January 27, 2011University of Toronto’s Independent Weekly Vol. XXXIII N0. 1

the newspaper

MartÍn WalDMan

A staff report released at City Hall last week showed that the cost of the 2015 Pan-Am Games in Toronto will not only exceed the city’s initial $49.5 million budget announced in February of 2009, but will in fact be near-ly double that, at an estimated $96.5 million.

A major factor in the budget increase is the excavation of a former landfi ll at U of T Scar-borough North Campus, the planned site of the Pan-Am Games aquatic venue.

To make construction viable, the land has to be remediated, at a cost of about $23 million. Mayor Rob Ford and members

PanAm Gamesbudget doubles

Why the UTSC aquatic centre is costing an extra $23 million

Continued on page 2

of the city Executive Committee expressed shock at the fi gures before them, and promised that Toronto would not be on the hook for any further “surprise” expenses that appeared between now and the event itself.

The doubling of the Pan-Am price tag does not come as a sur-prise to community groups such as No Games Toronto, which provided some of the most vo-cal opposition to the event in the months leading up to To-ronto’s selection as the host city. Their central criticisms revolved around the inevitable cost overruns that the munici-pal and provincial governments would be saddled with. Citing

U of T library embarks on massive digitization project130,000,000 pages and counting

sanDra DeGranDis

With Google books and devices like Kindle giving people the opportunity to access reading material online, it is no wonder that the digitization of books and other documents is gain-ing popularity. Many European nations have made great efforts to digitize historical documents including books, photographs, newspapers and even broad-casting material. Though Cana-da does not yet have a cohesive national plan to digitize its print and historical documents, U of Continued on page 6

T has been working in partner-ship with Internet Archive Can-ada in order to digitize about 300,000 public-domain books.

While digitization of printed material has its supporters and dissenters, the benefi ts from such a process seem to outweigh the cons. Most books or other historical documents are only available in specifi c libraries and only to the people that have access to them. Likewise, out of print materials are hard to come by. Through digitization, these and other types of mate-

page 5

The rise of the musical underdogThe ukulele comes to serenade U of T

Digital archivists work in a silent atmosphere on Robarts seventh fl oor, archiving documents for U of T’s new library digitization eff ort in col-laboration with Internet Archive Canada.

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MartÍn WalDMan

This past Saturday, Sidney Smith Hall hosted Great Minds for Whose Future?, an anti-corporitazation teach-in that was the latest event in a grow-ing overall discussion about corporate infl uence at U of T. A panel of speakers discussed the effects of corporatization and how to combat its ongoing in-fl uence, and while much discus-sion with respect to U of T was centred around the role of Peter Munk and Barrick Gold, panel-ists also included an organizer in similar anti-corporatization campaigns at the University of California at Berkeley, as well as a speaker from the the Extrac-tive Industries Research Group at York University.

The ongoing trend of univer-sities seeking out private dona-tions is certainly not a new phe-

Continued on page 2

Reclaiming U of T campaignaims at private donor infl uence

on campus

Great Minds brainstorm corporate takedown

Arts EditorSuzie Balabuch

ERRATAU of T General Assembly facilitator Leslie Jermyn

was mistakenly identified as Leslie German, a non-person.

2 January 27, 2011

the newspaperEditor-in-Chief

Helene Goderis

Web EditorAndrew Gyorkos

ContributorsMay Arida, Sandra DeGrandis, Andrew Gyorkos,

Stephanie Kervin, Cara Sabatini, Jess Stokes

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the news

Illustrations EditorDave Bell

News EditorMartín Waldman

Contributing EditorDiana Wilson

Photo EditorBodi Bold

PanAm budget doublesContinued from page 1

N u t r i t i o n i s t

P o d i a t r i s t

H e a l t h p h y s i c i s t

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the experiences of Pan-Am and Olympic Games in Winnipeg and Vancouver respectively, No Games Toronto considered the promise of jobs, infrastructure projects and affordable hous-ing to be of little substance, and were critical of hosting a one-time large-scale sporting event in the midst of an economic downturn.

