Negative 65 degree weather doesn’t stop U.S. Marshall Carrie Stetko from solv­ing a murder—or two—in the largest uncharted land­mass in the world—Antarctica.

Detective Stetko flies from the U.S. in hopes to get away from her past and ends up in a worse sit­u­a­tion than she expected. A body was found in the mid­dle of nowhere in Antarctica, and she now has only two days to solve the case before a huge win­ter hur­ri­cane hits the base leav­ing them stranded up there for six months.

What makes it more sus­pense­ful is, since it’s in Antarctica, the weather is deadly to the body; the white­outs that occur cre­ate much dif­fi­culty for the killer and Stetko, along with a U.N. Operative, Bryce, who comes to inves­ti­gate the mur­der, to find and catch each other.

The weather gets so bad you can’t even see six inches in front of you, mak­ing the out­side chases the best part.

The movie cer­tainly exceeded my expec­ta­tions. I was expect­ing it to be a typ­i­cal “I know how it ends after watch­ing the first half hour of it,” but I cer­tainly did not expect what I ended up see­ing. It was an edge-of-your-seat movie that kept the sus­pense going throughout.

It was a lit­tle slow in the begin­ning, but picked up pretty fast.

The act­ing was superb, as I expected, but the sto­ry­line I was uneasy about. I liked the actors enough that I took the risk and saw the movie, and it was
worth it.

The Meanwhile Film Series, set to take place at the Wealthy the­atre in Grand Rapids, Mich. offers an array of films for the next 23 weeks. An his­toric venue, the the­atre will present the shows on Tuesday nights.

All start at 8 p.m. and cost $5 per person.

Upcoming Movies

• Sept. 22: “Miller’s Crossing”
• Sept. 29: “Death Race 2000”
• Oct. 6: “Labyrinth”
• Oct. 13: “Suspiria”
• Oct. 20: “The Howling”
• Oct. 23: “Forbidden Zone”
• Oct. 27: “Dead Alive”
• Nov. 3: “Twelve Monkeys”
• Nov. 10: “Dr. Strangelove”
• Nov. 17: “UHF”
• Nov. 24: “The Big Lebowski”
• Dec. 1: “The Frighteners”
• Dec. 8: “Big Trouble in Little China”
• Dec. 15: “Darjeeling Unlimited”
• Dec. 22: “Dark Crystal”
• Jan. 4: “Gleaming the Cube”
• Jan. 11: “History of the World Part 1”
• Jan. 18: “French Connection”
• Jan. 25: “This is Spinal Tap”
• Feb. 1: “Batman 1966”

Another round of blues music at Top Taggart Field

Big Daddy Fox and the Krewe are back to bring the blues to FSU.

The sec­ond annual Blues and Barbeque hits Top Taggart before the Ferris vs. Grand Valley foot­ball game Saturday, Sept. 19 from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.

Admission into the event is $8 for Ferris stu­dents and $10 for adults and GVSU fans. Children 10 years old and under are free. If you bring a non-perishable food item, you can get a dol­lar off your ticket price.

The Student Government will “donate all of the food to the local food pantry and all of the money will ben­e­fit the stu­dent schol­ar­ship” for which this event was created.

The menu is expected to include ham­burg­ers and hot­dogs in addi­tion to ribs.

Big Daddy Fox and the Krewe are Grand Rapids natives and per­formed last year for this event.

Big Daddy Fox was born in Muskegon and “dis­cov­ered his love of music at the age of seven when he heard Cecil Fisher at a house party,” accord­ing to his Web site, big​dad​dy​fox​.net.

Big Daddy’s biggest inspi­ra­tion was Johnny “Guitar” Watson. He spent the sum­mer of 1964 in Idlewild, Mich., “cut­ting his teeth with some of the remain­ing local musi­cians play­ing at the lake and at the park,” said his Web site.

Big Daddy joined his first band called Jakki, in 1974. They toured disco clubs in New York city and man­aged to record their first sin­gle called “Sun Sun Sun.” Their sin­gle was fea­tured on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand but the record went nowhere despite its national exposure.

In 1978 Big Daddy toured church halls and base­ments with leg­endary gospel artists Willie Banks and The Messengers.

After a year of tour­ing, Big Daddy stopped play­ing and set­tled down for the next 20 years until in 1999 when he decided to take his first gig on a river­boat barge in Greenville, Miss.

Now after com­ing out of retire­ment Big Daddy has worked many series of local gigs in Michigan.

“Everywhere Big Daddy went the crowds and musi­cians loved him; peo­ple said ‘aint’ no party like a Big Daddy party,’” accord­ing to his Web site.

After 42 years in the music busi­ness Big Daddy was hon­ored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by The Mid North Michigan Blues Society in 2006.

Big Daddy and the Krewe won the fifth annual MNMBS Blues chal­lenge held at The Odawa Casino Resort in Petoskey, Mich.

Now Big Daddy will come back to Ferris again to liven up the bar­beque with some blues
music.

Human sex­u­al­ity is one of Dr. Friar’s specialties

Dr. Robert Friar, best known for teach­ing human sex­u­al­ity, has been talk­ing and teach­ing about sex for decades.

