Today's WEEKEND

WEEKEND // FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2012

ANYA GRENIER puts the search for Yale’s next president in perspective. PAGE 3.

REALITY

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GENTRIFICATION

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UGLINESS

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THE WEIRD INTERNET

THE DEATH OF PERIODICALS

“UGLY PEOPLE” TAKES THE STAGE

Are our lives just one big computer simulation? Susannah Shattuck mulls it over.

Jake Orbison meets a Harlem Globetrotter and expounds on the shuttering of News Haven.

Sex, coke and startups. All of the above in the newest play to premiere at the Whitney.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

ONWARD! // BY WEEKEND

SHATTUCK

Passing through our attic offices each in turn this week, our former editors — the lady Brenna, gallant Nikita, sir Chase and fair Erin — offered up wisdom and scraps of paper coded with the runes of InCopy and outdated passwords to servers. They leave us now, with their blessings and warm beer, refusing to look at our cover page, insisting they have societies to attend, activities to partake in, libations and obligations. And we’ve still only got two key-cards to 202 York Street between us. It’s all too much.

We four — Jordi, Jack, Cora and Akbar (in reverse, alphabetically, to spite the one with initials AA) — are finding our way. We’re fluent, respectively, en Español, Applied Math, continental philosophy and drama. Two of us took lost years. One of us, inexplicably, spells “what” “wot” in every Gchat.

We more or less met three weeks ago — we still don’t know each other’s middle names or where everyone will sit.

Here’s where our heads are at: In its third year, WEEKEND will wind its analog wristwatch and do its best to stay timely. We want to keep a finger on the pulse of the student body, its veins running Yale blue, and an ear to New Haven’s ground, knotted over with elm

roots.

Our sympathies, as ever, remain with the marginalized, the uncanny — above all, the sleepdeprived. Our pages are for the gonzo, the satirist, the reporter with a honey or vinegar voice, a singular vision or aciddipped pen.

We recognize that the News is steeped in certain institutionalized privilege. We recognize, staring out our gothic stone windows into the garden of Wolf’s Head, our complicit role in hierarchies and power structures on campus. We intend to work to keep this at the forefront of our minds, to challenge that fact and undermine it. At least, we aim to entertain, and to throw a few parties in the boardroom, beneath Briton Hadden’s pug nose.

With the modest soap box of these twelve weekly pages, we seek to confront the above — whether in features, reviews, or social critique. Not to mention the intoxicating prose of Chloe Drimal ’13.

There is a mind-meld that comes about in the process of putting out a publication. It comes with the necessity of coordinating staffers, deadlines and assignments, of proofing pages in time for that out-of-sight print-

ing (the means of production ever hidden — the owners of the presses with their early mornings, breakfasts, families).

At approximately 3 a.m. one night this week, a joke about our Frankenstein-esque crew — our weird fusion and eerie ESP, united via electronic mail and little else — led to a perhaps ill-judged message to one of our fearless illustrators, whose inestimable talents were harnessed by our whims, resulting in a likeness part ghoulish, part comic.

With four hydra-heads and sixteen appendages, we move awkwardly, but hopefully with inadvertent majesty, through the deep that is Yale’s campus.

We welcome you into our monstrous lair with open suctioned tentacles.

Here, among the ephemera and

The Internet says the darndest things // BY SUSANNAH SHATTUCK

I recently read an article on Vice Magazine’s website that described the very real scientific theory that our reality is actually a computer simulation. Yeah, you understood me correctly: There is a scientist out there in the world — a real live scientist who has science-y credentials and an important science job — who really thinks that our entire universe could just be an incredibly detailed and complex computer game. I practically did a spit take when I first read this article. “This is some crazy shit,” I thought, hunched over my glowing computer screen.

AS FAR AS SCIENTISTS KNOW, SOME ENORMOUS CREATURE COULD BE BELLOWING UNDER THE ICE IN ANTARCTICA. THIS IS CRAZY.

“There’s how many PlayStations worldwide? More than 100 million, certainly. So think of 100 million consoles, each one containing 10,000 humans,” said Rich Terrile, a big deal at NASA. “That means, by that time, conceptually, you could have more humans living in PlayStations than you have humans living on Earth today.”

My mind was blown again by the madness of everything around me when I stumbled across another online discovery — via Facebook, that great receptacle of bizarre Internet phenomena — from The Seattle Times, published in July, that described the story of a man being spotted in the Utah wilderness living in a goat suit amongst “realgoats” (it’s actually one word in the text). Officials at the time were concerned that with the approaching hunting season, “goat man” would be in danger of getting shot because people would think he was a goat. This news piece raised a few questions: namely, who is this goat man,

and why does he live among the goats in a goat suit? Is he “an extreme wildlife enthusiast,” as the article suggested, or is he just batshit crazy?

As if these two supremely weird stories weren’t enough to keep me on my toes, I just came across the other day with possibly the most frightening and strange Wikipedia entry that I have ever read, and believe you me, I’ve read a lot of Wikipedia entries. I absent-mindedly wandered across an entry for “Bloop,” one of six significant unexplained underwater sounds detected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Equatorial Pacific Ocean autonomous hydrophone array. Basically, in 1997, Wikipedia tells me, the array picked up a strange signal that did not resemble that of any man-made noise or known seismic activity. The sound, nicknamed “Bloop,” was more like an animal burp or a fart, scientists thought, but here’s the catch: It was, and I quote, “several times louder than the loudest recorded animal, the blue whale.” Now if that doesn’t freak you out, then I don’t know what will. As far as scientists know, some enormous creature could be bellowing under the ice in Antarctica. This is CRAZY. As much as I want to believe in the weird reality (or simulated reality or whatever) described by these articles, further Internet snooping tells me it would be foolish to do so.

(I probably shouldn’t be getting my science news from Vice either.) A great number of scientists think “simulation theory” is complete bunkum. A news update reveals that the “goat man” of Utah was simply a Canadian hunter “preparing” for the upcoming season.

The epic leviathan thought to be responsible for “Bloop” could just be an Antarctic ice floe crashing into the ocean.

Part of me doesn’t care, though. At least we live in a world where people can think weird things and publish them on the Internet. At least we still have that privilege.

Contact SUSANNAH SHATTUCK at susannah.shattuck@yale.edu .

F R I D AY

STAGE COMBAT WORKSHOP

OCTOBER 05

Learn the techniques needed to safely perform violence (on stage). Applicable for actors, directors, sophomore slumpers.

294 Elm St. // 2 p.m.

ANGEL

WEEKEND

WEEKEND VIEWS

ye l l owing covers from decades past, there is a crystal(esque) decanter we hope to keep filled, a ribbon-less typewriter and an original Mac, with its spectrum of neon stripes and the still-visible bite-marks of the original chomp of knowledge.

Once, in times of yore, the entire rag that is the News was processed through its now-dormant motherboard. Requiescat in pace, outmoded machine, dusty technology.

But enough highfalutin talk for now.

Doping for next week beckons. For the first time, as ever, we are your humble servants in journalism, arts and living.

Get at us.

//KAREN TIAN

The WEEKEND editors get Kraken.

Contact WEEKEND at weekend@yaledailynews.com .

Excuse me while I rant about breakfast // BY KALLI ANGEL

On Tuesday, the News reported the closing of News Haven and the future opening of a Panera Bread in its place. Skimming the article as I avoided puddles on Elm Street, I wilted a little. In truth, I had been to the international periodical outlet just once during my freshman year, and even then only to buy pens. Confused by the “No Browsing” sign, I hadn’t stayed to peruse, and yet, as an aspiring writer or editor or “something involving books,” I felt this closure as another wound to my cherished industry.

A moment of silence, please.

Walking briskly to get out of the rain, I probably would have forgotten all about the death of News Haven by the next block.

But then I came to this line: “Two of [13 students interviewed] said they think Panera will provide students with a much-needed breakfast option around campus.”

“WHAT??!!,” I thought. There was an angry pressure behind my eyeballs. “A MUCH-NEEDED WHAT??”

Granted, I rarely eat breakfast. I usually prefer extra sleep to a banana and cold cereal (sorry, Mom), and I don’t really care where other people consume their Most Important Meal. But if even close to 15 percent of the undergraduate population thinks New Haven is lacking in delicious breakfast locales, I kindly suggest that they poke their befuddled heads out of Commons and tear an itty bitty hole in that Yale culinary cocoon.

An overreaction? Maybe. But here’s the thing: You want pastries? I can’t think of a single Panera baked good that tastes better than a Blue State raspberry muffin, and JoJo’s, Willoughby’s and Koffee all have house-made treats. You want an egg sandwich? Try the Gourmet Heavens on Broadway or Whitney for 24-hour breakfast-y goodness

or hit up Wall Street Pizza for a bacon, egg and cheese with perfectly runny yolks and a 10-percent student discount. Craving a sit-down affair? Chap’s, Claire’s or A1 Pizza is your place. Weekend brunch? Find it vegan-style at Red Lentil or in full force at, of all places, Rudy’s. Looking for the real deli feel? Stroll over to Orangeside Luncheonette for pastrami

and after more than two years away, she was eager to check in on fond memories. We wandered quietly together down Doberaner Strasse.

“It’s very different,” she finally told me in German. “Now there are so many Ketten (chains).”

Then she started pointing out storefronts. A pizza chain that used to be a gelato parlor. A

BUT MY DOLLARS WILL KEEP ON VOTING FOR THE BOOK TRADERS, THE WOODLANDS AND ALL THE OTHER SUPERIOR, INTIMATE NEW HAVEN ESTABLISHMENTS. and eggs with pancakes. And of course there is always trusty Atticus for your book-browsing and quiche-eating needs.

So call me a locavore, call me a hipster, call me a trust-busting wannabe or some other laissezfaire-hating epithet. Fine. But my dollars will keep on voting for the Book Traders, the Woodlands and all the other superior, intimate New Haven establishments that have stories of origin instead of marketing copy, and that make this city feel like home.

In the same article about the end of News Haven, Abigail Raider of University Properties was quoted as saying, “national and regional merchants have the marketing and brand to draw people from the suburbs (who otherwise might never come) into the city to enjoy the city’s cosmopolitan look and feel.” And that may be true.

But this is also true: While traveling through northeastern Germany this past spring, a new friend, Nicole, took me to Rostock, a Hanseatic city about the size of New Haven. She had visited the city often as a teenager,

nationwide drugstore that used to be a trendy boutique. A ubiquitous media outlet that used to be a local university bookstore. A Starbucks.

Never having been to Rostock, I couldn’t exactly relate to Nicole’s loss. But during the three months I’d spent in Germany, the large signs of the popular Ketten — their colors, their typefaces, their slogans — had grown familiar to me. Despite its characteristic Brick Gothic churches and the copper plaques commemorating events from centuries past, Rostock felt a little too modern and a little too prefabricated.

We strolled through the Old Town for a few hours, I snapping photos and Nicole reconciling her childhood Rostock with the new one. We had a fine afternoon, but on the train out of Rostock I had the distinct sense that the marketing of Germany’s national merchants had ensured that Nicole would not be coming back any time soon.

Contact KALLI ANGEL at kalli.angel@yale.edu or follow her at @NewHavenNormal .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Calling your relatives

It’s midterm season. It’s that time.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND COVER

YALE’S “MOST PROGRESSIVE SEARCH” FAILS TO SATISFY ALL // BY ANYA GRENIER

I

t had been pouring for hours.

As students filed into Battell Chapel this past gloomy Friday afternoon, some looked as though they’d swum rather than walked there.

Three dozen Yalies had braved the weather to attend an “Open Forum” hosted by the Presidential Search Committee (PSC). That group, which consists of eight Corporation members and four faculty representatives, will be responsible for providing recommendations to the Yale Corporation, the larger body which will ultimately choose this University’s next President. Presidential Search Committee Chair Charles Goodyear ’80 and Vice Chair Dr. Paul Joskow ’72 told students in an email that this forum was an opportunity for undergraduates to offer “observations, advice and feedback” they said would be “invaluable” for the PSC later on in its selection process.

The atmosphere in the room was unsettled. The dripping wet students in attendance spread themselves thin over the pews, only moving up to the front when urged by organizers. Those who had put their names down on a list to speak muttered to their neighbors, rehearsing what they wanted to say. The forum’s moderator, the four Search Committee members present and the single student counselor asked to advise the PSC stood apart at the front of the nave, talking quietly.

After spending about 10 minutes glancing around for stragglers, moderator and Yale Corporation member Byron G. Auguste ’89 turned to face students and began explaining in calm, measured tones that this was going to be “a listening session”: a chance for the committee to hear students’ thoughts on Yale’s strengths and weaknesses — and, of course, the qualities they would like to see in its next leader.

That wasn’t exactly what they got.

Fifteen minutes in, the first student got up to talk. She identified herself as a member of activist group Students Unite Now and launched into a reading of a manifesto written by her organization’s members.

“Good afternoon,” she began.

“We’re really excited to be here.”

Over the course of the next two hours, SUN activists and other concerned students would speak passionately about everything from their love for Yale to their concerns about the new residential colleges, read aloud poetry by lesbian feminist group Fierce Pussy (the opening line: “I want a dyke for president”) and rail against Yale-NUS. But what they wanted to talk about most of all was not what they wanted to see in the next president of Yale. It was how he or she would be chosen — and whether they would have a say in that decision.

