This WEEKEND

WEEKEND // FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 09, 2012

THIS IS NOT IMITATION A REFLECTION ON YALE’S DRAG CULTURE

BY CHANTEL SIMPSON, PAGE 3

CONFESSIONS B5

JOKES

ON TAKING N-1 MATH CLASSES Joy Shan explains why she traded the truth of mathematics for the English major’s beautiful lies.

TWO NEW TROUPES IN TOWN Jackson McHenry introduces and deconstructs the newest improvisers on the campus comedy scene.

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ACID

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A PRIMER ON LSD Karolina Ksiazek speaks to Dr. James Fadiman about his research and the enduring mystery of psychedelics.

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YALE DAILY NEWS ¡ FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2012 ¡ yaledailynews.com

STANLEY-BECKER

WEEKEND VIEWS

10 REMEDIES FOR MITT’S POSTELECTION BLUES // BY ISAAC STANLEY-BECKER

Note: These are actual Facebook statuses from the days leading up to the 2012 election. All names were changed to Yale’s newest president, Peter Salovey. Congratulations, Peter Salovey!

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Your 2012 election newsfeed by Cody Kahoe and Caleb Madison Peter Salovey When voting tomorrow please think of the state of our economy. Realize that without a strong economy, we could risk falling to another nation. If that ever happens then we all run the risk of losing all of our rights. Then, any social issue you have becomes irrelevant.

-JLF t $PNNFOU t 8SJUF B DPNNFOU

Peter Salovey Got the 50 piece Chicken Nuggets ... not the best idea -JLF t $PNNFOU t 8SJUF B DPNNFOU

Peter Salovey When ur dating someone or talking to them and out nowhere one day they start to act funny‌ That means they talking to someone else..# Fact!

-JLF t $PNNFOU t 8SJUF B DPNNFOU

Peter Salovey People who make serious Facebook statuses make me laugh. Save it for your diary.

-JLF t $PNNFOU t // AUBE REY LESCURE

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It’s when the campaigning stops that the identity crises start. Mitt Romney has no idea who he is right now.

How’s he to occupy his time after spending the last five years doing little more than running for president? What reason does he have anymore for waking up in the morning?

I feel for you, Mitt, so I came up with a list of some post-election activities. I hope they keep you busy and away from politics because I think we can all agree: You’ve had just about enough.

1. Practice self-deportation.

Okay, it’s possible if you just try hard enough. It takes willpower and mental discipline. If you just sit and concentrate, you can train your mind to literally deport yourself anywhere you want to go. Switzerland to check up on the tax shelters? Ta-da! Cayman islands? Land ho!

2. Paul Ryan’s personal cheerleader. I hear it’s a paid position, and you’re already off to a good start by remarking on his “commitment to principle� in your concession speech.

I think I have a very different conception of “principle� than you, Mitt.

But it doesn’t matter — Paul needs

someone to cheer him on when he’s running all his marathons. All in under half an hour, of course.

3. Smiling classes. This is a must.

When you smile, it makes me want to cry. Just look at your face during the debates. Everyone already thinks you’re a phony, Mitt. You’re really not helping the cause with that awful grin.

4. Go on an apology tour! I know, I know, your book made it perfectly clear: “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness.� But really, no apology? None at all? Not to the poor saps who leech off government programs? Not to Lilly Ledbetter herself, to whom you wouldn’t have granted equal pay? Not to the 63-year-old gay veteran whom you dismissed during a New Hampshire campaign stop?

Fine, don’t apologize.

5. Collaging. We all know you’re an expert with binders, but the really hip thing is to deck those bad boys out with some images. Considering women for cabinet positions? Snap a pic and papier-mâchÊ it ALL OVER the pages. Got a thing for Big Bird?

You just know he wants to be cut out of a magazine and pasted into that Trapper Keeper of yours.

6. Speaking of Big Bird, how about a guest appearance on Sesame Street?

Cookie Monster thinks he’s entitled to cookies! And to health care and housing! He is the 47 percent. You need to teach him not to be a victim.

Educate that negligent slob.

7. Write out “I must not tell lies�

100 times, Dolores Umbridge-style.

That’ll teach you not to say the Dark Lord is back, errr ‌ not to flip-flop.

8. Learn how to love man’s best friend by adopting a few pooches from the pound. This will be your penance for strapping Seamus to the roof of your Chevy for 12 hours.

12 whole hours. This hasn’t been explained in a satisfactory way, and it needs to be. PETA, are you there? It’s me, Seamus.

9. Take up carpentry. We know you built your business, Mitt, but how about trying your hand at a table or a bookshelf?

10. Have another child. There aren’t enough Romneys roaming this planet. Here’s hoping Sasha vanquishes Mitt II in 2048.

Contact ISAAC STANLEY-BECKER at isaac.stanley-becker@yale.edu .

Peter Salovey I voted for the President.

-JLF t $PNNFOU t 8SJUF B DPNNFOU

Peter Salovey liked LOVED DAT BOOBS

Titanic If Jack and Rose both made it to America, what kind of life do you think they would have lived?

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82,348

Peter Salovey I wanna smoke a blunt and go out to lunch. Too bad I have no friends.

-JLF t $PNNFOU t %FBO .BSZ .JMMFS Lmao I wanna eat!!

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Peter Salovey Okay all politics aside, this video and song is hilariously and amazingly done.

Definitely worth checking out and laughing at!

(I AM NOT looking to instigate a political argument or debate; I am posting this purely for the video’s humorous artistic worth.)

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VANDERHOOF

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In Defense of Mom-like Love // BY ERIN VANDERHOOF

Peter Salovey and Rick Levin were tagged in Peter Salovey’s album YOLO, don’t be a whore.

Peter Salovey wish i can remain naked all day in bed‌ihatemyjob, let me win the lotto pleeze.

-JLF t $PNNFOU t 8SJUF B DPNNFOU

Peter Salovey We accept the love we thibk we deserve.

-JLF t $PNNFOU t 8SJUF B DPNNFOU

I recently realized that all of my close friends are attractive. Really, really attractive. They all have haircuts that really suit their well-proportioned faces, dress well (but not too well, they don’t try too hard), have beautiful eyes and lovely smiles.

At first I found this to be a little troubling. Do I hold my friends to a normative, oppressive standard of beauty? Have I rudely avoided making friends with uggos? Does this make me a bad person?

It was around this time that I started to realize that my close friends are also the nicest people I know.

They are really good listeners, they’re clean, they throw the best parties, are super funny, they’re good girlfriends and boyfriends and are super socially conscious with bleeding hearts of gold. I also found this troubling. Do I have a skewed perspective on the world because my friends are so great? Do I need some sort of affirmative action program for grumpy, mean friends?

Don’t worry, I understand that it’s really improbable that I just so happen to be friends with the prettiest, nicest bunch of twenty-somethings on the planet. (But not impossible!

Really, you should meet my friends!)

I genuinely believe that my friends

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are good looking and kindhearted, and will defend that to the ends of the earth. But I know I’ll never be able to prove it. Instead, I think I’ve stumbled upon some truth of friendship: When you’re really good friends with someone, it’s impossible to be objective about them.

One of my (positively brilliant, really clever) best friends compared it to looking at a specimen under a microscope. The closer you zoom in on the image, the better you understand the details, but you start to lose sight of the organism as a whole.

When you know someone for a long time, you learn about their motivations, their childhoods and all their weird habits, and they start to make sense. You start to just love them so much, despite the times they make you mad or upset or you see them throw up. It can be bad sometimes — I want good things to happen to my friends, so I meddle destructively in their affairs. But I also think my lack of objectivity makes me a better friend. It helps to get constructive criticism from someone when you know that the harsh words are coming from a place of real love. It’s nice to know that somewhere out there, someone really likes you, even when you don’t particularly like yourself.

I’m also starting to realize that it’s equally important to have acquaintances. Getting lunch or coffee with a person you don’t know very well feels centering. They can see you with some perspective, and make you feel like a whole human with a coherent personality rather than a haphazard collection of close-up shots.

But I know my intense affection may just be a quirk of my personality. I love like moms do, unconditionally and enthusiastically. I joke that I sink my teeth into people, because I don’t let go of old friendships or relationships. But I think that seeing your friends through rose-colored glasses is as important when you’re not that effusively affectionate. It’s amazing to spend time surrounded by the people that you love and that really love you back, to feel empowered to be grumpy, wear your fat sweatpants and go a little too long without a shower.

By writing this, I’ve probably embarrassed everyone that I’m close to. Sorry about that. But they’re so pretty, nice and generous, I know they’ll forgive me.

Peter Salovey I actually hate everyone no lie.

That includes whoever’s reading this.

-JLF t $PNNFOU t 8SJUF B DPNNFOU

Peter Salovey You can just call me jack of all traits, no job is too hard for me to figure out! Love working!

-JLF t $PNNFOU t 8SJUF B DPNNFOU

Peter Salovey SNAPE2012 -JLF t $PNNFOU t 8SJUF B DPNNFOU

Peter Salovey Whatever is happening now, I’m just happy to live in this country!

-JLF t $PNNFOU t )FMFO 4BMPWFZ Very well said, Peter!

Contact ERIN VANDERHOOF at erin.vanderhoof@yale.edu .

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“THE DROWSY CHAPERONE�

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

University Theater // 8 p.m.

“Grand, glittery and glorious� — what could be better? Our review, p. 4

Raising your hand.

You can wait to be called on to speak. You really can.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B3

WEEKEND COVER

‘GENDERFUCK’ AND OTHER EXTRACURRICULARS // BY CHANTEL SIMPSON

hen I saw Kyra Fey and Edyn Panache perform together at Partners Café for the first time one Friday night this past October, I felt as if I were watching two complete strangers. It wasn’t the exterior appearance of my two friends that obscured my ability to recognize them — no amount of make-up could completely cover the features I associated with their male counterparts, Timmy Pham ’13 and McJay Field ’14. (McJay asked that his surname be changed to protect his identity.)

But something about their transformation into their drag personas brought out a side of them I had never encountered before.

During her lip-synced rendition of Beyonce’s “Countdown,” Kyra’s body moved to the song in a way that Timmy could never match. Edyn’s performance of “Ten Little Indians” from “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” was delivered with passion and anger quite unlike McJay’s usual cheerfulness. Drag performance gave Timmy and McJay permission to say what they wanted, to move in the way they felt most comfortable and to express themselves without the limitations usually imposed on them by society. And the audience loved it.

Drag culture at Yale is the product of sacrifice, defiance towards conventional attitudes and a fiercely supportive community. A new development, it offers students a chance to use performance as a weapon against restrictive gender definitions. It’s a form of protest within the parameters of one’s external presentation. And according to student performers, the growing visibility of drag on campus means that more and more Yalies are learning to recognize the need for that protest.

Timmy and McJay are currently the only student drag queens performing at established venues. They have invested an immense amount of time and money towards their artform; today, drag is critical to their identities and will remain, they said, a part of their lives long past graduation. Developing the confidence to perform was difficult for each of them, but they made it there together. In Yale’s drag culture, that’s how it’s done.

W

BAD ROMANTICS, SUPPORTIVE PEERS When it comes to giving the finger to gender norms on campus, the Bad Romantics, Yale’s drag cabaret troupe, leads the way. In doing so, the Romantics embody a form of queer activism defined by artful revelry. They recognize, according to the group’s current co-director, Hannah Mogul-Adlin ’13, that drag is a broad experience with significant connotations and effects — “It’s not just about being a drag queen or king.”

Rachel Schiff ’10, founder of the group, explained that establishing the Romantics in her senior year was akin to placing the icing on the cake of the work she and others had done in creating conversation about LGBTQ issues on campus.

“I had spent the past four years invested in the queer community and I wanted to throw a celebration of our accomplishments in the form of an event that people could either participate in, if that was their cup of tea, or just show up at and relish in,” Schiff said, pointing to the accomplishment of gender-neutral housing and increasing awareness around the queer

female and trans communities as big developments.

“Sometimes,” she added, “we worked so hard we forgot to have a good time.”

Today, the Bad Romantics rarely forget to live it up. Their shows — defined by loud music and lots of glitter — never fail to fill Yale venues, their reputation helps replenish their ranks and their performances center around relevant but always slightly off-kilter themes.

“I feel like it’s a place where even people who are not involved in the queer community, who don’t identify as queer … can go and watch and be part of the glitter for a few hours,” Mogul-Adlin said.

The Bad Romantics place drag performance in the spotlight, exposing it to people of all backgrounds in a manner that makes the artform not as shocking or alternative anymore. And in the process, the co-directors said, they reveal just how much gender is a performance and nothing more.

In broader society and traditional social settings, “male” and “female” are clearly defined. Individuals, then, act on the basis of how they, as “male” or “female,” are socially conditioned. In a drag group, however, the norms are turned on their heads — and different forms of gendered behavior establish a new code.

“We’re all always in drag, always doing a gender performance,” said Maria Trumpler GRD ’92, a senior lecturer in the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department and the director of Yale’s Office of LGBTQ Resources. “But when you’re doing a gender performance that’s socially accepted by the people around you, you don’t think of it that way because it seems normal.”