Friar earned a Bachelor’s degree in Agriculture and Biology, a Master’s degree in Endocrinology, and holds a doc­tor­ate in Physiology with emphases in Reproductive Physiology and Neurophysiology from Purdue University and began teach at Ferris in 1967.

Friar teaches human sex­u­al­ity, in addi­tion to human phys­i­ol­ogy and anatomy.

“I never asked to teach Human Sexuality,” Friar said, “I never went look­ing for it; it found me.”

Former Ferris pro­fes­sors, George Janzen and Leon Keys, asked Dr. Friar to help them teach human sex­u­al­ity since he is famil­iar with the repro­duc­tive sys­tem. After Janzen retired and Keys passed away, the class was all Dr. Friar’s.

“There was a great need for this human sex­u­al­ity class because, in our cul­ture, we don’t talk about sex and sex­u­al­ity; a lot of peo­ple are mis­in­formed about it.”

Ferris stu­dents Jillian Speaks and Alysia Schuitema both com­mented on Friar and his human sex­u­al­ity class.

“Dr. Friar is a great and smart teacher; what I learned in five min­utes in his human sex­u­al­ity class is more infor­ma­tive and help­ful than what I learned in five hours of any other class I’ve taken,” said Schuitema.

“Dr. Friar treats us like adults. He is very pro­fes­sional when it comes to him teach­ing. His class was inter­est­ing and the sto­ries he had were great and fun to lis­ten to,” added Speaks

In his 43 years at Ferris, he has only had one col­league show con­cern about his teach­ing meth­ods in his human sex­u­al­ity course.

According to Friar, this pro­fes­sor had a class after his anatomy and phys­i­ol­ogy class. Dr. Friar left his slides in the class­room. This pro­fes­sor saw them and hap­pened to pick up a slide that showed a penis. She took it to Dr. Friar and said “why are you show­ing this to our stu­dents? You could get fired for this.”

Dr. Friar responded, “We should not be ashamed to dis­cuss what God wasn’t ashamed to create.”

Dr. Friar has demon­strated his abil­ity to dicuss sex freely and eas­ily, but rec­og­nizes when oth­ers are per­haps not of the same state of mind. “The penis,” Friar said, “has more names than any other organ in our body.”

If any­one uses the wrong ter­mi­nol­ogy of the penis and vagina, that shows, accord­ing to Dr. Friar, that those peo­ple are uncom­fort­able with their sex­u­al­ity. They are afraid of what and who they are when they use other words to hide what they really mean to say.

“The brain is the num­ber one sex organ. All sex­ual desires and sex­ual thoughts come from our brain,” he said.

Friar added, “The more knowl­edge we have about sex and sex­u­al­ity, the less likely we are to get involved in inap­pro­pri­ate sex­ual behav­iors. People who have a good under­stand­ing of sex and sex­u­al­ity will tend to use their frontal lobes of their brain to make sex­ual choices. People lack­ing that knowl­edge are prone to let their hypo­thal­a­mus dic­tate their sex­ual behav­iors. The frontal lobes think and use rea­son to make deci­sions. The hypo­thal­a­mus gives us reflex­ive types of behaviors.”

“If we want our chil­dren to make wise sex­ual choices, then we need to pro­vide them with com­plete and accu­rate sex­ual infor­ma­tion,” said Friar.

College cin­ema cul­ture that can’t be ignored

20. “Twilight”
19. “The Breakfast Club”
18. “Die Hard”
17. “Fight Club”
16. “Batman: The Dark Knight”
15. “American History X”
14. “Star Wars”
13. “Young Frankenstein”
12. “Schindler’s List”
11. “Forrest Gump”
10. “The Wizard of Oz”
9. “WALL-E”
8. “Grease”
7. “E.T.: Extra Terrestrial”
6. “Serendipity”
5. “Jurassic Park”
4. “Back to the Future”
3. “Harry Potter”
2. “Eagle Eye”
1. “Toy Story”

• Traveling
• Water ski­ing and snow ski­ing in Traverse City
• Photography
• Gardening
• Spending time with his grandchildren
• Teaching:

“It’s the most won­der­ful pro­fes­sion in the world and the only pro­fes­sion that I know of that I can give away my knowl­edge and never lose it.”
- Dr. Robert Friar.

Dr. Friar Topics

• Reproductive Anatomy and Physiology
• Why we are attracted to another person
• The role of the hypo­thal­a­mus and the higher brain cen­ter as they relate to our sexuality
• The dif­fer­ent between love and lust and how to rec­og­nize the dif­fer­ence between them
• Relationships
• Communication skills
• Sexual activ­ity
• Birth con­trol
• Sexually Transmitted Diseases
• Inappropriate sex­ual behaviors

FSU’s Information Technology Services (ITS) presents Geocaching

Ferris cel­e­brates its 125th birth­day with lots of events, includ­ing a trea­sure hunt.

Geocaching is an activ­ity done by peo­ple all over the world. A geo­cache is hid­den some­where, any­where, and its seek­ers use a GPS to help them locate the geo­cache, or treasure.

