This WEEKEND by Yale Daily News

WEEKEND // FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2013

AVA KOFMAN takes us on a tour of Newhallville, a developing land of struggles and promise. Page 3

Clustering Community

CRUEL

CULTURED

CLUES

B11

TO BE MEAN IS NOT TO BE FUNNY

WATCHING THE WATCHER

MURDER MYSTERY

Carolyn Lipka extracts your inner Gretchen Weiners and teaches you why you should push her in front of a bus.

In a profile of a security guard at the YUAG, Jennifer Gersten discovers an art fan and a fighter.

Jackson McHenry is on the case, seeking out the best — and worst — of Brisish humor.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

SHAKING UP THE HOT 100, FOR BETTER AND FOR WORSE

HURSEY

ADAMS

WEEKEND VIEWS

// BY WILL ADAMS

Vivacious Virgo Seeking a Good Time. With Myself. // BY MILA HURSEY

// KAREN TIAN

LIPKA

Last week, with the help of an especially viral meme, Baauer’s woozy trap song “Harlem Shake” rocketed to the top spot of Billboard’s Hot 100. Some critics cried foul that what they perceived was a “bad song” was now No. 1 in the U.S., as if that spot represented an endorsement — though it is actually a reporting of fact. “Harlem Shake”’s victory was propelled by a big change in Billboard and Nielsen’s tracking methodology. In a press release, Billboard announced that it would now factor “all official videos on YouTube captured by Nielsen’s streaming measurement, including Vevo on YouTube, and user-generated clips that utilize authorized audio into the Hot 100.” This meant that each view of each reproduction of the “Harlem Shake” meme pushed the song further up the charts. The change is long overdue. One need not look back further than last year to find examples of viral music videos that would have benefited from this shift — PSY, Gotye and Carly Rae Jepsen come to mind. PSY, in particular, could have used the push; thanks to its radio dominance, Maroon 5’s “One More Night” kept “Gangnam Style” from ever reaching the top spot, despite the song’s ubiquity last fall. But viral music videos were not a 2012 phenomenon. Past musical memes that undoubtedly would have charted high include most of The

Lonely Island’s repertoire, The Gregory Brothers’ “Bed Intruder Song” and, of course, Rebecca Black’s “Friday.” If it bothers you that “Friday” probably should have been a top 20 hit, just like it’s bothering certain parties that “Harlem Shake” is now No. 1, then it’s time you reassess the charts. Billboard and Nielsen’s purpose is to track music consumption; while what’s successful and what’s not have ramifications for pop music’s future, quality is irrelevant. It should also be noted that “Harlem Shake” was not the only benefactor of the change; Rihanna and Drake both posted gains this week from the strength of YouTube streams of their new singles and videos. To complain that “Friday” or “Harlem Shake” is charting high because they are bad songs misses the point that the chart describes our consumption patterns rather than prescribing them. But “Harlem Shake” is different from its viral predecessors. Whereas viewers watched until the very end of the “Call Me Maybe” video to soak in its final twist, a “Harlem Shake” video is gone in 30 seconds. That’s only a sixth of the entire song’s length. One could argue that the song is only ancillary to the real action: the midway switch, the manic flailing, the random props. It’s as if there could have been any bass-y club track underpinning the

madness, and it would have been just as much of a hit. The lumping together of all user-generated content that uses authorized audio regardless of length represents a large oversight in Billboard’s analysis. One wonders how many songs will become No. 1 based on tiny excerpts. True to fashion, the meme machine has already set the stage for this scenario: that screaming goat remix of Taylor Swift’s “I Knew You Were Trouble.” The video, which is 25 seconds long, has racked up over 2 million views in just four days. Does that mean that “Trouble” will be the Hot 100’s champion next week? It may be hard to tell, as the song is already far up the top 10, but the premise that repeat viewings of half of its chorus could put it there is just absurd. As ham-handed as Billboard’s decision was to make the change when it just so happens to coincide with a viral event, they deserve credit for trying to increase the accuracy of consumption now rather than never. Maintaining this accuracy, however, will require more careful attention paid to the nuances of YouTube’s remix culture. Hopefully Billboard decides what truly counts as a single consumption of a song, and history will look upon these fleeting viral hits as a blip in the data. Contact WILL ADAMS at william.adams@yale.edu .

It was Friday night around 9 p.m., and I was walking around campus by myself. I do this all of the time. And no, I’m not wallowing in self-pity or lonely. I’m just deep in thought about what my perfect life would look like while kind of wanting a cigarette, but trying to convince myself why that would be a bad idea. My perfect life is warmer or colder (depending on the current season) and involves being able to dance however I want to in clubs without strange men grabbing my body or cornering me demanding my name (it’d been a rough Thursday night). I would be prettier, thinner and have more fabulous clothing. I would make my own money, own a dog named after a “South Park” or “Archer” character. I would go backpacking all of the time because look how in tune with nature, athletic and lowmaintenance I am. Basically, I would be as perfect as I could be without getting plastic surgery because JUDGEMENT you should really just love yourself, amirite?

SO I DECIDED TO TAKE MYSELF ON A DATE. I DECIDED TO GIVE MYSELF A TREAT. That night, I had an epiphany in Beinecke Plaza, as everyone should. “I am not perfect, I will never be perfect.” There, I said it. The thought echoed against the marble edifices. A flock of pigeons may or may not have flown away in the background. Okay, I’ve had this realization before, but it never came with this particular sick idea: I feel like I have to be a different person for me to like me. Pretty much every teenager in the history of teenagerdom has thought, “I have to be another person for another human to like this despicable ball of hormones and hair, WAH.” I’ve made progress with that, still not completely there, but that’s a sub-

ject for another View. I’ve even gotten to the place where I love myself, i.e., I want the best for myself and would never intentionally cause myself harm. I just haven’t had that moment where I look in the mirror and pull out a Colin Firth line: “I like you, just the way you are.” I have this idea in my head that if I don’t like me, I will constantly try to be better and do better. You know, displeasure as a motivator. Looking at it now, it sounds like I’m trying to house-train a puppy, except I forget the part where I give myself fake bacon for not going potty on the carpet. So I decided to take myself on a date. I decided to give myself a treat. TREAT MYSELF. I took myself to the Yale Bookstore, perused the bookshelves before finally deciding on Mindy Kahling’s “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)” and a bag of kettle corn. I spent the night reading for pleasure, which was very thoughtful because I know I enjoy reading for pleasure. It wasn’t the best first date, it wasn’t the most romantic, and I didn’t make a huge effort or anything, but I enjoyed it. Tomorrow, I think I might take me out again for gluten-free pizza and some movie about sociopaths staring Matthew Goode. This might be the honeymoon period, but I’m starting to dig me, you know? When I laugh at my own jokes, it’s so freaking adorable. I know I should love myself, and I’m beginning to learn how to be kind to myself, compassionate with myself. I don’t have to be the model of virtue to have integrity, honor and courage, whatever. I’m going to be a hypocrite. I’m going to change my mind. I’m going to gossip. I’m going to arbitrarily hate absolute strangers to make myself feel better. I’m going to do the wrong thing. I am human. Being imperfect and being okay with it will (hopefully) not make me a slacker, or apathetic, or a bad person. It will (hopefully) just make me happier. I am starting to see me with myself for the rest of my life. Contact MILA HURSEY at mila.hursey@yale.edu .

And In That Moment I Swear We Were All Gretchen Weiners // BY CAROLYN LIPKA

When my editor first asked me to write a View, his only instruction was that I “be funny.” Usually, I welcome this challenge. On Twitter, people have commented that I’ll “live tweet anything” because I believe my commentary on the things people said in my “Athenian Imperial Democracy” class is hilarious. I also write about something ugly someone wore or take quotes out of context to make people look rough. So when I started thinking about possible content for this article, my mind first immediately jumped to some mean ideas — for example, writing about the one time a drunk, naked stranger stupidly wandered into my apartment and proceeded to take a shower, or all the vicious things I once said to people at an open bar because I’ve been told that the way I tell these stories is funny. But what does that really add

F R I D AY MARCH 1

to the productive campus discourse? What do these stories say about anything other than that Yale clearly cannot handle its booze?

TAKE THIS AS MY PUBLIC APOLOGY FOR ALL THE THINGS I’VE SAID ON THE INTERNET AND/OR TO MY FRIENDS AND/OR TO YOUR FACE. What they say is that the truth is that I don’t really know how to be funny — I know how to be mean. And even though this article might

be widely read (I’m looking at you, Mom and Dad, are you proud of me yet?), that possibility probably won’t stop me from jumping to say something humorously critical about the people around me, the school I go to or some larger societal trend in order to get some laughs. (Invariably, my own dad consistently asks me if I’m actually funny whenever I express interest in writing for a comedy show.) As a consequence, I have been so mean to people (even if they might be universally disliked) because I know people will laugh. Bear with me here, because I’m going to start an extended metaphor — this is why I am Gretchen Wieners. Towards the end of “Mean Girls,” Gretchen announces, “I’m sorry that people are so jealous of me, but I can’t help it that I’m so popular.” And everyone laughs because,

really, how can someone be so selfdeluded into believing that? Well, that’s how I am about my meanness. I rest on bitchiness instead of genuinely trying to be funny because it’s going to get me results. Similarly, Gretchen’s character relies on the fact that her dad invented Toaster Strudel (and that “her hair is full of secrets”) to justify her lack of depth and her attitude. I won’t strive for smart humor or real originality, because I tend to be lazy and because the one or two laughs I get enable me to be lazy. (Unrelated to my humor or lack thereof, but also related to how I am Gretchen: My grandfather invented both the powdered donut and Cool Whip.) Ultimately, I justify how mean I am with the fact that everyone laughs at it — I’m sorry people think I’m mean, but I can’t help it that I’m so funnny, right? Except for that fact that I can help

“THEORY OF FLIGHT”

Contact CAROLYN LIPKA at carolyn.lipka@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

Off-Broadway Theater // 8 p.m. Fly away with your avian obsession.

it. What I’m trying to say here, in my own roundabout way, is that I’m sorry and that I can do better (and now, so can you!). Take this as my public apology for all the things I’ve said on the Internet and/or to my friends and/or to your face. What I have been doing is a form of bullying, and it needs to stop. When we’re at a party complaining about our friends or stealthily taking unattractive Snapchats of others to send to friends, we’re relying on meanness to create humor and justifying the cruelty with its laughgenerating effectiveness. As easy as it is to be Gretchen, Yale deserves better than me acting like an animal in Cady’s fantasy. It deserves you to be better, too.

