Boo at the U

Treats, hayrides, carnival games and a haunted house will be part of “Boo at the U,” Texas Woman’s University’s annual fall festival. The event, enjoyed by almost 1,000 people each year, is scheduled from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 25. Activities will take place in and around the TWU Student Union, located on the southwest corner of Bell Avenue and Administration Drive. Admission is free and open to the public. For more information, call (940) 898-3641.

Festival activities include trunk-or-treating, where cars, decorated for the season, line the horseshoe-shaped drive between TWU’s clock tower building and the Student Union, and participants hand out candy from the trunk of each car.

“We hope the Denton and TWU communities will bring their children, neighbors and friends to the festival and join us for a night of fun,” Kyle Voyles, director of the TWU Student Union, said.

Christina Truelove, Staff Writer

One of the newest trends in dining experiences would be that of the hibachi grill. A hibachi grill is where eight people sit in a semi-circle around a table equipped with a grill and a chef comes to the table to cook food fresh in front of your eyes. If you have never been to a Hibachi restaurant, you should try it out. It is a lot of fun, and the food is fresh and delicious.

This week we went to Blue Fish in North Dallas. It is located at 18149 N. Dallas Parkway, Suite 100. This restaurant has several different areas to match any occasion. There is a bar area with seating where you can order food and greet others. Behind that is a lounge area where special parties or get together occur. On the other end of the restaurant is traditional table seating and a sushi bar. Between the restaurant and bar areas, there are six hibachi tables.

We were meeting a group of friends for hibachi so we got in and had a seat in the bar as all of our friends arrived. We were able to order their famous Apple Saki while we waited. It didn’t take long to gather our friends and have a seat at our hibachi table. We had made a reservation in advance which is recommended for busy weekend nights. The menu is set up where all you need to do is select your meat (or vegetables if you wish). All of their hibachi meals comes with soup, salad, assorted vegetables and steamed rice. Fried rice is available for a nominal fee and in my opinion the very best you can get anywhere. I had selected the teriyaki chicken and shrimp whereas my husband had the teriyaki steak. It was grilled to perfection as we watched from our comfortable seats.

The hibachi experience is something I simply cannot describe. We had excellent food, great friends, fun atmosphere, and premiere entertainment all in one package. However, if hibachi is not your style, they have sushi and ala carte menu items available. To check out Blue Fish for yourself or your next party, their website is www.thebluefishsushi.com. They have three locations in Greenville, North Dallas, and Las Colinas, making them convenient to nearly everyone.

In Wes Anderson’s latest film, The Darjeeling Limited, three American brothers travel across India via a train called the Darjeeling Limited in hopes of reconnecting after their father’s death a year prior. The three have not spoken since their father’s death, and the oldest, Francis Whitman (Owen Wilson) desperately tries to rekindle their relationship. With the help of his assistant, Brendan (Wallace Wolodarsky), Francis attempts to map out their “spiritual journey.”

The Whitman brothers experience an array of emotional events throughout their trip, including a tragic rafting accident involving three young boys. In addition, Francis reveals to Jack (Jason Schwartzman) and Peter (Adrien Brody) that he has secretly contacted their mother (Anjelica Huston), who is currently serving as a Catholic nun in the Himalayas. These events bring the brothers closer together and they are forced to deal with the death of their father head on. However, Peter still wears his father’s sunglasses and uses his father’s old razor. Jack seems to be the more philosophical one, posing questions such as, “I wonder if the three of us would’ve been friends in real life. Not as brothers, but as people.”

I absolutely loved this movie. It is definitely one of Anderson’s best. Anderson does a compelling job of trying to decode yet another dysfunctional family, similar to his work in The Royal Tennenbaums, another classic. One of the funniest moments in the film occurs when the Darjeeling unexpectedly veers off course and Jack turns to Peter and says, “What did he say?” and Peter responds, “He said the train is lost.” Then Jack to says, “How can a train be lost? It’s on rails.”

Scarlett Pope, Staff Writer

It was on a late Thursday afternoon in August 2005 when I headed down to Crawford, Texas. A woman who had lost her only son, Casey, had decided to camp outside President Bush’s ranch in Crawford until he would meet with her to discuss why her son had died. The president refused, saying that they had already met. The event was widely covered by the media as heroic, while others saw it as revolting that Cindy Sheehan had decided to publicly display her grief.

I went on a lark--I had heard about the protest a few days earlier. I registered for my spring classes and left. 3 hours later I arrived at Camp Casey. A huge group of protesters were there holding signs and chanting. Opposite was a very small gathering of people who called themselves “Camp Reality” although they never stayed overnight. I saw very few clashes from the Casey and Reality camps, but every time I did the discussion was filled with nauseating smugness. One side would try to out-parade the others morals, and each had their good tag lines. There was a “Who would Jesus bomb?” for every “You don’t support our troops” holler. I sat disillusioned next to a Vietnam vet and we talked until the stars came out. Before I went to bed, Cindy Sheehan came over to the camp and stretched her hand out to meet me. “Finally, a young person” she said. An observation worth noting, because in the Vietnam War it had been the youth of this nation that had led mass protest and in Crawford I was the only person under 30. I made my way over to Camp Casey II the next morning where a “media circus” was cleaning lenses and doing short reports before Cindy’s press conference. She came out, made a moving speech, and then departed. I got back in my car, took advantage of the gas prices ($2.42) and went back home.

That was back when the casualties were at 1,816 and the wounded a little over 13,000. The wounded have doubled since then, and the amount of U.S. causalities is fast approaching 4,000. At least 3,115 of the 3,828 have died to hostile action according to the associated press. No doubt the press will mark the date when it hits 4 grand, and both pro and anti Iraq war advocates will remark on it in their own way-- supporting their respective viewpoints. However, it will be far more than a number to the family who receives a folded flag in honor of their loved one. There will be tears and suffering.

At the most recent anti-war protest I attended there were only around 75 protesters. Again, there was a tiny group of counter protesters, and one held a sign saying “Smile your on Al-Jezeera”. The smugness in the air was even more apparent than in Crawford. The press didn’t cover the event, even though Cindy Sheehan was also there. I cried the whole time. Again, both sides would shout out the self-righteousness of their case. How could anyone feel smug at a time like this? When whilst we argue over who supports the troops more, a war continues to kill both innocent Iraqi’s and our brave soldiers?

All the while, the young and impassioned youth stay silent. In a time of constant blogging and endless emotion icons we, the youth, have been emotionally vacant when it comes to Iraq. Now I won’t delve into what is right and wrong when it comes to the war, I’d rather put our moral certainties aside and let our emotions speak for once. If there is any solidarity among both sides it has to be that we share the loss of our brave men and women over seas. We share the grief and tears. Twice since the war began I’ve had to pull over my car to stop crying at some random news report telling of a mass suicide bomber or car bomb. Yet every day I read news online or watch television with a straight face as violent images fade in and out of news headlines. The disconnect of image and emotion is making us place war on a screen, while it still is right outside the doors of those serving in Iraq. Our service men and women are also coming home with record numbers of post traumatic stress disorder and suicides. Is this becoming a widespread problem for all Americans--that our feelings must be placed far away to go about a daily existence?

So as we remember the beginning of the war this week, let’s remember our feelings; how they have changed, grown stronger, or faded all together. Remember that both parties have them, and lets comfort one another for once.

This coming week Campus Representatives Encouraging Wellness (C.R.E.W.) will be collecting letters from the student body to be sent to our Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. I encourage everyone, no matter where they stand on the war, to send a letter expressing gratitude to our men and women and uniform. The letters will be sent out to the soldiers so they arrive on Veterans Day, November 11th.