DJ Colette Really RoX!
She'll Take You To Mars, But Only If You Smile by Bryan Carrigan

Chicago house music hits mainstream radio this month, when DJ Colette and Kevin Dees launch their weekly mix show, Maximum Rotation on 97.7 KIISFM. The two hour show, which airs from 8-10 pm, headlines the station's Saturday night line-up.
While launching a radio show that's already slated to go into national syndication on XM Satellite Radio may seem daunting - even more so because it's the first nationally syndicated house music show - DJ Colette has already proven that she can find the right mix to fit the groove. As one of the first DJs to add live vocals to records while she spins, she's inspired a whole new category of performance in the world of dance music. With the radio show, she's just adding another layer to the vocal/turntable sets that have distinguished her as one of the best DJs spinning today.
This Chicago native's style is the result of her unlikely upbringing. Throw nine years of formal operatic training into the mix with the fertile Chicago house scene at the turn of the ‘90s and you begin to hear the sound that ressonates through Colette's first album, Our Day. "I started singing with house music when I was 16 or 17," she says. "I would go to parties and just freestyle over other DJs playing."
And while she was freestyling, Colette, then a classical music student, was learning how to spin from some of the best talent Chicago had to offer. "I'm very spoiled because Derrick Carter and Mark Farina are the first DJs I got to hear growing up in Chicago," she says, "I defintely learned how to spin watching people. I remember when I was 16, I used to watch Dizz and Lego; I'd watch every little thing that they were doing and tried to suck it in."
"Growing up in Chicago," she says, "everyone started when they were 12, so in high school and my first couple years of college, all of my friends were DJs, and were really accomplished DJs at that. I just had been buying all these records and then I decided to buy some decks just to play around. I never was planning on playing out because it just seemed too late in the game for me to do that, and also, a little bit intimidating."
Fortunately, one of her friends and a member of the Super Jane Collective, a group which Colette help formed, forced her to overcome her naturally shyness and play for a club crowd, where Colette again began improvising lyrics while working the turntables. "It's very impromptu when I write a song over a record," she admits, "cause a lot of times I'll buy the record that day and when I'm playing it out that's when I write the lyrics. There's definitely something to be said for a practiced performance, but it's really freeing to just improvise. It's just like dancing; you don't have a set routine when you go dancing at a club; you just feel it and you react to it. And it's the same thing for me."
Having logged enough hours in clubs and festivals throughout the world, both on her own and with the Super Jane Collective, Colette has established herself as an upper-echelon DJ. Colette's album Our Day and the radio show bring her skills to a wider audience. "With all the music that I've been making," she says, "I've been really trying to focus on a lot of positive things, both sonically and lyrically."
With a second album scheduled for release this spring, and national syndication looming on the horizon, there's no doubt Colette's audience will continue to grow as she rockets towards fame, smiling all the way.

Electric Cars: What a Sham!
I Want My Freedom Car, Now!!!
by Frida Rome


Waiting ten more years to develop the “Freedom Car,” is a sham. Right now, we have hybrid technology, and there are even some innovative do-it-yourself types who have successfully transplanted a hybrid engine into a medium sized SUV. Contrary to the long perpetuated myth, you do not have to deprive yourself, or drive a small car, in order to be smart about fuel efficiency. Consumers should be able to drive whatever vehicle they choose without being “unpatriotic gas guzzlers,” and our leaders should set their sights on fuel-efficient vehicles - in the interest of national security.

It has been argued that our oily policies abroad are actually endangering our national security. Since 9/11, Americans have had to take a long, hard look at just how much we really pay for cheap gas. It’s not so cheap when you consider the billions of hard earned tax dollars we spend defending, arming, and giving aid to oil producing nations. Despite their human rights abuses, oppressive regimes, and even underground support for Osama bin Laden, we continue to lavish upon them ally status and tax dollars.

Let’s get smart about fuel efficiency, true freedom, and national security by developing smart solutions and weaning ourselves off foreign oil. Drilling in Alaska is not a long-term solution. Even in the best estimates, the oil we may squeeze out of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge won’t even last us more than a year or two. Even if Cheney & Bush keep their promise to spend billions of our tax dollars in subsidies and handouts to Big Oil to explore and drill, it’s estimated that it would take at least ten years to bring that Alaskan oil to market.

If we were to drill in every last corner of America, we still only have 4% of the world’s oil supply. We simply cannot compete with the oil producing nations. Saudi Arabia alone contains 80% of the world’s oil. We consume approximately 25% of the world’s oil, yet according to a recent report on ABC’s Nightline, we only get about 10% of our oil from Saudi Arabia. Just by upping fuel efficiency on trucks, vans, and SUVs alone, we could not only eliminate our need for Persian Gulf oil, but we could save Alaska’s pristine beauty for generations to come.

America leads the world in technology, not oil reserves. Put our good ol’ American know-how to work and bring to market the “freedom car” – now! While we’re waiting another decade for fuel cell technology, why not utilize hybrid technology already available? There are free, renewable resources to explore, including micro solar panels and wind turbines, biomass, and more. We may never be able to completely replace fossil fuels, but we certainly have enough supplements to make a difference.

Proving “where there’s a will, there’s a way,” British supermarket chain, Asda, is now powering its delivery trucks with chicken fat. Asda's Environment Manager Ian Bowles told Reuters that “the chain's 258 stores in the United Kingdom generated 138,000 liters of chicken waste and cooking fat [and] The UK produces 50-90 million liters of waste cooking oil a year…an awful waste of resource to just send it away to landfills or pour it down the sink.”

Our national symbol, the bald eagle, nests in The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Do we really want to replace it with an oil rig? Are our oily foreign policies truly serving America’s best interests? Or just the very few who have stuffed our leader’s pockets with campaign contributions?

If the Enron debacle showed us anything, it showed us that Big Energy is suspected of market manipulation and buying political favor. Who will benefit from Cheney’s energy policy? - average Americans, or those who allegedly helped him draft that policy?

Spacesuits The Fake & The Real Thing
by Anna McWillie

With alien scum returning this May and the International Spacestation in need of “walkers” to build it’s expansion, now’s the time to look into that spacesuit you’ve been dreaming of. I recommend Global Effects in North Hollywood. Their selection, fit, and service can’t be beat! Every major movie studio, all the big advertising agencies, and even NASA go there for theirs!

President and founder of the company, Christopher Gilman is responsible for the high standard and excellence of craftsmanship. His father had an aerospace industry supply business, and Gilman, growing up, never learned how to think inside of the box. Instead, he taught himself how to build and make just about anything. Fascinated with the power of illusion, making something look real - magic - he started out in the entertainment business as a stuntman in a show in Old Tucson.

Gilman’s desire to become an astronaut led him to develop outstanding spacesuits in addition to the extensive props and wardrobe he has fabricated from plastic, metal, rubber and exotic materials. A walking encyclopedia, he can tell you about the first fax machine invented in France in the 1700s, the first computer invented at the turn of the last century, the first printing press, from China. But what Global Effects is most famous for is great fitting suits of armor, realistic weapons, saddles, crowns, jewelry, award winning and advanced technology cool and heat suit systems, space helmut adapters (real ones), and, of course, spacesuits!

The reason spacesuits are in demand: The International Spacestation. Now spanning only 60 feet, by the time it is completed, it will be the size of two football fields and will be visible from Earth. In order the build the Station, astronauts need to leave their ship and tinker with their wrenches and screwdrivers, like an erector set on a very large scale in a very toxic environment. Spacesuits must fit very well and provide maximum mobility so that the worker astronauts can do their job. A space suit needs to provide an environment like a spaceship. When it is blown up with air, it must allow the person wearing it to bend, move, and work.

Presently, only 7 astronauts at a time can be blasted to the spacestation to work on it. The need to build it is so great that everyone eligible for a spacewalk must be outfitted with a good fitting suit and ready to work. There are only 4 sizes of spacesuits at this time: extra large, which fits 20% of the astronauts; medium and large, which fits 60%; and small, which fits another 20%. Global Effects was contracted by NASA to design a suit for women astronauts. However, there are so many eligible male astronauts that already fit into one of the 4 sizes that women astronauts are not needed at this time.

There are 2 types of spacesuits, the EMU and the ACES. The EMU (external mobility unit) is the Big White One. It is not like the Apollo suits, which werre cutom to each astronuat, but comes in 4 sizes. It is a spacecraft in the shape of a body, used for activity outside the spacecraft. (Astronauts wear shorts and polo shirts inside the craft.)

The other suit, the ACES (advanced crew escape system) is the Pumpkin Suit, bright orange for detection and discovery in case of a mishap while entering the Earth’s atmosphere.

Another reason to outfittted for a space suit: Men in Black are coming this May to fight off another wave of alien scum. In case of kidnapping or some other encounter, look into getting your self some sort of protective suit to have on hand for a mishap.
Global Effect, Inc. 7115 Laurel Canyon Blvd, No Hollywood 818-503-9273.