Weekend

WEEKEND // FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2014

business or pleasure?

Jane Balkoski and J.R. Reed investigate the legal showdown between Yale and the storied nightclub.

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BULLDOGS

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BALLADS

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BEATS

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IN DEFENSE OF YALE

DESERT JOURNEY

HOMIES SPEAK UP

Wesley Yiin reflects on the mixed messages we send our alma mater.

Isabelle Taft finds belonging in “Dust Can’t Kill Me.”

Rap Genius founder dishes essential truths on music, Mark Zuckerberg and brain surgery.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

ADDENBROOKE

WEEKEND VIEWS

MORE THAN A BRITISH ACCENT // BY STEPHANIE ADDENBROOKE

WANG

The idiomatic expression, “She’s more than a pretty face,” is often used to praise those who defeat the stereotype that all “pretty faces” are two-dimensional. Until recently, I could never understand why beautiful girls became so frustrated when their peers congratulated them with this turn of phrase.

But since arriving at Yale, I have come to learn how it feels to have someone define you based on a first impression.

From the moment I utter a word, I am placed into a box. I am British; the accent gives me away. Any interaction I have with someone new quickly devolves into commentary on my background: “You’re from England?

Wow, that’s so cool. Say [stereotypically English-sounding word]. Do you know the Queen?”

Conversations like this began at orientation, continued into the first day of class, and well, it’s now second semester, and these interactions are still taking place.

At first, it was an exciting phenomenon for me. Having a British accent didn’t make me cool in high school — everybody had one! I felt a little special — I had something that made me stand out, and I knew that wasn’t going to be easy at a place like Yale. I had gained celebrity status from Day One, simply by being the token “British girl in JE.” But then I began to hear of conversations akin to “I don’t know if I’m attracted to her or her accent,” and “She just sounds so intelligent — must be because of the way she talks,” and excitement about my newfound fame quickly turned to frustration.

Why couldn’t people see past the accent? I probably sounded

intelligent because I was saying something intelligent, and maybe (just maybe!) you liked me because of me and not the cadence of my English roots. I finally related to those “prettyfaced girls” — I was being objectified for something I couldn’t control.

Don’t get me wrong; I am incredibly proud of my British heritage. In fact, maybe a little too proud! If you were to visit my room, the abundance of Union Jack paraphernalia is evidence of my citizenship. And I wouldn’t have signed up to teach my accent to the cast of the Freshman Show if I were uncomfortable with being British. But my pride in the Union Jack shouldn’t reduce me to a mere emblem of the crown.

I know that I didn’t get into Yale to make exchanges on the streets sound prettier, but I sometimes find myself wondering if everybody else knows that, too. I’m not vying for waves of praise and awe, but I’m pretty sure my accent isn’t the only thing special about me. I would love it if one day someone found an alternative to “You’re Stephanie Addenbrooke? The British one, right?” I can’t be the only person at Yale who wants to shake off a stereotype. As my old youth club’s motto dictated, “Labels are for jars, not people.”

Sometimes I am tempted to put on an American accent for a day. I always wonder if I’ll be treated differently, however irrational that fear may seem. I’d just like for people to pay attention to what I’m saying — not how I’m saying it.

// ANNELISA LEINBACH

Contact STEPHANIE ADDENBROOKE at stephanie.addenbrooke@yale.edu .

Calling Home // BY EDDY WANG

//MOHAN YIN

F R I D AY F E B RUA RY 7

My grandmother used to knit me sweaters before every winter. In a photo from my early elementary school years, I wore a handsome cardigan she had knit me out of white yarn speckled with red, magenta and green. That was the only time I wore one of her sweaters for Picture Day. Since then, I have become enamored with Gap, Abercrombie, Banana Republic, Polo and others — brands that have been worn by peers whom I looked up to over the years.

When I reached adolescence, my grandmother stopped making me sweaters; before the start of my junior year of high school, she left to go back to China.

By the time of her departure, I had bored of her predictable Chinese cooking and started cook for myself using recipes from the Food Network. In the months before she left, she would ask me, “How do you feel about me leaving?”

I would reply that if she felt like leaving, she should leave. I knew it wasn’t the response she wanted.

When I was in elementary school, I often came home to my grandmother’s fried noodles, drenched in black vinegar and soy sauce, ready at the kitchen table. I would wolf them down without stopping to ask her how her day was. The efforts my grandmother made to provide for me were great. For a time, she even tried to learn English. She attempted to practice her vocabulary with me, but I was embarrassed by her disjointed speech and quickly found an excuse to get away. When she decided to return to China, I think it was because she knew that my brothers and I were maturing and pushing her out of our lives: There was no longer a place for her in America.

