Last Stop This Town is a first stop on the road to literary success

27 Apr 2012, Posted by Chinmayi Sharma in Backpages, 0 Comments

Special to The Chronicle

One of the benefits of coming to a school like Duke University is the fact that it produces some of the most interesting alumni imaginable.

We all know that alumni from Duke and the Fuqua School of Business took up the majority of the leadership positions in Apple, but little do people know, Duke alumni are much more diverse than the series of investment bankers and doctors the school seems to exclusively produce.

Enter, David.

His name is Steinberg, David Steinberg. He is your regular Doogie Howser—he graduated high school at the humble age of 16 and enrolled into Yale University, casually. He proceeded to attend Duke School of Law, and there served in the ever-prestigious poisition of editor-in-chief of the law review. Then, he did that normal going-to-be-a-lucrative-entertainment-lawyer thing until he dropped everything to drive across the country to break into Hollywood. Casually.

Dead on balls image of your classic super-nerd who wasn’t fulfilled by the superficial scavengers of the legal world and decided to dedicate his life to discovering the meaning of human existence and sharing his insights with others through the medium of film? Not quite…

He was a self-proclaimed smart-schemer—the kid who sat in the back of class causing ruckus and managing his minor marauders in miscreant mischief all while getting the straight A’s that get him into one of the best colleges in the world, early. He had a seat with his name on it in detention to match his top spot on the hypothetical dean’s list of life.

“I had this masterplan, you know,” Steinberg said. “I wasn’t one of those type A ambitious kids who took all APs to prove something. I just didn’t have another choice. I placed onto the fast track early and didn’t have other options. If I stayed in school senior year, I would have taken cooking and gym.”

Yale, however, was not the real-world rager he had imagined.

“I got there and thought, this is the least fun school ever,” he reminisced.

It was the 80s and everyone had an opinion about something or another and were just dying to share it. Higher education was fostering some of the most politically charged and effective students the country had seen and yet Steinberg wanted nothing to do with it. Where was the welcome frat party to herald his arrival, complete with topless girls with open arms and a victory keg stand?

More importantly, where the hell was he supposed to eat and how does one do laundry?!

And it was this jarring experience that served as the inspiration for his debut novel Last Stop This Town.  With the sound of his breaking dreams muffled by a colossal pile of textbooks and papers as his muse, he broke into the literary world after having penned the screenplays for some of the most quintessential college movies of our age—Slackers and American Pie 2.

 Breaking into an unfamiliar world

Dylan, Walker, Noah and Pike spend the course of the book dealing with the daunting prospect of leaving a place that—for all their classic teenage whining and moaning—they had come to know and love for unfamiliar, frightening places across the country. Similarly, Steinberg has also ventured daringly out of a world of comic-screeplay writing to enter the unfamiliar territory of publishing the written word.

This novel has so much going for it. First and foremost, I had the pleasure of reading it during the tenuous time of finals. Now, as any self-respecting college student knows , FINALS stands for…

F***

I

Never

Actually

Learned

S***

And so to ward off that unpleasant realization, I was able to sink into the ready Steinberg-constructed world of high school hooliganism and replace the sentiments of stress with happy nostalgia. I would hardly call myself an emotional individual, but after this book I found myself calling my high school friends just to say hi. Who does that anymore?

Steinberg wrote about that last weekend before graduation that he never had.

“I wanted to shed light on another part of graduating—the broken expectations,” he said. “The omniscient narrator had my perspective so with a bit of implied dramatic irony, I knew the hurdles they would face before they did. It’s the story about the ending of one chapter and turning to another. It’s scary.”

The characters are certainly based on the standard college coming-of-age archetypes—we have the player, the stoner, the monogamous overachiever, and the endearing well-intentioned virgin. Sound familiar? I know, and so when I read the first couple pages of this book, I couldn’t help but release a pretentious I’m-an-English-major-and-so-above-teen-comedies sigh of impatience with the simple set-up.

That was my b.

Reading is as much about understanding the words as understanding the context. When reading an author’s debut novel, give them the courtesy of going past the first chapter. For any of you college kids that have written an extensive paper, how much did you like the first page you put down? Yeah, didn’t think so.

These archetypes were fleshed out to become the complex, incomprehensible teens we all are deep down inside. It was a perfect reflection of meeting someone. You know when you meet that sorority girl, or art student, or athlete and have this pre-concieved notion of how they will be and therefore everything they do seems to affirm that? And then they prove us wrong, rock our world, and become our best friends.

These four fools managed to break my prejudiced expectations of them.

