1-23-2015

@thepittnews

Vol. 105Issue 97

Thursday, January 23, 2015Pittnews.com

Cathy climbersCathy climbers

More than six months after Pizza Sola closed its doors, a new Asian restaurant will fi ll its vacancy.

A new restaurant, called Top Shabu-Shabu and Lounge, will open where Pizza Sola previously operated on Atwood Street. According to owner Res Jianz , Top Shabu, a casual dining establishment with table service, will serve traditional Chinese “hot pot” cuisine and will feature a bar when it opens in three to four weeks. Jianz ac-

‘Hot Pot’ restaurant coming to Oakland

Harrison Kaminsky & Dale Shoemaker

The Pitt News Staff

Top Shabu 3Cassidy Davis, a communications and dance major, leads a Zumba class Tuesdays at 5 p.m. on the third fl oor of the William Pitt Union as part Pitt’s Healthy U initiative. Meghan Sunners | Staff Photographer

WORK IT OUT

Starbucks co-founder Zev Siegl wants to invite you to lunch.

In a French restaurant in 1970, three friends from college — Zev Siegl, Jerry Bald-win and Gordon Bowker — met for lunch. Fol-lowing their meals, a waiter o! ered the men shots of espresso. The bitter taste sparked an idea that would dominate Siegl’s life for the next 10 years.

Siegl invited students to this lunch scene

during his presentation Wednesday night at Pitt. The Innovation Institute coordinated the speech as part of Innovation Week. Pitt launched the Institute a little under two years ago in collaboration with the O" ce of Career Development and Placement Assistance.

Innovation week is intended to “promote innovation and entrepreneurship to the com-munity at Pitt” through various events, ac-cording to Babs Carryer, the Innovation In-stitute’s Director of Innovation and Outreach.

The week will end with the second Univer-sity-based Pitt Startup Weekend. Beginning

this Friday at 4:30 p.m. and continuing until Sunday afternoon, students from across the board will pitch ideas, recruit teammates and join in on projects.

“Students need a chance to vet their ideas,” Carryer said, “to dip their toe in the entrepreneurial waters.”

Siegl, who spoke to 148 Pitt students and future entrepreneurs last night in the assembly room of the William Pitt Union, co-founded Starbucks with his friends after that

Starbucks co-founder speaks to studentsLiz Lepro

Staff Writer

Starbucks 2

Part 2Part 2Page 2Page 2

2 January 22, 2015 | The Pitt News | www.pittnews.com

espresso round in 1970, when co! ee bars and afternoon frappuccinos were an unheard of concept. The startup has since blossomed into one of the world’s most successful co! ee companies.

A self-proclaimed “startup man”, Siegl’s interest in businesses lies in their beginnings.

Siegl, who left Starbucks in 1981 — as he was not interested in dealing with the middle stages of business development — now spends his time speaking to, mentoring, advising and consulting young entrepreneurs. In the latter part of his career, far from slow-ing down, Siegl has become a startup consul-tant and has helped launch four businesses, including another co! ee company, Quarter-maine Co! ee Roasters in Washington, D.C . He also worked with the Small Business Devel-opment Center in Washington, a network of advisors that helps small and medium-sized businesses develop , which he said he has got-ten a lot out of personally.

“You could call it giving back,” Siegl said, referring to his work with students in busi-ness schools in Seattle.

Siegl suggests that before students decide

to jump into the entrepreneurial waters, they should understand how to handle the hurdles of start-up companies.

Siegl’s restaurant narrative highlights his fi rst startup hurdle: choosing the right type of business. From there, Siegl goes on to talk about competition, funding and his most emphasized hurdle: fi nancial forecasting.

Referring to what he calls the “hand-wavers”— young en-trepreneurs who are passionate about their ideas — Siegl warned, “The number one issue is fi nancial forecasting. It is important to go through the plan and evaluate with an analytic mind whether the ex-citement is something they should embrace.”

Siegl noted that after the deci-sion to pick co! ee as the business they would embark on, the three men spent six months doing the research — a process of continually asking why.

Back when Siegl, Bowker and Baldwin were running Starbucks, they didn’t have the resources that entrepreneurs take advantage

of now. Today, technology has revolutionized the business world, allowing small business owners to use iPads in place of cash registers and creating a whole new role for social media and website design.

“I just love the digital age,” Siegl said, add-

ing that, along with all of the e" ciency and speed that comes with technology, entrepre-neurs must understand the importance of professionalism and competition — advising

STARBUCKSFROM PAGE 1

Climbers 3

This story, which continues Lauren Rosenblatt’s climb to the top of the Ca-thedral of Learning, is the second install-ment of a two-part article. The fi rst part, published in yesterday’s issue of The Pitt News, can be found online at our website.

13th - 23rd fl oor:The windows were absent from these stair-

wells, making the pale brown walls seem even darker.

A woman passed me while carrying a bag of groceries. Where had she gotten them in the middle of this building?

I spotted another University sign, with the same warning as before.

Thirty years ago, when Chew fi rst started hiking the stairs, these signs didn’t line the stairs.

“They’re probably there because the Uni-versity doesn’t want to get sued in case anyone

gets hurt. But I haven’t had any accidents, and if you fall down, you’re not going to get hurt because you’re not going at high speeds,” Chew said.

