Robin "Avatar" Carr

I’ve always believed you can tell a lot about a person by the type of bagel they order. You can tell even more if they get flavored cream cheese. In light of this, I suggested to meet with Robin at the Bagel Café on a lazy end-of-May day. Arriving a few minutes late because I needed my Starbucks, I sadly used my credit card for my three dollar and fifteen cent order. I knew I needed to save those 3 one dollar bills for my upcoming delicious bagel. Noticing his shaggy brown hair, non-commercialized t-shirt that I forgot to ask about, and towering height, at least compared to me, I asked, “so what bagel are you getting?” I thought he told me a blueberry bagel with plain cream cheese, but I would soon find out that I was mistaken. He suggested we sit outside at the nearby park; an excellent suggestion considering the Santa Barbara sunny weather and an unusual one considering most people suggest to sit on the chairs right outside.

Sitting across from one another at a nearby bench, he whipped out his bagel which to my surprise had bruisy colored cream cheese. As I mentioned before, it takes a particular sort of character to order flavored, particularly non-strawberry flavored, cream cheese. Usually strawberry cream cheese is just for girls. But blueberry? Who orders blueberry cream cheese? Apparently Robin does- which intrigued me more than I’d like to admit. Looking around, I couldn’t help but remark how beautiful it was outside, how much I love the parks around the area, and how there is a grave merely four feet away. He nodded and agreed about the first two, then seemed to ignore- probably for the better- the last comment. After finishing our bagels and, on my part breaking the remainder of mine up into pieces on top of my grande-americano-sweetened with no room for sugar drink, we started getting down to business. Somewhere along the way talking about theoretical physics, I started taking notes about black holes. He said that, “Black holes suck everything in.” He added that you would think that because they slowly suck everything in and get bigger and bigger, then they’d eventually take over the world. To the contrary, he said, “if nothing is next to a black hole, they start to lose mass because positive matter and antimatter cancel each other out.” I couldn’t help but thinking about how much money they could make on zit cream if, as the zit grows in size, the cream diminishes it more and more until it’s gone to “the point of no return.”

He also mentioned that if you get sucked into a black hole, it would stretch your body out like that stretching torture machine in The Princess Bride. Thinking that this might be the last time to ask space questions, I had to mention, “so why isn’t Pluto a planet anymore?” I’ve seen the facebook group, actually was part of it, but never summoned the ambition to wikipedia it. He laughed and informed me that it’s an astroid from the Kuplar belt. At this point I noticed that Robin made the space stuff interesting, but I was still curious about some of his guilty pleasures. He said that he’s addicted to t.v., especially the Nickelodeon show Avatar. Actually, he said that it is currently his favorite show. I looked at him skeptically, but he defended it by saying, “No, it’s really cool.” He explained that four classical elements earth, wind, water and fire attack everyone using real Chinese martial arts moves. Apparently the airbending uses Tai Chai. I asked him how he could possibly know this and he said that he used to do martial arts. I was still skeptical he could tell what moves the animated characters were using and he added, “I actually looked it up on Wikepedia.” Without Wikepedia, he would never know that the one blind character uses Southern praying mantis Kung Fu. He said that while he watches it which he got his “friend” hooked on too, he enjoys eating the Avator fruitsnacks. At this point, I decided that I really liked Robin. He wasn’t afraid to admit embarrassing things. Next I asked if he likes any other sort of activities and he said swingdancing. Seeing his laugh and hearing him talk so passionately about Avatar, I pictured him swing dancing in his room with a blue blueberry flavored fruit snack hanging out of his mouth. Also, Nickelodeon would be on in the background.

You might think that Robin has interesting and varied interests, but he had just begun. He started talking about Middle Eastern history and military robots. Apparently, a military robot can fly around in the sky and shoot people with advisement from humans. The military is currently working on allowing them to operate on its own. However, the problem is that it can recognize people, but not distinguish friends from enemies. The implication of these UVA’s in future wars is that, if they replace soldiers, there will be no cost to start wars because no one will lose their men. Somewhere along the way of discussing- or rather him introducing me to technological advances- he notices a man on a very tall 10-15 feet unicycle peddling around the street. We were distracted and then changed the topic to books. He said that the DaVinci code is like the Scooby Doo mystery show. I mentioned some embarrassing books I’ve read and we waged a bit of a war as to the most embarrassing. I’m not sure who won, but he said that over his summer when fellow lit majors were struggling to finish The Idiot, he made a contest with his friend to see who could read the entire series of Animorphs the fastest. Rivaled only by Goosebumps, Animorphs, if you don’t recall, are those books with a cat who turns into a lion or something on the cover. I also thought that they were the books where you could flip to different pages for alternate endings, but he assured me that he thought only a few of the books were like that. He lost the contest, by the way, which was probably for the best.

Expressing that I quit reading Harry Potter by the middle of the third book, he voiced some advice for the Harry Potter fans. If you want to get it the first night it’s available, then you face a dilemma. You need to find that line between being too tired to enjoy it fully and wanting to read it as soon as possible. I hope Robin finds that line as well as the other readers. Nearly two hours after the first bite of my bagel, he points out a crater covered by a bush and said “Is that a tree or did the bush just eat that?” Sensing the burn on my backside and my itchy skirt, I was a little bit sad that I had to continue on with my day after my interview with Robin. By far one of the sweetest, most complex interesting guys I’ve met so far, I wish him the best of luck with Harry Potter and everything else.

