In the Future...April

Upcoming Movies - April 2011

- Source Code: Apr. 1

    - Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga

- Insidious: Apr. 1

    - Starring: Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Ty Simpkins

- Super: Apr. 1

    - Starring: Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Live Tyler

- Hop: Apr. 1

    - Starring: Russell Brand, James Marsden, Elizabeth Perkins

- Your Highness: Apr. 8

    - Starring: Danny McBride, Zooey Deschanel, James Franco

- Hanna: Apr. 8

    - Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Cate Blanchett, Eric Bana

- Arthur: Apr. 8

    - Starring: Russell Brand, Helen Mirren, Jennifer Garner

- Born to Be Wild: Apr. 8

    - Starring: Birute Galdikas, Daphne Sheldrick, Morgan Freeman

- Soul Surfer: Apr. 8

    - Starring: AnnaSophia Robb, Dennis Quaid, Helen Hunt

- Scream 4: Apr. 15

    - Starring: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette

- Rio: Apr. 15

    - Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Anne Hathaway, George Lopez

- Water for Elephants: Apr. 22

    - Starring: Robert Pattinson, Reese Witherspoon, Christoph Waltz

- Madea's Big Happy Family: Apr. 22

    - Starring: Tyler Perry, Loretta Devine, Bow Wow

- Fast Five: Apr. 29

    - Starring: Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson

- Prom: Apr. 29

    - Starring: Aimee Teegarden, Nicholas Braun, Christine Elise

- Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil: Apr. 29

    - Starring: Hayden Panettiere, Glenn Close, Patrick Warburton

(information taken from imdb.com)

Upcoming Albums - April 2011

Week of April 3

Various Artists - Songs for Japan

Tubes - The Completion Backward Principle

Hot Tuna - Steady As She Goes

Robbie Robertson - How to Become Clairvoyant

Jonathan Winters - Final Approach

Ray Charles - Live In Concert

Mandisa - What If We Were Real

Cold Cave - Cherish the Light Years

Wayne Brady - Radio Wayne

Craig Campbell - Craig Campbell

The Ravonettes - Raven in the Grave

Kills - Blood Pressures

Asking Alexandria- Reckless and Relentless

Louise Burns - Mellow Drama

Milow - North & South

Jim Jones - Capo

Mya - K.I.S.S

Three 6 Mafia - Laws of Power

Architecture in Hellinski - Moment Bends

Week of April 10

Alison Krauss - Paper Airplane

Gordon Goodwin - That's How We Roll

Jason Isbell - Here We Rest

Meat Puppets - Lollipop

K.D. Lang - K.D. Lang and The Sis Boom Bang: Sing It Loud

Thursday - No Devolucion

Atmosphere - The Family Sign

Figurines - Figurines

Foo Fighters - Wasting Light

Laura Story - Blessings

Low - C'mon

Jessie J - Who You are

Crossfade - We All Bleed

Swollen Members - Dagger Mouth

Paul Simon - So Beautiful or So What

Parachute Band - The Way It Was

TV On the Radio - Nine Types of Light

The Trews - Hope & Ruin

Glasvegas - Euphoric/Heartbreak

Mastodon - Live At the Aragon

Week of March 17

Steve Miller Band - Let Your Hair Down

The Brian Setzer Orchestra - Setzer Goes InstruMENTAL!

Lenka - Two

Panda Bear - Tomboy

Lloyd - King of Hearts

Glee - Glee Presents The Warblers

Curren$y - Covert Coup EP

Week of April 24

Emmylou Harris - Hard Bargain

Steve Earle - I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive

Wombats - The Wombats Proudly Present...This Modern Glitch

Bootsy Collins - The Funk Capitol of the World

Dirty Vegas - Electric Love

Bowling for Soup - Fishin' For Woos

Explosions in the Sky - Take Care, Take Care, Take Care

Airborne Toxic Event - All At Once

All Time Low - Dirty Work

Giorgia Fumanti - Elysium

Silverstein - Rescue

Holy Ghost - Holy Ghost

(information taken from metrolyrics.com)

