They came to me in the middle of the night. They were young and beautiful and dressed up like they were about to go out. I had about an hour’s warning, and their knock on the door was light so as to wake no one who wasn’t already up. When they got to my doorstep, I was ready. I knew it would be hasty and impromptu, but there’s no reason even a simple wedding can’t be beautiful.

We shared grapes and wine, and I told them that what begins as new and perfect fruit can end up a rich, fermented, much-changed substance that the vine might not recognize. They tasted both and said their vows, and we signed the paperwork. With a little help from their friends, they were married.

In the state of California, any recognized member of the church clergy can marry individuals to one another if the couple has a license. Over the years, I’ve married a handful of couples in the woods and in my living room. I’ve seen the state and the nation struggle over the definition of marriage, and I’ve seen it take many forms. I’ve heard the academic and feminist arguments that marriage was, for many centuries, a primarily economic arrangement to secure the merging and inheritance of property. Much about marriage has changed, but for the very rich and the very poor, the economic part remains the same.

The rich have assets to protect. They draw up contracts and agreements to ensure no one is seduced into a holy and blissful union by a heartless and calculating gold digger.

The poor have other arrangements to make. We are more likely to cohabitate to save money, whether it is appropriate for the relationship or not. In my life, I have known men and women who choose to stay with partners who are abusive or merely unsuited because breaking up means giving up a place to call home.

My friends who were married that night in my living room loved one another and probably would have chosen to marry at some point. The reason they came to me with so little notice, however, was not a pregnancy or a shotgun or even a romantic whim. It was the deadline for FAFSA submissions for the following academic year. Too young to be considered independent from their parents, they were desperate for enough financial aid to transfer to a four-year university. They were the children of vanishing middle class. On paper, their folks could afford to contribute to their tuition, but real life is complicated with gambling addictions and jobs that don’t offer health care.

It wasn’t young love. It wasn’t an impetuous gesture or an adherence to belief. It was a financial decision. Like many decisions forced upon us by poverty, it was a decision that puts the future in jeopardy — no money down, crippling credit terms down the road. The FAFSA considers married students independent and places a student in a wholly separate category for aid. Choosing to marry now to qualify for aid may result in a possibly messy and potentially expensive divorce later, but in the moment, we do what we must. In the meantime, we give one another the gift of an education otherwise out of reach.

Tuition has outpaced the cost of living, outpaced inflation and shows no sign of slowing. People all over are taking drastic measures to afford school, and at the University of California, we are no different. A recent discussion on the cost of housing led some of my classmates to speculate on the appearance of quad dorms with four bunks to a room and the feasibility of (not kidding) camping on the Glade and writing a blog called The Great Outdorms. The idea of getting married for mercenary causes may rankle the romantic soul, but in the scheme of desperation, it seems almost a tame solution.

In my tradition, couples being wed grasp hands and are gently tied together to symbolize their bond. When this couple was tied, I told them to remember that it’s only one hand they’ve given and that the other remains free. True of their marriage, this also became a symbol of their shared commitment to helping one another get through school, support one another’s dreams and be good partners; they were not entirely bound, but they were also not entirely free.

Marriage was never pure. It is sometimes undertaken in the spirit of perfect altruism and true love, but my friends’ practical decision was perfectly in line with the long and fraught history of this evolving institution. They might have given up, waited a few years or taken on crushing loans to move forward with their education. A license to marry costs $97 and takes effect the moment both people say “I do.” They’re responsible to one another and for one another, and they take that seriously. This year, they’ll both graduate from a UC school with their respective bachelor’s degrees.

I now pronounce you educated to the minimum degree necessary to get a decent job.

Meg Elison writes the Monday column on financial issues affecting UC Berkeley students.Contact Meg Elison at melison@dailycal.org.

The post For richer or for poorer appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Micah Fry/Staff

Somewhere in a cloister, there is a nun who kissed Elvis Presley.

There must be some people in the world who live a life without surprises. Most of us, however, find that life unfolds in ways we never expected, showing us that absolutely anything is possible. Mother Dolores Hart of the Order of St. Benedict has lived just such a life, from kissing the King to working for her god.

In her new interview-format autobiography, “The Ear of the Heart,” an aging and respected nun tells a story almost too unpredictable to be believed. Born in 1938, Hart had a difficult start in life. She describes her early life as fraught with the troubles of alcoholism and the terrible effects it had on both her parents, but she is able to look back without malice. Dolores grew up to be as beautiful as them, moving toward a career in film and on the stage. In 1957, she made her debut in “Loving You,” starring with Elvis Presley. Her agent advised the press to call her the girl all other girls would hate, because the script called for her to kiss Elvis. As with any story that passes through the orbit of a star of that magnitude, the interviewer asked Dolores what she made of the King. She describes him very differently than others have, focusing on his gentlemanly qualities and his adherence to religion. Hart recalls an Elvis who was always ready with a Bible quote and did not try to seduce her.

The book leads Hart through recollections of stardom and increasing notoriety in the 1950s. in 1960, she appeared in the well-received film “Where the Boys Are,” which dealt with sexuality in a fairly forthright way for its time. In 1961, she appeared in “Francis of Assisi” in the role of Saint Clare. In the movie, she went through the process of investiture (the ceremony of becoming a nun) on screen, in an odd foreshadowing of the direction her life would take. Later, Hart does not recall that this influenced her decision to enter the order, but it stands as a remarkable signpost of things to come. She starred in several more films until 1963, when her life came to a crossroads.

“The Ear of the Heart” tells the crux of Hart’s life with a kind and open honesty. The interview format keeps the book conversational, almost confessional. She was engaged to Don Robinson and loved him. She had hesitantly said yes, accepting the ring and insisting on keeping it secret for six months. Her career was destined for greatness; one promoter told her she could be as big as Elizabeth Taylor. She had beauty, talent and that indefinable quality necessary to constructing the mythos of a movie star. She had a future and a person who loved her and wanted to marry her. The decision she made would shock everyone; instead of pursuing any part of that life, she entered a monastery and took vows to become a Benedictine monk. In the book, she explains simply that her faith was the only thing she could not live without.

This story is exhaustive but does not answer the question of why this story must be told now — or at all. Mother Dolores may not profit from the work herself, but perhaps this mining of Hollywood history can be made to benefit her mission for people suffering from neuropathy. Loaded with reminiscences of mega-stars and glossy photographs of bygone days, “The Ear of the Hart” will likely find its way into the hands of many old movie fans and makes a great gift for the aging Catholic in your life.

Contact Meg Elison at melison@dailycal.org.

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Corn tortillas were being warmed over an open gas burner, perfuming the kitchen with that taco night scent. A simmering pan bubbled and spat, and I spotted a mounded bowl of shredded jack cheese. Tomatoes, lettuce and onions were arranged like birthday balloons in bright colors, and bottle of crema with a Spanish label lorded over it all, the white-robed lord of the condiments.

I was spending the night at a friend’s, and I was very excited. We had played for hours, and when her mom finally called us in for dinner, we were starving. There was an assembly line, and we could make our own meals. I got to the pan full of shredded beef and looked at it for a minute before getting nudged to get a move on. I was polite and didn’t say anything, but I was very confused.

When I got home, I asked my mom about it.

“So I spent the night over at Yesenia’s.”

“Yeah, I know you did. I met her mom.”

“Her mom made tacos, but she didn’t put any potatoes in the meat.”

“No kidding.”

“It’s like they weren’t even real tacos.”

She laughed a little and sat me down for one of the first adult conversations of my life.

My mom raised four kids on her own. She worked retail jobs and drove broken-down cars, but we never went hungry. She just got creative. Whenever she made beef, she explained to me that she could extend it with potatoes. They were filling, they’d soak up the flavor of the meat and they cost pennies to keep in the pantry. The more recipes she mentioned, the more I realized that she loaded all of my favorite dinners with the cheapest grains and produce she could find to make more out of less. Cabbage rolls with rice and carrots. Meatloaf that was more than half tomatoes and bread crumbs. Dark meat chicken and the heels of rye bread.

Up until I was 12 years old, I thought fettuccine Alfredo was just buttered noodles with pepper. My mom joked that she never cooked more than a pound of ground beef, even when the table was set for eight.

Poor doesn’t always mean going hungry. There is legitimate hunger in this country, but most of America’s poor suffer from a lack of options. People who grew up like me, on rice and bread and potatoes and convenience food, weren’t starving — we were slowly developing diabetes and gout. Our eating habits were formed early, and I still note the price of ramen noodles, holding steady at four for a dollar in my neighborhood store. However, I am trying to learn from the examples set for me by both Lil Wayne and Junot Diaz. I am trying to retain the parts of my identity that were forged by being poor while shedding the bad habits of poverty. My stories come with me, but the ramen and the purple drank have to be left behind.