Andrew Arifuzzaman, Chief Strategy Officer at UTSC, notes that the planning for the aquat-ics centre was by no means a hasty process. Discussions about building a new facility first started over 6 years ago. Currently, the UTSC Athletics Centre is designed for 4,000 people, and had very limited facilities considering the stu-dent body at UTSC has grown to 10,000 people. According to Arifuzzaman, “expanding the way U of T Mississauga did wasn’t really an option, we needed a new facility.”

Arifuzzaman explains that af-ter being approached by the city

as a potential site for the aquat-ics centre, the opportunity to le-verage provincial and municipal funds towards the construction of the “crown jewel of the Pan-Am Games” was impossible to pass up. “Of course we want to attract the best students, give them the opportunity to train in an excellent facility while at U of T, and also address some stu-dent experience concerns that are going on.”

The excavation and remedia-tion costs for UTSC North Cam-pus were not clear until recently because an exact location for the aquatics centre, which will be over 32,000 square metres (roughly the size of five foot-ball fields), had not been final-ized. The fact that none of the remediation costs, which equal roughly half of the original city budget, had been factored into the Pan-Am Games price tag, shows that the concerns ex-pressed by No Games Toronto might have been justified after all.

nomenon in Canada or abroad, but according to Zexi Wang, UTSU VP External, U of T is beginning to emerge as an es-pecially bad example.

“The U of T administration seems particularly unreserved about partnering with corpora-tions and the university itself increasingly operates like a cor-poration,” Wang explains. “Stu-dents, for instance, are referred to as Business Income Units (B.I.U.s) in Governing Council documents. Fourteen of the 50 seats on Governing Council...are reserved for government appointees, most of whom are business leaders.”

Peter Munk’s donation and influence at U of T has become the key target of anti-corporati-zation on campus. Sakura Saun-ders, Editor of ProtestBarrick.net and member of the Mining Injustice Solidarity Network, as well as an organizer of Satur-day’s event, notes that Munk’s company, Barrick Gold, is ac-cused of human rights abuses, environmental violations, and corrupt practices at many of their operations around the globe. Saunders also outlined

the major problems with Peter Munk’s agreement with U of T, and why it represents a “worst case scenario” for corporate control. “Munk’s influence in the School [of Global Affairs] is especially troubling as the school’s area of study, Inter-national Relations and Global Policy, are areas in which Munk has vested business interests.”

In the face of inadequate funding from the provincial government, university admin-istrations are often left in a dif-ficult situation, faced with few options to avoid budget short-falls. At press time the Office of the Provost had not responded for comment, but it is impor-tant to note the essential role that private donations can play from the perspective of a uni-versity administration.

However, Angela Regnier, UTSU Executive Director, points out that these donations can open the door for inter-ference in academic freedom, something that is already hap-pening at U of T. “Research con-tracts frequently include non-disclosure agreements which gag scientists from being able

to publish results which might be unfavorable to the sponsor - such as the case of Dr. Nancy Olivieri.” According to Regnier, “academic integrity has long been compromised because pri-vate companies have research goals and values that are simply incongruent with the purpose of the university - to foster critical inquiry, support human rights, and produce knowledge for the common good.”

Organizers of Saturday’s teach-in, such as Zexi Wang and Sakura Saunders, were encour-aged by the turnout over the weekend, as well as the mix of students, staff and faculty at the event. Asked if anti-corporatiza-tion initiatives are truly gaining momentum at U of T, Saunders seems optimistic. “With events such as the General Assembly, and with more events discuss-ing the corporatization of U of T, I feel like awareness will spread... [T]he events in this last week were a strong begin-ning to a campaign that aims to scrap the Munk contract as it is currently written, and spread awareness about the impacts of such agreements.”