TV Series Premieres - April 2011 (times: Pacific Standard)

- The Killing - Apr. 3                                                                   6PM       AMC

- Breaking In - Apr. 6                                                            6:30AM       FOX

- Happy Endings - Apr. 13                                                         7PM       FOX

- Game of Thrones - Apr. 17                                                  5:45PM      HBO

TV Series Season Premiere/New Episodes - April 2011 (times: Pacific Standard)

- Deadliest Catch - Apr. 12                                                       6PM        Discovery Channel

- Treme - Apr. 24                                                                          7PM       HBO

(information taken from www.pogdesign.co.uk/cat/)

Diary of an ENRAGED College Student - April

     I hate midterms. They are the bane of a college student's existence (in addition to finals). Maybe that's why my featured fiction ended up being so dreary and depressing. This was supposed to be a rant about something entertainment related, but I think you've heard about “Friday” and the UCLA girl too many times now, my fellow netizens. So instead, I'm just ranting about how college academic life sucks. 

Make sure you check out the videos!

     Midterms, midterms, midterms. Oh what would we do without you? I don't know, have fun? Have a social life? Have fewer sleepless nights? What kind of world would that be?  

     Admittedly, some midterms are easy as pie, and I sure wish all midterms were like those. But alas, some professors revel in the misery of their students. Either that or the class is just friggin' hard, even though the professor is awesome (Ochem, I'm lookin' at you). 

OCHEM Y U NO BE EASIER?

     I understand that professors need ways to test their students to make sure they are learning in their classes, but it doesn't mean that I have to like midterms. Who in the world likes tests?! (If you do, I don't know what to say to you bro.) I like learning the new material, sure, but asking me to memorize chapters upon chapters of information just to regurgitate it on a test for my grade? Ugh. Especially when you know that you're going to forget everything in a month (or sooner).

     Just ranting about midterms is making me tired. What is with these mystical but torturous packets of papers? I will never know. Maybe it's just because I'm a lazy bum. Now I'm off to cram for the two midterms I have this week. Tally-ho chaps!

--- Angela Zhang

Straight from the Narwhal's Mouth - April

The Extreme Narwhal

--- Steven Albers

     

      Unless your decision has to be black or white, neither extreme ever works. As much as you may want to say that pizza is and always will be better than burgers, there are people that will wholeheartedly disagree with you. If you argue that newer Guns n’ Roses stuff is better than the old, well you’ll have people disagree with you there, too.

     This isn’t to say that being in the middle is necessarily going to get you out of all petty arguments, or even that it’s a good thing to stay right in the middle on every important issue. Rather, it just sounds irrational if you harp so much about one side without so much as an acknowledgement of the other. Take your stand and defend it, but also see where the other side is coming from. 

     Again, this doesn’t apply to every decision, or every two-sided coin in the universe; for example, in math 2+2 will always equal 4, and you’d be a fool to say otherwise (unless you have one of those .999999=1 proofs, which have errors in them anyway). If someone asks you to go see a movie, you can’t say “Sure, but I’ll only kind of be there. You want to kinda see Sucker Punch?” There’s a big distinction between these kinds of decisions and the gray area (or analog, if you will) ones: there isn’t any sort of bias that goes into that decision, which is most important. For people pursuing math-based careers, triple integrals will always be important (or so our teachers say…), and they can’t decide to flat out ignore them and turn them into ponies, however fun that might be. Some laws of the world are stuck just the way they are, and only those can be taken to the so-called extreme.

     But inevitably, there will always be a gray area. And where there’s a gray area, there’s an opinion. And no opinion is unbiased. Even if you think NCIS is 9000 times better than NCIS:LA, you have to agree that both shows have their merits, and it just plain doesn’t work to say that one of them doesn’t. No matter how extreme you want to be about something (and you can be as extreme as you want; don’t let me stop you), don’t forget that there is always someone more extreme than you about the exact opposite.    