The University “installed the signs about 15 years ago to inform users that the stairwells were not monitored for physical activity,” ac-cording to spokesperson John Fedele, “and to reduce the University’s liability in the event that the stairwells were used as such.”Unlike Chew, climber Findle isn’t as confi dent in her ability to reach the top unscathed.

“People kind of look confused and con-cerned [when I pass them], especially because I’m not graceful and probably look like I’m going to drop at any second,” Findle said. “I try to run with a friend, just in case.”

Despite the signs, Findle and Sullivan said University o" cials have never approached them. A security guard once asked Chew to leave several years ago, he said, though he neither received nor requested an explana-tion for this.

“I don’t think the stair climbers as a group

ever got written permission, but we don’t want to get kicked out, so we don’t want to piss them o! ,” Chew said. “If someone asks me why I’m there, I would tell them honestly.”

Chew runs the stairs as training for cycling, he said. Regardless of his already impressive records, his goal is to ride one million miles on his bicycle before he turns 70.

According to his website, he biked his 700,000th mile in April 2012 at age 49.

“If I want to train indoors, I’d rather be running stairs than riding a stationary bike, because the [stationary bike] is so boring and doesn’t count toward my miles. It also o! ers less resistance [than a normal cycle],” Chew said.

True to Chew’s words, I certainly wasn’t bored as I lifted my feet toward yet another fl ight, feeling the pain in my thighs and calves intensify with each step up.

24th - 32nd fl oor:I had to abandon my staircase in search of

fresh air. I pushed open the doors and found my fi rst window in what felt like ages, but

had actually only been ten minutes. It was opened a crack, and I pushed my face down toward the gap, trying to take in as much cold air as I could.

My breath was coming in large gasps. I reached toward my backpack to pull out my water bottle but decided against unpacking the overstu! ed bag.

Taking a few more gulps of air, I prepared for the fi nal leg.

My destination: Finally, painfully, I collapsed on the stairs

in front of the elevators on the 36th fl oor.Chew warned that it is crucial to warm

up — a couple of fi ve-minute runs up, then a more relaxed, eight-minute run up — before starting such a venture.

“If you go all out before you warm up your lungs, it’s going to be very painful, like a wire brush down your throat,” Chew said.

I got to experience the wire brush sen-

Trek to the top, part two: Cathy climber reaches the peakLauren Rosenblatt

Staff Writer

Starbucks 4

Zev Siegl speaks with his mentor, Alfred Peet, displayed behind him. Cristine Lim | Staff Photog-rapher

3January 22, 2015 | The Pitt News | www.pittnews.com

quired the building permit for 114 Atwood St. on Oct. 22 and has been planning and renovating the restaurant since. Accord-ing to a report published in the Pittsburgh Business Times in May, Pizza Sola closed after owner Jim Aiello Jr. began to sell the properties in the spring.

“We’re doing the fi nal touches, so there is no set day to open yet,” Jianz said.

Andrew Khoo , the restaurant’s man-ager, said although they named the new restaurant after Shabu-shabu, a Japanese style of dining, yet Top Shabu’s hot pot style is traditionally more Chinese.

Customers will order a “hot pot” and whatever meats and vegetables they would like to eat, which servers will bring to the table. Customers will then cook the food using the hot pot, a metal container fi lled with broth and heated by an electric coil, and eat their food at their table. In hot pots, the food is cooked while the pot sim-mers. Thinly sliced beef is the traditional choice, Khoo said, but Top Shabu will o! er a variety of meat and vegetable options.

“All food is cooked at the table,” Khoo said.

According to Khoo, Top Shabu’s bar will o! er Asian-inspired drinks.

“We have a 10 tap system from the pre-vious owner,” Khoo said. “We’ll also have a variety of wine and a large variety of liquor for unique mixed drinks. The mixed drinks will have an Asian infl uence. For example, melon liqueur is used a lot in China.”

Though Pizza Sola also had a liquor license, Top Shabu had to apply for their license separately, Khoo said, in accor-dance with Pennsylvania law.

After construction is fi nished, Khoo said they will focus on hiring and training employees and are aiming to open the fi rst or second week of February.

“We completely rebuilt the interior,” he said.

Jianz, who has been living in Pittsburgh for the last 14 years, said he wanted to open a hot pot restaurant in Oakland because he wanted to introduce students to a new style of dining.

“Hot pot is very popular with young people in China. I wanted to communicate a new culture of food,” he said.

After he opens the restaurant in Oak-

land, Jianz said he hopes to open another hot pot restaurant in Squirrel Hill depend-ing on the success of the forthcoming Top Shabu. He said he is looking for a location now, but nothing is certain.

Though Oakland already has several other Asian restaurants like Szechuan Ex-press and Asia Tea House, Jianz is confi -dent Top Shabu will stand out.

“It’s di! erent, not like a regular Chinese restaurant,” Jianz said. “Everyone in China knows about [hot pot], and I wanted to bring the new food here.”

TOP SHABUFROM PAGE 1

sation myself, as I had foolishly ignored his warning.

Regardless, I tried to channel the euphoria of a runner’s high that Chew claimed I would feel once I reached the top. My screaming, sore muscles overshadowed the endorphins, but when the elevator doors slid open, I felt at ease.