Mrs. Bit O Honey: A story in Joseph Mitchell Style

Lee Desser had straight mousy brown hair, a reserved complexion and very dirty shoes. “Shoe’s don’t say anything about a person,” she said. “And they certainly don’t say anything about me.” She came to Santa Barbara in 2007, expecting sunny days, rich friends and, above all, a tranquility that would be her excuse for her failure as a writer. She was born into a family consisting of her father, mother, and younger sister , which unbeknowengst to her sister, she held in the highest regard. As a primer expert on how to overcome psychological and behavioral problems in order to receive pets from her parents- one cat and one dog- she knew that her life would be in order. As a middle school material girl, Claire retained a dignity from prominent adults often lost with the application of makeup, addition of short skirts, and removal of nail-polish individuality. “Claire’s like one of those pretty magazine girls that you convince yourself is secretly suffering from low self-esteem in order to make yourself feel better,” she frequently brought up. “If you ask her ‘How are you today?’ you can’t help but shutter from the answer because when she replies ‘Just great,’ you can’t help but feel that she actually is, which just makes it all the more unbearable.”

In my time spent with Lee, she rarely referred to her father. When her sixth grade humanities teacher displayed charts of a rollercoaster and of a straight line and asked, “what are your relationships with people like?,” she thought ‘like a rollercoaster with the exception of my father.’ “My father would have the kind of funeral that others dream their lives for,” she said. People he had lost contact with would come to the podium and tell brief anecdotes about the time he treated their nineteen person table to an all-you-can eat brunch or how he took the role as the father figure for their son, they would say. He lived a kind, decent life; one Lee aspired both to live and avoid. His success as a person and failure as a freak intimidated and disinterested her like a solved Rubics cube. “We rarely fight, but the only time I reveal myself is when I’m having problems with my mom.”

Lee used to think that her mother secretly despised her because she gave up her career in order to have kids. “When I was little, it always seemed like my mom was pregnant, but no babies ever came out. I wonder if she was depressed or relieved,” she said. In recent years, she has accepted that when parents say they love their kids equally and couldn’t imagine their lives without them, they’re full of bull. “From what I can fathom, parents are a lot like kids, just older and less curious.” Her dream is to live in a Alzheimer’s retirement home on Ocean and Montana.

Lee loves her family and hopes that one day her kids will write a favorable short biography of herself. She hopes that she doesn’t die of type two diabetes from eating too much candy bit-o-honey which can be found at K-Mart.

Simon Says: An Interview with a Fourth Year CCS Math Student

To contact a fellow undergraduate, I did what any other college student would do: I searched for him on Facebook. Immediately, I noticed a peculiarity to his profile. Unlike most students who have a main photo of them laughing under the influence of one or another or many other illegal substances, his profile picture featured math formulas. His web page further confirmed my speculation: he loved math. A majority of students have quotes from Anchorman, Napolean Dynamite, or Old School under their “favorite quotes” section, but he had one from, gasp, not a teen comedy. The quote by Robert Heinlein reads, "Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house." His personal philosophy reveals that “I don’t necessarily consider myself an optimist, but I always do math (and everything else, for that matter) in (fountain) pen. I can't bear to admit that mistakes are inevitable, so I strive for nothing short of perfection.” I thought, “Anyone who does their math homework in pen, I must meet.”

We planned to meet on the CCS lawn and, shortly before the interview, I momentarily feared we would miss each other’s tracks because, according to Simon, he does not use phones. Questions like “what if I got the time wrong,” or “what if my class gets out late and he thinks I ditched him” and “I hope I recognize who he is” flew in and out of my brain. Later, it occurred to me that if he doesn’t use phones, my thousand worries about missing an appointment probably never even occurred to him or at least, never bothered him. I spotted him sitting under the shade of a tree reading a book. Brown shaggy hair, blue eyes, Landsend sweater and jeans: this didn’t seem like a guy who, I would later found out, seriously considered dropping out of high school.

We relocated to a room inside a CCS Math class, one I didn’t know existed. I asked him the question I knew he, as well as many other CCS students had heard a million times before, “Why CCS?” He told me that Charles Ryavic used to hold a competition for high school students as a recruitment tool. “My sophomore year of high school, Charles Ryavic invited all the people that qualified. I met him and he started showing me problems and said all the problems were easy and I should be able to do them, but they were really hard and I didn’t know how do any of them. He had super geniuses [do the problems] and managed to think I was one of them.” Charles Ryavic became his mentor and eventually led him to choose CCS. During his orientation, Mr. Ryavic told him that “All of the undergraduate classes were useless. I figured he was probably crazy, but I followed his advice.” For Simon, choosing CCS turned out to be one of the best choices in his college life. “Honestly, it was one of exactly three good decisions I had in college.” He pauses for a moment, “I can’t remember any time after that I took anyone’s advice on anything.”