Great MindsContinued from page 1

3January 27, 2011 the news

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The ukelele makes a strong comeback on the contemporary music scene

Ukulele rising

suzie balabuch

What did you think of when you saw Ryan Gosling serenad-ing Michelle Williams with a ukulele in the Blue Valentine trailer? Certainly not a beach somewhere in Hawaii, with girls in grass skirts dancing in the background.

The charming four-stringed instrument is poised to make a comeback, and be taken serious-ly this time around. The ukulele has made a recent resurgence into music and pop culture, ris-ing like a cutesy phoenix from the ashes, charming the pants off many and converting non-musicians to seasoned pluckers and strummers.

Contemporary artists like In-grid Michealson, Jason Mraz, Sara Bareilles, and Nellie McK-ay have all fallen in love with the conveniently sized instrument. Michaelson’s sublime uke ren-dition of Radiohead’s “Creep” has 85,000 hits on YouTube. Nellie McKay reworks old jazz standards like “If I Had You” into beautifully arranged uke pieces that obliterate the old stigmas that the ukulele has faced in the past.

The realization of this mu-sical/pop culture phenom-enon occurred to this writer after attending three concerts (not weird ones in a meadow, I swear), in which the ukulele played an important role.

Now, the ukulele phenom-enon has touched down at U of T. Starting January 30, Hart House will be offering a class called “The Lover’s Uku-lele”, taught by avid ukuleleist, teacher and ukulele instrument salesman Thomas Dean. The class is a 3-week journey end-ing on February 14 which aims to get participants to compose and play their own love song for their valentine.

the newspaper got the chance to speak with Dean, who thinks that the ukulele phenomenon can be explained in many ways. Firstly, the quality of the instru-ment has improved, lending the uke a richer sound. “One of the reasons is it’s now being manu-factured in such a way that it is not a toy. That means it can ac-tually be taking seriously,” says Dean.

Also, the ukulele has experi-enced a boost in popularity due to star power. Many celebrities,

not normally music-affi liated, play the ukulele, and they play it well. Warren Buffett taught Bill Gates how to play, Steve Martin is an enthusiast, and Marylin Monroe and Lucille Ball were uke players as well.

Renowned musicians have been carrying on a secret love affair with the ukulele for years. For instance, all of the Beatles played the ukulele. George Har-rison, or “the godfather of the ukulele resurgence”, as Dean calls him, would compose al-most all of his songs on the uke

and then write them for the gui-tar and other instruments.

Another reason for the popu-larity of this amazing instru-ment is that it is very versatile. The uke is not restricted to Ha-waiian folk-songs only. It is pos-sible to play any genre of music on the ukulele, be it classic rock or classic renaissance music.

The most fl eeting reason of them all is that the ukulele sim-ply seems to make people hap-py. Dean tells a story of a friend of his who “strummed her way out of depression.” Its friendly

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sound is undeniably soothing, even if hearing it for the fi rst

time. Dean says, “The ukulele brings a lot of stress relief. You just feel good playing the darn thing. You don’t even have to be very accomplished.” Ukuleists may be “fi erce individualists” according to Dean, but they also have a very strong sense of com-munity. As abundantly clear in the trailer for the documentary, The Mighty Uke, the ukulele brings people together from all over, like a “social sport.”

Toronto is lucky enough to possess its own ukulele collec-tive, the Corktown Ukulele Jam, meeting every Wednesday. the newspaper spoke with perform-er and Corktown member Uku-lele Gaga (aka. Victoria Dobbs, a U of T alum). “For two years its founders have worked non-stop to providing free weekly workshops, group jams, open mics, and more, and what’s developed is a community of people of all ages and skill levels working together to learn and play ukulele. Having the oppor-tunity to become a part of that community has been above all my favourite part of this musi-cal adventure!”

Like Ukulele Gaga, Dean has been part of a tightknit ukulele community for some time. He concludes, “For some reason, even though people like to play it on their own and make up sons, the cool thing about it, is that they love to be together. They’re learning from one another and sharing, and that makes people feel good.”

