Forget Roc-A-Fella. Forget Murder, Inc. Forget Bad Boy. The Cream Team is the Dream Team of hip hop. That’s why it should come as no surprise when the second generation of the Wu-Tang Fam, Sunz of Man, drops a hot LP. If you’ve been sleeping on these guys before, it’s time to wake up.

The year 2002 has been extremely and uncharacteristically weak for new Wu-Tang releases. Ol’ Dirty Bastard dropped the so-so album “The Trials and Tribulations of Russell Jones.” Word is that various members, like Ghostface Killah and Method Man, are now in the studio working on LPs. Knowing how projects can fall apart like “peeww” (think Ghostface a la “Never Be the Same Again”), it wouldn’t be a surprise to find out if it was all hype. Something that supposedly isn’t hype is that GZA will release a new album called “Legends of a Liquid Sword” next month.

Despite losing Killah Priest, who went off on his own, the Sunz of Man crew, which consists of Prodigal Sunn, Hell Razah and the 60-Second Assassin, has not fallen off.

Proof of their lyrical ability shines on “All We Got (US)” as they trace back their history. “Date of birth ’92 / The first group out of the Wu / 10 years paid our dues / Of writin’ these jewels.”

Another track where they lay down dope lyrics is on “Black or White”: “Different world, same characters / In the facts of life, it’s your jeopardy to sell out / When the price is right / I’m your turn for the wheel of fortune / Who want a spin?”

“Banksta’z” is a hot track with a banging hook featuring RZA and 12 O’Clock. Bobby Digital comes through nicely, spitting lines like “My street officials / Is bustin’ through this municipal / Building. And snatch back the interest off my principle / My bank account is strictly all digital / High royalty residuals / My staff be made invisible.” This is why he’s the most talented member of the Wu Fam: He can rhyme and produce — like Dr. Dre, only better.

The lead single, “Saviorz Day,” features the one and only Ghostface Killah spitting flames. “Just imagine if we were all were one page / Think alike / A, B alike, C alike / The prophet of knowledge is needed like / With Satan off my back I’m at peace at night / No more cops, no more Rodney Kings / No more peekin’ out the curtain with the rifle by any means.” Ghostface has always given much respect to Malcolm X, and he does it again with reference to the famous picture of Malcolm X looking out of his window with a rifle.

“Honey Tree” is a warning for all young girls not to get caught up in the game of sex. Sunz chronicle the trials and tribulations of a 15-year-old as she drops out of school, has a baby and deals with all the drama it brings.

While there’s no Earth, Wind or Fire featured on this album, there are plenty of appearances, including Compton rapper MC Eiht and lesser-known cats like Ancient Coins, Madam D, Makeba Mooncycle and 2 on the Road.

Various producers do most of the beats for this album, a good thing if you like hearing varied beats. No doubt it is less repetitive than an entire album produced by Timbaland, and that keeps the LP fresh. Some of the tracks, especially “S.O.M.,” sound like a RZA joint, but it’s done by Linx, who also produced six other tracks. The most disappointing part of the album is the absence of RZA-produced tracks. While the other producers do a decent job, it’s not like you’d be checking to get the instrumental album.

Identities are an important part of emceeing, and most rappers rely on a created persona to add personality and flavor to an album. E-40 uses his own vocabulary, The Coup are socially conscious and P. Diddy steals lines from other artists. The Sunz of Man doesn’t fit any categories like that, and it’s even harder to differentiate between the different group members’ personalities. When you listen to a Wu album, you know who’s who. Raekwon’s the Chef, RZA’s got the gruff voice and Ghostface sounds like he just took a hit of helium. But establishing distinctions to identify Prodigal Sunn and 60-Second Assassin is crucial if S.O.M. is to have any long-term success.

The worst part of the album is the skits. “The Cause,” featuring Method Man, is nothing but a 31-second clip of him babbling. This follows for other skits which “feature” RZA and Ghostface.