The national debate about childhood obesity and the eating habits of the very poor isn’t just political. It’s deeply personal. I remember my friends in grade school who ate uncooked ramen sprinkled with the super-salty flavor packet for lunch every day. Not some days, not bad days, but every day. I remember living in a food desert and choosing between dinner at 7-Eleven or Pizza Hut about five nights a week. My mom made the best choices that she could, but there’s no denying that there is a great deal of privilege that can be read in our diets.

Living in the Bay Area, we have access to a great deal of local and imported produce. We can buy organic every day if we choose — and if we can afford it. Restaurants in this area are prepared to answer questions about the origin of ingredients, methods of preparation and even the moral philosophies of how and why they cook what they cook. Our options are numerous; our standards are high. This is the privilege of people who aren’t too hungry to worry about it.

When I visited home this summer, I could see I wasn’t the only one moving on. Like many women who had children when they were very young, my mom is still growing up and still finding herself. I opened the freezer, expecting the 19-cent burritos I grew up on, but I found it full of frozen quartered squash, my mom’s homemade chicken stock for soup and a couple of whole free-range chickens. She’s stopped using anything processed or artificial in her cooking, and she’s not scrambling to feed a bunch of kids anymore. We’ve both changed our circumstances enough that our choices are dictated by what we like rather than what’s cheapest.

We went out to dinner together and talked about what’s changed, and I think she said it best.

“When you kids were growing up, if we went out, I could only look at the right side of the menu, where the prices were printed. Now I only look left.”

We think back, we look left, we look forward. We keep the good and leave the ramen on the shelf.

Meg Elison writes the Monday column on financial issues affecting UC Berkeley students.Contact Meg Elison at melison@dailycal.org.

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“We’re going to go on an adventure.”

My mom had woken me up sometime after midnight to tell me this news. I blinked in the low light, trying to wake up fully.

“What?”

“You’re going to pack up your backpack for a trip. Bring clothes and the stuff that’s most important to you. Whatever doesn’t fit in your bag, we have to leave here.”

“When are we coming back?”

“We’re not. Hurry up.”

I was 7 years old. This was the first time we had to leave in the middle of the night.

We stole quietly out of the apartment. The notice on the door read “EVICTION.” I knew that word. My little brother lay curled up on the floor of the car, under the glass dome of the hatchback. He was asleep with his favorite stuffed animal under his arm. I hoped my mom had packed for him, but I didn’t ask. I had done a terrible job of packing for myself, choosing books and forgetting my hairbrush. The next time it happened, I was better at it.

In my life, I’ve moved more times than I can count. I’ve lived in more states than most people have driven through and more countries than most have seen on vacation. As an adult, I moved for jobs, for school, for love and for fun. As a kid, I moved because we were with the army. After my parents divorced, we moved because we were dirt-poor and could never seem to stay anywhere. Like most kids, I hated it. I could never stay in one school for very long or make friends I could keep. More often than not, we left in the middle of the night, abandoning our belongings, never to return. For a long time, I hated the word “adventure.”

This week, I moved again. But this time, I chose to move. I have lived in Fremont for a whole year, from CalSO to finals, and I never had to worry about packing to leave in the middle of the night. This time, I chose the time and the place, the neighborhood and the size of my new home. I chose the length of my commute and the distance I would have to travel to a grocery store, a library and a freeway.

These changes brought on by my choices got me thinking about moving and privilege. Privilege can be largely represented in choices. These simple choices about how and where to live were choices we didn’t have when I was growing up, because we were poor. We couldn’t choose to stay or go. We couldn’t choose not to live in the ghetto or in a rent-by-week motel — because privileges like that have to be bought. The old saying goes that beggars can’t be choosers, and that is more evident in how and where one lives than in anything else. It is inescapable.

My escape in growing up brought me choices. I get to choose who I live with, where we will live, where we will go.
Living in the South Bay was a hard choice. As I’ve written previously, my choice was between a commute lasting between an hour and a half to three hours, and at a distance from campus that made a social life or club involvement really difficult. Circumstances have changed enough this year that we were able to make the move to the East Bay to a home in West Oakland. The maximum length of my new commute, even if I take the slowest no-cost option, is 40 minutes. It is a new world.

