Nine-year-old Grayson King dangles a plastic camera over the railing of the stairs as he swings the toy around from the first landing. His dancing, downy-blond head can barely be seen below. The toy belongs to his two-and-a-half-year-old sister, Samantha, who tearfully wants it back, clamoring at the bottom of the stairs and shaking her dark curls, which match her coffee-with-cream complexion.

Covering his mouth with his hand, Grayson darts up the stairs to his room as their mother, Martha, restrains Samantha from running after him. Meanwhile, Claudia, the mocha-toned, pig-tailed, seven-year-old middle sibling, entertains herself with her own plastic camera, which she proudly says even has a flash.

This is a normal day at the King household. The only thing that might set it apart is that all three children are adopted. Martha was present only for the birth of Grayson, but she met Claudia the day after her birth and Samantha a few weeks after hers. Martha says she and her husband couldn’t conceive and didn’t try fertility treatments for long. This is why she credits The Cradle, an Evanston adoption agency that’s one of the oldest in the country, with helping her create the family that they have always wanted.

“Growing a family is in so many ways similar to doing it biologically,” she says. “After you change sixteen poopy diapers, you feel like a mom.”

Located on the corner of Ridge Avenue and Simpson Street, The Cradle offers an unusually open place for many associated with adoption: newborns whose birth parents are unsure of what step to take next, couples such as the Kings and single women around the world who want to become parents, and seniors who volunteer at the agency’s on-site nursery.

The warm, pink-striped walls of the The Cradle’s lobby give way to huge bookshelves in the living room, crowded with albums of records and pictures of all of the children the agency has helped place. Photos of smiling children at different ages—toddlers, middle schoolers, high school graduates—fill every surface. Just down the hall is the “wall of fame,” where pictures of The Cradle’s more-famous adoptive parents hang: entertainer Bob Hope, former Chicago Bears player Gale Sayers, and film star Al Jolson.

The Cradle was established in 1923 by Florence Walrath, an Evanston resident looking to help her sister find a child to adopt. Walrath assumed that there must be children in hospitals that birth parents wouldn’t be ready to raise, says Joan Jaeger, the agency’s director of marketing and communication. Walrath also wanted to provide a trusting site where people looking to adopt or place a child could connect with each other. Her research turned into her passion, Jaeger says, and the private adoption agency grew into one of the most-respected in the country. “The organization is around 85 years old, and that’s not by accident,” Jaeger says. “More than anything, our commitment to children keeps us steady.”

Each year The Cradle fields 750 to 800 calls from expectant women and about 1,000 calls from individuals looking to adopt, Jaeger says. The agency also offers counseling to both birth parents and adoptive parents–even ones who didn’t adopt through The Cradle. This includes managing crisis pregnancy situations on their 24-hour hotline, counseling to “explain what adoption looks like,” and workshops to help families through the process, on subjects such as the prenatal effects of substance abuse and the mental impact of adoption on the child.

One of the central tenets at the agency is open adoption, when birth parents stay in touch and have a meaningful relationship with their children. The Kings decided to try it, and say it has added a rich dimension to their family’s life.

“People are always fascinated by open adoption. It’s so funny to me that it’s so bizarre of a concept to others,” Martha says. “It so wonderful to have that relationship because it’s great for the kids to have those people in their lives and feel secure that their birth mom really loves them. In adoption, there are never too many people to love a child.”

She says that her family has close relationships with the birth families of her first two children, but Samantha’s birth mother didn’t want to be involved. Martha stresses how non-threatening these relationships are. “We are clearly our children’s parents,” she says. “It’s not a major issue. Sometimes people worry about it, but very rarely do I hear that there is a problem. Probably the adoptive parents want to have more of a relationship with the birth mother, so when that doesn’t happen the adoptive parents are disappointed for their child. In our situations, everyone has done everything they said they’re going to do.”

Jaeger describes open adoption as “a commitment to a meaningful, ongoing connection with the birth and adoptive parents that holds the child’s best interests above all else.” While the policy is neither legally binding nor mandated, she says it’s something that The Cradle suggests to all birth parents as an option, whether it takes the form of e-mails, letters, or visits.

The Cradle is also the only private adoption agency in the country to have an on-site nursery, Jaeger says, and every baby it receives in its care gets adopted. Consisting of a 24-hour staff and pre-screened volunteers, the nursery allows the agency to “establish a quick picture” of the health and needs of each child, as well as provide a haven for babies whose birth mothers may not know what to do next, according to Victoria Brooks, who’s in charge of nursing.

Located on the third floor, the nursery accommodates several white cribs, the walls delicately painted with vines and leaves curling over the heads of sleeping newborns. In the middle of the room stands a counter with a sink where staff and volunteers must wash up to their elbows before donning hospital gowns and after handling each infant. The nursery typically cares for six to seven babies at a time, and each usually stays about 17 days–although the room can accommodate up to 20 babies if necessary.

