The cast is a group of fun loving and passionate individuals who love to perform and educate the students of Bloom about the realities of being a young individual. There were two Acts, each act consisting of 4 scenes. The scene names in this episode were Secrets at the Cemetery, The Vitamin and Her Voices, Karaoke Bingo Night, The Sad Stigma, (Act Two) SGA Meeting, Intimate Glee Clubbers, A lesson, a Lie and The Guys’ Reality.

Each act was interesting and kept you intrigued because they were very relatable to the every day student, just not at Bloom but in general. The acts brought awareness to many topics that I, and any student, could relate to. Topics such as drinking and how fun it can be, but how if abused can ruin even inseparable loving relationships.

This episode also included situations involving teen pregnancy-how to deal with it in the most responsible way, family struggles-who to talk to when you feel like no one can understand, not even your closest friends. Also racism was spoken about, and how it still sadly exists today and the obvious reasons why it shouldn’t be.

Being a young adult at college is stressful in itself, let a lone when there are outside sources affecting your life too. Busted is a great performance to see if you want to be able to feel like you’re really not the only one going through something stressful. They lighten up the mood with their humorous acting, upbeat music, funky dancing and positive attitudes.
The cast of BUSTED will perform again December 7th. Come watch!

Front Page Photo Courtesy of http://www.bloomca.org/BUSTED/index2.html

The New York Post has been the center of all this Phillies bashing on the front page along with articles inside the paper. The Post has somehow created a sex angle against the Phillies along with calling the city of Philadelphia second-rate in comparison to New York City.  Yes, baseball has to do with these particular cities, but not which one is better. The media buzz surrounding the 2009 World Series is directly targeting the fans and players, mostly the Phillies by the New York Post.  This bashing is not a positive influence on the sports of baseball in any way.

Joel Sherman, who has been covering the Yankees baseball association since 1989 and is the author of “Birth of a Dynasty, Behind the Pinstripes with the 1996 Yankees” said on CNN, “The idea is to get the casual fan involved.  If you flip open the paper and read the words, it’s like one baseball team versus another, just like it’s always been.”  Inside the Post the articles are bashing of the city of Philadelphia, its fans, and the baseball players themselves. There are no straight forwards articles inside the New York Post which states the hard facts about the upcoming games, only articles about A-Rod’s girlfriend, how great their cuisine is in New York, and so on.

The gossip surrounding this series is completely irrelevant to the players. Of course they are going to read about themselves in the paper, which might distract them from playing like they are able to in the games. Yes, the New York Post is not meant to give cold hard facts like the New York Times, for example, but it should still not have a biased opinion for the entire country to see.

In the Philadelphia Daily Item, writers have not included any articles or demeaning headlines to try and say the Yankees are any lesser of a team in comparison to the Phillies.  Dean Grenfell, an avid Philadelphia Phillies fan of Bloomsburg University said, “All this mumbo jumbo is completely pointless. The sport of baseball just needs to be played with no questions or comments about it.”

Will Bunch, a senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily News, said on CNN, “Now since the Phillies won last year’s World Series, Philadelphia is a more confident city. And now it’s like New York is mocking us.” The New York Post has no reason to bash the Philadelphia Phillies team other than out of want to influence the Philadelphia players and fans.

Fans of baseball wonder why this World Series is so much more monumental than the past series. The media has built up these potential seven games to be the biggest games in a couple decades. Along with the buildup, the media has brought the nasty side of journalism into the series and is attempting to influence the opposing team continuously. Baseball is known as the all-American past time sport and that should not be challenged or potentially ruined by a few articles written by bias sports writers of the New York Post.

courtesy of http://www.campustheatre.org/

Why are all of these people dressed in strange clothes in a line outside of a movie theatre? Because they’re waiting to buy tickets for the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

For those Rocky Horror virgins out there, this Halloween cult phenomenon is a musical comedy that parodies horror and science fiction films. The premise of the movie tails a couple in distress. They get a flat tire and knock on the nearest door for help. The couple is then thrown into the house of a bizarre doctor, where they observe a strange and sexually ambiguous atmosphere.

The movie is usually a big hit with audience members.  The general consensus is that most people are aware of the film’s existence.  However it’s not very safe to say that most people have seen the film, or experienced it at midnight on Halloween.

There are some who have simply rented the DVD and watched it at home, but that might not be the way to go. Penn Tech student Rachel Putterman has some experience with this issue.  Putterman made last year’s Halloween her first trip to see the movie in theatres. She had rented it and wasn’t the biggest fan, but all of her friends told her she had to see it in theatres.  Putterman said “I thought I still wouldn’t like it, but it was so much better participating in the whole thing when you’re in the movie theatre.”