     Even if you hate this article, can’t you say there’s at least something good about it?

Just in case you were expecting something a little more extreme from this article:

Yeah, that’s extreme. 

Featured Fiction - April

Dark Reflection

--- Angela Zhang

“How? How did this happen?” 

Scin stared at his bleak surroundings: a tiny windowless prison cell with mirrored walls to prevent his escape. 

“Was it the research? It was only supposed to shine some light onto the nature of my veil, but all the tests were getting us nowhere.”

The white haired teen snorted at the irony.“Shine light. Hnf.” 

He experimentally flexed his hand, willing light to gather in his palm, but it quickly dispersed. Those  must be pretty powerful blacklights, he mused quietly while studying the ceiling, it is a maximum security illume prison after all. Suddenly, the gravity of the situation that he was in hit him, and he sank to his knees in despair.

“Oh Illia, what did I do that landed me here?”

“Well, it's not really a question of what you did, it's a question of what I did,” an unfamiliar voice whispered into his ear.

Startled, Scin whipped his head around to stare at his veil reflected in the mirrored wall next to him. The 

veil shot him a feral grin and waved.

“You... You're not supposed to be able to do that!” Scin muttered disbelievingly, gaping at his shadow form, “You're just supposed to be my reflection!”

“You're just supposed to be my reflection!” The veil mocked him viciously, “This is why I hate you  arrogant illumes! Always oppressing us veils...”

“What? Oppressing? From what we know, veils are just illume's shadow forms! The only times veils appear are when we've blacked out from overusing our powers! But I... I was different.” Scin remembered the first time he saw his veil reflected in the mirror. He had freaked out and called his parents to ask them what was happening. They too were baffled, and Scin ended up going to the research institute to try and get some answers.

“Ha! You?! It was me! I'm the one that's different, you fool!” the shadow growled, its eyes flaring red. It paused and stood up, pacing a bit to regain its composure before continuing. “Unlike my brothers, I actually have abilities much like you illumes, but oh so much better. I'm the only one of my kind: a sentient veil that can do as it wills with the host body when it blacks out.”

It smirked.

Comprehension slowly dawned on Scin. “You. What did you do?” 

The veil's smirk just got wider.

Scin stood up and smashed his fist into the reinforced mirror next to his veil's face, “WHAT DID YOU DO?!”  

He scowled at the gleeful shadow, eyes glowing white-hot in anger. 

“Oh, nothing much.” It sighed theatrically then shrugged, “I just killed a hundred people while you were blacked out.” 

The words did not register immediately in Scin's mind. It took him a few shocked seconds to fully understand what his shadow had just said. One hundred? It was mystifying; he could barely manage a coherent thought.

“...What?”

“You heard me. I took over your body while you were out and went on a killing spree. I made sure to make use of my shadow shifting in order to look like you instead.” It picked at its nails absentmindedly, as if it were no big deal. “Those weakling illumes didn't stand a chance! They begged for their lives when they saw me murder their colleagues. It was hilarious! The delicious expressions of fear and confusion on their faces when their son told them he had just slaughtered some people for fun...”

Scin froze. It couldn't have. No. He refused to believe it. “...Their son?”

“Oh, didn't I say? After I absorbed the life force of 100 scientists, I went to your house and told your parents. 100 lives as a present from you to them, Scin dearest.” The psychotic smile had worked its way back onto the shadow's face.

“YOU FUCKER!” Scin roared as he repeatedly punched the mirror violently where his shadow's face was, his eyes fully burning white and sparking with his intense rage. “How dare you! HOW DARE YOU!!”

“That's right, get angry! It's not like you can hurt me, fool! You'll only hurt yourself, and that would be good for me! Once you begin to fade into death, I can easily take over your body for eternity.” The shadow goaded him, that infuriating smirk playing on its lips. 

Scin halted his next punch and slowly brought his fist down to his side. He fought back his fury, although his chest was still heaving, his whole body was shaking in anger, and his eyes were still burning bright.  When his rage was at a somewhat controllable level, he managed to bite out a retort, “I will crush you. I will push you so far down in my mind even you'll forget you even existed. So far that you won't even be able to come out in the mirror again. I will never, ever, ever let you out again.” 

