Dance Revolutionizer

Atkins, Jenny Craig and Simmons can take a hike; DDR is here

published in The State Press on Thursday, November 13, 2003


Richard Simmons had it wrong all along, and I'm not just talking about those sparkly Hooters shorts he wears all the time. I'm talking about Sweatin' to the Oldies: What a boring waste of time. Perhaps if he'd met Mike Rak, Richie would have learned that Oldies ain't got nothin' on Dance Dance Revolution.


Since Rak started playing the Japanese arcade dance game in the Memorial Union a month and a half ago, he has lost 17 pounds!


When I first saw Rak performing/playing DDR, I was blown away by his mastery of the craft. Not only was he keeping up with all of the blinking lights beneath him, he also was incorporating all kinds of crazy moves - including leaping over the handle bar onto the dance floor and doing a "Matrix Walk" across the game console. And when I found out how he lost all that weight, I was even more amazed. It seems DDR is the antithesis to other video games that are played indoors and lead to hemorrhoids and stomachs big enough to rest cheese doodles on.

SPM: Don't I know you?


Rak: I'm the guy who goes freestyle, but my friends call me Sora.


SPM: Do you ever get a big audience down here?


Rak: I have been known to get a couple people down here. It's mostly just my DDR buddies.


SPM: How did you get started on this?


Rak: I first saw it about two years ago. I tried it, and I lasted about three seconds. I never danced ever. I tried it again a month and a half ago. I tried it, and I just kept going - and eventually I added some fancy moves.


SPM: What sets you apart from other DDR dancers?


Rak: I know I'm not the best, but I'm the only person that puts as much into the freestyle.


SPM: Are those your Vienna cookies over there?


Rak: Yeah. Since I started DDR, I've lost 17 pounds and all of my pants are too big for me now, so I had to pick up a belt on the way to school. After that I stopped to pick up the cookies for a snack.


SPM: Holy Moley. I think you might be on to something: the Dance Dance Revolution diet. You could have your own videos and everything.


Rak: Actually, the home version of the game has a workout mode, and I was looking on the Internet and some guy lost 50 pounds.


SPM: Have you ever worked out before?


Rak: In high school I did some weightlifting and running, but I never went above or below 190 pounds.


SPM: Do you play other video games?


Rak: I like all of the popular ones like Final Fantasy, Tony Hawk and Metal Gear Solid.


SPM: Is the video game aspect part of the appeal?


Rak: Yeah, that and since I was never really able to dance, this compensates for it. Before this, the only dance I ever knew was the Macarena. Now I've even learned a little bit of hip-hop style.


SPM: Has this helped you adjust to your freshman year?


Rak: I've become relatively good friends with a lot of the DDR guys like Fluff and Jeremy.


SPM: Do you have any signature moves?


Rak: Nobody else really does any moves. I have two moves. One is on dynamite rave: I go underneath the bar, jump up and click my heels together. And the other is the spinning Matrix walk where I jump up and kick off of the console.


SPM: Are there any misconceptions about DDR?


Rak: Especially for beginners, it's definitely harder than it looks, but it's easy to pick up if you keep at it.


SPM: Do you have any tips for beginners?


Rak: Loosen up - you gotta feel the beat.


SPM: Has Dance Dance Revolution changed your life?


Rak: I'm a relatively shy, introverted guy. With this, you gotta work yourself up to try different moves in front of different people. I've found that everybody's pretty cool about it.


SPM: Do you ever dream about Dance Dance Revolution?


Rak: Once or twice I've heard the beats in my head, and it's gotten to the point where I know the words to some of the Japanese songs.

Sham-on

Don't I Know You? Party Thrıller
This skinny white guy sure can move
published on Thursday, September 25, 2003


Ryan Britt, party crasher extraordinaire, shows off his "Bad" moves.

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If stealing attention is a crime, Ryan Britt is the smoothest criminal of them all. Britt, a Mesa Community College student transferring to ASU in January, spends his weekends crashing parties with Michael Jackson's Greatest Hits in hand. With great stealth and dexterity, he makes his way to the CD player and pops in his CD. And, in the amount of time it took for Jacko's hair to catch on fire in a Pepsi commercial, Britt has made his own dance floor and gathered his own crowd to watch him moonwalk, spin around, hump the floor and grab his crotch. OWWWWWW! Sometimes he'll stick around to shake hands or talk about his techniques, but other times he moonwalks outta there before you can even say, "Sham-on."