The Bad Romantics’ group dynamic is especially critical as they deal with all types of individual insecurities. With revealing dance forms like burlesque as a central feature of many of their shows, being comfortable with one’s body is very important. And though not everyone within the troupe may be as confident in his or her body image as others, the act of doing burlesque as part of a group, being collectively vulnerable, is meant to be empowering. The Bad Romantics provide a space where members can learn to embrace their self-perceived “flaws” and never leave their confidence on the stage.

“The only way to do drag and burlesque and that sort of outward performance and expression of yourself is to love yourself entirely,” Cody Hooks ’13 said. “So for me, drag was definitely this process of really learning to love my body.”

INSPIRATION FOR A NEW GENERATION For some Yale drag performers, a more intimate form of support has proved equally beneficial.

“I think it’s really important to have a figure to point to humanize drag and give you permission and safety to ask the stupid questions and explore,” Field told me.

For many of those on Yale’s campus who weren’t familiar with drag as a form of performance, that figure was Alejandro Bustillos ’11.

I vividly remember my first encounter with Bustillos, or rather Azure Ice. How could I not? She was at least 7 feet tall — 8, if you counted her hair. Her black wig was covered in glitter, her lips were frosty blue, her clothing was skintight, with an

even tighter waist-belt creating the illusion of voluptuousness. I saw her at the Drag Ball my freshman spring. Her presence amongst the other queens in the crammed basement space at 216 Dwight was so commanding it was as if she owned the place.

Both Pham and Field speak of Bustillos as an influential force behind their embrace of drag. When Pham was a freshman, he explained, Bustillos was “the drag queen on campus.”

Bustillos used Yale as a platform to not only build on his drag persona(s) but also to create an attitude of normalcy towards gender-bending performance on campus, exposing it to an audience that may have never encountered it before — at least not willingly. He became infamous for his outrageous costumes during the annual Yale Symphony Orchestra Halloween Show, appearing his freshman year as a “scag drag”— rough and ungroomed — version of C. J. Parker, Pamela Anderson’s character from “Baywatch.”

“It was an instance where I remember very vividly [thinking], ‘Oh yeah, I’m going to dress up ‘as a woman’ and I’m going to be in front of literally thousands of people,’” Bustillos said. “It was an interesting time in my development.”

Pham began to explore drag as an artform in his junior year, months after Bustillos graduated. Yet this past summer, as the two studied together at Yale, he got a

identities, accepting aspects of themselves they had been struggling with since their childhoods.

KYRA FEY IS HERE TO STAY — AND PANACHE HAS FOLLOWED SUIT “Timmy, are you good right now? Are you sitting down?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.

What’s wrong?” Pham asked his cousin over the phone.

“So … your aunt and uncle found your blog.”

Pham’s tone turned serious as he recalled the fear that overcame him after he heard those words. The call came two days after Kyra Fey’s debut. On a complete high from its success, Pham SEE DRAG PAGE B8

chance t o exchange ideas with the more experienced queen. Pham brought his ideas and fresh perspective to their experimentation with the form; Bustillos brought his expertise. Eventually, it was with Karma Lilola, Bustillos’ latest incarnation, at her side that Pham’s persona, Kyra Fey, made her debut performance this past August at Partners Café.

Even though he was still in the process of developing his own understanding of drag, Pham similarly provided integral support to Field as he constructed his persona, Edyn Panache.

“I owe the world to Kyra Fey,” Field said.

“I would not be doing drag now, Edyn would not have been born, if it were not for Kyra.”

It was Kyra who taught Edyn how to do her make-up and pad her bra. Kyra showed her how to fully embrace her persona and take advantage of the slew of possibilities that playing with gender opens up, the freedom of voice and actions without any repercussions.

These personal relationships gave Pham and Field the courage they needed to defy judgment, tradition and their families’ expectations. Using Yale as a safe space, they said, they became comfortable with their // CHANTEL SIMPSON

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“CRISIS IN THE MEDIA: WHITHER JOURNALISM? … OR WITHERING AWAY?”

Sterling Memorial Library Lecture Hall // 5 p.m.

Richard Valeriani, award-winning TV correspondent, predicts our future.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Sphincter Troupe.

Yale’s only all-female sketch comedy troupe returns.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND THEATER

THE DRAMAT’S SUGAR FIX // BY HAYLEY BYRNES In a pitch-black theater, a voice rings with a clear Southern drawl: “I hate theater.” Thus begins “The Drowsy Chaperone,” a postmodern throwback to 1920sera screwball musicals. After a few moments of disillusioned mumblings, the lights go up to reveal Ryan Bowers ’14, the show’s lonely bachelor and unofficial cultural critic who’s known as “Man in Chair.”

As the light illuminates his figure, Man in Chair pines for an earlier era of musicals and decides to enlighten the audience with an old favorite recording of “The Drowsy Chaperone.”

The musical — that is, within the musical — begins with the anticipated wedding of former showgirl Janet van de Graaff (Rebecca Brudner ’16) and Robert Martin (Christian Probst ’16). Supporting characters make for an especially colorful cast. Painfully aware of each character’s archetypal lack of originality, Man in Chair introduces them as generalities: “a harried producer, jovial gangsters posing as pastry chefs, a flaky chorine (chorus girl, for the uninitiated thespian), a Latin lothario and an aviatrix,” he says.

And, of course, the Drowsy Chaperone.

So how does the cast of “The Drowsy Chaperone” animate these cardboard cutouts? The answer: it doesn’t. Content to mimic the overdone absurdity of 1920s screwball comedies, the show favors aggressive silliness over any satirical undertones.

Given the production’s unconven-

tional narrative structure, its dependence on predictable slapstick routines was disappointing. Man in Chair bubbles with sarcastic outbursts throughout the piece, but any flirtations with genuine satire by the rest of the cast often fall flat.

If the intent was merely to mimic 1920s screwball comedy, the cast succeeds splendidly. But with that imitation, the show sacrifices the nuances of irony for the one-dimensionality of such comedy.

But “satire” and “irony” are lofty words, and by no means necessary for an enjoyable experience. “The Drowsy Chaperone,” while not nearly as unconventional as it may strive to be, is pure escapism. For those inclined to such slapstick hilarity, it’s a lively and engaging show (look forward to a scene devoted to spitting water in a British butler’s face and corresponding commentary by Man in Chair).

The second half of the show — at just under two hours long, no intermission is given — escapes the predictability of the first half and edges toward a more inventive discourse. With his comedic timing impeccable, Bowers rescues the plot from complete vacuity with each pithy aside. After accidentally paying the wrong record, he explains he hires a cleaning woman who “has an annoying habit of putting my records away … even though I say, ‘No touch records, Carmela.

No touch records.’ I suppose if I spoke to her in complete sentences she’d stop

touching my records.”

For something that could be as dizzying as an Escher painting (the theatrical equivalent of hands drawing hands drawing hands), “The Drowsy Chaperone” holds your hand as you navigate its play-within-a-play structure. Man in Chair, while often restricted to his cozy corner on the left of the stage, reminds us of his presence as he synchronizes his legs with another character or flicks an object into the musical, evidence of effective directorial choices.

The cast performs together with irresistible chemistry — the two pastrypun-loving gangsters (Gabe Greenspan ’14 and Sharif Youssef ’14) strike a Tweedledum and Tweedledee harmony. But individual performances suffer at times from unconvincing exaggeration. In seeking to convey his character’s narcissism, Probst delivers one too many winks to the audience. Exaggeration, of course, is part of the charade, as Man in Chair is quick to note. But somehow Probst misplaces exaggeration with an overly contrived sense of ersatz flamboyance. (That said, with tap dancing, roller-skating

// TORY BURNSIDE-CLAPP

“Drowsy” delight with apt narration and saccharine sensibilities.

and blindfolded dancing, Probst shows enviable talent.)

The titular Drowsy Chaperone (Sara Hendel ’14) embodies tipsy perfection as she glides across the stage, champagne glass forever in hand. Hendel’s delicate voice sometimes drowns in an overwhelming orchestra and reaches us best without any musical accompaniment.

Despite its avoidance of more nuanced complexities, “The Drowsy Chaperone” delivers. It delivers energy and comedy and an entire tune about monkeys at which it’s impossible not to laugh. But at some point, each candy-coated performance verged on sickly sweet. And while I didn’t leave with a stomachache, I had my fill and won’t be craving sugar for a while.

Contact HAYLEY BYRNES at hayley.byrnes@yale.edu .

‘Body Politic’ Engages Mind Too

Gay Pastoral

// BY YUVAL BEN-DAVID

// BY MAYA AVERBUCH

It’s a good thing I had my ID at the theater last night because an usher asked me for it at the door.

It took me a good long while to figure out that this little bureaucratic trip-up was an extension of the performance — not exactly street art, but foyer art, if you will — and that the ID the usher was asking for wasn’t my Yale one but the government-issued plastic card, the ID that controversially confirmed that I was an American citizen, eligible to vote. The play, “Richard 2012,” was billed as an “election event,” after all, and as a defensive American I wouldn’t want any foreigners to be better armed to ridicule to the circus-theatrics of the recent election. “Don’t air dirty laundry,” as the saying goes. I doubt that’s what writers Alex Kramer ’13, Charlie Polinger ’13 and Raphael Shapiro ’13 had in mind when they had an usher ask for my ID — though I’m kind of foreign, after all — but then again … I doubt that the usher knew I’d actually be voting on the show’s candidates: I’m reviewing the show, after all.

So I’ll come clean: it’s a blockbuster show, a media mash up of the best (Shakespeare’s “Richard II”) and the worst (campaign materials) of Western civilization into an energetic, timely punk of a senior project that simultaneously manages to sustain some deep insights. Kramer, who plays the “incumbent,” kicks off the show with an oration collaged out of 16 separate Obama speeches, starting with his keynote address to the Democratic National Convention way back in 2004. Kramer’s uncanny vocal imitation of Obama fuels a fast-forward capsule of the president’s political flight. The oscillating, start-and-stop style of his stump speech; the lilt; the arrogant tendency towards pontification — Kramer mimics

F R I D AY NOVEMBER 9

these Obama hallmarks to an admirably tactful, even respectful, degree, which only bolsters a runaway scene that seeks to flake away the words’ polish, and then grind it underfoot. It’s all the more honest for his fairness to the man he’s portraying.

Snaking through the speech is the makeshift Obama campaign slogan, “Fired up, ready to go!” Through overuse, its spontaneous radiance collapses into a fatigued mantra — and a false one to boot, as becomes clearer with Kramer’s every sigh and snappy shrug.

By the time Kramer settles into an Oval Office desk that’s too big for him, he seems battleweary, unprepared for the policy briefs an aide dumps at his side. He ends up circling the desk, folding himself into it like he’s going into hiding, though I’d like to believe he’s destressing with some office yoga.

Shapiro plays the only other character, Kramer’s challenger — Romney, that is, though Shapiro’s mimicry certainly isn’t as faithful as Kramer’s. He captures Romney’s slickness, but riffs on the role more widely than Kramer, in a way that conveys more of his own personal charm. At the Republican Convention he breaks out into a lip-lickingly smug song-and-dance routine of “Yankee Doodle Dandee.” Romney was never that expressive; his hair was.

A large chunk of Shapiro’s acting takes place on screen, where pre-filmed interviews linger on Shapiro’s physiognomy in a way that creates an intimacy never granted to Kramer. A strategic move on the writers’ part, no doubt: without the humanizing videos, the play would exhibit a salient bias against the Republican candidate, whose gaffes balloon to satiric proportions, especially in the debate scenes. Indeed, Shapiro sometimes gropes for simple words with a style more

YALE SCHOOL OF DRAMA PRESENTS “BLUEBERRY TOAST” Iseman Theater // 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. showings

“YOU LOOK HUNGRY, DEAR,” reads the description of this play, which was penned by our very own Backstage alumna Mary Laws DRA ’14.

// PHILIPP ARNDT

Shapiro conveys just who Romney is, using both his acting skills and his hair.

Dubya than Romney, and seems a bit overeager when interrupting questioners.

Its own partisan tics aside, the play takes on partisanship with scrutinizing intensity. With only two real characters — silent aides don’t count — audiences suffer from a claustrophobically binary arrangement that resembles American politics all too well. The costumes are all red or blue; so are the banners. The audience members, arranged on two sides of the theater, facing one another, literally face off. Towards the show’s end, Shapiro and Romney predictably duke it out, in a protracted, slow-motion brawl studded with strobe lights. It’s a hilarious scene, but gratuitous; comic relief isn’t exactly wanting in the script. The “morning after” the debate, where Shapiro and Kramer come out as janitors cleaning up after themselves, wins out though; using Shakespeare’s lines, they fret over the sovereign’s fate — an ironic selfappraisal by two politicians who’ve already disgraced themselves.

The integration of Shakespeare’s “Richard II” grounds the intensely current play in eternal questions about statecraft’s uncertainties. But Shakespeare’s lines don’t call attention to themselves, and their role is frankly secondary. Instead, it’s the writers’ own original directorial choices that raise the play’s content above hackneyed critiques of politics.

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

Charming fifth-grader Emory may frequently be found playing with a Barbie doll or practicing a ribbon dance for his debut on the TV show “Reach for the Stars.”

But despite his joy in such play, his no-nonsense Nanna reminds him that he’s a boy, and boys just don’t do that sort of thing.