The workout wasn’t in vain, as I am train-

ing for a marathon and consider myself in relatively good shape. This just makes me wonder more how people such as Chew could ever manage to make it up the stairs 12 or 13 times in one workout.

As I changed back into my formal attire, I refl ected on Chew’s advice for me.

“If you want to get better, try to go up one more time each week, and build up to when you’re doing it ten times, and that would be good for a marathon. You would be able to handle one extra time each time,” Chew said.

See you next week, Tower of Pain.

CLIMBERSFROM PAGE 2


Zev Siegl lectures on inspiration with the chemical formula for caffeine displayed behind him. Christine Lim | Staff Photographer

against, for example, letting a cousin design the website if she or he isn’t a professional web designer with a handle on marketing.

Siegl’s last hurdle is about picking the right people to work with — a topic stu-dents trying to learn the ins and outs of networking could relate to immediately.

“I like people a lot,” Siegl said, a trait that has helped him immensely in his career.

Using this trait, the young enthusi-astic Starbucks founder was able to ap-proach Alfred Peet in the 1970s. Peet, founder of Peet’s Co! ee and Tea, knew everything there was to know about co! ee roasting. He would later become Siegl’s mentor and an absolutely vital part of his success.

“I wouldn’t be here without him,” Siegl said, while an image of the now

deceased Alfred Peet appeared on the projector screen behind Siegl.

Siegl’s interest in people has also en-

abled him to enjoy his work with startup companies. He draws from an index of ex-amples and experiences to demonstrate to new business owners the importance of assembling information and making informed decisions when it comes to choosing business ideas and strategies .

He advises students to “not get ahead of themselves,” emphasizing the impor-tance of passion alongside a willingness to work with numbers.

Siegl’s passion for startup companies is evident. He talks about co! ee shops like he’s referring museums he’s visited, excitedly suggesting shops with the nicest set ups — an indication that the owner has years of experience in the fi eld.

When Siegl visits various cities around the world, including Paris and Kuwait City, he stops by Starbucks shops and is still amazed at the way every employee and barista is able to talk about the co! ee being sold. He asks the baristas questions about the blends, if they’ve ever consid-ered mixing Costa Rican and Panamanian roasts and if not, would they like to try it now?

“They don’t recognize me, of course,”

Siegl said, laughing. He summarizes that any company

able to grow to that scale without los-ing their commitment to the product is admirable.

Siegl hoped that students will take his messages about hard work to heart.

“It’s not for everyone,” Siegl said, ref-erencing the fact that not everyone is cut out for the hurdles entrepreneurs must face, “deciding to be an entrepreneur will really mess with your mind.”

Siegl’s experience proved useful to the students attending the presentation , who ranged from undergraduates to graduate school students and postdoctoral stu-dents, all with a wide-range of majors and interests.

Halid Mardini, a senior economics and psychology major, said he was in-spired by Siegl’s visit because it gave him and other students the chance to “follow in his footsteps,” seeing his ideas fl ourish around the globe.

“If there’s a kid right now drinking a frappuccino in Saudi Arabia,” Mardini said, “well then, [Siegl’s] got to be suc-cessful. ”

STARBUCKSFROM PAGE 2


OPINIONSInteractive lectures liven up undergraduate education

EDITORIALEDITORIAL

Large lectures — they’re a part of almost every undergraduate student’s college ca-reer. Yet, their e! ectiveness is questionable, and some educators are adopting a new approach to the classic college lecture.

Traditionally, large college lectures are comprised of a single lecturer communi-cating the day’s class material, with little interaction between the professor and large groups of students occurring. Afterwards, TAs are often tasked with leading recita-tions separate from the lecture. However, is it time to make the actual lecture more engaging for students? Many believe it is.

According to a Dec. 26, 2014 New York Times article, more and more lecturers across the country are attempting to ac-tively engage with their students with in-teractive lectures, rather than incessantly lecture to them for the entire class.

A University of Colorado study gives

evidence that these interactive classes are more e! ective than their traditional counterparts. In 2008, the University reported that students in such classes achieved scores almost 50 percent higher than students in traditional classes — an undeniable show of e" cacy.

The Times mentions that failure rates in introductory science and math classes are high. At four-year colleges, for instance, 28 percent of students aim to obtain a math, engineering or science degree. However, colleges grant just 16 percent of bachelor’s degrees to students in those fi elds.

To be fair, many early classes — espe-cially those on the path to a math or sci-ence degree — are intended to weed out slacking students and recognize the most capable students, which accounts for the dip in degrees awarded. However, with the modern cost of education, we should be

encouraging, rather than discouraging, students. After all, they pay enough for it. Therefore, classes should encourage active learning that benefi ts the students, rather than simply weeds them out. This way, pro-fessors give students a fair opportunity to pass or fail the class, making their college experience worth the high cost.

In regard to large classes popularly taken as general education requirements, professors must fi nd a balance between engaging students and putting them in ex-cessively uncomfortable situations. Lectur-ers should use methods such as clickers, worksheets and small discussion groups to gauge progress. They should not, however, make less-knowledgeable students anx-ious or nervous with the threat of shoving a microphone in their face at random to answer questions. This is counterproduc-tive and will shift focus from learning all of

the material to simply preparing possible answers to posed lecture questions.