Last Thursday morning, I placed a long-distance call to Shenyang, my grandmother’s home. It was Chinese New Year’s Eve. My grandmother picked up. “Hello?” she asked cheerfully. “Who is it?”

“It’s Eddy,” I said.

“Oh, Eddy!” I could see her smiling at the other end, her eyes curved in happiness.

She told me that everyone was at her place: my aunts, my two cousins and my grandfather. They were watching the annual Chinese New Year celebration on

CHEONGSAM BALL

Contact EDDY WANG at chen-eddy.wang@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

New Haven Lawn Club // 6:00–10:00 p.m.

Celebrate the 113th anniversary of the Yale-China Association (if you pay up for a ticket, that is).

TV and making dumplings at the same time. They would eat at midnight.

“You’re missing out!” she said. My insides tightened as I imagined my relatives gathered in her home: my grandmother scooping pork-and-cabbage filling into the dumpling shells and pinching them shut, my aunts carrying the finished ones into the kitchen to steam, my grandfather and cousins chewing sunflower seeds in front of the TV. She asked about my back, which had pained me in the past, and told me to be mindful when I exercised. Once, in America, she had hurt her back by moving too quickly and was bedridden for a month. She asked if I remembered. I said I did.

Since last November, I have been calling my grandmother once a month.

When she talks, I remember her hands, coarse from daily dish-washing, massaging my back to ease me into sleep. I remember her trying to execute the Food Network recipes and asking me questions about them so she could be a better grandmother for her three American grandsons.

I know I took for granted the moments when I should have appreciated her the most: when she would quietly place a plate of fruit in front of me while I was studying, slip hand-knit socks on my feet during the winter and be there every day after school. But she has never faulted me for all the time lost; her voice inflects with excitement each month.

So I call her just to check in, ask her about her hurting knee and the garden she’s tending in the backyard. She tells me life is good, but the air in Shenyang is not as fresh as it is in Rochester, N.Y. She asks when I’m coming to visit. I reply that hopefully I’ll be able to come this summer, but I know it’s not so easy for us to see each other anymore.

This Chinese New Year, I really wanted to be with my grandmother. I wanted to hug her, to sit next to her as she watched the New Year special on TV. I longed to dip her handmade pork-and-cabbage dumplings into black vinegar and soy sauce.

Pokémon

Like Magikarp, upon turning 20, our love for Japanese pocket monsters has only grown.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND COVER

THE YALE–TOAD’S PARTNERSHIP // BY JANE BALKOSKI AND J.R. REED

Tessa Berenson ’14 and Lisa Lin ’14 can’t quite describe Toad’s.

Lin looks at her computer screen thoughtfully. Pondering the York Street nightclub, Berenson seems at a loss for words. And then, suddenly, Lin starts and exclaims: “Wait!

Remember that article?” Going from pensive to determined, she begins to type. Berenson watches. “Here, it’s called Eight Underappreciated College Campuses You Have to Check Out.” Lin reads from the Total Frat Move article. “Number six: Quinnipiac University/University of New Haven/Yale.” The post goes on to explain, “the only reason these schools are on this list is because of Toad’s … It’s not so much a bar as it is a massive portal to hell where morality is forgotten.”

When interviewed, Yale alumni speak to a similar vision of Toad’s, sounding amused and even a little wistful. “Toad’s was drunken and crazy. It had a wild hook-up scene,” said Emma Gardner ‘06. “I would definitely say that one of my most distinct memories of Yale is being at Toad’s.” She remembers the “athletes and athlete groupies” at the bar and a ground sticky with urine and sweat. “It was disgusting.”

Disgusting or not, Toad’s has been on the forefront of the Yale social scene since it became a dance club in 1976. With penny drinks and dependable Wednesday and Saturday night emails promising “DJ Action and Mark spinning all your favorites,” Toad’s seems as tightly woven into the fabric of New Haven as Yale itself.

But if Yale and Toad’s are unable to reach a settlement soon, this social staple could be upended. On April 30, 2013, Yale filed a lawsuit against Toad’s for allowing its employees and patrons to trespass onto Uni-

versity property. Toad’s exits spill onto the adjacent walkway leading to Morse and Ezra Stiles, property under the University’s purview. And with the case set for trial as early as April, a majority of Yale students — if the decision goes in the University’s favor — could be forced to find a new place to conclude their Wednesday and Saturday nights. *** Yale and Toad’s have found themselves embroiled in this particular dispute for some time. In 1978, Michael Spoerndle, then-owner and operator of Toad’s Place, entered into a revocable license agreement with Yale to allow Toad’s staff and patrons to access the University’s adjoining property in case of an emergency — an arrangement that either side could revoke at its discretion with 10 days’ notice. James Segaloff, Toad’s’ corporate attorney, said Yale offered to extend the license for another ten years in 2008.