Deleting Tinder

WKND no longer matches with Tinder.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND COVER

A NEIGHBORHOOD IN FLUX // BY AVA KOFMAN

n a warm February morning, Stephen Cremin-Endes received a call from Larry Burgess, who had gotten Stephen’s number from a friend. CreminEndes is the community-building specialist for Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS), a not-for-profit community housing developer in New Haven. Burgess was looking into the possibility of selling to NHS the house of his father, who had passed away last May. Stephen told him he would stop by the house, located at 278 Newhall St. in Newhallville, within the hour. It was to be expected that the house, if not entirely dilapidated, would not be in great shape. When the real estate bubble burst in 2007, the Newhallville neighborhood was hit hardest as the epicenter of the city’s foreclosure epidemic. Speculators began to use the neighborhood’s already devalued and dilapidated housing stock as a cash machine. But as the debt on the properties grew, houses were once again boarded up. As with other vacated properties in the Newhallville area, people had broken into 278 Newhall to steal aluminum, furnaces, copper piping and toilet plumbing. In an effort to prevent further theft, Burgess had boarded up a door in the back with some nails and spare plywood. Walls were peeling; flooring exposed; ceilings decaying. Though one of his brothers hopes to keep the

house, Larry says he doesn’t have the proper funds to maintain it. This is where Cremin-Endes and the NHS team come in. The agency rehabilitates old houses like Burgess’ to sell to new lower and middle-class homeowners. But unlike the risky refinancing efforts of speculators or the superficial refurbishing touches of slumlords, NHS reinvests in the neighborhood’s already existing housing stock. About four years ago, NHS set its sights on targeting critical areas like Newhallville. Despite their experience renovating and selling over 250 houses since 1979, improving the neighborhood has been no easy task. “We have to make sure investors don’t use houses like Monopoly board rentcollecting,” said Peter Crumlish, director of development for NHS. In addition to having the city’s highest foreclosure rate, the neighborhood has had the city’s highest unemployment rate, lowest performing school district and record-breaking crime rate. In 2007, threats from a nearby bar prompted a resident to quickly flee her house developed by the nonprofit Habitat for Humanity at 526 Winchester St. Due to further safety concerns, Habitat’s local chapter soon put the rest of its plans for the neighborhood on hold. NHS Director Jim Paley soon realized that developing Newhallville one house at a time wouldn’t change anything. A house-byhouse remedy would be akin, at best, to put-

ting a Band-Aid on a gaping bullet hole. “The Habitat for Humanity house on Winchester was a perfectly wonderful house and family but if you’re left out there isolated on an island, what can really happen?” explained Bridgette Russell, the director of the Home Ownership Center at NHS. “At the time, it was almost imperative that anything done was done in the right way because you had to do it in a stabilizing way.” To stabilize Newhallville, NHS pioneered a strategy called the “cluster approach” that buys and renovates groups of contiguous houses simultaneously. These clusters of development can improve the appearance and raise the property values of entire blocks and streets. Community leader and resident Tammy Chapman moved into one of the three houses in the first cluster in Newhallville, at Winchester and Highland, in December 2011. “The cluster program allows you to put your arms out,” she said, “and touch your neighbors on both sides.” But for a long time, nobody reached out at all. Though the housing stock once was designed for socializing, with porches for waving and talking, people had retreated indoors as conditions outside worsened. *** In 1870, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company established its permanent industrial campus — acres and acres of plant floor two miles northwest from Yale. Nurtured by the strong arms of the Winchester Factory and its suppliers, the sur-

casians and Hispanics with mixed incomes. She remembers a time when the factory — located at the intersection of Winchester and Munson — looked like a factory. What remains of the factory today is series of two, four and five-story buildings filled with whatever refuse has not been sacked by squatters and skateboarders: shells, casings, old boxes. Bright greenery crawls over soot stained bricks and shuttered windows down into the twisted barbed wire fence that surrounds its perimeter.

THE CLUSTER PROGRAM ALLOWS YOU TO PUT YOUR ARMS OUT AND TOUCH YOUR NEIGHBORS ON BOTH SIDES. Though Winchester’s closing is not the root cause of woe in Dixwell-Newhallville, its demise left an open sore from which the neighborhood has yet to fully recover. Many sections of the Newhallville neighborhood’s properties are not much better off. When the small fraction of the still operative factory closed down in 2006, its staff (including Burgess’ father) consisted of fewer than 200 workers. Not long after the factory reduced its operations, Smith watched her street disappear. From her porch on Winchester where she sat on most days, Smith pointed to a string of small businesses — a drugstore, a Laundromat, a bar — and farther up the street — a donut shop, a shoe shop and a Greek restaurant. Where, with a little imagination, she could bring the street back to life, I saw only what was left: some nice houses, some burned houses, boarded-up buildings and empty grass lots. In what was now a totally vacant apartment building across from her house, I tried to picture the grocery store and grocer who once lived upstairs, and I failed. But NHS sees something else. If NHS were to purchase Burgess’ house, it would rebuild the interior while preserving undamaged historical details like its old sturdy green door. In addition to restoring historical fabric, NHS also hopes to revive the sense of community Newhallville once had. ***

roundi n g neighborhood of Dixwell-Newhallville had prospered from a wellspring of stable employment and decent wages for its residents. Eva Smith, who’s lived a block up from the Winchester Factory since 1956, remembers a time when people in Newhallville had jobs at the factory. Smith remembers hearing as a child the loud ringing of the lunchtime bell calling Winchester’s employees back to work from her living room. She remembers living in a flourishing working class town made up of Italians, African Americans, Cau-

Endes greeted the current landlord, who seemed to be making only minimal repairs, and offered to buy the house on behalf of NHS. The landlord seemed uninterested in the offer. But it is important for NHS’ efforts to raise property values in the neighborhood that rundown houses don’t stay rundown, no matter whose hands renovate them. So, Cremin-Endes made another offer: “If you do a nice job, I can get 20 volunteers — and I don’t do this often — but I can get 20 volunteers to help you clean out.”

En route to visit Burgess’ house on Newhall Street, Cremin-Endes drove past West Division Street in his blue Subaru. The street, once blighted, is now unrecognizable. NHS’ concentrated efforts in the area have rehabilitated four of the street’s seven houses. All houses are LEED-certified energy efficient (saving their owners from more expensive bills in the long term). NHS’ cluster strategy extends to houses it does not own: NHS has painted three other houses on West Division and added streetlights throughout. Right after he passed by NHS’ own work on West Division Street, Cremin-Endes pulled over at Newhall and Huntington next to a house in need of grave repair with green tiling, rusty fences over the door and broken fallen flooring. (Graffiti on the wall read: “To all you stink ass bitches …”). Cremin-

“I asked the city to help me,” the landlord responded. “I’m not bringing anything down. They bring themselves down every day. You get one or two houses but you can’t do anything. Let’s be realistic, what are you going to get on this housing?” The answer, in terms of community building instead of profit, is a lot. Cremin-Endes, who has gained national recognition for his work in Newhallville, explained that the agency someday hopes to connect all of these micro-neighborhoods to form a “critical mass” of stability. A bird’s-eye-view map of Newhallville in his office marks properties acquired and to be acquired. But one nice house does not a good neighborhood make. For this reason, NHS is currently developing and planning multiple clusters at once. The ultimate goal, CreminEndes said, is “to bring back neighborhoods to what they were many years ago: desirable neighborhoods of choice for families.” Boxes of flowers in windowsills have improved appearances, and, in turn, morale. Shoveled snow is a small but sure sign of a house’s self-care. And better lighting on streets has led to marked reductions in crime. Neighborhood leaders are making efforts to light up every street in Newhallville with LED lighting by the end of this year. NHS has recently partnered with about 10 churches and other social service agencies in the area as part of the Promised Land Initiative. The Promised Land Initiative has pledged to fix 10 blocks in Newhallville hit hardest by high crime and abandoned houses for the last two decades. “We thought because they were already renovating houses it would be a good partnership for collaboration,” said Pastor Donald Morris, the executive director of Newhallville’s Christian Community Commission — a nonprofit outreach organization, and one of the leaders of the Promised Land Initiative. The Initiative’s team has also helped train residents to become more proactive in the neighborhood’s community policing efforts and safety meetings. “The police department and local churches have all joined forces to make this a collaborative role model neighborhood for change,” Morris added. Yet while the streetlights improve both safety and aesthetSEE NEIGHBORHOOD PAGE B8

// JENNIFER CHEUNG

F R I D AY MARCH 1

“CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION”

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

Saybrook Underbrook Theater // 8 p.m. This is the story of five strangers taking a theater course.

Borrow Direct

Still don’t have your textbooks?

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND SCENE

YOUTH: A SELECTION

“

I have always believed that art should imitate life. In my study of photography, the closest thing to imitating life is to document reality. My social reality. My friends, their friends, the random crazies I bump into on a night out are the most interesting subjects to me. This selection of images was taken from an ongoing “Youth” series I have been working on for the past couple years, and features characters from my time in London my sophomore spring and back home in New York. The photographs were done in a wide range of formats — specifically, color film, black-and-white film and digital.”

CHANTEL SIMPSON

All of my images are portraits. The main idea behind my work is to portray how people interact with the places and spaces they inhabit. I also try to create a visual narrative of a particular moment or event. I did not know many of my subjects personally, but I succeeded in achieving a degree of intimacy with them — enough to became more than just a voyeur or intruder of their space. I became a part of the moment that I captured.

F R I D AY MARCH 1

“NRITYANJALI: A SHOWCASE OF CLASSICAL INDIAN DANCES”

Harkness Memorial Auditorium // 7:30 p.m. Get your fix of Indian dance. And chicken tikka masala (dinner’s provided!).

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Writing final papers over spring break

As if that class never had a final in the first place.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND ARTS

TEN TIMES THE ROOMIE LOVE // BY LEAH MOTZKIN

When you reach the top of the stairs to the second floor of Slifka, you will get the feeling that someone is watching you. In this case, there are 10 pairs of eyes staring at you with intense emotion. Intrigued, you approach. A plaque stands beside the beautiful female faces: 10 names, each followed by 10 words — the girls’ answers to a set of unknown questions. Then you see it. For the first time ever: “bacon” in Slifka. Don’t get your hopes up, but you won’t be disappointed: the word “bacon” appears under one portrait as the favorite food of one of depicted women — a series of 10 portraits in Slifka’s first completely student-run art exhibition, “Times Ten: Portraits by Lucy H. Partman ’14”. Partman’s exhibit tells the story of Calhoun Dean Woodard’s greatest success story: 10 girls, most of who were randomly assigned to live together as freshman, have become a family. “The exhibit tries to under-

stand how to create a family, and explores how ours has been created,” Partman says of the theme behind the project. She says that finding a family in her suite of 10 girls who have now lived together by choice for two school years is remarkable. Though each person is different, they all share a common value or aura, she says. For her, family is not defined by any blood tie, but as a group of people who can depend on each other and find a home with one another. The project itself consists of four parts: a portrait of each of the 10 girls, two smaller paintings of each with a different expression, a poem about family written in English and French and a list of the girls’ one-word answers to questions. While the overall feeling portrayed by the exhibit was similar to the familial warmth that I imagine characterizes their home, the poem, which was written a year earlier, seems to be a distraction from the beauty of the portraits. Partman’s decision to allow the girls’ own 10 words to

stand for them was a wise one, as she said, fully capturing them in prose was impossible.