With higher level classes, however, pro-fessors should not excuse students from random participation. It is a student’s responsibility to fully prepare for their classes of expertise, or else be weeded out from a patch of healthy, growing minds. Having the ability to communicate and answer questions under pressure is a skill that developed and educated adults must possess. So, professors should have total freedom to be as interactive as they wish in these higher level classes, as opposed to a more moderate approach for general education courses.

Student success is societal success. Therefore, interactive college lectures, instead of droning lectures, must be an essential component to modern higher education.

As a newly declared sociology major, I knew I would soon come into contact with the works of Karl Marx.

Marx, who is perhaps most famous for his denunciation of capitalism and advocacy of communism, wrote a “Manifesto of the Communist Party” — which advocated for working class control of the means of produc-tion — with Friedrich Engels in 1848. This booklet would eventually make its way into my social theory class.

As is typical of historic material presented in classes, I initially struggled to see the rel-evance of Marx’s work in modern life. Yet, several of his assertions o! ered interesting insight into current phenomena.

Marx writes about an “epidemic of over-production” brought on by the rapid devel-opment of production means during his era — the mid-to-late 19th century.

He was correct, and we are indeed living out his idea of an “epidemic of overproduc-tion,” meaning a dangerous overabundance of industry and information. The Industrial Revolution, which he researched, manifested his theory and resulted in crises like climate change and income inequality.

But, these days, the idea of an “epidemic of overproduction” also applies to our tech-nological strides.

There’s no doubt that advancing technol-ogy and the integration of the Internet has drastically altered the makeup of our society and, as Marx would put it, the means of our production.

For one, it has transformed the nature of our jobs. Where it was once a bonus for indi-viduals and enterprises to have some form of technical capability, society now expects us to have these capabilities . When both our work lives and our personal lives happen in the same Internet dimension, the line between the two is often blurred.

For another, it has changed the way that our mind functions. Nicholas Carr, writer of “The Shallow: How the Internet is Changing the Way We Think, Read, and Remember,” researched the cognitive e! ects of our heavy Internet usage after he became concerned about the cognitive changes he personally experienced. His discoveries are hauntingly familiar to college students: an increasing inability to concentrate and focus, as well as a decline in his ability to perform higher-cognitive functions.

Carr cites Michael Merzenich, a pioneer-ing neuroscientist, in asserting that the hu-man mind’s inclination to drift is a result of the massive amounts of stimuli with which the Internet readily provides us.

The 24/7 internet capabilities do allow for a substantial increase in production. However, we do not control whether what we stumble upon is it good, bad or fl at-out awful.

Beyond distraction, perhaps the most prominent example of how changes in our

means of production signifi cantly alter our society is the writing industry.

Prior to the 18th century, writing wasn’t considered a profession. Those who wrote did so for a patron, and often had alternate occupations. Over time, writing became an accepted and profi table means of employ-ment. In today’s society, writing is still vastly accepted as a profession — but it’s hardly a profi table one.

The problem is, as lawyer-turned-novelist Michael Henderson put it, “In the old days, you had to type the story on actual paper. Now any monkey with a computer can do it in hours. Shazam, everyone is a writer.”

Outcries over the quality of written work aren’t rare. The invention of the printing press raised similar dissent amongst critics.

Of course, everyone should have the right to unleash their story into the world. But when everyone writes, the writing’s value, or ex-

! e new existential crisis: An epidemic of overproductionBethel Habte

Columnist

HABTEHABTE

Habte 6


T P NS U DO K U

Today’s di! culty level: HardPuzzles by Dailysudoku.com

E S T A B L I S H E D 1 9 1 0

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change value in Marxist terms — meaning the quantitative value of exchange — does indeed decline .

What’s become somewhat of a new revolu-tion is the rise of the e-book. We can see it as the technological version of what the printing press did for Johannes Gutenberg’s time — the 15th century.

Some controversy surrounds the e-book.

According to the New York Times, Amazon also angered some writers by creating a ser-vice called Kindle Unlimited that would allow readers access to 700,000 books for $9.99 a month.

Kindle Unlimited is only the latest in a string of tensions caused by Amazon’s newly acquired role of publisher. Ultimately, Ama-zon publishes the way it runs its business — aimed at o" ering customers the lowest possible price coupled with great conve-nience. But while that’s great for customers, it’s horrible for writers.

However, Amazon is simply taking advan-tage of the technological “epidemic of over-production.” Readers like e-books for their convenience, and the way they resemble the manner in which they’ve become accustomed to reading text. Because there are more writ-ers, there are more books. More books, it seems, than people are willing to purchase.

Personally, I haven’t caught on to the e-book trend. Books were a large part of my childhood, and I still cherish the act of going to a library and sifting through the vast shelves. I’ve long nursed a desire to add something of

my own to those shelves, but with changing production, I don’t know what that’s going to look like anymore. Our new technology alters the way we work, the way we think and causing us to function at a rate faster than our dreams can keep up with.

We are no longer facing existential crises, but rather, as Marx also predicted, we are fac-ing “epidemics of overproduction.”

Bethel primarily writes about social issues

and current events for The Pitt News. Write to Bethel at [email protected].

