Gazing beyond Stars

Amy Millan is most at peace in bed. Nine pillows cover the cushy queen-size mattress she bought a year ago, and not a single one is for show. Every pillow allows her to fade into sleep in her new house in Montreal, her favorite city in the world. There are no stuffed animals; her sweetheart of three years is teddy bear enough for her. It’s not a bad deal.

Set the story straight

Under normal circumstances, band members initially connect through the music. For alt-metal rockers Story of the Year, however, that is not the case. Long before this St. Louis-bred band was creating head-banging ballads, they came together for an entirely different purpose: to skateboard.

Sound Advice: Flight of the Conchords

(Web Exclusive) Comedy albums don’t have the best reputation. Sure, stand-up comic routines are good in album form, but joke rock struggles. “Weird Al” Yankovic’s parodies and Adam Sandler’s “Chanukah Song” are about as popular as musical humor gets. However, a pair of kiwis are trying to change that.

Sound Advice: The Kooks

(Web Exclusive) Konk, the Kooks’ second LP, takes listeners on a journey perfectly described in “Kooks,” the David Bowie song that the band adopted its name from — “Soon you’ll grow so take a chance / With a couple of kooks / Hung up on romancing.” On this album, the band agonizes over lost love and has made an album that can serve as the soundtrack for everyday life.

School of gossip

Students in the J-School are, when you think about it, getting trained to be professional gossips. We’re being taught to casually overhear conversations for potential stories, gain a source’s trust to get the best interview possible and then report back to the world at large with gusto.

Cultural correspondent

He’s got an answer for everything, and it’s not always the one you’d expect. He uses Spanish profanities, explains etymology and relates historical events in a single, surprising answer. “¡Ask a Mexican!” columnist Gustavo Arellano is one sassy señor who knows it all.

Selling in the springtime

It’s springtime. College students are migrating out of Columbia, hopeful homeowners are emerging from hibernation, and “For Sale” signs are popping up in yards quicker than daffodils.

Reasons they race

Motors hum. Exhaust fumes fill the air. Cars wait patiently for their turn to race down the straight country road. The flagger signals; the first two racers hit the gas and accelerate to more than 100 mph. At the finish line, spectators take bets on which engine will outperform the other. The cars near the end of the strip, and the drivers will soon find out if they have won the respect they have worked so hard to earn.

Jackie vs. Jet

Action movies involving martial arts never get old, even with aging stars. It’s hard to believe Jackie Chan and Jet Li have not made a picture together before The Forbidden Kingdom. The movie opens April 18 and combines Chan’s style of comedy and Li’s artistic aura. Together, they join an American kung fu fan on a journey to save a captured king.

Muddy colors

(Web Exclusive) Jane Mudd’s Orr Street studio is filled with expressionistic canvases that disregard obvious color choices. Rivers aren’t just painted blue; the waters flow with sapphire hues, tinges of Kelly green and scarlet red. Bridges have thick maroon outlines and flowers are never just one color. Mudd, a Fulton artist and professor at William Woods University, brings her canvases to life with rich colors.

On the Job: Judy Weber

You can be whatever or whomever you want to be. It’s possible for anyone, says Judy Weber, teacher and director of Columbia’s School of Metaphysics. Using four cycles of coursework, the school is devoted to students achieving a mastery of consciousness — when people gain the mental power to perceive life in a fresh way with a refined purpose. Weber starts with concentration exercises as she introduces students to meditation and visualization tools. She teaches them to cut through inner turmoil to hear and understand their inner selves. She is thrilled to watch her students become conscious in the physical world as they move on in life without fear, with honesty and finally, with peace.

Take Two: Street Kings

(Web Exclusive) Intentions are questionable and loyalties are scarce in the new, edgy cop drama, Street Kings. Members of the notorious LAPD find themselves lost in a web of plots, counter-plots, distrust and death — and discover some ambiguous moral ground.

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

The Good: The kid blew it

Take Two: Prom Night

(Web Exclusive) Anyone who has ever dreamed of returning to their high school prom might have second thoughts after seeing the horror flick Prom Night. It’s not because of the fact that an escaped killer crashes the party and takes out almost all of the leading cast members. It’s because the cliché lines and high school stereotypes make this film as enjoyable as a knife to the gut.

STD study has many feeling the burn

(Web Exclusive) With sex reaching teenagers of increasingly younger ages, it seems like there are more than just naughty parts that are going uncovered. The national reaction to a recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been largely silent as many organizations have been slow to respond to the shocking new STD statistics.

STD protection

Teens might try to keep their love lives under the covers, but a study released March 11 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has opened the door to some startling information. It estimates that 3.2 million teenage girls are infected with at least one sexually transmitted disease. This news leaves parents facing the reality that one in four young women in the U.S. is infected with human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, herpes simplex virus or trichomoniasis.

College rumors hit the Web

With the help of MUGreekGossip.com, the rumor mill has picked up speed in the past 18 months, and few scandals escape the all-seeing eyes of an anonymous group of gossip writers. MUGreekGossip is just one of a slew of national sites catering to young adults that harness the Internet’s power of complete anonymity along with the all-too-human vice of dishing dirty secrets.

The demise of the film critic

Film criticism is far from the sole casualty as the newspaper stares down a potential slide into oblivion, but it is consistently one of the earliest. The past two years have seen a glut of firings and departures that have repercussions for film discussion and the industry around which it revolves.