To keep the nursery running all day, volunteers serving as “cuddlers” help the nurses hold and feed the babies in two-hour shifts. There are about 50 cuddlers altogether, and although some time slots need more, in general there’s a two-year wait list to even be considered, background-checked, finger-printed, and interviewed for the job, which isn’t paid. “It’s a real popular program,” says Lynne Firestone, The Cradle’s volunteer coordinator. “It’s very soothing and pleasant to stop and hold a baby. I think people just want to hold babies.”

Winnetka resident Janice Russ, 70, says that’s why she volunteers. She used to drive by The Cradle on her way to work every day thinking she’d apply to the program when she retired. About a year ago, Russ got in contact with the agency and now has a regular shift every other week—and has even placed herself on the substitute list. She calls it the best job she’s ever had. “I usually come five to eight times a month, but that’s hardly enough,” she says. “It puts you in a zone: It’s peaceful and I get more out of it than the babies do. I like to put my nose in their neck and smell that sweet, sweet smell. The babies touch your face and you have that fragrance of a baby.” When she leaves, Russ says, the first thing that goes through her head is, “When can I come back?”

Samantha Ptashkin, a 22-year-old Northwestern student who has worked at The Cradle for two years, says a co-worker once suggested she pass by the nursery when she was having a bad day. Though the Medill senior’s job mostly involves entering data on who donates and adopts, a recent interview Ptashkin did for a journalism class led her to a birth mother who gave up her baby 14 years ago. “It was a really compelling story to hear, and she was crying a lot when talking to me,” Ptashkin says. “It was the first time I realized, wow, they’re making an impact on people’s lives. People need The Cradle. What would she have done without it?”

Increasing awareness of adoption in the black community is another priority, Jaeger says, since The Cradle gets twice as many calls from blacks looking to place a child compared to parents looking for a baby of that race.

Martha and her husband decided early on that they would be open to transracial adoption, meaning they were willing to adopt children of other races. That, among other factors, shortened their time on the wait list. The King parents are white, while their son is part Asian and their two daughters are half-black and half-white, but the family talks about it comfortably.

“My daughters have questions but they go to school with people that look like them, where they talk about race all the time,” Martha says. “Typically, kids notice skin color at age three and our middle child goes through phases where she wants to talk about it. It comes up when we bring it up so if she has questions, she can ask.”

The Kings speak at agency workshops about both transracial adoption and children with special needs—such as Grayson, who has mental retardation. “We didn’t know about it when he was born and didn’t figure out he had major issues until he was three,” Martha says. “We believe it’s something that happened at birth, like birth trauma.”

Still, everyday life doesn’t center on adoption, Martha says, because raising three children in a house that’s being renovated, with construction workers hammering through parts of the day, and two dogs underfoot has its challenges enough. When it’s time to feed Ginger (“Bad Dog”) and Kaylee (“Good Dog”), Martha enlists Samantha to help. “Here,” Martha says, handing her a cup with dog food. Samantha trots over and empties the cup into the dogs’ dishes as Ginger and Kaylee begin to eat. One of the construction workers emerges from the kitchen to say that he’s leaving, and Martha wishes him good night. Samantha climbs onto the living room sofa, pulling a blanket over her body and sucking on her pacifier as she watches the kid’s TV show Arthur.

“This is a way to form your family. Once you have all your kids, it’s about school and getting homework done,” Martha says. “I’m an only child. It was a quiet family, so I probably sought this out. It’s chaotic, but that’s sort of how we like it.”

Outdoor picnics. They’re romantic, tasty, and an excuse to look at your date in a bathing suit. Here are a few suggestions for a simple but delicious picnic menu that might help get you lucky.

Just one warning: Evanston beaches are windy, which means sand will probably find its way into your food. To avoid this, package and portion everything individually. For the salad and pasta, pick up four of those white takeout containers from restaurants such as Cozy Noodles. Or a Ziploc bag might do just fine, especially if you’ll be feeding them to each other.

Spinach and pear salad

This salad blends clean and fresh flavors, and it’s wonderfully speckled with the bright colors of spring.

• Two handfuls of baby spinach leaves
• One Bosc pear, peeled, and sliced into sixteen slices
• One 11 oz. can of mandarin oranges, drained
• ¼ lb. of domestic blue cheese, crumbled
• ½ cup of walnuts, lightly toasted and crumbled
• ½ cup of extra virgin olive oil
• ¼ cup of white wine vinegar
• 2 teaspoons of honey
• 1 teaspoons of Dijon mustard

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
2. Once up to temperature, toast the walnuts on a baking sheet for 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.
3. Place one handful of spinach leaves into each of the two containers. Top each container with eight pear slices, half of the mandarin oranges, 1/8 lb. of crumbled blue cheese and half of the walnuts. Seal the containers and place in your picnic basket.
4. To make the dressing, place the honey and mustard in a medium-sized bowl and whisk to combine. Add the vinegar and a pinch of salt and pepper. Continue to whisk and slowly blend in the olive oil. Pour the dressing into a separate container, such as a leftover water bottle, to keep the salad crisp.

