April 26th, 2023
Childhood Nostalgia Edition
When you want to go back to the good ol’ days, here are some classic board games we all brought out when indoor recess struck.Hi-Ho! Cherry-O (2-4 players)
If you were the kid who never actually learned how to play the game—and just ate the pieces—this one’s for you. The goal of Hi-Ho! Cherry-O is to collect ten cherries from your individual trees into your bucket. Taking turns that continue clockwise, every player must spin the action wheel in the middle. Perform the action that your spin lands on, and the play continues to the next person.Spin Actions:
- Numbers 1-4: Depending on the number you land on, you will pick that many cherries from your tree.
- Bird or Dog. Take 2 cherries from your bucket and put them back onto your tree.
- Spilled Bucket. Remove all your cherries from your bucket and put them back onto your tree.
The average online price from Amazon is $15.00 (with free returns!)
—Ariel Rutten, Games Editor
Elefun
Have you ever sat back and wondered to yourself, what was that game called where the elephant blew butterflies out of his trunk? Maybe you weren’t thinking that, but if you were, do I have the answer for you! Elefun is “the butterfly catchin’” game by Hasbro. In this game, one fills up the elephant’s trunk with the little butterflies and flips the switch by the elephant’s tail. This turns the little fan on, and the butterflies start flying out of the trunk. Each player then has to catch as many butterflies as possible. (You can even grab them from off the floor!) Once all of the butterflies are released from the elephant’s trunk, everyone must stop grabbing butterflies and total the number they have caught. (Catching those little butterflies is harder than you think!) The person with the most butterflies wins a token! The individual who wins three tokens wins the game. Yet no game is a good one without a little twist. The twist in this game is the special blue butterfly! The person who catches this butterfly automatically wins the token no matter the number of butterflies others catch. The game allows 2 to 4 players and is available for ages 3 and up. Although this game is meant for a younger audience, it can be fun for almost all ages. I definitely have fond memories of running around the living room playing it and would absolutely play it now. Who wouldn’t want to feel like a kid again?
Have you ever sat back and wondered to yourself, what was that game called where the elephant blew butterflies out of his trunk? Maybe you weren’t thinking that, but if you were, do I have the answer for you! Elefun is “the butterfly catchin’” game by Hasbro. In this game, one fills up the elephant’s trunk with the little butterflies and flips the switch by the elephant’s tail. This turns the little fan on, and the butterflies start flying out of the trunk. Each player then has to catch as many butterflies as possible. (You can even grab them from off the floor!) Once all of the butterflies are released from the elephant’s trunk, everyone must stop grabbing butterflies and total the number they have caught. (Catching those little butterflies is harder than you think!) The person with the most butterflies wins a token! The individual who wins three tokens wins the game. Yet no game is a good one without a little twist. The twist in this game is the special blue butterfly! The person who catches this butterfly automatically wins the token no matter the number of butterflies others catch. The game allows 2 to 4 players and is available for ages 3 and up. Although this game is meant for a younger audience, it can be fun for almost all ages. I definitely have fond memories of running around the living room playing it and would absolutely play it now. Who wouldn’t want to feel like a kid again?—Emma Krueger
Let’s Go Fishing (1-4 players) 
This game is very easy and doesn’t require much effort to leave you with hours of enjoyment. This fun activity requires you to use plastic fishing rods with magnets attached to catch the little multi-colored fish while their mouths snap open and close as the little plastic pond they’re in spins. The goal is to catch as many fish as possible before the other player can. To make things more challenging, players can choose to catch only fish of a single color. I personally started playing this game around the time it was released in 2006. It has left many generations of kids, including me, with fond memories. I rate this game a 7/10 simply because over the years it got pretty repetitive (seeing as I am no longer a child). This game can be purchased on Amazon for around $8-10 and even includes free returns just in case you somehow aren’t satisfied with your hours of mechanical fishing.