“The book is pretty guy-centric,” Steinberg admitted. “It’s a side of us people don’t really see much of. We’re as scared as girls going into schools but, as I can only imagine, (I’m really assuming here) girls can talk about their bad days and get a hug from their roommates. Guys don’t really have that opportunity—we don’t have that sort of open support.”

So, at first, their friendship seems like your stereotypical bromance and I couldn’t help but read with this skeptical “we don’t ACTUALLY sound like that” mental protest, until I stopped reading and listened to my common room a bit. Spoiler alert: we really DO sound like that.

And we also see them grow and change, from being the guys who street race and try to bum beer off a bum to the ones who find strength in each other and admit that goodbyes aren’t as easy as they seem.

So just as we beg society not to judge us by the image we so meticulously construct and put out there, we should refrain from trying to fit these one of a kind personalities into a single-trait-defining category—we would only be doing ourselves a disservice.

A comedy with heart

And so what I really want to say about this book is that it has a lot of heart. It brings together the key cultural milestones of every era in the author’s recent memory (that go a bit further than our lives) and even before that. With song references like “Walk Like An Egyptian,” it not only appeals to an audience as wide and scattered as the college-age population, but also shows just how we are not an alien generation. We are an outgrowth of our parents, and our parents’ parents and so on and so forth.

It uses comedy as a tool to address the every day crises and heartbreaks of being a teenager. We have our classic Donnie Darko films telling of the existential search for the meaning of our existence.

At the same time, I don’t know about you, but I spend more of my time trying to survive the day then find the grander meaning in it.

“College kids are more of a comedy than a drama—they are resilient but they are still almost-adults with the brains of 5 year olds,” Steinberg joked. “Their hormones are like being on drugs all the time with amazing things happening at a time when they are least able to deal with it.”

We are teens. We pretend we are immortal and impervious to the lemons of life but we’re not. We use jokes on jokes on jokes to admit that we are vulnerable because the truth rolls off the tongue better with the parachute of sarcasm than one of sincerity.

And so comedy is the perfect tool to convey the fear of being a virgin forever, doing drugs for the first time, having poop thrown at you by a homeless person and going to the real world alone and unaware of what awaits you.

“Life is dark enough,” Steinberg soberly stated.

Escapsim is where magical things can happen. Where you can be as funny, flirtatious or fortuitous as your favorite character.

So this book is by no means perfect. Steinberg is so very clearly a screenwriter based on this narrative—it reads like a movie and sometimes can be a bit tedious with redundancy of dialogue and description. However, when your brain is fried after finals and you can’t create that mental image without a helping hand, this book is right there for you.

It is a novel with all the potential of a rising college student—Steinberg audaciously breaks into the unfamiliar world of literary works, producing a book with all the zeal and potential of an adolescent. A screenplay writer still getting acclimated to the world of written fiction, the core of his book more so than the writing style is where his true strength lies. He validates the tumultuous teenage years we all pretend were nothing—giving weight to the struggles we aren’t quite ready to admit to.

I truly hope he keeps writing because this book is certainly a freshman-year stepping stone to his metaphorical graduation day.

Rising Chicago rapper King Louie pushes “Gumbo” sound

26 Apr 2012, Posted by Walker Schiff in Backpages, 1 Comments

Up and coming rap artist King Louie was born and raised in Chicago, though you would never know it from his music. The handful of mixtapes he has released so far sound like something out of Atlanta. From the beats, to the lyrics, to the overarching style, King Louie’s music has a strong southern influence, an influence that is as evident in the title track of his most recent mixtape Motion Picture as it is anywhere.

In an exchange of emails between the Windy City spitter and myself, King Louie attributed that southern influence to “Dro City swag.” Dro City is the neighborhood on the Southside of Chicago that Louie hails from, a neighborhood that, until recently, was one of the few places where King Louie’s fame extended. Now King Louie has gained a national following through his hit single “Too Cool,” which features 2 Chainz and Red Café on the remix, and through a couple of mixtapes which compiled his lesser known, early work.

King Louie is part of an exploding hip-hop scene in Chicago that has just recently thrust itself into the national spotlight and features the likes of Lil Durk, Chief Keef, who is currently having his most recent single remixed by Kanye West, and Louie himself. Louie attributes the streets as a “major source of all of [their] success” and was sure to mention that none of them “have major label marketing behind them.”