Mediterranean Pasta Salad

This salad is as delicious at room temperature as it is hot. And because it’s mayonnaise-free, it’s perfect for picnics.

• 1/3 lb of penne rigate pasta
• A handful of cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
• ¼ cup of basil leaves, chopped finely
• 1 cup of Kalamata olives, pitted
• 1 cup of mini mozzarella balls, halved
• 1 clove of garlic, minced
• ¼ cup of fresh lemon juice
• ½ to ¾ cup of extra virgin olive oil
• ½ cup of grated Parmesan cheese

Directions:

1. Prepare your salad ingredients first: tomatoes, basil leaves, olives, mozzarella.
2. Cook the pasta in generously salted boiling water, according to the package’s directions.
3. While the pasta cooks, prepare the dressing by whisking the olive oil into the garlic, lemon juice, parmesan cheese and salt and pepper. Once the pasta is cooked, quickly drain the water and place half of the batch into separate containers. Immediately toss each container with half of the tomatoes, basil leaves, olives and mozzarella. The heat of the pasta will blend the flavors together and start to melt the cheese.
4. Next, pour half of the dressing over each container and toss to combine and coat.

Let’s be honest. Being a tech blogger really wins one over with the ladies. The minute I mention my blog, Tech Express, to them, they pine to know more about the latest Apple gadget or the wonders of the Blu-ray Disc. So for the first print issue of North by Northwestern, I only thought it right to do what all the ladies had been asking me to do since day one: a sex shop guide.

Okay, so that’s a lie. In reality, nothing could be geekier than a techie blogger tracking down the best sex gadget shops. So I got into my car, grabbed my iPhone and GPS unit, and headed for Lakeview. After driving around for about eight hours to find a parking spot, I arrived at my first destination. Taboo-Tabou bustles with couples and lone guys staring longingly at numerous “smoking products,” the store’s other specialty. A good part of the sex merchandise seems to cater to the fetish types—everything from black leather uni-suits to Dracula fangs line the walls.

The employees looked a little too busy to sit down and explain Dildos 101 to me, so I decided to do what I do best, which is eavesdrop like a pervert. The couple next to me looked at a demo of a product called the Wall Banger, a large, stiff, waterproof dildo that sticks to your shower’s walls. Good for a late-night wall fuck, I guessed. The employee explained that it would also be a good toy out of the shower, since the waterproof casing makes it easy to clean. “Do you have a favorite lube?” she questioned the two. I didn’t know I had to have a favorite lube coming into the store. I was embarrassed. Apparently, the woman didn’t have one either and proceeded try out four or five samples on her hand. At that point, I decided it was time head to the next shop.

Conveniently enough for the smart-minded dildo shopper, Belmont is full of sex shops, and Egor’s Dungeon was right next door. Walking into Egor’s is not unlike walking into a small cave – the drab, gray-walled shop is only a quarter of the size of the spacious Taboo-Tabou. As I entered, I was greeted by a tall man wearing a combination of chains, denim, and leather. I could see this was going to be my store.

After realizing I was the only one there, I thought Mr. Denim-and-Leather could answer a few of my questions. When I asked what his best-selling product is, he quickly pulled out a giant apparatus called “The Rabbit.” If you haven’t heard of this dildo, you’re apparently in the minority, according to Mr. Denim-and-Leather. When he turned the contraption on, the head vibrated and moved in a circular fashion while tiny “pearls” in the shaft grinded together.

“This thing makes sure you hit all the G-spots,” he said. He then pointed to two, small, rabbit-like ears near the base of the device. “They vibrate and massage the clit. Yeah, it’s kind of like the day spa of dildos.”

At that moment, another man walked in the store. Not wanting to be rude, I told him to assist the other customers if he needed to.

“Can I help you out with anything, sir?” Mr. Denim-and-Leather inquired.

“Yeah,” the man replied, “I’m looking for something called inter-species porn.”

“Oh, like a man fucking a horse?”

“Yeah, actually, but maybe the other way around.”

“A horse fucking a man?”

“Yes, but more like a—”

“How-to video? How to get a horse to fuck you?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“Yeah, we got that.”

The whole time I tried to hold back laughter. Maybe this was a normal occurrence? But when I looked up, I realized I’d been had. The two were just playing a game with me. I thanked them for their time and, with the fresh image of a horse mounting a man in my mind, moved on.

I needed to get out of the Lakeview area. I drove up Sheridan Road where I arrived at Early to Bed. From the outside, I could see youngsters mistaking it for a popular mattress store. The windows are painted in blues and whites with a giant mattress pad as the centerpiece. Nothing kinky – just a mattress. But when you walk inside, the walls are completely covered with dildos and toys. It’s like a hands-on version of the Museum of Sex: everything is out of the box and ready to play with. The store had a fair number of browsers, but I sensed something different about this place – something homey. The toys inside were actually cute. They’re something you might want your three-year-old to cuddle up with as you read them Goodnight Moon. Toys were given titles like “I Rub My Ducky” and the “Big Buddy Kit,” which promised “any kind of awesome ass play.” The dildos even had names – “Frank,” “Blue,” “Billie” and “Silkey” – that sounded like childhood playmates. One customer looked at a clit vibrator that was shaped like a cute, little rabbit. “I don’t know,” she remarked, “it’s too much like something to put on the floor and watch your cat chase.”