“Saviorz Day” is a nice LP. Prodigal Sunn, Hell Razah and the 60-Second Assassin are above-average lyricists that are blessed to be affiliated with the Wu. When you’re down with the Wu, it gives you a much better chance of being heard, because die-hard Wu fans will give you a listen just because you’re rolling with the Cream Team. Granted, they’re not the Wu-Tang Clan, but they’re next in line. Currently, “Saviorz Day” is the hottest release from the Wu-Fam this year, but that doesn’t mean this is a classic by any means. So how should we think of Sunz of Man? In “All We Got (US),” they tell us: “We ain’t regular MCs, we prophet MCs.” Time will tell.

What kind of lunatic would suspend a gig as leader of one of the world’s most successful bands in order to join a group of relatively unheard-of upstarts? Dave Grohl, arguably the most influential musician in modern rock, has done precisely that.

In a return to his Nirvana-era musical roots, the legendary wrench monkey has packed up his guitar and is once again making loud crash-boom-bangs from the drum riser, this time behind the Seattle group Queens of the Stone Age. As one of the most outspoken supporters of the Queens prior to the ignition of the media frenzy that now surrounds them — thanks to his rather unorthodox career choice — Grohl was a natural (if somewhat ambitious) choice for drum duties. He’s the fourth person to fill that slot over the course of the past three albums.

Though Grohl generally is the one in the spotlight, some of his bandmates have considerable experience as well — Troy van Leeuwen of A Perfect Circle mans the guitars and keyboards, and Mark Lanegan, previously of the Screaming Trees, lends his vocals.

Van Leeuwen is not as crushingly heavy as he is with A Perfect Circle, but he’s still every bit as insistent. His bare approach meshes well with Grohl’s similarly simplistic approach to percussion, and together the two of them are positively relentless — there’s rarely time to breathe between pulses. Lanegan spreads some typical Seattle-style vocals on top, reminiscent of Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell on some songs, on others breaking into fantastically dissonant screeches.

The first few tracks on “Songs for the Deaf” feature the hard-driving rhythm section work that has been missing from the Foo Fighters ever since their self-titled debut. This sets the tone for the rest of “Songs,” even when it calms down a bit for numbers such as “God is in the Radio” and “Gonna Leave You.” Despite the occasional appearance of slower tempos and more restrained vocals, there is always a sense of urgency to keep the music moving forward.

The Queens’ sound is heavy, but it’s not the slick, well-produced pop-metal of Linkin Park or (let’s face it) Metallica. In a refreshing display of both originality and reverence, the Queens use their unique approach to heaviness throughout the album while simultaneously paying tribute to many of their predecessors. For example, the first song owes no small debt to Led Zeppelin; the second immediately switches gears and borders on becoming a blues ditty. This makes it kind of hard to figure out just where these guys are coming from, but it’s fun to pick the songs apart.

The Queens previously scored their only major radio hit with a cleverly titled ode to intoxication, “The Feel Good Hit of the Summer,” a single three-minute drone with a chorus consisting of nothing but a long string of illicit substances. That song succeeded primarily due to its novelty value, but the Queens seem to be just as good at writing strong songs as they are at making fun of themselves. For example, “Mosquito Song” sounds like it belongs on Nirvana’s beloved “Unplugged” album, and “Six Shooter” somehow packs four or five minutes of any other band’s most brilliant work into a measly minute and a half.

By far the most surprising aspect of this album is the quality at which it was recorded. It’s not strictly low-fidelity, since the vocals are generally pretty clear, but everything else just sounds, for lack of a better word, dirty. This is not grunge as in the genre. This is grunge as in “dirty,” as in “filthy.” It’s as if the instrumental tracks were recorded onto an old, worn out tape coated with a mysterious residue of some sort and then haphazardly remastered. But for some reason it works, tying all the tracks together with a single common, dirty thread.

There are deeper forces at work here, but making sense of them is no easy task. The conceptual coherence is undeniable within the first third of the disc, so much so that it could easily pass as an outright concept album if only a theme of some sort was evident. Unfortunately, all they give us is a series of album cover images of circles and sperm cells. Go figure.

This album is saying something, but it can be hard to understand through the din of repetitive guitar riffs and predictable drum fills. The resulting confusion is both a blessing and a curse. Nothing entirely makes sense, which makes the whole mess that much more appealing; it becomes important to figure out what’s going on. Whatever it is, it is fresh and original.

The Foo Fighters are only temporarily out of commission — Grohl will be coming back next year — but with each listen to “Songs,” it’s becoming harder to decide whether to anticipate a new Foos album or to savor Grohl’s work with the Queens.