Next, I asked him about his high school experience and how it compared to college and he said that he came from a public high school that he didn’t, to say the least, particularly enjoy. Senior year, he came very close to dropping out at the advice of Mr. Ryavic. “When I was a junior, I won the advanced competition and he told me to not bother with my senior year of high school. I hated my high school and I seriously considered dropping out, but I decided I could probably tolerate it without any more degeneration.” When it finally came time to decide where to attend college, Simon faced two choices: CCS or Berkeley. “I had a choice between CCS and Berkeley. I wasn’t really looking forward to going to Berkeley and sitting through boring math classes. I thought I might be able to get around that by coming here.” I inquired, “Why not L and S then?” He said, “They don’t expect L and S students to take advanced classes; it’s not encouraged. I looked at the prerequisites and it was horrifying.”

Earning straight A’s freshman year wasn’t Simon’s primary concern. He started taking graduate level classes immediately upon his entrance to college. “I did horribly in the graduate classes, but I learned so much. I didn’t do a lot but study freshman year.” He then adds that you could argue that all four years he hasn’t done a lot but study. However, outside of classes, he is a member of the math and chess club and plays the piano and cello. In the future, he plans to attend Stanford Graduate school and become a mathematician possibly working on algebraic number theory, which he says, particularly interests him. Before the interview ended, I needed to ask one final question: does he really do his math homework in pen? He laughed and said, “I write everything in fountain pen or dip pen if I want to write something that looks nice.” But for math homework he uses TeX. “It’s a typesetting program that’s clearly text based [to make] things look professional.”

My Problems with UCSB

The Great Gatsby partying
The Dorian Grey hedonism
The absence of seasons which denote the passage of time
The realization that it is entirely possible to go for months without talking to a person of color
The fact that you could party before your finals and it will not drastically effect your performance
The lack of alternative scene
The truth that Freebirds is not that good (Am I the only one?)
The empty library
The lack of studying, researching, and overall learning
The large impersonal, anxiety ridden lecture halls
The people sleeping in the large impersonal anxiety ridden lecture halls
The fake tans
The schools “diversity” limited to small non-blonde groups
The eating disorders
The reporting in a town with no news
The sameness
The faint smell of marajuana always circulating in the halls
The professors who try so hard, but so few students appreciate it
The T.A’s eyeing you because they know you’re the only one who does the reading
The drunkenness
The pretend drunkenness
The larger selection of Paul Frank merchandise than books at the UCEN
The frequency of month-long relationships
The So-Cal/ Nor-Cal conflict
The provocatively posed Facebook pictures
The dining commons opening at 10:30 a.m. on weekends (Does no one wake up before that?)
The quarter filled lecture halls for a full class
The cry for a challenge

Short story about an IV party: Happy Just to Dance With You

George had decided to bring her to the dance floor when he caught sight of her dancing alone behind the basement bar. He rarely saw her dance when she was sober, and anytime she did, it was done with a distaste for the moves and the music that he’d found unattractive. But now as she was filling up shot glasses and tipsily singing along to Harry Belafonte playing on the boom box, she looked happy enough to try.

“Come on Dana,” he said cheerfully, and took her by the hand, leading her to the small patch of carpeted floor in front of the speakers that the other party guests designated for dancing. Already on the floor were four or five girls who held the promise of a dance no matter the song or the partner. Some of them were holding red cups over their heads so the contents wouldn’t spill, but the others who were freer with their arms practiced steps they learned in the ballroom dancing classes. Everyone sang along with the chorus,

“Shake, shake, shake, Senora, shake your bodyline / shake, shake, shake Senora, shake it all the time…”

Another girl placed one hand on George’s hip, keeping her drink hand in the air. George suggested that she put the drink down somewhere and when she left, George watched the rest of the group. Their dancing was not particularly inspired, he thought, just the average party girl steps, swaying and movement of the hips. Dana was moving her hips with each “shake” and her round face kept getting pinker. He felt the hands return to his hips, gently steering him closer to the crowd. The song ended then. Weak applause drifted around the room, and the dancers dispersed. The girl holding his George’s hips stood on her toes and murmured in his ear,

“I’m getting another beer. Do you want one?”

“Yeah sure,” he said. He wasn’t sure if he really did, since he’d had a decent amount already that night, and was becoming bleary eyed and slow. But as host, he felt obligated to lead by example. The girl kissed his neck and disappeared upstairs. Dana had returned to her chosen seat behind the bar and was reading the labels of the fancy liquor bottles. He approached the bar, swaggering and swinging his arms in a half serious show of authority.

“Do you want a drink?” she asked. She was looser than she was at the start of the party, George noticed. The reluctance she showed earlier at the flip cup game was beginning to fade. She grinned at him and spread her hands out on the bar like an old timey waitress.

“None of that,” he began. “You need a drink,”

“I don’t want one,” she said. Getting Dana to drink more than she planned could be like pulling teeth. She’d stopped caving in to peer pressure as readily as when she was new to the group. When she was new, she would have done anything to please them. Making Dana drink her first screwdriver was one of George’s proudest moments as host.

“I want a drink!” shouted Dana’s roommate Marissa, leaning unsteadily against the bar.

“What would you like?”

“Surprise me,” Dana turned back to George and shrugged.

“What does Marissa want?”

“She wants…a cosmo,” said George.

“Did he say cosmo?” shouted Marissa over the music. “I don’t like those.”