Set on a chicken farm in the rural Midwest, Joshua Conkel’s “MilkMilkLemonade” at the Cabaret is what the poster appropriately calls “a gay fantasia.” However, the harsh reality it depicts is more often tragic than funny.

Emory, the protagonist, suffers through the taunts of his classmates and the cynical musings of his often cruel, chain-smoking, cancer-riddled grandmother.

He is only truly gleeful when he dances with his best friend, Linda the gigantic, feathered-boa-covered chicken (hilariously played

by Lico Whitfield DRA ’13) while imagining his future as a tan, gorgeous performer on Broadway.

Conkel manages to keep the play from excessive moralizing by weaving in Emory’s fantasies and adorable cheer, which is what makes the play so compelling.

Even when Elliot, the violent bully on the neighboring farm, punches Emory and mocks him, the fifthgrader remains bright-eyed. He refuses to respond to the pressure from people around him, saying, “To me, I’m not acting like a girl.

I’m just acting like myself,” and “I really like being me.” The set, which is replete with child-like paintings of rainbows and flowers on the wall behind the barn, curiously reflects his mindset.

Though the jokes are undoubtedly hilarious, they sometimes pull away from the core of the play — the relationship between the two boys. Linda the chicken’s stand-up comedy act and conversation with a sunglasses-wearing spider are odd additions, though the chicken’s larger-than-life presence is enough to elicit laughs in every one of her scenes. Frequent references to Emory’s television dreams, such as the appearance of characters with numbered placards used to score some of Emory’s and the chicken’s performances, also warrant a chuckle.

What really makes the Yale Cabaret production successful is the expert way it tackles the complex interactions between Emory and Elliot. Played by Xaq Webb

DRA ’14 and Bonnie Antosh ’13, the boys are close to one another, even though one spends his free time choreographing dances while the other spends his burning things. Elliot, as Antosh shows, is not just the rogue he appears to be at first; the little voice inside him that tells him to hurt people drives him mad, and his frequent references to prom night betray a romantic sensitivity further revealed later in the play.

“I’M JUST ACTING LIKE MYSELF...

I REALLY LIKE BEING ME.” Though the excellent acting brings out the varied layers of the characters, the boys’ many scenes are not without their issues. Some of Conkel’s script choices play off the children’s ages in an unnerving way — while playing house, the beer-swilling Elliot declares that an abortion is necessary, given the invented couple’s financial straits, and Emory poetically describes the plight of moths drawn to the light. Though their make-believe could be chalked up to imitations of TV scenes, their language seems oddly beyond them. The only excuse is that their youth allows the playwright to preserve the wholly necessary fantasy elements in his writing on fairly adult topics. Still, these types of topics sometimes come across as bizarre, calling attention to how out-of-place they are in this childlike setting.

A chicken farm seems like an odd location to set such a play, but with some loose connections between the plight of the chickens and that of the other characters, the Yale Cabaret cast makes it work. As Nanna says, “Life is hard, Emory. And if you’re too soft, it chews you up and spits you out.”

Thankfully, “MilkMilkLemonade” is only sometimes so bleak. It might not warrant a placard with a big, shining 10, but between an enormous chicken and a sweethearted little boy, it comes pretty close.

Contact MAYA AVERBUCH at maya.averbuch@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Sledding, igloo-building, snow with maple syrup.

Making the most of the freak November weather.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B5

WEEKEND VARIANCE

CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH MAJOR // BY JOY SHAN

A few weeks ago, I dropped a math class. It was the first time I’ve done so, and I waited longer than I should have to turn in the form. It wasn’t the embarrassment or the stigma of quitting (does that even exist anymore, at this point in the semester?) that slowed my pace. At the risk of melodrama, the most precise way I can describe my resistance to withdrawing is this: I felt as if a major part of me would be laid to rest if I took the class off my schedule.

Walking into math lecture is a bit like wandering through a foreign city in a country whose language I’ve only recently begun to learn.

MATH’S BEAUTY COMES SIMPLY FROM ITS NATURE. IT REFLECTS A TYPE OF ORDER THAT CAN’T BE TWISTED. Equations and proofs scroll across the projector screen. The words, familiar when isolated, become meaningless when arranged into proofs or problems. That’s how the hour passes — in a fog of confusion. But as I pack up my books at the end of class (shoving papers into binders, eager to think of other things), I feel a small but distinct strand of comfort. My confusion has the warmth of familiarity.

Memory is funny, and sometimes it lies. Every summer morning when I was younger, my dad and I sat at the kitchen table, doing math problems.

My memory sees morning sunlight slanting in through the picture window. It sees my dad as he guides my eyes with his pen, gently correcting my mistakes. Only looking beneath nostalgia’s veneer do I remember that I couldn’t make it through most mornings without crying from frustration. I’d make the same silly mistakes and my dad too would grow

F R I D AY NOVEMBER 9

irritable. I glanced at the microwave clock every 10 minutes, and eventually I’d ask to take a “break.” The break, I knew, would last until the next morning. But some days, somewhere through the tears and my dad’s impatience, I’d understand an idea, its origin and its web of implications. It was as though I were catching miniature glimpses of the Wonderful.

These days those profound instances of understanding arrive further and further apart. I slip, I stumble. I grasp fruitlessly at these abstract ideas that feel alien and far above my reach. But once in a while I hear or read some words, arranged in a particular sequence, and, for a fraction of a second, the pieces slide into place. I don’t pursue these moments as I once did — looking back, I’m always struck by how tenacious and hungry my younger self was. Now I’m content to sit among strangers quietly waiting for the hum of insight to arrive.

It’s rare, but when the understanding finally comes, its warmth is deep and its edges sharp.

Lately I’ve been thinking about books and essays that are so perfect they make my head pound, I’m left so hungry for more. There’s the small inward gasp of breath I take when coming across a thought that resonates with my most private perceptions. Or the heady rush of passion, of possibility, of empowerment that a short rhythm can deliver. The intimacy of it all. But, on some level, I’ve realized that all of it is merely an intended effect, a carefully constructed appearance of serendipity.

I once read that, “Behind each word is a world waiting to be revealed.”

This is literature’s magic: at its source is one person, writing words that attempt to contain an entire universe of emotions and ideas. In the end, it’s all gamed. The words, their cadences, were careful choices, engineered to both seem effortless and to resonate with us. We, the readers, only reach the brink of something real and tactile. We never quite arrive. We depend on our own history of experiences to fill in the space between our

understanding and the writer’s intention. Perhaps the nature of what we write is what limits us — or maybe it’s the nature of language itself. But we hold on to these man-made vehicles because they take us as close to the edge as we can ever hope to approach.

Math isn’t gamed — it can’t be.

A professor who lectures on the nature of genius tells his students that the intrinsic nature of mathematical knowledge prevents its discoveries from being called “genius.” Some mathematicians were young when they struck upon their discoveries.

There are also the mathematicians who, like Einstein, found a way to convey the complexity of their discoveries in simple, graceful terms. They, the people, may be “geniuses,” but the knowledge itself isn’t “genius,” the way works of art may be.

Unlike a concerto or a play, the solution to the question is already in existence, waiting for us to find it.

The “genius” then, lies in the men and women and what they overcame to get at the elusive Truth.

But how reassuring, to know, at the very least, that something is there — absolute and waiting for us to see it. We have something firm to hold onto, even if we spend generations blindly groping for it. For 12 years, I have pored over textbook pages covered in my dad’s slanted writing. I am no mathematician; nothing I find will ever be genius. Still, each flicker of understanding I see is like crosshatch shading on a figure sketch, or the nutty aroma that lingers after a gulp of coffee, adding to my world new layers of richness.

Picture, please, two lines that march on forever. They meet and cross each other, forming four square angles. The lines spread across twodimensional space. Wherever you move, you remain on the same flat plane. Shooting upwards from the point where the two lines meet is a third straight line. Now we’ve made three-dimensional space, a box without bounds, infinitely full of points. In this “box,” floating somewhere between the flat plane and the

TEETH SLAM POETS: FALL SHOW

Contact JOY SHAN at joy.shan@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

Morse College // 8 p.m.

Sink your molars into some verse.

unreachable ceiling, is a shape. Like a bed sheet, it’s thin and wide with various folds and billows. The shape casts a flat, rippleless shadow over the plane.

Usually we’re stuck in this flat plane, seeing only a shadowy rendition of things. But we know that there’s something more. It’s so near our reach that if we tilt our heads and squint a certain way, we may catch sight of it for half a breath.

Math’s beauty comes simply from its nature. It reflects a type of order that can’t be twisted.

On those days when I wake up and seem to apportion my life into measuring cups, I feel I’m destined to live out only the small and trivial. Or that I’m trapped in my field of vision, forever ordained to see only a flatter version of how things Are. In our day to day, we see patterns, we make connections, we find ourselves inexplicably drawn to people, ideas, actions.

Often we end up rejecting all of it as nonsense. At those times, without anything to grasp, it’s easy to feel powerless and alone. But at each intersection where intuition and mathematical order meet comes a brief confirmation. We’re reminded that the silent tendencies we harbor are not meaningless or unconnected in a vacuum but linked in a way that transcends time, space, language.

I remember that I, too, am allowed glimpses at these truths. They’re yellow lights in a murky fog.

I feel a deep nostalgia for those mornings at the kitchen table. I miss my dad, but I also miss the purpose I once felt. The feeling of reaching for something that, although elusive, I know can be attained. Monday morning arrives cruelly. I walk in and look up at the screen and whiteboard, already covered in impossible lines and foreign numbers. My heart sinks thinking of the hour ahead, and I smile.

Snowball wars.

Because we’re in college now. Battles and fights are child’s play.

PAGE B6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B7

WEEKEND DEMOCRACY

ELECTION DAY: FROM SNOWBAMA TO SALOVEY // BY WEEKEND

Status Negative

Status Positive

// BY SARAH SWONG

// BY TAOTAO HOMES

Usually I can’t keep Facebook closed for more than five minutes. But on Tuesday night, I deactivated my account, threw my laptop under my bed and disowned all my friends. I’m not cynical or apathetic about politics — Gobama! But the election flooded my news feed with so much self-congratulation from all my closest Facebook friends, more than I ever knew existed. And I freaked out a little.

Here are the worst offenders: The “It’s Casual” — “Legit drunk on Obama love” or “So high on Obamarijuana.”

The PSA — “I’d like to take this moment to remind us that we shouldn’t celebrate anything. Birds are dying as we speak, and Bangladesh is trafficking women against their will.” OK...

The Instagrammer — “#Democracy #ReadytoMoveFoward” The caffeinated early poller who Instagrams herself voting at 6 a.m. on the “Rise” filter.

The Guy-Who-Offhandedly-References-Something-Unsexy-To-ShowOff-His-Knowledge — “Glad I can breathe easy — the JAJWJC won’t get cut tomorrow.” “Thank god we’ll get tax code reform!” We get it.

The Guy-Who-Tries-To-Be-TheGuy-Above, But-Is-Not-ObscureEnough — “Woohoo!! Take that, 47 percent!” “Big Bird is vindicated!” Om nom nom, too many memes.

The Deeply Affected Voice of Our Generation — “Winning Ohio made me realize how much I, just like the U.S., have come such a long way in four years.” A true American.

The Self-Congratulatory Volunteer — “Thank you, America, for fulfilling your civic duty and fighting for what

you believe in. It’s gonna be a fantastic four years.” Freudian projection at its finest.

The “Apathetic” “Ironist” — “Insert election status here” or worse, “Hey guys, so who won the election?” She thinks she’s above it all, but still participates.

The GOP — “‘I never thought of losing, but now that it’s happened, the only thing is to do it right. That’s my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life.’ — Muhammad Ali” Quotes from Shawshank Redemption, or any sports movie, also apply.

And then, the next day: “SNOW!!!” (x1000) “[Instagrammed photo of snow on Gothic buildings at Yale]” “SNOWBAMA!!??”

And here are four of the best statuses of all time, posted last night: The Beyoncé — “Take That Mitches” on a sheet of looseleaf. Brilliant.

The Marriage Equality/Tammy Baldwin — “We elected our first openly lesbian senator!!” “Marriage equality in Maine, Maryland and Washington!!” Yes, actual progress!

The Asian-American Immigrant Senator — OK, I may have liked every status that talked about the Japanese immigrant senator from Hawaii. Asian-American women, represent.

Nicholas Kristof — Because. Nicholas Kristof: “So Todd Akin, who made the notoriously stupid comments about rape, is projected to lose the Senate race in Missouri. I guess the body politic has a biological mechanism to shut down rather than allow a nut to win.”

So let’s be real: as a college student in 2012, I celebrated my first official election in the only reasonable way — liking every exuberant status that popped up on my newsfeed.

I have to say, Obama has some baller graphics. Political alliances aside, the probama prof pics and cover photos (my favorites: Obama with labradoodle, college Obama smoking (for all intents and purposes) weed) were astronomically catchier than the over-pixelated promney ones (vote for love of country?). Give me Mittens making a sassy face, maybe throw in a baby animal, and I’ll like that prof pic, too.

You know, some of the best statuses

were those of my friends’ parents. Mostly this one: “Our President is re-elected and I have power to do the laundry after 8 days.

So happy.” Right? Laundry + Obama = victory.

And then just the next morning, we get something even better than long-awaited laundry: snow. New equation: Snow + Obama = Delight.

