Each time the news came on that week in early February, junior Jordan Turner either changed the channel or left his kitchen. As newsreel after newsreel focused on the violent protests in the Middle East, Turner, a recent convert to Islam, found it difficult to watch the news with his Christian parents.
A quick upward thrust to the nose, followed by a fast knee in the groin. As my attacker keels over, I deliver a kick to the face. "No!" I yell, striking the lower back. "No! No! No!"
If only the craft of "Music from the Inside Out" was as spell-binding as the symphonies and waltzes its musicians play. Then, this documentary by Daniel Anker might have actually been a success. As it is, the pervading feeling during "Music from the Inside Out" is for the musicians to just shut up already and play their instruments.
Silver stars dangle from the ceiling. Sheer white fabric drapes the walls of the room, which is warmly illuminated by shining white Christmas lights. To one side are tables set up for poker; opposite the tables are trays laid out with delicate hors d'oeuvres. Guests dressed in tuxedos and sparkling dresses intermingle on this February evening, socializing as they sample shrimp cocktail.
All Blair staff e-mail accounts switched from FirstClass to Outlook on Dec. 1 in accordance with a countywide transition that is set to occur over the course of this school year, according to an MCPS informational brochure entitled "Outlook at MCPS."
They're coming again.
Guns and explosions. Marching drills in perfectly straight lines. Orders, yells and more explosions. These are the images the word "military" usually conjures. But it isn't that simple.
Tomorrow, go stand in front of a gravestone. Maybe then the message behind Liev Schreiber's film "Everything Is Illuminated," based upon the best-selling novel of the same name by Jonathan Safran Foer, will be a bit clearer. And if not, spend the $9.25 to see the film again — and again, and again, because every cent paid for cinema of this caliber is one more step on the path to illumination.
"Sequins"
Senior Alyssa Marzullo had never done anything crazy and unplanned in her life. But that didn't stop her from boarding a flight to Chicago O'Hare Airport early one morning last August to meet Jeff, the boyfriend she knew only through phone and online conversations.
Palms sweating as waves of apprehension passed through his body, former Blair junior Jonathan Musgrave waited backstage at his sixth grade talent show. The venue wasn't a theater, but rather the cafeteria of Silver Spring International Middle School, and Musgrave was about to do something few people have the courage for: a one-man comedy routine.
Each day as senior Tanu Suri leans against the counter, the customers at the photography shop where she works compliment her on looks. For months senior Suzie Adjogah dealt with the unwanted gifts her boss gave her from his travels abroad. Whenever senior Emma Karey wore a short skirt to her old job, her fellow waiters' catcalls would ring in her ears throughout her shift.
It's not an easy job being the politically correct watchdog for the holiday season. Every Nov. 1, I pull out my Hanukkah-menorah spear, Christmas-lights whip and Kwanzaa-vegetable bazooka and turn my eye to assaulting those three terrible offenders of political correctness: stores, cards and holiday jingles.
A silence settles over the 40-some people gathered in the Takoma Park City Council chamber as seven high-school boys in traditional tan scout uniforms march ritually down the center aisle, proudly carrying the American flag and their troop's bright ribbons. The boys line up, straight and tall, along the front of the room, their uniforms decorated with hard-won patches and red scout kerchiefs. They and those around them solemnly stand and begin to recite the Boy Scout Oath and Law: "On my honor, I will do my best...”
After suffering through mornings filled with daily tracking polls, enduring lunches engrossed in political conversation and bearing the evening news' coverage of the candidates' daily foibles and attacks, one can get a bit sick of the 2004 election. The doctor recommends one remedy, whether the patient is red, blue or purple in the face: Team America: World Police will reveal all the idiocies of American politics and cure the patient without fail.
The prospective opening for the new Takoma Park Community Center (TPCC) has been postponed from October 2004 to late spring 2005 because of a lack of funds and construction problems, according to Takoma Park City officials.
When the curtain closes at the end of the Shakespeare Theatre's performance of Macbeth, the audience will let out a sigh of relief that the theatre has not erupted in flames, nor suffered the death of one of its actors, or had a dangerous dagger skid across the floor. The Scottish play, as thespians dub one of the bard's most bloody works, has an inauspicious reputation for inevitable, sometimes deadly, accidents. Luckily for the audience, the Shakespeare Theatre contains the terror and gore of its performance securely behind the imaginary fourth wall of the stage.