SPM: Don't I know you?

Britt: I'm the King of Pop.

SPM: What's your major?

Britt: I'm transferring to ASU in January, but right now I'm studying secondary education with an emphasis on history.

SPM: As in, the history of pop?

Britt: Or, the history of being bad? Nope, just regular history.

SPM: How did all of this MJ madness begin?

Britt: In high school, I was in speech and debate, and Michael Jackson was sort of our inside joke. We rented Moonwalker for someone's birthday, and I just started dancing around. After that, we had a Michael Jackson party in the summer, and we had a dance off. After that, I just started doing it at parties.

SPM: What are some of your favorite songs?

Britt: "The Way You Make me Feel" is my favorite because the video is hilarious because you can't figure out what the hell is going on. All of these guys are just chasing a girl around in an alley. "Smooth Criminal" is the best as far as improvisation, and in the video you have the lean that is so awesome and his outfit with the suit, and the sweet hat is actually one of the most normal ones he ever wears.

SPM: What about the one where the gangs are fighting, but it's not "Bad"?

Britt: That's "Beat It." Michael won an award from Ronald Reagan for that song being anti-drugs, so he decided to teach real gangsters how to dance and put them in the video.

SPM: Sweet! Why do you enjoy doing it so much?

Britt: It's fun. Nobody dances like Michael Jackson. I always like to spice things up at parties because people want to laugh and have a good time.

SPM: You do a lot of party crashing. Do you ever contribute and throw parties of your own?

Britt: Yeah, I love having theme parties. We had a pirate party at my house a couple of weeks ago, and another time we had one called "The Future."

SPM: Has anyone ever tried to show you up?

Britt: At Club Rio one time, a guy tried to show me up, but he was cool. In all honestly, I just do it to get a kick out of it.

SPM: Do you dance anywhere other than clubs and parties?

Britt: When I worked at Bank of America, I used to dance on my desk. That was a boring job.

I've done the full costume for birthdays.

SPM: Since MJ has, shall we say, metamorphosed, has his new skin color helped you to pull off his look?

Britt: Obviously cause I'm white it allows me to kind of get away with it. One time, my friends and I were thinking of wearing a surgical mask, but we didn't because I don't want to diss on him. He's a freak, but he's a great performer.

SPM: How do you feel when people make fun of Jacko?

Britt: I laugh when people make fun of him, but I don't think he's a child molester.

SPM: Do you have any other favorite performers?

Britt: I love Justin Timberlake because he is the new white Michael. Let's face it. "Rock Your Body" is just a remake of "Rock With You." I like a lot of legit music, but if pop music makes you laugh and makes you want to dance, I'm all for it.

SPM: Do you have followers?

Britt: I guess you could call any of my friends followers. Most of them are from speech and debate. When I worked at Bank of America, I had all of these middle-aged women who thought I was cool. I went to one of their going-away parties downtown in full costume. It was pretty scary.

SPM: So do you think all of this dancing and partying will ever pay off?

Britt: I always joke that if I get hard up for cash I'll go to Casino Arizona and take that guys job. I can't really sing very well, though, so that might be a problem.

SPM: What would you do if you ever met someone like MJ or even JT?

Britt: I would just try to play it off like I was one of them. I met Marilyn Manson because he was in Borders [where I work], and we talked about Lionel Ritchie. If MJ came in, I could probably just talk crap about Paul McCartney or something.

Bend it Like Beckham Review

published in the State Press on Thursday, April 3, 2003



Where was Bend It Like Beckham when I was 10 years old?

In 1991, I was an awkward-ass, softball-playing tomboy. I had thick bangs, I was about a foot taller than my best friends in our fourth-grade class, and my favorite thing to wear to school was a manly pair of blue jeans and a T-shirt that read, "Snickers, reach for satisfaction!"

I didn't know what the hell I was doing, and I blame Hollywood.

The only movie out at the time to depict girls' sports was Ladybugs. If you don't recall this cinematic masterpiece, please let me fill you in. The movie starred Rodney Dangerfield as a struggling businessman who tries to impress his boss by coaching his daughter's soccer team. The girls on the team are so inept that Dangerfield has to put his girlfriend's son into a wig in order for the girls to have a chance in hell on the soccer field. What kind of message was that supposed to send to little tomboys like me?