And the memes — the memes! I saw some of Queen Elizabeth circling around, some more bad lip readings and plenty of sassy Barack.

But mostly, sitting in my college dorm room at 2 a.m. after an election shindig with 20 buddies, and after watching

the victory and concession speeches on my laptop with my roommate, there was one set of statuses that trumped them all.

Friends, cousins, siblings of classmates and those random contacts I hadn’t seen since fourth grade were posting statuses about how proud — and relieved — they feel to be Americans accepted for who they are: gay, straight, male, female and anything and everything in between. That, there, was a college moment if I’ve ever known one, and one I felt privileged to be a part of.

Contact TAOTAO HOLMES at taotao.holmes@yale.edu .

2 for 4 More... and More // BY DIANA ROSEN & ISAAC STANLEY-BECKER We made a promise to one another early in the day that if Romney won, we would both drop out of Yale and move to Canada. And we pinky swore, so shit was real.

It’s a good thing that Obama won because in that other place they pronounce “about” wrong.

After a day of canvassing, we returned to Farnam to make calls to swing states after the Connecticut polls had closed. By this time, every single person in Iowa had been called approximately 12 times over the past two hours. Needless to say, they were delighted to hear from us.

As an Iowan screamed at Diana for the

fourth time, results began to come in. This was around the time when Isaac started stress-eating. Soon, it became a competition to see whose Huffington Post page would refresh faster. The following two hours found us glued to our computer screens. At some point, in a sad illustration of Isaac’s mathematical abilities, he thought he had beat Nate Silver to the punch by calling the election for Obama without Ohio or Florida, based solely on punching numbers into his graphing calculator. Diana was unconvinced, unamused.

When NBC called it for Obama — and after we’d confirmed it with Facebook, as

any self-respecting 19-year-old would — we bolted outside to find Old Campus surprisingly … empty. Whatever, whatever.

“FOUR MORE YEARS,” we shouted, as a group of shirtless people thronged around the Woolsey statue.

The soul of America is safe. Or something less grandiose. Now it’s on to Midterms 2014. Let’s keep painting the country blue.

Contact ISAAC STANLEY-BECKER and DIANA ROSEN at isaac.stanley-becker@yale.edu and diana.rosen@yale.edu .

Contact SARAH SWONG at sarah.swong@yale.edu .

On the Other Election: Yale’s Dedication to the Status Quo // BY BEN CROSBY AND SARAH COX-SHRADER It took the Yale Corporation 10 weeks to select a new University President. On August 30th, Richard Levin announced his decision to step down. This was followed by a declaration of the prescribed process for the selection of his successor. Then there was a brief period in which the Presidential Search Committee solicited student opinions, which ended with an open forum at which students criticized a process designed to leave them out. After this point, the doors were shut and the blinds were drawn, and the Yale community heard nothing from the Corporation or the Search Committee until yesterday, when they announced their selection of

Provost Peter Salovey.

Salovey was selected by the Yale Corporation (and a small number of advisors handpicked by the Senior Fellow) without any input from or accountability to the wider Yale community. Now, as a result, in everything our new president does, he is beholden to no one but the Corporation.

If we want to change that, if we want to have a real, substantive student voice in what happens at this institution, we have to demand that the decision-makers relate to students in a different way.

This means treating us as important stakeholders with unique points of view that should be meaningfully incorpo-

rated into the decision-making process even, and especially, when they differ from those of the Corporation and the administration.

Everything about Salovey’s selection — from the process to the outcome — represents a dedication to the status quo. In order for Yale to progress, to become a better, more open, more just institution, there must be a more meaningful student voice. And we won’t earn that voice unless we demand it.

On the Other Election: Not Much of One // BY CARL CHEN AND MARC DEWITT As students, we halfheartedly endorse the überenthusiastic Yale Politburo’s number one draft pick of President-select Peter Salovey. Though they call themselves a corporation and say that it was an election, it is tough to see how shareholder and democratic values were represented when only the Corporation Fellows are allowed to vote.

But as far as choosing between straight white males from the academy, Eddie Bass seems to have done all right. Salovey had a pretty sweet mustache (he would score more points and probably babes as well if he didn’t shave it) though we are unsure how popular bluegrass music is at YaleNUS (or if American bluegrass music is even allowed under “academic freedom”).

He is an esteemed scholar of emotional intelligence, which is more humanizing than studying economic models, and we do sincerely hope he puts the emotional well-being of the Yale student first. We also applaud his Yale-like ladder-climbing abilities, from graduate student to professor to academic chair of the Psychology Department to dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences to dean of Yale College to provost and now to president of Yale.

Can he strive any further? Perhaps President-re-elect Obama will tap

him for the Cabinet. Lord knows the United States could use a Department of Emotional Intelligence.

That being said, we do wonder what his competition was — where was Hillary? Where was Dubya?

Where was Comrade Miller?

We’re deeply impressed with the efficiency of the Corporation, narrowing down over 150 people to the man in the office next door in only two months. Perhaps this presidential search process was a sham all along, stringing along students, alumni, staff, professors, community members and Woodbridge Fellows in a wild presidential-goose chase. Why even orchestrate a pseudo-search when you’re just making Number Two into Number One? Whatever. Here’s to 20 more bright college years — don’t let Yale down, Salbaby.

Contact CARL CHEN at carl.chen@yale.edu and MARC DEWITT at marc.dewitt@yale.edu .

H, O, V and A Enjoy a LowKey Election // BY AARON GERTLER V: A, who’s going to win? Like, really?

A: I’d say Obama, but I don’t make predictions, because everything is uncertain. But since you asked, Obama.

V: Oh! Phew.

(12 hours later) A: O, did you vote?

O: I did in fact cast my vote for Barack Hussein Obama (O often refers to himself as O. Hussein B, that his initials might reverse those of the POTUS).

V: (Starts to zone out in front of election; gives a start and switches to physics) A: H? H: I think I voted Johnson.

A: And some Republicans?

H: Johnson.

A: Did you vote to have Connecticut unilaterally decrease military spending?

H: … Johnson. (Goes to bed. It’s almost 11 and H hates excitement).

V: (Starts to zone out in front of physics; gives a start and switches to election) O: It looks like Obama’s starting to wrap it up.

A: That’s nice. (Works.)

O: And Nate Silver is getting every state right.

A: WHAT? YES! GO NATE GO! (Glues eyeballs to fivethirtyeight.com) V: Should we tell H? A: Let’s tie an Obama sign to the doorway so it hits him in the face when he walks out.

O: Let’s tape it to his laptop! (This did not happen).

(A & O check to see whether Johnson was a spoiler in any swing states. Apparently not.

Poor H.) V: (Has finished his election food and appears paralyzed as Obama walks onstage.

Might or might not be conscious.)

A: And I found that jacket I was looking for. Today was a good day.

Contact AARON GERTLER at aaron.gertler@yale.edu .

Contact BEN CROSBY and SARAH COX-SHRADER at benjamin.crosby@yale.edu and sarah.cox-shrader@yale.edu .

// TAO TAO HOLMES

S AT U R D AY NOVEMBER 11

MEGHAN UNO ’13 DANCING AT SATURDAY NIGHT TOAD’S Toad’s Place // 10 p.m.

Uno, dos, tres. Uno hits the stage for her third performance.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: http://whitepeoplemourningromney.tumblr.com/

Mourn for Mitt. All your Facebook friends are beating you to the punch.

“DEATH IN VENICE” SCREENING Yale Center for British Art // 2 p.m.

When we die, here’s to hoping it’s in Venice.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: The Professors of Bluegrass.

Meet your new president, y’all.

PAGE B6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B7

WEEKEND DEMOCRACY

ELECTION DAY: FROM SNOWBAMA TO SALOVEY // BY WEEKEND

Status Negative

Status Positive

// BY SARAH SWONG

// BY TAOTAO HOMES

Usually I can’t keep Facebook closed for more than five minutes. But on Tuesday night, I deactivated my account, threw my laptop under my bed and disowned all my friends. I’m not cynical or apathetic about politics — Gobama! But the election flooded my news feed with so much self-congratulation from all my closest Facebook friends, more than I ever knew existed. And I freaked out a little.

Here are the worst offenders: The “It’s Casual” — “Legit drunk on Obama love” or “So high on Obamarijuana.”

The PSA — “I’d like to take this moment to remind us that we shouldn’t celebrate anything. Birds are dying as we speak, and Bangladesh is trafficking women against their will.” OK...

The Instagrammer — “#Democracy #ReadytoMoveFoward” The caffeinated early poller who Instagrams herself voting at 6 a.m. on the “Rise” filter.

The Guy-Who-Offhandedly-References-Something-Unsexy-To-ShowOff-His-Knowledge — “Glad I can breathe easy — the JAJWJC won’t get cut tomorrow.” “Thank god we’ll get tax code reform!” We get it.

The Guy-Who-Tries-To-Be-TheGuy-Above, But-Is-Not-ObscureEnough — “Woohoo!! Take that, 47 percent!” “Big Bird is vindicated!” Om nom nom, too many memes.

The Deeply Affected Voice of Our Generation — “Winning Ohio made me realize how much I, just like the U.S., have come such a long way in four years.” A true American.

The Self-Congratulatory Volunteer — “Thank you, America, for fulfilling your civic duty and fighting for what

you believe in. It’s gonna be a fantastic four years.” Freudian projection at its finest.

The “Apathetic” “Ironist” — “Insert election status here” or worse, “Hey guys, so who won the election?” She thinks she’s above it all, but still participates.

The GOP — “‘I never thought of losing, but now that it’s happened, the only thing is to do it right. That’s my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life.’ — Muhammad Ali” Quotes from Shawshank Redemption, or any sports movie, also apply.

And then, the next day: “SNOW!!!” (x1000) “[Instagrammed photo of snow on Gothic buildings at Yale]” “SNOWBAMA!!??”

And here are four of the best statuses of all time, posted last night: The Beyoncé — “Take That Mitches” on a sheet of looseleaf. Brilliant.

The Marriage Equality/Tammy Baldwin — “We elected our first openly lesbian senator!!” “Marriage equality in Maine, Maryland and Washington!!” Yes, actual progress!

The Asian-American Immigrant Senator — OK, I may have liked every status that talked about the Japanese immigrant senator from Hawaii. Asian-American women, represent.

Nicholas Kristof — Because. Nicholas Kristof: “So Todd Akin, who made the notoriously stupid comments about rape, is projected to lose the Senate race in Missouri. I guess the body politic has a biological mechanism to shut down rather than allow a nut to win.”

So let’s be real: as a college student in 2012, I celebrated my first official election in the only reasonable way — liking every exuberant status that popped up on my newsfeed.

I have to say, Obama has some baller graphics. Political alliances aside, the probama prof pics and cover photos (my favorites: Obama with labradoodle, college Obama smoking (for all intents and purposes) weed) were astronomically catchier than the over-pixelated promney ones (vote for love of country?). Give me Mittens making a sassy face, maybe throw in a baby animal, and I’ll like that prof pic, too.

You know, some of the best statuses

were those of my friends’ parents. Mostly this one: “Our President is re-elected and I have power to do the laundry after 8 days.

So happy.” Right? Laundry + Obama = victory.

And then just the next morning, we get something even better than long-awaited laundry: snow. New equation: Snow + Obama = Delight.

And the memes — the memes! I saw some of Queen Elizabeth circling around, some more bad lip readings and plenty of sassy Barack.

But mostly, sitting in my college dorm room at 2 a.m. after an election shindig with 20 buddies, and after watching

the victory and concession speeches on my laptop with my roommate, there was one set of statuses that trumped them all.

Friends, cousins, siblings of classmates and those random contacts I hadn’t seen since fourth grade were posting statuses about how proud — and relieved — they feel to be Americans accepted for who they are: gay, straight, male, female and anything and everything in between. That, there, was a college moment if I’ve ever known one, and one I felt privileged to be a part of.

Contact TAOTAO HOLMES at taotao.holmes@yale.edu .

2 for 4 More... and More // BY DIANA ROSEN & ISAAC STANLEY-BECKER We made a promise to one another early in the day that if Romney won, we would both drop out of Yale and move to Canada. And we pinky swore, so shit was real.

It’s a good thing that Obama won because in that other place they pronounce “about” wrong.

After a day of canvassing, we returned to Farnam to make calls to swing states after the Connecticut polls had closed. By this time, every single person in Iowa had been called approximately 12 times over the past two hours. Needless to say, they were delighted to hear from us.

As an Iowan screamed at Diana for the

fourth time, results began to come in. This was around the time when Isaac started stress-eating. Soon, it became a competition to see whose Huffington Post page would refresh faster. The following two hours found us glued to our computer screens. At some point, in a sad illustration of Isaac’s mathematical abilities, he thought he had beat Nate Silver to the punch by calling the election for Obama without Ohio or Florida, based solely on punching numbers into his graphing calculator. Diana was unconvinced, unamused.

When NBC called it for Obama — and after we’d confirmed it with Facebook, as

any self-respecting 19-year-old would — we bolted outside to find Old Campus surprisingly … empty. Whatever, whatever.

“FOUR MORE YEARS,” we shouted, as a group of shirtless people thronged around the Woolsey statue.