Courtesy of http://www.campustheatre.org/

A seasoned veteran Mike Andrews, who has attended for three consecutive years, is planning on making this year his fourth.  Andrews is a college student at Susquehanna University who’s been going to this event with friends ever since his high school years.  He said, “You really have to go in with an open mind and just try to have fun, cause the whole thing is pretty chaotic, but in a good way.”

Andrews is bringing a few of his college friends along, and most of them are first-timers like Kyle Header.  Header said “It should be pretty funny, my girlfriend’s lending me some of her clothes.” Header won’t be the only guy there dressed in female’s clothing.  The show doesn’t start until 11:00 pm, but the line starts to build about an hour before.  The entire block fills up with people who look like they might be working the corner.  It may be a shocking visual for the uninformed by-passer.

Once you get into the theatre and the show starts, there is a lot more to get used to.  Every theatre has their own specific rules and regulations to keep things from getting out of control.  But aside from that, you’re free to do things you might not be able to any other time in a movie theatre.  The event is interactive and allows for some pretty outrageous behavior. Andrews explains that “You can yell profanities out at random times and throw rice around the room, it’s pretty much a given that things will get sloppy.”

There’s a list of items the newcomer to the Rocky Horror scene should bring along to be properly prepared.  The more popular items on the list include rice and toast for throwing, water bottles or water guns for obvious purposes, and newspapers as a defense mechanism from all the chaotic elements of the show.  As Andrews explained earlier, thing’s really do get sloppy in the theatre.

So for the adventurous college student out there looking for something new and different this Halloween, the Rocky Horror Picture Show might be just the ticket.

The concert, conducted by Mark Jelinek, BU professor of music, will feature performances of Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759 “Unfinished” and Haydn’s Concerto for Organ and Orchestra in C featuring Alan Hack on organ.

Hack, a 2004 graduate from Susquehanna University, holds a degree in mathematics and secondary education along with a minor in music performance. A mathematics teacher in Northwestern Lehigh School District, he has been the director of music and organist at St. Matthew Lutheran Church since April 2005.

Jelinek has conducted the BU Chamber Orchestra for 17 years and the Bloomsburg University-Community Orchestra for 24 years. He has performed in the cello sections of orchestras in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California and Pennsylvania, performing with artists such as Ferrante and Teicher, Steve Allen, Doc Severinsen, Chet Atkins, Floyd Cramer, Lou Rawls, Smokey Robinson and the Three Irish Tenors.

The Chamber Orchestra exposes students and fellow members to a variety of musical chamber pieces, enriches students’ musical repertoire and enhances instrumental ability through extensive chamber playing.

For more information, call the BU music department at (570) 389-4284.

The teams are each made up of six players, each player pays 5 dollars and will compete in the tournament. The tournament is going to be held in Decker gym starting at 1 PM on Saturday, October 24. Teams can sign up with PRSSA at the office and tables will be set up around campus.

PRSSA is an on-campus organization that works to help promote organizations on campus and give Public Relations majors a chance to explore the field. Heather Delp, a senior and vice president of PRSSA at Bloomsburg University, joined PRSSA as a freshman. Delp hopes to do a lot for the community this semester. She wants to help promote clients through BU Prime Inc., PRSSA’s own public relations agency, and hopefully win the bid to hold the Regional Assembly here at Bloomsburg.

However, the big project for PRSSA right now is Ball Fest. The organization chose to do the dodge ball tournament due to its popularity. Ashley Wood a Public Relations major in-charge of fundraising for PRSSA said, “In my freshman year they held a tournament that raised over 9 hundred dollars for charity, it was a success. I hope we can be as successful this year.” Wood has been in PRSSA since her junior year and says PRSSA is a great way to get your foot in the door, “it teaches you how to deal with real life clients” as she has worked with Bloomsburg University’s newspaper the Voice and Quest.

Students are encouraged by PRSSA to come out and play. “It’s a chance to help starving people and a have fun at the same time,” said Delp. The Columbia County Soup Kitchen helps feed the local homeless in Bloomsburg and surrounding areas. Wood said the reason they choose the soup kitchen is, “…because we have worked with them before and it’s right around Thanksgiving, a great time to help the hungry.”All profits of the tournament will be given to the Columbia County Soup Kitchen and help PRSSA members learn how to organize events. As Wood said, “Why not come out? It’s an excuse to hit people with balls.”

Front page photo courtesy of http://www.milwaukeesocialclub.com

Cirque Le Masque features a combination of sight, sound, imagination and beauty in the style of Cirque Du Soleil. The 90-minute animal-free circus focuses on acts of strength performed without a safety net.