Similar to Louie’s music, much of the music coming out of this Chiacgo movement has strong southern influence which has earned it the title “New Trap,” with trap music being a type of music often associated with southern artists such as Young Jeezy, T.I., and Waka Flocka Flame. King Louie embraces this “New Trap” brand but prefers to classify his music as “Gumbo” because he sees his music as “a mix of everything.” This title is fitting given that King Louie’s music pulls pieces from all across the rap spectrum but stems from southern hip-hop, giving it “a sound that people are unfamiliar with,” that is, until you listen to it. King Louie put it best when he said, “you will always know when you hear a King Louie song.” King Louie’s music has a unique and new personality while drawing from many different areas a hip-hop which is probably why his fame has grown so much lately.

King Louie’s growing reputation hasn’t come easy. Louie attributes his talent to “investing time in perfecting [his] craft, and hard work.” His recording career started after he dropped out of high school. He rapped before he left school but didn’t start recording and pushing his music until after. Once Louie and his brother Doe started peddling recordings throughout Chicago, Louie’s buzz continued to grow until his music reached John Monopoly, Kanye West’s former manager. Monopoly and his business partner Larro Wilson have since started a local label, Lawless Inc., and signed King Louie as their flagship artist.

It is on this label that King Louie’s debut LP, Dope and Shrimp, will be released. I asked King Louie about the inspiration for the album’s title and he said it comes from “last summer” when “all [he] did was smoke dope and then eat shrimp.” I also asked him what listeners can expect on album and he said, “You can expect a real personal project, a project that had a lot of time invested into and demonstrates my growth as an individual musically and personally.” As for when this project will be released, Louie simply told me “soon” as they are “putting finishing touches on mixing and so forth.”

Hopefully we won’t have to wait too long to hear King Louie’s debut. If you were like me and couldn’t wait, you can hear more of Louie’s music from the mixtape he released in March entitled Motion Picture located here or from one of his #ManUpBandUp compilation mixtapes located here and here.

Special thanks to King Louie for taking the time to answer my questions and to Phill Roche for setting up the interview.

Aspiring-rapper and Duke-alum ANTHM gaining traction

20 Apr 2012, Posted by Walker Schiff in Backpages, 1 Comments

Special to The Chronicle

I was first introduced to Duke-alum and aspiring-rapper ANTHM through an article in the Chronicle last February, back when his name was still Anthem. Before that article, I knew him simply as “that guy who did the Duke rap song.” The article told of his journey from taking a job on Wall Street straight out of Duke to leaving that job to pursue his dream of becoming a rap artist. I found the article interesting, but I mostly forgot about it apart from downloading his song about Duke entitled “Dear Duke.”

Fast-forward to now.

Earlier this week I was browsing the internet and I ended up on one of my favorite music websites, FADER. FADER is actually a magazine that is known for featuring big artists before they get big, including Eminem, Outkast and Drake to name a few. I noticed on the front-page a song posted by an artist named ANTHM and after a little research I discovered it was indeed the Duke-alum/aspiring-rapper that I had read about a year earlier. The song is a smooth track entitled “Stolen Whips” and featured the somewhat-already established Black Rob.

I was interested to see if ANTHM’s music was being pushed by other music blogs so I did some more research. I found that ANTHM has been gaining some traction in the hip-hop blogosphere, especially from the blog 2DopeBoyz. Since the beginning of March, the website has posted ANTHM’s music five times. One of the website’s founders, Meka, has given ANTHM significant praise, going as far as to compare him to established underground hip-hop artist Blu. This comparison came in late March after Meka DJed a concert for ANTHM at SXSW in which Blu made a surprise appearance.

Hopefully ANTHM’s fame continues to grow and maybe one year he will be headlining LDOC. His recent mixtape has him rapping over many of the most classic beats in rap and can be downloaded here.

Why Santorum must win Pennsylvania

09 Apr 2012, Posted by Walker Schiff in Backpages, 0 Comments

In November 2006, after 16 years of Congressional service, Republican Senator Rick Santorum lost his Pennsylvania Senate seat to Democrat Bob Casey, Jr. by almost 18 percent or over 700,000 votes—a margin of defeat almost unheard of for incumbent senators. Before this devastating defeat, Santorum was often mentioned as a potential Republican presidential candidate for the 2008 election, an election in which Arizona Senator John McCain easily beat out former Massachusetts Governor and likely 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

This 2006 Senate race defeat could have been the end of Santorum’s political career, but it wasn’t.

Last June, Santorum announced his candidacy for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination and his formal attempt to resurrect his political career began. Many, myself including, saw Santorum’s campaign as a futile attempt by the former senator to once again achieve relevancy. His socials views were about as far to the right as anyone’s and it seemed that Rep. Michele Bachmann and perhaps later Herman Cain and Gov. Rick Perry were destined to take the socially conservative, Evangelical vote that had given Mike Huckabee a surprising victory in Iowa in 2008.