WITH OUR BUSY LIVES AT YALE, WE BECOME SO WRAPPED UP IN OURSELVES THAT WE OFTEN STOP SEEING THOSE AROUND US. When selecting a place to show her work, Partman says that Slifka was the only suitable place; though only two of the suitemates are Jewish, they have had a suite dinner at Slifka every Sunday throughout their time at Yale. Partman says that Slifka, as a place where they have found themselves together, has become their home.

One of the suitemates, Cristel Oropesa ’14, said that seeing their 10 faces on the wall in a line remind her of all of their memories of helping each other and struggling together through school and life issues. She is, however, accustomed to seeing the 10 portraits together as they previously sat on the mantel above the fireplace in their suite. The process of being painted was interesting, she said, because at first she was unable to recognize herself, until suddenly she was looking at her own reflection. While the portraits were all the same size and shared an earthentoned style, the personalities of the individuals shone through to reveal young women who are different but similarly pensive. The order of the portraits, Partman said, does not reflect whom she likes best. Partman’s exhibit also represents a significant turning point for Slifka’s opening up to student artwork. Rebecca Levinsky ’15, the social and cultural chair on

the Hillel board, and a production and design editor for the News, curated the exhibit, her first. Levinsky is responsible for many of Slifka’s events, but as a history of art major, she has always wanted to make Slifka a thriving place for students to show their work. “Slifka has a really beautiful exhibition space. It is important to utilize it to show off student work. I sincerely hope to do at least one more student exhibition this year,” Levinksy said. CHINO, Slifka’s director of operations, expresses a similar sentiment, saying that one of his goals is to help students not only to dream but also to execute those dreams. He also pointed out that the 10 portraits are reminiscent of a modern take on the role of the minyan, the assembly of 10 men required to practice in traditional Jewish culture. “With our busy lives at Yale, we become so wrapped up in ourselves that we often stop seeing those around us,” an exhibit-goer

// ALLIE KRAUSE

Sisterhood on canvas.

Caroline Sydney ’16 points out. “There is something amazing about how the exhibit allows you the opportunity to look directly into the face of another student.” While I am naturally skeptical, after viewing the show, I found myself hoping to create such a family at Yale, even if no one ever paints me (do it, suitemate Carly Lovejoy ’16!). I was definitely moved by their genuine admiration for each other when talking to the girls in front of their portrait. I think someone needs to start a petition, because though the 10 girls hope to live together next year, Calhoun does not have a suite of 10 for seniors. Partman is sure, however, that they will continue have their Sunday suite dinners at Slifka. Contact LEAH MOTZKIN at leah.motzkin@yale.edu .

Aaron seeks party, wife at Toad’s // BY TESSA BERENSON

Here’s a little bit of old school for ya: Aaron Carter was at Toad’s on Wednesday night as part of his “The After Party” tour. Though 10 years too late, Carter’s performance still attracted a big crowd of hormonal teenage girls (and about 10 brave boys). While the tour name at first appears to be a refreshingly self-aware choice for a ’90s has-been, Carter, 25, performed with such energy and enthusiasm that it seems the aging child star really does want to keep his party going. Much of the show paid homage to Carter’s boy-band roots, as he and two male backup dancers performed choreographed dance routines that were reminiscent of the Backstreet Boys, ‘N Sync and Aaron Carter heyday. Carter,

a veteran of ABC’s popular reality show “Dancing With the Stars,” was an undeniably good dancer, and sometimes almost an acrobat, swinging from the pipes on the ceiling of Toad’s. High school girls throughout the audience swooned as Carter did a backflip onstage and gyrated towards his screaming admirers in the front row — one particularly enthusiastic fan even held up a sign that said “Kiss Me I’m Finally Legal.” For the average Carter fan (meaning someone whose entire knowledge of his musical oeuvre consists of “That’s How I Beat Shaq,” “I Want Candy” and “Aaron’s Party”), most of his set was unfamiliar, newer music. At one point in the show, Carter asked the audience

if they wanted to hear new songs, and despite a strong undercurrent of “No!” he bravely charged ahead anyway. His new tracks, “That’s Life” and “City Lights,” were both generic and forgettable pop songs. Carter knew the emotional heart of the show was in his classics, however, saving “I Want Candy” for the final song of his set and making the audience wait for the encore for a lively rendition of “Aaron’s Party.” Because Carter has a strikingly high voice for a man of his age, hearing a 25-year-old sing about getting grounded by his parents was overall less creepy than was expected. Now that Carter is all grown up, he isn’t quite as cute as he used to be. He is short and still rocking the ’90s spiked hair, and he wore track pants and a skeezy tank

top onstage. Unfortunately, it seems Carter may have peaked at 12. Carter seems unaware of this. What really stole the show was his, shall we say, appreciation for the ladies. The crowd was almost entirely female, and Carter spent a good deal of his time onstage winking, showing off his abs, blowing kisses and, in some cases, actually kissing the fawning girls in the audience. After multiple reminders that he is “totally single,” Carter called out, “I swear I’m looking for a wife on this tour and I’m going to find her. Would anyone like to marry me?” This announcement was met with a cheer from the crowd and a girl holding up another sign that said, “The Real After Party is in My Bedroom.” Later in the show, Carter picked a girl from the audience and took her

backstage, cryptically telling the audience that he needed a “breather.” You connect the dots. Though Carter’s desperate attempts to be a Casanova deserved pity, his commitment to his show demanded begrudging respect. Instead of giving a lazy performance and relying on the popularity of his old songs to win over the audience, Carter attacked each song and dance routine with such vigor that the sheen of sweat on his face was visible from the back of the club. And it is that energy that has made Aaron’s Party keep bumping for over a decade. Come get it. Contact TESSA BERENSON at tessa.berenson@ yale.edu .

// THAO DO

F R I D AY MARCH 1

COUP DE BRASS

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

Slifka Center // 4 p.m. Yale’s “only undergraduate all-French Horn ensemble.” Did anyone think there were two?

Kamikazes

Basic bitches drink cranberry vodka.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND LOVEBIRDS

THE BLINDEST DATE

The Gals

Last week on The Blindest Date... // BY WEEKEND

// BY WEEKEND

BACHELORETTE #1

ere we go — the last hoorah, the final frontier: The Heterosexual Scene! The straighties flooded — FLOODED — our email inboxes with requests and profiles, clamoring to earn a coveted spot in our dating game. A free meal? A chance at love? What’s not to like! The air on campus is rife with mist and desperation. WEEKEND will take care of the latter for you, frustrated Yalies, with one more round of The Blindest Date. This one’s for the ages, kiddos.

Major: East Asian studies Interests: Drinking, reading, traveling (to cities), crosswords, old movies. Random fact: I used to pole vault and I still hold my high school’s record! Looking for: I want someone who is laid-back and uses their intelligence for comedic purposes; the world becomes interesting and absurd when you analyze it properly.

The Guys

BACHELORETTE #2

BACHELOR #1

Major: Molecular, cellular and developmental biology

Major: Applied mathematics

Interests: Dancing, Google Docs, dogs, smoothies, the fact that Mike from “Homeland” is Shane Omen from “Mean Girls.” And smiling’s my favorite!

Interests: Basketball, singing, video games, track and field. Random fact: I try to appear really bad ass, but I’m really just an awkward hopeless romantic.

Random fact: In kindergarten, my career goal was to work at Subway because I thought latex gloves were awesome.

Looking for: A lady who has good manners, who is easy to talk to, who has passion for what she does.

What I’m looking for: A guy who’s sweet, funny, really passionate about something, and just has that boom badoom boom boom badoom boom bass.

BACHELOR #2 Major: American Studies

BACHELORETTE #3

Interests: Other people’s passions.

Major: Anthropology. Otherwise known as “academic people watching.”

Random fact: I was bullied in middle school.

Interests: making music, YouTube videos, cooking sumptuous feasts for friends, mental health, interior & graphic design, whiskey & ginger, cats & dogs, my family, and the trajectory of Lykke Li, Robyn, and other Swedish pop stars’ careers within the American pop landscape.

Looking for: Eye contact, spunky, self-deprecating.

BACHELOR #3

Random fact: I have three tattoos, only two of which you can see with the *naked* eye!

Major: Economics Interests: Huntin’ bucks and drivin’ trucks.

Looking for: Somebody with a lot of love to give, a lot of knowledge to share, and enough time to enjoy a good adventure each week.

Random fact: I’ve never actually shot a buck, but I do have a truck. Looking for: Someone to cruise the dirt roads with me.

BACHELORETTE #4 Major: Anthropology (#anthro4ever — ask me about my main man Clifford Geertz!)

BACHELOR #4 Major: Writing concentrator doing a poetry thesis.

Interests: Wine tasting, late-night Hemingway, border crossings, all things fur, vodka martinis (straightup), post-modern feminism, and the 3 “R”s: red lipstick, Rudy’s and rowers.

Interests: Fresh water aquariums, poetry, Freud, certain particular mothers. The television show TUGS. Random fact: Two — Harold Bloom called me “The Gloomy Thersites of [my] generation.” My therapist said I could be a professional amends writer.

Random fact: I won my county’s spelling bee championship. Twice. Looking for: I like quirk, a healthy sense of adventure, and abs. Ideally he can talk about Tolstoy, fix things when they break and ski. Foreign accents a plus. Nice Jewish boys finish first.

Looking for: Courage.

BACHELOR #5 Major: Sociology and Environmental studies

BACHELORETTE #5

Interests: Having a good time, music, cooking, dancing and making people laugh.

Major: Global affairs and Ethnicity, race & migration Interests: Dancing on elevated surfaces, traveling to countries that most people deem “dangerous,” talking to random people on the street without getting jumped.

Random fact: I used to dance on old-school 4-wheeled skates. Looking for: A chill girl who is easy going and willing to try new things.

// KAREN TIAN

BACHELOR #6 Major: Biomedical engineering

BACHELOR #8

BACHELOR #10

Major: Sociology

Major: Physics

Fun fact: I’m trilingual and my name rhymes with a famous landmark.

Interests: Break dancing, writing music, watching and talking about movies.

Interests: Pottery, metalworking, running, rock climbing, reading Russian literature.

Looking for: Someone who finds joy in the little things. Someone calm and collected. Someone who likes to go out and have fun.

Random fact: A long, long time ago, I was rocking a jew-fro.

Fact: I once went into zero gravity!

Looking for: A girl who’s got some sass in her and knows how to use it.

Looking for: I would love someone who is interested in doing things outside, like hiking in the woods, playing frisbee, or laying on the grass (at least when it is warmer).

Interests: Hip-hop and soul, long boarding, hiking, football, and just hanging out with friends.

BACHELOR #7

BACHELOR #9

Major: Mechanical engineering

Major: History and philosophy

Interests: Raging, traveling (especially abroad), the outdoors, volleyball, flute, social entrepreneurship, global health, raging.

Interests: I love backpacking, rock climbing, and whitewater kayaking. I have a love for music (I play the bass guitar with a bunch of different guys around campus), international relations, normative ethics, animal rights, soccer, the Green Bay Packers and collies.

