson, Kyle Swain and Austin Portolese — joined in January.Most of the Forest members have been riding for a couple of years but not competitively. Silverthorn calls them “casual cyclists.”But their rookie status doesn’t phase them. As they hang out and practice, they joke more than they talk seriously.“It’s good to have serious and fun,” Clark says. “When we get on the track, we’re all serious. I put my game face on, usually. Want to see it?” His face goes still, his mouth a hard, straight line. He cracks after a few seconds.While the team hasn’t been training together that long, having fun has brought them closer.“We might be rookies, but we’re family,” Clark says. “Have you ever seen that movie ‘Up’? We’re like that. We’re very empathetic to each other. Like, when he got hurt” — he points to Swain, who broke his elbow in practice while exchanging with Ward — “we made Neal feel bad to make him feel better.”On Saturday, as the team waits on the field, it’s a different story. Clark’s game face is permanently on. The team is quieter than it was a few days earlier.Clark, Silverthorn, Portolese and Henderson stretch, readying themselves for quals. Ward stands next to them. While he’s the team captain, he says the four other members are better at exchanges than he is: He’s not sad he has to sit out.In a whirlwind few minutes, the team is herded from one station to the next — team photos, warm-ups, a quick pep talk, then onto the track.Henderson, the shortest of the four, is up first.As he rounds the third corner of his slow lap, a women’s rider mistakenly warms up on the track in front of him.“Get that girl off the track,” Silverthorn says, waving at her teammates.She exits just as Henderson rounds the last corner, speeding into his single lap.Clark steps onto the track. Because he, Silverthorn and Portolese can all ride the same bike height, he takes a bike to switch out.The exchange, which they’ve been practicing for months, goes off without a hitch, and Clark speeds around the track. As he exchanges with Silverthorn, however, Clark falls.On the sideline, Portolese and Henderson pause, watching as time slows down. Clark sits where he fell on the track, holding his right arm. His game face deflates as he stares down at the track. The team’s coach, Don Meyer, approaches him as Clark begins to stand. Meyer holds out his hand to Clark, who’s still holding his upper right arm.“Don’t touch me,” Clark says, throwing his helmet on the track with his left hand.In the stands, a woman yells, “Yeah, Forest! That’s an all-freshman team.”The race continues, and in no time, Silverthorn and Portolese have finished their laps and are back on the sideline looking for Clark.As Clark’s teammates stand around him, an emergency medical technician wraps gauze around Clark’s arm and back to keep his arm from moving. Henderson holds their white time card — 2:29.78. Good enough for 13th at the time they finished, 20th at the end of the day.“Head on over to the emergency room, dude,” the EMT says after wrapping Clark’s arm.“First, we’ve got to get a picture of this sexy guy,” Silverthorn says, putting his hand on Clark’s left shoulder and walking toward the time board.It’s bittersweet for the team, but they did it. As they stand under the board, smiling for the camera, they have the biggest prize they could get.They’re moving on to the next race day.
(03/22/12 1:57am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“Nowheresville” is right: In the Ting Tings’ second album, “Sounds from Nowheresville,” the English duo doesn’t quite know where in the music industry it wants to be.The album opens with “Silence,” a bass-heavy song with ghostly vocals, before moving to fun, nonsensical pop with “Guggenheim” and then turning to a dark plea in “Help.” The album scatters about with no direct connection between the tracks.And it seems the success of the duo’s first album, “We Started Nothing,” has frontwoman Katie White confused about her new image. In “Nothing,” White engaged us with sassy lyrics and a no-bullshit persona.In “Nowheresville,” she mixes that persona with the need for attention: “You love everybody else / Everybody else / Wish I was everybody else,” she sings in closing track “In Your Life.”Still, the album isn’t a complete loss. Middle tracks “Hang it up,” “Give it Back” and “Guggenheim” live up to the catchy melodies the Ting Tings are known for. Have fun with the first half, but go ahead and skip the second.
(03/07/12 9:35pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>When soapbox preaching is all you’ve got, / This movie’s just not going to get better; it’s not.You’ve got no tricks up your sleeve, no imagination to spare. / Finding someone who will like this “Lorax,” it’s rare.“Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax,” who are you named for? / Surely not the children’s author we all adore.You concealed his message of dire consequences and caring / With a meaningless plot, too many characters, not enough sparing / Of your brainwashing opinions. You see, they don’t fit / In this children’s loved fable. They don’t, not one bit.Your opening song about loving pollution, / About little boys glowing, about society’s delusion, / It made me cringe when I heard it, feel uncomfortable in the theater. / The constant warnings were like you killed a conservative horse, then beat her.Seuss’ book is filled with fantasy. It’s simple. It’s modest. / Your story is critical; it points fingers. Let’s be honest, / You know that it’s obvious, right down to that sign / During the Once-ler’s song that points to big business’s crime. / “Too Big to Fail” — we all know who you’re shunning. / Come on, directors, that’s not clever or cunning.But you did do something right: This film sure is pretty. / The colors are gorgeous, even if the dialogue’s not witty. / You made me laugh a few times, and those bears are the cutest. / But don’t be fooled, moviegoers. Take my advice: Don’t view this.
(03/05/12 2:28am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>HENRYVILLE, IND. — A light rain was already falling Friday when students from the Henryville elementary and high schools were sent home at 2:30 p.m., 20 minutes before regular dismissal.The rain was a prelude to the most destructive tornado in residents’ memory. The storm started with a funnel cloud that touched down at about 3:15 p.m. — 45 minutes after the schools sent the students home — followed minutes later by a monster tornado.Bus drivers herded students onto buses, but not enough time remained to get them all home. The drivers took matters into their own hands, driving their buses through fields, speeding to reach the next stop or shuttling the remaining students to one home to get them all out of danger.A little before 3:15 p.m., Bus 211 returned to the school’s parking lot, unable to outrun the storm. The driver rushed 11 students back into the high school, where they took refuge in the principal’s office along with 15 other people.Moments later, the storm lifted the bus and tossed it through the air, launching it through the front window of Budroe’s Family Restaurant.Nick Shelton was working on a lift in the back of his auto body garage, Henryville Auto Services, across the street from the school. As he worked under the car, no TV or radio played news coverage — there was nothing to warn him of the storm as he continued his routine.In Budroe’s Family Restaurant next door, employees and customers were watching the news and knew they needed to take cover. They knew Shelton wouldn’t know the storm was close. He wouldn’t have anywhere safe to hide in the open garage. With the storm approaching, someone from the diner ran to Shelton’s garage, telling him to join them in the diner’s basement.They made it just in time. As eight people crouched in the diner’s basement, the now-empty Bus 211 crashed through the wall.On Saturday, Andy Bell, Shelton and some friends stood next to Shelton’s demolished garage, now a pile of metal and debris. Two of the friends sorted through the wreckage.Bell said he couldn’t believe what he found in town.“Henryville doesn’t look the same,” he said. “When I came into town last night, it was like a new town.”Destroyed houses and businesses surrounded the schools for miles. The EF-4 tornado with 175-mph winds that swept through the town and others closeby, including Marysville to the northeast, left more damage than Clark County Sheriff Danny Rodden could describe the following day.“It has been assessed that we’ve got the largest area of problem, the most widespread,” he said. “It is very rural, so we’re doing the best we can, going door to door.”The Henryville tornado was the first of two in the area, weather officials said, and they followed essentially the same path, separated by about 10 minutes. Officials said the first tornado was on the ground for 52 miles and measured about 150 yards wide.In total, 12 fatalities were counted in southern Indiana.