Daily Bruin – Page 212

Editorial: Feinstein should not dismiss concerns of changing electorate

It takes a lot of courage to read off your political resume to a group of kids and teenagers.

Or maybe just a great deal of hubris.

That might come as news to Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

The internet has been ablaze with a video of Feinstein talking down to a group of schoolchildren seeking her support for the Green New Deal, a climate change reform bill working its way through Congress. The 85-year-old senator from California has been publicly critical of the effort, which was incepted by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Edward J. Markey, stating Congress has no way to fund it.

There’s no denying that Feinstein, who sits on the U.S. Senate subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies, knows how to navigate byzantine budgetary procedures better than most people a sixth of her age. But her encounter with the schoolchildren is more than just a showdown about environmental policies.

It’s about the callousness long-tenured politicians have toward their increasingly diversifying populaces’ needs.

California’s fifth-term senator showed us last week just how bad it can get.

“You didn’t vote for me,” Feinsten remarked in response to a 16-year-old student’s question.

She’s right: Young voters largely didn’t vote for her in 2018.

But the senator’s attitude fuels a dangerous mindset. Although last year’s midterm elections saw unprecedented participation from 18- to 25-year-old voters, dismissive dialogue from politicians serves to disengage young people from engaging civically.

That might have been lost on Feinstein in her nearly three decades in office. The senator has accomplished little since the pass of the millennium, save for an expired assault weapons ban, a voting record showing her support of gay marriage in 1996 and a seat on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Her supposed political acumen has featured her caving into partisan rhetoric from her political opponents – often against the overwhelming wishes of her state’s constituents.

Feinstein voted against a Medicare-for-all bill in 2017, despite 53 percent of Californians supporting single-payer healthcare. She has long spoke of the need to pass legislation securing the legal status of undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children, but has yet to introduce robust legislation – let alone secure the passage of a bill – aimed to accomplishing that.

Perhaps worst of all, she has consistently attempted to boost federal government surveillance programs. That includes her 2013 FISA Improvements Act, meant to extend the National Security Agency’s ability to search records without warrants, and her 2018 vote in favor a bill to boost the FBI’s ability to probe citizens’ digital communications.

These collective failures only further sting in light of Feinstein’s tasteless comments about her not needing to care about the concerns of those who didn’t vote for her – especially when they’re predominantly children who are admirably trying to interface with their elected official.

Sure, Feinstein wasn’t denying climate change in the video. And she has the right to reasonably disagree with the specifics of the Green New Deal. But her pomposity in responding to the sincere – and very real – concerns of her constituents is a slap in the face to people who, unlike her, will have to live with the consequences of climate change for the majority of their lives. Feinstein embraced the same condescending attitude driving the young electorate’s disillusionment with government.

In her conversation with the children, Feinstein suggested that, “People should listen a little bit.”

She would do well to heed that advice for the next six years.

Second Take: ‘Green Book’ Oscar win drives home ignorance of racism’s complexity

“Blue Cadillac” would have been a more apt name for “Green Book” – the car is featured more prominently than the titular guide book, historically used to help black travelers find safe accommodations.

While “Green Book” certainly wasn’t terrible, the contentious best picture is a flawed pick for the Oscars’ top award, especially in a year filled with strong contenders. The film’s win indicates the Academy’s deep misunderstanding of the film’s questionable attempts to capture American racism at large.

“Green Book” tells the story of an unlikely friendship between Tony Vallelonga (Viggo Mortenson), a rough-around-the-edges New Yorker, and Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), the African-American classical pianist. As Shirley tours the American south, he hires Vallelonga as his driver. Vallelonga is introduced as someone so racist that he is disgusted by the thought of drinking out of a glass previously used by a black man. Yet through the course of a three-month business engagement, he reaches a point where he both advocates for Shirley and invites him to his home.