Random fact: Half Cambodian, half Latvian/Russian. Looking for: Adventurous, solid sense of humor, athletic, easygoing, confident, fun.

Random fact: I have a twin brother at the University of Florida. Looking for: A cute girl who is willing to have some fun, who is funny and who is outgoing.

BACHELOR #11 Major: Music Interests: Songwriting, “Arrested Development,” improv comedy, Carly Rae Jepsen, sushi Random fact: I once won a pie-eating contest. It was blueberry. Looking for: A genuine connection during conversation, even if we’re talking about the weather.

Random fact: Dave Matthews once asked me to hop into a hot tub of German chocolate cake with him. Looking for: Someone who is witty and doesn’t take himself too seriously; someone who is worldly yet overall has interests different from mine such that I can learn from him. He also would preferably be over 5’11” but that is negotiable.

BACHELORETTE #6 Major: Mafia Studies (lots of real-world business experience, but a suspiciously low graduation rate …) Interests: Bicycles, burritos, beer and bubble baths. Random fact: I sat next to Jay-Z at the Miami airport and got so nervous that when I said hello, I called him “Mr. Jay-Z.” Looking for: The fashion sense of Dean Marichal Gentry, the gravitas of Ronnell Higgins, the mustache of Peter Salovey and the money of Richard Levin.

BACHELORETTE #7

MARCH 2

WAGNER’S “PARSIFAL”: MET LIVE IN HD Sprague Memorial Hall // 12 p.m.

WEEKEND loves opera.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

Major: Psychology Interests: Crossword puzzles, long walks, yoga and Joan Didion Random Fact: I’ve never spent more than $15 on a haircut.

Beyonce’s ‘Schoolin’ Life’

“Who needs a degree when you’re schoolin’ life?” Preach, Queen B.

S AT U R D AY MARCH 2

Ladies finding love (?)

She says...

// BY KRISTEN DOWLING

// BY ANALISSE MARQUEZ

As we arrived at Thali Too, she seemed slightly disappointed that it was a vegetarian restaurant since she is a selfproclaimed carnivore. So she asked our waiter for suggestions and we ended up with two great curries, a beer for her (in celebration of a hugely successful day at her lab) and a mango lassi for me. After Allie (the Yale Daily News photographer) came by to be our paparazzi, we got to talking about our lives on campus — our gripes with balancing a science major with extracurriculars, and our hometowns, which really couldn’t be more different. She’s a California girl who can’t stand a cloudy day, and I’m a hearty New Englander partial to the four seasons. The conversation carried on easily; we ended up talking about our respective summers abroad in Europe, and our shared interest in history of science. She even asked my opinion on the Darwin-Wallace debate (swoon!). Towards the end of the meal, she tentatively asked if I was interested in des-

sert, to which I answered with a resounding “of course!” since I have never in my life turned down an opportunity to indulge my sweet tooth. We didn’t want to stop chatting after we were done with the meal and the restaurant had already emptied, so we continued at her apartment right around the corner. We discussed feminism, queer politics, our experiences in Catholic families (things that are completely out of line on a first date, I hear), but she was such an easy conversationalist and had such interesting opinions that it seemed to work quite well. Before (what seemed like) very long, I looked at my watch and realized that it was 11 p.m. and I hadn’t touched my homework yet, so after a quick exchange of numbers and a promise of raspberry margaritas, I headed back to Timothy Dwight. Contact KRISTEN DOWLING at kristen.dowling@yale.edu .

It was a cold Monday night. One in which I had been trapped in a lab for several hours, and so I was not looking forward to the chilly walk back to my apartment. When I looked up at the clock after running my last experiment, I realized that I was already late. On the way over, I realized that it was probably not my dread of the cold so much as my fear of meeting someone completely new that caused this tardiness. Would we have stuff to talk about, or would dinner be filled with awkward pauses followed by the general questions ingrained into every Yalie’s social arsenal since freshman year? After quickly showering, I ran off to find out. When I arrived, a few minutes late, Kristen was standing outside, under the shadow of the Apple store. We introduced ourselves briefly, and she held the door to Thali Too open for me as we went inside. The waiter showed us to our table, and we tried to decide what to order. Neither of us had been to Thali Too before, so we decided

to get recommendations from the waiter, both of which turned out to be delicious. As the night went on, we talked about various topics, from Darwin to how Celine Cuevas ’15, a mutual friend, is an unbelievably productive person. We finished up with dessert and then walked down Broadway. When we stopped in front of my apartment, Kristen had just been in the middle of what seemed to be a long story, so I invited her up because of the freezing cold. There, we talked for a few more hours until she finally decided it was time for her to head home and start work. She asked for my number, and then I showed her out. I thought about walking her home, but figured the walk would give her time to decompress from our long night. She told me she’d call me; I told her that I had a great time and that I would be down to hang out again. Contact ANALISSE MARQUEZ at analisse.marquez@yale.edu .

BACHELORETTE #8

BACHELORETTE #10

Major: History (?)

Major: Economics

Interests: Everything and yet nothing. More specifically, jug band music, Anselm Kiefer, hockey, G&T, sleeping on couches, hiking, hedgehogs, George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language”, Catch-22s, the environment, skinny-dipping.

Interests: Sporcle, Scrabble, playground swings, The Beatles, the NHL, all kinds of cheeses, Eskimo kisses and overweight animals.

Random fact: The other morning I cried about how beautiful whale sharks are. Looking for: Dark hair, cynicism, glasses, knowledge of obscure Eastern European historical figures, cynicism, interesting/cute birthmark, cynicism, desire to move to New Mexico and start an arts commune. Must like 4 a.m. strolls through New Haven.

Interests: Singing and wine and humor. Random fact: A man once pulled up his pant leg to show me a tattoo of himself as a pinup girl. Looking for: Someone who makes me want to be a better person.

409 Prospect St. // 4 p.m.

Stop talking of Michelangelo, start talking about music.

Looking for: Someone who is goofy, hunky and kind, and smells nice. He’d stop tickling me when I say so and understand when I take the whole blanket. He isn’t too cool to hold my hand or my pet hamster.

BACHELORETTE #11 Interests: Kitties, film scores, warm cookies, dazzling summer mornings.

Major: Political science (Environmental politics)

T.S. ELIOT’S “FOUR QUARTETS” AS POETRY, MUSIC, ART

Random fact: I dyed part of my hair purple as a reward for getting a summer job! But nobody can see it!

Major: Political science

BACHELORETTE #9

Looking For: Someone who is unpretentious and honest, and likes wine.

S AT U R D AY

// ALLIE KRAUSE

Random fact: I was in a commercial for Lil’ Miss Mermaid bath toys when I was six. Looking for: A wicked sense of humor, a kind smile, the body of Michelangelo’s David … someone who will be the king I know he is (the king I see inside).

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: T.S. Eliot International Summer School

Poetry all day, every day. Live in “The Wasteland.”

PAGE B6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B7

WEEKEND LOVEBIRDS

THE BLINDEST DATE

The Gals

Last week on The Blindest Date... // BY WEEKEND

// BY WEEKEND

BACHELORETTE #1

The Guys

BACHELORETTE #2

BACHELOR #1

Major: Molecular, cellular and developmental biology

Major: Applied mathematics

Interests: Dancing, Google Docs, dogs, smoothies, the fact that Mike from “Homeland” is Shane Omen from “Mean Girls.” And smiling’s my favorite!

Interests: Basketball, singing, video games, track and field. Random fact: I try to appear really bad ass, but I’m really just an awkward hopeless romantic.

Random fact: In kindergarten, my career goal was to work at Subway because I thought latex gloves were awesome.

Looking for: A lady who has good manners, who is easy to talk to, who has passion for what she does.

What I’m looking for: A guy who’s sweet, funny, really passionate about something, and just has that boom badoom boom boom badoom boom bass.

BACHELOR #2 Major: American Studies

BACHELORETTE #3

Interests: Other people’s passions.

Major: Anthropology. Otherwise known as “academic people watching.”

Random fact: I was bullied in middle school.

Looking for: Eye contact, spunky, self-deprecating.

BACHELOR #3

Random fact: I have three tattoos, only two of which you can see with the *naked* eye!

Major: Economics Interests: Huntin’ bucks and drivin’ trucks.

Looking for: Somebody with a lot of love to give, a lot of knowledge to share, and enough time to enjoy a good adventure each week.

Random fact: I’ve never actually shot a buck, but I do have a truck. Looking for: Someone to cruise the dirt roads with me.

BACHELORETTE #4 Major: Anthropology (#anthro4ever — ask me about my main man Clifford Geertz!)

BACHELOR #4 Major: Writing concentrator doing a poetry thesis.

Interests: Wine tasting, late-night Hemingway, border crossings, all things fur, vodka martinis (straightup), post-modern feminism, and the 3 “R”s: red lipstick, Rudy’s and rowers.

Looking for: Courage.

BACHELOR #5 Major: Sociology and Environmental studies

BACHELORETTE #5

Interests: Having a good time, music, cooking, dancing and making people laugh.

Random fact: I used to dance on old-school 4-wheeled skates. Looking for: A chill girl who is easy going and willing to try new things.

// KAREN TIAN

BACHELOR #6 Major: Biomedical engineering

BACHELOR #8

BACHELOR #10

Major: Sociology

Major: Physics

Fun fact: I’m trilingual and my name rhymes with a famous landmark.

Interests: Break dancing, writing music, watching and talking about movies.

Interests: Pottery, metalworking, running, rock climbing, reading Russian literature.

Looking for: Someone who finds joy in the little things. Someone calm and collected. Someone who likes to go out and have fun.

Random fact: A long, long time ago, I was rocking a jew-fro.

Fact: I once went into zero gravity!

Looking for: A girl who’s got some sass in her and knows how to use it.

Looking for: I would love someone who is interested in doing things outside, like hiking in the woods, playing frisbee, or laying on the grass (at least when it is warmer).

Interests: Hip-hop and soul, long boarding, hiking, football, and just hanging out with friends.

BACHELOR #7

BACHELOR #9

Major: Mechanical engineering

Major: History and philosophy

Interests: Raging, traveling (especially abroad), the outdoors, volleyball, flute, social entrepreneurship, global health, raging.

Random fact: Half Cambodian, half Latvian/Russian. Looking for: Adventurous, solid sense of humor, athletic, easygoing, confident, fun.

Random fact: I have a twin brother at the University of Florida. Looking for: A cute girl who is willing to have some fun, who is funny and who is outgoing.

BACHELORETTE #7

MARCH 2

WAGNER’S “PARSIFAL”: MET LIVE IN HD Sprague Memorial Hall // 12 p.m.

WEEKEND loves opera.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

Major: Psychology Interests: Crossword puzzles, long walks, yoga and Joan Didion Random Fact: I’ve never spent more than $15 on a haircut.

Beyonce’s ‘Schoolin’ Life’

“Who needs a degree when you’re schoolin’ life?” Preach, Queen B.

S AT U R D AY MARCH 2

Ladies finding love (?)

She says...

// BY KRISTEN DOWLING

// BY ANALISSE MARQUEZ

BACHELORETTE #8

BACHELORETTE #10

Major: History (?)