“Most of the searches are completed,” Indiana State Police Sgt. Jerry Goodin said. “We hope the number stays at eight for our three counties, but as this progresses throughout the day, it would not surprise us to have other fatalities.”Where Highway 161 enters Henryville, a gas station lay in a pile, like Shelton’s garage, across the street from a second gas station that was barely touched.A few blocks down, windows were blown out of a house that had been going through renovations. Near the front window, a box marked “Barb & Charlie’s baby memories” spilled onto a table.New Washington State Bank, near the house, posted a sign on its front door — “Bank closed temporarily, equipment problems.” While the building remained intact, the drive-up ATMs were nowhere to be seen.The Henryville elementary and high schools on Ferguson Street downtown took the brunt of the damage. Three or four buses remained in the parking lot Saturday, knocked to their sides, the windows shattered. Madelynn Evans, 6, threw a stick at Bus 201. Her mother, Wendy, shot her a look, then pulled Madelynn to her side.On Saturday, Madelynn and Wendy stood in the rubble near the bus, surveying the destruction to the town’s only school building — now missing most of the elementary school and the back wall of the high school’s gym. Photos of past basketball teams still hung on the gym’s walls, but the floor was covered in fallen debris.The high school had celebrated its 100-year anniversary last year, and the elementary school was added two years ago.“See the framework over there,” Bell said, pointing to the school. “That’s all that’s left of the two-year addition.”Now, students, parents and faculty are unsure about what will happen. According to the high school’s website, both schools will be out the week of March 5-9 due to the damage. But the school can’t be rebuilt in that time.“We could be out for a couple months — we could be out all year,” senior Logan Chapman said.Junior Miranda Hopper, wearing a Henryville Athletics sweatshirt, said she wanted to cry as she looked at the demolished school.“I’m in such disbelief,” she said. “I can’t take it all in.”“I had 40 math problems to do in geometry, and I didn’t want to do them,” she added. “Now I wish I had them to turn in.”
(03/03/12 2:12am)
After a string of storms Friday afternoon, several southern Indiana towns are working to clean up severe tornado damage. The death toll in the area is now at 12, down from the officially stated 14.
(03/01/12 5:10am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Tickets to the IU vs. Michigan State basketball game fanned from Randy Hammond’s hand Tuesday as he wandered Assembly Hall’s parking lot. Hammond, a ticket broker who works for ETA Tickets, stayed close to the stadium’s south entrance, haggling with prospective ticket buyers.Half an hour before tipoff, he still had more tickets than he thought he’d have.“I buy season tickets off people, then sell game by game,” he said. “It’s a lot of work. People don’t realize. You can’t pick and choose games.”The scene outside Assembly Hall changes drastically for bigger games, which more people want to attend. On Feb. 22, when IU played North Carolina Central, four ticket brokers and scalpers waited near the entrance of the stadium. Less than a week later, at the Michigan State game, the number of ticket sellers more than doubled.Hammond didn’t always have to deal with more competition. In Tom Crean’s early years as head coach, tickets weren’t moving as much.This year, however, it’s been harder to get tickets to buy and sell. This year, Crean’s team is winning. This year, everyone wants to go to the games. And more scalpers want in on the profits.At about 6:45 p.m. Tuesday, 15 minutes before tipoff, Hammond haggled with three customers.“$350,” Hammond said, holding out three tickets.“I don’t know, it’s getting close to tipoff,” Shane Martin said. He lit a cigarette and put it in his mouth.“$300.”Martin shook his head. “How about $260? $275?”Hammond paused, nodded. He had to get rid of the tickets.Martin took out his wallet, the cigarette hanging from his lips. He counted his bills, then handed the money to Hammond.“You just have to wait ‘til they’re at the price you want,” Martin said, heading into Assembly Hall. “They’re well over face value.”Hammond said he has sold IU basketball tickets since before Crean came on. He said Crean’s first years compared to this season — he held up his left hand, making a circle with his fingers and thumb, then did the same with his right — are like “day and night.”“The only thing good about the first year was some people didn’t realize how much the prices were dropping,” Hammond said.But ticket brokers, people who sell tickets mostly via the phone and online instead of at the stadium, still took a substantial loss in those first years, which Patrick O’Steen, owner of Bloomington-based company Tickets for Less, Inc., said some don’t realize.“We were stuck with several games where we couldn’t sell any tickets,” he said. “So we end up with 30, 40 tickets and lose $2,000 a game.”By buying season tickets, Hammond said, he will get money back out of this season’s biggest five games.