After grabbing some food and heading home, I realized I’d been moved that day by the Chicago sex scene. No, it wasn’t because this was the first time I had visited a store that wasn’t Circuit City or Best Buy; it was something else. Sex shops were no longer places for laughs and giggles, but places for legitimate respect. And hey, if I ever want to find “How to Fuck a Horse” videos, I won’t need my iPhone with its built-in Google Maps. I’ll just know where to go.

If you were the 13-year-old captain of your gym class kickball team, lanky bespectacled Aaron Eisenberg probably wouldn’t be your first pick. But six years later, when you’re slaving over textbooks while he takes the stage at New York comedy clubs, the joke’s on you.

“I was not the most popular kid in middle school,” says Eisenberg, a Communication freshman. “I was a theater kid, I liked student government. I found my sense of humor, I think, by being made fun of by the other kids in middle school.”

Eisenberg, who trained with the Upright Citizens Brigade at the end of high school, has moved on from his years of awkwardness. After his first stand-up performance at an open mic night at Café Ambrosia, he landed a spot at New York comedy hotspot Carolines on Broadway.

The stand-up scene has been kind to Eisenberg, especially the embrace at Ambrosia. “It wasn’t one of those mortifying first times,” Eisenberg says. “That was probably one of my most tranquil and most respectful audiences that I’ll ever have.”

Eisenberg delivers well-rehearsed material with a quirky and awkward but conversational delivery, a la recent television shows Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Office. His series of non sequiturs ranges from SkyMall to how fruit sounds like sexually-transmitted diseases. One setup goes, “I’m contemplating if you can be a triple threat if you can sing, dance, and have a gun…For me, little is more threatening than that—somebody that holds a pistol to your face and starts tapping ‘Hello Dolly!’”

While his friends were Facebooking, Eisenberg researched local open mic nights. Unable to juggle the Chicago scene with campus commitments, Eisenberg started looking closer to his hometown of Westfield, New Jersey. He contacted Carolines “on a whim,” and they agreed to give him six minutes of stage time at one of their well-known New Talent nights.

The 300-seat comedy club Carolines evokes “dimunitive Vegas grandeur,” according to New York Magazine, and has featured performances from the likes of Jon Stewart and Jerry Seinfeld. “It’s a big jump,” Eisenberg says.

But Eisenberg isn’t going to let the experience go to his head; His toughest audience is still in his living room. “I always love being able to make my parents laugh,” he says, “because then I really know that I’ve done something well. If I’ve made my parents laugh, that’s the real test for me.”

Curiosity got the best of us. We signed a contract guaranteeing us 15 minutes of fame. Fifteen minutes we never got. Trust me, I’m not a disgruntled reality television star. Just one who saw reality TV in a new light.

Nothing remotely interesting happens in Morgantown. Actually, the best word to describe the entire state of West Virginia is “remote.” But I love it, and it’s home. We’re a state known for boozing, college football, pepperoni rolls, and, in a combination of singing and choregraphy, show choir. More specifically, my high school’s show choir.

In 2006 we were the only show choir in the nation invited to perform at Carnegie Hall. Though we had trouble placing at state competitions, Carnegie gave us bragging rights—so much so that we entered ourselves into the running for an eight-episode documentary about show-choir life for MTV. After a lengthy interview process, MTV called in March 2006 and gave us the okay. Taping began in May.
Pretty soon, girls talked about becoming the next Lauren Conrad, and one member even went as far to say the show was going to launch his “celebrity status quo.” A few weeks later, selections began for the lucky seven whom MTV would follow for nine months: The self-absorbed girl whom everyone hated, the gay guy (actually bisexual), the longtime couple, the guy who turned gay after the show, the perfect Italian princess and two natural-born talents.

They got more than they bargained for. Each of the seven stars had microphones taped to his back 24/7, so anything and everything you said was fair game in the show. Six cameras recorded their every move. Once, cameras followed two of the girls into the bathroom and taped them talking trash. One of the people they talked about was me. (My role in the show choir was pit orchestra violinist, so I couldn’t even tell you why I came up.)

The crew set up question-and-answer sessions at the end of especially dramatic days of taping. Zach Warman, the show-choir captain and arguably the main character of the series, said that many times during the production he was told what to say. “I felt that MTV really wanted me to be the me they wanted me to be,” he says. Producers said that since people weren’t used to being on camera, it was beneficial to them and the show (aka a ratings boost) that they be guided along.