Major: Economics

Interests: Sporcle, Scrabble, playground swings, The Beatles, the NHL, all kinds of cheeses, Eskimo kisses and overweight animals.

Interests: Singing and wine and humor. Random fact: A man once pulled up his pant leg to show me a tattoo of himself as a pinup girl. Looking for: Someone who makes me want to be a better person.

409 Prospect St. // 4 p.m.

Stop talking of Michelangelo, start talking about music.

BACHELORETTE #11 Interests: Kitties, film scores, warm cookies, dazzling summer mornings.

Major: Political science (Environmental politics)

T.S. ELIOT’S “FOUR QUARTETS” AS POETRY, MUSIC, ART

Random fact: I dyed part of my hair purple as a reward for getting a summer job! But nobody can see it!

Major: Political science

BACHELORETTE #9

Looking For: Someone who is unpretentious and honest, and likes wine.

S AT U R D AY

// ALLIE KRAUSE

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: T.S. Eliot International Summer School

Poetry all day, every day. Live in “The Wasteland.”

PAGE B8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COVER

URBAN REVIVAL: A PRIMER there.”

NEIGHBORHOOD FROM PAGE B3 ics, if nothing else is done to solidify these changes then crime can start to creep up all over again. Community organizing and homeowner leadership have helped to reinforce these changes. The Solar Youth after school program keep kids busy after school; Chapman has also been organizing community walks to promote health and resident visibility. Studies have shown, Chapman says, that communities that exercise together have lower crime rates. Newhallville now boasts the highest concentration of community gardens in New Haven. When Chapman’s neighbors were going to move out of the neighborhood, she convinced them to stay by pointing to these catalytic changes. “There is a direct causal impact on how people who might have been reluctant to view a house for purchase change their mind after seeing change on the block or street,” NHS Development Director Bridgette Russell said. “There’s a positive impact for those already living in a community on both an ownership level and investment level. When you see other changes taking place, it spurs you on.” Last year Russell invited NHS homeowner-to-be Vinita Mullings to attend a community leadership conference in Orlando, Florida. Mullings felt inspired by the confidence of other community leaders across the country. “It was great just to meet different people,” she said. Since that trip, she has been working on an initiative to build an educational greenhouse in the community garden across from LincolnBassett School. This spring she’ll be moving from Hamden into a house on Winchester and Cave. Accented with purple paint, her new spacious two-family house — she’ll be leasing to a tenant on the first floor — will have a mortgage lower than what her rent had been. “I’m thinking about a boxed garden in my yard,” she said, adding that she was hoping to start a garden club. “I think this is a replicable model in terms of what can be done,” Russell added, “because when I talk to other residents in Newhallville they’re excited about the positive things that are on the horizon; there’s a lot of positive energy

S AT U R D AY MARCH 2

*** At last October’s annual meeting of the Neighborhood Housing Services, employees, trustees and new homeowners gathered to celebrate and share the year’s accomplishments over hot wood-fire pizza. NHS’ architects were the bartenders, everybody was kindly praising somebody else’s work, and the NHS office campus, built as a series of small houses, flowed with voices and good news. NHS tries to prepare first-time buyers to be responsible owners with classes and foreclosure mitigation assistance. “This is about the long-term,” Cremin-Endes told me. “Not just ribbon-cutting.” NHS is willing to work with new owners for as long as it takes for them to get off their feet — sometimes for years.

THIS IS ABOUT THE LONGTERM, NOT JUST RIBBONCUTTING. Joseph Adjei, a father of five and a new home buyer, talked about how taken care of he felt by this ‘allthings-considered’ approach. “I can talk to them. It is not like buying and selling,” he said. “They care about the people who live in the houses. It makes me comfortable.” As the annual meeting’s party gathered into a white plastic tent, rain came down in longer and longer streaks outside. Chapman and her husband James spoke to the crowd on behalf of their cluster about their experiences. “We are really looking forward to reclaiming our neighborhood,” she continued. “It has suffered so many years of neglect.” Of Adjei, Chapman said that he “feels like a king in his home, so thank you, NHS, for making him a castle.” Since moving to Newhallville, Chapman has gotten involved with many of the initiatives to beautify and form a community. “They make it so you feel that you’re part of something,” she said. “They

COLE PORTER SWING DANCE 155 Elm St. // 8 p.m.

Dance like a true Yale gentleman by a real Yale gentleman.

call you and get you involved with meetings and initiatives and you’re always encouraged to do your own initiatives.” Her blog, “Newhallville. Community. Matters.”, reads as an archive of the community’s collective building efforts. When Chapman talked to me about her community involvement, she also talked about its communal history. “I think it’s kind of unusual for a neighborhood to have multigenerational families, families that have been here when things were really rough and really bad,” she said. “All you could do was go into

your house, through the back door, shut the shades, and never talk to anybody.” She says that street cleanups get people out of their houses and talking to each other. Now that the weather is warming, she’s hoping to organize street cleanups once a month from March through October. “When I try to explain this to people, I say that I can connect with my neighbors more readily than other neighborhoods in New Haven because it has always been a community,” Chapman said. “The cluster did not create a commu-

// JENNIFER CHEUNG

Dixwell/Newhallville: Know your city.

nity. People have kind of forgotten it throughout the years. The bones are there. We have our challenges but we’re invested.” Contact AVA KOFMAN at ava.kofman@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Trumbull Date Night

Naht, it’s so awkward. Go to Cole Porter Swing Dance again.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND MAKES

PAGE B9

A FRIEND

THE VIBRANCY OF GRAY // BY JENNIFER GERSTEN Leaning perilously over the display at the Yale University Art Gallery, the boy wasn’t quite sure what to make of artist Mona Hatoum’s quaint crystal orbs. “They’re grenades, honey,” his father said perplexedly, reading the description of Hatoum’s piece, titled “Nature morte aux grenades.” Upon closer inspection, what I had imaginatively taken for pomegranates protruding wartlike across a hospital gurney proved, indeed, to be grenades. The three of us clustered awkwardly on one side of the gurney, staring expectantly at the little bulbs as though waiting for them to either explode or explain themselves. Silence ensued as before. A guard nearby, coming suddenly to life from totemic stillness, shifted towards our company. I glanced at the child’s fingers, which had probably strayed too close for comfort and were now to be chastised. Instinctively, I stepped back, recalling with unfortunate clarity being criticized for touching museum pieces I ought not to be touching. We fixed ourselves like the grenades on the gurney, willing our bodies safely away from the art. It was the guard, though, of ursine proportions and with hands the size of Frisbees, who seemed more likely to crush the collection. But when he spoke, it was not, as I had thought, to usher us aside. “This is one of my favorite pieces,” the guard said. We looked at him, taken aback, as he proceeded to explain the work and the artist’s history. He was, clearly, no tour guide. Still, he continued as though he were, animatedly evincing a knowledge of the art more encyclopedic than I would ever have imagined from one whose task it was to stand by and secure art, not study it. First fruit had become firearm, and now security guard had become scholar. The guard’s name, he said, was Jerry Gray. *** After 14 years of renovations, the Yale University Art Gallery reopened in December 2012 to fanfare from visitors and journalists alike. Heralded as “magnificent” by The New Yorker, the YUAG was praised for its balanced collections that feature not only marquee pieces like Van Gogh’s “Night Café,” but also smaller, unexpected works by artists both famous and forgotten. The YUAG’s attention to the small and unexpected filters down to its security agents. Although Gray is a notable example, he isn’t the only guard who has taken more than a passing interest in the gallery’s offerings. Visitors to the gallery have noticed the guards’ excitement. One wrote in a letter, “Typically, the security in museums big and small [is] more like the statuary they protect. The enthusiasm I felt when I left your museum was due in no small part to their enthusiasm for the museum, too.” Gray insists he doesn’t know as much as I thought he did about the gallery. He says he’s studied a bit (“I did a little reading”), favors contemporary art (“Sol LeWitt and Pollock”) but also goes for the classical — in other words, his is an interest no more remarkable than that of your average amateur, he seemed to assert. Still, it’s hard to imagine LeWitt or Pollock preferring a viewer told by textbooks and lecturers to venerate their works over

S AT U R D AY MARCH 2

one like Gray, who has come to art of his own accord. “People are floored that I know things about the art,” he said, with a touch of pride. “But if I’m interested in it, I’m going to learn about it.” I pointed out that not everybody takes such initiative, and he shrugged. “That’s just how I am.” Despite his familiarity with many of the works in the gallery, Gray claims that he doesn’t have a favorite piece. Shaking his head, chuckling and shrugging his massive shoulders, he said that he loves “all the art.” “I love working in the Trumbull gallery,” he conceded. When I asked why, he widened his eyes, surprised that I didn’t know. Gray explained that Trumbull, a Harvard graduate, agreed to display his collection in the Yale galleries only under the condition that he and his wife be buried beneath his portrait of George Washington. It’s one story among many Gray likes to share with the people passing through his watch. Gray might be oversized, but there is no doubt that he is exactly where he belongs at the YUAG. Towering sturdily over his painted wards, he could be art himself, an ambitious artist’s exploration of the majesty in bulk and brawn. A sculptor might labor to make his face as full and selfassured as in life, to painstakingly chisel the manifold pleats and tucks in his cheeks that deepen when his lips let loose a smile. Gray is the kind of person around whom you feel either very safe or very scared, depending on your side of the law. As important as art has become to him, apparent in his largeness is that something else has held his heart far more tightly, and for far longer: football. *** Gray has spent the past 17 of his 45 years coaching football. Next year, he is poised to be the defensive coordinator of a new minor league pro team in Connecticut, the New Haven Venom. The day after he interviewed for the job, he was hired.