HABTEFROM PAGE 5


ARTS and ENTERTAINMENT

“Daily Geology” sounds like the title of a leather-bound textbook containing illus-trations of glossy, fuming volcanos and cliff faces. Assumptions aside, it’s really the title of a daily autobiographical com-ic, drawn by Lawrenceville-based art-

ist/cartoonist and CMU professor John Peña, whose everyday confessions and self-examinations give the comic depth.

Peña said that the comic is a way for him to make sense of his world through art . As for the name, “I’m still thinking about it,” he said. “I thought of it as layering, like sediment ... when I started [“Daily Geology”], it was so thin. And then one day I had a whole

stack of drawings, and they were all kind of jutting out in different layers — and so I thought of a life as a geological process.”

Indeed, Peña isn’t shy to reveal his most personal reflections about him-self, his relationships or his Irritable Bowel Syndrome to his audience. While the drawings themselves are seldom graphic, the ones that are, or contain

exceptionally dark or harmful material, aren’t published to his website, daily-geology.com.

“ T h o s e [missing dates] are usually pret-ty exposed, dark, more unnerving images that are too sensitive to put on the In-ternet,” Peña said. “Whether that ’s an in-teraction I had with somebody that resulted in an argument or

something really painful.”A text to image relationship weaves

through “Daily Geology,” as each drawing is usually accompa-nied by a paragraph of Peña’s c a r e f u l ly i n t i m a t e w o r d s , r e a d i n g like diary entries.

A l -t h o u g h with “Daily Geology,” anyone can read the p e r s o n a l i n s i g h t into Peña’s life.

“When we found [ “ D a i l y Geology”] as fresh-men, it felt like you were learning some secret about your professor’s personal life,” Minnar Xie, a former student of Peña’s, said in an email. “We felt like we shouldn’t be reading it.”

When asked how many drawings he’s done, Peña doesn’t hesitate before an-swering, “Well, what’s 365 times 5?”

Peña, who received his M.F.A. from CMU in 2008, has been uploading his

comics to his website

since 2010. He began the project unof-ficially at least three years before the earliest Daily Geology upload.

Daily Geology was conceived from years of reading comic strips such as Gary Larson’s “The Far Side” and Gary Kochalka’s similarly autobiographical “American Elf.”

Peña also cites Douglas Coupland’s novella “Life After God” as one of his biggest influences — specifically the author’s vignettes before every chapter.

Local artist John Peña documents life with ‘Daily Geology’

Jack Trainor Staff Writer

Peña 10

FEATUREFEATURE

Photo courtesy of John Peña

Cartoon courtesy of John Peña

Cartoon courtesy of John Peña


Delpy and Hawke created a romance for the ages in “Before Sunrise.” Warner Bros.

Although January has become a cin-ematic dumping ground for mental vacations such as “Paul Blart: Mall Cop,” Liam Neeson saving his daugh-ter “one last time” or Kevin Hart movies, the occasional great film can sneak onto the schedule, much like “Before Sunrise” did in 1995.

Twenty years later, it’s still hard to believe that one of the best cin-ematic romances doesn’t have a plot, on-screen sex or a tragic ending.

Richard Linklater could trans-form from Texan indie forefather to minor household name this Oscar season, but even if you took away “Boyhood,” the presumed Best Pic-ture front-runner, he would still have one of the most varied and ac-complished careers of any working director. His early run of “Slacker,” “Dazed and Confused” and “Sunrise”

— which all took place in one day, in one place — set the mold for his freewheeling and philosophical, but contained career. Sure, some crit-ics have (mis)labeled Linklater as a “slacker,” but he’s nearly kept up a one-movie-per-year output with minimal missteps since the early ’90s — even alongside filming “Boy-hood,” that 12-year feat of a movie. His two unlikely sequels to “Before Sunrise” also adds the rarely war-ranted trilogy-notch to his belt.

“Before Sunrise,” which was co-written by Linklater and Kim Krizan — in her only direct screenwriting credit — begins on a train cruis-ing through Austria. Jesse (Ethan Hawke), an American, meets Celine ( Julie Delpy) from France . They talk. They get off the train together in Vienna, and then they talk some more. By the end of the movie, it’s

Linklater’s timeless romance, ‘Before Sunrise’ turns 20Shawn Cooke

A&E Editor

TIME CAPSULETIME CAPSULE

Before Sunrise 9


Peña said that Coupland drew them “with a Bic pen — he made a crappy line drawing. What I liked about that so much is that he was clearly not a good craftsman, but what he was doing was he was trying his best to make sense of something by drawing.”

Sam Ward, another of Peña’s former students, said most of his students are aware of the comic and its intensity.

“It’s fascinating to see a professor re-ally vulnerable and really open about [himself ],” she said in an email. “It’s important that professors are engaged in the [art] community because I think it gives us as students hope that we can also make a living making art and work-ing with a community.”

While he may not post his most graph-ic comics, Peña doesn’t let subject matter deter him from creating every day, a task that he’s maintained for five years.

“My first two-and-a-half years, I was trying really hard to be smart and clever and funny and it was extremely dishon-

est,” he said. “So I didn’t show a lot of people when I was doing them.”