The show “Carnivale,” which will be presented at BU, is about a young tourist, Moira, who wanders through Rio de Janeiro annoyed by the sounds of the big city. She packs a suitcase as the sounds of a jet liner sweep her to a dream fantasy in Rio. Through the magical character performers, Moira sheds the weight of the world layer by layer.

Dennis and Bernie Schussel, the creative minds behind Cirque Le Masque, have been in the entertainment business since 1980.  Their blend of theater technology and creative entertainment is suitable for audiences of all ages.

General admission is $34, and tickets can be purchased at the Haas box office Monday through Friday from noon to 4 p.m. Wednesday’s box office hours are extended to 7 p.m. when school is in session; on performance days, box office hours are noon to 8 p.m.

For more information or to purchase tickets, contact the box office at (570) 389-4409 or visit http://organizations.bloomu.edu/arts/box_office.htm. For more information on Cirque Le Masque, see www.cirquelemasque.com.

In London’s early life, we find him recklessly finding his way, paying no attention to humanized rules, but obeying universal laws by necessity. He would have broken them, too, if he could. He wasn’t one to observe time schedules or to take notice of what others his age were doing and succumbing to the pressure of the masses. He joined a march on Washington, but did so after, “…it had already left Oakland for Sacramento.” He knew what he wanted and this knowledge was good enough for him. London rode the rails with the other unemployed who were headed to Washington D.C. to demand $5 million with which they could work to build roads. This human necessity to have money was at the heart of Jack’s mind. Money dominated him, both causing his hurried nature as well as torturing him later because of brimming debt.

Careless is a word perhaps best describing this wild man’s nature. But he did think of life in terms “better” and “worse,” as all politicians do. London knew where he was going as far as the physical destination each time he set out, but the wild man’s nature made him unconcerned with the elements along the way.

Writing of Alaska, journalist Rex Beach wrote, “There’s no drama up here, no comedy, no warmth.” How untrue Beach would prove those words. Even he would write successful books about the treacherous region both he and London would explore and experience to the extreme.

The adventurous London had money fueling his moves yet again. Not that he had any when he left for the Klondike, but surely his inspiration for leaving was both money and selfish desire. But the desire of which I write is not a horrible selfishness as can be found with athletes looking for the ball, but rather human will, with which some seem to be born more. But, for the sake of argument, some also live well past 40. In any event, London was there, a risk-taker, an unsure risk-taker, taking commendable steps for the reader’s benefit. He would not yet know it in Alaska’s snowy terrain, but what he was doing was providing entertainment, tugging on the rope which moves the curtain for his one man show, butterflies swarming about his stomach, but yet feeling the tug and resistance of that rope. We were, unknowingly, awaiting this storyteller’s appearance. He emerged, full-fleshed, later.

I can’t imagine many writers experiencing such warmth from the cold hand of New York publishers, today or then: S.S. McClure wrote, “If you will send us everything you write we will use what we can, and what we cannot we will endeavour to dispose of to the best possible advantage.”

The Klondike writings were Jack’s own cast shining star, illuminating the literary world in a flash, flying from California to New York and propelling London into what would prove to be his real career. His other rough careers were not for him but probably helped to kill him. Being a writer was only out of necessity for Jack. So many other physical trades went against him and he against them, but they paved the way for his stories of perseverance which bred great true stories of perseverance for others paying for their sweat but hopeful for more in their lives.

London was always an athlete and even wanted to be a professional prize fighter, but his body wasn’t built for it. Perhaps if he wasn’t made to be the family’s bread winner by the age of 14 he would have not taken the early lumps which knocked his physicality out of serious contention. Did London know better than to live a dangerous life?

London, the animal, puts himself into his arguably most famous story, The Call of the Wild. He seems to be Buck, rising as a persevering presence in whatever climate he is placed in by the human authority figures, proving his superiority over the flawed. Buck, the perfect beast, is either a template for Jack or Jack is a template for Buck. Either way, Kershaw observes London’s stories and reports on them with great summaries in A Life. He tells how Buck, “fearlessly attacks the tribe, killing several, then rejoins a wolf pack.” London wasn’t a human murderer. That is one of the few names London can’t fairly be called, but he murdered self-doubt and he murdered outside doubt, too, just like his dog Buck does in The Call of the Wild. Both bring heart to the snow, and the heat pumping through their organ melts people’s pre- and ill-conceived notions of them.

I don’t find London’s writing to be purely out of anger as much as it is from experience alone. He surely had enemies – most obviously documented here: Capitalism – but he really is writing for every one because not one person can stand up to their individual adversity. Though he would think of himself as superior, London still believed in a base and general human strength.