The soul of America is safe. Or something less grandiose. Now it’s on to Midterms 2014. Let’s keep painting the country blue.

Contact ISAAC STANLEY-BECKER and DIANA ROSEN at isaac.stanley-becker@yale.edu and diana.rosen@yale.edu .

Contact SARAH SWONG at sarah.swong@yale.edu .

On the Other Election: Yale’s Dedication to the Status Quo // BY BEN CROSBY AND SARAH COX-SHRADER It took the Yale Corporation 10 weeks to select a new University President. On August 30th, Richard Levin announced his decision to step down. This was followed by a declaration of the prescribed process for the selection of his successor. Then there was a brief period in which the Presidential Search Committee solicited student opinions, which ended with an open forum at which students criticized a process designed to leave them out. After this point, the doors were shut and the blinds were drawn, and the Yale community heard nothing from the Corporation or the Search Committee until yesterday, when they announced their selection of

Provost Peter Salovey.

Salovey was selected by the Yale Corporation (and a small number of advisors handpicked by the Senior Fellow) without any input from or accountability to the wider Yale community. Now, as a result, in everything our new president does, he is beholden to no one but the Corporation.

If we want to change that, if we want to have a real, substantive student voice in what happens at this institution, we have to demand that the decision-makers relate to students in a different way.

This means treating us as important stakeholders with unique points of view that should be meaningfully incorpo-

rated into the decision-making process even, and especially, when they differ from those of the Corporation and the administration.

Everything about Salovey’s selection — from the process to the outcome — represents a dedication to the status quo. In order for Yale to progress, to become a better, more open, more just institution, there must be a more meaningful student voice. And we won’t earn that voice unless we demand it.

On the Other Election: Not Much of One // BY CARL CHEN AND MARC DEWITT As students, we halfheartedly endorse the überenthusiastic Yale Politburo’s number one draft pick of President-select Peter Salovey. Though they call themselves a corporation and say that it was an election, it is tough to see how shareholder and democratic values were represented when only the Corporation Fellows are allowed to vote.

But as far as choosing between straight white males from the academy, Eddie Bass seems to have done all right. Salovey had a pretty sweet mustache (he would score more points and probably babes as well if he didn’t shave it) though we are unsure how popular bluegrass music is at YaleNUS (or if American bluegrass music is even allowed under “academic freedom”).

He is an esteemed scholar of emotional intelligence, which is more humanizing than studying economic models, and we do sincerely hope he puts the emotional well-being of the Yale student first. We also applaud his Yale-like ladder-climbing abilities, from graduate student to professor to academic chair of the Psychology Department to dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences to dean of Yale College to provost and now to president of Yale.

Can he strive any further? Perhaps President-re-elect Obama will tap

him for the Cabinet. Lord knows the United States could use a Department of Emotional Intelligence.

That being said, we do wonder what his competition was — where was Hillary? Where was Dubya?

Where was Comrade Miller?

We’re deeply impressed with the efficiency of the Corporation, narrowing down over 150 people to the man in the office next door in only two months. Perhaps this presidential search process was a sham all along, stringing along students, alumni, staff, professors, community members and Woodbridge Fellows in a wild presidential-goose chase. Why even orchestrate a pseudo-search when you’re just making Number Two into Number One? Whatever. Here’s to 20 more bright college years — don’t let Yale down, Salbaby.

Contact CARL CHEN at carl.chen@yale.edu and MARC DEWITT at marc.dewitt@yale.edu .

H, O, V and A Enjoy a LowKey Election // BY AARON GERTLER V: A, who’s going to win? Like, really?

A: I’d say Obama, but I don’t make predictions, because everything is uncertain. But since you asked, Obama.

V: Oh! Phew.

(12 hours later) A: O, did you vote?

O: I did in fact cast my vote for Barack Hussein Obama (O often refers to himself as O. Hussein B, that his initials might reverse those of the POTUS).

V: (Starts to zone out in front of election; gives a start and switches to physics) A: H? H: I think I voted Johnson.

A: And some Republicans?

H: Johnson.

A: Did you vote to have Connecticut unilaterally decrease military spending?

H: … Johnson. (Goes to bed. It’s almost 11 and H hates excitement).

V: (Starts to zone out in front of physics; gives a start and switches to election) O: It looks like Obama’s starting to wrap it up.

A: That’s nice. (Works.)

O: And Nate Silver is getting every state right.

A: WHAT? YES! GO NATE GO! (Glues eyeballs to fivethirtyeight.com) V: Should we tell H? A: Let’s tie an Obama sign to the doorway so it hits him in the face when he walks out.

O: Let’s tape it to his laptop! (This did not happen).

(A & O check to see whether Johnson was a spoiler in any swing states. Apparently not.

Poor H.) V: (Has finished his election food and appears paralyzed as Obama walks onstage.

Might or might not be conscious.)

A: And I found that jacket I was looking for. Today was a good day.

Contact AARON GERTLER at aaron.gertler@yale.edu .

Contact BEN CROSBY and SARAH COX-SHRADER at benjamin.crosby@yale.edu and sarah.cox-shrader@yale.edu .

// TAO TAO HOLMES

S AT U R D AY NOVEMBER 11

MEGHAN UNO ’13 DANCING AT SATURDAY NIGHT TOAD’S Toad’s Place // 10 p.m.

Uno, dos, tres. Uno hits the stage for her third performance.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: http://whitepeoplemourningromney.tumblr.com/

Mourn for Mitt. All your Facebook friends are beating you to the punch.

“DEATH IN VENICE” SCREENING Yale Center for British Art // 2 p.m.

When we die, here’s to hoping it’s in Venice.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: The Professors of Bluegrass.

Meet your new president, y’all.

PAGE B8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COVER

‘I COULD NEEEEVER DO DRAG!’ DRAG FROM PAGE B3 posted a video of the show on Kyra’s blog. His aunt and uncle, who were unaware that their nephew was gay, let alone performing in drag, coincidentally stumbled upon his blog through Facebook and found the video.

“When I jumped into [drag performance], I never stopped to think that [my family was] going to find out, without me telling them,” Pham said. “I thought I was covering my tracks well enough.”

As the oldest son in a Vietnamese-American family that is devoutly Roman Catholic, Pham was expected to carry on the family line — dressing as a woman and being paid to perform in bars was not an option for him. Though his siblings were largely supportive, his parents were apprehensive about his new hobby, fearing it would put him in harm’s way. Pham was forced to put his artform into perspective: “This is something that I loved,” he said, “but [was] this hurting the people that I care about too?”

He was torn between keeping his loved ones at ease and continuing to do something that was essential to his personal growth, that made him feel more comfortable in his own skin than he had ever felt before.

As someone who first came to Yale identifying as a straight male and worried about appearing effeminate, Pham has found that his confidence in his self-presentation has evolved drastically.

Drag performance represents the ultimate control over who he is and how he is defined. He can bring Kyra to life whenever he wants and imbue her with qualities that do not fit any script. “[She’s] a character that I’m creating myself. [She’s] not something that’s handed to me,” Pham said. “I was given no guidelines. You can be as crazy as you want. You can be as feminine as you want, or masculine, or crass, or crude, or elegant, or polite. It’s up to me.”

It’s only been a couple of months since Kyra Fey made her debut, but the impact she has had on Pham’s personal growth is immeasurable. Despite the hurdles he encountered with his family and his identity, Kyra provided a means of refuge, to dress his wounds and face the w o r l d more con-

fidently than ever. It’s a relationship that will last a lifetime.

“I’m really proud of the work that I’ve done and the growth that I’ve had through it,” Pham said. “I spent a lot of time working on it. As with anything, that’s something that you want to have your parents be proud of.”

Field’s conservative Mormon background attempted to define his identity before he even had a chance to understand who he was — he knew what kind of life would make his family proud.

Field recalled walking out of his friend’s room the first time he was shown an episode of the reality television show “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” It was freshman year and he was in the process of completing his application for a Mormon missionary trip to Argentina. He could not like the show.

Drag represented everything he feared becoming.

Although Field was not allowed to listen to pop music growing up, he remembers being obsessed with Gwen Stefani, going to his best friend’s house and sneakily listening to her older sister’s “No Doubt” CDs. At 8 years old, he felt a personal bond to the singer; he connected with the story she conveyed through her edgy persona. Field embraced early on the idea that pop stars could rewrite their stories yet remain genuine to their true selves.

“Powerful women in particular, when I was little, just gave me some sort of way through which to experience being different,” Field said. “They made being different really cool and really awesome.”

Responding to his intuitions about how he wanted to live his life, Field decided to break with tradition in his own way: He left Argentina after completing only one of two years of his mission, coming home to the disapproval of his family. The year after he left was particularly difficult, he said, as he was still coming to terms with his religion and his identity. While in Mauritius the summer before his junior year, Field found himself unmotivated and lost.

Then Jessie J started to play on the radio.

Field started dancing and singing along — and then he began to reflect on drag performance again, recalling Bustillos’ example.

“I was terrified,” he told me.

“I could never do drag, I could neeeeeever. I could never do drag. But then I started

looking at my face [and thought] ‘I think my face could pull off drag.’”

Last fall, Field performed in drag for the first time, donning a costume and make-up with Pham for a Mixed Company promo video. He started moving in ways that he never had, because dressed as a woman, he could. As he walked down Elm Street after the shoot, still in full make-up, he realized he did not care who turned to stare.

“I felt invincible,” Field said.

“You grow up being called gay, you grow up being called a girl, ‘Why are you so girly? Why are you so effeminate?’ … [And now] I’m literally dressed as a woman.

You have no power here. No insult that you throw at me can touch me. Call me a woman. Call me a girl. Call me gay. I’m clearly OK with my sexuality. Getting into drag is like putting on this impenetrable body suit.”

Today, he has channeled that defiant spirit in his formation of Edyn Panache. The names Edyn — an allusion to the Garden of Eden, where God’s rules were broken — and Panache — a nod to flamboyance and outrageousness — give Field permission to tap into a part of his identity that he once suppressed.

“Edyn Panache, for me, is flamboyantly, unapologetically, biting into the apple.” he said.

“You know, breaking the rules.”

DRAG IS NOT IMITATION As a female, seeing a man who can walk better in heels than I can or who is more skilled at applying make-up than I am can be a little unsettling, if not intriguing.

When I was first introduced to drag culture, via “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and the 1990 documentary “Paris is Burning” by Jenny Livingston ’83, my initial response to drag performers was that these males were “imitating” femininity — that their personas were exaggerated representations of what they thought it was like to be a woman. However, after exploring modern feminist theory and speaking with various drag artists, I began to co n s i d e r gender in terms beyond t h e blacka n d white w a y

we are taught to understand it; society’s polarity of masculine and feminine is not natural — it is an “act” itself.

In an essay entitled “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution,” feminist philosopher Judith Butler states, “If the ground of gender identity is the stylized repetition of acts through time … then the possibilities of gender transformation are to be found in the arbitrary relation between such acts, in the possibility of a different sort of repeating, in the breaking or subversive repetition of that style.”

Basically, the acts that usually define our gender — the way we talk, the way we sway our hips when we walk, even the way we make gestures — were constructed at some point in human history and are passed down to us by the leading performers of these acts in our lives: our mothers, fathers and peers.

I’ll be honest. I am not completely convinced by Butler’s argument. But I do believe drag artists successfully embrace the incongruous relationship between the acts that supposedly define masculine and feminine. By simply putting on a dress — an object that is unanimously tied to female identity — they are spitting in the face of behavioral gender norms.

“When athletes get on a football field, they perform manly or they perform alpha male,” Field said. “And when a drag queen gets on the stage, she is performing pure strong femininity and it’s no different. They are both performances. They’re performances that speak to or give access to something else inside of those people.”

Kyra Fey, although she is separate from Pham’s true self, has found a way to permeate his life off the stage. Now and then, Pham wears make-up to class and paints his nails because he feels that “guys can wear makeup too.” While his presentation of “Timmy Pham” was once driven by a conscious reaffirming of his masculinity, he has since given in to intuition.

If gender is a performance, as these students believe, and performance allows one to act as someone or something o t h e r than one’s everyday

self, then we should all be able to turn on or off our gender-specific behaviors. Yet we choose not to because of societal pressures to conform to the norm. Drag queens and kings, in essence, represent the extreme, openly rebelling against a sex-defined identity. They are not imitating femininity but are simply exposing their own inherent feminine or masculine qualities, shifting the weight on the scale of gender extremities.

Or, as the Bad Romantics call it: “genderfuck.”

DRAG IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE For Yale’s drag performers, the practice has been a valuable means of self-discovery — looking within and beyond campus, they want others to have a similar experience.

Pham, for one, has become a poster child for the artform.

Through his work at Partners Café, he has served as a liaison between New Haven drag queens and students. In October, he did an intimate performance and talk with members of the AfroAmerican Cultural Center, where he shared personal experiences and obstacles he encountered while establishing his persona.

Meanwhile, he is hard at work on a Creative and Performing Arts Award project that will focus on making drag more accessible through make-up workshops, photo exhibitions and performance pieces.

The Bad Romantics have also made outreach a central part of their group’s mission. Whether at Yale or around New Haven, the troupe utilizes the power of drag performance to promote positive attitudes toward gender and sexuality.