Over and over, students expressed their confusion and frustration about the search process: How had the search committee members been appointed? Why wasn’t there a student voice on the PSC? How could

students even know the Corporation was going to listen to what was being said that day?

Beyond concerns about the search’s mechanics, students spoke about against its overall lack of transparency, as well as the “corporatization” of Yale as an institution.

“I see a trend of Yale becoming less of a community and more of a brand,” said Communication and Consent Educator Jess Belding ’13. “I don’t like forums like this because … I feel like I’m being an ungrateful consumer.

In a truly democratic process, no one would be feeling that way.”

Belding was among many who pointed out what they saw as the primary flaw in the forum’s design: the fact that it asked students to talk at, not with, the members of the committee sitting silently in the front pew, while hearing nothing in response and having nothing more than the Corporation’s word as a guarantee that their views would be taken into account.

By the end of the session, it was clear that at least some of the assembled students weren’t willing to disband without hearing something from the committee in a physical, rather than a virtual, space.

Eventually, Goodyear stood up and began to speak directly to them.

Asked whom the members of his search committee saw themselves as accountable to, he said he would turn the question back to students: “Why do you think we won’t be accountable?”

Several disgruntled student responses later, Goodyear conceded the point.

“I realize you don’t have any basis to trust us,” he said. “We need to earn your trust over time.”

--Four weeks earlier, at 8:59 a.m. on Aug. 30, 2012, Yale students, faculty and staff received “a message to the Yale Community” announcing that, after 20 years in office, President Richard C. Levin would be stepping down at the end of the 2012-13 academic year.

At 9:10 a.m., they received another email from the Senior Fellow of the Yale Corporation, Edward P. Bass ’67 ARC ’72 . This was the first time most Yalies had ever heard the name, and many hit the delete button without a second thought.

Former Yale College Council President Brandon Levin ’14 was sitting at his job in Betts House, where he works as special assistant to Vice President Linda Lorimer, when the message announcing President Levin’s retirement appeared. He processed the news together with the administrators sitting in the offices around him.

“I had no idea, no advance notice,” he said, “I was very surprised.”

Later that same day, Lorimer spoke to her special assistant about an opportunity for him to serve the University in another capacity. Bass had asked her to invite Brandon Levin to fill the role of Student Counselor to

the new Presidential Search Committee.

Before long, he found himself “communicating daily” with Bass, Goodyear and Joskow.

One day later, the community received another email from Bass with the subject line “Presidential Search.” It contained a rough outline of the structure to be set in place for communication with the PSC, with appointed “Trustee Liaisons to Campus Constituencies” on the Corporation side working with “Campus Counselors to the Search Committee” on the other.

The position to which Levin was appointed is a new one. It represents the first time in Yale’s history that a student has had a formal role in the process of finding a new president.

The same goes for the new posts of faculty, staff and alumni counselors to the search committee — all of whom are to serve as conduits between their various constituencies and the members of the Yale Corporation.

But certain members of both the student and faculty communities remain skeptical of what such overtures might mean in practice.

“An elaborate structure has been put in place, featuring layer after layer of filters and baffles … It all seems like a thin disguise over the Corporation’s undisputed prerogative to do exactly what it wants, no matter what anyone thinks,” French and African-American Studies professor Christopher L. Miller GRD ’78 PHD ’83 wrote in an email to the News.

More visibly, members of Students Unite Now (SUN) took the Corporation’s attempts at outreach as a call to arms.

SUN began a multi-pronged campaign to get fellow students organized, sending multiple email blasts to the Yale community, circulating both paper and online petitions and canvassing residential college suites.

SUN Leader Sarah Cox ’15 said nearly everyone she has talked to about the search process, from friends to the last freshman whose door she knocked on, “has a sense that this isn’t quite right.”

Her organization’s petition had 366 supporters online at change.org at the time this article was written and contains a template for a letter outlining the demands SUN is making “in order that the process better reflect the values of democracy and transparency that are at the core of this institution’s mission.”

Members of the Yale Corporation and administration who were present in 1993 for Levin’s selection might find this appeal difficult to understand. After all, the current search process is doing more to solicit input from all the constituencies of the Yale community than any in Yale’s 311-year history.

President Levin told the News that “the outreach on this one has been much more extensive in terms of reaching out to the internal consistencies” compared to the search which selected him.

Up until Levin, Yale’s presidents were selected by a process so far from being either democratic or transparent it could become “farcical” at times, said Yale historian Gaddis Smith ’54 GRD ’61. Past presidents were selected — with more or less total impunity — by the Corporation, Yale’s board of trustees.

The most egregious excess came in 1986, just after President A. Bartlett Giamatti abruptly ended a presidency beset by strikes and tense labor relations in order to become the new Commissioner of Major League Baseball. The search that followed resulted in the appointment of then-Dean of Columbia Law School Benno C. Schmidt — but it was really no search at all.

“Schmidt was the only candidate, and the search committee was basically just one powerful member of the Corporation,” said Smith. “They just tapped him and said, ‘that’s it, you’re the president.’”

But Schmidt was no Levin when it came to longevity. His term lasted only six years, and he is best remembered for alienating much of campus. Schmidt did not even live in New Haven, choosing instead to commute to Yale from New York City.

The search for his replacement, which would eventually bring Levin to office, was significant in the University’s history for its thoroughness, with numerous candidates from across the country interviewed in multiple rounds. Levin recalled having had around 24 interviews with members of the search committee.

For Smith, the enormous divide between these two presidential searches can be boiled down to one visual: the documentation produced by the search for President Levin is purported to take up the equivalent of a four-by-four foot shelf space in a downtown New Haven bank, he explained. With Schmidt’s selection, Smith laughed, “there was a rumor it was just one thin file.”

Though the ongoing presidential search, modeled after that of 1993, has inspired outrage in some, it is undoubtedly the most progressive in Yale’s history. Not only will it continue the precedent of including faculty as full members of the PSC, but it will be the first to include an extensive formal structure to reach out to students, staff and alumni.

Given this, the overwhelming attitude among those on the Corporation both then and now is to ask, “Why fix what isn’t broken?”

For Vernon Loucks Jr. ’57, who was senior fellow of the Corporation when Levin became president, Levin’s legacy ought to be enough to vouch for the process that chose him.

“It seems to me that what you’re looking for more than anything else is an effective system,” he said. “And it seems to me that it was.”

But what was revolutionary in 1993 seems anachronistic to many in 2012, particularly those with an eye on what has been happening at Yale’s peer

institutions.

Some weeks after Levin’s announcement, Princeton University President Shirley M. Tilghman declared that she too would be stepping down. Not long afterwards, Princeton’s Undergraduate Student Government President Bruce A. Easop invited members of the university’s current senior class to apply to serve on the school’s Presidential Search Committee.’

“Two members of the Class of 2013 … will have the unique privilege of playing a part in shaping Princeton’s history,” Easop wrote in an email.

At Princeton, such an opportunity isn’t news. Two students were also on the committee that identified Tilghman, the University’s last presidential choice. The only new development is towards increased openness: last time, one of the two student seats was reserved for the president of Princeton’s student government. This time around, both will be filled through an open application.

“I think the president of a university needs to be able to work effectively with all of the constituencies of the university,” Princeton Vice President and Secretary Robert K. Durkee, who will also be staffing the school’s search committee, told the News. “In our experience it’s helpful … to have representatives of all of those constituencies present during the search itself.”

The view looks similar up in Providence. When then-President of Brown University Ruth J. Simmons announced her plans to step down on Sept. 15, 2011, a process comparable to Princeton’s was set in motion. The Presidential Selection Committee of the Brown Corporation was joined by a 13-member Campus Advisory Committee, which comprised six professors, two staff members, a medical student, a graduate student and three undergraduates, only one of whom was a member of student government.

For a shot at one of the other two undergraduate spots of the Advisory Committee, students could fill out an application which was sent out to the entire undergraduate student body.

Current Brown senior David Rattner, who filled the spot reserved for a student government representative, said that, despite the formal split between the Selection and Advisory Committees, the two “essentially functioned as one big group.” Both he and the other students remained present in the room during meetings all the way up until the final candidate’s presentation to the rest of the board of trustees, and remained, he said, “as much a part of the process as anyone else,” right up till March, when the search culminated in the naming of economist Christina Hull Paxson as Brown’s new president.

Princeton and Brown are not uniquely enlightened institutions.

Stanford, Columbia and Duke Universities have all included students as formal members of their most recent SEE TRANSPARENCY PAGE 8 //HARRY SIMPERINGHAM

F R I D AY OCTOBER 05

THE TALE OF THE JAPANESE FOLDING SCREENS Beinecke Library // 3 p.m.

WEEKEND hears “Harimaze” folding screens are making a h-u-g-e comeback.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Watching the presidential debates

Even if Romney has creepy, glossy, TV eyes.

PAGE 4

WEEKEND NEWS

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

GRAVEYARD

// ANNELISA LEINBACH

News Haven to Close: Panera to replace the Old Media Temple // BY JAKE ORBISON

“People raise pigs on roofs,” offered Tony Kowalski, as just one example of the obscure knowledge one could glean from thumbing through the periodicals of News Haven. “Oh yeah, they do all kinds of stuff down there in the city.”

Kowalski has been the processor of News Haven’s inventory for the past 15 years, a tenure that will end in a few short weeks with the neighborhood staple’s closing. A Panera Bread will replace it. To some Yalies, such as myself, News Haven seems, at first glance, to be a standard convenience store. But to most of its patrons, the shop is absolutely irreplaceable. This past Thursday, Kowalski showed me around and helped guide my observation of the unique establishment.

The store is pleasantly plain: white walls, on which the only decorations are section signs, a few drink refrigerators, a convenience counter, and stacks on stacks on stacks of magazines and newspapers. The front of the store acts as a quick pit stop for most — a place one can pick up Gatorade, snacks, single doses of Tylenol, Emergen-C and all other defenses against the freshman plague. The rest of the store, however, is unlike any for literally miles around.

“At one time, we had over four thousand titles,” Kolwalski told me. “Recently, we’ve got about 2500, maybe close to 3000. It depends on the supplier.” The shop’s inventory is so vast that few other news shops struggle to compete. After News Haven closes there will be virtually no place for magazine-lovers in the greater New Haven area to purchase their beloved publications.

Among the wonderfully diverse scores of volumes displayed on News Haven’s shelves were such titles as “Edible Brooklyn,” the heading that prompted Kowalski’s tidbit on urban pig farming, “Kung fu,” “Homeopathy Today,” “Equestrian Quarterly,” “Women and Guns: The World’s First Firearms Publication for Women,” “Playgirl,” “Modern Drunkard” (“Standing up for your right to get // DIANA LI

News Haven is the latest victim of the fast-food invasion hitting the city.

F R I D AY OCTOBER 05

MANHATTAN SHORT FILM FESTIVAL

Whitney Humanities Center // 7 p.m.

“NOTE: MANHATTAN SHORT is NOT an ONLINE Film Festival.” Duly noted.

falling down drunk since 1996.”) and “Oggi,” which is something akin to the Italian version of “Us Weekly.”

Of course, News Haven carries every standard publication a New Havenite could ever want, but it is these special issues, the ones that News Haven staff would describe as “shockingly popular,” that will be missed most dearly from the long-standing institution. Kowalski added, “I tell our customers that if you want any of this anymore you have to get on the train.

Out of Town News up in Boston, in Cambridge Square. There used to be a place in Stratford, but now you have to go to New York.” Of course, the increasing scarcity of newsstands and stores like News Haven may not be troubling to some. Personally, I had never felt shortchanged for my lack of access to Russian gossip media

means for some the loss of bass fishing tips over lunch or a dog lover’s weekly on the Monday commute to work.

Unfortunately, the story of what’s happening to News Haven is an all too familiar narrative: corporate chains driving the well-loved local stores out of business. It’s the plot of “You’ve Got Mail,” “Dodgeball,” “Empire Records,” “Barbershop,” “Barbershop 2” and even “Good Burger.”

News Haven has been around for 30 years, and unlike in the movies, it will close its doors in two weeks. Despite the recent popups of Shake Shack, Chipotle and now Panera Bread, many New Havenites insist there is a healthy advocacy for local businesses.

Even those at News Haven would agree that the Elm City still has large support for the little guy.

Kowalski, a resident of New

THE STORY OF NEWS HAVEN IS A FAMILIAR NARRATIVE: CORPORATE CHAINS DRIVING THE WELL-LOVED LOCAL STORES OUT OF BUSINESS. or a professional cartography digest. I thought I had access to every piece of information I could want through my smart phone. I didn’t quite understand what it was about these magazines that was causing people to feel such loss. Then again, no spontaneous Googling would necessarily uncover the titles I saw while browsing the aisles.

Why, then, can’t these news lovers turn to the Internet, as more and more people seem to be doing? I asked Kowalski if he would feel withdrawal from any print publications in the way he believed most might. “Of course,” he replied, “There’s tons of them.

The Spectator, The Nation, The Guardian, I like the political publications. The Economist, New York, The New Yorker. You know, Vanity Fair has some great articles. It’s just good reading. When you go online you can get part of a story or a highlight or something. But to hold it in your hand and to have 30 pages there to soak up is just a whole different experience.” For Kowalski and his customers, magazine reading is a ritual. The loss of News Haven

Haven since 1967, commented that his city was still “surprisingly parochial. People here have allegiance to small business.

Some people just take umbrage at places like that ruining the local flavor.” The owner of News Haven, Navin Jani, reported such customer loyalty when he told the News that his store has about 100 regular customers everyday.