Then there was the re-taping incident. One of the characters on the show got into an argument with the director of the choir. She stormed out to her car, only to find that the cameras followed her the entire way. They asked her to go back and “re-tape the scene with the same emotions.”
The show was also edited so that each person would have a distinct stereotype. Warman complained that he came off as a “stuck-up prep and a show choir nazi.” Many others in the choir complained of appearing in a bad light too.

The editing was the clincher. The producers cut together little bits of us, putting separate conversations together and rearranging incidents to create drama. Add that to the re-tapings, scripted interviews, and a national show choir title on the line, and you get one hit-or-miss television show.
Except that it never aired. Our beloved choir director was linked to a sexual-harassment scandal just three months before the show was scheduled to air, and the producers pulled the plug. But I’m grateful. The cattiness, fakeness and conceit disappeared. The school was calm and peaceful again. Thank you, MTV, for coming our way and giving us the biggest reality check that money and fame could never buy.

Music

Counting Crows – Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings
I’d hate to party with Counting Crows. The dirty-haired alt-rockers and A&O Ball performers’ latest album, Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings, finds the band trying to create an album split between “Saturday songs” (with guitars) and “Sunday songs” (with piano and maybe harmonica). The group’s fifth LP sounds more like Tuesday afternoon: Sonically bland and loaded with Hallmark sentiment. According to Counting Crows, living it up means playing generic guitar while singing about girls and Christopher Columbus (“1492”), a fatal mistake when half your album is about Saturday nights. Opt for a frat rager instead.
—Patrick St. Michel

Tokyo Police Club – Elephant Shell
When people say all indie rock sounds the same, the new Tokyo Police Club album, Elephant Shell, is what they’re talking about. Steady drum beats back repetitive but nod-worthy guitar riffs, usually played on the same three chords. David Monks’ whiny voice sings about emotional pitfalls and forced metaphors: “You’re my cave and I’ve been hiding out.” The catchiness of the band’s 2006 EP A Lesson in Crime is gone, and the handclaps and chanting sound tired. So here’s to regression: The keyboard and synthesizer lines blatantly stolen from the ‘80s may well be the highlight.
—Jenny An

Gnarls Barkley – The Odd Couple
Outkast hinted at funk-and-soul revivalism, but Gnarls Barkley opened the floodgates. It was a lot easier to like Cee-Lo and DJ Danger Mouse when their celebrity status didn’t rest on one single and a lot of film parodies. The Odd Couple is a sophomore album that sucks its concept dry, from the annoying antics of “Run” (only outdone by Justin Timberlake’s humorless appearance in the music video) to the slickly over-produced “Whatever” and “No Time Soon.” The best Gnarls Barkley song–on here it’s “Charity Case”–is one that understates Cee-Lo’s soulful voice and Danger’s Gorillaz-style chill beats, but most of the time it’s a whole lot of soul crammed into a song that’s so un-soulful it’s deadening.
—Paul Schrodt

Movies

Funny Games (Directed by Michael Haneke)
No one wants to play a game that isn’t fun, but Michael Haneke expects you to come back for more in the American transplant of his original German film, Funny Games, which set arthouse hearts aflutter in 1997. That was then, this is now — Haneke still nudges at his incredulous audience (Michael Pitt’s killer addresses them directly), except that his generic dissection of the horror film no longer looks fresh in 2008’s torture-porn glut. We watch as Naomi Watts’s hostage mother vomits into her mouth, but we don’t get to see anyone die. Haneke admonishes his audience for wanting release, but after Steven Spielberg’s deft examination of real-life violence in Munich, his tricks no longer pass for clever.
—Paul Schrodt

Surfwise (Directed by Doug Pray)
Surfwise is a documentary that follows the Paskowitz children — eight boys and one girl — raised as nomadic surfers on a spiritual quest led by their father Dorian, or “Doc.” The film delves into the family’s bizarre lifestyle, like Doc’s unconventional approach to schooling (none), diet (strict) and discipline, as well as their various encounters with fame. Pray illuminates familial divisions as the children grow up and apart, and though the in-depth feuding sometimes feels self-serving, the result is an honest look at the unusual family’s life outside of society — and the childrens’ individual assimilations back in.
—Lizzie Schiffman

Paranoid Park (Directed by Gus Van Sant)
Like Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin, Paranoid Park is flooded with the tortured memories of childhood — in Mysterious Skin it was Fruit Loops, now it’s Super-8 footage of skaters whirling through a cement-pipe chamber. “I don’t think I’m ready for Paranoid Park,” Alex (Gabe Nevins) says before he is accidentally entangled in a murder by the park’s train tracks. Echoes and shadows are everywhere in Gus Van Sant’s story about a quiet skater kid coming to terms with life. Non-professional actors speak awkardly as if they’re afraid to talk. Van Sant toyed with adolescent angst in Elephant, but that film’s obfuscation of the Columbine High School massacre felt vacuous. The pain in Paranoid Park is real and beautiful — the teens don’t say very much, but you can always tell they’re thinking.
—Paul Schrodt

A few weeks ago, a friend directed me to the Web site Stuff White People Like. The concept would be funny, but thin, were it not for its ingenious presentation. The site is structured as a top 100 list (at last check there were 91 entries), as if to guide an outsider on how to make friends with the race. Entry 70 explains that white people actually enjoy the process of breaking up with their significant others: “If you are lucky enough to speak a second language, the best thing you can do for a white person in this situation is to give them an expression in that language that relates to breaking up. This will make them feel better since they are comforted by the gesture and happy to be learning a new sentence that they can reuse to with their friends.” Dead-on in its assessment of a contemporary sensibility, it will, like any Web satire, soon lose of any of its trenchancy.