For more information on “The Lover’s Ukulele” at Hart House, visit http://www.hart-house.utoronto.ca/class/lov-ers-ukulele-2903.

To fi nd out more about the Corktown Ukulele Jam , vis-it http://www.torontoukes.com/.

4 January 27, 2011the inside

Toronto DJ Pat McGuire schools us on the legitimacy of laptop DJing

DJ MacBook ProJess stOKes

If you’re anything like me, you spend a lot of your time in shitty dive bars listening to your friends or random people play music off of laptops. Some people call these people Laptop DJs or DJ MacBook Pro, jokes meant to marginalize the le-gitimacy of playing music off of programs, such as iTunes, as a musical art form. In a time when everyone seems to have laptops and there is endless access to vast archives of free music, what makes an individual more qualifi ed to quench a crowd’s musical thirst? Can these peo-ple call themselves DJs or does the absence of turntables and mixing equipment makes them just another dude playing some songs in a bar?

Patrick McGuire is an up and coming Toronto DJ who spends a lot of his time playing music in bars and galleries through-out this concrete playground. Over the past three years he’s been instrumental in the cre-ation of hip-hop parties in To-ronto (White Girl, First World Problems, Bad Taste), fi lling a much-needed niche for those of us who just can’t handle any-more house and dubstep in our lives. “We started because a friend of mine who I was in res-idence with, James and I, were the only skinny white people we knew that were obsessed with hip-hop. We were obsessed to the point were went out and we couldn’t really enjoy ourselves because we thought we could do it better.” He’s interviewed a range of popular hip-hop art-ists from Clipse to Kid CuDi. This Friday he’ll be opening for the sold out Das Racist show at Wrongbar (FYI 50 door tickets left) – his largest venue yet. I checked in with him at home to get thoughts on the legiti-macy of laptop DJs, the Toron-to hiphop scene and the art of hyping a crowd.

When asked how he responds to people who think playing mu-sic on computers in bars is not a legitimate art form, Pat’s reply is straight forward: “I think those people are really bitter and I think a lot of people who do say stuff like that are traditionalists of something that’s just not even worth being traditional about. One of the classic debates on this subject is whether Serato is a viable way to DJ… if you’re a good DJ it’s because you know the music you play really well and which song will work with

the next song. If you really want to use vinyl than have fun lug-ging 200 pounds of wax with you but if you are going to do that four times a month in dives bars than I think you’re kind of a loser.”

For those that think scratch-ing is a more legitimate art form, I’d say that the two forms of musical expression cannot be compared. We agree they are different creative processes meant for different sized ven-ues and musical genres. Pat adds “Yeah I think there is a lot

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of incredible technical skills to DJing and being able to juggle records, mix well and scratch is really credible but if you’re do-ing that you’re probably playing bigger venues not small bars. I just think it’s a completely dif-ferent thing and honestly, if you play house music you can come off as a lot more technically ad-ept because a lot of house music sounds the same. The bpm’s for hiphop is all over the place and it’s a lot harder to mix songs to-gether.”

Anyone can drag and drop

songs onto an ITunes playlist, an argument often cited as the main criticism of laptop DJing. But not everyone has an equal ability to draw out a crowd or play music they’ll all want to hear. McGuire point’s out that if you’re rocking a playlist and “you still have 60 people com-ing out to your night at 751 ev-ery week [shouts to Dan Arget] than you are obviously just at-tracting people because they like you, think you’re cool, and they don’t give a fuck whether you’re mixing or not.” In this digital age music is so freely available now that anyone can have an extensive music collec-tion without spending all of his or her time and money on it.

The playing fi eld has been leveled, Pat says, arguing that the “differences are now made by people who A) legitimately love the music they’re playing, B) have some or great techni-cal skills at playing it (because I think they standards for techni-cal skills have gone down an C) have any social ability and pull to bring people out. If you’re able to do those things that you’ll rise above some kid that’s doing it for the fi rst time.” He points out that radio jockeys are called DJs only what they play is mostly prescribed. At the very least, laptop DJs can use mixing programs and generate their own style.