“I think that being comfortable in your own skin, both with your body and also intellectually, is so crucial and so important to function,” said Mogul-Adlin, the troupe’s co-director.

Acting on that imperative, the group has conducted make-up workshops with New Haven high school students. For 70 minutes, students are given a chance to express their gender differently through walk-offs, lip-sync performances and vogue competitions.

The activism doesn’t stop for Yalies once they’ve graduated.

While Yale provided a foundation for his development as a drag artist, Bustillos has continued to pursue his art postg ra d u -

ation in his home city of Omaha, Neb. Karma Lilola has become an active member of the drag scene there. Additionally, he plans on opening an art complex in the city called SPASM, or the Society for Performing Arts and Social Movement. It will serve as a breeding ground for activities related to drag. Members will be able to take how-to classes on drag make-up, walking in heels, lip-syncing, making costumes and much more. He wants to provide a safe place for people to learn all they can about drag performance.

Eventually, Bustillos said, he wants to become a “drag mother” of sorts to members of the Omaha drag community, taking up a role similar to the one he played at Yale. *** One of the most striking elements of Kyra Fey and Edyn Panache’s performance at Partners was the reaction from the audience. They danced and sang along with the queens; they willingly got on stage and participated in stage antics; they fully embraced all that the performers threw at them.

Yale, for most of these students, has proven to be an ideal venue for drag performance.

For Rachel Schiff in 2010, it was not difficult to find students that shared a similar enthusiasm toward challenging gender through performance.

Today, Pham, Field and the Bad Romantics draw an exceptionally diverse group of Yalies and New Haven residents, both queer and straight, to their shows.

While performers may face their own struggles at home, Yale has always had its arms and its heart open to them.

“Everyone is accepting here,” Field said. “Where [else] will I go in the world in which I just have a bubble of people that are willing to open their minds and entertain drag for five seconds?”

Contact CHANTEL SIMPSON at chantel.simpson@yale.edu .

// CHANTEL SIMPSON

S AT U R D AY NOVEMBER 11

MILKMILKLEMONADE

Yale Cabaret // 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. showings The show sounds excellent; the milklemonade combination does not.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Starting Thanksgiving early this year.

The more stuffing, the better.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B9

WEEKEND LAUGHS

YOU HAVEN’T HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE // BY JACKSON MCHENRY Sitting in rehearsal for Outside Joke, one of Yale’s newest comedy troupes, things are very far from normal.

The members begin with improv, running a traditional short-form game entirely in gibberish. Two players start to shout out nonsensical phrases as they chase each other around the room.

One of them steals the other’s wallet.

The scenes soon grow more and more ludicrous and indecipherable, but Shon Arieh-Lerer ’14, the group’s director, still insists on giving notes, even pausing the action to clarify the blocking.

He jokes that “we’re not interested in differentiating rehearsal from us doing stuff,” but that sentiment is belied by the very real effort that the performers put in.

The members of Outside Joke work against the very real assumption that every improv comedy troupe, at Yale or otherwise, is supposed to specialize in a certain kind of game with a very clear set of directions.

This is not to say that improvisation itself is dead, or boring, or false — there is certainly a lot of variation to be found within every specialty — but only that it has rules, rules which Yale’s two newest improv groups, Outside Joke and Lux Improvitas, are trying to break, whether by incorporating theater or turning comedy into an all-out performance art piece.

AT THE EXTRACURRICULAR BAZAAR: “WE REDIRECTED FRESHMAN DOWN A STAIRCASE WHERE SHON WAS SEEN HALF-NAKED, CRAWLING TOWARD A BOX LABELED COMEDY.” “It’s been a long time since anything new came along,” noted Joel Sircus ’14, the director of The Viola Question, regarding the improv scene at Yale.

Looking at the troupes currently performing on campus, it’s easy to see how all of the traditional bases have been covered — and now two new troupes are looking to broaden the playing field. *** The Ex!t Players, Yale’s oldest improv troupe, perform short-form comedy, which relies on the rapid-fire exchange of jokes. On the other hand, The Purple Crayon, founded in 1985, specializes in long-form improvisation, which means building up scenes, and sometimes an entire play, from a couple of suggestions.

To add variety, The Viola Question, founded in 1986, prides itself on performing a 50–50 split of both genres, whereas Just Add Water, also founded in 1986, is known for its long-form musical improvisation, which it added to its repertoire in 2001. But AriehLerer argues that comedy can be found

somewhere beyond those limits.

“We don’t have a set form,” he said.

“We don’t always go for belly laughs.

We’re more interested in the production of affect.”

“And that’s the saddest way to talk about what art is,” responded Andrew Kahn ’14, a fellow group member.

Outside Joke is committed to combining sketch comedy, improv and performance art, in what Arieh-Lerer referred to as the developing genre of experimental comedy. He and Kahn list the “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” a web-based sketch group, along with Andy Kaufman, Alan Sherman and “the letters A through W” among their influences.

The group’s first performance was “A Master’s Tea with Barack Obama,” put on in spring 2012. As Arieh-Lerer described it, it was “as if the Soviet Union had organized a very low budget performance without any element of a Master’s Tea in it.”

“Obama did show up in the end,” Kahn corrected, “but that was only a projection, and everyone on stage was dead by that point anyway.” The performance was about “how [our group] produces affect,” he added.

Arieh-Lerer spent his time in high school performing at comedy clubs in New York City and on a local-access television station. Recently, he opened at the Fall Show, showcasing his interest in recursion by telling a joke about a comedian telling a joke about a comedian telling a joke (etc.).

Outside Joke, however, started from one of Arieh-Lerer’s disappointments in his freshman year. He was not accepted into any of the comedy groups he tried out for. After meeting Kahn at an audition for The Viola Question, they decided to found their own troupe.

In doing so, Kahn and Arieh-Lerer recruited members from their own class, many of whom have a more traditional approach to comedic form.

“The group is not homogenous in what the group is,” Arieh-Lerer said.

Or, as John Griswold ’14, who AriehLerer recruited after seeing him perform at a Ezra Stiles talent show, puts it, “Shon and Andrew call me ‘the ambassador to the normal.’”

But overall, Outside Joke dwells in one of the most absurd extremes of comedy, stretching the notion of performance art in a way that’s starkly different from the standard campus fare.

“It’s sugar to get the medicine down,” Arieh-Lerer explained. Though it’s more fun, he added, to make the sugar bitter as well.

Compared to Outside Joke, Lux Improvitas, founded by Noam Shapiro ’15, Chamonix Adams Porter ’15 and Freddie Ramos ’15, is a step away from that bitterness, though its members still seek to define themselves as a novel breed of improvisers.

“We call ourselves an ‘improv theater’ ensemble rather than an ‘improv comedy’ group,” remarked Shapiro, the troupe’s director, indicating a stylistic focus that combines long-form improvisation with influences from theater.

“Some of our performances are more comedic, whereas others are more dramatic.”

The group’s first show, a Jane Austen-inspired play they performed last Friday, fell on the humorous end of that spectrum, though the influences from theater and literature were evident.

“We hope to expand the audience’s conception of what improv can be,” Porter said.

Lux Improvitas grew out of Shapiro, Ramos and Porter’s collaboration on “Pick-Up Prov,” a Facebook group that Ramos created in September 2011 for people who weren’t in one of the four existing groups.

The troupe began getting together for weekly improv jam sessions, but as

they all grew to know each other better, they decided to transition into a performing ensemble.

In order to do so, Shapiro, Porter and Ramos recruited several other interested players over the course of last spring. This fall, they brought two freshmen and a sophomore into the fold and Ramos took on the role of director for Lux+, an improv workshop run by the group.

“We had the rare opportunity to create our own traditions, techniques and group culture,” Shapiro said.

That striving for newness, on all accounts, seems to be a product of Yale’s comedy culture as a whole.

“Compared to other colleges, our scene is a lot more varied,” said Nelson Madubuonwu ’13, the director of Just Add Water, distinguishing Yale’s diverse offerings from Harvard and Princeton’s comedy worlds, which are dominated by one or two groups. He saw a similar range in his own group’s past, recalling how during their 25th anniversary reunion, he met alumni who could explain games that are no longer in the troupe’s current repertoire.

But within that same history, there has also been room for animosity and close-mindedness.

“We always heard that there were bitter rivalries between the troupes back in the ’90s,” said Zeke Blackwell ’13, the director of The Purple Crayon, “but we’re friends, we don’t have time for that.”

Blackwell went on to note that, even since his freshman year, he has witnessed a greater collaboration across genres and between groups. The Purple Crayon and the Ex!t Players have begun holding joint workshops this semester to meld long- and short-form games.

“Improv comedy is growing nationwide,” he asserted, complementing Yale’s ability to adapt to growing interest and changes in style. *** Back at Outside Joke’s rehearsal, the group moves on to their sketches.

Max Ritvo ’14, who conferences in via

// JACOB GEIGER

Lux Improvitas: some funny faces

Skype, asks to go over a moment in a scene again. “I think it needs more of the feel of a 19th-century boudoir,” he comments, “as if you are struggling with the very failure of language itself.”

The performers’ second rendition of the sketch earns twice as many laughs.

Arieh-Lerer and Kahn see themselves going into careers in comedy, but have uncertain ambitions about the future of the group itself. They recruited two new members this year, a junior and a senior, but have yet to bring in underclassmen.

Kahn recalled a performance art piece the group set up at the extracurricular bazaar: “We redirected freshmen down a staircase where Shon was seen half-naked, crawling toward a box labeled comedy.”

“Most people were horrified,” Arieh-Lerer chimed in. “One in 10 laughed”.

Their last sketch during rehearsal — the banana song — sends up the traditional weaknesses of improv comedy. In it, an audience member is called up to the stage to perform in a game.

No matter what that audience member does, he cannot please the members of the troupe, who all insist that he is doing it “wrong,” and offer other, clearly less funny suggestions.

The joke lands well if you’ve seen a lot of comedy shows and feel like it’s all been done, but improv at Yale doesn’t suffer from that fatigue. With new troupes pushing for invention, and established groups breaking new ground in their own right, the campus scene is fighting off any risk of becoming stale.

As Sircus of The Viola Question, pointed out, the successful members of Yale improv troupes don’t abide by rules or definitions. They all have “something” else.

“It’s like pornography,” he argued, paraphrasing Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart. “I can’t describe it, but I know it when I see it.”

// JENNIFER CHEUNG

Outside Joke: some serious comedy.

S AT U R D AY NOVEMBER 11

HIGHLIGHTS TOUR

Yale University Art Gallery // 1:30 p.m.

Not to be confused with the Highlighter Party.

Contact JACKSON MCHENRY at jackson.mchenry@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Modifying your party attire for the cold.

Toad’s goers, pull on some thicker tights. Make that any tights.

PAGE B10

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COLUMNS

THE IDES OF MARCH: ‘HOT CAMPAIGN SEX’ OR ‘MISOGYNIST?’

Homemade Pi and Bite-Sized Chips // BY JACOB EVELYN

// BY BECCA EDELMAN Every American who doesn’t live under a rock knows that Mitt Romney once had a binder full of women. By 6 a.m. the morning after Romney made his now infamous remark at the presidential debate, the Facebook page “Binders Full of Women” had 200,000 likes.

The Internet exploded with memes parodying his phrase. Entire Tumblr pages are now devoted to Romney’s slip of the tongue. Among my favorites is magicbinderfullofwomen.tumblr.com, which displays the ’90s phenomenon that was Magic the Gathering cards, altered to feature famous women along with their “creature type” and “special skills.” Jackie Kennedy’s hat, for instance, makes an appearance as “totem armor.” When placed on a creature, it makes it “Exalted.”

The national reaction to Romney’s faux pas might imply that, in today’s media-obsessed culture, the chances of getting away with a misogynistic comment, when said comment is projected on a screen before the eyes of the nation, would be slim. Yet, the upcoming presidential election recently reminded me of what I would consider two hours of misogynist blundering that went largely, if not almost entirely, unacknowledged: George Clooney’s 2011 film “The Ides of March.”

THE FILM NOT ONLY MARGINALIZES WOMEN, BUT ALSO RESTRICTS MEN TO THE STEREOTYPES OF AMBITION. The film follows the political campaign of presidential candidate Mike Morris (Clooney). It focuses primarily on the promising and charming assistant campaign manager Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling) as he maneuvers the intrigues of the political domain. Both Morris and Meyers become sexually entangled with an attractive young intern (Evan Rachel Wood), spiraling the campaign into a whirlwind of dirty politicking. According to Clooney’s directorial perspective, the world of politics is a completely maledominated one. Every influential participant, from Morris’s high-level staff members, to his opposing candidate, to the important senator Morris must woo, is male. In fact, the film only has three female characters at all, each of whom

BECCA EDELMAN A CASE FOR CINEMA fulfill a stereotype: the devoted wife, the self-serving career woman and the selfdefined slut.

Cindy Morris (Jennifer Ehle), the potential first lady, has the smallest role of the three women and absolutely no substance that is not a reflection of her husband. She is eternally loyal, constantly watching him from the sidelines or lovingly caressing his shoulder and soothing him with kind words. Despite his adulterous dalliances, Morris uses his wife to gain voter trust, telling them of his “normal marriage.” She never learns of Morris’s promiscuities, remaining ignorantly at his side until the film’s end.