When I visited the shop, allegiance to News Haven was constantly evident.

Even during my short time at the store, I could see the wide range of dedicated patronage that News Haven receives. The first to come in after I arrived was a father and his daughter who lingered and finally landed on the right coloring and puzzle books.

Next, a power-walking Yale student buying an energy drink. The next slate of items purchased ran: Marlboro Reds, Pretzel M&Ms, Twizzlers, vitamin water, postcards, and, of course, the magazines. One customer looking for the latest “duPont Registry” was wearing a Harlem Globetrotters hat.

Alex Howard or “Vator,” as he

was known on the Globetrotters (a basketball team with their own animated series) serendipitously illustrated just how widely appealing News Haven is to a certain section of the community.

Kowalski, who incidentally knew a player on the Washington Generals, the team the Globetrotters pay to humiliate on the court, approached this man. The two had a brief, amiable exchange, but it was the final patron of News Haven I encountered that demonstrated just how important the store was to the neighborhood at large.

This final customer of my saga had not yet heard of his news shop’s closing. He was looking for the latest issue of Classic Cars, his favorite British monthly. He couldn’t find the magazine in its usual spot in the back left corner of the store, top shelf.

“I’ll look for it, but we might be out.” Kowalski replied to the man’s inquiry.

“Well how frequently do you restock your inventory?”

“I’m sorry to say but the shop’s actually closing down in two weeks.”

Kowalski said that the shock and disappointment visible on the man’s face was not an uncommon response to the news. “Lots of people are very upset.”

“This was an important place” the customer replied softly.

“Sure, in the last couple of weeks we’ve had a lot of people crying in here. You know, you get used to certain publications, and you cannot get them anywhere else, and I know that, and our customers tell us that.” Kowalski and his coworker behind the register tried to convey to me how engrained in the lives of their customers these publications could become. Most of News Haven’s business is New Haven area regulars, including some Yale faculty and staff. Kowalski explained that for the regulars that request it, there is a reserve service. For them, these articles, the acclaimed and the unknown, become a routine part of life — brushing your teeth, your morning coffee. “That’s what’s going to be missed,” Kowalski said.

Contact JAKE ORBISON at james.orbison@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Bustin’ out the turtlenecks It’s getting ruhl cold, ruhl fast.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

WEEKEND REFLECTIONS

MOTHER SUU // BY HAN MYO OO

I was born after Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was first placed under house arrest in 1989. For many Burmese youth of my generation, Daw Suu was just an idea.

We glimpsed her in banned copies of her collected writings, Freedom from Fear and Letters from Burma. We saw images of her on the Internet. And we heard about her through foreign media.

Every time I drove past University Avenue Road on my way home in Yangon and saw soldiers and metal-wire barricades in front of Daw Suu’s home, I wondered whether I’d ever meet her, or whether she’d ever be free. I wondered whether she would one day be more than the subject of whispered conversations in the country.

But in November 2010, Myanmar held its first general election in 20 years, and, a week later, Daw Suu was released from house arrest. Thousands gathered outside her home, where she appeared on a platform behind the gate of her compound.

“We haven’t seen each other for so long,” she said. “So we have many things to talk about.”

ON THE DAY MASTER BRENZEL TOLD ME THAT HER VISIT WAS CONFIRMED, I WAS OVERJOYED: MY MOTHER WAS COMING TO YALE. Her words affected me, even though we had not met before.

Strangely, for me and for a lot of other Burmese people, it didn’t feel like that was the first time she spoke to us.

Eventually, I did see Daw Suu one day, when I visited the office of her National League for Democracy party. She had a horde of supporters surrounding her, so I was unable to speak to her personally. But this past summer, a second chance and a special opportunity arose: While working at a Thai news agency that covers issues in Myanmar, I learned that Daw Suu was visiting the U.S. in September. Immediately, my friend and I emailed Master Jeffrey Brenzel to propose Daw Suu as a candidate for Timothy Dwight College’s Chubb Fellowship. On the day Master Brenzel told me that her visit was confirmed, I was overjoyed: My mother was coming to Yale.

Tickets to her public address in Sprague Hall ran out in a matter of minutes. I was happy to see

the support of the Yale community for Mother Suu, but I was also worried that in celebrating her visit, Yalies would overlook the very issues that she stands for: Myanmar’s political and economic changes are just starting, and there is still much to do back home. At the Chubb Fellow dinner, the evening before her address in Sprague Hall, Mother Suu told the 100 or so students in attendance about the lack of educational opportunities to challenge and prepare young people in Myanmar as we rebuild our nation.

“We would like your help, as citizens of this world, as fellow human beings, to help us to achieve what we are trying to achieve,” she declared.

The next morning, at her public address, she emphasized the fact that until we in Myanmar achieve the rule of law and establish an independent judiciary, we cannot say that our country is truly on the road to democracy.

She called on the Yale community for help to train lawyers and judges in Myanmar. The University responded: in his introduction for Mother Suu, President Levin announced that plans were being discussed to bring Burmese high school principals and teachers to Yale for training.

And sitting there, in my second row seat of the crowded Sprague Hall, I had never felt prouder to be Burmese and a Yalie.

But I cannot help but reiterate the point that Burmese people must build up our own country — after all, Mother Suu herself had said, “we must take responsibility for the future of our nation.”

I didn’t see her after the public address, and I admit that I was saddened by the fact that I didn’t get to talk to her more. But I realized that perhaps I was expecting too much. She had already achieved more than enough for my country.

She brought and continues to bring hope to the people of Myanmar, to the hundreds of thousands of Burmese refugees outside the country and to many of the young Burmese students abroad who have the privilege of receiving a good education. She connects us, across ethnic boundaries, with a common national goal. For many of us Burmese studying in the U.S., her 18-day tour across the U.S. reinvigorated our purpose. The idea of Mother Suu will always speak to me — and I hope our mother knows that we are ready to take responsibility.

Contact HAN MYO OO at hanmyo.oo@yale.edu .

Questioning the system // BY CATHERINE SHAW

In the summer of 2009, I visited Burma with my family. I have never been to a place so devout. Stupas and temples dot the countryside, and the red and saffron robes of Buddhist monks and nuns are rarely out of sight. The Burmese people display their devotion in their every action, and their religion has, in many ways, become their only method of peace and security during this difficult political time. So when I heard Daw Aung San Suu Kyi tell a story at her address last week about the police dressing as monks in order to attack her convoy, I was furious. I think my mouth must have been hanging open for a good minute in a combination of shock and outrage.

While I contemplated the shocking yet expected horror of her story, Daw Suu was smiling and even managed to elicit laughter from the crowd. Although at first I was as offended by the laughter as I was by the story, I realized later that this is Daw Suu’s supreme gift. She has seen and experienced so much, but her experiences do not hold her back. Rather, they propel her forward. From an early age she says she “knew what kind of person [she] wanted to be,” and she has never allowed anything to come in the way of being that person. Her strength and perseverance have already done immense good for Burma and for the world. After hearing her speak, I know that her positive influence will continue on for the rest of her

life and beyond.

I could use many words to describe this incredible woman who has done so much for her country and for humanity. She is elegant, graceful, highly intelligent and an incredibly gifted speaker. But her nature is so magical that I describe her most accurately only by borrowing a buzzword from Tyra Banks. Daw Aung Sun Suu Kyi is fierce. There is a reason that the people of Burma call her the Lady: her grace of bearing, especially considering the horrors she has experienced throughout her life, is absolutely astounding. The military junta declared her a “destructive element” because of her involvement in politics and kept under house arrest without a trial for a total of 15 years. Being locked up without contact with the outside world for 15 years is enough to turn even the kindest person bitter. Daw Suu is, however, one of the least bitter people I have ever seen. She was able to speak about the breakdown of rule of law in Burma without hesitation or anger. She simply spoke of the terror the government’s complete disregard for rule of law inflicted on the people of Burma and said, “without rule of law, our people would never be free from fear.”

I come from a family of five generations of lawyers; we, the Shaw family, may as well have been the cheerleading squad for the American legal system. Although I’ve always been a staunch believer in due

// CREATIVE COMMONS

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi visited Yale last week as a special guest hosted by the Chubb Fellowship.

process, Daw Suu’s speech made me realize that I never truly appreciated our legal system until I heard, from the mouth of a survivor, what can happen without it.

Sitting there, listening to this remarkable woman — a true victim of the breakdown of law and order in Burma — and hearing her stories forced me to think about the possibility of something like that happening here. I no longer felt isolated from these instances of injustice.

They became something real, something tangible, something that could occur not only in Burma but also anywhere under the wrong set of circumstances. I left the auditorium with a newer, deeper appreciation for the American legal system because, although I can’t say our legal system is perfect, it is certainly better than the alternative that Daw Suu experienced. We must guard our system against abuse. and we must protect the great gift that our founding fathers have established for us.

Contact CATHERINE SHAW at catherine.shaw@yale.edu .

The Good, the Bad and the SWUGly // BY JULIA CALAGIOVANNI

Two days before “SWUGLIFE: A Colloquium,” a commenter on the Facebook event page asked, “IS THIS REAL LIFE.” It was. (For those I’ve lost already, the vaguely unfortunate acronym stands for “Senior WashedUp Girl.”) Wednesday evening, a few dozen seniors and a handful of Communication and Consent Educators gathered at Viva’s. Over mediocre nachos and truly questionable quesadillas, they hashed out the realities of SWUG life: the good, the bad and the SWUGly. I watched from a safe distance — as a sophomore, I’m at least two years away from potential SWUGdom myself.

The colloquium was more than a chance to eat fried food on Yale’s dime.

The tell-tale signs of being a SWUG were bantered about: they hang out at Viva’s and Box; they’re equally likely to drink a bottle of wine or a bottle of gin; they’re big fans of Yorkside’s mozzarella sticks and S’wings’ “sassy wings.”

They “dontgiveashit,” in the words of one attendee. The event was a chance to talk about some very real, very common feelings and experiences that are a natural consequence of spending

F R I D AY OCTOBER 05

three years at Yale under constant academic and social pressure. This sustained state of frantic self-discovery is — let’s be honest — exhausting. We learn the unwritten rules, established by no one in particular — where to party, what to wear, whom to hook up with — and spend three years trying to follow them. SWUGs break them.

The event Wednesday had a few men in attendance and two on the panel, but the majority of the audience was female. It’s worth asking why there’s no such thing as a “SWUD:” a Senior Washed Up Dude. After all, plenty of senior guys “dontgiveashit” either, but there’s no trendy acronym for them. It’s because the rules of acceptable behavior are, in many ways, stricter for women. Pressure from our peers, the media and society at large can be relentless. Men definitely face their own set of expectations, but, in many ways, women are taught to be more aware of — and more ashamed of — our transgressions.

In the back room of Viva’s, it became clear that SWUGs are a diverse group.

But they all share a certain “no apologies” attitude. They’re making their

TROLLEY NIGHT

Calhoun College // 10 p.m.

It’s no Safety Dance, but whatever floats your trolley. Long Live Safety!

own social, personal and sexual decisions: to go all-out at Toad’s or stay in with Netflix; to hook up with a freshman or finally give up on the twelve college challenge. They might forgo going out to, instead, work on their senior essays. Faced with the prospect of leaving their friends after graduation, they spend more time having real conversations, although not necessarily sober ones. They articulate their sexual desires and boundaries and don’t worry that it seems less sexy.

They chill out.

There’s nothing wrong with this; it’s actually a pretty healthy way to live. But we seem to know, although we don’t quite know why, that there’s something wrong with it. It threatens the status quo; it doesn’t fit with the way we think we “should” behave. So we turn it into a pejorative. We pathologize it. Girls call themselves SWUGs with a shrug and a laugh, with more than a hint of self-deprecation. Are you supposed to be ashamed of being a SWUG? It’s unclear. The Urban Dictionary entry is tagged with both “desperate” and “badass.”

“Washed-up” seems to suggest

failure, that someone has peaked and then fallen — hard. That she has, in this case, lived that caricatured college lifestyle and then failed to keep it up.

There are younger girls or hotter girls to take her place, and she’s resigned to her fate. But most self-identified SWUGs seem to know that’s not the whole story.

“It’s so fucking refreshing,” declared Chloe Drimal ’13, author of the Monday opinion column in the News that ignited the campus debate around SWUG. Other panelists agreed, and heads nodded throughout the room. “We love SWUG.” “We made it up, so we can define it.” And, so, what sounds like a Mean Girls-style insult actually becomes an opportunity for empowerment. It’s also a semi-humorous way to deal with a semi-scary thing; SWUG is, in a way, shorthand for all of the angst, anxiety and burnout that comes along with being a senior. One attendee said it helped her to know that other girls felt this way; she’d experienced the SWUG phenomenon, but she hadn’t told anyone, she said, because she felt bad about it.

Events like the SWUGLIFE colloquium and columns like Drimal’s are part satire, part consciousness-raising. Why do we still feel bad about doing the things we want to do, providing they’re safe and don’t harm other people? We don’t need to wait for the SWUG title to give us permission. It’s okay to admit that we’re not the same people we were a year or two ago. SWUG is not an excuse to do truly reckless or hurtful things, but it is a license to listen to yourself a little more and other people a little less, to define yourself rather than waiting to be defined. I wish we didn’t need this “permission,” but if SWUG starts the conversation, so be it. SWUGs are over things that don’t matter, and we’d all do well to follow their example.