Perhaps if I had seen a movie like Bend it Like Beckham, I would have had a healthier idea of what it means to be a female athlete.

This charming movie, directed by former BBC reporter Gurinder Chadha, follows Jessminder "Jess" Bharma [played by Parminder Nagra], an 18-year-old British-Indian living south of London, as she defies cultural norms and pursues her dream of being a football [aka soccer everywhere except America] player like her hero, Mr. Posh Spice...er David Beckham.

When Jess begins playing football, she doesn't have much hope for a serious career. She comes from a family of orthodox Sikhs who feel that it is important for young girls to stay home and learn how to cook traditional foods like Aloo Gobi. Activities like football are considered profoundly unfeminine and a waste of time. Also, unlike America, England does not have any professional opportunities for female footballers.

Jess is aware of these cultural dilemmas and is resigned to playing casual games in the park with her mates. She has a natural talent and one day catches the eye of Juliette "Jules" Paxton [Kiera Knightly of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace] who plays on a local women's team. Jules invites Jess to try out for the team and Jess accepts the offer even though she knows her parents will disapprove.

Some of the film's finest acting comes from Jess's concerned parents. Veteran Bollywood actor Anupam Kher, in his British-film debut, plays Jess's warm-hearted father. He remains diligent about keeping his daughter off the playing field. It is revealed that he was a champion cricket player in his youth in India, but when he moved to Britain, the white blokes wouldn't let him anywhere near a wicket. He loves his daughter and doesn't want to see her hurt like he was. Her mother [played by Shaheen Kahn] continually asks what she could have possibly done in her past life to deserve such a strange daughter.

Jess makes the team and befriends Jules, who faces similar at-home tension. Jules' silicon-enhanced mother, Paula [Juliet Stevenson of Nicholas Nickleby, Emma] is paranoid that playing sports will turn her daughter against the opposite sex. When she takes Jules shopping and she opts to buy a sports bra, Paula tells her, "There's a reason why Sporty Spice is the only one without a man."

When Jess's parents find out she is spending her afternoons playing on a real team, they forbid her from going back. Jess is devastated, but with Jules' help, she sneaks out of the house and continues to play.

Nagra takes on her role with confidence and grace. Although her character is a lot older than most girls beginning a sport, she possesses the same heart and passion of any athlete. The plot may be a bit convoluted at times [Jess and her coach, Joe, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, end up falling for each other] but Chadha creates a film that leaves you rooting for Jess the whole way through.

If there are any 10-year-old tomboys defying our demographic by reading this movie review, you should consider yourselves lucky. Nowadays you have films with real inspiration.

Bend It Like Beckham was released in India in 2002 and has already had a profound effect on the culture. According to a BBC article, this month India will launch its first-ever girls football league.

Fairly impressive, considering that in my day the only thing a sports movie ever did was inspire pre-teen cross-dressing.

The Core, the worst movie with an Oscar-winning actor since Big Momma's House

Almost hardcore
The battle between Mother Earth and the human race rages on in 'The Core.'
by Joy Hepp
Published in The State Press on Thursday, March 27, 2003

The earth is angry. Something has violated her inner core and she is having a bitchfest. Birds fall out of the sky and cause traffic accidents, there are horrific lightning storms, and people with pacemakers are dropping dead all over the place.

So, NASA designs a phallic-shaped vessel to penetrate the earth's surface deeper and deeper into the red-hot magma. When the vessel's crew finally reach the center, they are sweaty and exhausted. But they are still able to fire four nuclear bombs into the liquid metal core. The Earth reacts with a shudder of seismic activity across her entire surface. Her anger dissipates and she is satisfied at last.

The Core, written by Cooper Layne and John Rogers and directed by Jon Amiel is rated PG-13 for death images and brief violent language. It seems the director averted the R rating by leaving fornication out, even though the main characters, Joshua Keyes, played by Aaron Eckhart [Erin Brockovich, Nurse Betty], and Lieutenant Rebecca Childs, played by Hilary Swank [Boys Don't Cry, Karate Kid 3], have eye-contact orgasms throughout the film.

