I started my mornings around 7:15 this summer and with the hottest shower I could achieve in Newport House. While others might have found this heat to be excessive during a muggy Massachusetts summer in a college dorm without air conditioning, I needed it. As the heat rolled down my body, I stretched, preparing my muscles for another day chock full of physical labor at Book and Plow farm.
“The Spectacular Now,” which premiered at the 2013 Sundance Festival and hit theaters everywhere Aug. 2, is an honest and unapologetic depiction of love on the cusp of adulthood. Based on the book “The Spectacular Now” by Tim Tharp and directed by James Ponsoldt, the film stars Shailene Woodley of Golden Globe-winning “The Descendants” and Miles Teller of “Project X” as teens in their senior year of high school in Atlanta, Georgia.
The day after I finished The Last of Us, near the end of my summer vacation, I was talking to my sister, who had, on-and-off, been watching me play through the game. When my sister asked me to catch her up on what she had missed one day, I described a series of moments and images I had witnessed. The general themes were loss, bitterness and the dimming light of hope. I witnessed suicide, the loss of children and numerous other difficult moments. I described the profound depression and malaise underlying the game.
The summer. When not forced to brave the heat and midday traffic to fetch coffee for your seasonal employer or trying too hard to avoid listening to your coworkers’ embarrassing and way-too-personal stories, students can hopefully make enough time in their schedule to see many of the year’s most anticipated blockbuster films. Designed to provide mass-entertainment (although not at cheap prices these days) and provide further respite from the heat, summer blockbusters are a staple of any young person’s summer away from school.
Every summer there is a week or two, usually after the end of internships and before the start of the school year, for which nothing is planned. It is during this time that I inevitably plunge back into binge-gaming, desperately marathoning any Games of the Year I missed out on due to school-time business.
This past Saturday night, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, with opener Sol, played the Spring Concert here at Amherst College. To say that this was a step up from last year’s Ludacris (“What up, Connecticut?!”) Spring Concert would be an understatement. Macklemore rocked this campus. In the midst of pre-finals tension and hysteria, he got Amherst College students to throw shit to the wind for one night and actually enjoy themselves. If that isn’t a miracle, I don’t know what is.
This Saturday, May 4 at 8:00 p.m., the Amherst College Symphony Orchestra will debut its most difficult performance to date: Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. The 70-member ensemble, under the direction of conductor Mark Swanson and concertmaster Ben Boatwright ’14, is prepared to deliver a thrilling 70-minutes’ worth of virtuosity. According to Swanson, Mahler’s Fifth is a symphony celebrated for its “great dramatic impact, emotion, and beauty.” Concertmaster Ben Boatwright offered his own take on the ambitious piece:
