RJ Maller is a senior. He studies political science. He is incredibly gracious and I interviewed him at the Campus Center last Thursday night.
 

So, RJ, what I remember from first year, or maybe from sophomore year, is that you used to make homemade beer, right?

Oh? Yeah.
 

Do you still do that?

I haven’t recently, but I’d like to get back into it. My sophomore year we probably made like 15 batches—and those are five-gallon batches of beer.
 

What possessed you to do such a thing?

Well, I had a friend that sort of got me into it, and I wasn’t, you know, old enough to buy my own alcohol. But it’s legal to buy the ingredients, even if you’re underage.
 

And there’s a store on Grand, right?

Yeah, yeah. It’s a great place. And umm … I don’t know, I like beer. I like drinking beer. It was fun to make. You boil a big pot over a stove for a long time, so it’s kind of like cooking, except you’re making beer, you know? What could be better? I mean, I like cooking to begin with, but here your end product is beer, which is so much better than any solid food that you could cook.
 

You’re from Wisconsin?

Yeah. I’m from central Wisconsin. Really rural, rural Wisconsin. I liked growing up in the country. It was all right.
 

Beats the hell out of the suburbs, right? [because the suburbs are inherently evil]

Yeah, right.
 

How do you feel about the Coke boycott?

I think it’s a great idea. I totally support the Coke boycott. I don’t drink sodas, except I used to drink diet sodas. And I recently quit caffeine. So I guess I am, by default, boycotting Coke.
 

Wow.

I think that Coke’s a great starting point. I think to have an activist community you need to get started somewhere—Coke is cool. I think there are a lot of other local and on-campus things that need to be considered as well. Like the wages of Bon Appétit workers and other campus workers.
 

You know, I saw a chalking outside of the library during the peak of the Coke boycott and it said “DRINK COFFEE TO STAY AWAKE. COKE KILLS!” I thought that was really funny—so suddenly we’ve abandoned the coffee field workers?

That is funny—I guess if we don’t drink Coke, we’re going to drink Pepsi. But that’s cool. I still think it’s a good boycott. It means that people are thinking about the importance of their everyday actions. It’s a starting point, even if it isn’t the most important battle that needs to be fought right now.
 

Going with the soda theme, if you’re on an airplane and you order a beverage from the flight attendant, what do you pick?

Well, ginger ale. But I don’t drink it under any other circumstances.
 

I know! Thank you! I’m so glad that you said that. Because once I was on an airplane and both the people I was sitting next to ordered ginger ale and so did I and when I asked them if they ever drank ginger ale when they weren’t on an airplane, they said no. What is with that? What about flying makes us want ginger ale?

Maybe it’s something about how you know that it might be your last moments on earth, so you let loose; you do things that you wouldn’t otherwise do. You know, like, you’re nervous so you order a ginger ale.
 

I wanna hear more about your capstone—[RJ and I were in a poli sci senior seminar together last semester]—all I remember is that it was about the politics of photography or something. Are you into photography?

Well, I’ve got a really short attention span. But I go through strong phases—obsessions, really. I was really getting interested in photography last semester, and I’m still totally interested. And I’ve got everything to set up a darkroom in my apartment. When it gets warmer I’m going to talk to my landlord about it. I wasn’t interested in photography until last semester. The paper was okay. It was about different political theorists who talked about photography. So, sort of the politics of photography. I can’t really remember what it was about now.
 

So you like theory?

Yeah. I like theory.
 

And you’re taking Kiarina Kordela’s class right now?

Yeah. That’s a really cool class—definitely the most challenging reading of any class, but it’s cool.
 

I like her outfits.

Yeah. I do too. I’m really im-pressed.
 

I mean, every day it’s something new. Well, the bag stays the same. She always carries around that big black leather thing. I notice these things.

Yeah. They’re great. And always totally edgy. You know, like not safe or obvious combinations. It’s totally cool. Oh—another obsession that I got into last semester is fashion magazines.
 

Really? Which ones?

All of them. Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Glamour, Allure, Cosmo, Elle, catalogues, everything. I don’t know what the obsession is for me. It’s kind of the models, but it’s also the fashion. Sadly, there are no men’s fashion magazines to speak of.
 

Yeah, because Details doesn’t really count.

No. And GQ, maybe it used to be more of a fashion magazine, but to compete with Maxim they’ve totally sold out. They’re trying to be as centrist and as much like Maxim as they can.
 

That’s too bad. No one should want to be like Maxim.

ID is really awesome. It’s not all fashion—it’s got culture.
 

Is it American?

No. It’s British.
 

Well, there you go. Do you have any plans after graduation?

I think that I might take some time off and then go to grad school. I’d also like to teach in China. I don’t know any Chinese. But I’d like to try it—I went to China in high school with my family and I’d love to go back.
 

Why’d you guys go to China?

Ummm…it was kind of just a family vacation and uh…let me just leave it at that.
 

Are you guys missionaries?

No.
 

But your middle name’s Jeremiah, right? And that’s a name from the Bible.

No. My parents are not very religious at all. But you’re right, it’s from the Bible. In fact, I went by Jeremiah until I came to college.
 

Oh really? What does ‘R’ stand for?

Just the letter “R.” Even on my birth certificate it just says “R.” My grandfather’s name was Robert, but my parents didn’t want to name me that. They did want to name me something beginning with “R,” but they totally couldn’t agree on what to name me and they were fighting over it. And so I guess in the end they were like, “Fine. We’ll name him ‘R.’ Fine.” And then it just ends up on the birth certificate, it’s like on my driver’s license. Everywhere. That’s my name, just R.
 

Your name is R! That’s wild.

Yep. Jeremiah’s just my middle name. Relatives at first didn’t know what to call me. They were like “How’s baby…er…uh…Maller doing?”
 

Jeremiah, huh? Did you feel a shift in your identity when you started going by RJ?

I tried to get people to call me RJ in high school, but it was totally useless. It was no good. My friends were like, what are you talking about? You’re not RJ. You’re Jeremiah. So, you know, I’d sort of been wanting to change my name for a while, so this was just practical.
 

Yeah. Leaving home made it convenient. Do you have any siblings?

Yeah, I do. Jasmine is my 16 month-old sister. I got to see her over J-term when I spent a couple of weeks at my dad’s. It was just so much fun to be with her.
 

Aren’t babies fun?

Yeah. I’d never been around a baby before and she’s just amazing. She’s toddling and sort of googling. We read together. We play together. We drool on each other. It’s fun.
 

How often do you shave? I’m interested in this because I don’t have facial hair.

I shave every two or three days. I think ideally I’d shave every two days, or even every day to be looking clean-shaven every day. I tried growing a beard but I don’t have enough density or whatever for it.
 

If I had facial hair I think I’d switch it up a bit. I think it’s too bad that I can’t do interesting things with my facial hair. But I guess it’s not a bad thing that I don’t have facial hair.

Well, in terms of the face being a palette or a canvas or something, women do have the option of makeup. And I’ve heard that makeup is being marketed to heterosexual and non-heterosexual men in Japan. It’s a huge emerging industry. If American culture could accommodate this, the people who make makeup would like to do something similar in America.
 

Is there anything you’d like to add as the interview comes to a close? Anything that you’d like the Macalester community to know about you before you leave?

I don’t know. If I think about something, can I e-mail it to you?
 

Oh, yeah. Totally.

Ok. That takes some of the pressure off.