This movie has all of the elements of a true blockbuster in the Armageddon, Deep Impact vein. There's an exorbitant amount of explosions, a threat of the world ending, and an overkill of special effects. But it is set apart from other big-budget films in that it is a refresher course in eighth-grade physical science.

When hundreds of people suddenly drop dead within a five-mile radius of Boston, the feds call on college geophysics professor Dr. Keyes and his former colleague, Sergei Leveque, played by Tcheky Karyo [The Patriot, Operation Dumbo Drop], for some sort of explanation for the madness. Dr. Keyes, a swarthy, blonde, unscientific-looking dude, concludes that all of the victims had pacemakers, and confirms to a military representative that this is no act of war.

Whew!

The scientists are sent on their way, but Dr. Keyes cannot dissuade his intuition that there is something wrong with the bigger picture. When he gets back to his lab he conducts research on the Earth's electromagnetic field and concludes that the earth's inner core has stopped moving and the entire planet is royally screwed.

Meanwhile, somewhere in space, "Beck" Childs is the youngest person ever in space, as well as the first to maintain perfect eye make-up throughout her entire mission. She is the mission navigator and when the shuttle is set off course on its landing by the same crazy electromagnetic nonsense, she cleverly averts the shuttle's landing to the Los Angeles River, thus saving the lives of countless Angelinos.

Shortly after Childs' landing, Keyes presents his findings to a panel of distinguished military blow-hards. They are baffled. Huh? Luckily, someone brought a fruit basket to the meeting. Keyes picks up a peach and slices it open. He explains to these short-bus heads of state that "the skin is the crust, the fruit is the mantle and the pit is the core," and that it will be nearly impossible to navigate a way to the pit/core in order to stop the eventual destruction of the planet.

But the government is resilient and determined to find a way to be heroes. They devise a plan to build a heat-resistant phallic-shaped ship to travel to the center of the Earth and deliver enough nuclear weapons to blitz the entire continent of Africa in order to re-stimulate the core and put the planet back on track.

[Reviewer's note: By the way, the correct pronunciation of nuclear is Nuke-Lee-er - NOT Nuke-YOU-ler! Dr. Keyes, a so-called world-renowned scientist uses the incorrect pronunciation twice! I know that even Big Baby Bush has taken to pronouncing it this way without fail, but he's the guy who made up words like "suiciders," "strategery," "subliminable" and "embetterment." Not only are we currently at war, but this movie is supposed to be based on a highly scientific concept. The least the actors could do is know how to correctly pronounce our weapons of mass destruction.]

I digress.

As the earth maddens, the Golden Gate Bridge melts and the Roman Coliseum blows to pieces, the crew pops open a bottle of champagne and boards their vessel. They enter the earth through the Marianis Trench, which is surprisingly inhabited by friendly whales, and begin their adventure.

I think the vessel ended up getting the core's phone number, but you're just gonna have to see the movie to find out if he ever calls her back.

Fiction Plane Review

My dad sells coffee for a living. Joe Sumner's dad just played halftime at the Super Bowl. My dad goes to church every Sunday. Joe Sumner's dad owns a yoga studio. My dad's name is Mark. Joe Sumner's dad goes by Sting. Joe Sumner's band, Fiction Plane, just released an album called Everything Will Never Be O.K. on MCA. I'm just writing about it.


To the band's credit, there is no mention in either the liner notes or the self-produced material of the familial linkage. And while Sting's old band relied on catchy hooks ("Sending out an SOS") and an airtight structure, Fiction Plane's style is anti-pop, with few repeated verses or simple chords. Any utterance of "doo doo doo" or "da da da" would be unthinkable on a Fiction Plane track like "Do I Feel Loved," a fidgety interlude in which Sumner broods like Thom Yorke.

But that's where the incongruence ends. The lyrical similarities between Pops and the kid, for instance, are uncanny. The Police addressed the issue of political unrest in Northern Ireland with the song "Invisible Sun" on their 1981 album Ghost in the Machine: "I don't want to spend the rest of my life/Looking at the barrel of an Armalite." More than 20 years later, Joe Sumner's emotive lyrics about knee-jerk militarism on the Third Eye Blind-sounding "Soldier Machismo" are eerily familiar: "I wanna put glue down your gun/Imagine pointing that thing at your son."

