Culture
Not Vanila
Not Vanilla: In celebration of museums
Hello, dear reader! This week, I want to talk about a more reserved but common aspect of our culture: museums. Museums are centers of learning and exploration, spaces designed for the enrichment of the human mind. They’re places where we showcase best of our knowledge and culture. There are museums for almost every subject in […]
student musicians
For senior Facciolo, debut album is 8 years in the making
Senior Siena Facciolo was 14 when she wrote her first song about a “little fling” she had at piano camp. That song, “Morning,” is featured on singer-songwriter Facciolo’s debut album, “Dear House,” out Sept. 29. Facciolo, now 22, has been actively putting the album — recorded in Rettner — together since January. She first arrived […]
Movies
‘The Room’: Profoundly awful, awfully profound
One of the most compellingly amusing phenomena of our ironic age is the rise of the “so-bad-it’s-good” movie. Genuinely terrible films like “The Kissing Booth,” intentionally awful, campy schlock-fests like “Sharknado,” and off-kilter flicks like “A Talking Cat?” have all developed cult followings. They have thrilled film students and fans alike, and proven themselves to […]
Movie Review
Pedestrian Drive-In combines nostalgia and a queasy romance
On Thursday, the Pedestrian Drive-In screened “Phantom Thread” as part of the Rochester Fringe Festival. The Pedestrian Drive-In was familiarly wistful, but instead of pulling into a dirt parking lot and adjusting the radio to the film’s station, headphones were provided for personalized audio, and the film itself absorbed viewers in haunting elegance. The ride […]
Rocky's
UR Stand-Up Comedy Club finds a venue in Rocky’s
Rocky’s Sub Shop flooded with students 15 minutes prior to the 10 p.m. opening of a showcase of UR’s Stand-Up Comedy Club on Friday, Sept. 14. The showcase was hosted by club president and senior Kathryn Baldwin, sophomore Kandie Kramer, and juniors Cass Domingo and Maude Hall-Skillern. Some performers had a comedy background prior to […]
cooking
Not Vanilla: The joys of watching people cook
Recently, I’ve realized I watch a large amount of cooking shows and videos. I came to this conclusion when the first three shows Netflix suggested were all cooking or food-centric. I started to think about why I (and society in general) like watching cooking videos. Cooking entertainment has spanned several types of media — you […]
frat review
A party at Sig Ep, reviewed
“I can’t look at this,” said my friend Matty, as they exhaled a bulbous, opaque cloud of vape in the kitchen of an off-campus house inhabited by some Sigma Phi Epsilon brothers. It was a party, on a Saturday night like any other. The arid air enveloped us like a microwaveable sleeve, and we were […]
dryden theater
Cinema classics new again at the Dryden Theater
The Dryden Theater, the in-house cinema of the George Eastman Museum, specializes in presenting movies, old and new, in the way they were originally meant to be experienced. Seeing a movie in a theater usually involves a lot of buildup, a sort of drum-roll before the big reveal. With most movies this entails 15 minutes […]
clothesline festival
Clothesline Festival has more than garments
Hundreds of booths lined the Memorial Art Gallery for the Clothesline Festival, in which local artists from the Rochester community presented their projects on Sunday, Sept. 9. The crafts spanned from leather, metal, and glass, to photography, mixed media, painting, and digital art. “Art should be able to transform the room it decorates, and what […]
Not Vanilla
Not Vanilla: Cycles of hype
Dear reader, we have to address the harsh truth that we have both been avoiding. Summer is over. And while I am happy to not be sweating in my sleep every night, I know we both will miss the amazing gifts that summer gives us, like sunny summer days, thrilling summer blockbusters, and countless summer […]