Still, the site’s inclusion of Michel Gondry in the “canon of directors white people love” proves prescient for Be Kind Rewind. In Gondry’s latest film, Jack Black and Mos Def accidentally erase all of the videotapes in their cutely decaying video store, and rather than switch to DVDs, they remake Hollywood blockbusters with homemade sets and cardboard costumes. It’s cute and warm until Gondry’s whimsical encouragement of DIY art comes unsettingly close to the movie’s fetishization of a black neighborhood and its naïve equation of “blackness” with community. Living in ethnicity becomes a badge for the protagonists’ own kookiness.

Gondry should never be mistaken for a realist. He’s interesting because he creates fabulist worlds that extend from real places. In Rewind, as the homemade remakes incorporate more and more of the people of Passaic, New Jersey, the movies become an illusion, as J. Hoberman said, of an illusion: the projection of a naïve hope for utopian community.

It’s one thing for Gondry to present his characters’ hopes as a wishful fantasy; it’s another for him to turn Passaic into a fantasy without any awareness of its reality. He portrays the city as a predominately lower-middle-class black neighborhood — besides a few cops, Jack Black is the town’s sole white guy, living in a trailer and hanging out with Danny Glover, Mos Def and their Latina friend, played by Melonie Diaz. In fact, according to the 2000 census, 35 percent of the real town’s population is white, only 13 percent is African-American and 39 percent is of other races.

It begs the question: Why are the extras in the film played by predominately black actors? Again, Stuff White People Like seems to provide the answer: “White people love being the only people in the room.” Black’s and Mia Farrow’s kookiness, as the only significant white characters in the film, is understood partly because they’re the only two in an “ethnic neighborhood.” The movie is conscious of this — Glover pulls Black aside after he dresses up in blackface to play a semi-famous jazz musician. But it’s a winking gesture, evading the idea that Gondry is racist, because, hey, he can laugh about blackface and still know the limits. It’s all a bit hypocritical from a movie in which one character calls Driving Miss Daisy “condescending.”

I can’t squawk that Be Kind Rewind is just another dubious exploitation of black culture, because Gondry is genuine — at least about the DIY’ness. Intentionally sloppy, the movie shares the spirit of Black’s junkyard cinema. That’s no small feat from Gondry and his photographer, Ellen Kuras, who in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep always seemed to end up with slick, glossy colors. This is also Gondry’s first film in 2.35:1 widescreen, and the actors look appropriately awkward inside the frame. A conversation between Glover, Mos Def and Black is also cut in such a way that they never appear to actually interact with each other, pointing out the truly weird way in which movies are edited.

Movies increasingly rely on a specific, temporary discourse with an audience. To understand Black’s character requires me to understand the implicit, racist connection between quirk and otherness. Between Knocked Up and Juno, comedies that work only within the immediate context of today’s culture look to be here to stay. The problem is, like Juno’s wannabe cynic, they only look sincere. We know Katherine Heigl’s careerist character needs a baby to make herself worth something, but we never get to hear her talk about it. Instead of speaking to us explicitly, these movies only work because their politics are implicitly understood — and legitimized by the audience that watches them.

A 20-year-old Northwestern student comes home from a party on Saturday, alone and a little drunk. He goes on Craigslist and posts an ad “looking for some guys around my age to have some discreet, clean fun.”

He lists brown hair, brown eyes, and a height of 5 feet, 10 inches. It has to happen “soon, before I pass out,” he says, but it’s about 3:30 in the morning so there probably aren’t many people online to read his post. The next night around eight o’clock, he’s studying in the library and thinks about it again. He makes another post looking for “a nice study break,” but it needs to be convenient — maybe in the bathrooms nearby. “Send me an instant message over AIM at ‘deeringboi’ right now to set something up — im waiting.”

Last year, Senator Larry Craig was arrested for allegedly propositioning an undercover cop by tapping his foot inside a bathroom stall — a code from the “tea room trade” of the 1960s and ‘70s. But on the Internet, there are more-advanced ways to anonymously hook up. An archive of male-to-male Evanston personals on Craigslist for last November shows that nearly 70 listings soliciting sex appeared to be posted by Northwestern students or men looking for Northwestern students — an average of more than two a day.