My friends are almost as excited as I am. Everyone is very supportive of this change, and strangers touched by my story tell me they have been rooting for me all along. Our new place is bigger, better located, and packed with better features than anything we’ve had before. There are more good things about this move than I can list, but it feels incredibly fragile to me. To have so much freedom and so much choice is hard to accept after a lifelong habit of being the beggar who could not choose. It all seems too good to be true. I am hanging up pictures, making my bed and making it real. Our choices become our lives, they make up who we are.

I caught the bus in downtown Oakland for the first time a few days ago. The ride was over so quickly that I barely had time to distract myself with emails and texts. The bus pulled up to Bancroft Way, and I was momentarily overwhelmed by the small changes in fortune that led me here. I had my packed my bag for a day, not forever. I have the keys to my new place, and I know it will be there when I get back. The long car ride of eviction and the long bus ride of the beggar have ended.

I am no longer afraid of adventure.

Meg Elison writes the Monday column on financial issues affecting UC Berkeley students.Contact Meg Elison at melison@dailycal.org.

The post Moving on up appeared first on The Daily Californian.

If you attended high school in the United States, you probably read a story called “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant. It’s a story about a poor woman who borrows a necklace from a friend and loses it. She then panics because she believed the necklace was worth a great deal of money. She decides to replace it and never comes clean about the mistake. I remember when I read it — I was a freshman in high school living in a bloodthirsty little town before the anti-bullying crusade began. I knew from experience through elementary and middle school that there were many things I could hide, but being poor was not one of them. Poverty was in my lunchbox, on my clothes, on my no-name brand shoes.

I read “The Necklace” knowing that I’d never make the mistake of borrowing a diamond necklace from a friend — but also that I could just as easily end up a slave to a simple mistake and to my pride. The woman in the story could have just told her friend what happened. I could just tell my friends that my mom had lost her job and that we had to move in with friends of hers. Instead, the woman in the story works 10 years in menial labor to save her pride, and I came up with implausible lies about not wearing my nice clothes to school or doing a science experiment on how fast sneakers fall apart. Pride is the great barrier.

There are many instances in which pride is the correct response. When you’ve accomplished something, when you have learned who you are or when you have overcome an obstacle, you should be proud. When your pride keeps you from texting your exes when you’re lonely or from selling out a friend when you might have profited in doing so, pride is a companion to integrity and self-respect. When pride is a companion to poverty, however, the two can get you into trouble. I can’t count the number of times I’ve laid down my debit card at a restaurant or a bar and said “I’ve got it” when I didn’t have it. Or the times I’ve agreed to go out in the first place when I knew that going out was not in the budget — and that once I was out, I would have to spend money to save face. I’ve had to learn to get over my pride as I’ve gotten older and tell my friends to come hang out at my place, pick somewhere cheaper or go on without me. My pride has often been too large to swallow, but I’m learning.

Part of the trouble is that here in America, we assign no nobility to the poor. We often treat it like a choice that people make not to be ambitious or industrious, forgetting that most people who were born poor will stay poor, because we never catch up. We forget that there are times in life when almost everyone is broke — like in college — and that it’s a temporary state we get through that is not something to be ashamed of. We forget that our friends will understand that we aren’t made of money.

When I finally get up the courage to tell a friend that I can’t afford to go, I’ve always been met with understanding — and sometimes relief. Honesty engenders honesty, and if you fess up to being broke, you might be surprised at who says, “Me, too.” Americans are trained to consume from birth, so saying no and admitting you don’t have the money isn’t easy, but it gets easier as you go. Once I got over the initial peak of my pride and admitted to a friend that I couldn’t always buy concert tickets or sushi, it all seemed to get better from there. I was not rejected because I wasn’t rich.

Economic cycles can sometimes help us out. In times of booming markets, it may be harder to tell people you’re not in a position to spend money for fun — because it’s what everybody does. However, the recent cycle of recession changed what people expected from adulthood almost completely. Most of us no longer expect to be married by 25 and own a house filled with kids by 30. College graduates move back home at an incredible rate these days, and scaled-back entertainments like game night, TV-watching parties and dining in have become trendy and even expected. It’s almost like being broke is cool.

“The Necklace” ends with a tearful confession, and the owner of the lost jewelry tells her friend it was a fake; the necklace was not worth much after all. What has been lost is 10 years during which the main character’s pride deprived her of time, freedom and friendship. Her pride kept her from admitting her poverty, and she suffered in ways that her poverty alone never would have caused. Being broke in Berkeley can be tough, and admitting it can be embarrassing. But refusing to admit it can be much more costly.