These people often don’t just stop at playing music off their laptops; they create digi-tal booklets and mixtapes, use tmblrs and blogs to creatively express their own personal style and musical taste. McGuire adds, “anytime you can make a visual component to accompa-ny music that you may not have ever made it just shows more interest.”

Check out Pat McGuire’s mix-tapes at http://roofl yfe.tumblr.com/ and Youtube his name for interviews with current rap art-ists.

“ the campus comment ”the newspaper asked: tell us a story from a party you’ve been to on campus.

Wandering Jew & Kimberly, 4th year, Philosophy and English“Smoked cigars in the ladies’ bathroom in one of the engin-eering buildings”

Milca Kufl u, 4th year, Poli Sci“Went to a lingerie fashion show party and was surprised to see the lack of lingerie on girls. Feathers aren’t lingerie, right?”

Morgane, 2nd year, Psychology “Our friend took 28 shots on his birthday, threw up into several plastic bags that ended up freezing on his front lawn”

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5January 27, 2011 the inside

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6 January 27, 2011the arts

In October 2010, renowned historian and Yale profes-sor Timothy Snyder released a groundbreaking historical book entitled Bloodlands: Eu-rope between Hitler and Sta-lin. Sponsored by the Centre for European, Russian, and Eur-asian Studies, Petro Jacyk Pro-gram for the Study of Ukraine, Ukrainian Canadian Research & Documentation Centre, Pol-ish Cultural Institute, Ukrai-nian Jewish Encounter, Prof. Snyder and three discussants, Professors Bergen, Wrobel, Ma-gocsi will hold a talk at the St. Vladimir Institute (Wednesday, January 26, 7-9 pm) and at the Jackman Humanities Building (Thursday, January 29, 4-6 pm). the newspaper interviewed Mr. Snyder the week of his visit to U of T to speak about his book.

What was the original in-spiration behind the un-dertaking of this book?At a certain moment I realized that an enormous catastrophe, that one could see the deaths of 14 million people in a very small place, over a very short period of time, as a single event, and that no one had written a his-tory of the event.

How did you come up with the title Bloodlands?I wish there were a story’ The book is geographical in its scope. I’m trying to emphasize that. The book begins from the observation that almost all the people killed by Hitler and Sta-

suzie balabuch

History in bloodAcclaimed historian and professor speaks about his

unprecedented book on the fragmented history of WWII

lin were killed in the area that I describe, which is called the Bloodlands. I don’t have any clear answers of how the term came to me. There are various things in the book which are suggestive of it. For example, when the Germans shot Polish hostages in public in Warsaw, sometime women would collect the dirt soaked with blood, put in jars, and take it to the church. There are various things like that which are throughout the book, but I don’t’ have a story to tell you. It just came to me one day.

Recently in class, we were asked to choose who was worse, Hitler or Stalin, based on the atrocities di-rectly stemming from their policies. Many people dis-tinctly chose one or the other. Do you think it is possible to maintain a bal-anced perspective of Stalin and Hitler?Well, if by balance perspective you mean, are they the same, then the answer is no. They were pursuing goals which are comparable, but which were nevertheless different. I think it’s legitimate to compare them. One of the things I find in my book is that you actually look at the comparisons, you real-ize that the Nazis actually killed more people than the Soviets, the opposite of what most peo-ple would think.

Another thing I turn my at-tention to in the book, which has been I think overlooked in the past, are the times and the

places where German power and Soviet power overlapped. There are important cases where it’s hard to say, whether a giver person or even a given hundred thousand people were victims of just Hitler of victims of just Stalin. In some sense, they were victims of both.

