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What would you like to see on The Blaaag? Tell us at theblaaag@gmail.com.

Therefore, The Blaaag (or maybe just Marilla) also loves tulips:

Happy Primavera.

CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities
http://www.caaav.org

Date: Monday, April 27, 2009
Time: 8:00pm - 10:00pm
Location: IRC Extension, 554 114th Street (114th and Broadway)
City/Town: New York, NY
Email: apaam2009@gmail.com

Come learn more about issues of gentrification in New York City, current CAAAV campaigns against evictions and landlord harassment, and how you can get involved in the movement.

Asian Pacific American Awareness Month (APAAM) is an annual celebration at Columbia University dedicated to promoting awareness of Asian Pacific American (APA) issues and history among the Columbia student body.

http://www.cuapaam.com

Check it on Facebook.

Reader: Why do you post so many APAAM events?
Marilla: Because over half The Blaaag staff is on the APAAM board. We are all its slaves.
Reader: Oh, okay.

Dear all,

Apply for the 2009-2010 Columbia Political Review editorial board! Applications are due next Monday, April 27, at 11:59 PM.

The magazine is looking to fill the following positions on next year's staff:
- 2-3 managing editors*
- 6-7 senior editors*
- 2 business managers

- 6-7 campus editors*
- 2-3 copy editor*
- 1-2 art editor(s)
- 3-4 fact-checkers
- 1-2 layout editor(s)
- 1 web editor

Catherine Chong and Alex Frouman were elected last week as Columbia Political Review editor-in-chief and publisher, respectively.

The managing editor, senior editor, and business manager positions require interviews, which are tentatively scheduled for May 5 and 6.

You do not need to have had previous involvement with the CPR to apply for a position on the editorial board. Feel free to e-mail me if you have questions about the given positions after reading the descriptions below.

The following is due by Monday, April 27 at 11:59 PM to karen.hl.leung@gmail.com:

There are three parts to the application: your (1) proposal, (2) resume, and (3) one writing sample (only if your position is starred) or sample web design (only if you are applying for web editor). Please put your (1) name, (2) phone number, (3) e-mail address, (4) class, (5) major, (6) school, and (7) which position(s) you would like to run for at the top of the application. You can apply for more than one job.

The proposal should include a little about yourself and why you’re qualified for your chosen position. This part of the application should mostly focus on what you'd like to see the magazine emphasize, as well as any changes you would make. The proposal should be no more than one single-spaced page.

If you are applying for positions that are starred, also attach a resume and one writing sample (no more than 6-7 pages).

A few suggestions:

Potential managing editors should discuss how they approach editing on the level of argument and style, and how they would handle editing an entire magazine's worth of content.

Potential senior editors should discuss how they would work with writers and handle the day-to-day editing process.

Potential business managers should discuss the administrative and business aspects of the magazine (advertising revenue, changes that would affect the budget, etc.). Business managers are also responsible for coordinating the responsibilities of the campus editors, as well as event planning.

Potential campus editors should discuss how they would communicate with student groups, recruit writers, and generate story ideas for the magazine.
Your application does not need to be long, but it should contain as much insight into the desired position as possible. Current staff members must submit the same application as non-staff applicants, and should specify which position they would like to run for.

Let me know if you have any questions. Past issues can be downloaded at cpreview.org - these might serve as inspiration. Good luck!

Karen Leung
outgoing editor-in-chief, CPR


While watching Brillante Mendoza’s film Serbis, viewers may only take a slippery hold on the many secrets that linger inside the campy porn movie theater (appropriately called “Family” Theater), that doubles as an underground hotspot for gay prostitution. The latter point seems to be the more arresting aspect of the film, but Mendoza isn’t interested in the men who engage in pleasure-for-profit. They consistently remain nameless and faceless. Mendoza is instead interested in the family that runs the theater, whose own disarray parallels the crumbling of the theater itself, as prostitutes and customers run rampant under blind eyes.

That the story circulates around a movie theater is significant, because there are times when watching certain individual’s activities feels like an act of voyeurism. There is the opening scene, in which a nude Jewel boldly applies lipstick and, while observing her self in the mirror, puts on a sexual display with a series of gestures and endless mouthings of “I love you”. Whatever and whomever she is doing it for remains unclear, but there is a blatant sexuality, vanity, and privacy to her act, and those qualities are broken when Jewel realizes that, in fact, her nephew has been watching all along. This is one of many moments in which characters (and viewers) are put in the uncomfortable position of feeling unwelcome as they open doors, seeing what probably shouldn’t be seen. Yet, despite all appearances, that which is seen can no longer be erased from the mind.