This game is very easy and doesn’t require much effort to leave you with hours of enjoyment. This fun activity requires you to use plastic fishing rods with magnets attached to catch the little multi-colored fish while their mouths snap open and close as the little plastic pond they’re in spins. The goal is to catch as many fish as possible before the other player can. To make things more challenging, players can choose to catch only fish of a single color. I personally started playing this game around the time it was released in 2006. It has left many generations of kids, including me, with fond memories. I rate this game a 7/10 simply because over the years it got pretty repetitive (seeing as I am no longer a child). This game can be purchased on Amazon for around $8-10 and even includes free returns just in case you somehow aren’t satisfied with your hours of mechanical fishing.—Jasmine Puls
Wake up, Detective. We have a murder to solve. In the heart of an impoverished, war-torn city of Martinaise, a hanged body has been reported in the backyard of a local cafeteria. The Revachol Citizens Militia, the law enforcement agency of the city, sent one of their best, Kim Kitsuragi, to investigate the murder—and sent their worst. You. To make matters worse, you’ve woken up in your apartment with a throbbing headache, a shattered window, a bathtub full of booze bottles, hardly any clothes on, and worst of all, you don’t remember a single thing.
In Risk of Rain 2, you find yourself stranded on a hostile alien planet. The game is a roguelike, which means there isn’t one set storyline; rather you play individual games, or “runs.” At the start, you select a character and are dropped into the randomly generated world empty-handed. The runs are broken up into stages, and your goal for each stage is to find the teleporter at the end, while being attacked by a whole array of enemies the entire time. Throughout the world, there is loot you can acquire to make your character stronger, but don’t get too attached because death is permanent. Each run provides you with a unique experience, with loads of new items and characters to unlock and secrets to be found all over the place. Play with a few friends, or just face the deadly aliens alone in this fun but challenging, chaos-fueled ride through space. Available on Steam and for PS4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One. 
The 2023 Northern Lights Literary & Arts Journal will be launching on Thursday, May 4th, and you’re invited to the party! Join us at 6:00 p.m. in the campus library to hear contributors read from or talk about their works, and to be among the first to get a print copy of the journal. We’ll also have light refreshments!
When a man from India’s slums does a little too well on a game show, he finds himself under suspicion by the police, who believe him to be cheating. The entire premise of this movie hinges on the belief that its audience is gullible enough to believe that someone can win a game show—and through luck alone, at that. Nice try, Danny Boyle. I’m not buying it.
After discovering $2 million dollars at the site of a drug deal gone bad in the desert, a hunter finds himself pursued by a relentless assassin who will stop at nothing to see the money recovered. Meanwhile, the sheriff of a local small town investigates a mysterious rash of deaths in the surrounding area. No Country for Old Men is almost a good movie, except for one very fatal flaw: A guy walks around with a bowl cut like that in 2007, and no one suspects that he’s a murderer? Sorry, but no one is that nonjudgmental. Maybe this movie’s body count would be lower if these people just exercised some common sense.
Wallace and Gromit are back in their most frightening assignment yet: freeing the town from the tyrannical paw of the were-rabbit eating everyone’s crops. After Wallace and Gromit start a new pest-control service to rid their tiny English town of its rabbit problem before the annual Giant Vegetable Competition, a monstrous were-rabbit—a man who turns into a rabbit beneath the light of the full moon—begins terrorizing the town. Can Wallace and Gromit uncover the identity of the were-rabbit and save the town’s vegetables before it’s too late? This is a truly chilling film for gardeners everywhere. 
You know how in Scooby Doo, the ghosts and monsters always turn out to be guys in costumes? What if, one time, the ghosts and monsters turned out to be real? And even worse, what if Scrappy Doo was there? When Scooby, Shaggy, and Scrappy are hired as gym teachers at Miss Grimwood’s Finishing School for Girls, they quickly learn that the school is set up to teach the daughters of supernatural beings—a list including Frankenstein’s monster, Count Dracula, the Wolfman, and the Mummy. And that’s not the scariest part! There’s also a witch after the girls, and if Scooby, Shaggy, and Scrappy don’t keep them safe, then their fathers will not be pleased. Scooby Doo & the Ghoul School is a spine-tingling tale for the whole family to enjoy… if they’re brave enough.