Furthermore, the film is supposedly “inspired by a true friendship” and is based on Vallelonga’s life. While historical films often take some creative liberties, it seems the film did little to research or represent the characters and history accurately. The script was written by Nick Vallelonga, Tony’s son, without any consultation with the Shirley family. When the film premiered, various members of the family called it “full of lies,” saying that it misrepresented Shirley and the nature of his relationship with Vallelonga.

The family cited numerous discrepancies between the movie and reality – Shirley was not estranged from his family as the movie suggests, nor was he unaware of how to eat fried chicken, as a particularly tasteless scene in the film suggests. Family members also claimed that Nick Vallelonga misrepresented the relationship, transforming their strictly employer-employee relationship into a friendship. Shirley’s niece Carol Shirley Kimble put it best, saying that the filmmaker chose to depict a white man’s version of a black man’s life, undermining her uncle’s agency and presenting Vallelonga as the hero of the story for being less racist by the end of the story.

To make matters worse, after the Oscars, Nick Vallelonga fielded a question asking why he didn’t consult with the family. In response, he said he didn’t even know that the Shirley family really existed. In a similar vein of omission, when “Green Book” won best picture, the producers’ acceptance speech failed to mention Shirley or the guide book from which the film took its title.

This lack of research and perspective isn’t just a hiccup in the writing process – it permeates the perspective of the film. Shirley is a mere supporting character in his own story, and each scene in which Ali shines is a reminder of the more compelling movie that could have been created. Instead, the film presents Shirley as a victim of racism, constantly getting himself into predicaments from which he needs saving.

The audience is quickly introduced to Vallelonga’s racism when his wife offers two black construction workers a drink of water. When the workers set the glasses down, Vallelonga scoops the cups into the garbage can. The moment is treated as a piece of simple character establishment, but the film minimizes the implications of deep-seated prejudice that the scene incurs – it’s not just a discomfort with people of color, but an active view of their inferiority.

And yet Vallelonga is able to simply bounce back without any particularly challenging moments or deep thought. Simply being in Shirley’s presence somehow ‘fixes’ him, an arc that is both too neat and deeply unrealistic – Vallelonga’s redemption is never earned. Racism is messy and ugly, but “Green Book” wants audiences to believe that getting to know one black person will obliterate it.

The film’s failings reveal a desire to boil down America’s deep racial divides into a solvable problem by illustrating racism as an interpersonal issue, a framing that ignores the larger, structural issue of institutional racism. Racism cannot be solved merely through a single friendship because it permeates our culture and our society, structuring our world. That’s not a feel-good illustration, but it is the truth – one that “Green Book” tries to work around.

If the Academy truly wanted to reward a film that tackled race in a nuanced and interesting way, there were plenty of films that did so, from “The Hate U Give” to “BlacKkKlansman.” The latter in particular provides sharp contrast, particularly because of the film’s unapologetic portrayal of racism’s continuing legacy and violence.

Or perhaps next year, the Academy could honor the recent documentary “The Green Book: Guide to Freedom,” which actually looks at the historical legacy of the original “Negro Motorist Green Book.”

But “Green Book” did neither. Perhaps the film was made with “love,” “tenderness” and “respect” as producer Jim Burke stated in his acceptance speech, but the gap between intention and reality reveals a reductive ignorance not at all exemplary of modern cinematic achievement.

Japanese silent film narrators to provide interpretive, engaging performance

Characters in silent films didn’t always stay silent – at least, not in Japan.

In the early 20th century, silent Japanese films were often accompanied by benshi, performers who narrated the film to audiences from inside the theatre. Paul Malcolm, a programmer from the UCLA Film & Television Archive, said most Japanese films from the silent era have been lost due to mismanagement and the effects of World War II, making contemporary benshi performances rare.

“The Art of the Benshi” program, presented by the archive alongside the Tadashi Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities, will attempt to give audiences a historically accurate recreation of the benshi experience this weekend at the Billy Wilder Theater.