Tattooed with an awkward, nervous grin and a shuffling, insecurity-reeking delivery, Jimmy Fallon absorbs criticism like a sea sponge, turning any detractor into a 300-pound bully picking on a 5-year-old girl on crutches.

And while singing Halloween jingles in the key of Dave Matthews normally leads elsewhere than iconic canonization, Fallon has engineered a coup in the hearts of adolescents, offering amusingly pleasant humor to be taken as gospel.

Jimmy Fallon: Average Underachieving Comedian has thus exploited his Oh-Gee cuteness and pop culture panache to metamorphic heights, developing into Jimmy Fallon: Comedic Future, who ubiquitously flouts his shtick on a TV terrain with borders ranging from the Weekend Update to an MTV circus while remaining nearly critic proof.

Now, as follows in the Comedic Future trajectory, Fallon delivers his obligatory amalgamation of musical fluff and stand-up with “The Bathroom Wall,” an album that succinctly mirrors the essence of Fallon’s career: mildly delightful but utterly toothless.

Fallon’s underdog appeal crowned him antihero for college audiences before his first “Nomar” cry, and his live routine overtly aims to appease that cult following through commentary on the college experiences. He taps into the safe collective memory of dorm life, roommates, RAs and fake IDs and achieves minor laughs without delving into anything riskier than loofa gags.

As past Comedic Futures from Pryor to Leary, even Rock, have proved, stand-up can’t cower to the audience’s comfort; it must penetrate uncomfortable areas where comedy wasn’t thought to inhabit, and Fallon’s modest tepidness can’t comprehend this, instead imitating Jerry Seinfeld both in commonplace observations and vocal delivery. Seinfeld, however, unloaded 20 years of material on his one album “I’m Telling You for the Last Time,” unlike Fallon who seems to have expediently garnered whatever anodyne material he hadn’t already donated to SNL.

His inadvertent Seinfeld mimicry aside, Fallon does possess a startling ability for impersonations; if only he had an appropriate outlet for it on the album. Beginning his routine, he unloads a bombardment of impressions including John Travolta, Adam Sandler and Robin Williams in the context of auditioning to be spokesman for a troll doll, a gimmick at once amusing and perplexing in its random, seemingly strained creation.

The auditions continue later when Fallon picks up a guitar to perform troll doll jingles in the vein of his SNL holiday songs. Unsurprisingly, he performs his parodies impeccably (Dave Matthews, Michael Stipe, etc.), but an underscoring realization that these concepts are hastily conceived permeates, preventing them from accelerating past the level of pleasantness of SNL, where most of the underdeveloped stand-up should have resided.

The validity of “The Bathroom Wall” thus falls on its five musical attempts.

Instead of trying to find a voice or style of his own, Fallon opts to burlesque different styles native to the 1980s: cheesy R&B mush (“Idiot Boyfriend”), Beastie Boys electro-funk (“(I Can’t Play) Basketball”), gooey molasses country blues (“Drinking in the Woods”) and ballistic British punk (“Road Rage,” “Snowball”).

The inverse of Fallon’s stand-up, the remarkable aspect of these songs lies in the blaring amount of time and effort poured into generating these studio slick, overproduced songs with such sophomoric underpinnings. Both “Road Rage” and “Snowball” can’t decide whether to take themselves seriously or humorously, instead falling into the rut of complacency, while “(I Can’t Play) Basketball” expends all the humor of a Raffi song.

At least “Idiot Boyfriend” revels in its absolute wretchedness to produce the album’s only truly realized moment, one that has both bizarre lyrical snap and tacky accompaniment without overly depending on Fallon’s innate charm.

As for the rest of “The Bathroom Wall,” nothing veers toward offensively bad territory, but nothing strikes a strong comedic cord, instead leaving a bland, unfulfilled potential for our Comedic Future, no matter how adorable it may be.

“Lost In Space,” Aimee Mann’s latest album, speaks to anyone who has ever stood witness to the demise of a relationship. But don’t turn on your CD player expecting to find a lovesick saga of loss and betrayal — Mann takes the hackneyed subject and makes it her own, speaking to her audience through haunting lyrics and a soulful voice, relating her experiences for a greater good.