“She doesn’t like those. Could you make her a gimlet instead?” George felt a small wave of fatigue wash over him and he sighed.

“I’m kind of on my last legs here,” he said. Dana smiled and patted his shoulder.

“That’s okay, maybe you should sit down.”

“You need a drink,” he tried again.

“But I don’t want one,”

“You haven’t had nearly enough yet,”

“Didn’t you just say you were tired?” Dana buzzed. “Have a seat, I’ll get you some water,” He squinted at her suspiciously, then pointed at her and grinned, like the last one to get the joke. She’s a clever one, George thought.

“I see what you did there,” he slurred a little. “Well if you won’t drink, you have to dance with me,”

“Okay,” He was surprised when she let him take her by the hand and lead her back to the dance floor, now empty as John Mellencamp sang in the background. He took her waist, and she did the same because his shoulder was too high for her to rest her hand on.

“I didn’t know you liked dancing,” he said. She smiled, a little embarrassed.

They swayed from one foot to the other, making an aimless circuit around the room. John Mellencamp played on.

“Do you need a lover who won’t drive you crazy?” George asked.

“Not really,” said Dana.

“What about Jack?”

“Oh Jack never drove me crazy. Everything was so nice. Even breaking up was nice. There was almost no conflict,”

“So you need a lover who will drive you crazy,”

“Only a little. I’m tired of nice,” she said easily. She didn’t seem to mind being interrogated, so George kept going.

“What I can’t understand is why you like Alex,” Alex was Dana’ friend who had graduated the previous Fall. George would tolerate him when he was around, but he didn’t like listening to Alex talk about whatever protest he was arranging for the coming week, especially the ones that had so many causes smashed into one place. Hearing them all; US out of Iraq, Stop Global Warming, End Genocide in Darfur, Fight AIDS in Africa, made George feel very tired.

“What? He’s nice, he’s smart—”

“Yeah,” interrupted George, “But is he good?”

“Good at what?”

“I don’t know. Life?”

“I think so. He graduated early, he just moved out of his mom’s house and now he’s living the dream at some nonprofit organization. I think he’s happy,” They kept dancing.

“I don’t have any romantic feelings for him though,” she suddenly added.

“You don’t?”

“No. Did you think I did?”

“No!” he said, and then added, “Well, I thought maybe there was potential for that to happen,”

“Oh no,” she said, “That would be too weird. I can’t see myself doing it. We’re too good of friends. Do you ever have those friends that are so good that you can’t think of sleeping with them without feeling a little sick?”

“No, sounds great though,”

“You do, you feel sick because you imagine not being friends with them afterwards.”

What a crock, George thought. She just doesn’t find him attractive. The song ended and the pair separated from each other. Dana began to head back to the bar, but George grabbed her hand again.

“You want to dance for another song?” Dana shot a quick glance at the stairs.

“What about Lindsay?” She began to pull back. George grimaced and shook his head.

“That,” he began slowly, waving the idea away, “is not what this is about,”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,”

“Okay,”

Alone again on the floor, they danced for three more songs until a party guest came by and tapped George on the shoulder. She was sleepy and stumbling and wanted George to find her a place to sleep.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, “I’ve got to help Annie with the futon,” and he followed the young girl upstairs.

Sitting on the edge of the futon, Annie watched George unroll the sleeping bag and she asked,

“Did Lindsay already go to bed?”

“I don’t know, she just went to get a beer,”

“When?” George stopped unrolling the sleeping bag and stood up. It occurred to him then that Lindsay had left the floor a half hour ago. He ran to the front door and went into the driveway. Her car was still there, so he went around the side alley into the backyard, but he didn’t see her.

“I think she left,” the young party guest said when he came back inside, “I don’t see Marissa either.” Getting anxious now, he came back downstairs where Dana was waiting on the floor.

“I think something’s wrong,” he said to her, “Lindsay’s not outside,”

“Is she inside?”

“I don’t know, I looked outside and she wasn’t there,”

“Did she leave?”

“I don’t know, she wasn’t outside!” George was starting to sweat and he kept looking around the room hoping he’d find her with the other guests, but she wasn’t anywhere.

“Did I screw up? Did I do something wrong?” he kept repeating quietly to himself. Dana held his arms and made him look at her.

“We’re going to look for her, okay? We’re going to look around the house. Let’s go upstairs.”

There she goes again, being bossy because she’s the more sober one, George thought. While Dana ran upstairs and started going through the rooms of the house, George sat on the pull out and brooded. Annie had tried to call Lindsey on her cell phone, but she had hung up so now she was talking to Marissa and George eavesdropped on bits of the conversation.

“Where is she going?…well why did she leave?” There was a long pause as she listened to Marissa explain.

“Oh,” she said, smiling nervously. She looked at George, then looked down when he looked back.

“She isn’t driving is she? Oh good,” said Annie, and she hung up. Dana came back into the room and shrugged.

“She’s not here,”

“She left, she’s walking home with Marissa,” Annie said meekly.

“Why?” George almost shouted. Annie flinched a little.

“Marissa said that Lindsay was mad because you wouldn’t dance with her.”

“What?”

“She said she went to get a beer and when she came back you wouldn’t dance with her.”