After the panel ended, attendees finished up the nachos — why, I still don’t understand — and headed out. Maybe some of them ended up at Toad’s later. Maybe they didn’t. And that’s okay.

Contact JULIA CALAGIOVANNI at julia.calagiovanni@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: The Little Book of Economics, by Greg Ip. All you need to know about the economy, stupid.

PAGE 6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 7

WEEKEND DOUBLETRUCK

New Haven’s Lesser Known Notables // BY WEEKEND

Give this dog a break — put him on a wall // BY YUVAL BEN-DAVID

M

eryl Streep’s face adorns the exposed brick of Miya’s exterior.

Paul Giamatti smirks between Chapel and York. Dr. Benjamin Spock holds up a baby on one out-of-the-way wall, and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. stares down New Haven’s citizens from a height on Howe. Chapel West Services recently launched a campaign of “New Haven Notables” — stylized portraits of accomplished locals from throughout city history, immortalized (though perhaps not weather-proofed) on the sides of various businesses and municipal structures.

WEEKEND put out a call for those lesserknown figures — your unsung New Haven heroes. You responded... in growls and gurgles, from the digestive tract. Yale’s stomachs have spoken. Here, then, are primarily the gate-keepers to eating well — the good men and women between you and your next hot meal. Also a celebrity canine.

Branford’s “Ms. Michelle”

Game over. Handsome Dan, 17. Dalai Lama, 14.

Dan — who, according to his profile on the athletic department website, “retrieves with vigor” — has been reincarnated three more times than the great monk.

That’s 17 Yale mascots since 1889, when a British student, Andrew Graves, bought the original from a New Haven blacksmith for $5. Nowadays he sits, stuffed, above the trophies in Payne Whitney. The dog, that is — not Graves.

And as for Dan, it’s been a dog’s life lately, with few trophies in sight.

To start with, the boys of Sigma Phi Epsilon violated the fall rush guidelines by taking in Sir Jackson Margari-

// BY LEAH MOTZKIN

Looking good from her frosted tips to her revolutionary acrylics, Michelle is the first person you want to see when you walk in the Branford Dining Hall. Michelle never fails to make you smile as she swipes your ID card.

Sometimes cracking jokes, always asking after students’ well-being, Michelle genuinely cares for the students in Branford. She has become a “mother away from home,” she says, for the students who pass through her hall’s doors.

A New Haven native, Michelle began working at Yale 13 years ago and has worked in Branford for the past four. She has four children of her own — though 400 more claim her. You may have seen her adorable grandchildren visiting her in the dining hall.

Julius Mitchell BR ’13 says of this maternal figure, “Any time I walk in the dining hall, I can always expect a warm welcome and good conversation from Ms. Michelle. In my four years here, she’s never let me pass by her without telling her how I’m doing.” When freshman timidly hand her their ID cards for the first time in August, she immediately steadies them and makes them feel at home. [Ed.’s note: The author of this piece is one such freshman … ] Making such close connections with students is sometimes hard on Michelle, who has witnessed four years of seniors graduate and leave campus. She does say, however, that many come back to visit. They know where to find her. If you intend to become a Branford regular, look forward to seeing her smile every morning — probably in a different shade of lipstick each day.

taville Wasserman — a golden retriever with the self-promotional skills of certain Yale undergraduate publications.

Dan’s pretty smug about the rumors that Jackson isn’t yet potty-trained, but that’s just because he’s bitter about being elbowed out of Rumpus’s “50 Most Beautiful” Issue. Again.

But Dan’s biggest beef is with the undergraduate admissions office, which he says is “exploiting” his brand.

While the first Handsome Dan was treated to a world tour with its keeper, #17 got a rougher deal. When the international admissions officers recently set out on their international jaunt, they substituted the latest Dan with a stuffed animal.

// MARIA ZEPEDA

Yorkside’s Anthony Koutroumanis // BY AAMINAH QADIR

Louis’ Lunch’s Jeffrey Lassen

// LEAH MOTZKIN

// BY AAMINAH QADIR

Sally’s Pizza’s Flora “Flo” Consiglio

Jeffrey Lassen, the owner of Louis’ Lunch, has been working behind the counter at one of New Haven’s most historic eateries for the last 33 years. A serious, no-nonsense guy, he keeps the luncheonette his great-grandfather opened in 1895 up and running, producing the same five-meat hamburger sandwiches in the original stoves.

“I do everything — and I do mean everything, from cleaning the restrooms to locking the door, and anywhere in between,” he said while chopping onions. “My father always told me that if we were going to hire somebody, you had to do all the chores you had them do, because then you would know what [the work] entailed. They could say, ‘Well, you never did that,’ and I could say, ‘Oh yes, I did.’”

// BY MAYA AVERBUCH The former owner of Sally’s Pizza, Flo Consiglio, who passed away on Monday, Sept. 24, is remembered as one of New Haven’s most beloved residents. Described as a little tough on strangers, but warm toward Sally’s regulars, she made delicious thin-crust, brick-oven pizza for patrons from all over, including politicians and celebrities.

For decades, Flo sat behind the cash register and talked to members of her New Haven community, making many of them feel like family, they say. She opened her doors to the Cottos, the first Puerto Rican family in Wooster Square, and to many of the city’s children, several of whom worked for Flo and her husband, Sal. In an interview with the New Haven Independent, President of St. Andrew Ladies Society Theresa Argento said, “You’ve lost a legend.”

// AAMINAH QUADIR

// CREATIVE COMMONS

“Adam! What’s up, buddy?” “Adam, how’s it going, brother?” “Sup, Adam?

I hate studying.” “Interview? You’re gonna be famous, Adam!” Every person who walks into G-Heav has something to say to the store’s legendary front man.

As it seems most Yale students end up in G-Heav at least once during the day and once after midnight, manager Adam Juarez comments, “I know most of the students at Yale, and I like them.” Adam has dealt with Yalies in all sorts of situations — at their best (“They treat me very well during the weekdays”) and lowest points (“On weekends, after drinks, there’s sometimes trouble”).

Students can be very demanding of Adam. They introduce themselves and expect him to remember their names.

Adam loves, however, whenever he is able to remember a name, because the students are always so glad about it.

While Adam considers many Yale students to be his friends, he recalls one of the weirdest nights he’s spent at G-Heav, when some students crossed the line.

On a slow night about three years ago, a

group of students dressed up as burglars — replete with bandanas over their faces — and filmed his reaction to their “robbing” him. Adam comments, “I thought it was real until they said, ‘Adam, we got you!’” While he was freaked out in the moment, Adam is a pretty chill guy. He said he understands that it was a prank that happened around Halloween time — though the students claimed it was for a class. After many apologies and hugs, Adam forgave them.

You may always end up at G-Heav with the late-night munchies, but Adam Juarez is always already there. Therefore, it’s only natural that the sandwiches he makes are clearly better than yours.

They’re bigger, too. Adam says that the sandwiches he makes himself often look so big and good that he ends up giving bites to students who ask. “So what’s on the typical ‘Adam’ sandwich?” the inquisitive reader wonders. He reveals all: “Though it’s different every night, typically I like egg whites, chicken, Brie, onions and avocado.”

G-Heav’s Adam Juarez // BY LEAH MOTZKIN

S AT U R D AY OCTOBER 06

THE SOUND OF ARCHITECTURE Loria Center // 9 a.m.

One word: Acoustics.

The eatery has come a long way since its opening days, when Louis served steak dinners, but it maintains the same decor, with small wooden booths and brick walls. Portraits of its previous owners hang on the walls, but Jeffrey says his portrait is not going up until he is “up there.” He hopes Louis’ Lunch will keep on running, though he cannot predict whether his son, who is now three years old, will want to work there.

Jeffrey once hoped to be a baseball player, but he likes the work in his family business.

“It’s not an easy thing to do. It’s very timeconsuming, but you get your rewards: meeting people every year, forming friendships, maintaining family ties.”

And he gets to eat a hamburger sandwich — every single day.

// LEAH MOTZKIN

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Barrio Latino Lounge in West Haven. It all happens HERE, actually.

I walked into Yorkside Pizza in search of the smiling face we see every Saturday night, the one the belongs to the man who hands out free Yorkside T-shirts to the most frequent goers: Anthony Koutroumanis, ever happy to see me.

Anthony has spent 42 of his 72 years of life at Yorkside, putting calories, grease, and — more than anything — love, into the food he has served to Yalies for many a time more than our lifespans.

Shy of the limelight, Anthony co-owns Yorkside Pizza with his brother George Koutroumanis. He doesn’t like to take credit for his hard work, but upon getting him to sit with me, he revealed many historical Yorkside secrets. (For instance, who knew they’re not actually splitting their profits with Toad’s?)

The diner we see today sprung up in 1977 — but it wasn’t always situated where it is now. Anthony’s first place was around the corner from a popular pizza joint that stood where Urban Outfitters stands today. Imagine: it was that far from Toad’s. Only there was no Toad’s in New Haven then. (Which is how we know, officially, the two aren’t actually working in cahoots.) In place of Toad’s, there stood a club set up by four Ivy Leaguers, one of whom was Johnny Carson. The former Yorkside was called Broadway Pizza Palace and started in 1970, with only about 15 to 20 items on the menu.

Anthony recalls that Toad’s came around in about 1973 — so after he was on the block. While he admits that Toad’s gives the business an extra boost, he said they “wouldn’t shut down if Toad’s did. You know?” We see Anthony so often

S AT U R D AY OCTOBER 06

on Toad’s nights because his major shifts are on Saturday and Sunday.

You’d wonder why he would pick the busiest nights to work, when rowdy, obnoxious and rather disoriented Yalies and Qpac-ers hit the diner, hard. Even he asked, “Why would I come here, at this age, on those nights?” His answer to himself: “It’s the people. I love them.”

So Yalies can take some consolation in knowing that Anthony loves us in all shapes and forms — at all times.

Speaking of forms and shapes, Yorkside has contributed to the alteration of many body forms.

This might be because its menu has evolved from the modest 20 or so items to over 100. Back in the day, they specialized in meatballs, sauces and pizzas, but today they sell seafood, scallops and pasta as well. When asked what his most popular item is, Anthony proudly said, “The Greek Salad.” The reason for the move in popularity from pizzas to salads is clear: When Yorkside set up there were only about 500 girls on campus. “Now? There are more girls then boys!” said Anthony. This is not to say all us women are healthy eaters, because someone has to eat the yummy gyros and the irresistible mouse track milkshake (me). Yorkside has grown notoriously famous for its scrumptious milkshake, which is lined with Reese’s at the bottom and mixed with all else that is unhealthy and delicious in the world.

Koutroumanis: We apologize for our late-night belligerence, and thank you for your kindness. Here’s to many more generations of Yorkside!

DRAWING AND PAINTING AUTUMN LEAVES AND BERRIES Peabody Museum of Natural History // 10 a.m.

We fucking love natural science illustrations.

// YALE DAILY NEWS

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Tutoring. Break out of the ivory-tower rut.Doing a problem set with your housemate doesn’t count.

PAGE 6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 7

WEEKEND DOUBLETRUCK

New Haven’s Lesser Known Notables // BY WEEKEND

Give this dog a break — put him on a wall // BY YUVAL BEN-DAVID

M

eryl Streep’s face adorns the exposed brick of Miya’s exterior.

Paul Giamatti smirks between Chapel and York. Dr. Benjamin Spock holds up a baby on one out-of-the-way wall, and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. stares down New Haven’s citizens from a height on Howe. Chapel West Services recently launched a campaign of “New Haven Notables” — stylized portraits of accomplished locals from throughout city history, immortalized (though perhaps not weather-proofed) on the sides of various businesses and municipal structures.

WEEKEND put out a call for those lesserknown figures — your unsung New Haven heroes. You responded... in growls and gurgles, from the digestive tract. Yale’s stomachs have spoken. Here, then, are primarily the gate-keepers to eating well — the good men and women between you and your next hot meal. Also a celebrity canine.

Branford’s “Ms. Michelle”

Game over. Handsome Dan, 17. Dalai Lama, 14.

Dan — who, according to his profile on the athletic department website, “retrieves with vigor” — has been reincarnated three more times than the great monk.

That’s 17 Yale mascots since 1889, when a British student, Andrew Graves, bought the original from a New Haven blacksmith for $5. Nowadays he sits, stuffed, above the trophies in Payne Whitney. The dog, that is — not Graves.

And as for Dan, it’s been a dog’s life lately, with few trophies in sight.

To start with, the boys of Sigma Phi Epsilon violated the fall rush guidelines by taking in Sir Jackson Margari-

// BY LEAH MOTZKIN

Looking good from her frosted tips to her revolutionary acrylics, Michelle is the first person you want to see when you walk in the Branford Dining Hall. Michelle never fails to make you smile as she swipes your ID card.

Sometimes cracking jokes, always asking after students’ well-being, Michelle genuinely cares for the students in Branford. She has become a “mother away from home,” she says, for the students who pass through her hall’s doors.

A New Haven native, Michelle began working at Yale 13 years ago and has worked in Branford for the past four. She has four children of her own — though 400 more claim her. You may have seen her adorable grandchildren visiting her in the dining hall.

