Left-over lunch's cycle

Many mobile eateries on Main Campus boast their fare is made fresh daily. Some owners try not to let the extra food go to waste.

Even after the lunch trucks close at the end of the day, the quiet hum of freezers can still be heard.

To avoid waste, most truck owners keep meats and other items frozen over night. Most dishes they serve are made to order, according the owners of TJ’s Corner, Silver Eagle and Chicken Heaven.

At TJ’s Corner, which parks on Montgomery Street between Broad and 13th streets, the most popular meals are made with chicken. Approximately 120 pounds of chicken are ordered each week, all of which is kept frozen and prepared to order.

“It takes a little longer, but it’s safer, and you don’t waste,” owner Kevin Doan said.

Read the rest of the news story, written for The Temple News' special Lunchies edition, here.

Film Review: Josh Appignanesi's The Infidel

Essentially, the film is about a man who must reconcile who he thought he was and where he really comes from with the idea he's created of himself, in order to become the man he eventually will be. In the midst of an identity crisis, which follows from learning he is Jewish by birth and not “really” Muslim, Mahmud Nasir (Omid Djalili) lies to his loved ones and endangers everything good in his life. Despite several opportunities to come clean to his beautiful wife Saamiya (Archie Panjabi) and their two children, Mahmud continues to hide his discovery and the fact that he’s taking Jewish lessons with American cabbie Lenny (Richard Schiff) in order to gain access, currently barred by a fanatical Rabbi, to his observant-Jew birth father.

Should he admit to being Jewish, Mahmud would ruin the engagement of his son, Rashid (Amit Shah), to Uzma (Soraya Radford), whose mother has recently married Muslim extremist Arshad Al-Masri. Al-Masri (Igal Naor) who won’t let his new stepdaughter marry a nonbeliever. In other words, the pressure is on for Mahmud to prove he’s a good Muslim. Mahmud attempts to do this by burning a yarmulke at a Justice for Palestine rally where Al-Masri will speak. This act is caught on video and posted online. When Mahmud returns home from a failed attempt to meet his father, Al-Masri is there. He gives the Rashid-Uzma union his blessing and then cops show up to arrest Mahmud for inciting religious hatred. Mahmud must decide if he will risk his son’s happiness and save himself by admitting he is Jewish or accept his arrest.

Despite its heavy subject matter, the film is billed as a comedy, and it improbably succeeds. The juxtaposition of Muslims and Jews provides excellent fodder for comedy. More than that, the movie conveys the message that these warring factions are not so different without being preachy. Just as Mahmud found peace with two conflicting parts of himself, so can the world’s Muslims and Jews – and we can all learn to laugh about our differences.

This film review was originally published on two.one.five magazine's website.

Dorm Corp.

With money tight and jobs scarce, students look to the Internet for ways to make some extra cash.

With the difficulty of finding part-time jobs and open work-study positions on campus, Temple students are turning to alternative money-making ventures, such as text-message Q-and-As, answering surveys, reading paid e-mails, playing games and selling products online.

But with many websites that offer ways to get rich quick, it can be difficult to know which are legitimate. Rachel Brown, the director of the Career Center, said she and her team of counselors can offer advice on how to recognize a scam.

“One of the things we advise students to watch out for is a pyramid scheme and what cost or fees are associated,” Brown said.

Sophomore psychology major Mike Althouse is one of the many students wary of being scammed.

“I know I did something like that before [take surveys online] and I don’t think I got money from it,” he said. “I’m sure a lot of money-making sites have catches, for example, following through with additional requests, et cetera.”

Read the rest of this 850-word feature for The Temple News here.

Sex manual comes up short on advice

"Sex: Our Bodies, Our Junk” falls short on humor and helpful sexual information.

There are certain things people should not do in public, and reading the Association for the Betterment of Sex’s book “Sex: Our Bodies, Our Junk” is one of those things. Places you may not want to read the book include your daily commute on SEPTA, your work-study job and your parents’ living room.

Then again, you might not want to read it anywhere unless you are one of the Neanderthals in the 2007 movie “Knocked Up” – who, in the film, say a woman can’t get pregnant if she’s on top – as this book was clearly intended for them. On us upright-walking people, the joke is lost.

Here’s a little about the ABS: It’s a self-professed think tank based in Washington, D.C., comprised of five former and current writers for “The Daily Show,” “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” Vanity Fair and the Onion. They are Scott Jacobson, Todd Levin, Jason Roeder, Michael Sacks and Ted Travelstead.

Proposed to give the reader a “radical new understanding of sex and intimacy,” the book fails to actually inform the reader of anything sex-related. The handful of tips that aren’t a health risk or a bad joke are things you learned in health class. The whole book reads like a monologue from a misinformed health teacher with a tragic need to be liked by his or her students.

Although ABS’s book was supposedly “exhaustively researched,” it is filled with tidbits quite clearly figments of the imagination. There are some that almost sound truthful, such as “a scant 18 percent of men successfully roll a condom onto their penis in the first try,” until you read, “A man who ejaculates forcefully enough can impregnate the cosmos.”


Read the rest of this 660-word book review for The Temple News here.

Professors’ guide unlocks the secrets to earning A’s

Lynn Jacobs and Jeremy Hyman’s “The Secrets of College Success”contains more than 600 tips to improve your college performance.

Dr. Lynn F. Jacobs and Jeremy S. Hyman, creators of the Professors’ Guide series, set out to write “the instruction manual for college.” The result: “The Secrets of College Success,” which was published this past summer.

Their second book is filled with tips for picking classes and professors, improving academic performance and, ultimately, getting more bang out of college for a student’s buck.

“You’re paying a lot of money for this college thing, and if you know what to do, you’ll get your money’s worth,” Hyman said.

Students will get their money’s worth out of the book, too.

Read the rest of this 460-word book review for The Temple News here.