Still, Santorum weathered the months in late 2011 that saw Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain and to a lesser degree Newt Gingrich come and go. Suddenly, in the last week of 2011, Santorum was finally finding traction and polls coming out of Iowa had him slowly creeping up. On the night of Jan. 3, 2012, as the votes slowly came in from the Iowa caucuses, Santorum found himself in a dead heat with the longtime favorite Mitt Romney. Before January was over, Santorum was declared the winner of Iowa.

The peak of Santorum’s political campaign came on Feb.7, the first day on which multiple states were holding primaries. Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota were all easily won by Santorum that day and suddenly the Santorum campaign had life. Santorum went on to grab a few Super Tuesday states as well as a few key Southern states in March, but let’s come back to reality.

After losses in Illinois on March 20^th and Wisconsin on April 3^rd, Santorum’s run at what would have been a colossal upset over Mitt Romney is over. Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee for president. That being said, there are still reasons for Rick Santorum to fight.

On April 24^th there will be five primaries, one of which is Rick Santorum’s home state of Pennsylvania, a state that he served for almost two decades. If Santorum was to lose Pennsylvania, it may cause irreparable damage to his political career. Santorum, if he is still in the race on April 24^th, must win Pennsylvania in order to complete the resurrection of his political career.

You may ask, why are you so invested in the resurrection of Santorum’s political career? Well, it is because Santorum makes politics so much funner. When Santorum entered the GOP presidential candidate race, there were very good reasons I never gave him a chance. It was because every time someone googled his name they saw it defined as “the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.”

I want Santorum in the public eye for as long as possible because hilarity seems to follow him. I want Santorum to have a thriving political career because instead of saying he disagreed with a speech by JFK on the separation of church and state, he said that the speech made him want to throw up. Most importantly, I want Santorum to be successful because we need more serious political candidates who have vowed to initiate a “war on porn” if elected.

UPDATE: Santorum dropped out. This isn’t quite the political victory that would have come from winning his home state, but it avoids a political defeat that was looming.

The WowDuke

29 Mar 2012, Posted by Chinmayi Sharma in Backpages, Digging into Durham, 0 Comments

If there was ever a place that offered a meal to compensate for a year’s worth of barely palatable college food, it’s The Fairview Dining Room. Located in the ever glamorous Washington Duke Inn, these meals are often far out of the meager college budget of monopoly money-esque food points. If anyone were ever to face the apocalyptic problem of extra food points, this would be the place to spend it. I was afforded the wonderful pleasure of experiencing samplings from their new Spring Menu in advance. Words fail me.

Chinmayi Sharma/The Chronicle

Now, I must say that this appetizer called Ahi Tuna Tartare one of the most appetizing things I have ever had the pleasure to lay my food-loving eyes on. And here’s the kicker: I’m vegetarian. The other members of the party sampling the menu with me seemed to love it. Of course, I can’t be sure because they were all much too busy maintaining the momentum of hand to fork, fork to food, food to mouth and repeat! It’s rude to speak with your mouth open, don’t ya know…

Chinmayi Sharma

Now here was my favorite pat of the meal—the part when I could eat. This delicious Spring Salad included all the delectable tastes of a fresh new season from baby lettuce and the classic addition of strawberries to the more exotic and typically southern vidslia onions. It was complemented beautifully by a creamy yet still light and refreshing Spring Sweet Pea Soup.

My mouth hailed in the coming season sitting in the outside seating arrangement, next to the golf course, surrounded by lovely Durham.

Chinmayi Sharma/The Chronicle

This artistic masterpiece of a plate featured Chesapeake Wild Striped Bass and Pan Roasted Rack of Lamb all dressed up and ready to go. Meat? Yes. So in my belly? No. But I was a bit preoccupied controlling the drool its mere appearance caused.

1.) That is hardly good table manners.

2.) Looks aren’t everything! It’s what’s on the inside that matters…

But from my meal companions, the only thing better than its stunning presentation was its satiating taste.

Needless to say, the meal was incredible. Served with the WaDuke’s extensive collection of good wine, or just water, this is a meal to die for. Next time you have a need to celebrate, need a pick-me-up splurge meal or just want to blow those last few monopoly food points, this is the place to go.

Chinmayi Sharma/The Chronicle

Executive Chef Jason Cunningham outdid himself. Not that I can really say that seeing as I have been in Durham for a grand total of two years, but honestly, it can’t POSSIBLY get much better than this!