“Humpty Dumpty,” the first track, serves just that purpose: Its upbeat nature and catchy lyrics draw the listener in from the onset of the album and grab hold for the 10 songs that follow. Although impossible to disengage yourself from any one of Mann’s self-discoveries, “Humpty Dumpty” is by far the CD’s ‘hit’ song. Mann shoots down a severed relationship, urging her lover to “take the keys and drive forever / Staying won’t put these futures back together / All the perfect drugs and superheroes / wouldn’t be enough to bring me up to zero.”

Although Mann pays homage to the inevitable downfall of any relationship, she’s far from being a bitter man-hater. If anything, she blames her romantic failures on her own faults and warns others of her precarious nature.

Perhaps this is most passionately realized in “This Is How It Goes,” which is, by far, the most poignant song on the album. It is one of sad resolution, sharply realized both in lyric and tone. Mann’s intoxicating voice skims lightly over her melodic rhythms, so soft that at points the listener must strain to hear. Mann doesn’t ”

have the bribery in place / No bright shiny surface to my face / So I won’t go near the marketplace / With what I’m selling lately / Cause this is how it goes.”

The song delves into Mann’s own persona and personal thoughts, and it is for this reason that it’s so moving. While you won’t be humming “This Is How It Goes” to yourself after the fact, it most artfully displays Mann’s genius: her ability to weave together lyric, melody and instrumental backup into musical perfection.

The title song ties together Mann’s overall theme — she’s a wanderer who relates to few and often puts on an indifferent front to mask deeply felt emotions. Though she lives and converses within a world of many, she may as well be in “space,” as she constantly ends up alone.

Optimistic the album is not, but a lack thereof doesn’t present the album as a woe-is-me tale of loss. Rather, in comparison to her previous (and slightly more uplifting) album, “Bachelor #2,” Mann has become the voice of experience — and this experience is showcased not only in lyric, but in musical ability.

Songs from “Bachelor #2″ were nabbed by film director P.T. Andersen for the movie “Magnolia,” gaining Mann widespread acclaim and recognition. While the acclaim was long overdue, her music has since been inexplicably tied to the film. “Lost In Space” provides Mann with a template for the future, as it is her first widely known album — and the template she puts on show should earn Mann her own place in the spotlight for the duration of her career.

Perhaps the album’s unvaried rhythms are its only downfall. While all 11 of the album’s songs are exemplary in both lyric and musicality, most don’t stand out on their own. However, the album is put together so masterfully that this factor can be more than overlooked.

Mann’s “Lost In Space” is the work of a true artist. Unlike many of today’s performers, she possesses the ability to exceed expectations in all aspects of the musical field and create work that is truly original. Don’t go to “Lost In Space” expecting a pop-culture “love sucks” album with ultra-repetitive choruses — you won’t find it here. Part folk, part alternative and all genius, “Lost In Space” tells it like it is.

Q: How do you like teaching mostly first-year students?

A: It’s like Groundhog Day every year. I get the same questions and I spend the whole year answering them. Then August rolls around and I do it all over again.

Q: Who was your favorite teacher?

A: My favorite teacher was my high school math instructor in 1977. He was the only math teacher that didn’t keep pointing out that I was a girl. My other math teachers would always say to the boys in the class, “Look guys, the only girl in the class is doing better than you.” Having a girl in a math class isn’t so unusual now.

Q: What is the best piece of advice you give your students?

A: The advice I always give to first years is that everything is going to be okay. You don’t have to get straight As; you can get a C and everything will still be fine. The world is run by C students. I tell them to relax, that they don’t have to be perfect anymore. They’ve already done so much to get into the University, and yet they’re still running on that treadmill like they have to be the top of everything they do.

Q: How do you spend your free time?

A: My free time is spent taking care of animals. I have horses, chickens, ducks, cats and dogs. I live 30 miles away in Afton, and I work six days a week, so free time is limited.

Q: How did you decide to teach math?

A: Actually, I never did decide to teach math. The first job I was offered was teaching math at Exeter Academy for two years, and while I was there I got offered my next job back at my alma mater, Smith College, because they already knew me. When I moved to Virginia I was offered a job teaching here. I guess I haven’t decided yet what I want to do; math was something I fell in to, but I love math.

