A few weeks ago, English instructor Amy Newman visited the Barnes & Noble bookstore to read her newly published series of poems titled “Fall.” A crowd of about 50 NIU students, faculty and friends came to listen to Newman read sections from her...

For a movie about ballroom dancing, its outcome is pretty decent. Directed by Peter Chelsom (“Serendipity,” “Town & Country”), “Shall We Dance?” is a movie about Chicago accountant John Clark (Richard Gere), who is happily married but...

With the presidential election less than two weeks away, Weekender wanted to find out which celebrities you would like to see not endorse candidates, but take up a campaign of their own: Krist Novoselic, the former Nirvana bassist, with aspirations of...

Every year, the third Saturday in October provokes relationship carnage over non-existent gifts, half-hearted gestures and those strange looks you keep giving that poster of the hot Olsen twin. Sweetest Day (or as I call it, the annual “Greg, you will...

Weekender needs your help. For the section’s Halloween edition, running Oct. 28, we hope to send students on a frigid, ghoulish race. We are looking for teams of two to four students to help us with the upcoming cover story. The Jonamac Orchard in Malta...

The terms “lo-fi” and “DIY” aren’t usually associated with dense layers of samples, drum loops, multiple-part harmonies and music so complex that it requires five multi-instrumentalists to play it live when it was recorded by only two. Yet the...

Stan Doty has come a long way since his days studying industrial engineering at the University of Colorado. “In 1977, I got a job as a stagehand working for the Grateful Dead through a friend,” Doty said. “After that, I was hooked. Being behind...

Before you walk into “Team America: World Police,” make sure you’re familiar with Trey Parker and Matt Stone. These are the guys who make “South Park,” a television cartoon that once had an episode featuring Christopher Reeve eating aborted...

Some bands find success and then kind of stop. They have their sound and they’re sticking to it. Cake is one such band. With its fifth album, “Pressure Chief,” the group affirms, once again, its resistance to an overload of change. Full of easy...

Welcome back to another flavorful edition of Playback, homes. This week’s jam session comes from junior photojournalism major John Lykowski. Lykowski, a Glenview native, loves ’80s music and longs for Chicago. If he were to make a mix CD today, these...

From MTV to NIU, Cribs is in the house ... well, apartment. Throughout the semester, Sweeps will frunk out the funkiest fly facilities NIU students inhabit. Close to campus and next to the endlessly exciting birthplace of barbed wire, five upperclassmen...

“Frisbee Tournament at NIU!!!!!!!!” “House Party Tonight” “IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING THE SCHEDULE OF CLASSES” These are but a few of the subject headers you will find at the NIU Community at livejournal.com. LiveJournal is an online...