Many of these came from repeat posters whose ads were vaguely similar, if not exact duplicates of each other: The 25-year-old graduate student with the Calvin Klein underwear. The 21-year-old student-athlete who’s curious about guys but “needs to be really discreet.” Craigslist, like a neighborhood bar, has its own regulars and drifters. “You could probably make a general consensus that people who post are usually older, they don’t do relationships,” says John, a sophomore who used Craigslist from April to August last year, when he became “bored” by routine sexual encounters with strangers. (His name has been changed for privacy.)

For a generation of gay men, online personals aren’t just a new form of advertising — they’re a new way to have sex. Though John lost his virginity to a man he met through Manhunt, another gay-personals site, he’s never actually heard the phrase “tea room” and he’s never had sex in a bathroom. On the Internet, he can connect to any number of men, and with a lot more security than at Fisk Hall or the main library, two of the more-popular tea rooms on campus. When John used to scan listings on Craigslist, he looked for guys around his age or ones with pictures, and as a rule he avoided regular posters or anal sex. To be safe, he would sometimes type a guy’s address into a Word document before leaving the house.

The careful anonymity of Craigslist also gives an outlet to men who might not otherwise feel like they have one, whether that’s closeted gays, uncomfortable bisexuals or the freshman who’s “not out yet” but wants to experiment. Of the 69 ads archived from November, the word “discreet” appears in 23 of them, far more than other common gay-personals terms such as “safe,” “masculine” or “D/D free” (drug- and disease-free). That suggests respondents either seek out privacy specifically or don’t want people to know that they’re using Craigslist to find sexual partners.

This emphasis on discreetness might make Craigslist look like a hideout for Northwestern’s collective closet. And in some ways it is. When John started trading e-mails with one prospective hook-up, the two realized that they knew each other from class. A sophomore fraternity member with a girlfriend, the other student also turned out to be a bisexual who’s not at all public about whom (or what gender) he sleeps with. “I know some people who have been outed because they hooked up with someone who didn’t keep their mouth shut,” John says. “It’s an issue of privacy, I think.”

But lots of men like to have casual sex for many different reasons, and so the issue of who uses Craigslist and why isn’t always clear. For a certain type of gay man, Craigslist may be more convenience than compulsion. “If someone is just out there doing it, and they’re deriving pleasure and not feeling it’s interfering with their lives, I’m not looking to tell them that they ought to change,” says Professor Fred Berlin of the Johns Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic, “and they’re not usually looking to come in to try to change.”

Though John eventually found Craigslist and Manhunt unsatisfying, he doesn’t begrudge the gay man who uses them to get some action on occasion — as long as he doesn’t expect anything more. After all, John first logged on after it simply became too much work to find guys on campus. “I think once you start hooking up, if you stop altogether, it kind of builds up,” he says. “I’m a pretty lazy person.”

Sometime between 1980 and 1985, Kevin Leonard found a piece of paper wedged inside the glass display case in Deering Library, which today houses Northwestern’s university archives. It was an illustrated, black-and-white flyer that had been circulated around campus: “If you’re into any kind of man to man sex mutual or one-way stand by parking meter #1 in the lot just to the east of Kresge Hall.” Leonard, who has been working at the archives longer than he can remember, filed it immediately. “It’s an artifact of something that happened on campus,” he says. [Click here to see the undoctored flyer — but don't open it at work!]

When I first ask Leonard about his research into Northwestern’s history of anonymous gay sex, he sounds apologetic. “Unfortunately, this is all I have,” he told me. While Leonard, the university’s associate archivist, also remembers a newspaper advertisement that has been lost to time, the Kresge ad remains the only explicit reminder of a time during the ‘70s and early ‘80s when campus tea rooms had a reputation all their own, particularly in Deering, where men would wait on benches for their turn in the stalls. “It was known here, it was known all over campus,” Leonard says. “It was like Studio 54 — it was a happening place.”

Leonard’s discovery began as a way to explain Library Staff Announcement #824, a routine document about the closing of the Deering Library men’s room effective February 27, 1985. What the document doesn’t mention is why the bathroom was shut down or the controversy that ensued. Everything started, Leonard recalls, when a visiting scholar from another university went into the bathroom and was solicited for sex. “Apparently he raised hell about it,” he says, and a debate sprang up between two groups: those who still wanted to be able to relieve themselves in Deering and figured the university was overreacting, and those who felt more than a little skeezed out.

The lock installed on the Deering men’s room door in 1985 hasn’t been used for many years, though Leonard can neither remember nor find documentation on when it was re-opened. When you walk in now, the bathroom looks old and a little dingy but otherwise unremarkable. You wouldn’t guess that the university once hired a not-quite-undercover cop to sit in a stall fully uniformed, waiting for the action to come to him. “I get police reports,” says Al Cubbage, the vice president of university relations, when asked about anonymous sex on campus, “and I haven’t seen anything like that in years.”

John Rechy’s 1963 City of Night is known as the first major novel about gay sex. In it, a nameless hustler moves from one city to another, briefly entering the lives of scores, queens and other “youngmen” in parks, bars and — sometimes — bathrooms. With each new place, there is the sense that Rechy’s character tries to erase what came before, even as he continually repeats himself. “Then it was over,” he says about one encounter. “The orgasms have made us strangers again. All the words between us are somehow lost, as if, at least for this moment, they have never been spoken.”