Q: What is it about math that terrifies people?

A: Math seems to be used as the overall IQ test for people; if someone’s good at math, then they’re smart. And that’s totally untrue. People get nervous like math is reflecting their overall intelligence, but math is not something you know automatically. Learning math is like an athletic endeavor: you have to practice all the time. People seem to think you’re either good at it or not, but it doesn’t work that way. Even my SAT scores in math were low. I went to a vocational school, not a college prep school, and I was the only person even taking the SATs.

Q: If you could have dinner with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?

A: Well, I’ve already had dinner with [DNA scientist] James Watson, and I didn’t know who he was. I taught his son at Exeter. If I could have dinner with anyone, I would want to have dinner with someone in the future — my 10-year-old daughter’s future husband. I would want to tell him how to treat her and make sure he was always true to her in everything he does. I’d tell him that she should never have to worry about where he’s going or what his intentions are.

Q: Do you have any unusual interests?

A: I have obsession with bull riding — I’m a bull riding freak. I love the rodeo. I grew up riding horses and I’ve always thought cowboys were cool.Part of the reason I like to watch the rodeo is that it’s one of the few times when humans and animals interact and the human always loses. The animal never gets hurt. I would never try it myself, though. I’m chicken — it’s so scary to me. I’ve been on a bucking horse once, and that was enough for me.

Q: What is your favorite book?

A: If I had to take a book with me to a deserted island, I would take a calculus book. I could spend ages solving those problems. But I’d want to take one I haven’t taught from so I didn’t already know the answers.

Q: If you could teach one other subject what would it be?

A: I would teach non-runners how to run. I run all the time, that’s another one of my hobbies. New runners need to learn about the conservation of energy. I’d tell them not to waste energy by flapping like a bird when they run. I’m not very good at running, I just do it all the time. I started right after I had a baby and was sick of being fat. I started running, and instead of losing weight I gained five pounds because I thought I could eat everything I wanted.

Q: What other profession would interest you?

A: If I could be anything, I’d be a barrel racer in the rodeo — one of those hot chicks in shorts. But I’m a math teacher, so I guess that’s it.

It takes all kinds to be in the V-club. When I was in high school,
I decided I no longer wanted to be a virgin. I was the last of my friends remaining in the precious V-club and I hated it. They would sit around and talk about sex with their boyfriends and all I could do was sit and listen or add the occasional oral sex tip. I wanted to know what I was missing.

Plus, I had this growing fear that if I didn’t find the right boyfriend to give it up to in high school, then one of two fates would befall me in college. Either I would end up being deflowered by some one-night stand prick that never called me again. Or, worse, if I held out for some boy who was worthy, I would wind up a 26-year-old virgin. Nobody wants that kind of pressure.

Fortunately, when I left “the club,” my fears were put to rest because I found the right guy, and I didn’t have to wait a decade to get some. Moreover, when I got to college I realized that real life virgins over the age of 16 actually did exist (OK, maybe my friends were way ahead of the game). I was actually one of the only people on my hall who had ever had sex, hence our nickname: the “Virgin Vault.”

Even in the hormonally driven atmosphere of a campus, I found out virgins are not as rare a commodity as I once thought.

But, why not? After all, aren’t these supposed to be our best years? The time to get wild and crazy and to experiment before heading into the dull, dreary adult world? Besides, we may never again be surrounded by so many toned, good-looking young people, strutting around at the height of their sexual primes.

So what, exactly, is driving some students to lead a sex-free college career?

As far as I can tell there are three types of virgins. First, we have the God Squad Virgins. These virgins remain this way because of — you guessed it — religious conviction. These people are card carrying members of the V-club and proud of it. They may be hornier than hell, but they avoid sex at all costs for fear of going straight there.

Christina, a third year, says that she doesn’t want to have premarital sex because of her religious beliefs. But she says it’s also plain common sense not to. She makes a good point that there are a lot of reasons to wait — STDs, pregnancy and emotional issues.

Christina also used an interesting metaphor to explain why she doesn’t believe in sex before marriage.

“It’s like a piece of tape on your arm,” she said. “Every time you sleep with someone it’s like ripping that piece of tape off. So each time you pull it off and stick it back on, that piece of tape is less and less sticky and your ability to create a unique emotional bond with your eventual spouse decreases.”