Julius Mitchell BR ’13 says of this maternal figure, “Any time I walk in the dining hall, I can always expect a warm welcome and good conversation from Ms. Michelle. In my four years here, she’s never let me pass by her without telling her how I’m doing.” When freshman timidly hand her their ID cards for the first time in August, she immediately steadies them and makes them feel at home. [Ed.’s note: The author of this piece is one such freshman … ] Making such close connections with students is sometimes hard on Michelle, who has witnessed four years of seniors graduate and leave campus. She does say, however, that many come back to visit. They know where to find her. If you intend to become a Branford regular, look forward to seeing her smile every morning — probably in a different shade of lipstick each day.

taville Wasserman — a golden retriever with the self-promotional skills of certain Yale undergraduate publications.

Dan’s pretty smug about the rumors that Jackson isn’t yet potty-trained, but that’s just because he’s bitter about being elbowed out of Rumpus’s “50 Most Beautiful” Issue. Again.

But Dan’s biggest beef is with the undergraduate admissions office, which he says is “exploiting” his brand.

While the first Handsome Dan was treated to a world tour with its keeper, #17 got a rougher deal. When the international admissions officers recently set out on their international jaunt, they substituted the latest Dan with a stuffed animal.

// MARIA ZEPEDA

Yorkside’s Anthony Koutroumanis // BY AAMINAH QADIR

Louis’ Lunch’s Jeffrey Lassen

// LEAH MOTZKIN

// BY AAMINAH QADIR

Sally’s Pizza’s Flora “Flo” Consiglio

Jeffrey Lassen, the owner of Louis’ Lunch, has been working behind the counter at one of New Haven’s most historic eateries for the last 33 years. A serious, no-nonsense guy, he keeps the luncheonette his great-grandfather opened in 1895 up and running, producing the same five-meat hamburger sandwiches in the original stoves.

“I do everything — and I do mean everything, from cleaning the restrooms to locking the door, and anywhere in between,” he said while chopping onions. “My father always told me that if we were going to hire somebody, you had to do all the chores you had them do, because then you would know what [the work] entailed. They could say, ‘Well, you never did that,’ and I could say, ‘Oh yes, I did.’”

// BY MAYA AVERBUCH The former owner of Sally’s Pizza, Flo Consiglio, who passed away on Monday, Sept. 24, is remembered as one of New Haven’s most beloved residents. Described as a little tough on strangers, but warm toward Sally’s regulars, she made delicious thin-crust, brick-oven pizza for patrons from all over, including politicians and celebrities.

For decades, Flo sat behind the cash register and talked to members of her New Haven community, making many of them feel like family, they say. She opened her doors to the Cottos, the first Puerto Rican family in Wooster Square, and to many of the city’s children, several of whom worked for Flo and her husband, Sal. In an interview with the New Haven Independent, President of St. Andrew Ladies Society Theresa Argento said, “You’ve lost a legend.”

// AAMINAH QUADIR

// CREATIVE COMMONS

“Adam! What’s up, buddy?” “Adam, how’s it going, brother?” “Sup, Adam?

I hate studying.” “Interview? You’re gonna be famous, Adam!” Every person who walks into G-Heav has something to say to the store’s legendary front man.

As it seems most Yale students end up in G-Heav at least once during the day and once after midnight, manager Adam Juarez comments, “I know most of the students at Yale, and I like them.” Adam has dealt with Yalies in all sorts of situations — at their best (“They treat me very well during the weekdays”) and lowest points (“On weekends, after drinks, there’s sometimes trouble”).

Students can be very demanding of Adam. They introduce themselves and expect him to remember their names.

Adam loves, however, whenever he is able to remember a name, because the students are always so glad about it.

While Adam considers many Yale students to be his friends, he recalls one of the weirdest nights he’s spent at G-Heav, when some students crossed the line.

On a slow night about three years ago, a

group of students dressed up as burglars — replete with bandanas over their faces — and filmed his reaction to their “robbing” him. Adam comments, “I thought it was real until they said, ‘Adam, we got you!’” While he was freaked out in the moment, Adam is a pretty chill guy. He said he understands that it was a prank that happened around Halloween time — though the students claimed it was for a class. After many apologies and hugs, Adam forgave them.

You may always end up at G-Heav with the late-night munchies, but Adam Juarez is always already there. Therefore, it’s only natural that the sandwiches he makes are clearly better than yours.

They’re bigger, too. Adam says that the sandwiches he makes himself often look so big and good that he ends up giving bites to students who ask. “So what’s on the typical ‘Adam’ sandwich?” the inquisitive reader wonders. He reveals all: “Though it’s different every night, typically I like egg whites, chicken, Brie, onions and avocado.”

G-Heav’s Adam Juarez // BY LEAH MOTZKIN

S AT U R D AY OCTOBER 06

THE SOUND OF ARCHITECTURE Loria Center // 9 a.m.

One word: Acoustics.

The eatery has come a long way since its opening days, when Louis served steak dinners, but it maintains the same decor, with small wooden booths and brick walls. Portraits of its previous owners hang on the walls, but Jeffrey says his portrait is not going up until he is “up there.” He hopes Louis’ Lunch will keep on running, though he cannot predict whether his son, who is now three years old, will want to work there.

Jeffrey once hoped to be a baseball player, but he likes the work in his family business.

“It’s not an easy thing to do. It’s very timeconsuming, but you get your rewards: meeting people every year, forming friendships, maintaining family ties.”

And he gets to eat a hamburger sandwich — every single day.

// LEAH MOTZKIN

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Barrio Latino Lounge in West Haven. It all happens HERE, actually.

I walked into Yorkside Pizza in search of the smiling face we see every Saturday night, the one the belongs to the man who hands out free Yorkside T-shirts to the most frequent goers: Anthony Koutroumanis, ever happy to see me.

Anthony has spent 42 of his 72 years of life at Yorkside, putting calories, grease, and — more than anything — love, into the food he has served to Yalies for many a time more than our lifespans.

Shy of the limelight, Anthony co-owns Yorkside Pizza with his brother George Koutroumanis. He doesn’t like to take credit for his hard work, but upon getting him to sit with me, he revealed many historical Yorkside secrets. (For instance, who knew they’re not actually splitting their profits with Toad’s?)

The diner we see today sprung up in 1977 — but it wasn’t always situated where it is now. Anthony’s first place was around the corner from a popular pizza joint that stood where Urban Outfitters stands today. Imagine: it was that far from Toad’s. Only there was no Toad’s in New Haven then. (Which is how we know, officially, the two aren’t actually working in cahoots.) In place of Toad’s, there stood a club set up by four Ivy Leaguers, one of whom was Johnny Carson. The former Yorkside was called Broadway Pizza Palace and started in 1970, with only about 15 to 20 items on the menu.

Anthony recalls that Toad’s came around in about 1973 — so after he was on the block. While he admits that Toad’s gives the business an extra boost, he said they “wouldn’t shut down if Toad’s did. You know?” We see Anthony so often

S AT U R D AY OCTOBER 06

on Toad’s nights because his major shifts are on Saturday and Sunday.

You’d wonder why he would pick the busiest nights to work, when rowdy, obnoxious and rather disoriented Yalies and Qpac-ers hit the diner, hard. Even he asked, “Why would I come here, at this age, on those nights?” His answer to himself: “It’s the people. I love them.”

So Yalies can take some consolation in knowing that Anthony loves us in all shapes and forms — at all times.

Speaking of forms and shapes, Yorkside has contributed to the alteration of many body forms.

This might be because its menu has evolved from the modest 20 or so items to over 100. Back in the day, they specialized in meatballs, sauces and pizzas, but today they sell seafood, scallops and pasta as well. When asked what his most popular item is, Anthony proudly said, “The Greek Salad.” The reason for the move in popularity from pizzas to salads is clear: When Yorkside set up there were only about 500 girls on campus. “Now? There are more girls then boys!” said Anthony. This is not to say all us women are healthy eaters, because someone has to eat the yummy gyros and the irresistible mouse track milkshake (me). Yorkside has grown notoriously famous for its scrumptious milkshake, which is lined with Reese’s at the bottom and mixed with all else that is unhealthy and delicious in the world.

Koutroumanis: We apologize for our late-night belligerence, and thank you for your kindness. Here’s to many more generations of Yorkside!

DRAWING AND PAINTING AUTUMN LEAVES AND BERRIES Peabody Museum of Natural History // 10 a.m.

We fucking love natural science illustrations.

// YALE DAILY NEWS

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Tutoring. Break out of the ivory-tower rut.Doing a problem set with your housemate doesn’t count.

PAGE B8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COVER

GITLIN: “TRANSPARENCY WOULD BE A FANTASY.” TRANSPARENCY FROM PAGE 3 presidential search committees.

In fact, however little we may want to believe it, the institution Yale most closely resembles in this respect is none other than Harvard.

Harvard’s most recent presidential search took place in 2006 and selected the school’s first female President, Drew Gilpin Faust. Like Yale’s current process, it was the first in that school’s history to consider input from a series of student and faculty advisory committees. In Cambridge, though, neither student nor faculty representatives had a formal seat on the Search Committee itself.

News stories published in the Harvard Crimson over the course

petition. 82 percent of more than 600 students surveyed by the News agreed with the statement that students should have a say in the decision-making process to find Yale’s next president, while 77 percent agreed that at least one student should be present at all Presidential Search Committee meetings.

Adding Levin to the process is not, Cox emphasized, a replacement for a student voice.

“A liaison is just a liaison,” she said.

As she and others have pointed out, the only formal duty that has been outlined for Levin thus far is to act as an intermediary between students and members of the Yale Corporation and Search Committee. As far as Levin knows, he said, his role will only diminish as

“YOU LIVE HERE FOR FOUR YEARS. FACULTY MAY LIVE HERE FOR THEIR CAREER,” MR. GOODYEAR SAID. of that year described Harvard’s process as “unique in many ways, not the least of which is its insular and secretive nature,” and (perhaps not without a note of pride) “historically as secretive as finalclub punch.”

Overall, however, the marked difference between Yale and many of its peers has served to further some students’ outrage at the absence of a single student voice at the table at Yale today.

According to Cox, being aware of opportunities other schools provide for student representation “really highlights how unnecessary this is for this to be so closed [and] how far behind we are in our governing structure.”

The numbers of those who agree are greater than the 30-some students who came to the meeting in Battell or even the 369 who have signed SUN’s online

the search moves beyond its initial “listening phase.” He will not, for instance, be present during meetings at which the PSC will evaluate candidates.

The Corporation’s official statement on the subject of student representation on the search committee is that “no one or two students can represent the full diversity of the Yale student body.

The Corporation believes that the best way to get input is through the designed process that allows the committee to directly or indirectly hear from all the student constituencies, through the Student Counselor or direct contact from any and all students or student organizations.”

But that argument seemed to hold little merit for the students at Battell, as became clear through the increasingly hostile exchanges between Goodyear and those bar-

raging him with questions from both those linked to SUN and there to represent themselves.

When Goodyear got up to speak in response to students’ repeated requests, he reiterated the Corporation’s logic.

“Think about the diversity of the students on this campus,” Goodyear said, listing examples of specific student constituencies present on Yale’s campus before being interrupted by students arguing that similar divisions could be present within the faculty or the Corporation.

“I don’t understand the distinction between students, faculty and the Yale Corporation,” said Katherine Aragon ’14, the political action chair of MEChA de Yale. “I feel, if anything, students should have a larger voice in this process because we live here, and we go to these classes, and this is our home for four years, so I really don’t understand the distinction, but maybe you could explain it a little more.”

Goodyear had an answer ready: “Well, you just said it. You live here for four years. Faculty may live here for their career.”

Aragon was not satisfied with this distinction.

“We should be taken seriously,” she argued in an email to the News two days after the meeting. “For us, Yale is an everyday reality, not just a dollar figure, public image or brand to be maintained. We can bring this perspective to the search committee’s deliberations.”

But on that gray Friday, Goodyear cut the dialogue short.

“Listen, I’m not going to be able to answer all of your questions today,” he said.

Within a few minutes, the meeting was dissolved.

--While SUN’s demands for a student voice ask Yale to do nothing but meet the standards of its peers, its requests for transparency demand action that some said would be unimaginable for a university like Yale.

SUN is asking the Search Committee to enact two new policies with regards to transparency: to release the minutes of each meeting and publish a shortlist of can-

“STUDENTS SHOULD HAVE A SAY IN THE DECISION-MAKING PROCESS TO FIND YALE’S NEXT PRESIDENT”

EE NEITHER AGR E E R G A S I D R O N

1%

DON’T KNOW

REE

10%

DISAG

7%

% 2 8

AGREE

S AT U R D AY OCTOBER 06

STUDENTS SAY...

didates at least three weeks before a final recommendation is made to the Corporation.

The organization listed the University of New Mexico, Missouri State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison as schools at which releasing a shortlist of candidates before a final selection is common practice.

The Presidential Search Committee’s emailed response to these concerns explained that many candidates for Yale’s presidency might not want to publicly announce their candidacy.

“Many candidates will not want to publicly ‘throw their hat in the ring’ as they do not want to be seen to have come in 2nd or 3rd (or worse) if they are not successful. It may also impact the opportunities in their current role if they are not successful. The same can be said of Yale; Yale does not want to be seen having to settle for her 2nd or 3rd choice. As a result, in order to maintain the widest pool of outstanding candidates, the PSC believes confidentiality must be maintained.”

While SUN’s statement at Battell played up the pettiness of trying to save face during such an important decision, it did not address the more serious underlying argument the PSC was trying to make: that failing to guarantee confidentiality to potential candidates could dramatically limit Yale’s options.