Among many others, you reference Marek Edelman in the chapter entitled “Re-sistance and Incineration”. In research for your book, did you get to meet Mr. Edelman or many other survivors of the war?That’s an interesting question. I knew Mr. Edelman very slightly, but I never spoke to him about these issues. I knew Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, who appears in the footnotes of the book. I know a few people who appear in the book, but it’s not an oral history book in that sense. I did use a lot of testimony material, video testimonies or written testimo-nies, but I did not actually talk to people. I consciously chose not to talk to people about their own experiences on my own. If they left some kind of written record, I used that. I tried to separate this from my private life, if you see what I mean. But, i would emphasize that there are thousands and thousands of ex-cellent video-recorded and also written primary source materi-als by Jews and by others, and that those were extremely use-ful to me. I encourage everyone to use those.

In your book, you juxtapose

the mind-boggling statistics of the war with often hor-rifying personal accounts. How were you able to cope with the emotional aspect of this undertaking?You’re assuming that I did cope with it. The simplest answer is the true answer: it was very hard to write. But every day, when I got up at five in the morning, I had the sense that I was doing something worthwhile, and that was really sustaining.

You answer a lot of ques-tions specific to people coming from the countries within the Bloodlands. Did you have a readership in mind when writing the book, and did that reader-ship include people from those places who might be on a search for answers?I was trying to write the book so that people who had very spe-cific knowledge of some of the events would be able to under-stand the others. I was also try-ing to write so that people who were just interested in the his-tory of the 20th century would have access to all the events.

I was writing in English so I had in mind, North Americans, and Australians, and the British of course, but my life and my mental life also encompasses places like Israel, and RUssia, and Ukraine and Poland, and Germany, probably above all. I was assuming that people in those countries would be read-ing the book as well. Now the book has been translated to 15

or 16 languages. The discussion will be taking place in all those settings as well. I wanted friends and colleagues and people who I don’t know as well in all these countries to be able to read it. I was thinking of an international readership.

The implications of your book are manifold. What do you think or hope, will resonate most with the av-erage reader, someone like myself?Two things: the first thing is that I think the central event of Eu-ropean history has been over-looked. I think it’s been frag-mented. The individual things that make up the book are ter-rible enough that we haven’t actually had the courage of the patience to bring them all to-gether and understand just how black the centre of European history in the 20th century was. We think we know that, but we don’t know that.

The second thing would be that we should use history to reach to the depths of these black events. It’s natural that we memorialize, it’s natural that we try to explain things in psychological terms. It’s natural that we care about individuals that we know who were in some way involved, but I think it’s very important to try to use the scholarly tools of history to try to make sense of these things, because if we understand that it’s history, then we understand that it’s human. If we under-stand that it’s human, then we have a chance of seeing how it relates to our own experiences.

rial are available to the public that otherwise would not have been available before. Digitiza-tion serves an important role in preserving historical and artis-tic information that is central to Canada’s cultural identity.

“By scanning them and mak-ing them freely available online, we aim to make the knowledge residing in these books avail-able to a far wider community… This project is about lowering the bar for access to knowl-edge,” says Sian Meikle, Digital Services Librarian.

The process of converting print material online is quite a tedious task. “Going full pace, an experienced Internet Archive staff member will scan 475-500

Library digitizesContinued from page 1

pages per hour,” says Meikle.The books are selected and

then sent to the Internet Ar-chive Digitization centre which is located in Robarts Library. Internet Archive staff members examine the books to make sure they are in good enough shape to be scanned. Books that are either too delicate or in copy are examples of what cannot be scanned. Scanning occurs twice a week between Monday-Friday and there are 18 stations operat-ing. The scanned material must also go through a verification process before it can be put on the Internet Archive website.

According to Meikle, over 270,000 volumes, or roughly 103,000,000 pages have been

scanned so far. Aside from the ongoing process of digitization, U of T library is hoping to col-laborate with various other as-sociates and the U of T Book-stores in order to give people the opportunity to have a physi-cal copy of the digitized books at a low price through a “Print on Demand” program.