I’m not sure if I like the idea of comparing sex to tape, but let’s go with it anyway. My advice? You better peel that tape off just a little. If you discover you don’t like your (permanent) partner’s sexual stylewhen you finally do rip that tape off, it might be painful.

The next type is the Virgins by Circumstance category. These folks aren’t particularly against sex, but for one reason or another they just haven’t been able to grab the bull by the horns. Maybe they haven’t found the right person, or maybe their sexual curiosity was stifled by overbearing parents and house rules.

Either way, exterior conditions have prevented them from doing the deed. And this makes them about a hundred times more ready to go. Will, a fourth-year, told me reluctantly that, yes, he was still a virgin. “It’s partially family traditions, but mostly my girlfriend,” he said with a sort of pitiful expression.

I feel for people in his situation, but I also hold them in the highest esteem.Can we say selfless? But you better believe these couples have usually perfected the art of oral sex. (I didn’t ask Will about that one).

The last type, and my personal favorite, is the Virgin-Slut. You know exactly who I’m talking about. They are horny all the time, get more play than anyone on Grounds, but still are technically virgins. They always have the greatest never-have-I-ever answers.

These virgins have a version in their head of the good-girl or good-guy image. Sex doesn’t fit in the picture, but they definitely want it. And they want it bad.

I used to know a girl who was a self-proclaimed virgin and very proud of it, but kept a list of every boy to whom she’d ever given oral sex. That list could have run the length of our first-year hall.

A subset of the Virgin-Slut category are people who like to have fake sex. That’s right, penetration without all the thrusting and orgasms. They tell themselves “it was only in part way,” or they go by the 10 second rule. As long as the activity in question doesn’t exceed these boundaries, they think they’re in the clear.

Elizabeth, a fourth-year virgin, admits that even though she believes in abstaining, she has towed this line from time to time.

“The first time it happened, I didn’t really get how close it was, but it kind of spurred the whole curiosity,” she said.

Still, while she’s been in close situations, Elizabeth said she’s glad she’s stuck to her guns.

“I knew that I wasn’t in love with him, and even though I am curious, it’s just not worth it,” she said.

And I guess that’s just it. Sex, and any other sexual activity for that matter, is all just a matter of personal choice and deciding what is and isn’t “worth it.”

My friend with the tape metaphor had a point that I really liked.

“Sexual purity is not a diagram,” Christina said.”How far you’ve gone can’t be measured on a chart. It’s kind of a personal thing and you have to ask yourself how can you best maintain your own sense of self.”

And that about sums it up, because no matter how much I joke, I still believe that personal decisions about sex are a matter of drawing your own lines and figuring out when you want to cross them.

On sunny skied football game days, swarms of enthusiastic fans flock to Scott Stadium. They come to root for their home team, support their alma mater, and perhaps most importantly, pre-game.

Most season-ticket holders arrive in Charlottesville a few hours prior to the game, filling the parking lots for some quality tailgating, which has become as much a part of the University’s football tradition as striped ties and sundresses.

Of course, quality tailgating most commonly includes a considerable amount of alcohol.

So what allows both fans and students alike to bring alcoholic beverages onto school property on game days?

“The Virginia Student Aid Foundation leases the parking spaces in the lots near the stadium from the University on game days,” VSAF Executive Director Dirk Katstra said. “We work with the ABC [Alcoholic Beverage Control] Board to determine which lots meet the requirements to allow alcohol consumption.”

Only lots reserved for VSAF donors can be licensed for alcohol consumption, Katstra explained. Donors must pay a seasonal fee of $70 and make an annual gift to VSAF of $1,000 or more. Their contributions fund athletic scholarships and support the athletics department.

“It’s all based on a points system,” said second-year College student Amy VanDeusen, whose family has tailgated in her grandfather’s parking spot on the south side of the stadium for over 10 years. “You get so many points for being an alumni. You get so many points for donating to VSAF. You get so many points for donating for so many years. The more you donate and the more points you have, the closer you are to the stadium.”

On game days, the lots are cordoned off with rope to assure that fans who consume alcohol stay within the designated areas. Police security is heightened, and signs surrounding the lots read, “No alcohol past this point.”