Those on the other side of the process both here and at other universities sympathize with the PSC. Princeton Vice President Durkee said that the work of his university’s presidential search committee, which will be working parallel to Yale’s over the coming months, will be carried out in complete confidence.

“Our experience is that there are many potential candidates who would be willing to talk with the search committee … But who would not be willing to do so if we were not willing to have that conversation confidentially,” Durkee said.

Speaking over the phone from Brown, Rattner said that the same level of secrecy was expected from all those working on the his university’s presidential search.

SUN wants Yale to keep students informed about candidates the PSC being brought under consideration and the progress the PSC is making. But according to Rattner, once the Brown search committees moved into their deliberation phase, “there was absolutely no updating [the community at large] at all” up until the final selection was made and announced in an email to the entire university.

The reason for this level of secrecy, Rattner argued, is simple: “Anyone who wants to become president of Brown, of Yale, of Princeton, already has an incredible job … If their name got out, they would almost certainly drop out of consideration.”

In fact, this exact situation happened at Yale in 1978, said historian Smith. Giamatti was appointed at the last minute, after the name of Yale’s top choice, a top Harvard administrator, was leaked to the press and he subsequently withdrew his name from consideration.

Yale and its peer institutions may be different from the public schools SUN has cited simply in attracting a pool of higher profile candidates with more to lose should their names be released.

“This is not … some open beauty contest,” Vice President Lorimer said. “[It is] rather a serious review of outstanding candidates to ascertain who would be the best leader for Yale.”

For some members of the Yale community, a level of secrecy seems inherent when it comes to Corporation dealings at this level.

“I’ve been a student, I’ve been a faculty member, I’ve been a parent. but I don’t know what goes on inside the Corporation room, I can only guess,” said history lecturer Jay Gitlin ’71 MUS ’74 GRD ’02.

He wasn’t, however, complaining.

YALE VS. DARTMOUTH FOOTBALL

…they haven’t been involved in the Presidential Search.

…they believe that the Presidential Search Committee will incorporate student opinion in its decision making process.

“Transparent would be a fantasy, it can’t be that transparent,” he added.

--Gitlin is one of many who aren’t complaining. Many on this campus are expressing either optimism that student voices are being heard or simply indifference.

Seventy percent of respondents to the News’ survey said they have not been involved in the presidential search in any way.

“I think that the [lack of response from] the student body is a good thing,” said Amalia Halikias ’15. “It shows we have a lot of faith that a good decision will be made.”

Meanwhile, students coming out of the smaller private sessions with members of the PSC and the Corporation held the weekend after the Friday open forum said they were satisfied with their opportunity to have the kind of dialogue with members of the PSC that was lacking at Battell.

Jamey Silveira ’13, president of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity and a vocal representative of the Greek life community recently hit by more stringent administrative policies, described the atmosphere and general tone of his meeting with the PSC as “fantastic.”

“It was very open and seemed very promising, especially in terms of the likelihood that these people will take into consideration the concerns that we brought up,” Silveira said.

Even SUN leader Alejandro Gutierrez ’13 said the PSC members at the meeting he attended seemed receptive to having a dialogue with undergraduates.

“The best thing [for students] to do is to demonstrate that there would be benefit added from having a student on this search,” said Brandon Levin, perhaps the best example of a Yalie working within the system currently in place.

Indeed, some students feel that in attempting to “change the conversation” at Battell Chapel, SUN was doing exactly the opposite — and effectively harming its own cause.

Yishai Schwartz ’13, a columnist for the News and former speaker of the Yale Political Union, expressed this view in an op-ed published yesterday. He criticized SUN for using the forum “as a platform to prove how activist they are” instead of providing constructive feedback to the Search Committee in keeping with “the point of the forum.”

Entering the fray with a less serious blow at SUN, the Yale Herald placed the organization’s emails to the undergraduate population in its Bullblog Blacklist on September 28.

“I promise you,” read the text, “I have nothing valuable to contribute to the presidential search committee. Now leave my inbox alone.”

On the presidential search front, maybe all Yale needs is a bit more time to update its search process and fall in step with its peers. But the dissatisfaction expressed by some undergraduates may point to a more problematic institutional difference between this University and others.

Both the presidential searches at Brown and Princeton have

something Yale lacks: a precedent for involving students in major decisions made by the University.

The body responsible for the presidential search is not the only important committee at Princeton to incorporate student representatives. In the email student body president Bruce Easop wrote to Princeton’s senior class, he noted that “this commitment to transparency in committee selection comes as part of a [Princeton University Student Government] effort to open up applications across campus, including those for the Priorities Committee.”

The Priorities Committee at Princeton, which has existed since 1970, annually advises that university’s president on how to spend the operating budget, making recommendations about tuition levels, salary increases, and new programs to support.

Apart from administrators, the committee includes undergraduates, graduate students, faculty and staff members.

“It’s a way for people from all campus constituencies to think together about the decisions that have to be made each year,” Princeton Vice President Durkee said.

Hearing students out is a part of the institutional culture at Brown as well, according to Rattner, one of the undergraduate representatives involved in that university’s presidential selection process last year.

He spoke of opportunities for students to be heard on committees that determine everything from the University’s budget to dining options. In a report published two weeks ago on the formation of new committees to work on future university strategy at Brown, the Brown Herald noted that most of these bodies would contain undergraduates.

While Yale includes undergraduates on a range of committees, mostly those concerned with specific majors and academic programs, both students and faculty have complained about the University’s closed off approach to making larger strategic choices.

These include the controversial creation of the Yale-NUS College, which faculty argue did not include adequate opportunities for their input, and about which students were not consulted at all.

Gutierrez said that the messages from Bass and Levin designating how the search process will work are merely part of a pattern he has seen in which policy decisions are made “in a boardroom somewhere and emailed out.”

Sometimes, as in the case of Yale College’s 2010 decision to increase the student income contribution for undergraduates on financial aid by $400, these decisions are not emailed out at all, Gutierrez added.

Measures such as the SUN petition and the speeches made at Battell Chapel are, then, aiming to do more than just change the presidential search process.

“What we should be thinking of is how, at the end of this year and beyond, we can have a different relationship with the administration and Corporation,” Cox said.

And that means, she added, “not just in the presidential search process, but in everything that goes on at this University.”

Contact ANYA GRENIER at anna.grenier@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

Yale Bowl // 12 p.m.

School spirit > restrictive tailgating policies.

77% 70% 34% …at least one student should be present at all Presidential Search Committee meetings.

presidential-search.yale.edu Get informed.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND THIS

PAGE 9

BE ART

Undergraduate show: meta, real // BY CATHERINE SHAW

When I first walked into the UGx3 Auvillar, Norfolk and Art Majors Exhibition in Green Hall, I felt as though I was in the room of a 12-year-old girl.

Two large posters of Harry Styles and Niall Horan from One Direction, pulled from the pages of the fan magazine Tiger Beat, hung on the walls before me. Between two of the most iconic emblems of boy bands, a photograph of a third, unfamiliar face was placed in the piece, smiling at the camera like he, too, is a member of a band. Although I didn’t realize it, this piece by Max Saltarelli ’13, with its vivid, memorable and selfreferential twist on familiar symbols, reflected a theme present throughout the entire exhibit.

The works on display at the exhibit are the works of art majors as well as the Yale Summer Session at the Institute for Studio Studies in Auvillar, France and Yale Summer School of Art and Music in Norfolk, Conn. These Summer Session pieces, varying in size and design, are all done on what appears to be slabs of white cardboard. There were abstract designs, pencil sketches of cathedral arches and hazy lakes, and one particularly colorful piece that almost looked like camouflage. I was particularly drawn to a pencil sketch of a lighted lantern in front of a misty lake. The background

was so dark the details were mostly obscured. The lantern, however, was left untouched, so the white cardboard shone through, brilliantly capturing the blazing forth of light.

Walking through the gallery space, I realized the sheer variety of the utilized media, from photographs to sculptures to installations to various multimedia presentations. One particular multimedia piece projected a series of colors onto a large plastic doughnut with shapes carved in it, peppering the wall behind it with interesting shadows.

There was a beautiful series of watercolors in the second room; they skillfully evoked the contemplative spirit of the pensive girls using only swooping lines of various thicknesses. Yet another impressive installation was that of Alex Terrell ’14, who has several photographs in the show from her first photography class. Her representations of everyday objects in New York, such as an empty Coke can and coffee cup sitting next to the exposed rebar of a construction site, gave new life to these typically mundane scenes. “[The photos I chose] are scenes of New York where object gains character from shadows and light,” Terrell explained.

Floor-mounted pieces — such as braided rope so long it might have been plucked from Rapunzel herself — had unorthodox placements and broke up the gallery’s physical space. Each strand of the beautiful 10-foot-long rope was laced with immense skill. The rope left me in awe, its sheer size and technicality emanating a sense of royalty — I didn’t want to go near it. However, as I paced through the gallery, I observed someone stepping directly over it, intruding on what seemed to be the piece’s invisible, regal bubble.

Walking from the first gallery space to the second, I nearly decapitated myself on a carefully constructed clothesline hanging from the doorway, a work conspicuously and confusingly blocking the entryway. In this same room, I was particularly drawn to the everyday objects melting onto the floor like Dalí clcoks.

A rubber slipcover was laid over the

seat, making the chair appear to be gently fading away. As I watched, the cover fittingly and unexpectedly cascaded from the seat, revealing the intact fabric underneath. The chair’s “nip slip” not only gave a glimpse into the process behind the making of the piece, but also expanded the piece’s meaning on a meta level — the seemingly splintered chair melted, more or less, before my eyes.

As with any art exhibition, the Undergraduate Art Show features works that seek to illuminate and make sense of disturbing ideas. The first gallery space featured a large print of a man devouring his own foot by Hannah Shimabukuro ’13, which brought to my mind Francisco Goya’s “Saturn Devouring His Son” that similarly and masterfully depicted a barbaric scene of cannibalism. Also present was a series of pen and ink drawings of a living room with several severed body parts sitting on a side table, perhaps begging for the viewer to understand the parts before the whole. One of the multimedia presentations playing on a television screen even featured a stomach grotesquely devouring food while music played in the background. These scenes are, however, more thought provoking than downright gruesome, juxtaposing alarming repulsiveness with ordinary life.

Overall, the Undergraduate Art Show is outstanding and worth a visit. Each piece, even if it was created for an assignment, shows a unique and intriguing point of view matched with an incredible level of technical ability. The great diversity of pieces on display also ensures that there is something for everyone — from One Direction-ers to horror story fanatics. As a person who participates in art mostly on an academic level, I was especially impressed by the intellectual rigor behind the creative abilities of these artists.

The UGx3 Exhibit will be on display in Green Hall at 1156 Chapel St. until October 9.

Contact CATHERINE SHAW at catherine.shaw@yale.edu .

// ANNALISA LEINBACH

Green Hall is where it’s at.

S AT U R D AY OCTOBER 06

ELI YALE’S BAR MITZVAH

Saybrook Dining Hall // 10 p.m.

L’chaim, Eli! Go and party as if this event doesn’t happen every year.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: People’s Arts Collective of New Haven Social justice, meet art. Keep them company at the corner of College and Crown.

PAGE 10

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COLUMNS

HOW TO CURE YOUR “SUNDAY WEIRDS” // BY CHLOE DRIMAL

I wasn’t able to truly comprehend the idea of the “Sunday Weirds” until I woke up after Marathon Weekend (toga, tailgate, RAD1) with cornrows in my hair. Yes, these cornrows did have colorful star beads dangling from them, and no, I didn’t fly to Jamaica to get them. I walked into a dorm room in Pierson and got my hair pulled by a skinny white girl.

The “Sunday Weirds” n. [suhn-dey weerds] You know, the “Who am I?” “What am I going to do next year?”

“Should I be applying to banking jobs too — I mean, everyone else is.”

These ubiquitous amounts of anxieties that creep through our stomachs are only made worse by Retro Cringe, which is bound to follow soon after.

Retro Cringe n. [re-troh krinj] We’ve all had it. That moment when you are gaily skipping down Broadway only to be interrupted by some memory of your night: maybe it was begging your best friend to date you. Maybe it was attempting to walk on your hands outside of Box 63 — you are male and weigh 200 pounds, you aren’t Gabby Douglas.

But, whatever it was, you remember it, and cringe. Your skip turns into a saunter and you decide to find your way to a small cubby in the basement of Sterling and avoid Facebook at all costs. You know the tags will come. ***

CHLOE DRIMAL THE UNICORN FILES This weekend was indeed a marathon. One arm has an unexplained bruise. The other has three patches of arm hair missing, as a result of ripping off my “Calhoun Loves Our Bulldogs” stickers, which I wore proudly despite our defeat.

We seniors made the last togas of our lives. (Well, actually, my friend’s parents still attend an annual toga party. I’m crossing my fingers to be on next year’s guest list.)

But still, with fear of never, ever again fastening a sheet around myself with safety pins or be called a toga-guru, I became extremely attached to my toga. I was so attached, in fact, that I felt the need to incorporate it into every outfit of the weekend. It functioned as a shawl at Tailgate2, an armband at RAD and now as a blanket for my blue stuffed giraffe named Morphine.

But now, a few days later, I realize the time has come to clean my room and throw away the dirty piece of fabric. I mean, come on, I’m not Steven Tyler.