“I don’t believe this,” said George, “This is horseshit!” He shot a panicked look at Dana, who looked like she was going to be sick.

"Hey, when we were dancing, it didn't mean--"
"No! I know! Not for me either!" Dana interrupted.
"It was just--"
"I know! I know!"
"I didn't do anything wrong did I?"
"I don't think so, but she probably thought what we were doing meant more than it did."
"That's horseshit!" George said again. He stared off at the wall, barely registering the hushed babbling between Dana and Annie. His mind was rushing, but his thoughts were drowning in alcohol. I can’t believe this, he thought. I can’t believe she would drive. Now I can’t dance with any girl besides her? Doesn’t she trust me? I’m so sick of this, I want to break the chair. But I can’t break the chair, because that would scare them, and that’s not being a good host. I didn’t know Dana liked to dance and so I danced with her. I like dancing with her. I wonder if I’ll ever get to dance with her now. She always does this, she always thinks I want to cheat on her. I’m so damn sick of it.

“Goddamnit!” he yelled.

“Calm down!” said Dana, “You’re not helping,”

“She’s just being irrational,” said Annie. “She’s a girl. And she was pretty drunk,”

“Did I screw up somehow? Is this my fault?”

“No, but I was worried that this would happen. We were dancing kind of close,” Dana admitted.

“I don’t believe this!”

“I’ll try calling them again,” said Annie with a yawn. She opened her cell phone and scrolled to the last number dialed. Suddenly the phone rang in her hand and she screamed and dropped it. Turning red, she picked it up and answered it.

“It’s Marissa,” she said after a moment, “she wants to talk to you,” Annie handed the phone to George.

“What the hell is going on?” The voice on the other line was serene.

“Calm down man. Everything’s cool, I called her a cab home. It should be here in like, five minutes,”

“Why don’t guys just come back here?”
“She’s not feeling it right now. Trust me, you want to wait for her to cool down before you two patch things up. She’s pretty pissed,”

“I didn’t do anything!”

“I know. This isn’t about you. She’s drunk, she’s stressed and she’s insecure. I know because so am I. She thinks you’re settling for her. I know it’s dumb, but try not to take it personally. And don’t try to see her until tomorrow,”

“I don’t want to see her,”

“Good, because you’ll just make it worse. You had more than she did,”

“This is horseshit,” George said, defeated. He felt Dana’s hand patting his wrist and looked down at her face. She was holding her hand to her ear like a phone and making the “gimme” gesture with her other hand. He gave it to her.

“Hi, Marissa? It’s Dana. How is she doing?” Listening to the faint voice on the other line, she closed her eyes and grimaced.

“Listen, tell her I’m sorry, tell her I’m so sorry. I didn’t know she’d be upset. I didn’t do it to hurt her,” George watched her go on, explaining, apologizing for things that weren’t her fault just so no one would be mad at her. He almost began blaming her because she was apologizing so much.

“I need a shot,” he said when she finally hung up.

“Yeah, me too,” she said, grabbing a small fistful of her hair. They went downstairs to the basement bar. George went through the liquor cabinet and pulled out an almost empty bottle of Captain Morgan and he poured out two shots. The rest of the party guests were quiet now, feeling the end of their buzz. George and Dana raised their glasses, nodded at each other, and drank them down.

“I liked dancing with you,” he said.

“I liked dancing with you too,”

“One more song,”

“Isn’t that what started this?”

“Trust me, it isn’t,” They were silent for a moment.

“I can’t,” she said.

“Okay, fine,” He got up to leave. “I won’t embarrass you by asking again,” He went upstairs.

“What was that?” said another guest at the bar.

“Nothing,” she said, “It’s a non-story,”

Gaucho Fencing

Sweat and Swords: An introduction to UCSB fencing culture

The second most common response I get when I tell people that I’m on the UCSB fencing team is, “Cool! I’ve always wanted to try that.” Then they may go on to tell me that they took the fencing class taught by team coach Tim Robinson, or that their roommate used to do it in highschool, or that ever since seeing Pirates of the Caribbean they just been dying to try it. This is all encouraging to hear, even that last one, because despite the allure, the UCSB fencing team is consistently quite small, and they’re always on the lookout for fresh blood, so to speak. Which unfortunately brings me to the most common response I get from people who learn that I fence for UCSB:

“Whoa, we have a fencing team?”

This is rarely said to us directly, but overheard in passing if one of us should be wearing a club T-shirt or jacket. Yes, in the wide range of Gaucho sports, one could say that the fencing team is stuck on the fringe. All but ignored by the Daily Nexus, with events attended only by other fencers and their families, and a cheerleading team that despite pleas from last year’s administration, would not “bring it on” for us, it would be easy to blame our obscurity on others. But the truth is most of the blame lies with the sport itself. Modern or Olympic fencing as some people call it, is a very strange thing. Your average Joe who wanders into a practice at the top floor at Robinson Gym looking for break dancing or tango lessons only to find a room full of white clad humanoids wildly motioning at each other with frail, metal rods, would not know what was going on.

