Front page design, UCSD Guardian, March 1, 2012
Two older designs from last year. I was going for an Esquire style in both.
Front page design, UCSD Guardian, Feb. 26, 2012
Dirty Girl Talk
This article was originally published in the UCSD Guardian.
For two days, female musical comedy duo Garfunkel & Oates brainstormed what a penis looks like. The girls, actresses Riki Lindhome (Garfunkel, 32) and Kate Micucci (Oates, 30), were writing the lyrics for “I Don’t Understand Job” — a little ditty about uncovering the mysteries of third base. Their mission: A clever way of describing male genitalia.
They eventually settled on “Silly Putty Pac Man ghost” and “Darth Vader Pez dispenser,” though the song still took them a total of five months to write, Lindhome told the Guardian during a phone call from Los Angeles.
“Sometimes things will just come to us,” Lindhome said. “It will be quick. We’ll write it in an hour and then maybe rewrite it the next day. And then sometimes it’s a five-month process.”
Clearly, Garfunkel & Oates are serious about their dick jokes.
(Source: ucsdguardian.org)
Hacking Into the Past
This interview was originally published in the UCSD Guardian — unfortunately, the online link has since been removed.
For some of us, the bips and beeps of the Game Boy are the soundtrack to childhood. The little ditty it played as you mastered Pokémon got stuck in your head for days. And nothing could encapsulate the frustration of stacking ill-shaped boxes more than the Tetris theme. Kids once had only vinyl records and rock ‘n’ roll — we got Nintendo and infectious bleeps.
Now artists around the world are tapping into that influence, composing new melodies from forgotten gaming technologies. These artists create chiptunes — aka 8-bit, bitpop and chip music — by hacking and tweaking vintage video game systems, such as the Nintendo Game Boy and Nintendo Entertainment System, so that they work like a sequencer with four different channels.
For Sixth College junior Patrick Trinh, the genre has been a revelation. He started teaching himself chiptunes last spring and now — under stage name Space Town Savior — has already landed himself an opening gig for mash-up DJs the Hood Internet at the Loft next Tuesday, among other shows with bitpop artists around Southern California.
Drake Concert Preview
This review was originally published in the UCSD Guardian — unfortunately, the online link has since been removed.
It wouldn’t be entirely out of character for Drake to show up to Sun God in a wheelchair; after all, the world was first introduced to Aubrey Drake Graham as the paralyzed ex-b-baller Jimmy on “Degrassi: The Next Generation.” Since then, the Canadian has graduated the teen-soap gig for songwriting sessions with Lil Wayne, rumored romantic exploits with Rihanna and a Grammy nomination — not a bad upgrade.
You might think the kid is hip-hop royalty already, but he hasn’t actually released a proper album: Major-label debut Thank Me Later doesn’t drop until June 15. All Drake has to prove that he’s worthy of Jay-Z and Eminem’s love is hit single “Best I Ever Had,” his spot on “Forever” and a few forgettable (if promising) mixtapes.
Last year’s So Far Gone is one such promise: Though Drake’s lyrics are often ridiculous —“I really can’t complain, everything’s kosher/ Two thumbs up, Ebert and Roeper” — they’re never boring, and his beats are always made by the best.
MGMT Album Review
This review was originally published in the UCSD Guardian — unfortunately, the online link has since been removed.
Stumbling awkwardly on the red carpet at the Grammys last January, the members of MGMT slid right into the unfortunate, disgruntled indie-band stereotype they seemed destined for since the day “Time to Pretend” began infiltrating deejay playlists. During the band’s interviews, lead singer Andrew VanWyngarden’s painful unease in the wake of the group’s sudden commercial success gave him the air of an electro-pop revival of Kurt Cobain.
And with the arrival of sophomore effort Congratulations, the band’s mole-like introversion has only gotten worse.
It’s as if MGMT decided to make the In Utero to their Nevermind. Unlike catchy debut Oracular Spectacular, the band’s latest is defiantly anti-commercial, strange and ultimately polarizing.
Sample of Dodging the Horizon Column
This installment of my column, “Dodging the Horizon” — entitled “I Could Never Whip My Hair” — was originally published in the UCSD Guardian. You can find more of “Dodging the Horizon” here.
Like most girls, when I was 10 years old I wanted to be a star. After dragging my parents to *NSYNC and Christina Aguilera concerts, and wearing out my copies of Spice World and the “Footloose” soundtrack (don’t ask), I decided it was my turn to own the spotlight.
This dream went beyond the typical singing into the hairbrush for an audience of my favorite Barbies shtick. I trained to become a triple-threat.
It went well, kind of.
Sick of watching me attempt to tap dance around the house, my mom enrolled me in dance classes. I was pretty good, and thus began my descent into the world of competitive dance, where makeup on youngins isn’t JonBenet creepy, but a necessary component to a first-place performance.
The musical side of stardom, however, was a disaster. My East Bay Area elementary school was too poor to let us all play in the band, so those of us with musical aspirations were forced to take a test to determine our aptitude. At the tender age of nine, my dreams of rockin’ the drums or the clarinet were dashed — apparently, I wasn’t good enough.
