jmartin

Bar area on the first floor of One Restaurant and Bar, 600 Hampshire.

Schlipmann

If you haven’t noticed a trend by now, I like to do things that are not only fun but also for a good cause. I also like to eat. So, when I heard that One Restaurant and Bar donates food sales to non-profit organizations on Tuesdays from 4 to 9 p.m., my heart about burst. I discovered this philanthropic food fest last Tuesday when One was donating 10 percent of its food and non-alcoholic beverage sales to Quest, a local organization that rescues horses, re-introduces them to riding and utilizes them for therapeutic riding for children. As it turns out, they are booked solid every Tuesday for a different organization.

Most of you have probably been to One and have raved about its awesome Thai dishes, but if you haven’t been in a while, please check it out on a Tuesday! There are some new items on the menu, but all the classics are still there. I, as always, had the red chicken curry and paired it with a Skinny Girl blueberry/pomegranate vodka water with a twist, and I had a grand old time for charity. Kudos to you, One, for feeding our bellies and our community’s charities.

Abby Schlipmann

Participants prepare for Bridge the Gap 2011

One of Quincy’s biggest and baddest events is this Saturday: Bridge the Gap. If you don’t already know, Bridge the Gap is a walk/run to benefit MedAssist, a non-profit that provides medications to the needy. There are competitive 5K, 10K, and half-marathon runs and 10K and half-marathon walks. If you’re not into competitions, you can leisurely run or walk any of the routes.

Schlipmann

This event attracts people from all over: St. Louis, Columbia, the Quad Cities, even Chicago. Why? Participants get to run across both of our beautiful, characteristic bridges. Lanes are shut down to traffic to accommodate thousands of runners and walkers. Yes, thousands. Last year, it was estimated that more than 2,000 people participated in this incredible event.

Other than the obvious draw of being able to say you ran across the Bayview and Memorial Bridges, this race has lots of other bells and whistles. The Senior High drumline boosts runners’ morale as they are running, McDonald’s milkshakes and a hot dog greet everyone at the finish line, and live music and a beer tent provide entertainment in the early afternoon. To top it all off, participants and volunteers alike can celebrate the day later that night at Johnny Bang Bang’s with no cover charge (but be sure to bring your finisher’s medal if you’re a participant and your yellow card if you’re a volunteer).

I, for one, can’t wait for this colossal event. You can still register to participate or volunteer at http://bridgethegaptohealth.com. I am actually a runner, but will be volunteering this year and am looking forward to running (leisurely!) in 2013.

Abby Schlipmann

What is the only animal that can’t look up? Which president was not married while serving in the White House? Who was Tom Cruise’s first wife?

Schlipmann

Do you know the answers to these questions? Then you should be at trivia night. Every Tuesday starting at 8:30’ish the Blind Pig hosts trivia night. If you’ve never been to the Blind Pig, it is a Chicago-style bar — where the owner wears Cardinals baseball caps and leaves the St. Louis Blues games on when there is a Cubs game on, just sayin’ — that has great hot dogs, pig tails, homemade chips, and lots more. (As you continue to read my blogs, you’ll find that most of my outings and experiences revolve around food.) They also offer a great selection of beers, local and imported, that you don’t see everywhere else. Blind Pig always has great seasonal beers on tap, like Leinenkugel’s Summer Shandy or Shiner Holiday Cheer. It’s a low-key alternative to the mainstays like the Abbey or Spring Street, and Tuesday Trivia makes it especially unique.

I have been going to trivia for nearly a year now, and it really never gets boring. I have a regular team, and every week we come up with team names inappropriate for The Local Q blog. We try our best to place in the top three as the top three winners get gift certificates to the Blind Pig, which we inevitably use on beer and shots of Jaeger. Rarely do we win — those darn Pirate Monkeys and Underwater Panthers always stealing our thunder — but it is just fun to sit around, hang out, and realize how little you actually know.

Abby Schlipmann

Dear History,

I remember you so fondly when we were growing up. I was in grade school and junior high and you were so cool. I would spend hours glued to your great historic educational programming. Whether it was “Tales of the Gun,” “Mail Call,” “Wild West Tech,” or “The Presidents,”  the programming on the History Channel had at least one thing in common. It was about history. Sure, there were problems: everything was about WWII, you only had two guys to do voiceovers, and you were guilty of over promoting any movie about history (“Braveheart,” “Black Hawk Down,” or “Titanic”).

Hahn

But now I barely recognize you anymore. You have a tried to chase after the popular kids’ Discovery Channel, A&E and TLC. You saw the success of “Deadliest Catch” and have become so self-obsessed that you can barely see past “Pawn Stars.” You’ve started to hang with a rougher crowd too: “Ax Men,” “Swam People,” “Mudcats,” and Larry the Cable Guy — sure they’re good people but you’ve forgotten your roots, remember where you got your start.

The middle ages, ancient Greece, Egypt, the wild west  and, of course, WWII — this is where you grew up and where I fell in love with you. Of course, there are still things I love about you, “Modern Marvels” and “Histories Mysteries,” but that isn’t enough for me to ignore “Ancient Aliens.” You even changed your name: you abandoned your real name, your just “History.” What would your parents think?