If that's not convincing enough, explore Sting's ode to self-pity, "King of Pain" ("I have stood here before inside the pouring rain/With the world turning circles running 'round my brain"), and place it next to Fiction Plane's "I Wish I Would Die" ("To wallow in pain/Used to make me feel like/I wasn't the same").

Whatever. So what if Sumner coasts on his dad's musical coattails? I bet he doesn't get free cappuccino.

Rosie's House

Originally published in The State Press on Thursday, February 27, 2003


"I take my flute case with me to school everyday and every time I look at it I just want to open it up and start playing," Diana Solorio gushes.


Rosie’s House founder Rosabell Schurz plays the cello while 12-year-old Myra Sandoval accompanies her on the violin.

Young musicians sit in a somewhat-straight line in a place where Phoenix's ancestors were baptized, married, and received communion. A teacher paces the floor in front of his students, retracing the steps of a sermoning priest. But, this congregation is more interested in the gospel according to Mozart.

The room in which they make their music would have been used as a chapel in the distant past. It has since been converted into a practice/performance hall. In the back of the chapel, two elementary-age boys, Ronnie Gomez and Nick Garcia, are sprawled out across a pew along with their instruments and the contents of their backpacks. They diligently practice timetables and learn vocabulary words as they wait for their cousin to finish his music lesson. What would they be doing that afternoon if they weren't at Rosie's House?

"Probably playing a video game or something," Garcia says.

This daily scene is something Rosabell Schurz, the founder and namesake of Rosie's House, a music academy in downtown Phoenix, never would have imagined growing up in World War II-era Munich. Schurz's childhood in Germany was one of bloodshed, extreme poverty and hunger.

It was an upbringing without music.

Before the war broke out, Schurz had a passion for the violin; but when she was 8 years old, the fighting escalated and she was forced to give up music when her family moved to the countryside. She was never able to take up music again.

Schurz didn't want to see that happen to other kids.

"When a war comes, everything stops dead in the tracks," says Rosie, 67, a German accent barely recognizable in her aged voice. "Some of these children have war indirectly in their own homes, and I want them to see joy and beauty in their lives.

"One way to do that is through art and music."

Dream house

For most of the day, the dusty stretch between Seventh and Eighth avenues off Pima Street in Phoenix is relatively quiet. The half-mile of asphalt is sandwiched between a Salvation Army rehabilitation center on one corner and a llanteria [tire repair shop] on the other. Van Buren Street, where the ladies of the night seem to be on the prowl all hours of the day, is only a few blocks away.

Then, around four o'clock in the afternoon, something begins to change and Pima Street becomes vibrant.

Astro vans and late-model American sedans pull up in front of a white building that was once the San Pablo Episcopalian Mission. Black words carefully painted on the outside of the building inform passersby of the current mission pursued on the inside: Rosie's House - A Music Academy For Children.

Van doors swing open and frenzied elementary-age students tumble out - their black instrument cases in hand and overloaded backpacks bouncing with each leap toward the front entrance of Rosie's House.

The kids know that along with bad grades in school, tardies and absences at Rosie's can jeopardize their enrollment in the free after-school music programs. They know that if they leave, there is a waiting list of children who would jump at the opportunity to take their place.

"It's about more than music," Schurz says. "It's about keeping kids off the streets. Music is the international language and it is able to instill pride, confidence and discipline."

Schurz began her mission seven years ago when she and her husband, Woody, bought a turn-of-the-century house in downtown Phoenix.

"You should have seen it," says Rosie, who came to Phoenix in 1978. "It was remodeled with a little garden in the front. It was beautiful"

Then called "The Christmas House," it was a home for the elderly as well as a place for children to receive music lessons. Eventually, the music program became so large that it outgrew the house and Schurz decided to move to the San Pablo Mission.

In the beginning, there were 45 children involved. Enrollment has since grown to 360. All of the children receive free music lessons and are loaned an instrument for practice at home. Although the lessons don't require any financial commitment, students must practice for 25 minutes a day, maintain good grades, and participate in Rosie's House activities.

One of the reasons Schurz says she has been so passionate about the program is what she describes as the continuing depletion of funding for music programs in public schools. "They have been cutting the culture out of schools and it's so frustrating," she says. "Cutting out arts in school is absolutely disgusting. Not everything in life revolves around football and basketball."