“I am very, very good at coaching,” Gray said. It wasn’t bragging, just affirmation of what he knew to be fact. His tone left no room for doubt. “I’m going to coach till the day I die.” It’s a passion that has been fermenting since he started playing at the age of 5. Football became his “saving grace,” a place of comfort from a host of anger management problems. Gray’s father, a former football player himself, encouraged his burgeoning interest in the sport. That he was right for athletics became immediately apparent. As a child, he once “tackled a high school guy who weighed 270 pounds.” Unable to stop myself, I asked him how much he weighed at the time, as by his own admission, Gray was “always big.” “I wasn’t 270, I know that,” he responded grimly. “But I went at him hard. … I had no fear.” In Gray’s adolescence, a number of coaches noticed his talent. The first, Ron Carbone, a high school coach from Hamden, recruited him when he was only 12. Big and fast, Gray made an impression on each who saw him play. He seemed disarmingly nonchalant about the injuries he received on the field. “My mother was fine with football. It was actually my father that freaked out” about Gray’s bruises and bumps, he said. In high school, he rolled his ankle. Then, playing defensive lineman for Western Connecticut State College, he broke his neck, a fact he revealed only after I pressed him further. He broke his neck — then continued to play. “I lay on the ground, screaming,” recalled Gray. “I knew my career was over. Then I got up, said nothing to the coach, and kept playing.” The accident left the entire right side of his body partially paralyzed, and Gray, unwilling to acknowledge the end, became a left-

handed player. “Luckily, I’m [naturally] left-handed,” he said, although his resulting condition would take its toll on him by the end of the season. Gray explained that he had gone to college solely to play football as the only freshman starter in New England’s Independent Division 3. In the permanent, jarring absence of the sport that had first saved him, then ruined him, he lost all motivation to finish his education. Gray came home and went to work at a dry cleaner’s. *** In May 2011, after Gray crossed the stage at Albertus Magnus College to receive his diploma, the first thing he did was hold it skyward. Absent from the audience was his father, who had died of cancer four years ago. “That moment changed everything,” he said. “It destroyed me.” After his stint at the dry cleaner’s, Gray had been flitting between jobs, eventually entering the security business when a friend pointed out his size would be an asset in that industry. Still, he recalled a promise to his father to complete his education. Eleven months after his father’s death, Gray enrolled at Albertus Magnus. He received his associate’s degree in business management from its New Dimensions program, which allows students to simultaneously pursue their careers and attend school. He chose to continue his studies at Arizona State University last year, but had to return home after developing soft-tissue sarcoma, losing the entire left side of his chest in surgery. Back in New Haven, he sought work in security once more, learning about an opening at the YUAG. Gray impressed with his friendliness

and excitement for the job, said Joshua Ramirez, his current supervisor, and he was hired. In the six months Gray has been at the YUAG, his excitement has only bloomed. “People tell me, ‘You should be a tour guide!’”, he said, though he has no plans to apply. Gray doesn’t think his position at the New Haven Venom will require him leaving the gallery, “but if it does, it does,” he said. Then he paused, seeming to reconsider. “I don’t know. … I like it here. I like everything about this place.” *** Ramirez said his staff dissuades the guards from overstepping their responsibilities as security agents. “We don’t want to infringe on our [visitors’] experience,” he added. But visiting an art gallery is in itself an infringement — on expectations. The experience of viewing art is necessarily a displacement of assumptions about color, perspective, form, composition. Verisimilitude, even in the exact sketch of a subject’s plump form or a gnarled tree branch, is only ever a coincidence. If in art audiences sought only the quotidian, the seen and foreseen, creators might set down their tools; real life would suffice. Art succeeds most when it challenges us. At the YUAG, the gauntlet has been thrown. There, art is a crystal pomegranate that becomes a grenade. From 9:15 a.m. to 5 p.m., art is a security guard named Jerry Gray who becomes a storyteller. Contact JENNIFER GERSTEN at jennifer.gersten@yale.edu .

// CARLY LOVEJOY

Jerry likes his art.

“THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS” 220 York St. // 10 p.m. Love Owen Wilson? Susan Cahan does.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Pin down that hookup

It’s the last weekend before spring break. Things get awkward after break.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COLUMNS

THE NON-RELATIONSHIP RELATIONSHIP // BY AISHA MATTHEWS AISHA MATTHEWS BEGINS HER WKND BLOG SERIES SOON — CHECK IT OUT TO IMPROVE YOUR LOVE LIFE, YOU SORRY BUM! In response to the recent New York Times article “The End of Courtship?”, I’ve decided to revisit the idea of the non-relationship. Over the last six years (purposefully excluding my series of middle school romances), I can honestly say that countless female friends and I have — reluctantly but consistently — been on the receiving end of the “non-date,” or even worse, the “non-relationship relationship.” I define the latter as a situation that, under normal circumstances, would be considered an actual relationship, bearing all the signs of an actual relationship, but very conspicuously does not include the titles of “boyfriend” or “girlfriend.” The non-relationship relationship is usually an exclusive hookup arrangement that has evolved into actually spending time together, perhaps attending functions together, and likely having met the other participant’s friends or coworkers. As an extension of the non-date, which the Times aptly describes as “hanging out” (often as an afterthought or as an accompanying invitation to established plans), the non-relationship is ideal for the commitment-phobe. Although you look like a couple and act like a couple, for whatever reason, you’ve decided not to go the extra step into officially defining the relationship. It’s pretty much the dating equivalent of the Mormon “soaking” trend, i.e., the “just the tip” relationship. Usually as a result of one party being afraid to ask

AISHA MATTHEWS where the relationship is going, the non-relationship generally goes on until the Facebook-official status of the relationship has been confirmed or one party suffers an “are we even together?!1” meltdown. Between the accumulated experiences of many friends and even a few personal forays, I think it’s fair to say that the non-relationship ends up being a girl’s worst nightmare. While you’ve established that you’re not seeing or sleeping with other people, girls constantly end up wondering how to explain the arrangement to friends, family and random strangers at the bar. Maybe if we lived in a world where social media and appearances weren’t everything, the non-relationship would be a girl’s dream. Right above friends with benefits and below actual dating, you get to really spend some time getting to know someone and deciding if it’s actually going to work before you go public. Sadly, because of the constant pressure to declare what’s going on in your life, it gets harder and harder to accept the fuzziness of your vague relationship. Along with the need to define the situation, the Times offers other theories on the change in the dating scene. With the introduction of online dating and the changing economic landscape, they suggest that there are simply way more options for men to pick from — and they have way less money to invest in a girl that might not turn out to be the one. The argument I most agree with, however, is their suggestion that today’s men don’t want to set-

tle down until their 30s. With guys being so noncommittal, particularly in the man-child phase that our 20s have become, it’s much harder to envision a guy wanting something serious, which means that girls often settle for pseudo-dates and pseudorelationships when they’d really like something more serious. I read somewhere that the average teenager today is under as much stress as the average businessman in the 19th and 20th centuries. Technology is a wonderful thing, that, in accordance with — and adding to — our ever-expanding FOMO, is changing a lot of our practices. That doesn’t mean our expectations are keeping pace. Those of us who grew up in the ’90s still remember watching shows where people went on actual dates. We idealized Cory and Topanga and couldn’t wait to find some sweet, kinda dorky guy who would love us until the end of time. But instead, now that we’re all getting to our 20-something years, “keeping your options open” amidst horror stories of “clingy exgirlfriends” and shows like HBO’s “Girls” have us running scared. The pressure to have a one-night stand or to accept a casual arrangement has never been higher. I still know some girls who are in non-relationship relationships. They find themselves cooking dinner or doing laundry for a guy, but not being able to tell their parents that they have a boyfriend. Worse, I know some girls who aren’t even aware of their non-relationship status and tell themselves that their “boyfriends” are really just “private people.” But whether or not he’s ready to declare it to the world, there’s absolutely something to be said for defin-

i n g what you’re doing. While picking out floral arrangements for your future nuptials might land you a Carrie Bradshaw-esque Post-it breakup, it seems very fair to ask what the hell is going on. Women shouldn’t be afraid to ask for terms, and men shouldn’t be afraid to ask girls out. No matter how far technology goes, there will always be a chance of rejection. But avoiding real dating and real relationships won’t fix that. It will just delay the process when you do want to settle down and cause you to potentially miss out on the person you might want to spend your life with. The non-relationship is common, but certainly not the standard. And maybe being forward isn’t a turnon. But who knows? Maybe taking that step and asking where you stand could be the difference between changing your relationship status online and being FB-poked by the guy who’s currently poking you. Contact AISHA MATTHEWS at aisha.matthews@yale.edu .

// KAREN TIAN

Best Picture 2012: “Argo?”

Vintage tunes: locally sourced food for your ears

// BY MICHAEL LOMAX

// BY DAVID WHIPPLE

Last week I wrote that if “Argo” won the Academy Award for best picture, I’d eat a brick. Well, shit. I’m floored that “Argo” took home the Oscars’ biggest prize. Do I think it deserved it? Not really. (Of the nine movies nominated, I would’ve picked three or four others before settling on “Argo.”) But hey! Who cares what I think? Ben Affleck has completed the career turnaround of which we all hoped he was capable — shrugging off his string of horrendous late-’90s/early-’00s films to reinvent himself as a potent filmmaker with wide ambitions. So maybe there’s more to “Argo” than meets the eye. (We are astoundingly quick to criticize blockbusters, to be fair.) At the very least, I’m willing to reexamine the film. When I first saw the trailer for “Argo” last summer, I was completely unimpressed. Maybe it had something to do with the plot, which, if anything, initially turned me away from the idea of the movie altogether: A CIA operative flies to Iran to sneak out six escaped U.S. citizens during the 1979 hostage crisis. Their cover? A team of sci-fi filmmakers location scouting for their next big picture. Obviously the story gets a bit more complex than that, but the basic idea is the same. It was something seemingly ripped straight out of Hollywood, and I couldn’t have been more turned off. It’s not that I necessarily doubted the skill of Affleck, who also plays the lead role of Tony Mendez. Nor did I have a problem with the film’s other stars: Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin and John Goodman, all of whom provide great backup. I just figured “Argo” would fall down the same predictable throughways that define just about any other rescue movie: a Point A to Point B structure built on high stakes that are, in the end, meaningless and forgettable. So it just doesn’t seem like the journey from Point A to Point B in this film, which admittedly was one of the best thrillers of 2012, should be so captivating. After all, if you can grasp even a smidge of U.S. history you’d know that all the hostages taken in the embassy conflict were eventually returned alive. What’s more, why would Affleck (or anyone in Hollywood for that matter) invest in such a big-name film if it wasn’t going to have a happy ending? We know everything turns out all right in the end, so the scene-to-

S U N D AY MARCH 3

MICHAEL LOMAX CINEMA TO THE MAX scene tension shouldn’t be more than minimal at best. But that’s the thing: Every turn is sharp. No action is wasted. Everything has a suspenseful purpose. I know, I know. All thrillers are supposed to work this way. But “Argo” takes it one notch higher. Found footage mixed with nostalgic camera coloring. Shots of frenzy here, shots of subdued chaos there. Screaming voices and bodies hanging from cranes. Silence in still halls just before the onslaught of a mob. Each moment is choreographed not beautifully but out of necessity, and for that you have to signal out Affleck, whose direction, while no means aesthetically genius, is nothing less than consistently smart. He understands how to throw people to the edges of their seats, and so he does precisely that right from the opening tip. But what’s perhaps most astounding about the film is its subtle humanity, which helps navigate it away from the pitfalls of the traditional thriller. There are no hokey one-liners, no pointlessly ridiculous characterizations, and most importantly, no completely blackand-white villains. There is only Mendez, trying to rescue the six hostages, and the government trying to stop him. If anything, the idea behind “Argo” comes down to a very basic principle found across borders: The protection of life and freedom is ultimately ordained by the good graces of good people. Everyone needs a little help to get by — real problems only arise when that help is hard to find. But the smallest acts of selflessness can still speak volumes, even if they are committed for complete and total strangers who themselves are fundamentally opposite to you in every way. And if that’s what we’re taking away from the latest Oscar winner, maybe we shouldn’t be too surprised at all. Now please excuse me while I go find that brick. Contact MICHAEL LOMAX at michael.lomax@yale.edu .

“THE GIVERS”

Off-Broadway Theater // 4 p.m. A play inspired by interviews conducted with abortion providers across the country.