Meg Elison writes the Monday column on financial issues affecting UC Berkeley students.Contact Meg Elison at melison@dailycal.org.

The post The pride issue appeared first on The Daily Californian.

When I first met the guy I was going to marry, he told me he had a book called “Dating for Under a Dollar.” I didn’t believe him until he showed me. His parents had raised him in a lifestyle he cheerfully called “frugal” rather than “cheap.” Most of the ideas in the book were things we would never do — for example, camping in the TV display area of an electronics store for the free movies. We kept the spirit of the book alive, if not the letter. Some of our very best dates have cost us little or nothing to go on, and we never run out of good ideas.

His favorites have been literary dates. Once, we went to the public library and picked out our favorite books for a set of ages. We picked books for kindergartners, for 10-year-olds, for 16 and for high school graduation. We pulled our three current favorites. We talked for a long time about what we loved and why, compared how much we had read out of each other’s stacks and basically decided what books we would give as gifts for years to come. One year, for his birthday, we spent the whole day in a huge and friendly used bookstore where the owner didn’t mind if we hung out and read books. At the end of the day, we picked one book apiece and walked to a place where we could get a slice and a Coke. Total cost of both those book dates: less than $10.

My favorite dates have been a little more varied. Most galleries and a large number of museums are free. Viewing art of all kinds for free is one of the incredible benefits of a society that values expression. We’ve seen music, poetry, paintings, sculpture, performance art and dance performances at no cost. We’ve walked into galleries where owners treat everyone like a potential buyer, put glasses of wine in our hands, tell us about artists and processes of production and ask for our views. I keep tabs on the calendars of nearby community colleges and universities, watching for spoken word events, author readings and performances. The ones that aren’t free are usually cheap. We’ve always been able to go out and find culture without giving away all our cash.

Stay-at-home dates and staycations have also become more popular. It’s always cheaper to cook at home than to go out, and it’s something you can do together. Trying out a new recipe from the Internet or attempting to recreate a childhood favorite always starts conversations. When I introduced my husband to my mom, we had a stay-at-home date with an Italian theme. We cooked pasta and made salad together and watched “The Godfather,” which he had never seen. We’ve had other themed parties centered around movies, including whipping up competitive batches of butterbeer during a Harry Potter marathon and a rum-tasting arranged to accompany the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films.

It goes without saying that drinking at home is cheaper than going out. If you’ve ever seen those obscene bar tabs posted on the Internet, you know there are people out there who drink their tuition in a single night. Learning how to mix cocktails and figuring out what you like is a process best undertaken among people you trust in an environment you can control. Plus, bartenders may laugh at how much grenadine you want in your drinks — your significant other will think it’s cute. Drinking at bars and clubs only seems more fun because of the crowds and music and low lights. Hit the switches, invite some friends over and turn it up.
Game night is the old standby. People have been doing it since Monopoly was new, but it doesn’t have to be dull. Look up alternate versions of games you have, or make up your own rules for a more interesting time. Ever try strip Jenga? There are fantastic game stores within walking distance of campus. Need something new? There are great game reviews on YouTube, including shows like TableTop. If board games aren’t your style, download cheap or free games on your cellphone and try to beat each other at Fruit Ninja or Candy Crush. Then you can help each other through rehab for your terrible addiction.

Lots of people think that you can’t have fun dates without a lot of money. Some even hold back on asking people out because they can’t impress them with cash to burn. Dates aren’t about money, and relationships won’t be stable if you base them on what you’re willing to buy. Even if you’re broke in Berkeley, a fun night depends more on your creativity and sense of fun than what you can pay for. If you’re as lucky as I have been, cheap dates can pay off — with interest.

Meg Elison writes the Monday column on financial issues affecting UC Berkeley students.Contact Meg Elison at melison@dailycal.org.

The post Can’t buy me love appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Graham Haught/Staff

Sometimes, when Kanye West, Jay-Z, Beyonce and Frank Ocean love each other very much, they form a self-referential and very profitable psychosexual corporation and produce an album. That album was 2011’s Watch the Throne. Since that album, Jay and Kanye have become fathers, Ocean publicly came out and Beyonce’s stardom has exploded again and again into unthinkable magnitude. All of that is to be expected of the brightest stars of hip-hop and R&B, and anyone with eyes could predict that between Kimye and the Carters, there would be beautiful children. The genuine surprise is that Watch the Throne had children.