The hunt will begin on Thursday, Sept. 3 at 3 p.m. and con­tain mul­ti­ple dif­fer­ent geocaches.

Jody Gardei, Team Central Coordinator for the Computer Technology Services, said the stu­dents will have instruc­tions that give them details on what to look for, which is avail­able at the Founder’s Day kick­off and at local busi­nesses around Big Rapids.

The infor­ma­tion will also be avail­able on geo​caching​.com and fer​ris​.edu/​1​2​5​/​c​a​c​h​ing.

In order to find the trea­sure you need a GPS though, cor­rect? Yes. GPS receivers will be avail­able for check­out in FLITE. “I think it will give them a chance to try some­thing new and pos­si­bly get hooked on Geocaching,” said Gardei.

According to Gardei, eight Ferris colleges/departments are already plan­ning on par­tic­i­pat­ing in this event. Each depart­ment will be respon­si­ble for a Geocache. Gardei said the caches will be stocked with “swag,” or trea­sure, stu­dents can take for participating.

Not only will the stu­dents enjoy that “loot” but should also be inter­ested in the prize for com­plet­ing the trea­sure hunt. Students will be entered into a monthly draw­ing to win a Limited Edition FSU 125th Anniversary coin, said Gardei.

When asked what she thought about Founders’ Week and this event, Gardei said, “This is a great way to learn more about the his­tory of Ferris and see where Ferris is going in the future. They will prob­a­bly go to places around cam­pus that they didn’t know existed before.”

The Final Destination is an R-rated movie about a new group of adults who try to escape death.

The movie starts right off with the first big inci­dent and chaos occurs after. Our main char­ac­ter doesn’t look at pic­tures for the clues, doesn’t “feel” the pain that will hap­pen to the next per­son who dies, and doesn’t see what’s going to hap­pen next; he only sees clues. He gets visions of the pos­si­ble weapons, places, and things around the soon-to-be-crime scene and has an eerie “feel­ing” about things to lead him to the next per­son on death’s list.

This new install­ment of the series didn’t quite cut my expec­ta­tions as I thought it would. The 3D ver­sion of the movie helps, but the sto­ry­line was a bit boring.

Yes, I already knew the basic sto­ry­line so how can that change, but every­thing just hap­pened too quickly.

Maybe it was the mod­er­ate act­ing, maybe it was the gore, maybe it was the “oh how can that hap­pen” type of think­ing, but over­all it was just okay to me.

If I had to give it any­thing, I’d rate it a 2.5 out of 5.

The graph­ics, gore, and sto­ry­line are good; act­ing is mediocre, but if you liked the pre­vi­ous three movies, like I did, if you own the pre­vi­ous three movies, like I do, then it just may be worth your money to see.

Movie Trivia Question

“Inglourious Basterds” star Brad Pitt is also well-known for play­ing a “soap sales­man” in what 1999 Oscar nom­i­nated block-buster hit? Contact torch@ferris.edu with the answer!

Ferris Alumnus, Shawn Christian, on “Days of Our Lives”

Shawn Christian is famous for act­ing in mul­ti­ple tele­vi­sion shows, includ­ing “As the World Turns,” the short-lived “Summerland,” and cur­rently “Days of Our Lives.”

Christian, born in Grand Rapids, Mich., grad­u­ated from Rogers High School in Wyoming, Mich., where he was voted as hav­ing the “Hottest Student Body” by his high school class­mates. He then went on to obtain a degree in Marketing from Ferris State University in 1989 before mov­ing to Chicago after graduation.

He first landed a spot with the com­pany “Improv Olympic,” where he honed his act­ing skills.

While audi­tion­ing for a print ad in Chicago, he met his soon-to-be-wife, Deborah Quinn. Both were mod­els then. They now have a son together named Kameron who was born in July of 2000.

Christian has always been a help to the com­mu­nity; he received the Congressional Medal of Merit in the early 90s.

Christian started to hit it big in 1994 when he landed his first role in the hit TV show “As the World Turns.” He stayed on the show for three years before mov­ing to L.A. to act on shows like “Charmed” and “Crossing Jordan.”

He was also the first ever male spokesmodel to appear on the TV show “Star Search” back in 1994.

While act­ing in “As the World Turns,” he was nom­i­nated for “Hottest Male Star” by Soap Opera Digest mag­a­zine in 1995.

As he began to gain sta­tus, he climbed the act­ing chain and proved him­self for roles in famous shows like “Ellen,” “Step by Step,” “Beverly Hills, 90210,” “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” “Friends,” “The Drew Carey Show,” “Las Vegas,” and more.

He’s also acted in a cou­ple of movies, but for now he’s stick­ing with play­ing Dr. Daniel Jonas in “Days of Our Lives.”

Some inter­est­ing facts about Christian are: he acted with his step-daughter, Taylor Cole, in Summerland, he shares the same birth­day with Brad Pitt, and is also on the ros­ter of an NBAE (National Basketball Association Entertainment) team. For the 2007/2008 sea­son he played for the Miami Heat with team­mates Jay Harrington and Taye Diggs.

For this infor­ma­tion and more, visit imdb​.com and NBC​.com.