It took the support of his friends and an intense work ethic that his parents instilled in him at an early age to push through his initial timidity. He also sells collections of “Daily Geology” cartoons in self-published books. On top of the daily drawings, Peña maintains his daily “Letter to the Ocean” project, in which he addresses a letter to the Pacific Ocean. After the post office returns them to Peña, he puts them on display in an exhi-bition, which has accumulated more than 3,000 letters since 2003. He currently has an exhibit at the Mattress Factory entitled “Word Balloons” that features large, three-dimensional speech bubbles, supported by two-by-fours.

As for the future of “Daily Geology,” Peña doesn’t have any definitive plans, but he is open to ending the series, one day.

“It comes and goes in waves,” he said of his enthusiasm. “Sometimes I think ‘what’s the point of all of this?’ And then I make a drawing of me thinking about it.”

PEÑAFROM PAGE 7

This Weekend...Fri., Jan. 23

LotusStage AE

400 North Shore Drive, North Shore

8 p.m.$22 advance / $25 at door

! ey’re no Flying Lotus, but the similarly named, less experimental “jamtronica” band Lotus returns to Pitts-burgh less than a year after they last played at Stage AE. Equal parts Phish and Kraft-werk, they make a case for keeping real instruments around in this EDM-satu-rated era. Lotus is touring to support last July’s record,

Gilded Age.

Sat., Jan. 24

PharmakonBallroom

202 38th St., Lawrenceville9 p.m.

$10After a soft opening, new performance space Ball-room will ring in their grand opening with a scream. Noise master Mar-garet Chardiet makes blood-curdling, cathartic music as Pharmakon. Her second LP, Bestial Burden, was her most impassioned work yet, coming less than one year after a massive cyst nearly

took her life.


BEFORE SUNRISEFROM PAGE 8

unclear if they’ll ever see each other again. It doesn’t sound like much for a 105-minute feature, but the perceptive Jesse and Celine are more interesting than anyone you know .

If you met Linklater, chances are he wouldn’t want to talk about any of his movies, actors or awards hype — he’d cut right to the meaningful stuff. Just 10 minutes into their screen time together,

Jesse and Celine have already discussed love, death and their greatest fears—even before exchanging their names. Since “Sunrise” is loosely based on a night Linklater spent with a woman he met in Philadelphia, you have to wonder if their conversation was that immedi-ate.

Celine and Jesse’s banter seems so effortless and rhythmic that it’s jarring when Jesse finally asks her to get off the train with him in Vienna. He has to catch a flight back to the U.S. the next day, so

it could be his last chance to see Celine. For the first time, he seems nervous, nagging her like a sixth grader asking out his crush in the cafeteria. It’s a leap of faith for Celine, since a similar “trust a strange man in a strange city” setup appears more often in horror films than in romance.

But there’s no kidnapping or slashing in Vienna — Jesse and Celine just walk aimlessly through the city, stumbling into isolated, nebulous situations. Lin-klater masterfully makes odd encoun-

ters with a palm reader, street perform-ers and a homeless poet seem natural, much like he did in “Slacker” with the trendy Austin community.

Linklater’s navigation of these ram-bling, small moments makes “Before Sunrise” special, but the film works best in the context of its superior successors, “Before Sunset” and “Before Midnight,” which were released nine years apart in 2004 and 2013. If Vienna is the first date, then their surprise Parisian re-union in “Sunset” is the honeymoon and Greece in “Midnight” is the Hail-Mary-moon. They share an eternal, turbulent love, but by the latest installment, we only see flashes of youthful interplay in their decade-old relationship .

“Before Sunrise” has its mind on the future right from the start — after watching an angry couple storm out of the train car, Celine asks Jesse, “Have you ever heard that as couples grow older, they lose the ability to hear each other?” When Jesse convinces Celine to get off the train, he asks her to leap 10 and 20 years into the future, assuming that she’s stuck in an unsatisfying mar-riage, wondering, “What if I had gotten off that train?”

After watching the sequels, it be-comes apparent how fully formed and lived-in these characters were in the beginning — every story they tell in “Sunrise” rings true to the characters we’ve come to know over the years, and Jesse even channels time travel during a pivotal moment in “Before Midnight.” Although she bombards Jesse with them in “Before Midnight,” Celine already mastered the trap-question in the first installment (“What do you think would bother you about me years from now?”).

Some might argue that the boiling point of “Before Midnight” can be attrib-uted to Jesse and Celine changing dra-matically over the course of 18 years. But that assertion couldn’t be further from the truth. The “Before” trilogy doesn’t suggest that it’s the people who change in long-term relationships — it’s their tolerance and ability to detect the other person’s temperament.

By “Midnight,” Jesse and Celine haven’t changed much — they’ve just grown tired. Vienna can only happen once, and that’s the most heartbreaking thing about “Before Sunrise.”


SPORTS

Allison Combs looks contemplatively at the grass. Her thoughts whirl as she tries to focus her eyes beyond the ground in front of her. She inhales, steps back and lets it fly. The ball goes soaring through the air.

Rewind to 1863, and see the same scene unfolding: the game of soccer.

Although the idea of kicking a ball through the dirt has rolled around since Christopher Columbus, it did not reach America until the 1870s, when it was brought over by immigrants coming through Ellis Island.