This may be because people think of fencing in its original context, that is, young men of breeding settling their differences with a glove, repartee, and a duel. The action was probably easier to follow back when there was bleeding involved. Olympic fencing is very different and has distilled that facet of 17^th-19^th century European culture over the centuries to be a better reflection of the modern age. Today’s fencers are quick to adopt new technology to make the sport fairer, easier to judge and generally more manageable and consequently Modern fencing has become somewhat dependent on new technology to keep score, although many clubs still practice dry, or non-electric fencing. The result is a far cry from Errol Flynn, and better resembles something out of a science fiction novel. The fencing bout is restricted to a thin rectangular strip and limited to two opponents at a time and most bouts go up to five points. If it’s a dry bout, four hand judges will stand at the corners of the strip to help the director call the action. If it’s an electric bout, each fencer will literally be plugged into a box that calls the action. Each fencer wears a wire connected to that box that threads underneath their jackets, running through the armpit and sleeve and finally plugging into their weapon. Changing technology inevitably changes how people fence. For instance, a machine will usually recognize a touch better than a distractible hand judge, so electric fencing has more room to be subtle than dry fencing. Even the speed at which a box will recognize a touch can impact how someone will fence.

The Basics

Modern fencing has three different weapons that people have the option to train in, each one having different rules, techniques and target areas. The best way to explain them, once again, is in their original context, or rather, how they killed people.

The weapon that most people begin learning with is foil. Foil was originally designed for the quick, painless kill. Consequently the target area is the torso, where all of those important internal organs are, namely the heart. It’s a point weapon, which means that touches are made with the end of the blade instead of the side. Foil bouts are governed by a set of rules called “right of way” which, even after three years of fencing foil, I can’t understand or explain for the life of me. Suffice it then to say that they help the director decide who gets the point when two people stab each other at the same time.

Epee has a more mischievous air, being a traditional dueling weapon. The original point of an epee duel was to hurt and humiliate your opponent as much as possible. This means that everything is target area, including face and crotch and there are no rules of right of way. It is also a point weapon. Epee bouts are the easiest to follow, and epeeists usually get the most bruises.

The final weapon is saber, and was introduced last in the modern fencing repertoire. Sabre is a very different ballgame because it isn’t a point weapon but an edged weapon, meaning that saberists make attacks with the side of the blade and not necessarily with the point (though those count too). This is because the point of saber is to make your opponent bleed, so attacks are made on everything from the waist up, including wrists, neck and head. Saber also follows the rules of right of way, and seems to attract violent people.

Fencing Culture: Competitions, and Decorum Don’ts

Modern fencing can also be called Competitive Fencing because fencing clubs often compete in tournaments where they fence against other teams in their league. The spirit of these tournaments always depends on the people there, (and let me say now that most fencers are laid back, friendly and good sports) but it’s not uncommon to see a grudge match or two between a pair of rivals. A fencing rivalry can start pretty easily because tournaments can rub one’s emotions more raw than usual, especially if you’re having a bad day. All it might take is a wrong look, a snide tone or a violation of the many Decorum Don’ts listed below, and you could have a lifelong nemesis, at least on the fencing strip.

The Decorum Don’ts

Now, once again, to most fencers most of the time, these are no big deal. But during a big tournament where you feel like your sole purpose is to be someone else’s pincushion, or you get cheated out of a stunning victory by an incompetent director, the following quirks can get old REAL fast.

Screaming: Fencers from all weapons (but mostly saber and foil) love to do this. There are several reasons a fencer might scream, but usually it has to do with right of way. Because right of way is so freakishly complex at times, a fencer might employ screaming to convince a director that a touch was theirs. For some fencers however, screaming has become a reflex and they will let out a piercing shriek any time they do anything, making them really unpleasant to be around or worse, fence. Sometimes emotions are running so high, a normally quiet fencer may even do it without thinking about it when they’ve made a touch that they’re particularly proud of, but many people consider this justifiable behavior.

Being a sore loser/snobby winner: This can include mask throwing, refusing to shake hands, salute or make eye contact with an opponent, and cheering one’s own victory while still on the strip. Fencers who do this come off as immature, disrespectful and inconsiderate so naturally it’s pretty common. Usually the decent thing to do, win or lose is to salute, shake hands, make eye contact and maybe say “Thank you” or “Good bout,” (saberists, usually having more physically intense bouts, sometimes hug afterwards.) I for one get really irked when people don’t bother to look me in the eye after a bout, especially if they’ve won, so if I know that won’t, I just refuse to let go of a handshake until they do.

Talking to an opponent during a bout: Trying to psyche out your opponent during a bout is generally considered a tacky move, especially if it’s verbal. I once had an opponent silence my cheering teammates by saying, “Now watch me put her in her place,”. Sometimes fencers try to stimulate antediluvian dueling banter during a bout, such as “En garde, you whoreson rat!” and the like. This can be distracting.

Turning your back on an opponent during a bout: Not only is this bad manners, it’s against the rules for safety reasons because the fencing mask doesn’t protect the back of the head. This can lead to a black card penalty; an automatic win for the other person.

These are the main standout “don’ts” that I’ve learned about during my time as a fencer. There are also a lot of carding offenses that are too many to list in full like using malfunctioning equipment and accidentally/intentionally body slamming opponents.

