Battalion
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ie(piving it the old college try
tar of Phantom Menace trades movie scripts for textbooks
PHOTO COURTESY OF FOX 2000 PICTURES
I ortman stars in the upcoming movie Anywhere But Here.
NEW YORK (AP) — Natalie Portman is
going to hate herself in the morning.
Hate herself because there are dirty jeans
and unread books piling up in her dorm
room. Hate herself because she is here, hun
dreds of miles away, curled up on a sofa an
swering questions.
“It’s so overwhelming. I have to go home
after this and just cry over how much work
I have,” the 18-year-old college freshman,
her eyes rolling heavenward said.
“I’m having the most amazing, amazing,
amazing time. But it’s really hard: balancing
everything, taking care of yourself, setting
your own limits, scheduling for yourself,”
she said.
“And, on top of that, you have to balance
doing, like, your housework, too — which
was never a part of the equation! All of a sud
den, you have to do laundry and clean your
sheets and vacuum and wash the toilets.”
That is an image: Natalie Portman, the
star of the summer’s biggest smash hit and
one of Hollywood’s most sought-after
young actresses, getting busy with a bath
room scrubber.
And why not? After all, that, too, is Port-
man, a teen-ager who rises to announce she
needs “a potty break” or who pre-emptively
apologizes for her “stinky feet” upon shed
ding her Guccis.
“I’m just trying to be true to who I am and
not let anyone define me except for myself,”
she said. “I’m not trying to have a magazine
call me the ‘It Girl.’”
Perhaps “Lit Girl” would be better. Port-
man may have ruled a planet in the Star Wars
prequel, but now she just wants to be one
more stressed-out frosh lugging books
across the quad.
“I’ve been so lucky to have these oppor
tunities, but we have a way of making movie
stars not mortal. We have a way of making
them images rather than people, and they’re
human beings,” she said.
“They’re extraordinary at what they do,
but so is my father who is a doctor, and no
one ever freaked out about meeting him.
No one would ever shake shaking his
hand, but people meet me, and they’ll
shake, and they’ll cry, and that’s weird —
and that’s wrong.”
Keeping Portman sane are her new college
pals: the youngest speaker at the Million Man
March; a cellist who has worked with Yo-Yo
Ma; the poet-slash-artist down the hall; her
roommate, a star tennis player.
“You should hear these kids!” she said. “1
mean, these people are just all so fantastic in
their own right that, you know, nothing I do
is that impressive to them that they’d be
overly interested in me.”
. Portman is as cagey as she is self-depre
cating. She is an on-the-record vegetarian, a
straight-A student, a teetotaler and an
adamant nonsmoker. Drugs? Don’t even
think about it.
“I don’t like it when people just assume
they can smoke around me or do drugs
around me,” she said. “I think probably peo
ple view me as a goody-goody, which isn’t
necessarily true. 1 mean. I’m a human being.
I’m not an angel.”
There are areas, though, that Portman
feels uncomfortable discussing. She shies
away from referring to her hometown on
New York’s Long Island and the gossipy de
tails of her life at Harvard University are not
easily forthcoming. She’s even registered un
der a different name at school.
*LASMA
RUBEN DELUNWhiU*,
;ee $500. Inrealiiy Continued from Paged
iru jnied email, a: ,n k means and manner by which the ad-
;i\ treatment to an: ninistration or Johnny perpetuates? For the
el then break an or: ormer, yes. For the latter, no. The donation
dthei than waiting T blood and the selling of plasma does bene-
> ter tlie op irtunit ^ f 1 8 00C ' cau se other than tamale money. It
m |i , imstjnote i e ips hospitals perform vital transfusions
l s ;;;; , ^ijn^^hat keep people alive and well, namely Bing
c j s | ] ‘ ‘ Crosby and his entourage of liver transplants.
nuse the faces mu But a j the risk of sounding only slightly
njaranoid, one cannot help but wonder what
1 ’ ,u> ukenor motives are for blood banks and
a \ T\\\t.\sa > i asma cen ters. Governmental storehouses of
"Hit )NA? Sophisticated file cabinets of the future?
’dsion.t lacking systems designed to keep Americans
tenth' seup" ceon Ider the wary eye of Big Brother? Hardly,
nut. Grantei'i'^rfee far-fetched conspiracy theories are as
Jo whatevetis'vfc nprobable as they are immature. They are
uy the billsandfe" 1 ierely the stuff of elementary imagination
: -eful angeloiitiiW' nd modern ghost stories,
jut one shouldco 1 ' 9 | Blood banks are neither being utilized as a
iorities whend^'ource of information about American citi-
jerived intravenoii'ens nor as identification systems for the na-
n Pedantic’sblo oij’s scattered denizens, or as any other
more than atafl-diculous Hollywood-spawned notion.