We can all get so consumed by our memories, our pasts, that we begin to believe that if we let go of even the smallest strand of the memory, the entire memory, good or bad, will

be lost forever. But maybe it’s these exact memories that hold us back, anchor us down, and catalyze our “Sunday Weirds.”

Maybe, if you throw away your toga, you’ll let go of the fact you have no job lined up for next year, you won’t mind that you have never attended a naked party, and you may finally stop being scared of walking alone down Crown St. It’s a scary thing to let go of what you know, to let go of the consistencies in your life, but sometimes, that’s just what you need to get rid of those “Sunday Weirds.”

My friend once told me that I live my life like a rock star. He then coldly and bluntly reminded me that I’m not one, and that I will most likely be eating oatmeal for breakfast, lunch and dinner once I’m off the meal plan. I told him to fuck off and continued to eat my eggs, reminding him that oatmeal isn’t even glutenfree.

But maybe we can all learn from rock stars. Their lives get plastered on the cover of US Weekly and some of it is fact, but a lot of it is fiction.

They roll their eyes and continue to produce music, letting go of last week’s cover story. That’s all you can really do: roll your eyes and carry on.

If we all just keep living, if we forget about our old togas, and learn from our cringes, Sundays will just be Sundays. We can’t relive the past — it’s gone forever. But today, we can

// CHLOE DRIMAL

Chloe passed the Marathon Weekend with flying colors! be whomever we want, and I don’t know about you, but I want to be a rock star.

1.

For those of you who haven’t ventured past the Shell gas station, it’s the ’80s party at the frat that thinks it’s badass.

2.

Yes, it deserves a capital letter.

Tailgates are more important to me than who wins the game.

Contact CHLOE DRIMAL at chloe.drimal@yale.edu .

A Long Stay in a Strange “Hotel”

The loose ends of J.J. Abrams

// BY DAVID WHIPPLE

// BY GRAYSON CLARY AND SOPHIA NGUYEN

It always confused me when Rolling Stone talked about music as if it were a math test.

“Difficult,” “challenging,” “rewarding”: I struggled to see how listening to my iPod could have so much in common with manual labor. Music was music. It didn’t fight back or require hours of study, and if I didn’t like something at first, it probably just wasn’t any good.

I went on like this for a while. Every new CD I bought, I half-expected to jump out of its jewel case and “challenge” me to a duel, as seemed to happen so regularly at the Rolling Stone offices. I imagined David Fricke parrying blows from the latest Radiohead album, then subduing it with a final jab. “‘Kid A’ is even harder to decode … exquisitely camouflaged in taut, arch distemper,” he would write. On the floor, the defeated CD would whimper as Fricke spilled its secret “arch distemper” to the world. What the hell, I wondered, does that even mean?

And then I got the album that made me understand. Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” is widely regarded as one of the best records of the 2000s (“But I haven’t even heard of it!,” you might say. Shame on you.) I bought the album determined to love it. Wilco’s more recent stuff had me hooked, so when I cued up the album and bumped the volume, I was expecting the first song, “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart,” to be a twangy, off-center burst of killer country rock. Instead, my room filled with a smooth, oscillating synthesizer and a lightly strummed guitar repeating the same three chords over and over. The drums, instead of hanging out in the back, snapped along with Jeff Tweedy’s half-spoken vocals: “I am an American aquarium drinker / I assassin down the Avenue … ” I found myself with the same question I had when reading David Fricke’s review of “Kid A:” What the hell does that even mean?

“Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” was a disappointment. Where were the slide guitar solos, the howling broken-heart epics, the shimmering acoustic laments of “A.M.” or “Sky Blue Sky”? The rest of the album limped along just like the first song, formless and stubbornly un-catchy. Was this really Wilco’s opus, their defining work? I was skeptical that music so unorthodox could really be as compelling as everyone claimed. But I kept listening. In his review, Fricke compared “Yankee Hotel” to the “exquisitely camouflaged” “Kid A.” Maybe this would be the duel I had been waiting for.

But then a funny thing happened. The album came to me. As I listened over and over, the shapeless cacophony of that first song became a symphony, an intricate puzzle

S U N D AY OCTOBER 07

DAVID WHIPPLE TUNE-UP of optimistic chimes and half-drunk pianos, liquid electronic harmonies and acoustic guitars all swelling together with Tweedy’s murmured fears and confessions. The curtain over the rest of the album had been lifted. “Ashes of American Flags” featured my missing slide guitar, layered in reverb and mourning some unnamed loss; the sailors of “Poor Places” floated on waves of feedback and radio static, and that mysterious rhythm that had frustrated me suddenly slid into place. Far from disappointed, I was captivated.

I NEVER HAD TO DUEL “YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT.” IT NEVER BRANDISHED A RAPIER AND CHALLENGED ME TO LIKE IT. I never had to duel “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.”

It never brandished a rapier and challenged me to like it. All it took was time. Time for the music to unfold like an old roadmap, time for me to master the album’s twists and turns, time to relearn the rules that Wilco had shattered. Like switching to black coffee, it was unfamiliar and maybe unsatisfying at first, but with time I began to wonder how I ever settled for anything else.

Music as far outside the box as “Yankee Hotel” is always a risk. To almost completely disregard convention and practice, to stray onto the thinner limbs, carries the possibility of total failure. The old guidelines — base, guitar and drums, or verse, chorus and bridge — are there for a reason. But breaking the rules so brazenly can also lead to the creation of something entirely new and breathtaking, as it did for Wilco 12 years ago and as it does every so often. This is the stuff that causes David Fricke to string together those long chains of adjectives. And it is, in some sense of the word, a challenge to learn to love something unknown and alien. The reward is in hearing noise shape itself into music before your ears.

Contact DAVID WHIPPLE at david.whipple@yale.edu .

BIG FOOD: HEALTH, CULTURE AND EVOLUTION OF EATING Peabody Museum of Natural History // 12 p.m.

Come and learn all of the reasons why you’re fat.

GC: We wanted to kick things off with the high-concept drama that’s brought J.J. Abrams back to a small screen near you: “Revolution.” (NB: he’s only the executive producer, but his fingerprints are all over it.) The premise ought to be compelling — the lights have gone out, and they’ll never come back on.

The show opens 15 years post-electricity to introduce the Matheson family, residents of an idyllic American commune. Enter Giancarlo Esposito as Captain Neville in the swaggering militia of the reigning Monroe Republic, the death of the family patriarch (who knows more than he’s telling about the show’s electrical mystery) and the abduction of his son Danny quickly follow. That leaves behind Central Blond Teenage Daughter, now with a pair of objectives: rescue her brother and seek out itinerant uncle Miles Matheson for aid and information about what happened 15 years ago.

SN: From there, “Revolution” walks right into the cliché that genre stories are high on setting, low on character development. Bow-wielding Central Blond Teenage Daughter (whose name is Charlie, I had to look it up) is a Katniss Everdeen knockoff, and her love interest Nate is your store-brand Taylor Lautner: hunky, expressionless, of dubious intentions.

The stale dialogue quashes any hope that these characters will grow and subvert expectations. What’s great is that there’s no such thing as subtext. Characters constantly, hilariously, overexplain themselves to each other: “I can’t believe you’re sleeping with this hussy and betraying the memory of our mother, who — as you know — died soon after the blackout!”

“You think you’re grown up enough to hunt for food, but — as you know — it’s dangerous out there, and you have asthma, for which there is no longer medication!”

GRAYSON CLARY & SOPHIA NGUYEN SPLIT/SCREEN GC: That being said, Billy Burke as Miles Matheson is by far the brightest spot in the pilot for me.

His resigned, “Yep, same shit as always” attitude hits just the right note, and I’d probably keep watching just to see him have another few reluctant but beautifully choreographed sword fights with the goons. It’s a Han Solo riff, sure, but it’s a good one.

I’m more worried about the nagging structural problems.

One: the show’s weirdly disinterested attitude towards the consequences of its premise. Though the setting deserves a radical reinvention in light of the fact that, well, there’s no electricity, it’s weakly sketched, which is a shame when there’s such enormous potential for world-building.

I’m not talking about the aesthetics — the shots of overgrown Chicago are appropriately pretty — but about the epistemic stinginess. I can accept that there are no iPhones, but where have the combustion engines gone?

Esposito’s spiel on the “Baltimore Act” banning firearms doesn’t really cut it either; show us why that makes sense in (or how it makes sense of) the postblackout context, don’t just lay it out like an un-motivated law of physics.

Maybe I’m being unreasonably impatient, but after the incredibly fun pilot for “Last Resort,” I think the execution of the setting just wasn’t great. I know that Abrams would like to get at our anxieties about overconnectedness, I know he wants a Revolutionary Era vibe, but my feelings on this new way of life were weakly cued.

SN: If anything, the second episode screamed right-wing nightmare to me. People are exe-

cuted for owning hunting rifles; the militia burns the (outlawed!?)

American flag. It wasn’t so much the end of the world as we know it, as it is the end of Amurrica.

I’m usually a sucker for postapocalyptic scenarios. Give me marauding gangs and a long road, even this stuff was borrowed from elsewhere. But Charlie’s road is 15 minutes long and the gangs don’t scare me.

GC: What makes all of these smaller failures so frustrating is that the commercial stakes for genre television are such a delicate negotiation — when your space opera tanks, the networks make more police procedurals and medical dramas. It’s not that I don’t like J.J. Abrams’ shows; I’m a “Fringe” watcher, albeit a begrudging one by now. It’s that he’s studiously squandering whatever cultural capital is available to science fiction.

SN: I actually gave up on watching “Fringe,” and watching “Revolution” has made me wonder if J.J. Abrams is really suited for television. He did a good job with the Star Trek reboot, but he seems to have problems starting from scratch and playing an idea out to its conclusion. Any given episode of “Fringe” has several ideas running full-throttle, each of which could totally shift the show’s essential paradigms: an evil corporation, an alternate universe attacking us, otherworldly agents who engineer fate. You end up with a jumble of plot twists totally evacuated of tension.

That weakness makes me wonder how future audiences will look back on “Lost.” At the time, I was pretty forgiving of the pseudo-spiritual finale. But maybe it wasn’t brilliant, atmospheric incoherence. Maybe J.J. Abrams just doesn’t finish what he starts.

Contact GRAYSON CLARY and SOPHIA NGUYEN at grayson.clary@yale.edu and sophia. nguyen@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Following new EIC @TapStephenson on Twitter Because @idtapleythat is no longer!

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 11

WEEKEND THEATRE

AMERICANA, PAINFULLY

Fugly druggedout people lose it

// BY LIZ RODRIGUEZ-FLORIDO

// BY ROBERT PECK

Flannel, rifles and other assorted Americana (a flag as a cape, a mounted deer’s head) appear throughout the Yale Dramatic Association’s fall 2012 production of Sam Shepard’s tale of woe and psychological trauma in the late twentieth-century United States. The man loves his country, the way we love our families, even when that love takes us in tragic directions.

“A Lie of the Mind,” the second of the Dramat’s Fall Exes, tells the story of two Western families coping with the aftermath of domestic abuse. After years of marital disputes, husband Jake (James Dieffenbach ’13) leaves his wife Beth (Bonnie Antosh ’13), who he believes was unfaithful, for dead, and tries to cope with life without her. Beth’s family collects her from the hospital and must deal with their own personal demons while attempting to help their daughter recover.

The script doesn’t lend itself to easy adaptation — it’s basically a play that tries to communicate how hard it is for two families to communicate with themselves — but the sensitive direction of Kate Heaney ’14 made such serious issues easier to digest. At times, the scenes drag and feel overly depressing, but the premise isn’t one that would easily lead to rainbows or happy endings.

Antosh’s performance is scary. Not scary as in horrible — scary as in awfully, breathtakingly good. Antosh takes the role of a brain-damaged and beaten woman — a role that could easily be over- or underplayed to disaster — and made it both

physically believable and emotionally convincing. She screams, mumbles, and suffers on stage. And whenever she’s on, everything else on the set seems irrelevant.

The rest of the cast held their own, with Jacob Osborne ’16 as a convincing patriarch and the welcome comic relief in a show with scene after scene of dysfunctional family history, disappointment, and old memories.

The cast collectively put on southern accents, which at times were a bit distracting from the scene due to their large variety. The story is very dialogue based; the biggest event — Jake’s beating of Beth — takes place before the play begins, but inventive light direction and an interactive set help make up for this lack of direct action.

All in all, the lighting design of Shannon Csorny ’15 is ambitious but coherent: lights alternately guide the audience’s attention, set the mood and give cast and crew time to transition between scenes.

The lighting introduces layers to the set, literally breaking down the stage into two sections. Stage left, we have Jake’s family and, stage right, Beth’s home.

The set consists of two walls constructed from large, hanging photographs of snowy cabins, trucks, and family portraits – which feature the actual cast – and which are enhanced by frequent lighting changes. Whenever a cast member begins discussing something from the past, the photograph dealing with that particular

// BRIANNE BOWEN

Pain isn’t just an emotion in this Dramat production — it’s expressed physically, violently, as well.

set of circumstances lights up. This adds to the production’s portrayal of the effects memories and family identity have on us.

The lives these characters had before we meet them are literally illustrated with these images, extending the play into an imagined past.

In addition to the expert lighting, two cellists play throughout the show’s transitions. I’m mixed on their contribution.

Though they added to the atmosphere, the musicians did not seem to contribute to the story’s arch. To my mind, I associated their theatricality with Hollywood blockbusters like Black Swan and Harry Potter.