The veil cackled, “You wish, filthy little illume. You'll never be rid of me! Wherever there is light, there must be shadow! I will always be a part of you. That you cannot change.”

“I will burn you out.” Scin threw a final punch at the mirror, managing to leave the tiniest of cracks on the flawless surface.

“Just watch me.”

Tbc.

Check the Artist's Forum for a picture of Scin!

**all fiction is property of the author and EAL Magazine, please do not use or copy in any form without permission** 

  

My Gay Best Friend - April

My Gay Best Friend

--- K.P. Lennox

     Ok, so first off I’m sorry to all of our readers for delaying the publication of this month’s blog. I’ve been shacked up in the library for the past 3 days poisoning my brain with 90’s country music, organic chemistry, and about $70 worth of coffee. Don’t worry, I plan on entering rehab as soon as possible…or getting a lobotomy, whichever is cheapest.

But back to the task at hand…

     This morning at breakfast a close friend of mine voiced some concerns with this new guy she’s interested in. Apparently she’s slept with this guy a few times, and as they’ve become more “experimentative” she’s found out that he’s into some different stuff. According to her, he likes it when she plays with his, erm, back-end? Now she’s kind of flipping out and thinks he may possibly be gay, not that there’s anything wrong with that. So I guess my question, or her question, our question? is how do we tell if he’s gay? Any help would be appreciated.

--Kinda Flipping Out

     I read this and cringed. What you’re referring to actually has a name; it’s called ass-play. And no ladies, they don’t teach this in high school health class.

     Now, I’m going to venture out on a limb here and say that your friend’s, erm, friend isn’t gay; that is, unless he’s getting gangbanged by a bunch of leather-daddies behind a dumpster. But really, it is quite common for males, both straight, gay and bisexual, to enjoy stimulation around that area during sex. See, if you were studying neurology (or had read your fair share of sex-ed books) you would have learned that the little ring right there on your friend’s dude’s butt is pretty sensitive. Hurray! You’ve just found part of the male g-spot! The rest of it, known as the prostate (Wikipedia that shit if you want more info) is inside. Like I said, it’s perfectly normal for a guy to enjoy ass-play because like any girl, with the right kind of solid amount of stimulation there, your friend can give this guy a rockin’ orgasm.

So run along now and spread the word.  Oh and watch out for the leather daddies…

For the wise advice from our GBF, please send all questions to ealadvice@gmail.com and your question may be answered in the next issue!!

Fitness/Beauty - April

Summer Workout

--- Sarah Luo 

     As springtime finally kicks in and we’re all getting ready to wear our short sleeves and short shorts, a very sudden thought dawns on you. Are you ready to wear your summer clothes? Do you have that swimsuit body? While looking absolutely flawless isn’t our goal here, we still want to be healthy and have the body that makes us confident. In college, a majority of the time during the spring and summer semester, guys don’t wear shirts and girls suntan in their bikinis on the front lawns of apartment complexes and sorority houses. It gets old and a little scarring at times, but you have to give them props for being confident enough to walk around in virtually nothing all day. It’s ok, because you still have time to perfect the body that YOU want and I’m here to help you secure that body with some of these great summer workout exercises that are guaranteed to help you along in your summer body workouts!

     For both men and women, ab exercises are incredibly important, sometimes more so for men. Some of the more basic ab exercises that work include basic crunches, bicycle crunches, full vertical crunches, and the plank. These are all the more basic ab exercises that can help you jump start your ab workout. To specialize more on particular areas of your abs like your lower abs, exercises like the reverse crunch, scissor kicks, v-sit, and alternating supermans. In terms of when and how you should do your ab workouts, you should probably try to do them regularly. Perhaps try one ab routine per week that way your muscles don’t stop working because you’ve hit a plateau. Make sure you change up your routines so that your body doesn’t get used to what you’ve been doing and stop working.  