Conceived in different studios under separate auspices, both Magna Carta Holy Grail and Yeezus are the offspring of that two-year-old collaboration. They are a pair of mismatched twins saying the same thing in different voices, neither outshining their mother album.

Their human fathers both came to these albums with ambition. Yeezus was leaked and released first and impressed many with how sharply it converged from Kanye’s earlier work. The tracks are not melodic, not danceable and not playful in the least. The aesthetic is stripped, minimalist and even grungy in places. Announcing itself with a naked jewel case, the CD boasts very philosophical and political tracks, like “Black Skinhead” and “New Slaves.” In previous albums, Kanye has always used his bombast and grandstanding to defend his own crippling insecurities. On Yeezus, he comes perilously close to actually addressing them. The aesthetic is raw, but so is the man.

Magna Carta Holy Grail is also very different from Jay-Z’s catalog up to this point. There is little here of the symphonic sardonic of “Empire State of Mind” or “D.O.A.” off of his last solo album, The Blueprint 3. Jay is clearly dealing with his age and responsibilities in a more stark fashion, reflecting that he didn’t learn to be a father from his own father and obsessing over the minutiae of his daughter’s life. However, it’s almost as if he’s compartmentalizing his doubts into the edgier tracks. When Beyonce drops in for “Part II (On the Run),” the result is an embattled but idealized version of events where it’s the three of them against the world, and his doubt does not enter. Disappointingly, the man who wrote “Death of Auto-Tune” and his genuinely talented wife turn in a schmaltzy, overprocessed wannabe single. Jay and Ocean do a cleaner job on “Oceans,” a deeper narrative song about history and diaspora and a quick mention of the painter Basquiat, whom Jay collects. There is one quick rearview mirror moment of the Jay-Z of the past with all his swagger and quick unthinking wordplay on “FuckWithMeYouKnowIGotIt,” the real standout of the album, featuring Rick Ross. The feel of the whole album is contemplative and transitional, as if Jay is ready to move on to his next chapter.

The telling thing about Jay and Kanye, about these two albums, about the state of hip-hop, is where they overlap. Both albums spend a fair amount of time rhapsodizing on the emptiness of conspicuous consumption, which may be said to be the cardinal sin of both artists. Both concern themselves with fatherhood, with religion, with power. Both scoff at themselves in the way they get to all these things.

After Watch the Throne, it was tempting to rank these two artists as equals, but they’re headed in different directions, and that’s clear in their latest work. On Magna Carta Holy Grail, Jay-Z sounds like a man coming to terms with his life, maybe looking for the next phase of his art. On Yeezus, Kanye West sounds like he may finally be growing up.

Contact Meg Elison at melison@dailycal.org.

The post Former collaborators Jay-Z and Kanye West diverge with their latest albums appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Warner Bros./Courtesy

Somewhere in the world tonight, Michael Bay is crying himself to sleep.

“Pacific Rim” is Guillermo del Toro’s monsters-versus-mechas spectacular. It is not a perfect movie, but it is an awe-inducing, jaw-dropping achievement in the visual qualities of the summer blockbuster.

The film does not suffer from a slow start. Residents of the Bay Area should anticipate feeling the rush of pride and horror usually reserved for citizens of Tokyo; San Francisco is the first city attacked on screen. The story follows the sudden invasion of monsters given the Japanese name “kaiju” and the rush to contain them by military force. Naturally, when fighter jets and tanks fail, the superpowers of the world band together to build enormous Gundam-style mechas. This solution leads to some of the best sci-fi battle scenes ever to be born of models and CGI.

The film’s cast members are not its stars. Charlie Hunnam plays the hero, Raleigh. He’s an all-American type with almost no personality and walks around holding on to his crotch for the first half of the movie. His partner, Mako Mori, is played by Rinko Kikuchi with an intensity that is wasted on a part that is little more than a nod to the Japanese origin of the “kaiju” concept — though the only female character in this movie is written with a satisfyingly ungendered hand. Idris Elba, in the role of (essentially) two-eyed Nick Fury, slides through every British accent but his own, occasionally delivering plot exposition or character development that we don’t really need. Those developments will seem familiar to anyone who has seen “Independence Day.” Three nameless Chinese acrobats are introduced in time to die in a red mecha, followed by the Russian team of Dolph Lundgren and Dolph Lundgren in drag, who die with barely a word said. The film is occasionally unintentionally funny, and it’s hard to remember anyone’s name.