Jium soft drink, ather, they are being used to assemble a su-
ir Mints and tw>h
t CaddyshacK Byh
The essence ofMr
i much more won.
lore precious. Cato
Fight Club
s the circulatory s'-
about cash? Is®
SEE Plasma onI
per soldier, a genetically engineered superior
fighting machine with all the traits desired for
combat: the discriminating eyes of a stock
broker, the sharp hearing of a short-order deli
cook, Schwarzenegger’s propensity for kick-
butt one-liners, and the overpowering brutali
ty and cold impersonality of Bill Gates.
Thanks to blood banks, the soldier of the
future will not only be the perfect killing ma
chine but will also be able to predict market
fluctuations and make a rocking club sand
wich while saying an Arnold-esque “Your or
der is up,” and all the while remain geeky. If
we ever go to war against a country of soft
ware designers, we’ll be sitting pretty (with or
without a super soldier).
The super soldier scenario is admittedly
fictional, although scientists are currently try
ing to splice the DNA of supermodels with
the DNA of nymphomaniacs in hopes of find
ing a cure for what they term to be “cancer of
the children.”
But the advent of the gene market, the selling
of desirable traits to covetous couples, epitomizes
a scenario that is not too different from that of
the super soldier. Specialists have come to call
the probable outcome of genetic tampering and
DNA marketing “the super suburbanite.”
By skipping natural selection’s middle
man, about two to four million years, scien
tists hope to engineer a being with the ulti
mate urban survival ability.
With impeccable eyesight, foresight,
hindsight and Lucite, the super suburbanite
will be able to jump higher, shop thriftier,
run faster and steal cable television faster
than ever before.
But there is a downside to this vision of the
perfect politically correct citizen. No one will
know where others’ traits came from.
The variations of gene sequences are end
less, as will be the number of people one
could contact while interacting with only one
individual.
One could feasibly be romanticizing one’s
own grandmother without knowing it (a mal
ady that will no longer be exclusive to resi
dents of Arkansas).
This is not a call to cease donating blood
or selling plasma. The probable bad is still
overpowered by the realistic good, whether
it be providing vital transfusions for medical
patients or money for nachos magnificos.
Jacob Huval is a sophomore
English major
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3610 S. College (Bryan)
846-4275
MINISTER
TURNED
ATHEIST
Come hear Dan Barker of the
Freedom From Religion Foundation
talk about his transition
7pm November 9 th MSC 201
by the Agnostic & Atheist Student Group
TEACH?!
Perform one of the highest services—teach!
Teach at The Brazos School for Inquiry & Creativity, a new experi
mental school in North Bryan that serves many low-income students.
The Brazos School for Inquiry and Creativity seeks undergraduate and
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STUDENT TRAVEL
London $366
Paris $410
Madrid $457
Tokyo $837
Planning Trips
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X, V, and Z.
Are >u HeaSt) to Tfleet ^ our
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Topic; Salvation and Afterlife
Thursday, Nov. 11
@ 7pm in MSC 145
Free Admission!
For more info, call 846-7718 or email islaml01@tamu.edu
Visit our table in the MSC hallway every Wed. between 11:30 and 3pm
The Texas A&M University Student Media Board
is accepting applications for
The Battalion
— Including radio and online editions —
Spring 2000
(The spring editor will serve from Jan. 10 through May 5, 2000)
Qualifications for editor in chief of The Battalion are:
• Be a Texas A&M student in good standing with the University and enrolled in at least six
credit hours (unless fewer credits are required to graduate) during the term of office;
• Have at least a 2.00 cumulative grade point ratio and at least a 2.00 grade point ratio in
the semester immediately prior to the appointment, the semester of appointment and semes-
ter(s) (all summer course work is considered summer semester) during the term of office. In
order for summer school grades to qualify as previous semester grades, a minimum of six
hours must be taken during the course of either the hill or two summer session(s);
• Have completed JOUR 301 (Mass Communication, Law and Society), or equivalent;
• Have at least one year experience in a responsible editorial position on The Battalion or
comparable daily college newspaper,
-OR-
Have at least one year editorial experience on a commercial newspaper,
-OR-
Have completed at least 12 hours journalism, including JOUR 203 and 303 (Media Writing I
and II), and JOUR 304 (Editing for the Mass Media), or equivalent.
Application forms should be picked up and returned to Francia Cagle, Student
Media Staff Assistant, in room 01 3D Reed McDonald Building. Deadline for
submitting application: 4 p.m. Friday, Nov. 12, 1999. Applicants will be
interviewed during the Student Media Board Meeting beginning at 4:15 p.m.
Tuesday, Nov. 16, 1999, in room 221 F Reed McDonald.
An Affirmative Action / Equal Opportunity Employer. Committed to Diversity.