Following World War II, City of Night spoke to the slow emergence of a national gay identity, when furtive glances and handjobs in late-night movie theaters turned into the Stonewall riots of 1969 and, finally, the AIDS crisis. For the first time, homosexual men recognized themselves as a group. If the university hadn’t closed the Deering bathroom, Leonard wonders, would men still have had sex in it? “In the mid-‘80s, that was just when people first started talking about AIDS,” he says. “It was a busy place then. If you go in there now, you won’t see anything.”

Gay men, at least at Northwestern, don’t have anonymous sex like they used to. Rainbow Alliance, which started as a closely guarded support group for closeted members in the 1970s, has become a platform for open gay culture, such as drag shows and speaker events. But what’s left of that world, existing mostly on Craigslist and Manhunt, remains an open secret. The occasional tea room listing still shows up, whether it’s for the library or the basement of Fisk, where you can sometimes find notes and phone numbers written on the walls.

Scanning the posts on Craigslist, it’s hard not to think of Rechy’s hustler codes. Though most straight personals avoid sex, at least directly, male-to-male ads usually request it by the act. There are the older “scores” looking for young guys and the emphasis on “masculinity” or “straight-acting” men, which appears in 21 ads from November. Because Northwestern’s gay community is so public, it’s easy to forget that another community of active homosexual men exists almost exclusively online. “The ones I hooked up with were gay. I don’t know how closeted or not closeted they were, but they weren’t active in the gay community, or else I wouldn’t have hooked up with them,” John says. “They wouldn’t identify with the gay community.”

Craigslist makes finding hook-ups a lot easier, but convenience can’t be the only reason people use it. Would a gay man use Craigslist — with the risks and embarrassment that it entails — if he could meet gay men in everyday life? Most of the men who come to Dr. Berlin deal with some kind of identity conflict. “I see people who want to be faithful, who don’t like the sneaking around, they worry about the detection,” he says. “Obviously there’s something pushing them to do that, but then there’s this other part of them that’s trying to resist. I don’t mean to trivialize it, but it’s almost like the dieter who tries not to eat and yet their appetite keeps pushing them until they give into temptation.”

When I ask John about his sexuality, I’m surprised to find out that he doesn’t identify as gay, even though he’s only had sex with men and never dated a girl. “I don’t know,” he says before pausing. “I don’t really like to limit myself. I am attracted to girls, and there are girls who I would want to be in a relationship with. But I think sexually, it’s a lot easier to hook up with guys, because I don’t get as emotionally attached to guys. There have only been one or two guys I’ve fallen emotionally attached to.”

Everything that’s true offline is true online — it’s just a lot easier to play the game. Even though Deering isn’t the tea room it used to be, anonymous sex at Northwestern hasn’t gone the way of the past. Men still like to have lots of sex, and some gay men still put discreetness before everything else. For them, Craigslist is the best of both worlds: You can find someone to sleep with on your way home from class, you can see what they look like and where they live—and no one has to know about it. “If you’re just looking for sex with no strings,” John says, “then it’s completely gratifying.”

Every quarter, College Drinker, an online magazine run by Northwestern students, writes a column for our print magazine.

It’s warm again, mini-skirts and flip-flops are back, and you can finally venture outdoors for your nights of drunken debauchery. Thanks to the more than 225 registered beer gardens in Chicago, you can now enjoy good weather and good booze right here in the city.

While open-container laws prevent us from enjoying our sweet alcohol at other locations, beer gardens are outside areas, normally a patio attached to a bar, where drinking is not only allowed but encouraged.

The beer garden originated in 19th-century Germany. Dark lagers brewed by German beer-makers needed to ferment at cool temperatures, so breweries dug cellars during the summer and planted trees to keep their beer cool in the shade. Not wanting to waste time transporting beer to customers, they set up some tables under the trees, and bam — the first beer garden!

When spring begins, Northwestern students typically flood the beer gardens at The 1800 Club in Evanston, and The Union Tavern at 2858 N. Halsted, where there they can take advantage of a $10 open bar from 6 to 9 p.m. on Friday. Avoid the sad excuse of a beer garden at The Keg — it’s really just a fenced-in side area that feels more like a dog run than a beer garden. But, hey, at least there’s free popcorn.

The more adventurous might want to try Joe’s, located at 94 W. Weed St., which was not only voted the “Best Sports Bar” in the Citysearch “Chicago’s Audience Poll,” but it boasts an impressive 200-person-plus beer garden that’s an oasis of white, plastic chairs through the summer. The beer garden is Chicago’s biggest, says Katelyn Lobascio, an event planner at Joe’s, and even has a full-service bar. She added that there’s “always a good crowd” too. Just make sure that you get to Joe’s early, because after 8 p.m. on weekends there will certainly be a line.

Get out there yourself and you might even find me enjoying the great outdoors the way they were meant to be: drunk.