The quality of voyeurism has much to do with the notion that each character has a particular position and place in this microcosm, and while crossing certain places may be unallowable, it is also unavoidable. The people running in and out of the theater are many, but there remains an unspoken agreement of where each one belongs. Through an observable series of everyday routines, one is trained to understand that Ronald runs projections (while masturbating) in the reel room; Alan trades projection reels and paints posters (while bedding his girlfriend Merly in between); Nayda stands in as the married theater matriarch (while fighting an attraction to her cousin Ronald); and so on. No mention is made of how this pattern came to be; it just seems to have been this way for as long as anyone could remember. Here it becomes clear that the family operates under the illusion that people can run by pure mechanics, can automatically stabilize their selves, and can be free of wrongdoing or mistake. Even the movie theater itself, a porn house, is maintained under the illusion that sex can be distilled and rendered immobile, resting as paintings on the theater walls or as a picture on screen for the price of a movie ticket. In fact, much more is brewing under the surface. Whether anyone knows, or wishes, to acknowledge this, remains unclear.

This droning routine, rendering even sex stagnant, makes one look to smaller, more quotidian gestures to find any hint of disruption or untidiness. Mendoza sets everything up so that seeing a man being sucked off by a boy for a modest fee is no longer shocking; but catching Ronald looking one moment too long at Nayda is. The losing principle of Serbis, it seems, is that life should be anything but messy. If things do get messy, then clean up the mess, pure and simple. As Nanay Flor, the aging mother, says, “There’s a lot to fix in this movie house”, but she fails to recognize that perhaps some things, like her divorce, can’t really be fixed. Near the end of the film, Mendoza withdraws from the family and leaves the theater. The final scene rests on two complete strangers, men who briefly converse about nothing in particular, and the film reel burns up, leaving a gaping hole in the screen. The gesture reads like a "fuck you" to this concept of social mechanization to which the family--and on another level, the audience--so desperately adheres. With people, there is no smooth running or compartmentalizations to be had, so let them remain confusing and opaque, even in the movies.

If you haven't seen it already, there is a flyer circulating Columbia's campus, created and distributed by the Clear Party in lieu of CCSC elections. Read further for an image and some of the e-mails that have been circulating in response to this flyer:

Hey lovely people,

Some of you might have found out about this already, but there's a flyer for the student council campaign of the clear party that reads "Two Asian girls at the same time". Since finding out about it from eagle eye Vivian, I've gotten increasingly irritated.

So far, a few people have contacted this group about the issue of this flyer. I was talking to Sam Stanton, and she thinks it's a ripe time to get CCSC to mandate some type of anti-oppression training for all its members, or as many as possible. Something could be done with the elections board as well. (This comes out of the fact that somehow, someone involved with CCSC didn't get the fact that this flyer was offensive.) Nhu-Y says we should involve the administration, ppl the councils look up to. All things to talk about...


I suggested to Sam that we use the time right before the APAAM meeting on Wednesday to discuss things to do. So, 10pm, Lerner 5th floor? What do people think? Hopefully something worth pulling off before the end of the year?

If you haven't seen it, it's hanging in Hamilton right now between floors 5 and 6 in the west staircase I think.

David

---

Hello folks,
I am e-mailing you guys to express my deep concern over a flyer from your party that I saw in Hamilton. I noticed a flyer that said "Two Asian Girls At The Same Time". I understand that you guys must have thought that was funny, but it is really upsetting. Not only is it a play off of a racist fetishization of Asian women that directly corresponds with the effeminization and invisibility of Asian men, as well as American imperialism, but it is also a heterosexist and patriarchal male fantasy that has contributed to the invisibility of Queer women. As a Queer woman of color I find this deeply offensive.
I wanted to e-mail you guys before I took any other actions, so that this issue could be resolved with maturity and expediency. I am asking that you please take down all of those flyers immediately. I also think it would be appropriate to release an apology. Please let me know what you decide to do as soon as possible.
Thank you
Samantha Stanton
Columbia College, Class of 2009

Who is Joe Wong?

Actually, he kind of resembles my cousin:

Executive Co-Chairs: Yadira Alvarez and Nicole Beach
Political Co-Chairs: Aretha Choi and Andrea Russell
Events Co-Chairs: Takako Kono and Destiny Sullens
Campus Liasons: Nancy Trujillo and Jia Ahmad
Communications Chair: open
Funding Co-Chairs: Maggie Jiang and open
Public Relations Co-Chairs: Wendy Bermudez and Alise Green
Webmaster: open


 

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