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Submit your photos and writing to fcpaper@ gmail.com 14 FIRST CALL MARCH 24, 2008 planations. As “Commuting in America III” suggests, some of this is due to a trend of Americans seeking to simply avoid the rush hour, with more and more workers beginning their commutes before 6:00 am or after 9:00 am (the 64% of working Americans falling in this range was 67% a decade before). Some of it is also due to an interesting movement where many Americans are starting to live in cities and work in the suburbs, rather than the other way around. Then there is always population growth, another decent explanation, and with that comes the issue of traffic. Traffic, actually, is a rather good explanation, and it’s easy to complain about. The Texas Transportation Institute produces an annual “Urban Mobility” report that measures all the extra time we have to spend in traffic – that is, the additional time we spend on the road solely due to congestion. For the “average peak period traveler” (so, only looking at workers driving during rush-hour) in 2007, this added up to an extra 38 hours of traveling each year. That’s over one and a half days, above and beyond usual travel times, just because of traffic. They also went a step further and calculated how much it cost us: 26 extra gallons in fuel, adding up to $710 per traveler in 2007. To determine these figures, the study looked at 437 specific U.S. urban areas that ranged in population. If you just look at those areas with populations of more than 3 million, that figure jumps to 54 hours. Among them, the Philadelphia urban area retains the national average of 38 hours. Based on this national figure, that’s still adding another 9 minutes to the daily commute of drivers. For whatever reason things are getting worse, though, it’s worth questioning why we are accepting it. Don’t we care? Couldn’t we take a closer job, or if not, at least move closer to work? We have people in the cities working in the suburbs and people in the suburbs working in the cities – that makes no sense. Why don’t they switch homes? Or jobs? The best explanation I’ve read, honestly, is that people are just, kind of… too dumb to notice. A little while ago, economists Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer of the University of Zurich published a report titled “Stress That Doesn’t Pay: The Commuting Paradox.” It was a psychological study seeking to determine how people value their commutes relative to compensation. The results showed that, if you were to increase your commute time from zero to an hour each way, your salary would have to increase by 40% to satisfyingly make up for it. That implies that those who commute should be receiving significantly more compensation than those who don’t, but this simply isn’t happening. Hence the “Commuting Paradox”: people are commuting even though it’s terrible. They’re simply not realizing they need to be paid more for the unhappiness of it. Now, there may be plenty of other good explanations, but already I’ve provided an abundance of statistics, and you’re probably wondering exactly what my point is. You could be thinking I want to encourage my fellow Americans to recognize their nonsensical habits of commuting. Maybe I want everyone to take a closer look at their situation and decide if their own commutes are really worth it. Maybe I have some great ambitious plans to fix traffic, commuting times, and early wake-ups. Maybe I’m trying to warn the rest of the student population about life after school. Or maybe I just get some sick pleasure out of alarming anyone who will listen about the inevitable impending doom! Well, if you were supposing any of those things, you were wrong. Really, this is all one big elaborate rationalization for those two previously described incidents that took place during my own commutes home from work. Clearly, in the horrible times we are suffering, these things are bound to happen. My commute at the time was far above average, 90 minutes each way. Of course I’m going to be in a rush, and it’s just common courtesy to give me more space. So the next time some old lady gets in my way, I’ll tell her, “Sorry, times have changed. Now move it.” And as for that blind man – well, okay, maybe I still don’t have much of an excuse there. If you’re reading this, sorry about that. FC Michael Sall is a junior in Wharton and the College. You can write to him at sallms@wharton.