“Eventually, the benshi developed this very fascinating art form unto itself in which the benshi became true storytellers,” Malcolm said. “They were adding (to) and deepening the audience’s experience of that story.”

The program is able to produce an event with three benshi and many silent films through the Yanai Initiative’s partnership with Waseda University in Japan. Many of the benshi and musicians performing in the program are either affiliated with or work at Waseda University, Malcolm said.

Michael Emmerich, a professor in UCLA’s Asian Languages & Cultures department and director of the Yanai Initiative, said financial limitations often made it common for only one benshi to perform during modern renditions.

However, Emmerich said they will present multiple benshi over the weekend to emphasize the art form’s range of styles. Malcolm said each benshi writes their own script, so even if two benshi narrate over the same film, the audience will receive different interpretations based on which characterizations the benshi chooses to accentuate.

Contrary to American film history, the benshi, rather than actors, are often considered the first stars of Japanese film history, said Junko Yamazaki, a professor in UCLA’s Asian Languages & Cultures department. Malcolm said people would base their film decisions on which benshi was performing, similar to how Americans would pick a movie based on a particular actor. To interpret the films, Yamazaki said benshi would shift their tone of voice to differentiate between characters and act out physical gestures to reiterate the story’s sentiments.

Benshi also narrated international films, acting as cultural translators that mitigated societal differences and foreign customs for Japanese audiences, Malcolm said. Some of these cultural translations required benshi to convey controversial subject matter, Malcolm said. One of the program’s films, “The Cheat” directed by Cecil B. DeMille, caused controversy in 1915 by misrepresenting a Japanese character, Malcolm said. The film’s antagonist was a Japanese-American art dealer, and Malcolm said the stereotypically exoticized characterization enacted a protest from a Japanese-American civil rights organization.

“I’m curious to know how the benshi may have interpreted those (misrepresentations) for the Japanese audience,” Malcolm said. “That’s why ‘The Cheat’ is one of the films that I’m most looking forward to seeing how they sort of handle that.”

While the advent of sound edged out the benshi, Yamazaki said resistance to the narration was present in Japanese film society before talkies gained popularity. This can be seen in “Dragnet Girl” directed by Yasujirō Ozu, which will be screened Saturday. The film shows how intertitles and image sequencing were used to prevent the benshi from being able to interpret and present the dialogue in their own way, Yamazaki said. Benshi wrote their own scripts, so some filmmakers would sequence intertitles and images in a way that prevented benshi from adding their own interpretation to the film, Yamazaki said.

Although other cinema cultures developed orators to accompany silent films, Yamazaki said the Japanese benshi and their respective art form stand apart from the rest. Western cinema was often accompanied by live orchestra, but Emmerich said such performances still remained focused on the screen. Benshi made the moviegoing experience more engaging through dynamic acting and narration, Emmerich said.

“The benshi is much more than a visual experience. It’s almost like its own beast,” Emmerich said. “You know it’s film, but it’s a different genre.”

Owner of TLT Food speaks on success of restaurant, goals for UCLA community

Daniel Shemtob is the definition of the millennial persona amplified.

Aside from his round glasses and neon green TLT attire, the first thing I noticed about him was his tattoo; “I am the future” read legibly across his right forearm. I instantly sensed that it was not just a saying he inked on his body to be trendy. He truly believes he and his company are the future.

And as far as college catering businesses go, they just might be.

The Lime Truck’s restaurant is a Westwood hotspot, serving as a meeting place for both UCLA students and staff. Long, communal benches, coupled with a TV broadcasting basketball highlights and pop music blaring in the background, show that TLT is a breeding ground for community interaction. The restaurant is meant to foster a sense of unity among Westwood residents, bringing people together over their love for tacos, Shemtob said.

TLT is now offering a more flexible catering menu, along with drop-off and setup options to help serve the university community. The team is looking to cater directly to UCLA-specific events such as Spring Sing, sports games and other on-campus activities. Their goal is to serve fresh, affordable made-from-scratch food.