Playing a slightly larger role in the drama is Ida Horowicz (Marisa Tomei), an ambitious political journalist. Of the three women, she is the only one focused on a career, and for this Clooney decidedly masculinizes her. She wears her hair cut short and consistently dons stereotypically men’s attire: collared shirts, vests and trench coats, never a dress or a skirt. The men treat her as one of the boys; she is the only woman in front of whom they make indecent comments with hardly a second thought.

Throughout “Ides of March,” the characters maneuver and backstab each other to attain their goals. Stephen and his boss (Philip Seymour Hoffman) each have the other fired; a leader of the opponent’s campaign (Paul Giamatti) woos Stephen only to let him go. The characters accept these maneuvers as part of the political game, and through their repetition, so too does the audience.

Although the victim of each scheme may react with hurt, he always seems in some way to understand that it’s all “just politics.” The exception to this rule, however, is Ida. When Ida decides to print a column that will ruin Stephen’s reputation, he acts completely astonished.

“You’re supposed to be my friend,” he cries, suddenly shocked that a reporter would try to do her job. His lines seem intended to garner sympathy. “I gave you everything you ever wanted. Every story, every scoop,” he whines. Although political intrigue is allowed and even expected from each of the plot’s male players, coming from Ida it is viewed as shocking, self-serving and abhorrent.

The most clearly stereotypical character in the film is Molly, the intern. She is never depicted as particularly interested in or adept at her work. Rather, her character can be summed up in a single

word: sex. She wears tight, low-cut outfits to work. Her conversations at the office serve primarily to boost the confidence of the men she works with through comments such as, “You’re the big man on campus. I’m just the lowly intern.”

Although Molly is portrayed as the aggressor in her sexual escapades, this is not to say she is a shining example of the sexually liberated woman; after sleeping with Stephen, she actually refers to herself as “pretty slutty,” a self-description that I don’t think I’ve ever heard in a film before.

Soon after, Molly reveals that she is pregnant, likely with Morris’ child.

“We’re Catholic,” she weeps to Stephen.

One might perceive this attempt at garnering sympathy for Molly as the film’s taking a pro-choice stance. However, this plot point does little more than portray abortions as a punishment for sluts who commit adultery. Further, Molly reveals herself to be completely helpless in this situation without male assistance.

When faced with her pregnancy, Molly first calls Morris, and when he does not respond, depends on Stephen to fund and take her in for the procedure. Afterwards, feeling deserted by both men and unable to cope alone, Molly commits suicide by overdosing on the drugs from the abortion clinic. Neither man seems particularly grieved by the state of affairs, and Stephen actually uses the information he now has about Morris’s and Molly’s sexual encounter to finagle a promotion naming him the head of the campaign.

Walking out of the movie theatre last October, I was appalled at what I had seen and couldn’t wait to get home and read all of the horrified reviews that the film must have received. I was shocked to find that, beyond the critiques of a few feminist blogs, nothing had been said. A. O. Scott boils Molly’s character down to “hot campaign sex.” Roger Ebert waves the problem of women within the film away in a mere three sentences, claiming that in the high-pressure environment of politics, “imprudent sex under these circumstances is explicable.”

Ultimately, the film not only marginalizes women, but also restricts men to the stereotypes of ambition, aggression and callousness towards women, thereby enforcing the divide between the sexes.

What I am criticizing, then, is not the film’s individual creator, but a culture in which these atrocious stereotypes are so familiar and accepted that they go unnoticed.

Contact BECCA EDELMAN at rebecca.edelman@yale.edu .

When I was a kid, my aunt gave me a book of science fair project ideas. The book was old — published no later than 1980 or so — and detailed everything from cloning plants (one of the easier ones) to building robotic laser cutters. Needless to say, I never did any of the projects. I never made it past the list of chemicals or industrial machines, never approached a university physicist for lab time, never even read all of the instructions for a project without getting overwhelmed halfway through and quickly picking up a Hardy Boys book instead.

It seems like the days of tinkering ended when our parents went to college. People stopped taking apart televisions to see how they work or building their own ham radios. Today, pretty much everything we own comes prepackaged, pre-programmed. The really adventurous among us use Linux, and even that’s not the Wild West it once was.

But a new trend is emerging amongst computer types — and people who write about trends amongst computer types for collegiate newspapers every other week. Computer geeks are once again starting to tinker.

Enter the Raspberry Pi. (Note the tasty nomenclature pun.) The Raspberry Pi, started last year by the aptly named Raspberry Pi Foundation, is a computer designed for education and sold for only $25. That’s right. Around eight times cheaper than the famous cheap laptops sold by the One Laptop Per Child project. The Raspberry Pi, with its reasonable processor and surprisingly decent graphics card, is a fully functioning computer, though it should be noted that in the computer world this criteria means only that it has the capability to do some computing; a monitor (or TV), keyboard, mouse, case, Ethernet cable, SD card (those little memory cards that go into your camera, which are the basis for the computer’s memory) and power supply are all up to you to provide.

Still, the Raspberry Pi, due to being a cheap and easy-to-customize chip about the size of a credit card, has become the darling of the DIY geek community and served as the backbone for projects ranging from retro arcade machines and music and video players to customized coffee machines and robot controllers. The director of the Raspberry Pi Foundation even claims that some enterprising techies plan to launch the cheap computer into space, the rationale being that it might be a lot better to put hundreds of cheap computers on a satellite and see how many survive the harsh environment than to have one expensive, custom-designed computer and hope it doesn’t get fried in a solar flare.

But the Raspberry Pi’s got company

JACOB EVELYN FUTURE in the cheap-computer-that-fits-inan-Altoids-tin market. The $99 Parallella, which finished its Kickstarter fundraising campaign at the end of October, markets itself less as an educational/tinkering tool and more as a powerful parallel computer for both everyday use and scientific computing.

The Parallella takes advantage of using many cores to perform similar computations simultaneously — a practice known as parallel processing — which allows the Parallella to crunch numbers at 45 GHz, according to its creator, or roughly 20 times the speed of my pretty decent Macbook Pro. For, ahem, $99.

COMPUTER GEEKS ARE ONCE AGAIN STARTING TO TINKER. Still, these computers are hardly the first to promote tinkering. Arduino is a microcontroller (basically a very small computer) created in 2005 and designed to easily connect to hardware like sensors and motors. It can be controlled with a simple programming language, resulting in projects like a homemade self-balancing Segwayesque robot, a robotic tattoo gun (that tattoos a random religious symbol onto the lucky volunteer’s arm), a swimming robo-snake and the laser harp — an instrument composed only of laser beams, which makes noise when you block the beams with your hands to “pluck” the harp.

And before Arduino was LEGO Mindstorms, the robotic branch of the popular kids’ toy brand, which turned building and programming robots into little more than snapping pieces together and drawing flowcharts on a computer screen. LEGO Mindstorms has become, in the last 10 years or so, the easy and inexpensive tool of choice for amateur robotics tinkerers around the world. Scientists at Cambridge University are even using LEGO robots to help aid in their research creating samples of bone.

This new opening up of activities once reserved for labs and factories marks a new shift in creative-scientific pursuits. People can build robots. They can attach wires and sensors to their computers that live in Altoids tins. We are finally back to tinkering.

Contact JACOB EVELYN at jacob.evelyn@yale.edu .

Game Change --> Game Over // BY SCOTT STERN

By 11:30, it was over. All the major networks had announced that Barack Obama was going to be the winner. Shortly thereafter, his rival conceded in an awkward if apparently sincere statement.

The election that had seemed like it would go on forever was finally at an end.

Fast-forward four years.

By 11:30, it was over. All the major networks had announced that Barack Obama was going to be the winner. Shortly thereafter, his rival conceded in an awkward if apparently sincere statement.

The election that had seemed like it would go on forever was finally at an end.

The ends of Election Night ’08 and Election Night ’12 looked remarkably similar. The Democrat triumphed, propelled to victory by high youth turnout, clear majorities among all minorities and an outstanding get-out-thevote mechanism. Even the aesthetics seemed the same: The energetic black former liberal defeating the wealthy white former moderate assisted by a radical young starling.

Yes, Obama did not take back the House, and perhaps he lacked

S U N D AY NOVEMBER 12

SCOTT STERN READING BETWEEN THE LINES his youthful glow and the energy that allowed him to triumph in 2008. But the overall results are largely familiar. Several successful ballot initiatives this time around (regarding gay marriage, marijuana and immigrants’ rights) reveal that momentum was on the side of the liberals — just as it was four years ago.

When the textbooks are written, the documents are archived and the elections of 2008 and 2012 are chronicled and dissected, what will we remember?

To political journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, how the sausage was made is just as interesting (and perhaps as historically relevant) as selecting your choice from a menu. In their widely acclaimed 2010 book “Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime,” Halperin and Heilemann tell the story of the 2008 presidential race like you’ve never heard it before. Days after another historic election, it

is useful to reflect on the important moments of the last election to fully understand the results of the present one.

“Game Change” tells a story that is at once familiar and unfamiliar. It chronicles the 2008 presidential election in scintillating detail, beginning with the primary battles and concluding with Obama’s choice of Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State.

It is divided into three parts: 1.

The Democratic primary (Hillary vs. Obama, with a little Edwards thrown in for flavor); 2. The Republican primary (McCain triumphing early); and 3. The general election (including the selection of Palin).

The title of “Game Change” is based on the authors’ thesis that the 2008 election was largely shaped by a few “game-changing” moments — earth-shattering revelations that fundamentally altered the outcome of the election. These game-changing moments also happen to be the book’s most controversial and entertaining parts. We learn early on about the numerous senators who were secretly plugging for Obama, including Major-

ity Leader Harry Reid, whom the book revealed to have supported Obama because he was “lightskinned” and with no “Negro dialect, unless he wanted one.”

(Reid apologized after the book’s publication.)

Bill Clinton was also criticized for a comment he made early in the book to Ted Kennedy about Obama, informing the stalwart senator, “a few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.” Other game-changing new details from the Democratic primary (and before) include: Hillary Clinton would’ve run for president in 2004 but for the objections of her daughter Chelsea; John Edwards tried to make a deal with Obama, so that whoever lost the Iowa Caucus would be the other’s vice-presidential nominee; titillating details of Edwards’s affair; a portrait of Edwards’ dying wife Elizabeth as a psychotic, arrogant shrew; Obama’s poor debate performances; Reverend Wright; and the implosion of Hillary’s campaign staff.

By the time we get to the Republican primary, the book is already more than halfway

done, but the reader is treated to some delightful gossip. (Did Cindy McCain have a secret boyfriend back in Arizona?) John McCain falters early in the primary campaign, but returns with a vengeance, possessing newly acquired conservative credentials and a less bulky, less Bushian staff.

The general election is largely the story of McCain’s long, slow decline, but it provides delightful details about the ultimate gamechanger: Sarah Palin. Apparently, the obscure Alaska governor did not know why North and South Korea were different countries, why we were in Afghanistan, what the Queen of England’s role was, among many, many other things. She is painted as borderline mentally ill, but campaign workers later supported the book’s portrait as accurate.

“Game Change” was an excellent book, engaging and informative, though I would’ve liked it more had it identified a single source. (The book, instead, was done in the “deep background” style of Bob Woodward.)

I recently found myself dwelling on “Game Change” because, ever

FAMILY PROGRAM, STORIES AND ART

Contact SCOTT STERN at scott.stern@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

Yale University Art Gallery // 1 p.m.

“All ages are welcome, and drawing materials will be provided for older children.”

since reading it, I’ve had a habit of analyzing contemporary politics, looking for these “game-changing” moments.

If Halperin and Heilemann were to write a new book, chronicling the 2012 campaign (which I truly hope they will), what would be the most important gamechangers? I propose the following: 1. Tim Pawlenty’s refusal to be divisive (and subsequent demise); 2. Donald Trump’s hilarious foray into the race; 3.

Rick Perry’s “oops” comment; 4. Michele Bachmann’s sheer lunacy; 5. Cain’s 9–9–9 proposal; 6. The emergence of personal billionaire patronage; 7.

The “you didn’t build that” exaggeration, 8. The choice of Paul Ryan; 9. Clint Eastwood’s disdain for a chair; 10. Bill Clinton’s convention speech; 11. 47 percent-gate; 12. The bad, the good and the ugly (i.e., the debates); 13.

Hurricane Sandy.

Takeaway from the 2012 election: You don’t mess with Nate Silver. Or Candy Crowley. Or Big Bird.

Green tea.

Gotta get those antioxidants. Flu season is upon us.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B11

WEEKEND DANCE

1.

2.

THE KINKS AND THE KINKY OF BHANGRA

3.

// BY HAYLEY BYRNES

Look like you’re having the time of your life.

Sway with the grace of a wheat stalk.

Dip it low. Oh, and don’t wear shoes.

No, I’m not giving you cheesy firsttime sex advice. I’m telling you the secret to a successful bhangra dance.

As a bhangra virgin, I was deflowered Tuesday evening after attending a class hosted by the Yale Bhangra Society. Wandering to Temple Street at 6:45 in the evening, my head swirled with the day’s intellectual absurdities (i.e., a whole class in which the term “Indo-Pak-Afghan” was repeated far too often for comfort) and Election Day obnoxiousness. I just wanted to dance.