The children who take lessons at Rosie's House attend schools where music has become less of a priority, and since they come from families who can't afford quality lessons, which run upward of $35 an hour, Rosie's House is likely the only chance they have to receive any type of musical education.

"We try to be more than just plain old teachers," Schurz says. "Some kids come from dismal family conditions and when they come here it gives them something to look forward to."

Music therapy

In order to have top-notch instruction, Rosie's House uses its grant money and donations to pay the teachers for their services. "It's a miracle that Rosie's House is still alive," Schurz says. "We've had so many financial obstacles because everything relies on donation. I wouldn't have the courage to do this again. I went into this thing cold-blooded and blind." But, so far, Schurz has been able to make things work and says that she wouldn't change the way things are now for anything. "I'm extremely proud of what we've accomplished," she says. "And it is my dream to leave this legacy to the city."

Recently, Schurz has taken a sabbatical from running Rosie's House and has turned the day-to-day operation over to executive director Allison Blanchard and artistic director Joe Costello, who knows everything about the program and acts as a tour guide for first-time visitors.

Costello, who has spent most of his life involved with music programs, including ASU's guitar preparatory program, says that since part of the kids' involvement includes discipline, there have never been any problems with kids getting out of line.

"We have all kinds of rules and we've never had a fight and never had a kid come in here on drugs," he says. "Kids always rise to your standards."

Another room in the old mission serves as a banquet hall on special occasions. A sign on the wall features Uncle Sam with his famous pointing finger, "I want YOU to practice your instrument," it says. The message of the sign is redundant for 16-year-old Diana Solorio who is in the room getting a flute lesson from her teacher, Judy Conrad, a former member of the Phoenix Symphony.

Solorio says that she can hardly get through a day of high school without thinking about playing her instrument.

"I take my flute case with me to school everyday, and every time I look at it I just want to open it up and start playing," she gushes. "When I play, it relaxes me and I feel calmed."

Solorio has made it through what Costello considers to be a very telling stage in the life of a musician.

"A lot of kids will take lessons until they are about 14 or 15 and their social lives get so full that they commit to something else," he says. "That's why we try to give good instruction and show them there's value in it early so they stick with it at that critical point.

"I find that, with girls especially, if they play an instrument it gives them something to occupy their mind and they're less boy-crazy," he says. "It's harder for them to fall into that social gregariousness."

Next to the main building is another that was used as living quarters when the mission was in operation. It now serves a multitude of purposes. Instruments are housed and repaired there; private lessons are given in two separate rooms; and family members use the living room as a waiting area. There are children's books scattered across a coffee table in the center of the living room, and 20-year-old Tiffany Cooper passes her time perusing these books while she waits for her little brother, 12-year-old Larry, to finish his piano lesson. Cooper says she doesn't mind waiting because she has seen positive changes in her brother since he took up the piano.

"To be honest with you," she says, "he was pretty rowdy before he started. Now he's calmer and has a lot more patience."

Cooper may not realize it, but her involvement in Larry's musical endeavors may be just as important as his practicing scales. Costello says that family involvement is one of the crucial elements in a child's success with music.

"We're looking for a combination of [dedicated] kids and parents," he says. "If you look at all of the great musicians like Beethoven and Mozart, they all had supportive families."

Vanessa Aragon has that winning combination. She spent six years of her adolescent life learning the piano within the walls of Rosie's House. She is now studying music education at ASU's College of Music. As one of five high school graduates to go on to college from the program and the only one to pursue a degree in music, she embodies the spirit of Rosie's House. Like many of the other students, Aragon, who lives at home while she attends ASU, says her family has been supportive the whole time.

"My mom always took me back and forth to practice and made sure that I practiced at home," she says. "Music isn't the most lucrative career but they know it's something that I enjoy."

Much to the delight of her teachers and everyone involved with Rosie's House, Aragon says that she's thinking of returning to Rosie's when she graduates.

"I want to give people the opportunity that was given to me," she says. "It was a lot of work, but it was worth it in the end.

"I didn't know if studying music was something that I really wanted to do. But I enjoyed it so much that I knew I wanted to teach others."

Aragon already has gained some experience being a role model for the younger generation of Rosie's House students. "When they have summer programs, they will ask me to come in and play for the younger kids as sort of a 'look at me now' thing," she says. "I think it's easier when the kids see me play because I'm closer to their age and it helps them relate."

