Valentine's Day is over...thank goodness!

Heart candies, flower-shaped balloons, bouquets of roses, classic romance movies like Casablanca and Titanic, and even heart-shaped cards on the Registrar’s glass door…

Valentine has passed, but ever wonder why single people are so bitter about V-Day? Well, let me tell you.

First, Valentine’s Day ruins diets. At the end of the holiday season, I try to clean up my act, avoid the ham, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie, and resolve on New Year’s eve to eat healthier. During the month of January, I am on fire – eating salads and running on the treadmill. Then my forward momentum screeches to a halt come February 14.

Even grocery shopping is impossible. If Valentine’s Day didn’t exist, I could contain my urge to stop for sweets and baked goods as I lazily stroll through the aisle in a grocery store. But during Valentine’s Day, everywhere I turn, my eyes are quickly attracted to the bright pink and red heart candies placed at the entrance. I can’t even buy just a chocolate bar.

Every time I contemplate it, I end up grabbing the whole box of chocolates instead, justifying my diet-breaking purchase by convincing myself that I get more for my money. After gorging on a whole box while watching The Notebook, I wonder why the hell I put myself through this every year.

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Cloud 9’s modern stereotypes

The Georgetown Gilbert & Sullivan Society performed Caryl Churchill’s feminist comedy Cloud 9. The play explores the links between sexual repression and power structures, finding humor in the incongruity between social roles and erotic desires, and suggesting liberation of the latter is necessary to reform the former.

The first act is set in British colonial Africa in the Victorian era, the second, a century later in the modern London of Churchill’s own time, the late 1970s. Ms. Churchill has the gall to not only play waning taboos such as homosexuality and interracial sexuality for laughs, but to do the same with incest and pedophilia. The casting, as is traditional, is eager to disorient the audience. Actors often play across race, sex, and age, and different actors play the returning characters in the second act.

This robs the audience of the ability to use ingrained prejudices and assumptions about social roles as a short hand for understanding the characters’ relationship. Unfortunately, it over-achieves its intended effect by requiring adults to play children of the opposite sex, turning an exercise in subverting expectations into a supreme acting challenge.

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Cloud 9’s hidden secrets

About twenty minutes into the first act of Cloud 9, one character asks another, “Shall we go in the barn for a f**k? It’s not an order.” At that moment, a light bulb went off over the audience’s collective head. Oh, this is the play we’re watching.

You certainly wouldn’t have been bored this weekend at the Georgetown Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s production of Caryl Churchill’s 1979 farce, which explores how gender roles created and enforced through centuries of patriarchy inform gender politics in the late 1970s London.

The play’s structure is both simpleand bizarre. The first act centers on a patriarchal family living in British-controlled Africa in 1880. The second act follows the children of the same family 25 years later but now in London in 1980. Despite unexplained time jumps, the play is very entertaining and ably performed, using deadpan deliveries in absurd situations to great effect. (“Hello? Who is it? We’re having an orgy.”) Even more entertaining, the casting is superb.

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APALSA celebrates Lunar New Year

More than 150 students, alumni, professors, and local attorneys celebrated the Lunar New Year on Friday, February 9, 2013 with a dinner, keynote speaker, and performances. Members of the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association transformed the twelfth floor of Gewirz with traditional red and gold decorations, and catered Chinese, Thai, and Korean food from restaurants in DC and Virginia.

Christopher Chan, DC’s Asian Pacific American Bar Association President and former Asian Pacific American Bar Association Educational Fund President, gave the keynote speech at the event. He addressed a few of the issues that Asian Pacific Americans face in the legal field, and gave practical advice on how to step beyond stereotypes.

The performers included our very own acapella group, Lawcapella, local spoken word artists from the group Sulu DC, and singer and songwriter Christopher Santa Ana – all of whom received loud cheering and applause from the audience. “The room was packed, there was delicious food, and the performers were great,” Stephen Shin, 2L, said about the event.

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Keepin’ it real with K-Scurz: advice on flirting via text message (or not)

Dear Law Weekly,

I met a girl this weekend and scored her digits. We’ve been exchanging flirty text messages, but I have no idea what I’m doing. How do I convey sarcasm? When do I use an exclamation point instead of a period? Should I ever include an emoticon? How long should I wait before asking for a date? Is it okay to ask via text message or do I have to place an actual real-life phone call?

All help appreciated,

Out of My Depth

Dear Out of My Depth,

First of all, it may be time to update your slang. “Scored her digits”? Maybe I missed the memo, but I’m pretty sure 2003 isn’t cool again, at least not yet. As for flirting advice, you clearly came to the right place. As a law student who writes for the humor section of the student newspaper, I obviously have excellent social acumen and extensive dating experience, making me one of the world’s foremost experts on text-message flirting.

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