Within the Dramat’s fall lineup, “A Lie of the Mind” is a break from the more light-hearted and cheery fare on offer this season. In less than three hours, it presents a rugged look into the degeneration of the American home and country.

Contact LIZ RODRIGUEZ-FLORIDO at Liz.Rodriguez-Florido@yale.edu .

Copious cocaine usage. Eating talking birds raw. Sketchy sex. Destroying your close friends’ possessions.

If you enjoy the thought of any, or all, of those things, then you can get your sick thrills at “Ugly People,” by Cory Finley ’11, which premiered yesterday at the Whitney Humanities Center. But you’ll especially love it if you like the parts about drugs, intercourse and insanity, items that receive big billing in a show that displays more despair in one two-hour stretch than Dostoevsky fit into his entire career.

“Ugly People”’s foremost ugly person is Janna (Willa Fitzgerald ’13), a coke abusing San Franciscan who has recently lost her lover, Brian, to heart failure. Before his death, Brian was the pioneering mind behind a startup business backed by his parents and staffed by Janna, Brian’s brother Dan (Raphael Shapiro ’13), and his close friend Toby (Paul Hinkes ’15). Both Dan and Toby join Janna in her grief, Toby shares her drug habit and all three spend the play shouting at one another in a lakeside cabin to which they, along with Dan’s longtime girlfriend Megan (Calista Small ’14), have retreated for Brian’s funeral service.

The show opens with Megan sitting in the cabin with Janna as the two engage in barbed conversation. Megan tries to comfort Janna by touching her face a lot (a technique that she will favor throughout the play), but the only real comfort Janna seems to find comes from the alcohol that Toby and Dan show up with a few minutes into the action. After having a bit too much to drink, Janna experiences a dream/flashback sequence that incorporates a hyper, narcotics-induced rant, a frenzied make-out session and a midnight lighthouse sail in the course of maybe ten minutes.

Though the show asks its audience to accept a lot in the first two scenes, the skills of its performers make this suspension of disbelief seem not only possible, but reasonable. This holds true for no one more so than Fitzgerald: given the continuous emotional fluctuation that being a crackhead demands of her character, she plays Janna with commendable maturity, displaying subtlety in some places and hysteria in others. Especially impressive is her ability to emote on command,

an ability that the show calls on frequently whenever it asks her to take a hit. Hinkes, too, plays his role with confidence and volume befitting a much older actor, adding a layer of fear just as powerful as on-stage violence whenever he raises his voice.

Finley’s ambitious writing is tackled with poise by director Charlie Polinger ’13, whose orchestration of the production’s numerous sound cues, from beach waves to revving engines, brings gusto to scenes that might otherwise feel misplaced. Great care has also been put into prop usage: Fitzgerald was heard backstage more than once calling for “her blood,” a reference to the fake liquid that finds its way onto the hands and faces of several characters in later scenes, every time without a hint of camp.

Janna’s first bloodletting takes place after Toby and Dan have a screaming argument over who will take over as CEO of Brian’s startup after his death.

Dan tells Toby that the board of directors have named him CEO, in reaction to which Toby proceeds to smash Dan and Megan’s fine china all over the cabin floor while a drug-addled Janna jeers from the sidelines. After Dan and Megan go to bed, Toby threatens to leave, but Janna convinces him to stay by cutting open her hand on the edge of a broken plate. Toby responds by forcing her onto the couch as the theater goes black.

The final scenes, to leave room for intrigue, are equally in line with the above grim happenings. And all in all, though its characters often act in criminally insane ways, “Ugly People” leaves its viewers with a creeping sense of self-awareness. By throwing the negative aspects of its characters into sharp relief, the show calls attention to the ugliness in all people, ugliness that audience members will have little difficulty pinpointing in themselves due to the sympathy produced by the show’s excellent acting and skilled direction. Though the material often seems to exist simply for shock value, Ugly People’s positive aspects nonetheless make it sure to be offensively enjoyable for even the most critical theatergoer. Give it a go, unless you’re overly attached to your own sanity.

Contact ROBERT PECK at robert.peck@yale.edu .

Lost in Yonkers, Found in New Haven // BY YUVAL BEN-DAVID

A few years back, when I hit puberty, my dad put a copy of “Portnoy’s Complaint” in my hands. That’s the Philip Roth book, you’ll remember, that “put the id back in yid.”

Neil Simon took that project seriously, and “Lost in Yonkers” — his 1991 Pulitzer Prize winning play — takes a circumcisionscalpel to the pathologies of a Jewish-American family.

Set in Yonkers, New York, during World War II, the fast-talkin’ domestic play hurtles forward as its agonies accrete, understatedly—until, at the point of oversaturation, they collapse under the dead weight of schmaltz. Director Molly Houlahan ’14 brilliantly cushions the fall, leavening her production with just so much realism as to warrant a genuine emotional response. In other words, yours truly—a notorious schmuck of a skeptic—teared up.

The plot seems, at best, archetypal, at worst a Hollywood stock-reel. In any case, it’s an obscenely overstated litany of sorrows (try saying the following in one breath): two brothers left to their curmudgeonly grandma and absentminded aunt as their hemorrhoidal father goes South to make the money he needs to pay back the shy-

S U N D AY OCTOBER 07

lock he borrowed from to care for his wife who died of cancer: a meek, sickly aunt and wastrel uncle also make appearances. It’s a preachy lot, among whom the word “obligation” folds and refolds like amateur origami. Grandma thinks her grandsons have an obligation to be healthy, even though she’s a hypochondriac. Papa thinks he has an obligation to his family but not to himself.

The sons aren’t quite sure to whom they’re obligated. It’s debatable whether the raffish uncle has even heard the word obligation.

But the control room of the play is in Hitler’s bunker; the family’s local anxieties all refer to historical tragedies. Anti-Semitism is Simon’s chief device, rationalizing every statement — at once the cause of and excuse for the play’s sentimentality.

When Arty (played by a compelling, baby-voiced Connor Lounsbury ’14) refuses his grandmother’s soup, she falls back on the usual rhetoric: “If you were a boy growing up in Germany, you’d be dead by now.”

“But if I ate this soup, I’d be just as dead,” Arty returns.

If on our one side we have a mountain of wit and on the other a mountain of high theatrics, we find that Simon’s script lies in the

ARTIST TALK WITH PHOTOGRAPHER AN-MY LÊ

Yale University Art Gallery // 2 p.m.

She just won a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. That’s a huge deal!

valley between them. Sara Hendel ’14 plays the grandma, herself a mountain, or monster — “Don’t pay me for being born” is her response to a birthday present — but the actress’s acute sense of stage rhythm allows her to round out the disapproving matriarch, complicating her otherwise overcooked and predictable moral dilemmas.

Christine Shaw ’14, as Bella — the forgetful, ambiguously childlike aunt — employs a suite of tics and mannerisms as expressively controlled as a face fighting back tears; her performance is ravishing.

In fact, what is consistent about the quality of the acting is how the cast nimbly manipulates its oversized parts into psychological creatures and not — as lesser actors would have done with the script — into grotesques.

When the play ends — and it does so in the most predictable way — the boys’ father (played by Gabe Greenspan ’14) kisses his mother, whether she likes it or not. “Thank you for not putting up a fight,” he says. All I could think was: Thank you, production members, for putting up a fight. // HARRY SIMPERINGHAM

Contact YUVAL BEN-DAVID at yuval.ben-david@yale.edu .

Lost, but together.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: It’s 4 a. m. — bedtime! Sleep is for the Blessed.

PAGE B12

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BACKSTAGE

MARGOT BORDELON DRA ’13 AND MARY LAWS DRA ’14 // JAMES LU

Playwrights, observers, visionaries // BY NITIKA KHAITAN

M

argot Bordelon DRA ’13, Mary Laws DRA ’14 and Alex Ripp DRA ’13 created ‘This.’, a show that premiered at the Cabaret last week and is based on interviews with New Haven residents. The question they asked was simple: “Can you tell me about a moment in your life when everything changed?” WEEKEND was able to catch up with two of the three play’s creators — Bordelon and Laws — to discuss this (or ‘This.’).

ML. We started with basic questions, but sometimes these warm-up questions would open up things that were very personal to people. We found that people were excited to share stories even though they knew they were going to be on stage. Part of that was because we kept all the interviews anonymous. An audience member who had a story in the show said it was exciting to see something articulated on stage that they maybe weren’t free to share themselves.

MB. It was really amazing for us. We talked to 40 people for an hour each, and you can learn a lot about a person in an hour. We asked warm-up questions like — where are you from and what were you like as a kid — because we wanted them to trust us and know we weren’t trying to exploit them.

Q. And how did you go about the process of finding people to interview?

MB. We sent out emails to all the graduate schools, and the Cabaret sent out emails to its subscribers. We set up a [public] anonymous email account so people could email us [their details to set up an interview], and we posted flyers in the city with both email addresses.

ML. There was never a night with less than two or three audience members who had stories in the show.

That made it feel very live in the room because the person sitting next to you could be the person that was “on stage”.

Q. You had a lot of material to work with.

How did you go about transforming that into a play?

ML. A lot of coffee and very little sleep.

I was sent away with [the transcribed interviews] for two weeks to sift through everything. At the end, the draft had different kinds of stories —

some life-changing and some smaller.

We wanted to say that because you’ve held on to these memories, no matter large or small, we think they’re important because they’re a part of how you define yourself.

MB. Logistically, we made lists of all the connecting themes – stories about people who lost their cats, jewelry, loved ones.

ML. It was amazing how much crossover there was and how much you have in common with another person without even realizing it.

Q. What has it felt like living and studying in New Haven?

MB. It has been challenging, and I miss living in the big city of Chicago. But I’m sure I’ll look back on this time and romanticize it as a quiet oasis. I wish I had more time to really understand New Haven rather than it feeling like a transitory place, and that was part of how this project grew.

Q. How did the project start?

MB. Even after spending two years at the School of Drama, I felt intensely isolated, like I didn’t know people as well I’d like to and people didn’t know me. You can work with people on a show every day for two months and think you know them. And then you realize you don’t know some basic things about them, like what their parents do, stories from their childhood or events in their life that have shaped them. For me, it really started from that and getting to know people beyond conversations about theatre and who they are as artists. We talked about how film and TV are so fantastic to reach a broader audience, but the power of theatre is that you can create a show in dialogue with audience.

That was a lot of the work I was doing in Chicago and in part, what made me fall in love with the city. So I guess this was also an attempt to fall in love with New Haven more.

ML. Definitely. Once you know some-

one’s story, it’s easy to fall in love with them. And when you know a lot of people’s stories, it’s easy to fall in love with the place.

Q. Looking back to the beginning, what drew you to the Yale School of Drama in the first place?

ML. Professor Paula Vogel — she’s a genius. I love the way she teaches playwriting, but they only accept three playwrights a year, so I had to apply to Yale three times in a row until they were so annoyed that they had to let me in. I also love the way students collaborate here. Margot’s a student director, and I’m a student playwright, and we were able to work together and foster a relationship. When we leave, hopefully Margot and I will do every project together!

MB. I’m going to hold you to that! I wanted to come here and work with Paula Vogel, which I’m doing now!

It’s the one drama school in the country that has students in all disciplines, including designers, who are working really hard here, like they’re going through designer boot camp.

ML. They’re badasses! Can you say that in the Yale Daily News?

Q. Because you were dealing with the stories of real people, were you ever scared of being insensitive?

MB. We tried to be really sensitive.

Over 90 percent of the script is verbatim. It was important to us that we never change the intention of the stories.

[The interviewees] gave us a gift, and we wanted to give them a gift back, not saying something that would make them regret giving us their stories.

Q. Christopher Arnott, a reviewer from the New Haven Theatre Jerk, wrote “[‘This.’] is not a show for egos, for folks who feel they have deeper problems than others.” What are your thoughts on that?

MB. I think that quote is apt, in so far as there was no interviewee that was the star of the show. The reviewer [who was also interviewed for ‘This.’] had some great stories, which were whittled down to a few words. That’s the heartbreak of a piece like this — you end up getting so many good stories and you think, I could make five shows out of this. It’s hard to not be precious about that stuff, but you have the logistics.

Q. What about the presentational style?

MB. I’d call it a collage piece, if I had to put a label on it.

ML. We wanted to create a sense of a universe of people instead of one or two primary characters that you follow all the way. We had a group of beautiful, talented actors in the ensemble that transformed into dozens of characters each.

Q. How did you prevent the show from becoming too dark given your themes of loss, fracture and regret?

ML. I tried to select some stories that were humorous. I think the joy was in

the shared experience and in understanding that the things you lost were a part of your life for a reason. You can celebrate that as opposed to mourning it.

MB. Also, the way Mary structured the play was that some stories had their first parts in the first half and their conclusions in the second. So in the first half, we got to see people’s relationships with [what they loved], like a wonderful stuffed elephant they made in kindergarten and the happiness and joy of loving them. And that is where the humorous tone comes from.

Q. Did either of you include your own experiences in the play?

ML. At the very end of the play, we had a wall of projections to try and include as many people as possible in the play.

And I included one of my stories in the projections.

MB. Should we claim the Fifth Amendment? We’ll never tell!

Contact NITIKA KHAITAN at nitika.khaitan@yale.edu .

“

ONCE YOU KNOW SOMEONE’S STORY, IT’S EASY TO FALL IN LOVE WITH THEM.

“

Q. How did it feel interviewing people about such personal themes, and how did you get them to open up?