TLT celebrated its new business plan Feb. 20 by offering a free buffet inside their crowded restaurant on Westwood Blvd. I sat down with Shemtob, owner of TLT Foods, to discuss their road to success. His rapid, decorous speech was interspersed with the occasional “super dope.” Shemtob proudly claimed that TLT started the fast-casual trend in Westwood, which is quite the bold statement.

“I thought Westwood was the perfect culmination of students and young professionals,” he said. “Second- and third-year students at UCLA go and tag all their favorite restaurants in Westwood and they tagged TLT, which reinforced how popular we were becoming. Our business grew tremendously after the first year.”

While we spoke, I took my first bite of the restaurant’s signature Mr. Potato Taco, which was bursting with tangy twinges of flavor. Chimichurri sauce spilled down the blue corn tortilla as Shomteb discussed the restaurant’s most recent partnership with UCLA. TLT was invited to a business fair on campus, but Shemtob was the only business owner in attendance – something he thought was strange. He stressed how important on-campus involvement is to TLT.

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As I munched on roasted corn on the cob, Shemtob busily ran around the restaurant catering to customers and glancing at his watch every chance he could. But when asked about TLT’s relationship with UCLA, he paused to relish in a moment of gratitude.

“I know how special our relationship is with UCLA, and how ingrained we are in that network. I didn’t really realize the capacity of it all,” he said. “It’s incredibly humbling to see our reach.”

It would appear that TLT does have strong ties with the UCLA community. Kimberly Arizabal, program manager at the David Geffen School of Medicine, has been eating at The Lime Truck for about 10 years, before they opened the Westwood restaurant. When she found out about their restaurant and learned they delivered, she decided to try out their catering service for department meetings.

She has never received any complaints about TLT’s service from fellow faculty members, she said. The food is flavorful and the delivery is quick, she said. She uses their company to cater events at least once a month.

I spoke to TLT manager Shane Curran, who opened up about their relationship with the university. There’s a responsibility to make food that’s both tasty and affordable, especially since TLT is so well-known among the Westwood community, he said. Southern California slang and laid-back vibes may be obvious TLT staples. But Shemtob and Curran’s aura of millennial entrepreneurship is not a facade.

“I opened this restaurant when I was 23, so I was around the same age as a lot of college kids, and at the time I had friends who were in graduate school at UCLA. It was so cool to hear kids in their classes talking about TLT,” Shemtob said. “That was one of those moments where you feel really overwhelmed and blessed.”

Cooking with Chemistry: Understanding how your pots, stoves handle heat in your kitchen

Chemistry as a science sounds like something that should strictly be confined to a laboratory with poisonous toxins and exploding reactions, but as it turns out, most labs aren’t quite like that. In fact, the most important laboratory is found in every home: the kitchen. Understanding the complex processes that go on in the kitchen allow us to go further than the recipe to improve our cooking.

A chef is more than someone who combines certain ingredients in a certain order – a true chef is a master of thermodynamics.

The science of heating plays such a prevalent role in cooking that it can contribute to how food is described: steamed eggs, grilled onion, seared steak. The methods used in cooking are combinations of the three basic ways of heat transfer: conduction, convection and radiation.

Click, click, click.

A natural gas stove releases of a mixture of gases, mostly methane. That click you hear when you turn on the burner is the continuous discharge of a piezoelectric crystal, which is basically constant sparks of electric charge emitted into the air. A nice flame erupts in less than a second and you are ready to cook.

Such a process seems so ordinary to us, but producing fire is fascinatingly complex. The mechanism relies on some fuel source, an energetic kick and an oxidant. An oxidant is a unique type of chemical that is capable of robbing an electron from other molecules, typically forming an unstable molecule known as a free radical. But hold on, where was the oxidant in our natural gas stove? Here’s a hint: It’s in the name.