But depression loomed large in his life, right when he was “supposed” to be at the top of his game, after writing The Sea Wolf. Kershaw writes that in 1905 he began, “what he called his ‘long sickness’: a feeling that, despite all he had achieved, it had meant nothing.” He was spitting on success, claiming to never have liked writing, continuing to eat poorly. London was stubborn, living what he wanted and doing so humanely because after all, he was a man and writer for the people, having risen up from the people as a beacon of hope and a buoy on which people could hold. If London’s real life is a good enough tale – and it is – he provided any doubters with fictitious stories, but he didn’t want to, at least not most of the time.

If the life of a full-time adventurer existed, London’s resume and drive would make him the ideal candidate. But yet, finances haunted him who supported many other than himself and so his pen was busy, pushing out 1000 words daily, no “ifs,” “ands,” or “buts.” This routine is great evidence of how harsh London was, but also how generous. He wrote for others mostly, and he just happened to also be a beneficiary.

With his documented busy life, London never devoted himself wholly to anything, making some wonder if he was perhaps over-adventurous. No one spends all his time with one hobby or habit, but when a man like Jack, who worked for himself with no man above him, keeps too many hands in too many jars, he doesn’t fully grasp anything, but that seems okay. After all, he is still wildly respected and influential in a variety of avenues from literature to politics to agriculture.

Perhaps Kershaw’s most entertaining moments come from London himself. The book has many letters written from Jack to others but it also comes with passages from London’s stories. From Martin Eden, “The pressure on his eardrums was a pain, and there was a buzzing in his head…Coulors and radiances surrounded and battled him and pervaded him.” We must receive these delicious samples in a biography of a writer. Missing from musician biographies are listening samples to coincide with the music being described. This of course is a much easier task for writer bios and we should be thankful because those bios exist that don’t provide the reader with writing samples.

This book, at times, reads like Kershaw is a salesman and he’s inserting proof of the cutting power of the knife by embellishing these letters and story paragraphs. Kershaw, as one finds, is definitely a raving fan in this book and it might be worth picking up some of his other writings to see just how obviously influential London is to Kershaw. Kershaw has received much praise for his work, not nearly as much as London did in his lifetime, so we’re told, but a bio of Kershaw’s climb to the top might be interesting.

Of course London’s literary and personal life – which were one in the same – wouldn’t have been complete without its detractors. Like just about everyone, London felt the crushing hand of criticism around his neck, but his was too strong to be crushed, though I’m sure the grip at least temporarily cut off some artistic oxygen. “As early as 1903 he had been attacked for alleged similarities between sections of The Call of the Wild and Edgerton R. Young’s My Dogs of Northland.” London was surely not a liar and didn’t claim to be drawing from other sources but, again, in this regard London’s ignorance showed through. And now, over 100 years later, no one really seems to care how much London borrowed to spin his exciting and relatable adventure tales. But academic circles wouldn’t accept him until years, decades even, past his death. Yet, London wasn’t writing for their “snobbish” approval: he wrote professionally and, it just so happens, honestly and with tearing passion, for even endeavors done for the attainment of money can be and are achieved with honest and raging desire. London, one must only need his writings to know, is proof of the co-existence.

London and his second of two wives, Charmian, would travel together on adventures, her being his “Mate Woman.” But she was too concerned for their future because of Jack’s being spread so thin that she couldn’t help but tear up when these sea adventures, during which Jack was accessible, ended. The two, though, did live a very happy marriage and she supported him wholly, even following his 1916 death. One can really sense the passion and affection the two felt for one another when he reads Kershaw’s book. The love spills out of many of the 305 pages, but when the feeling wasn’t love, it was still passionate and there is a tremendous mix of deep emotions that Kershaw beautifully relates in this book.

The passion didn’t end even as Jack’s life was coming to an end, largely because the 1000 words-a-day habit didn’t end even when he was plummeting toward death. This is perhaps because debt loomed so largely over London that the pen – his vocational tool – was his way of chipping away at the weight of the debt.

The deep pessimism Jack felt in 1914 is displayed rather well in his novel of the year The Mutiny of the Elsinore. Kershaw writes, “The book’s hero, John Pathurst, echoes Wolf Larsen and Jack at this most pessimistic, believing that the ‘chemical ferment’, as Jack described existence, is a struggle which ends in nothing more than death. This is an obviously depressing comment coming from a writer who writes of a sometimes depressed man. One must wonder if the word “manic” appropriately applies to London’s situation, but this ultimately doesn’t matter except for people who want to feel more like London, and even that is dangerous. One should write only like himself and encourage others to follow their own “adventure path.” I think London, though he had great heroes of his own, would agree that a life is one’s own unique experience.

I think Alex Kershaw’s Jack London: A Life is a great read for everyone, but be sure to prepare your goods for an adventure when you finish.