Today, more than 13 million Americans play soccer, and it has become the third-most played sport in the country, behind basketball and baseball.

On college campuses, the game’s na-tional success is mimicked on our smaller fields, as more Pitt students take the soc-cer pitch. From varsity level teams to club sports and intramural leagues, students

have several ways to get in on the action.Pitt’s long history of varsity soccer be-

gan with the men’s team in 1951, while the women’s team started kicking in 1996. The men’s team began as a non-varsity club sport but, three years later, the University elevated the team to varsity level, gaining funding for scholarships in 1961 .

Combs, a sophomore communication science and disorders major, took the field as a member of “sorority soccer.” The Stu-dent Affairs Intramurals and Recreations Department heads this intramural league . According to Combs, the intramural league includes several different subsections, in-cluding sororities, fraternities, dormitory floors and other campus clubs. Members of different organizations sign up based on with whom they associate. For example, members of a sorority sign up for a playing division containing other sororities.

Each subsection includes four to seven teams that compete against each other

Varsity, club and intramural soccer thrive at PittLauren Rosenblatt

Staff Writer

Men’s soccer coach Joe Luxbacher watches his team.Theo Schwarz| Visual Editor Soccer 13

SOCCERSOCCER

Of all the things I expected to hear incessantly in the weeks leading up to a New England Pa-triots vs. Seattle Seahawks Super Bowl – “Tom Brady’s experience,” “Bill Belichick,” “Legion of Boom” – I can’t say I imagined the level of football infl ation to haunt my eardrums. But, here we are, and the Patriots are once again the villains of the National Football League for under-infl ating their footballs (gasp!).

“Deflategate,” as social media sages termed the incident , became the biggest NFL news since the Patriots’ 45-7 romping of the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday. When reports fi rst surfaced that the Pats defl ated their footballs (with absolutely zero regard to the league rulebook, I might add), I laughed. I didn’t understand why it was such a big deal, and I still don’t. But I did some research, and

here’s why “Defl ategate” is a bit more than just lost air.

NFL rules stipulate that each football eli-gible for game use contains between 12.5 and 13.5 pounds of air per square inch (psi), which translates to each ball weighing between 14 and 15 ounces. Using an underinfl ated ball will give a passer better grip strength on the ball, which is helpful in a number of obvious ways, like being able to throw for more yards. Does it seem like a big deal for a team to violate the rules of ball infl ation in a playo! scenario? In theory, yes.

In actuality, however, it’s not. Reason being: We’re not talking about

shorter quarterbacks like Drew Brees or Rus-sell Wilson here. We are discussing Tom Brady, a man big enough to see over the steering wheel of his Prius without a booster seat. While

‘Defl ategate:’ Did Brady and the Patriots break the rules?Alex Wise

Staff Writer

Column 12Tom Brady and the Patriots fi nd themselves again at the center of controversy, this time regarding defl ated footballs. Sam Riche| TNS

COLUMNCOLUMN


ACROSS1 Parking lot fillers5 “Me too!”

10 Cutlass automaker14 Nike competitor15 Valuable violin,

for short16 Genesis or

Exodus, e.g.17 Like the 1920s-

’30s, economically19 Wild revelry20 Audition hopefuls21 Enjoyed a sail, say23 Indian melodies24 Excellent work27 Dean’s email suffix28 Japanese sash30 Back of a flipped

coin31 2,000 pounds32 Uncooked34 Greek messenger

of the gods35 Dramatic weight-

loss program38 Geek Squad

member41 Fireworks

reaction42 EPA-banned

pesticide45 Roger who broke

Babe Ruth’srecord

46 Refusals48 Prior to, in poems49 Deadeye with a

rifle53 “A Doll’s House”

playwright55 Decorative inlaid

work56 Watchful

Japanesecanines

57 Comet Hale-__59 Hectic pre-

deadline period61 Thought from la

tête62 Hayes or Hunt63 Slaughter in the

Baseball Hall ofFame

64 Surrender, asterritory

65 Grab66 Emailed

DOWN1 Musical set at the

Kit Kat Club2 Guacamole fruit

3 Tear gas weapon4 Margaret Mead

subject5 Georgia and

Latvia, once:Abbr.

6 Horseplayer’shaunt, for short

7 Island nearCuraçao

8 Perry in court9 Convention pin-

on10 Section of a

woodwind quintetscore

11 Conrad classic12 Guard that barks13 Big __ Country:

Montana18 Approximately22 One-to-one

student24 Prejudice25 Corrida cry26 Undergraduate

degrees in biol.,e.g.

29 Scottish hillside33 Detective’s

question34 Sunshine cracker35 Massachusetts

city crossed byfour Interstates

36 Insurance coversthem

37 “Please stop that”38 Film lover’s TV

choice39 Corn serving40 Hardly roomy, as

much airlineseating

42 Preordain43 “It’ll never

happen!”44 Most uptight

47 Many a Punjabi50 Goldman __:

investmentbanking giant

51 New employee52 Eyelike openings54 Tugs at a fishing

line56 Clearasil target57 Clic Stic pen

maker58 Poem that extols60 Pince-__ glasses

Saturday’s Puzzle SolvedBy Clement McKay 1/26/15

©2015 Tribune Content Agency, LLC 1/26/15

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I like to think he’s a dainty little Prius-driving schoolboy because he went to University of Michigan and wears Ugg boots, Tom Brady is not a dainty little schoolboy with dainty little schoolboy hands. He’s a 6-foot-4 man with, presumably, the hands of a 6-foot-4 man. And those hands have won him three Super Bowls already.