There’s a scene in “Walking Dead,” AMC’s zombie apocalypse miniseries, when Sheriff Rick Grimes reveals to his band of survivors that they are all infected with the zombie virus. This is, of course, met with shock, despair, revulsion, etc. I hope you take it better when I tell you that, like me, you are all hipsters. Calm down, calm down; it’s not quite as bad as being a zombie. I’m not even accusing you of sneaking off to your room to wear flannel and listen to Lana del Rey on vinyl. But even if you’ve never listened to a record in your life, even if you’ve never seen a record in your life, you have heard of Mumford and Sons, right? The Avett Brothers? “Wagon Wheel”? Even if you’ve never bought a record, you’ve certainly heard music that sounds like it could be on one. The past few years have seen a revival of genres and sounds that appeared to have quit the limelight decades ago, from blues to bluegrass. And this isn’t a fringe revival. Grammys and album sales continue to pile up for bands who sound like they’ve been cryogenically frozen for 40 years, Austin Powers-style. Vintage sound has gained a mainstream currency. Pop is a little hipper than we think. There might be nobody who exemplifies this better than The Black Keys. Two gawky white guys playing the blues in the basement of an Akron, Ohio, condo is rarely a recipe for commercial success. And yet after a few years of blog buzz, they attracted popular attention with 2008’s “Attack and Release” and exploded with 2010’s “Brothers,” even scoring a minor hit with “Tighten Up” while still sounding like, well, two gawky white guys playing the blues (albeit aboveg-

DAVID WHIPPLE TUNE-UP round this time). Mumford and Sons followed suit with an album that somehow went gold despite opening with a banjo, and The Lumineers recorded this year’s folk smash hit with “Ho Hey.” I know, it sounds weird to me too: folk smash hit?

AUTHENTIC MUSIC IS LIKE ORGANIC FOOD: IT FEELS GOOD TO KNOW WHERE YOUR INGREDIENTS ARE COMING FROM AND WHAT THEY ARE. There’s something refreshing about bands and songs like these that make their point with little or no help from a computer. I’ve already ragged on electronic music, so I won’t do it again, but there’s an authenticity and an immediacy to old-school bands, the feeling that if you saw them playing for spare change on a street corner, it wouldn’t sound that different from their records. As much as I love T-Swift, it’s impossible to imagine “I Knew You Were Trouble” being played entirely by humans. So there’s something reassuring about being able to see, onstage, which musician is producing which sound. And here we reach common ground between two hipster favorites, in that authentic music is like organic food: It feels good to

know where your ingredients are coming from and what they are. This obviously isn’t the only thing we want in an old-school band, seeing as we aren’t all walking around listening to Robert Johnson on our iPods. (He’s a blues musician. Duh.) All our favorite throwbacks combine their crunchiness with an acute pop sensibility. “Ho Hey” might be a folk song, but it’s a catchy song above all else. Pop music must conform to pop sensibilities. But the fact that old sounds and radio friendliness are compatible at all is remarkable. This all started, of course, with The White Stripes, who were to good indie music what the Big Bang was to … other stuff. Jack and Meg exploited national boyband fatigue in the early 2000s to sneakily sell a series of blues albums masquerading as mainstream rock. Maybe the vintage music of today is essential as a counterpoint to increasingly electronic pop music; maybe every dubstep drop makes us crave an acoustic guitar. Even some modern pop has adopted anachronistic elements in lieu of pure adherence to modern axioms. Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” has a lot more in common with RunD.M.C. than with Kanye. That such sounds maintain relevance suggests that music doesn’t go extinct, but rather evolves. Sounds may become outdated only if they aren’t updated. One could easily have pronounced the blues D.O.A. at the turn of the millennium, but it’s stuck around in a new form. So, back to “Walking Dead”: Genres, like zombies, never really die. Unless you shoot them in the head. Contact DAVID WHIPPLE at david.whipple@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Chipotles lemon slices

Squeeze a few over your burrito bowl.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND THEATER

AT THE CABARET,‘THE BIRD BATH’ GETS SURREAL // BY KAROLINA KSIAZEK It’s not that hard to create a piece of theater that’s weird or disturbing. But it’s almost impossible to do that while making the work beautiful. This weekend at the Yale Cabaret, “The Bird Bath” manages to do just that. “The Bird Bath” is a 35-minute work of experimental theater. The show is inspired by “Down Below,” the memoir of Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington. In the book, Carrington suffers a mental breakdown after her husband is taken to a concentration camp. “The Bird Bath” recreates that hellish reality onstage. “The Bird Bath” takes place on a stage divided into three zones by distinct black and white sections painted onto the walls of the theater itself. In these zones, three women play out the hallucinogenic agonies of Carrington’s story. On the left, Ariana Venturi carries out ambiguous science experiments. On the right, Chasten Harmon sometimes acts like a tiger, at other times, like a puppy. In the center, Hannah Leigh Sorenson takes a bath and puts on makeup. In sum, the performance feels like a full narrative, even without a traceable arc.

// MARIA ZEPEDA

Art/anguish/anxiety.

It is difficult to come to “The Bird Bath” without context, but it felt as if too much context would have been bad as well. When I spoke to director Monique Barbee after the show, I felt that there was no way I could have understood many of the concepts without hearing them directly from her. But I was glad I hadn’t heard them before seeing it. There is more than enough to occupy the audience’s attention even without a traditional narrative to focus on. The work uses the cozy space of the Cabaret wonderfully, making use of the windows, and stretching the stage area lengthwise so that almost every seat is close to the action on stage. A clothesline hangs right over the heads of the first row of seats. In one of the first scenes, the three women shed their normal clothes, approach that clothesline and slip into brightly colored gowns that stand out against the grays and browns of the set design. Being so close to the stage, the audience does more than just see the action right in front of their faces – they can also smell it. During a particularly disturbing scene, I could smell the white powder a character was furiously applying to her face. But most striking was what I could hear. The sound design replaced the voices of the actors.

None of the women speak words during the show; instead, a voiceover narrates. But the actors are not silent. They emit screeches, puppy whimpers and hellish grunts of agony. Sorenson’s cavewoman grunts are completely believable as she explores her surroundings. It feels odd to call it acting. The performance felt too real. One simply does not contort one’s body, thrash about and cry out in pain as believably as Sorenson does without feeling that torment inside oneself. Watching her agony, I began to experience it myself. After the show Barbee admitted that an actress had actually injured her hand banging on glass while rehearsing a scene where the character tries to escape a window. But the anguish comes with a sort of ecstasy. Barbee told me after the show that when reading Carrington’s book, she was struck with how willfully it seemed Carrington put herself through this torment, for the sole sake of developing the perception of other Surrealist artists. “She goes through this obsessive image-making out of the things around her,” Barbee said. That image-making is where the ecstasy lay. The creators of “The Bird Bath” brought something completely fresh to this world. The movements of the

bodies, the sounds I was hearing, the emotions I was feeling — they all seemed new to me. Barbee saw the look of horror on my face when she was talking about Carrington’s book. “It’s an interesting question to ask as an artist,” she said. “Do I have to put myself through what she did?” Maybe not, but it felt like it was happening anyway during the 35 minutes of the show. The actors and the audience feel the experience of going through anguish for the sake of art. There is a scene where the women repeatedly emulate Queen Elizabeth. In the bathtub, Sorenson goes through a cycle of giggles and smiles. In context, it is utterly disturbing. Don’t let my talk of the audience’s pain keep you from seeing this show. It is not easy to watch. But it is impossible to let your mind drift away while watching it, and it is impossible to casually forget afterwards. How often do you see a show and not space out here and there? “The Bird Bath” is an original portrayal of art and the human body. I believe that the best art forces you to be changed by it. “The Bird Bath” made the cheerful disturbing and made the horrifying beautiful. I was changed. Contact KAROLINA KSIAZEK at karolina.ksiazek@yale.edu .

Barking Up the Wrong Tree, Thanks to ‘Inspector Hound’ // BY JACKSON MCHENRY

At one point in “The Real Inspector Hound,” the play’s five central characters realize that there may be a murderer in their midst and they all rush to grab improvised weapons — the maid gets a rope, the ex-soldier in a wheelchair clutches a bent pipe and a young socialite fiercely wields a candlestick. This far into the play, audience members who know the board game “Clue” have seen this reference coming from a long way away (with the characters in color-coded outfits, it’s a surprise that the girl in red isn’t actually named “Miss Scarlett”). But this is part of the point. “Hound” purposefully revels in recycled dialogue, and send-ups of character types any reader of Agatha Christie already knows far too well, because it also features two critics who sit behind the stage. “Derivative,” says one. “I know who did it!” shouts the other. Directed by Alexi Sargeant ’15 and playing in the Calhoun Cabaret this weekend, “The Real Inspector Hound” presents a formally daring challenge. The script, written by Tom Stoppard (who earned fame for his witty rewrite of “Hamlet” in “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”), stuffs both a play within a play — the story of a murder in Muldoon Manor — and commentary on that play by a pair of critics into a single act. Initially, the critics merely remark on the action, but, as the plot zips forward, their reality blurs into that of the characters onstage. I won’t tell you how or why, but, by the end of the play, everyone becomes involved in both plots. In an early scene, Mrs. Drudge, Caitlin Miller ’16, listens to a police report on the sighting of a madman in the nearby moors and then comments on how isolated Muldoon Manor is. The joke relies on your knowledge that nearly every British murder mystery takes place in a manor house cut off from the world. In fact, “Hound” works through the genre’s standard tropes one by one — from a confrontation over tea to a game of bridge played with an increasingly ridiculous and inscrutable set of rules (so pretty much any game of bridge). At times this lampooning becomes extreme,

S U N D AY MARCH 3

when the characters make several references in a row to “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” for instance. The humor lands if you know what it’s sending up, but those who think of Sherlock Holmes as just another Robert Downey Jr. action hero will find little to latch onto. And while lovers of Victorian mysteries might laugh, they, most likely, will not. Of course, the two critics at the back of the stage tell the audience this opinion during the play, among their other quips. Birdfoot, Alexander Oki ’13, takes an old-fashioned perspective to his job. He is carrying on an affair with one actress, and, halfway through the play, he falls in love with the other. Moon, Connor Lounsbury ’14, on the other hand, is more serious. The second-string reviewer for his local paper, he dreams of one day taking the lead — at one point, he even considers murder in a speech that Lounsbury delivers with maniacal glee. But the script also places the critics in the position of audience stand-ins. Once during the performance, they both looked into their programs for an actor’s name, and I realized that I was doing the same thing. Later, when the plot puts the critics in mortal danger, I began to feel highly uncomfortable, as I had spent so much time following their read on the plot. Critics and audience members, as Stoppard points out, really don’t think for themselves. “Inspector Hound” ends with a big reveal, and, without spoiling anything, it works. That is not to say that the play has an emotional core — the actors play each character as a caricature, complete with a varying array of near-British accents — but that the conceit makes sense. By the time the curtain falls, a murder has been solved. The most satisfying part of any whodunit is the intellectual challenge, the way it keeps you on your feet until the end of the play. And, like every part of a good mystery, Stoppard’s extra layer of commentary provides yet another satisfying way of pointing in the wrong direction. Contact JACKSON MCHENRY at jackson.mchenry@yale.edu .