To find out more about this process, visit The Internet Ar-chive website at http://archive.org and http://main.library.utoronto.ca/eir/resources.cfm to connect to online materials at U of T.

cara sabatini

Natalie Portman did not win the Golden Globe for her perfor-mance in No Strings Attached. As novel as the notion, “friends with benefits,” struck the film’s leading characters, the premise had all the originality of its cat-egorical cohorts. Fortunately, people do not watch romantic comedies to see an original plot unravel.

Ivan Reitman’s film was true to its genre, delivering 117 min-utes of mildly entertaining se-quences, which included a sexy montage of casual cavorting and other more-than suggestive scenes between Portman and Kutcher to merit its R-rating. Given the actors’ good looks, an absence of chemistry would have been shocking, if not im-possible.

A twist to the typical rom-com recipe, the gender rever-sal of lead roles left Kutcher playing the affectionate Adam who, despite having complied with a strictly sex/no romance policy, finds himself falling for the aloof and romantically re-

served Emma Kurtzman (Port-man). The apparent deviation promptly resolves itself into the predictable pattern of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy’s ex-girl sleeps with boy’s father, boy tries desperately to get girl back.

Kutcher’s charmingly naïve

character effectively juxtaposed (in a variety of positions) the clinically cynical Emma. Reit-man’s Adam achieved a puppy dog persona, baring just as much backbone as he did back-side (some, but not much). Portman’s portrayal offered a depth that frankly seemed out

Not quite N’SYNC, but No Strings Attached might still get you laid

of place adjacent to her co-star and film’s minor characters.

Kutcher’s company included Kevin Kline playing Adam’s immature, self- (and sex-) ab-sorbed father, who delivered well-timed one-liners, and Lu-dacris as a level-headed bar owner, despite uttering the

dreadful, “happy HO-lidays.” Lake Bell sublimely executed Adam’s colleague as a sincere but chatty neurotic on a Glee knock-off series.

Among Portman’s crew were Greta Gerwig and the Office’s Mindy Kaling as Emma’s ro-mantically challenged room-mates. Along with Bell, Gerwig and Kaling produced an enjoy-ably self-mocking tone, missed throughout the rest of the film.

The screenplay included nu-merous witty exchanges, though the occasional gauche line fell short of screwball and hung at awkward. Rather than inducing sincere sympathy during more poignant parts of the film, pa-thos for the protagonist came with having to hear Kutcher de-liver lines like “you fight like a hamster.”

Reitman’s title is fitting for a film whose tone was as inconsis-tent as its plot was predictable. Its entertaining inconsisten-cies were evidence of Reitman’s ambition to break the rom-com mould, but No Strings Attached was just a loose thread in Ash-ton Kutcher’s loincloth.

Iron and Wine’s new album pleasantly blends old and the new

Electronic kiss, acoustic hugs

BOD

I BO

LD

suzie balabuch

For fans of Iron and Wine’s music, it will be noticeable right from the start that the act’s sole member, Sam Beam, has de-cided to make a change from his last album, Kiss Each Other Clean. If his previous work tip-toed into the electronic music realm, his newest effort takes a dive into the deep end.

That being said, Iron and Wine’s trademark lush vocals and instrumentation are, for-tunately, still present on the al-bum. “Half Moon” recalls Iron and Wine’s earlier work, blend-ing a lovely melodic line with retro pop back-up vocals and a twangy country guitar.

“Tree by the River” is by far the most enchanting track on

the album, once again making use of relaxing background vo-cals and the sweet sounds of a glockenspiel.

“Monkeys Uptown” is an ex-ample of Beam’s growing inter-est in electronic music, overlay-ing a funky bass guitar line with chirpy, rhythmic beats. Despite the electronic aspect to the al-bum, the themes of memory, love, and Iron and Wine’s musi-cal journey are present.

Kiss Each Other Clean is a satisfyingly eclectic mix: every song tells a different story, and every song provides the listener with a different mood that can be really captivating. Although it may not be the best Iron and Wine album ever, it is the per-fect listen for a lazy Sunday af-ternoon, and that’s saying a lot.

7January 27, 2011 the arts

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