Though my characteristic grandpasweaters and lack of eyeliner skills may imply a nurtured indifference to looks, I am Cher à la Clueless at heart. Thus, I replaced performance anxiety with the eternal question: what do I wear to bhangra? After a cursory Wikipedia search — always the key to enlightenment — I despaired about my lack of ethnic Punjab wear. But my sartorial worries were soon put to rest when Kathryn Wright FES ’13, the instructor, walked in with Pittsburgh sweat-

pants and a matching shirt.

Don’t be fooled by the hard-to-spell Indian dance moves. As David Cruz ’14 explained to me before the lesson started, “What we do isn’t really traditional.” The type of bhangra the 17- or 18-member team performs was developed mostly by Indian immigrants in the UK and US. When I asked Cruz if bhangra could be compared to Bollywood dancing — I’m a freshman from an unknown little hamlet in southeastern Michigan, so please excuse the cultural naiveté — he shook his head. “Bollywood is like the disco of Indian dancing.” If he declares Bollywood the disco, I, with my infinite understanding of Indian dance, declare bhangra to be India’s version of swing.

Wright’s class usually hosts 15 to 20 people, but, perhaps due to Election Day distractions, only five graduate students made it to class.

As we warmed up in front of Wright, my mind flashed back to the claustrophobia of freshman gym class and the horrors of the Cha Cha Slide. Much to my relief, she avoided any use of the word “funky” in favor of Hindu mumblings. First up: dhamaka. Kick the legs behind — gracefully, of course.

Now propel arms forward, one at a

time, “like an airplane,” Wright says.

Now you’ve mastered the first basic move of bhangra.

Before the lesson, Cruz described the pace of bhangra: “It’s just filled with highs and lows, highs and lows — there are slow segments and fast segments.”

With that in mind, we soon did the jhoomer, a glorified bicycle kick in front of the body. Another one of bhangra’s elegant moves, jhoomer is also the slower part of bhangra, usually danced to love songs, a fact all the more amusing given that bhangra was traditionally a dance only for men.

Having covered six or seven basic moves, Wright dropped a beat (our soundtrack: Husan De Mare) and we began our fluid partner dance, jodiyaan, where the goal was to successfully mimic a stalk of wheat’s movement.

My favorite term to say, jandhu sangha, proved to be my dancing downfall. Rotating on one foot was just too much. As my jodiyaan partner, Cruz soon became the love of my life when he valiantly contained the urge to burst out laughing. As he bravely held his hand out to me, we began a terrifying swirl around each other, reminiscent of a sadly choreographed

kung fu B-movie.

In 35 minutes, most (read: everyone except yours truly) mastered the intricacies of a two-minute routine, which in bhangra time might well be an hour.

With a nod to bhangra’s roots as an improvisational dance form, we ended with freestyle. Word to the wise: no matter how easy your 5-foot-3-inch bhangra instructor makes freestyle look, it is actually downright intimidating.

With that, my bhangra education

// JACOB GEIGER

A how-to for you would-be bhangra stars.

was complete. Wright ended the class on a tantalizing note: “Soon,” she said, “there will be sticks.”

Contact HAYLEY BYRNES at hayley.byrnes@yale.edu .

Swinging with my two left feet // BY CATHERINE SHAW

I recently made the unsavory discovery that I can’t dance. Despite my many attempts to pop-lock-anddrop-it, I have never been quite able to conquer the movement. But, as swing dancing is an entirely different form of physical self-expression from the kind usually displayed at Wednesday night Toad’s, I figured maybe, just maybe, I would finally succeed in mastering an activity of the rhythmic variety. I thought wrong. I would now like to take the opportunity to issue my sincerest apologies to the poor souls who had the misfortune to dance with me.

Despite my utter failure, I had an incredible time learning the basics at the first session of Yale Swing and Blues’ Intro to Swing dance classes this past Thursday. As a complete novice to swing dancing, I was thrown into the deep end with what one of my classmates called the “hardest move EVER,” a fundamentally important and deceivingly difficult six-step routine.

At the beginning of class our instructors, chemistry student Anne Carroll GRD ’18 and Dan Rathbone ’14, assembled us into a big circle. They had us pretend to swallow a bowling ball, in order to lower

// BRIANNE BOWEN

Yeah, it would be nice to be able to do that.

S U N D AY NOVEMBER 12

BICINIUM

Dwight Chapel // 8 p.m.

14th-century Italy will ring in your ears.

Possibly for days.

our center of gravity and to assume a good dancer’s posture. We then began to learn the steps — the perfect one, “twooo,” triple step and “throw the Frisbee,” one by one. Along the way, Carroll and Rathbone would explain the science behind a particular step, something I found incredibly helpful.

I particularly loved Carroll’s explanation of dancer physics: “A follow in motion remains in motion unless acted upon by an outside lead.”

“Dancer Physics” became especially important when it came down to learning both the following and leading parts of the dance. I was thrown off guard by the continual changes of lead and discovered that I have immense difficulty telling my left from my right. My confused feet were set straight, however, by one of my fellow dancers who kindly reminded me that, when following, one always starts with the right foot.

While I was an utter failure as a ballroom dancer, some of my classmates were quite talented. Following a strong lead was immense fun, and when I wasn’t leading, we actually looked like we knew what we were doing. Apparently, I am a better follower than I am a leader. I hope that this skill will come in handy one day, when my knight in shining armor comes and sweeps me off my feet with his impeccable ballroom dancing skills.

A good swing dancer is, lamentably, a rather unusual thing to find, so I was curious how my instruc-

tors came to be involved. Carroll was first exposed to the dance with Emory University’s Swing and Blues dancing club, but said she “really learned out in the bigger [swing] community.”

Rathbone also credits this communal interest for his love of dance.

I WAS THROWN OFF GUARD BY THE CONTINUAL CHANGES OF LEAD AND DISCOVERED THAT I HAVE IMMENSE DIFFICULTY TELLING MY LEFT FROM MY RIGHT. “I came for the dancing and stayed for the people,” he quipped.

Every Sunday, Yale Swing and Blues hosts a practicum at the Slifka Center, where people in the community come together and swing.

According to both Carroll and Rathbone, this is “really where you learn to dance.” Although my skills are limited and I may have two left feet, I know where I will be this Sunday night. I hope to see you there.

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

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Latest music from The Vaccines.

In which they “Come of Age.”

PAGE B12

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BACKSTAGE

JIM FADIMAN // SCOTT KLINE

RESEARCHER IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS // BY KAROLINA KSIAZEK

O

n Thursday, Dr. James Fadiman visited Branford for a Master’s Dessert, where he was interviewed by his cousin Anne Fadiman, the Francis Writer-in-Residence. Dr. Fadiman has been an author, professor and consultant, and he co-founded Sofia University. But the trajectory of his multifaceted career started in a Paris café in 1961, when his favorite Harvard professor offered him two pills of the chemical that puts the magic in magic mushrooms, turning his world around. Several years later, Fadiman conducted research on LSD at Harvard in one of the last legal studies of the drug before its use in research was made illegal. I called Dr. Fadiman at his California home Monday night to talk.

A. When we were doing the original research, there weren’t negative reactions from the public, because that was at the same time that the public was finding LSD and scarfing it as fast as they could. What we did have criticism from is the scientific establishment that said, “The results of your research do not fit our notion of reality.” Let me give you just one wonderful example. There was a person who was head of alcohol research for the National Institute of Mental Health.

Results were coming out of Canada that said if you take long-term treatment-resistant alcoholics — I mean people who are really pretty wasted, have liver disease and so forth — and you give them one session with LSD, there’s a 50 percent abstinence rate.

This person was shown the data, and he said, “I don’t believe it.” The person who showed it to him said, “So which data would you believe?” His answer was: “None.”

Q. In your writing and lectures, you talk about LSD a great deal more than other psychedelic drugs. Why LSD? A. I think it’s a little bit like your first boyfriend. I got all my training on LSD, and therefore I understand all the advantages of it. It’s most easily focused to do various things. You can use LSD for spiritual experiences, you can use it for therapeutic reasons, you can use it at Burning Man to just not know where you are for a week, you can use it on scientific hard-nose problems. I’m now doing research on something called micro-dosing, which is using so little LSD that it’s below the perceptual threshold.

Someone said to me, “The rocks don’t glisten even a little.” When people are doing that, they go on with their normal day, they go to classes, they are lawyers, they are bus drivers — but they have a better day. They just feel a little better.

Q. You place a lot of emphasis on being in harmony with nature and other people. But you’ve done consulting work for companies like Dow Chemical. What was that like?

A. I loved being a consultant because people tell you your problems and you get to help them and you get to charge them a lot. I worked for Dow Chemical during the end of the war when it was [seen as] an evil company because it made a substance called napalm. I was interviewing people at the company that were looking for jobs at a fairly high level. I told Dow I was not only going to see if the [candidates] would do a good job, but also how they felt about working for Dow Chemical. One of the things I did was advise some candidates — the company’s going to make you an offer, and you’re going to hate it. I recommended to the candidates that they consider what they were doing with their own morality.

Q. How big of a role do you feel psychedelic drugs played in the social movements of the 60s?

A. Look at a group like the Beatles, who had a huge effect, and it was clear that one of the things they did was take a lot of psychedelics. But you also had philosophers and artists. You really had people who were questioning the whole nature of a society based on competition, based on separation.

Really, the [environmental] movement was based on being somehow separate from nature. They were saying being separate from nature is inherently unhealthy, because when we have experienced being closer to nature, it feels more natural, it feels more correct. People were saying, “These Native Americans who keep talking about my brother, the mountain and my sister, the tree — they’re not being metaphorical. They’re talking about experience that makes sense.” Reality just looks a lot more flexible after you use psychedelics.

Q. I was raised Catholic. How do organized religions compare to the type of spirituality experienced on psychedelic drugs?

A. Through the Catholic Church, you have to go to an intermediary who talks to God for you. When you confess to a priest, he says, “I’m working for God. And God says that if you do 100 Hail Marys you will be better.” That’s indirect. But 80 percent of the Buddhist teachers in the United States — American ones, not our Tibetan immigrants — started [practicing] by having psychedelic experiences early on. Meditation and psychedelics approach the same experience. Meditation does it slowly, carefully and deliberately, and psychedelics kind of shove you to the front of the line before you’re ready.

But they also let you know there’s something there that’s worth sitting in meditation for 15 years to get.

Q. Can you tell me more about the medical uses of psychedelics?

A. There’s a bunch of research now using psychedelics for specific medical purposes. There’s a study at Harvard at the moment on something called cluster headaches. Cluster headaches make migraines look like

“

Q. What about side effects?

A. It depends on the substance. Usually the side effects are temporary, meaning they’re just while you’re on [the drug]. I have an older friend who’s on a tranquilizer [therapeutically]. He’s still depressed, and he has a side effect where his mouth kind of keeps moving and it’s very embarrassing. He’s taking it every day. When you use a psychedelic either therapeutically or spiritually, it’s only once. And then if it’s done right, as well as possible, there’s no desire to do it again for a long time. LSD has almost no physical effect at all. Literally, if you look at scientific literature, your pupils dilate a little and your blood pressure goes up one or two points. That’s it. You probably get a lot more body load from a chocolate bar.

Q. If psychedelic drugs were to be legalized for therapeutic uses, how would you see them being regulated?

A. If LSD were available by prescription, a lot of people who would have never touched it otherwise would only use it in the most legal, safe way. And that seems to me, you know, sensible.

The argument for legalizing marijuana is, until you make something legal, you

can’t regulate it. So I think regulation would be very healthy.

Q. What effect do you think regulation would have on society?

A. What happens when people use psychedelic drugs is they don’t use them too much. It looks like if things were legal, not much would change, in terms of problems. What would change, of course, is that the U.S. would lose its honor of being the nation that imprisons the most people of any [country] in the world.

Q. Where do you think those negative feelings toward these drugs come from?

A. Culture likes to be stable. Any culture. There’s this fear I think we all have of not being in control of ourselves. Fear is a very powerful motivator, and psychedelics, for many people, really make a difference in their lives — it isn’t like getting drunk. But there’s a lot less fear out there than you think. When you release a book about psychedelics, you walk around and you say to people, “Hello, would you be interested in this book?” I’ve done that to the strangest looking people, and at first they look at me like they want to squash me like a bug. And then there’s this little glazed thing that happens, their eyes go a little out of focus, and they say something like, “You know, I was in college once.”

Contact KAROLINA KSIAZEK at karolina.ksiazek@yale.edu .

MEDITATION AND PSYCHEDELICS APPROACH THE SAME EXPERIENCE. MEDITATION DOES IT SLOWLY AND DELIBERATELY... BUT [PSYCHEDLICS] ALSO LET YOU KNOW THERE’S SOMETHING THERE THAT’S WORTH SITTING IN MEDITATION FOR 15 YEARS TO GET.

“

Q. You’re very well-known for your research in the 60s on LSD. Even now, we see a significant public backlash against controversial research in areas like stem cells and evolution. Was there any negative reaction from the public on your LSD research?

a pleasure. It turns out that somebody noticed his next series of cluster headaches didn’t happen, and then he recalled that he’d taken LSD a week or two earlier. Now they’re kind of proving what we already know to be true, which is that [psychedelics] seem to be remarkable in preventing cluster headaches, at least for months.