None of this matters.

What does matter is the real stars of the film: the monsters and mechas. Once their battles get started, all criticisms are dissolved into the quivering, childlike and overawed terror of the battle scenes. Del Toro’s undeniable genius is all over this. The monster concepts are true to genre but still pack some surprises that no one sees coming. The battles are set up with incredible foreplay, readying and delivery of the mechas (called Jaegers), which are shot with an unhurried confidence in their beauty and scale. We get a good look at these things from every angle — the visual concept of armor and servos are laid out in industrial glory in action and at rest. The Jaegers have several different designs, boasting different special attack features and leading to delightful variety in the fight scenes. This is the triumph of the film.

Comparing “Pacific Rim” to others of its kind shows there is no competition. The late adaptations of “Godzilla” made the right move in making the monster the star but failed to deliver on terror through effects, a dropped challenge that “Jurassic Park” picked up with glee. The “Transformers” franchise delivers thinner stories and shinier robots but gives them to us with a desperate, whirling cinematography, as if afraid to let us get too close. “Pacific Rim” does not have the warmth of “Avatar” or the depth of “Inception,” but it blows every fight scene in every big-budget movie of the last 10 years completely out of the water. The film is playing in IMAX and IMAX 3D. This reviewer is not a 3-D fan, but this is one place where the extra ticket money is worth it. Go see “Pacific Rim.” It’s going to be the one everyone is talking about.

Contact Meg Elison at melison@dailycal.org.

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Chris Granillo/Courtesy

Oakland boasts so much art that it’s impossible to take it all in. Some of it appears furtively, illegally, on the streets and under the onramps. Some of it shows in upscale galleries all over town, with price tags and author credits. Occasionally, the same artist spans the two worlds, leading us to question the nature of graffiti — and of art. Nite Owl’s show at Loakal is one of these boundary-testing exhibitions.

Loakal Art Gallery and Boutique is a multipurpose space. Located near Jack London Square, the setting is hip and clean and away from the madness of downtown. Coming through the front doors, you have the immediate choice of gallery space or retail therapy.

The gallery up front showcases a well-known graffiti artist named Nite Owl in a show called “Aesthetic Transience.” True to his moniker, Nite Owl’s works largely feature owl designs — one grumpy-looking, tough, urban owl in particular. The artist uses reclaimed wood and canvas surfaces and, notably, a borrowed traffic sign. The appeal is obvious and has a strong local flavor; two of Nite Owl’s largest works appear over slaps and bills and are headlined “HELLA.” The aim of the artist is described on his Facebook page as “eclectic artworks inspired by travels, trips and hip hop culture with a splash of big brother paranoia.” The Nite Owl show is complemented by an intuitive hip-hop music set provided by DJ Baysik, who spins new and old hip-hop, mixed to please the crowd rather than to show off. The combination of sight and sound gives visitors to the opening a great sense of the aims of the gallery.

Chris Granillo’s “The Sacred Language of Mystics” is in the transitional space of the gallery, fitting placement for a liminal set of works. Granillo’s style is esoteric and indigenous, using hermetic symbols in a flat, simple figure. Eschewing symmetry and reaching for something more subconscious than conscious, Granillo’s show reaches for something raw. His “Zetans Trial” invites the curiosity and then confronts the onlooker with something unexpected.

Behind the facade, the main part of the building is a large open warehouse. The main foyer is beautifully arranged, with excellent lighting. The corners are partitioned into individual artists’ studios, some of which are open for viewing. Large-scale close-up paintings of everyday objects by Terry Furry are displayed in the open space, including a stunning hand-crank mixer rendered 6 feet long. Furry also shows a collection of religious-themed curios and reliquaries featuring athletic supporters as well as a studio full of very intimate portraits of young urban men in various states of undress.

Artist Sharaine Bell’s studio reveals curious and haunting images of traffic jams, mostly in monochrome. These paintings are strangely affecting despite their common subject matter. Across from her space, dioramas by Jane Elliott offer something very original. Elliott is executing a graphic novel series called “About Mayfair,” the story of a post-petrol world using dioramas as a medium. Their graphic quality and lyrical expression is very compelling.