Review: saturnalia A Reach towards the light for a match made in hell Steven Waye The privilege of writing a piece on The Gutter Twins’ Saturnalia is, for me, the critical equivalent of handing out a lifetime achievement award. The aptly named Gutter Twins, Mark Lanegan and Greg Dulli, have toiled in parallel obscurity for a decade and a half, cranking out some of the most inventive and visceral music from that period. Dulli’s quartet Afghan Whigs, described by Rolling Stone as spending “the bulk of their career on the brink of stardom,” and Lanegan’s band Screaming Trees, the forgotten sons of the Seattle grunge scene, are shunted aside in discussions about the greatest rock acts of the 90’s. To this day they are prohibitively overshadowed by bands like Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains, despite producing catalogues that have aged as well or better than their c o n t e m p o raries. They are the neglected younger brothers of jaded flannel rock, the Kevin Dillons of the alternative scene. However, in my eyes these are two of the greatest frontmen of their era, and the longevity of their careers, if nothing else, supports my claim. They have managed admirably to con- t i n u e to make compelling music leading up to this 2008 release without tragically self-destructing (Layne Staley, Kurt Cobain) or becoming a flickering echo of their own fading stars (Chris Cornell, Eddie Vedder). While admittedly uneven, Saturnalia highlights the complimentary creative prowess of two backburner legends in the twilight of their careers, and when Lanegan’s smoky growl tangos with Dulli’s fire-breathing wail, the result is some truly stunning black magic. The opening track, “The Stations,” sets the tone, with Lanegan crooning, “O mama, ain’t no time to fall to pieces,” with every ounce of bitterness his pack-a-day baritone can muster. The guitars and strings wail in the background as Dulli joins Lanegan for the chorus, lamenting a salvation that for them only serves as a consistent reminder of what they always pined for but never tasted: “They say the rapture’s coming/ they say he’ll be here soon/right now there’s demons crawling all around my room/They say he lives within us/ They say for me he died/And now I hear his footsteps almost every night.” Throughout the album, the musical accompaniment serves only as an atmospheric backdrop to two men struggling to make sense of a life of burgeoning disappointment, as a movie score might serve to heighten the emotional intensity of a tragic dialogue. Yet, strangely, Saturnalia finds Dulli and Lanegan closer to anything resembling peace than we have ever heard in any of their previous endeavors. The tension and scrappiness that defined their output to this point is still there, but the interplay between Dulli and Lanegan reveals a ruggedly beautiful synchronicity that led Dulli to dub them “the Satanic Everly Brothers.” “We had to become the Gutter Twins because that’s how we were perceived,” Dulli quips. This album captures the sound of two weathered men working together in world-weary harmony, a kinship of the kicked-around. Though Saturnalia recycles many of its best moments, it has plenty of them. “The Body” is an ethereal ballad that sounds like something “Adore”-era Billy Corgan may have penned if he had the vocal chops to pull it off. Martina Topley-Bird’s guest vocals make the song really take off and transport the listener. “Who Will Lead Us” is a hauntingly dark gospeltinged ballad that showcases Lanegan’s more wistful side. “Idle Hands” sounds like a dance party in Hades, and you can also hear the ground shaking as Lanegan croaks “With idle hands/there’s nothing I can do/but be the Devil’s plaything, baby/and know that I’ve been used.” When Dulli accompanies him for the chorus, it scares the bejeezus out of me in the most beautiful way imaginable. “Heaven, it’s quite a climb…” reads the epigraph to the bio section on the band’s website, a line lifted from the Saturnalia track “Seven Stories Underground.” Here’s to hoping the duo’s ascent continues on for a few more rungs, and that they keep dragging us up along with them. FC Steven Waye is a sophomore in the College. You can write to him at waye@sas. FIRST CALL MARCH 24, 2008 15
Page 1 and 2: MARCH 24, 2008 | Volume 8, No. 10 m
Page 3 and 4: LETTER FROM THE EDITORS Dear Childr
Page 5 and 6: endition of the “DE-FENSE” chan
Page 7 and 8: Clichés don’t bother me as much
Page 9 and 10: O ver the past few years, reality s
Page 11 and 12: Photo Spotlight: Spring 2004, BY Ri
Page 13: are even going to bed. Moreover, th

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