If Aragon is able to follow through with her plan, she will have much to offer the new students. As someone who has been with the program almost since its inception, she is empathetic to many of the situations that future students will face.

"I'm lucky to live in a good neighborhood," she says. "But a lot of the other kids are surrounded by violence, drugs and gangs."

Rosie's return home

If there's one regret that Aragon has, it's that she didn't get started with music until she was 13 years old. She says she sees younger kids at Rosie's and imagines all of their potential.

"I wish I would have been able to start earlier," she says. "Since I started [college] it's been a lot of playing catch-up. I haven't been playing as long as a lot of the other students, but now I know that's just an excuse, and I'm understanding a lot more."


Over the past six years, Aragon has made a lot of sacrifices in order to keep her musical career on track. Two years ago, she missed her junior prom to attend a competition in Tucson, and she says that she tries to avoid "anything that would jeopardize my advancement." But, she says that all of her dedication has paid off.

Aragon is attending ASU on a full scholarship that she received as a result of her involvement with Rosie's House, and she has met people and experienced things that many of her high school peers could have only dreamed of.

Aragon had only been playing the piano for a year and a half when Schurz announced that she would hold a contest in which three winners would get to go to with her to Salzburg, Germany, for the annual Mozart Festival for two weeks. The winners would also get to perform in Mozart's home, "The Residence."

Aragon practiced Mozart's Sonata in B-flat minor all summer long and won the trip to Germany along with two flutists. She had never been anywhere further than Mexico or California and she was on her way to play the piano in Mozart's hometown. Her parents didn't believe that anyone would be crazy enough to take a group of kids to Germany, but they got her a passport and she went.

"It was one of the worst winters ever, so there was snow everywhere," Aragon says. "But it was great to experience a different culture, especially one that revolves around music."

Although Schurz had returned to Germany many times since she moved to Phoenix, the trip she made with Aragon and the other two students was a particularly moving experience.

"I showed them where I lived and everything from my old life," she recalls. "The only thing they couldn't experience was what it was like in wartime. I can still remember my violin teacher. I can vividly remember her face. I remember the studio where we practiced. None of that survived after the war."

Schurz still looks back at those two weeks as one of her greatest accomplishments with the program.

"I was tickled pink," she says. "I was so proud."

Rasputina Review

I read The Catcher in the Rye about seven times before I realized that it depicted Holden Caulfield's spiral into depression. Initially, I thought he was just a caustically sarcastic son of a bitch with a love for alcohol. When my 10th-grade English teacher pointed out that Holden was telling the story from a mental hospital, I read the book again.


Melora Creager is a lot like that teacher. Creager, vocalist for self-described "pseudo classical hard-core positive goth" band Rasputina, interprets seven out-of-left-field songs on Lost and Found 2nd Edition, the band's latest EP, and – here's an understatement – the covers defy innocent perceptions.

Creager has a knack for making black-eye-liner-wearing "negative" goths look like a bunch of undereducated pussies. Anyone can say, "I hate myself and I want to die," but it takes a real pro to turn innocuous nursery rhymes and Creedence Clearwater Revival songs into nightmarish spine-tinglers.

Hence, listening to Rasputina's "This Little Piggy" is like being reintroduced to an old childhood friend who's become a heroin addict. What the heck happened to little Joey, and why does he break into that electronica jig in the middle of talking about sending pigs to the slaughter? The band sounds most natural here on Marilyn Manson's "Tourniquet," not only because Creager's artistic endeavors seem to have been birthed out of a chance meeting of Manson and Emily Dickinson, but also because the subject matter (spider legs, little teeth and the like) is befitting of the enigmatic sound.

Perhaps more disturbingly amusing, while CCR's classic "Bad Moon Rising" is fodder for a country hoe-down, Rasputina's version sounds like it's being performed by the house band in a bomb shelter. Creager's haunting voice and an ominous cello put a new twist on old lyrics – "Hope you have got your things together/Hope you are quite prepared to die/Looks like we're in for nasty weather/One eye is taken for an eye."

It seems the same part of me that had been too blind to see that Holden was too depressed even to sleep with that prostitute also neglected the apocalyptic leanings of John Fogerty. Man, Creager and I should have hung together in high school.