Clary Fray is your average, everyday, artsy teen girl next door. However, when she witnesses three teenagers commit a murder at a club in New York City, things quickly devolve into hell in a handbasket. Upon returning home, Clary discovers her mother is missing, presumably kidnapped, and she gets attacked by a demonic monster, only to be saved in the nick of time by the three teenagers she encountered. Over the next 24 hours, she is quickly pulled into the world of her saviors, also known as Shadowhunters—or warriors who can see and fight demons—and must try to survive. Will Clary find her mother? Why can she see the demons, even if she isn’t a Shadowhunter? How will she survive in this new world?
It is a truth universally acknowledged that there are way too many Pride and Prejudice adaptations in the world. Modern-day authors have set Jane Austen’s best-known work in the dog show world, converted Elizabeth and Darcy into high-school debate-team rivals, and turned Mr. Darcy into a vampire. It’s enough to make a purist’s head explode. 
Have you ever wanted to listen to a movie review podcast that only talks about one movie once a year? Well, neither have I until today! ‘Til Death do us Blart is a comedy podcast where the creators of the podcasts My Brother, My Brother and Me and The Worst Idea of All Time come together to talk about the film Paul Blart Mall Cop 2. That’s right, not the first movie but the second one. These men chose to discuss this movie once every year on Thanksgiving, and they all have collectively decided to keep up the tradition for as long as they live. I never expected someone to be able to talk about the same movie over and over again, but the guys somehow make it work. They are a hilarious group of individuals that keep coming up with new things to discuss about each episode even though it’s about the same movie. This podcast never fails to make me smile or laugh out loud. This podcast is definitely one of a kind and deserves a listen.
Produced by the production company Wondery and hosted by Saachi Koul and Sarah Hagi, Scamfluencers is a strangely interesting podcast about—you guessed it—people pulling enormous scams. Ranging from episodes on big names like Martin Shkreli, Tom Brady, and Todd Chrisley to lesser-known scams by people like Stephane Bourgoin, Koul and Hagi cover it all. They start at the very beginning, completing a profile early on in every episode on the scam artist chosen for that week. They detail their life, and weave an enlightening tale that spirals into an over-the-top scam every time. At some points, you may even find yourself rooting for the scammer, but they always get found out in the end. Koul and Hagi provide fresh eyes to many types of stories from scammers from all walks of life, and they do so with funny commentary and heartfelt earnestness. Scamfluencers can be listened to wherever you find your podcasts, though I personally listen to Koul and Hagi’s many episodes on Apple Podcasts.
A wonderful classic, Good Burger (1997) is based on a comedy sketch of the same name from the Nickelodeon television series All That. Featuring Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell as fellow high school students Dexter and Ed. The two meet when they get into a predicament where they need to work together. Ed is the source of a minor car crash between Dexter (who does not have a license) and his teacher. To pay for the damages, Dexter gets a summer job working with Ed at Good Burger, a burger-and-fries diner that has some very quirky employees. Although Ed is down-to-earth, his naïve decisions put himself and Dexter into some pretty difficult situations. Mondo Burger, a competitive new burger restaurant, opens just across the road from Good Burger, and the diner’s flow of customers quickly dwindles.
If the name Captain Beefheart doesn’t immediately have your attention, he will hold it the entire time you listen. Like a car accident, you cannot take your eyes (and ears) off of Trout Mask Replica. Captain Beefheart leads the band like a musical dictator to make the album sound exactly how he wanted it to, practically turning the band into a cult. Between being unable to leave the house they recorded at, barely allowed to eat, and effectively forced into practicing the music for 14 hours a day, the members of the band had their work cut out for them. Despite this unique style of leadership, on top of the Captain’s already eccentric tastes, this album is truly one of a kind. As equally parts mesmerizing as it is brilliant, there is truly nothing else like Trout Mask Replica, and I highly doubt there ever will be.