“Then the rest is profit,” he said. “The biggest five games of the year will make the starting money back.”O’Steen said his company tries to sell all its tickets via the phone and be out of them by game day, but when he has tickets left, he’ll have someone sell them at the stadium.For the Michigan State game, O’Steen said he had six tickets left to sell, some of them dead center, row 12.“We were trying to get $295 each for them,” he said. “I think we ended up getting $150 each for them.”The closer the game, the more perishable the tickets become, and prices usually go down, O’Steen said. But in instances when there are no tickets on the market, O’Steen said prices can shoot up.“Generally, for most events, especially if it’s a week day, if you don’t care if you go or not, you can save some money,” he said.People buying the tickets think brokers are making a huge profit, but most of the time that’s not the case, O’Steen said. He said he doesn’t get tickets for $35 then sell them for a $300 profit. He usually spends a few hundred dollars per ticket to make a $50 profit, then sells 50 tickets.“They say, ‘How can you charge $250 a ticket?’” he said. “They don’t think about the four years that it took us to make a profit. Like, right now for Purdue, good Purdue tickets, you’re paying a couple hundred a ticket.”O’Steen said as of Wednesday, there were only 20 or 30 tickets for the Purdue game Sunday left on the market.“It can be expensive for the average fan to go on a year like this,” O’Steen said. “But nobody’s going on bad years, and we’re taking kind of a beating.”Five minutes after tipoff Tuesday, the momentum changed. Crowds of people no longer rushed by the scalpers, who still had a few tickets to sell.Though IU’s rankings this season have increased the ticket selling business, the demand hasn’t made Hammond or the other ticket brokers’ job any easier.At 7:10, Hammond wandered off for home, a few tickets still in hand.
(03/01/12 4:05am)
Michael Goering’s farm in Salem, Ind. is a part of a family tradition of making maple syrup.
(03/01/12 12:34am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Sometime in their youth, the band members of fun. missed their opportunity to experiment with auto-tune and should recognize that it never be used in an album.On their second album, “Some Nights,” fun. tries to fit in every gimmicky sound modifier possible. You can call it artistic, I call it annoying.Lyrics such as “What have we done / Oh my god” in “It Gets Better” make me ask, “What have you done? When is it getting better?” Through the entire song, lead singer Nate Reuss’ voice is auto-tuned to the point where any emotion he might have tried to convey is covered by a robotic effect that competes with the lyrics.On top of that, every song on the album tries to be the next teenage anthem. “We Are Young,” the album’s first single, already won us over as exactly that, but fun. wants to make every song on “Some Nights” meaningfully stand out.It doesn’t work. And what’s left is fun.’s practice album, which should have never made it to shelves.
(02/16/12 3:48am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Half an hour into “The Vow,” my boyfriend, startled awake and said, “I didn’t even know I was tired.”I wish I could have done the same.“The Vow” was spectacularly bad. What the previews depicted to be a feel-good romance movie turned into a two-hour trailer with each scene feeling more awkward and misplaced than the last. This is not what I was promised.I was promised to see Leo (Channing Tatum) cutely try to make Paige (Rachel McAdams) fall in love with him again after she lost her memory. No — Leo tries maybe twice to regain her love before taking the backseat to the second “plot,” centered around Paige’s relationship with her controlling parents.Instead of giving us any feeling of what it’s like to live in that cliché situation, McAdams barely cracks a facial expression in the entire film. Way to make us feel warm and gooey for Valentine’s Day, Ms. McAdams. After seeing your latest, I wish I had memory loss.
(02/02/12 2:45am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>What do you do when the other founding member of your band not only drops out, but also reportedly ends your romance?You write a solid, ’80s-esque album more heartfelt than the first — one that still holds all the quirks — and let it all out.Chairlift’s “Something” places the revengeful (“Sidewalk Safari”) next to the sweetly romantic (“Met Before”) all over an airy, techno-pop beat.They’re simple beats that let Caroline Polachek’s voice shine, as it should. Her voice floats over the melodies like a harder, more modern Pat Benatar, making every change from high to low seem effortless. She can go from rhythm and blues emotional in “Cool as a Fire” to quick and breathy in “I Belong in Your Arms.”Nothing on “Something” comes across as especially striking or difficult. There are definitely a few songs I’ll never listen to again, but it does offer a refreshing pop sound that will make other indie bands pay attention.