The Other Side of the Coin

Now, the UCSB fencing club is not the only fencing related club on campus and people often confuse them with the Society for Creative Anachronism, or the SCA for short. The SCA has a completely different approach to fencing, despite sharing roots with Modern fencing. Where Modern fencing focuses on one aspect of their roots and continue to evolve with technology, the SCA endeavors to recreate the entire culture as accurately as Safety will allow.

Initially, my knowledge of the SCA was limited to what members of the fencing club would tell me about them, and since most of them were irritated at being confused with the SCA, some of the accounts were laced with a thinly veiled hostility. The harsher among them may criticize the SCA’s technique and accuse them of being theatrical. These people have led several pilgrimages to the SCA’s practice space, (the courtyard of the music building) to “kick some ass” but the accounts of said quests are mixed. More tolerant members of the club say it all depends on what individuals want to get out of the fencing experience.

I finally got a chance to see the SCA practice in their native habitat when a teammate invited me to come with her and visit one of her friends. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to get some more background on this supposedly blistering rivalry.

Stay tuned for Part II: The Belly of the Beast…

Sweat and Swords Part II

You could say that the Society for Creative Anachronism, or SCA for short, has a higher profile than the UCSB fencing club by virtue of their obscurity. The school does not provide the SCA with their own space to practice like it does with the fencing team, so for the twenty years that the SCA have had a club at this campus, they have been forced to find their own grounds to fence on. For the past eight years, that space has been the courtyard of the music building, where any passer by can come in and observe. Consequently, people are likelier to see the SCA in all its glory than they are to see the more cloistered Gaucho fencers. Some people that the SCA encounter regularly are their hosts, the music students and faculty. Both parties have retained a tepid rapport over the years.

“They hate when we make too much noise during their concerts but they love that we chase the skateboarders away,” says coach Jonathan Getty.

When I arrived at the music building courtyard one Wednesday night, Jonathan Getty was giving a small group of students their fencing lesson. Around them were several pairs of people fencing their way across the courtyard. They weren’t operating strictly on a line, but moving in circles, up and down stairs and some of them were even on their knees.

Making the Case for Christ

First Impressions

After a few days of walking past the huge red exhibits with nothing more than a quick glance and a noncommittal shrug, I finally get up the courage to walk up to one for a closer look. The board is covered with little pieces of paper that share the heading “I Confess” and leave a space for people to write their own anonymous confessions. The responses run from “I have doubted God’s existence” to “I love cheese and I don’t care if it makes me fat”. One of the organizers approaches me as I scan the spread.

“Would you like to add something to the wall?” he asks.

“Oh! No thank you. I’m Jewish.”

“Hey, that’s okay, everybody needs to confess sometimes.”

I decline as politely as I can, and dismiss myself, thinking that maybe I should have added a quote from the Tony Kushner play, Angels in America, “We Jews don’t have confession. We have guilt.”

I was initially wary of this group’s efforts, having seen their bold banners and booths displayed across the UCSB campus. The college has, after all, experienced its share of zealots in the past, with demonstrations occurring as early as the week before from a group who aggressively spoke out against gays and atheists, citing their actions as “confrontational evangelism”. The campus’s relationship with these groups have usually been a tense policy of tolerance (although this event required police involvement on account of the noise), and any time an event of this nature would erupt, op-eds in the Nexus grudgingly reminding us of the First Amendment would be quick to follow.

Oppressive to the senses in red and black, these new displays bear messages like “I Confess That I Am Selfish, Vain and Prideful When I Should Realize I Am Nothing Without Christ” or “I Confess That I Am a Sinner and That Christ With His Death and Resurrection Frees Me From the Confines of Sin”. People involved in the project in turn wear red T-shirts with “I Confess” written in the front in large, static letters. Some people wear jackets, cutting the message down to just, “Confess”. There are other signs with messages like “I Confess That the Lunatic Christian that Does Nothing but Condemn and Accuse, Infuriates Me,” but I was sure that these were a prank, an act of retaliation from a rival campus group against a new onslaught of intolerance. No way could these be related.

Still, I can’t help but be interested in this project’s approach. Unlike the previous groups, this one encourages participation from passers-by by inviting them to write their confessions on the big red board. No one is forced to do this, and when I read the responses, I can see that some people took the chance to express things they really needed to say. I decide that they deserve a second look. The next day I ask the group with the booth outside the Ucen about the public confessions.

“It’s not really about confessing your sins,” one of the organizers explains. “As the Christian group on campus, we’re just seeking to confess to people how we don’t live up to Jesus, how a lot of the time Christians are hypocrites and they hurt other people.”

She directs me to the guy who came up with the idea for the public confessions, Real Life organizer Brett Jensen. Real Life is the Christian group on campus that is running the whole project, which they are calling Confessions Week.

“The cards I just came up with,” he says. “I thought it would be something that would draw people around it, kind of stir up conversation about it. I just thought it would be kind of a cool idea. The real design for this--” he says, gesturing towards the red booth struggling to stay up against the wind, “--we got from a book called Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller, he talks about it, where they actually build a booth and they do this confession thing-”

“Like a private confession?” I cut in.

“Yeah, that’s what people go in there expecting to do,” he explains. “What it really is, is someone inside confessing the sins of Christianity to them, like one on one, saying, ‘Hey I’m sorry about this and that, and I’m sorry if you’ve been hurt in your life’,”

The concept of Christians apologizing is an inventive one, and it ranges from offenses done in the name of Christ (the examples that Real Life cite are the Crusades and the Inquisition), to everyday evils committed by Joe Everyman Christian.