America is having a nervous breakdown // BY HELEN ROUNER Having burst out into a joyous refrain of “Die when you die,” the ensemble suddenly froze, and one performer stepped forward, announcing matter-of-factly, “America is having a nervous breakdown.” The line from Allen Ginsberg’s “Independence Day Manifesto” perfectly summarized “I Am America,” a project by the Italian theater company known as the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, which combined Ginsberg’s poetry with folk songs from the American South in a provocative hourlong performance at the Whitney Humanities Center. Much of the show’s impact was derived from its sense of intimacy, one an American ensemble would never have been able to achieve. Even from the doors’ opening, performers created an atmosphere of confidentiality, ushering the 30 or so audience members by the arm to specific seats, speaking with them in hushed voices. Something about the foreign accents and mannerisms allowed one to accept that social standards were different, to be willing to experience something unfamiliar that went beyond what we would normally consider the bounds of privacy. The show’s loose premise was that of hopeful foreigners immigrating to America only to become, as Ginsberg was, dis-

illusioned with capitalism and societal rules, and subsequently to lose their minds. The dialogue consisted of fragments of Ginsberg’s poetry, often recited over the plucking of an acoustic guitar or the ensemble’s singing. Wild dancing accompanied some of the musical numbers, calling to mind an exorcism. The performance seemed like a study in insanity, focused on building a precarious tension between celebration and lamentation. The primary purpose of the first half of the show seemed to be to disorient the audience. A woman’s cawing and convulsing like a bird transitioned into a young man’s shaking his torn-off shirt between his teeth in ecstasy, followed by a woman in a feathery black Afro wig screeching and spinning, raising a lantern over her head and reciting the inscription on the Statue of Liberty. About half an hour into the show, the absurdity suddenly made sense. In a scene around a simulated campfire, the only American in the troupe began dancing and chanting to the clapping and drumming of the other performers encircling him, as a woman holding a twisted American flag behind her back like butterfly wings danced on the crates behind him. The accelerating chant captured the euphoria of Ginsberg’s poetry: it was at once violent, celebratory, haunting and

KYUNG YU & ELIZABETH PARISOT

Exorcism? Insanity? Foreigners?

unrestrained. The euphoria exploded as the show devolved into a simulated rock concert, in which all the cast members were singing, dancing or playing the guitar before the backdrop of an undulating American flag. The scene ended abruptly when a young man said, “Everybody’s serious but me,” as if to say, “Yes, this is a parody, but so is everything.” In the most powerful moment of the performance, the hyperactivity eased up, and the same young actor, shirtless again, soliloquized beneath dim red lights in a sort of confessional. His speech put the audience into a trance, evoking the youth, drugs, sex and insanity that Ginsberg celebrated in one tender monologue over a romantic guitar melody. This one vulnerable moment following all the chaos made the performance function much like Ginsberg’s poetry, which, beneath its loud and abrasive surface, articulates fundamental personal truths. Contact HELEN ROUNER at helen.rouner@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

Sprague Memorial Hall // 8 p.m.

Bach, Strauss and Saint-Saens in piano and violin.

// KATIE CRANDALL

Sex Weekend

Sex, meet WKND.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BACKSTAGE

DAVID BROOKS

COMMENTATOR, REALIST, HUMBLE PIE SERVER

// ALLIE KRAUSE

// BY KIKI OCHIENG

Q. One of your most quoted and referenced articles is your famous 2001 piece for “The Atlantic.” In that article, you describe the generation of college students born between 1979 and 1982 as the “organizational kid.” How do you think today’s generation compares to the students you profiled in that article? A. I guess the first thing that’s the same is the amount of energy and pressure to succeed. I graduated from high school not in the top 40 percent of my high school class, [and] my GPA was extremely mediocre, but I could still get into the University of Chicago, undergrad. When I look at contemporary student resumes, not only was I not like that, but nobody I knew was like that. The pressures of meritocracy have continued to build, and now, the rewards for energy and early intelligence, or the kind of intelligence that blooms early, are higher and higher. I think those pressures are already ratcheted from when I wrote the article. As far as the moral challenges that I describe, I think they’re still true. I don’t think this is just a big problem with people until 30 — I think this a big problem with people under 60. We’re sort of morally inarticulate. We’ve grown up in an era without a strong external moral code, and it’s hard to have moral arguments. We’re good at having arguments about neuroscience and how to succeed and how to make wise decisions. The language of virtue and vice and sin — all that has sort of drifted away from us. Q. How do you think that factors into emotional education? You’ve touched on that subject in other columns.

A. The column about Bruce Springsteen? One of the things that is striking about the field of cognition is that it used to be that people didn’t pay attention to emotion in particular. They paid attention to reason and decision-making, but now we realize that reason isn’t the opposite of emotion. Emotion is the foundation of reason, and our emotions tell us what to value. Our emotions influence all sorts of cognitive processes. The older you get, the more you realize — especially if you’re a guy — the importance of an emotional repertoire. If you ask people, especially men, what they regret most in life, it’s that they weren’t emotionally open with their families. Even as you get into the world I live in, the emotionally avoidant world of politics and economics regimented on growth and budgets, I spend a lot of time myself, I think about emotions and reading novels and going to places like Yale to work on that side of the education. Q. What influenced your decision to teach a course on “Humility”? A. Well, the short answer is that I work in the most obnoxious, narcissistic profession ever. I’m perpetually spouting off, so humility is a concern of mine [laughs]. But I think a lot of people are like that, and we’re all forced to market ourselves and brand ourselves and win attention. Second, more generally, I do think over the last 50 years, there’s been a tremendous rise in self-esteem, which is measurable by a bunch of different statistics: the way we perform on narcissism tests, the rise in the number of people who think that someone should write a biography about them, the rising desire for

fame. I do think there was a whole moral code 100 years ago built around humility, built around the sense that you’re an underdog, you’re struggling against your own weaknesses. I think we’ve lost touch with that tradition. The course is not designed to turn back the time, but to connect people — including me — with a moral tradition that includes St. Augustine and Edmund Burke and Dorothy Day. I think that it would be part of a good education to be familiar with these other traditions. Q. Do you think that the lessons of your “Humility” course factor into how you’ve taught “Grand Strategy”? A. Good question. The “Humility” course is people writing about internal struggles, struggles against your own weaknesses, and the “Grand Strategy” course is the course of that external struggle against enemies. There are some parallels there. Machiavelli believed you could have two moralities: the morality of your private life, where you could be nice and compassionate, and the morality of politics, where you have to be a ruthless bastard. I’m not sure if he’s right about that, but in both cases, you’re talking about how to be a good person in an ugly world. Q. What place does idealism have in the American political scene, nowadays? A. I guess I’m a believer in skeptical idealism. I’m a believer that we are all extremely limited creatures. When you do what I do and you spend your time around politicians, you realize that they never have the choice of a really good

policy versus a really bad policy. They have a choice between an awful policy and an even more awful policy. They have to make these brutal decisions. Often, idealism doesn’t even come into it. They’re just trying to survive. One of my heroes, Michael Oakeshott, had this theory: Politics is like you’re on a ship, you’re in stormtossed waters, you’re just trying to keep the ship upright. That’s what politicians are doing a lot of the time. I give them a lot of credit because everyone’s dumping all over them and they are faced with horrible choices and very constrained power. One of the things I observe as I watch, say, President Obama — as all presidents, he learned how the office seems really powerful, but very often their power and their ability to implement change is extremely limited. Q. Does America have a superiority complex? If it didn’t, would its actions abroad be different? A. All great nations have a superiority complex. I really have no taste for nations that don’t think they’re great, so I like the French. Everyone else hates the French and their arrogance. I like their arrogance. I covered Europe for a long time, and grew to respect them because they just think they’re a great nation. I was at dinner last night with a senior foreign policy official and this person was saying that all these theories that we’re in decline, that people don’t respect us as much as they used to or that we don’t have as much influence, are not reality at all. We have our troubles, but every other country has even worse troubles. We’re still the big dog on the block. I think we’re bound to be a superpower for a long time. We’re going to be the kind of superpower we’ve

always been, which is a pain in the ass for everybody but genuinely a force for good. Q. We’ve talked a bit about morality and politics. How does the use of drones change warfare and what new moral perspective does that mean we have to consider? A. That’s a classic case of what policy is like. When you talk to people in the military, they say that drones are just so damn effective. You’re president of the United States. Every day you get an intelligence briefing that says this person is trying to launch a bombing raid, this person is trying to kill Americans, that person is trying to blow up an airplane. You’ve got a few options. Option A is to do nothing and hope you can stop them at the TSA gate at the airport. Option B is to do some bombing strike. Option C is to send in special forces, but special forces don’t work the way they do in the movies. You can’t just send in eight people. You probably have to send in 500 people. Option D is to send in a drone. Of those four options, Option D seems like the best one — or the least bad. Now, having said that, because I am the sort of person who distrusts myself and others, I would like to see oversight. I’m a believer that we should have a court, overseen and appointed by Congress, that oversees the president’s authority, or at least who gets on the kill list.

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Q. Many people complain about polarization and how we don’t see any bipartisan bills being pushed forward. Do you see the polarization of American politics increasing or decreasing as today’s youth move into positions of power? A. My view is that polarization goes in cycles. For example, the Revolutionary War period was highly polarized. My hero Alexander Hamilton was killed by the vice president, which was a polarized act. The Civil War period obviously was. We’ve had 30 or 40 years of pretty great polarization. I have to think that it’s going to burn itself out. Maybe it’s in the process, with the last election, of burning itself out. Having said that, there is still a lot of geographic polarization. People moving into neighborhoods of people just like themselves. There’s a lot of academic polarization — people going to colleges filled with people just like themselves. It’s not evident or obvious that the era of polarization is ending. But eventually, you just get sick of it and have a big fiscal crisis which forces you to compromise. Liked the interview? Check out Yale Daily News multimedia reporter Cody Pomeranz’s video interview with Brooks on our website for more! Contact KIKI OCHIENG at akinyi.ochieng@yale.edu .

I’M A BELIEVER IN SKEPTICAL IDEALISM. I’M A BELIEVER THAT WE ARE ALL EXTREMELY LIMITED CREATURES.

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his semester, conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks is back at Yale to teach two courses at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. WKND BLOG’s Foreign Dispatch correspondent Kiki Ochieng was able to catch up with Brooks, liberals’ favorite conservative (especially after his comments on the GOP last year), about the contradictions inherent in teaching a seminar on humility while co-teaching Grand Strategy. Is this meant to be irony or an exploration of two sides of the same coin? Is there any overlap? How do all the egos fit in the room? Brooks chatted with WEEKEND about the lack of moral arguments in contemporary politics, the need for diversity in political thought and America as a “pain-in-the-ass” superpower.