Oxygen, in fact, is the most common oxidant we encounter. The spark generated by squeezing a crystal provides enough energy to destabilize the oxygen in our atmosphere. That excited oxygen crashes into the unstable methane floating around, which in turns creates an unstable free radical, bumping into its neighboring methane molecules.

This ultra-fast chain must eventually stop, but not before it releases light and heat. The fire we observe is not necessarily a definitive thing – it’s light that is released from a reaction that we just so happen to be able to see.

Radiation – No, not the nuclear kind

Radiation is one way for heat to be transferred. If you’re roasting a pig on a spit, you are relying on electromagnetic waves produced by the flame to cook the pig. What is going on when light interacts with the matter?

The specific answers to such a question led to tremendous advancements in the field of physics in the 1900s, but what we care about is that matter basically absorbs light in a very particular manner. The absorbed light must be released in some way. For cooking, what this means is that the extra energy goes into the molecular vibrations of your food, generating thermal energy.

Picking your pots and pans

Convection and conduction are two aspects of the same thing: motion. When electromagnetic waves radiate and are absorbed by matter, it’s the resulting jiggle of the molecules that we know as heat. Convection refers to heat transfer in fluids and conduction in solids.

For a natural gas stove, convection heats the bottom pan of a skillet, allowing for conduction between the skillet and the food. Quality thermal conduction relies on molecules in a solid moving together in synchronized motion. If the material is defective, the motion may be random and not conduct well.

The surface of food heats first, as one would expect. The trick in cooking is to make sure the insides cook just as well.

So what makes for an adequate skillet? Two things: the abilities of a skillet to distribute and retain heat well. Distribution relies on good thermal conduction, so metals without many defects are best. But what about retention?

Retention is referred to as an object’s heat capacity – basically how much thermal energy it can store. The key property that determines this is how much stuff is in the material. If it’s super dense, then it can retain a lot of its heat, while if not, it’s going to dissipate it very quickly.

If you’ve ever been to a Korean restaurant, you may have been served food in a granite bowl. This material has a massive heat capacity and retains so much heat that it will still be cooking your food when they serve it to you.

Stainless steel is dense but it has a lot of impurities in it due to alloying. Hence, it conducts heat poorly but is fantastic at retaining it. Aluminum is a great conductor of heat since it’s a pure metal, but it is light and cannot retain its heat well. Laminated pots, a sheet of aluminum in between two sheets of stainless steel, are very common as they combine both properties. A fantastic metal to use is copper, due to its high density and great thermal conduction, but these properties are what makes it more expensive than others.

Electric or gas?

So far, we have been neglecting those who may use electric stoves. There is nothing wrong with this, after all, heat is heat. Why do so many chefs prefer using gas stoves instead?

Electric stoves tend to lack the precision of natural gas stoves, making the control of heat transfer more difficult. An electric stove tries to pump electricity through a highly resistant material, thus generating heat and then immediately conducting into the pot. However, this takes a while compared to the almost instantaneous burst of flame. Quickly adjusting the temperature is a bit of a challenge as well. For a flame, it’s a quick turn of the knob. For the electric stove, it’s the quick turn of a knob plus the wait for the heat to dissipate off the coils.

Control of the oven is absolutely vital to a chef. Using the right ingredients at the right time is important, but the true art of cooking involves mastering heat. This is more than just the food – it’s also making sure the chef has the right tools at hand.

The Quad: How astrology has evolved from tracking the weather to tagging your friends

It’s not you. It’s your zodiac sign.

Well, maybe not. But either way, Westernized astrology has infiltrated modern society and, more recently, social media. We’ve all seen at least one incarnation of the ubiquitous “the signs as…” astrology meme: From deleted Wikipedia pages to “thank u, next” lyrics, the list goes on.

Western astrology hasn’t always been encapsulated in Instagram posts discussing archetypal zodiac sign traits, though.