Basic Crunch

Full Vertical Crunch

 Bicycle Crunch

 Plank

Reverse Crunch

     Maybe do an ab workout 3 or 4 times a week and change routines maybe every 2 weeks that way you’re constantly working your abs and constantly changing the routines so that your body doesn’t get used to any one thing and it’s always working the right muscles. Laughing is also very helpful in terms of sculpting abs because it’s contracting so many different muscles at once when you laugh out loud, so laugh away!

     Another important part of the summer body is of course, our legs. Shorts are the highlight of summer and who doesn’t want super toned, tan legs? Lunges, squats, mountain climbers, and calf raises do wonders for your legs. Although these exercises aren’t cardio exercises that help you burn fat quickly, these exercises mainly tone up your muscles so that you have strong muscles in your thighs and calves. To get more of a cardio workout that burns fat quicker, try the elliptical, bicycle, treadmill, jumping rope, or stairmaster. I strongly encourage you workout outside though because the weather during the summer is the best time for these kinds of workouts. Go out and take a short one mile run around the neighborhood or take a day out and go mountain biking. Not only are these exercises fun, you get to get out of the house/office and get some fresh air. 

Lunges

Squats

Calf Raises

 Mountain Climbers

**all images taken from Google Image Search (various websites)

     In terms of when and how you should work your legs, I would suggest alternating between cardio and strength training. Usually cardio training loosens your muscles after you’ve done a strength workout so if you’re sore from doing too many lunges, running will help you relax and get rid of the soreness. Just like abs, maybe do leg workouts 3 to 4 times a week and change routines every 2 to 3 weeks for the best results. 

     Either way, it’s time to start working out not only for that fantastic summer body but also for a healthier lifestyle. I guarantee, if you start working out now, not only will you have a great body come summertime, you’ll continue working out even through those harder fall and winter months because once you get those endorphins going, you’ll never want to stop! 

Some good websites to visit for workouts:

http://www.trainwithmeonline.com/exercises.asp

http://www.self.com/fitness/workouts

http://www.the-abs-workout.com/ 

Working Out With Makeup

--- Lena Lam

     The girl next to me was crying black tears. I was confused at first, but then I was impressed. At least this one isn’t in a mini skirt and heels. Most people at the gym are impressed by how much weight that one buff guy can lift. I, on the other hand, am impressed by how some girls waltz into the gym all dolled up…to sweat. Some only have eyeliner and mascara on (but, as in the case above, they don’t have it on for long), but others go all out with foundation, eye shadow, and lip gloss. What a fabulous way to clog your pores while you’re working out and sweating. 

     To be honest though, I shouldn’t be so judgmental. After taking a step back to think about why these girls would put on make up to go the gym, I decided that it’s not as bad of a thing as I initially thought. To many girls, cosmetics are synonymous with beauty and confidence. Therefore, I can’t blame them for wanting to look good when they’re working out, which can be a time when they don’t feel completely secure about how they look. 

      Having said that, I still don’t think that putting on a bunch of make up is the best thing when you’re going to gym. When you’re working out, you want to keep your pores clear so that your body can sweat freely. If the reason why you put on make up in the first place is to hide the blemishes on your face, you should consider the fact that your make up may be the cause of future, additional blemishes since they’re clogging up your pores. 

    Some say that if you must use foundation when you work out, try a mineral powder one to hide your blemishes while letting your pores “breathe.” Though I would recommend forgoing make up in general when working out, I understand that some of you feel you must have some on. In that case, I would suggest keeping it simple with waterproof eyeliner and mascara, and a little lipgloss. 

     An alternative is finding a gym or class that is “for females only,” if the only reason you put on make up is to look good in front of guys. Perhaps you’ll feel comfortable enough to actually focus on the ultimate goal, too, which is to work out. In sum, put on some make up if you must, but keep in mind that by trying to look pretty throughout your work out is besides the point and may just backfire on you…and you’ll end up crying black tears.