Wednesday, July 8, 2009

i've never had an asian roommate

A study of students at Duke University, using lists of their close friends before college and at the end of freshman year, found that white students, the least likely to have had close friends of a different race, were the most likely to develop more diverse friendships as freshmen — while black students, who came in with more interracial friendships, had a decline in cross-race friendship freshman year. The study found little change freshman year in the diversity of Asian and Hispanic students’ friendships.

Freshmen with roommates of a different race — or those who lived alone in a dorm — were the most likely to diversify their friendships.

“Just having diversity in classrooms doesn’t do anything to increase interracial friendships,” said Claudia Buchmann, an associate professor of sociology at Ohio State and an author of the Duke study. “But the intimacy of living together in residence halls, with no roommate, or a different-race roommate, does lead to more interracial friendships.”

- "Interracial Roommates Can Reduce Prejudice" (NYTimes)

Friday, June 26, 2009

seasons of love



Yesterday I attended a free preview screening of 500 Days of Summer, which will be released in theaters July 17. Directed by Marc Webb, the film stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt (the guy who wasn't Heath Ledger in 10 Things I Hate About You) opposite Zooey Deschanel (the perennial "quirky girl" and one-half of the band She & Him). With the tagline "Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Girl doesn't," which sums up the plot of the movie surprisingly accurately, this romantic dramedy is the anti-love story (or a "realistic and modern" love story, depending on which way you want to look at it), whose endearing characters are perfectly packaged in clever filming, flawless comedic timing, and witty script writing. Plus, Gordon-Levitt spends pretty much the entire movie in either skinny ties and cardigans or skinny jeans and band T-shirts. So my heart was pretty much won over from the start.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

meet me at chapeau

This video makes me miss Praha (both the city and the idea of the city) every single time.

Monday, June 22, 2009

i guess the hair adds a couple inches

Paul Rudd and Jack Nicholson are surprisingly short.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

one in three

Tayo: a PA is basically the same as a gopher right?
me:
no i'm sort of like the gopher's bitch
I'm working tomorrow on the new James L. Brooks movie starring Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, Jack Nicholson, and Paul Rudd.

I am so excited.

Even crazier though is that I met the guy who called me about it in the hospital waiting room. It's a lot less sketchy than it sounds, I promise. And no, he was not the one being checked out.