“University, state, Charlottesville and Albemarle County police are all involved in the game day experience,” Katstra said. “They work diligently to monitor the crowd of over 60,000.”

VanDeusen said tailgating is as much a part of the football tradition as watching the game itself.

“We’re there a few hours before the game, and if we win we’re there for a few hours after the game,” she said. “It makes it more than just a football game. It’s a whole day event.”

The checkout aisles are cluttered with the colorful covers: super skinny models wearing skimpy designer clothes. It’s enough to make any woman think twice about that two-for-one ice cream deal that looked so tempting 15 minutes ago.

Whereas female targeted magazines tend to leave many women feeling like “Shrek’s” Princess Fiona-turned-ogreafter sunset, studies show that men do not take the images that male magazines project as seriously.

Women reading Cosmo see impossibly thin and attractive women they would hope to match, whereas men tend to overestimate their own looks, said Sociology Prof. Rae L. Blumberg.

“Therefore, when a man reads Maxim or GQ, he is able to say that he is reading it for content, without having the same negative vibes as the woman reading Cosmo,” Blumberg said. “In general, women tend to judge their looks — and those of other women — more severely than do men.”

Third-year College student George Anderson said he reads magazines like Stuff for monthly updates on new trends, entertainment news and for a good laugh.

While he said he thinks wearing the featured clothes is unrealistic, he said buff male models set a societal standard for what females want in a guy.

“If you don’t look like that, you need to get on the ball,” he said jokingly. “I do need to maintain working out, though, because these [pictures] are what everyone sees.”

But despite his occasional tendency to follow the examples of males in his magazines, Anderson said he doesn’t feel like he needs to change very much.

“I have enough control of my life and style,” he said. “And good self esteem.”

Overall, Anderson uses his monthly subscription of Stuff to keep himself “on task.”

“That’s why they have monthly editions,” he said.

And if nothing else, Anderson said the pictures of girls and alcohol make great wallpaper.

“One of the main reasons I got the magazine was girl posters,” he said.

Fourth-year Architecture student Matan Chaffee uses his favorite magazine, Maxim strictly “for entertainment purposes.”

“Sometimes I do get an idea, like ‘if I was trying to be trendy, that would be cool to wear,’” Chaffee said. “But I never sigh, ‘why can’t I look like that’ and then go eat a tub of ice cream, as I assume some girls would.”

In fact, he would never even think of comparing himself to the sculpture-perfect guys in Maxim.

“I’ve seen “Zoolander,” and just thinking about male models cracks me up,” he said with a chuckle.

When it comes to learning creative ways to cook meat, or finding out how a certain beer is rated, Chaffee turns to the pages of Maxim for useful advice. But as for the periodical’s advice about women, Chaffee said he just doesn’t buy it.

“One thing I do know about women is that each one is different,” he said. “So what might work on one is totally wrong for another.”

Based on his experience around groups of girls, Chaffee said Cosmo is a big part of girls’ vocabularies. Maybe that’s because the same topics seem to blare from the racks month after month.

“In grocery stores, magazines for girls have all the same headlines, like, ’10 Steps to Great Sex’ and ‘Lose Five Pounds in a Week,’” Chaffee said. “It boggles my mind how you can have so many different magazines every month and still the same articles.”

Whereas his female friends seem to take these tips to heart, he said, his male friends’ conversations sound more like, “man, did you read that Maxim article? Yeah, it was pretty funny.”

“I think there’s a very distinct difference between how guys and girls read magazines,” Chaffee said. “Girls look at the latest clothes and think, ‘that’s what I’m going to wear.’ And they read about relationships and think, ‘that’s what I’m going to do.’”

Chaffee claims Cosmo is like a “girls’ Bible,” whereas “guys say, ‘whatever, [Maxim's] full of crap.”

Third-year College student Seanan Maranzano said women’s magazines aren’t the only ones whose covers go into repeat mode. But as long as Maxim and GQ present the same advice in new ways, he doesn’t mind.

Thumbing through the monthly magazines seems to be pure entertainment on this guy’s agenda.

Models “make me laugh when they’re all dolled up like that,” he said.