So as hard as this is for me, I can’t see you anymore. It’s not me, it’s you, and let’s not be friends.

Kevin Hahn

Jennifer Lawrence portrays Katniss Everdeen in a scene from "The Hunger Games."

As a political science major who is about to graduate I am constantly looking for ways to apply my education to real life. I have found that one of the best uses of my time is to apply modern political theory to young adult literature and movies. It’s a swell time. I spend hours apply Hegel’s “Phenomenology of the Spirit” to the “Harry Potter” franchise, and I had a blast last weekend applying Marxist principles of class consciousness to the “Twilight” saga.

Hahn

I was especially excited this weekend when I had the chance to catch the latest craze amongst preteens, teens, tweens, college students and my friends’ boss, Jeff: “The Hunger Games.” This Sunday, I prepared for what was expected to be a great exercise in applying my studies to pop culture.

I have yet to read the original books but what I knew going into theater was puzzlingly and terrifying. I knew:

1.) The books are addictive.

2.) The movie is set in a dystopian future where there are a lot of poor and starving people.

3.) Woody Harrelson, Lenny Kravitz, and the girl from the most recent X-men movie were going to be in it (Jennifer Lawrence).

4.) It’s about kids killing each other.

Whoa, hold on really? A movie about 12-18 year olds killing each other?

Yes, in this dystopian future, for reasons explained in the opening minutes of the movie, different parts of the future-dystopian-America are forced to send two kids to kill each other with swords, axes, spears, throwing knives, and bow and arrows. It is a mix between a giant gladiator match, “The Most Dangerous Game,” and high school.

Are you serious? That’s pretty screwed up. Parents let their kids read this stuff?

Calvin and Hobbes

All of my moral judgments aside, this actually lines up perfectly with an old-school idea in political science, the state of nature. An enlightenment theorist, Thomas Hobbes (who is most notable for being immortalized as a imaginary tiger who pals around with the cartoon kid who pees on Ford, Chevy, Dodge, and IH) originally spelled out this theory. Hobbes’s state of nature is a theoretical world that will occur if governments fail to keep their populaces in line. Watch “The Walking Dead,” and you’ll have an idea of what his state of nature would be like. It would be a dog-eat-dog world, except there would be fewer dogs and fewer people.

The reason why a theory published in 1651 during the English Civil War has anything to do with this movie is because the actual Hunger Games in the movie is exactly what Hobbes was describing, exactly. In the Games and the state of nature, nothing should matter except for survival and killing anyone who tries to kill you. There is no room for morals, hesitation or empathy. If a 14-year-old is running at you with an ax, you either need to swing right back at him or it’s game over (like high school).

***Warning, here come some spoilers****

In the movie the protagonist, a girl named Katniss (played by Lawrence) gets swept into competing in the games, and, on the eve of the Games, she confides with her partner/angsty, pseudo-love interest that no matter what happens, they aren’t going to change. They’ll keep to their morals and stay true to themselves (like a conversation that could happen before going to high school). This is what in political science we call political idealism. (Everyone besides political scientists call it plain ole’ idealism.)

So the Games start, things go crazy, and a whole bunch of kids get killed with medieval weapons. Katniss goes through some adversity, tries to survive as long as possible by herself until she gets picked on by the successful popular kids with weapons training, survival gear and a sociopathic lack of empathy (a lot like high school). She soon figures out that she needs to work together with other kids, and slowly but surely she is able outfox the popular kids, come into her own, and lands the angsty, pseudo-love interest. (I think you get my point about high school.) The movie resolves with her and him returning home, some political unrest going on around future-dystopian-America, and ominous overtones to set up the sequel.

The only problem: she should have lost.

If Hobbes is right, anyone in a killing people contest who doesn’t want to kill people should never win. More so, anyone in a killing people contest who isn’t good at killing people should never win. It would be like Babe Ruth being afraid of getting a splinter.

I know that it is unfair to expect realism from science fiction. I love sci-fi, and I understand that you have to suspend disbelief to enjoy the work. However, you suspend that disbelief while the world you are watching is being created, in the beginning of the film. The beginning is when the creators set up the framework and the rules of their imaginary world. You buy into it and accept it. Everyone understands The Force is a big deal in “Star Wars,” so people don’t get upset when Luke uses superhuman aim to destroy the Death Star.

In the “Hunger Games,” from the beginning of the movie, everyone says how impossibly hard it is to survive the Games. You have to be the best possible physical specimen, you have to be ruthless, and you have to kill people. Katniss making it through the games by only really killing a few of the bad guys upsets almost every rule the movie created. It seems like Katniss just kind of lucks her way through the hardest most dangerous version of high school ever conceived. Thomas Hobbes and I would appreciate it if when dealing with young people dying there would at least be some serious physical, emotional, and psychological consequences for the people who make it through the ordeal. Anyway, my real point is Hobbes’s book has a cooler cover:

Note: I was just joking about that stuff about Hegel and Marxism, I’m not that big of a nerd. I stick to Morgenthau and Mearshimer.

Kevin Hahn