The retail boutique space of the gallery is almost as interesting as the art. A great deal of handmade craft is offered at good prices, including custom wood iPad stands, quirky handmade jewelry, screen-printed bags and 3-D printed objects. A refreshingly original assortment of Oakland-themed T-shirts is also for sale, including a series based on the giant cargo cranes dreaming of becoming AT-AT Walkers. For art gallery crafts, all of these are offered at very fair prices and are definitely tempting. Loakal Gallery is an intensely Oakland-flavored experience. In both art and craft, it is showing the beating heart of the city.

Contact Meg Elison at melison@dailycal.org.

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“BART’s going on strike.” I got the news first from Twitter.

“Well, we’re screwed,” my roommate said.

His boyfriend piped up reassuringly. “We can make it work. We need to make a plan.”

My tribe of roommates sat down last week to figure out a strategy. Our apartment is in Fremont. Jeff works in Newark only a few miles away, but getting there by bus involves an ill-timed transfer. Devin goes to San Francisco State University in Daly City. John works in Corte Madera, and his normal commute involves three transit agencies, including BART. I have class in Berkeley four days a week, but I can take AC Transit the whole way if I have three hours to spare. Collectively, the household has one car. Solve for X, where X represents everyone getting to work and school on time and before we can’t stand one another anymore.

Solving this dilemma required a complicated system of picking up and dropping off, minimizing tolls and taking advantage of free BART parking during the strike. My roommate selflessly shared his fuel-efficient Honda, and together we put almost 100 miles a day on the odometer. The days began at 4:45 a.m. and ended at 10 p.m., but the job got done. Overall, the measurable cost of commuting this way came to just about the same as our combined cost of commute if BART were running. However, not everything can be measured in dollars and cents.

There are resources available to everyone that are simple to cultivate and can be incredibly valuable. These nonmonetary economic resources are the very thing that saved my friends, my roommates and me during the recent strike. The greatest of these resources is goodwill. My roommate didn’t hesitate to offer us the use of his car. One of my good friends is teaching in the Summer Bridge program and was immediately offered a closer place to stay in Berkeley. Another friend from Cal joined forces with a classmate so that they could carpool from Pleasanton together. The people who extend these offers are kind and generous, but the remainder of these transactions is made up by banked goodwill. The recipients of the kindness and help of friends put in months and sometimes years of the reciprocating behavior of friendship to indicate that we are worthy of this kind of nonmonetary investment.

A person without good friends — without this long term banking of goodwill — might have had to arrange for a rental car or a local hotel room in order to keep a job or make it to class during the last week. Comparing scenarios between people with banked goodwill and people without it doesn’t seem like an argument about economy, but the bottom line can be expressed in debit and credit.

This principle is nearly identical to the idea of networking. Networking is this nebulous idea of making lasting and worthwhile connections, and we’re all supposed to be doing it in college and online and at parties and any time the panic about post-graduation employment sets in. Networking is supposed to bank professional goodwill and remind potential contacts that we are fun at parties and that we know the same people; it’s supposed to keep our names and faces fresh in the minds of those who matter. The ones who matter aren’t always in charge, however. Often, even an entry-level good word is an advantage to an applicant.

Here’s the point: Whether networking for a job or banking goodwill for reciprocity in friendships, your contribution is the same. If you are friendly, if you are kind, if you are forthcoming and generous with your time and your thoughts, the payoff has value, even when forming priceless relationships. Goodwill has a distinct economic worth. It’s an odd way to think of it, but it means having a car to borrow or a couch to crash on in another city during a transit strike. Relationships make up our lives, but they also have measurable utility. The more you put into them, the more you can someday derive from them.

The BART strike lasted less than a week. My friend staying in Berkeley left his borrowed lodging clean and with a vase of flowers on the table in thanks. My friends from Pleasanton worked out the worth of their carpool without gas money, because one is far better off than the other. Instead, the driver asked her passenger to read her the news, tell her jokes and keep the ride interesting. I brought back my roommate’s car with a bunch of new miles on it, but I also ran all his errands for him while I had it and surprised him with takeout.

Being rich or being broke is not merely a condition dictated by the contents of one’s bank account. It is, literally and metaphorically, expressed in the relationships we have with one another and what comes of them. Measure in utils, measure in love.

Meg Elison writes the Monday column on financial issues affecting UC Berkeley students.

Meg Elison writes the Monday column on financial issues affecting UC Berkeley students.Contact Meg Elison at melison@dailycal.org.

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