Maranzano describes himself as “a T-shirt and shorts kind of guy” and makes no attempt to emulate the male models depicted in the magazines. His one fashion concession: a pink polo shirt.

Although a large proportion of American Latinos go to college, many of them do not receive their degrees, according to a report released last week.

The Pew Hispanic Center, a non-partisan research organization based in Washington, D.C., conducted the study, which relied on monthly surveys conducted by the Census Bureau.

Richard Fry, a senior associate at the Pew Hispanic Center who wrote the report, offered a variety of reasons for his findings, including economic and cultural factors, language barriers and deficiencies in K-12 education.

A greater proportion of Latino high school graduates are currently enrolled in college than white or black high school graduates, the study showed.

Fry viewed this finding as encouraging news.

“One of the messages of this study is that there are large numbers of successful, highly-motivated Latino college students,” he said.

Although Latinos attend college in large numbers, the study showed that Latino high school graduates earn college degrees at lower rates than every other population group.

Whether this finding is relevant to the University is unclear.

“I don’t think that’s the case at the University,” Asst. Dean of Students Pablo Davis said.

Fry said he thinks many Latinos are not adequately prepared for college before enrolling.

The K-12 education that Latinos in predominantly Hispanic areas receive may be insufficient or inferior to that at other public schools, and this could partially explain the study’s finding, Fry said.

Davis said early education inequalities could explain why some Latinos do not end up getting college degrees.

“The inequality in secondary and primary education is an important factor in explaining what happens later,” he said.

Most K-12 education funds are generated by local property taxes, a system that leads poorer, predominantly minority schools districts to have below average financial resources.

The inequalities will continue as long as the property tax funding scheme continues, Davis said.

Fry said Latino students also may not be prepared because their parents lack the necessary education to teach them in the home.

“Clearly your parents have a role to play — their experience, whether they went to college,” Fry said.

Their capacity to pay for higher education also adds another limiting factor.

“On average Latinos do tend to have lower household incomes,” Fry said.

The study also showed that many Latinos favor alternative forms of higher education, including two-year schools. The report noted that students who attend two-year schools are less likely to complete their degrees, meaning the lower graduation rates among Latinos is not necessarily surprising.

Students peppered Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with questions as part of an open session at Caplan Auditorium yesterday during Thomas’ two day visit to the University.

Thomas went to two classes and had lunch with about 40 students yesterday, Law School Dean John C. Jeffries, Jr. said.

Today, Thomas’ docket includes visiting a third class and dining with the Law School’s Federalist Society.

“One way or another, he’ll have seen a lot of people,” Jeffries said.

During his visit, Thomas was exceptionally candid in addressing student questions on controversial topics, second-year Law student Chris Rapp said.

“He has been really accessible and open to meeting with students. Somebody of his stature doesn’t have to be that way,” Rapp said.

During the hour and a half question and answer session, Thomas spoke to an audience of about 300 on issues such as his stance on affirmative action, which he claims is unconstitutional.

“I understand the sentiment and all with you,” Thomas said in response to a question on the topic. “I just don’t think sentiment will enable you to carry the day.”

He added it was the same type of sentimental thinking about race relations that justified segregation not long ago.

Thomas also talked on the pressure of justices deciding controversial decisions.

“I think it reflects well on us that we don’t tear each other apart,” he said. He said he respected his fellow justices even when they held different opinions from him.

“I sit between Justices Ginsberg and Souter,” he said. “In almost a decade of sitting between them, I don’t think they’ve had any influence on me.”

After the split decision in Bush v. Gore, Thomas said it only took the justices as long as a walk to the dining room to get back together.

“I don’t see that anything was done wrong. We did our best under the circumstances,” Thomas said of the court decision that effectively decided the 2000 presidential election. “The only thing I’d do over is write my own opinion so I could make it clear I still agree with myself,” he added.

Thomas also joked about the sexual harassment allegations that came out during his 1991 hearing with the Senate Judiciary committee.

I would still like to resolve the “unfinished business” of the Anita Hill case, Thomas said.

Jeffries said the Law School gets speakers of Thomas’ distinction about once a year. Last year, Chief Justice William Rehnquist visited for the Law School’s 175th anniversary celebration. Next year, the school will host a visit from Justice Anthony Kennedy, he added.