“I haven’t loved people the way that Jesus did,” says fellow organizer Jeff Pauls. “He spent time with prostitutes and the poor. I ignore homeless people, and all sorts of people that I meet.” According to Jeff, people are really responding to this.

“I know people who have stepped into confession booths and they’ve been confessed to and they’ve just teared up. A lot of people have been really hurt by Christianity.”

Jeff is a CCS alumnus but continues to participate in Real Life after graduating. He has a broad, friendly grin and towers over me. He’s eager to answer my questions and clear up misconceptions I have about the project. Firstly, their goal is not conversion. If they get people interested, great, he says, but what they really want to do is to present a picture of Jesus separate from what he is commonly associated with, or as he puts it, “to look at Jesus through the crap.” Jeff is confident that if people understand who Jesus really is, the product will sell itself.

“People are going to choose what they want.” He says. “I’m not gonna argue someone into Christianity, that’s a ridiculous idea.”

It’s clear then that my initial reaction to the project is quite different from what they are actually about and this brings up an interesting point. For a group that appears to be ecumenical, open minded and ready to take responsibility for the wrongs committed in the name of their savior for anyone willing to listen, why choose such an abrasive looking set of displays?

“We wanted a color that would stand out,” says Jensen. “We knew that some of the government parties were probably going to be doing something this week, so we tried to stay away from the colors that they normally pick like blue and green. Somebody proposed it we were like ‘Oh, that’s great!’”

Jeff also says that the colors were useful in confronting people, without being, well, confrontational.

“We’re trying to be more submissive and admit ‘Look we’ve been aggressive for years, we want to humble ourselves and say we’re sorry.’ And to be louder than the people with bullhorns and not preach hate speech we have to have loud colors,”

It’s a clever idea, it may help that people are intimidated by the colors at first, says Jeff.

“They expect us to be political, and I think they’re excited [when they discover] that we’re not. We’re not trying to preach a message, we’re just trying to say the message has been preached and it’s been really misinterpreted, sorry.”

The Main Event

Confessions Week culminated in an event called Confessions of a Modern Day Christian, a night of music, poetry, dance, and a sermon of sorts by speaker Ken Virzi. As I look for a seat in I.V. theater, I can see that this is a closer crowd than most. People greet each other like they haven’t spoken in years. Girls are hugging everyone in sight, guys are sneaking up and tackling each other in the aisles. Almost no one sits alone, save me. Finally the lights dim and the first act takes the stage, a young woman reading a poem about breaking her promise to God and sleeping with her boyfriend before marriage. She says she is sorry that she broke her promise, but sorrier that she made it before she truly understood what she was promising.

“I sleep with my boyfriend, and I don’t feel the need to change.”

Then a guitarist and a guy drumming on a wooden crate play transitional music as the dancers take the stage, three girls who stare at the floor, standing in formation. Their music begins, they begin to dance, sometimes together, sometimes not, violently pirouetting, begging and being pushed away. Finally the girl in the middle is left prostrate on the ground as the other two walk away. The lights dim, the guitarist and drummer continue to play music. The next act assembles on stage left. It’s two guys with mics and one begins to beatbox. Is that what I think it is? Yes. It’s Christian rap. The crowd begins to hoot and holler and the second guy starts rapping.

“C’mon everyone let’s tell the truth / we all hypocrites both me and you / we say one thing and we do the next / like a girl who don’t drink but smokes a lot of cigarettes”

The crowd claps through all three verses and finally it’s time for the speaker. Ken Virzi has a calm voice that falls at the end of every sentence like disappointment. He stands before the crowd and catalogues the wrongs of those who practice his faith.

“On behalf of this huge dysfunctional family, I confess.”

He starts out with Christians at the top of the heap “In politics Christians have way overstepped their bounds…I confess there has been dishonesty, there has been manipulation there has been power struggle…I will confess there have been Christians at the head of some of the ugliest stuff that happens,”

He then moves down the ladder to the clergy and religious leaders that are trusted and respected, mentioning people who have abused that trust by stealing from church coffers, and committing adultery and pedophilia. He then moves down even further to the normal and the everyday, to the indifference and subtler evils of the average citizens.

“When I have friends tell me that they would never even consider becoming a Christian, I see a lot of reasons why.”

But he turns it around and begs forgiveness for these offences, citing the love that Christ had for people as a reason to follow him. He talks about the impact Jesus made over the centuries in literature, music, government and art. But for him, it’s not good enough to say that every action has an opposite reaction and I believe him when he says he’s sorry, for what he’s done and for what his faith has done. Maybe he’s a bit too sorry. He relates a story when he and his friends traveled to Italy and were stuck in Pittsburgh for two days. He was annoyed and took it out on the people around him, and in telling he makes this out to be such a horrible unchristian act. Unpleasant I can see, but unchristian? His constant self flagellating reminds me of my state of mind when I was in highschool, where I felt I could do no right and all of my motives were ugly and wrong. It’s true that Real Life emphasizes on ones own relationship with God and discourages judging others, but what about over judging oneself?