The psi of the football doesn’t matter be-cause Tom Brady is simply a great football player.

Perhaps the best part of “Defl ategate,” however, is the entertainment value in watch-ing every Patriots opponent retroactively claim that they, too, were the victim of de-fl ation. Leave it to the Baltimore Ravens to wait until after a report surfaces to say, “Uhh, yeah, we thought the balls weren’t pumped up enough, either. Yeah. We noticed that. We just didn’t say anything.”

Ravens linebacker Terrell Suggs may have commented also, but it’s unclear what the ineloquent player would actually have said.

League Dictator — er, sorry, Commis-sioner — Roger Goodell hasn’t decided the course of action from here. Technically, the

Patriots could be disqualifi ed from the playo! s and Indianapolis would take their place, but we all know this won’t happen because the Patriots are 1,000 times more ratings-friendly than the Colts.

Besides, Colts quarterback Andrew Luck already has plans to spend Super Bowl Sun-day at a retirement home, bringing joy to the elderly of Indianapolis, because he’s just a good guy.

So, the Super Bowl will still be the Patriots vs. the Seahawks — or, rather, Tom Brady vs. the Seahawks.

Now that I’ve established that conclusion, I’m having another moment of clarity. I have a theory that the defl ated balls were a setup. This was an elaborate scheme by the Patriots to gain an advantage in the Super Bowl.

Knowing they’d be playing the Seahawks and the undersized Wilson, the Patriots fl at-tened their footballs. Brady then threw an interception or two intentionally, hoping the Colts would call them out, which they did. The League will now highly scrutinize the footballs used in the Super Bowl, and will probably infl ate them to the high end of the psi range, putting small-handed Russell Wilson at a huge disadvantage.

Well played, New England. Well played.

COLUMNFROM PAGE 11


throughout the six-week season. Each team must have six players registered, but they are allowed to have only five players if one or both teams ever can-not field enough players for a full team . The players usually don’t have assigned positions as there are no coaches, and the roster ultimately depends on who is available each night.

The 40-minute games — plus a five-minute halftime — take place at the Cost Sports Center.

On a different field, things are a bit more intense, and soccer balls fly to-ward the net, pummeling the keeper. Feet clad in spiky cleats run the length of the field performing exhausting drills and exercises.

These feet belong to sweat-drenched players of the Pitt men’s soccer team.

“Practices are very hard,” head coach Joe Luxbacher said. “But in a game, play-ers make mistakes when they get tired, so we try to prepare [the players] for the environment that they are going to

experience in the game.”The team practices three times a

week for 90 minutes, constantly mov-ing from one drill to the next. They must remain in motion, as soccer players av-erage running more than seven miles in a game, according to the research group STATS.

A club team at Pitt is run in a similar fashion to the varsity teams. It holds tryouts, competes in games and has strenuous practices.

The coaches recruit most varsity players to join the soccer team, but some players “walk on” to the team, meaning that they contact the coach and try out without being recruited. Luxbacher said the varsity team has had several walk-ons, often with great success.

Like the varsity team,the club soc-cer team at Pitt is selective in choosing its players, and takes the competition seriously. Intramural leagues accept any willing participants until the ros-ter fills up.

For all teams, with game day comes more pressure, more noise and more distractions than a secluded practice

field. Most of this comes from the cheer-ing audience.

“A loud, supportive crowd helps the players, but you still have to play the game,” Luxbacher said.

For Ryan Hulings, a member of the Riverhounds — the Pittsburgh profes-sional soccer team — being on the field means more than just playing a game.

“Sports are entertainment. Whenever you have a chance to perform, you have to get out there and do it,” Hulings said.

Hulings and Luxbacher have noticed a link between the play on the field and the reaction off of it.

“One sort of fuels the other. If it’s an exciting game, the crowd gets into it, and if the crowd gets into it, it fuels the game, too. Its a two-way street,” Luxbacher said.

Jessica Weinreich, a freshman occu-pational therapy major participating in the sorority soccer league, said that the audience fuels her motivation as well.

“I like when there is an audience,” she said. “It makes me work harder because it shows me why I am there and that I am representing my sorority.”

Still, games are fierce, and sorority girls play to win.

“The games get somewhat competi-tive at times, especially when we are in a draw and it is getting close to the end of the game,” Weinreich said. “That atmo-sphere and competitiveness definitely make it more fun.”

While soccer intramurals are gener-ally more relaxed, club teams gravitate to the intense nature that varsity sports provide.

For Weinreich, intramurals were the right level.

“I used to play a high level of soccer when I was younger,” she said. “There was a lot more pressure to do well and not make mistakes because winning was pretty important. [In intramurals,] its nice not to have to impress a coach or fear that I will be taken out of the game because of a mistake.”

Each team has different rules, dif-ferent guidelines and different players; however, as Hulings said, the game is always the same. From a dirt field to a crowded stadium, soccer is making its rounds.

SOCCERFROM PAGE 11

1-23-2015

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