Since 15,000 B.C., early human civilizations have looked to the stars as a n avigation tool, giving birth to a preliminary form of astrology. Recordings of the lunar phases were etched onto cave paintings, animal bones and mammoth tusks as discovered by archaeologists. As nomadic lifestyles were swapped out for agrarian societies, observing the planets and stars was sort of like a prehistoric weather app necessary to prepare for nature’s cycles.

Starting around 2,000 B.C., Sumerians in Mesopotamia began channeling their interests in divination, astronomy and mathematics into creating a structured astrological system. This is where the earliest known astrological texts – “Enuma Anu Enlil” and “Venus Tablet of Amisaduqa” – emerged from, written in cuneiform.

Most astrological texts of the time were very different from the daily horoscopes that we know today. In fact, much of Mesopotamian astrology was a simple observation of the planets and stars and their relation to the kingdom. For example, a translated Mesopotamian cuneiform reads: “When Moon and Sun are in opposition on the 14th lunar day, the king of the realm will be possessed of an extensive ear.”

By 600 B.C., Mesopotamians had established the 12-sign astrological system that we commonly associate with astrology today. This was also around the same time that astrology spread to ancient Greece, which deeply intrigued Greek philosophers and astronomers alike.

Greek astronomer, geographer and astrologer Claudius Ptolemy’s text “Tetrabiblos” added to the Greek involvement in astrology. The text explored the philosophy behind astrology, particularly the belief that planetary influences come from their relationship to celestial bodies such as the sun. It is the only remaining ancient astrological text and was the established astrological train of thought until the 17th century. Nonetheless, ideas presented in “Tetrabiblos” such as zodiac signs and houses remain at the core of our modern understanding of astrology.

As the Middle Ages rolled in and the Roman Catholic Church began its conquest of Western Europe, the Quiet Period of astrology began. This era was characterized by Western astrologers’ needing to remain low profile as the Catholic Church’s power grew – astrology was heresy, with the danger of prosecution.

The Age of Enlightenment further drove astrology into decline. Rationalism and individualism were above all: Astrology, seen as a factless medium of entertainment, had no place in this period.

It wasn’t until the 20th century that Western astrology was revived, primarily due to astrologers such as Grant Lewi and Isabel Hickey. Whereas past astrological practices focused on observations and predictions of events, this wave of “psychological astrology” focused on understanding the nuances of the individual personality. Gone were the days of astrology being a faraway concept – it was now relatable to the average Joe.

The new era of psychological astrology took mainstream American culture by storm with the help of the 20th century’s rise of mass media. Whether it be in the form of magazines such as American Astrology or newspapers such as The Washington Times, the American public has had more access to modern astrology than ever before.

The relatively recent resurgence of astrology has not gone unnoticed. Alby Toribio, owner of GnarlyAstrology on social media platforms Instagram and Twitter has noted the cycles that astrology goes through in being mainstream, and then disappearing.

“A lot of (the fluctuations in astrology’s popularity) have to do with when times are a little bit hazy and unstable,” Toribio said. “People tend to turn to astrology and other alternative guides to help them through these times.”

This has some truth to it: A 1921 article from The Washington Times titled “Mars Will Sway World Until 1944, Astrologist Reveals” attributed the “Anglo-Japanese alliance” to opposing zodiac signs, capturing the United States’ wartime fears at the time. As it modernized into a psychological tool, astrology offered a conjectural explanation for American sentiments of uncertainty as spurred by wartime activities.

So how did astrology come to take over the internet?

A lot of this answer lies, again, in accessibility and approachability – but this time, through a form specific to the 21st century: social media. With the emergence of memes through social media, astrology was just a phone screen tap away for the hip and trendy Generation Y and Z audiences.

This rise of astrology memes, commonly shortened to “astro memes,” is successful in in its reimagined take on psychological astrology. Though still drawn from ancient knowledge on zodiac signs and their characteristics, the memes have a lighthearted undertone that makes digesting astrology easier.

Known as “notallgeminis” on Instagram and Twitter, Courtney Perkins incorporates this more casual and approachable undertone into many of her astro memes.

“Seeing a meme about how Libras are obsessed with getting a text back seems funny, but what you’re going to find from a well-educated astrologer is that Libras are ruled by Venus, the sign of love, so they’re obsessed with their love life,” Perkins said. “You’re really getting the same information, but just the watered-down version of it on Instagram that’s designed to be funny and enjoyable.”

Western astrology’s journey from Mesopotamian cuneiform to print publications to astro memes was a long but expected one. Its current – but probably not final – form is designed to entertain and appeal to the individual.

So whether or not it’s you or your zodiac sign, you probably can’t help but scroll through an Instagram and wonder what botched marriage proposal or college roommate you are as indicated by your sign.

Softball prepares for upcoming high-stakes tournament in Judi Garman Classic

The Bruins have a lot at stake this weekend.

No. 2 UCLA softball (14-0) will head to Fullerton, California, this week for the Judi Garman Classic, playing No. 3 Florida (18-0) twice before facing a myriad of other traveling teams – Michigan (6-8), No. 21 Auburn (13-3), Loyola Marymount (7-5) and Connecticut (3-9).

UCLA’s last and only meeting against Florida in 2018 came at the NCAA Women’s College World Series. Senior catcher Taylor Pack hit a three-RBI home run in the fourth inning to complete a four-run comeback and give redshirt junior pitcher Rachel Garcia her 29th win of the season.

The Bruins went on to lose two consecutive games against the Florida State Seminoles, ending their 2018 campaign with a record of 58-7.

Coach Kelly Inouye-Perez said that both games against Florida will reflect the squad’s current strengths and weaknesses.

“It’s a great opportunity for us to get some competition against opponents who I think are really going to challenge us,” Inouye-Perez said. “We’re going to focus on what makes us successful. … (Florida is) a very strong team both offensively and defensively, so I look forward to being able to compete against them.”

Senior infielder Brianna Tautalafua touched further on the upcoming tournament, saying that her teammates’ confidence and camaraderie increase the team’s adaptability against other top-ranked programs.

“It’s going to be a good opportunity to see how well we compete with a team like Florida from the East Coast,” Tautalafua said. “There’s a lot of stuff we can work on as a team, so I think all around, there’s a little bit of something in every aspect of the game that we can work on.”

UCLA is coming off of their third consecutive undefeated weekend, bookending last week’s Mary Nutter Collegiate Classic with wins over Oklahoma and Colorado State courtesy of their starting pitchers.

UCLA’s high-swinging bats against Missouri, Nebraska and Kentucky also led to three mercy-rule victories with a combined total of 32 runs in less than 24 hours.

Freshman pitcher and 2018 Gatorade California Player of the Year Megan Faraimo fanned nine batters in her second collegiate no-hitter against Colorado State. Faraimo fell just short of a perfect game on account of two team errors and a hit player.

Faraimo said that the Bruins’ routine of keeping things simple is essential to having fun and continuing their winning streak in Fullerton.

“I think for any opponent, we just have to focus on our side of the ballgame and focus on what we’re doing,” Faraimo said. “It would be huge to come out on top against Florida, but I think if we stay focused on what we’re doing, we’ll be okay.”

Of the five opponents this weekend, UCLA has only played against Loyola Marymount this season, beating the Lions 3-1 to close out the Stacy Winsberg Memorial Tournament on Feb. 17.

Inouye-Perez added that she was pleased with her squad’s aggression and how new competitors will help the players develop into a championship-caliber team.

“I mean, once again, we’re not playing against the opponent; we’re competing against ourselves,” Inouye-Perez said. “We have speed, we have power, we have an aggressive approach, so we’re here to manufacture runs.”

The Bruins will kick off the tournament with their first matchup against the Gators on Wednesday night at 6 p.m.