Toad’s’ current owner, Brian Phelps, who had taken over ownership of the nightclub by this point, refused to accept the agreement with the revocation clause intact.

Yale then terminated the contract on July 21, 2008.

Two years later, Yale filed a trespassing complaint, claiming patrons of Toad’s were using the emergency exits “for improper purposes,” such as “smoking, drinking and littering,” according to the Summary Judgment Ruling released on Nov. 29, 2013.

Phelps is seeking a solution whereby patrons, like they’ve been able to in the past, can exit Toad’s onto the adjoining Yale property in the event of an emergency. Unlike the past, however, he wants this agreement to be set in stone, not tied up in a “revocable clause” with the

University. If the two parties cannot reach a settlement within the next two months, the case will go to trial. Scheduled for an April start date, the trial and its outcome will likely determine the fate of a club that has hosted the likes of the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, U2 and Billy Joel in its 40-year history.

“If Yale prohibits the use of the side entrances, then Toad’s has no egress,” said Segaloff. “All we are asking for is to use the exit doors in an emergency situation.”

According to University spokesman Tom Conroy, Yale is seeking a permanent injunction enjoining Toad’s and its employees from entering or trespassing on Yale property.

He noted Yale is still willing to enter into a license agreement affording Toad’s access for emergency purposes, contingent on the prevention of improper use of the property.

Indeed, it’s not the institution itself that has Yale running for the courthouse — “Yale isn’t interested in having any negative effect on Toad’s business,” he said — it’s the question of property rights.

“The purpose of the litigation is to protect Yale’s property rights and to establish that Toad’s may not use Yale’s property without the University’s permission,” Conroy said.

“If Yale prevails, there is no reason, in Yale’s view, why an agreement between Yale and Toad’s cannot be achieved.”

But while Segaloff agrees that the issue is certainly “resolvable,” he adamantly disagrees with Yale’s approach to its relationship with Toad’s. “What they did was meaningless for all intents and purposes,” he said. “If you can revoke the agreement at any time, then what good is it?”

was our oyster,” Phelps, enlisted as manager in 1976, said. “We wanted to go for it and bring in the best artists we possibly could.”

Bruce Springsteen was the first superstar Toad’s snagged. “People couldn’t believe that he was here,” said Phelps of the 1979 concert. Billy Joel performed a year later and his first live digital recording featured a song played at Toad’s, “Los Angelenos.” Newer, alternative artists followed suit—both Debbie Harry and the Ramones made their way to the York Street nightclub in 1989.

Toad’s was for locals, a place where “good musicians who [hadn’t] made it nationally [could] show their stuff,” remarked Spoerndle in a 1979 News article. A police officer at the time described Toad’s as “a nice place to go out – lot of the fellows bring their girlfriends or wives here.”

But Yale kids, for the most part, weren’t interested. The article’s headline reads: “Club draws top names, but students stay away.”

In the same article, Spoerndle expressed a fledgling desire to branch out and appeal to the Yale community. Students “used to walk on the other side of the street,” he said. “But then some of them came to this side of the street. And now they’re looking in the windows to see what’s going on.”

It seems just the reverse of what the headline might read today— ”Club draws students, but top names stay away.”

By 1981, however, Spoerndle had tapped into the collegiate market: on Tuesdays, the so-called “Night of the Toad,” draft beers cost only 25 cents each. According to Phelps,

// BRIANNA LOO

Gotta get down on Wednesday.

Yalies were “timid at first” but soon enough, Toad’s “became a part of the University.”

With its large capacity and convenient location, Toad’s became an iconic campus bar. Barbara Bush stopped by about three times a week, according to Phelps. And when the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 passed, forcing bars and clubs across America into bankrupcy, Toad’s didn’t budge. And in 1989, Spoerndle and Phelps opened the venue to all ages, further securing the bar’s dominance of the Yale social scene. Today, Phelps says Toad’s’ major sources of revenues stem from Wednesday and Saturday night dance parties, adding that the two are key tenets of Toad’s’ business model.

While local resident Edward Cooke remembers the Toad’s crowd in the late eighties as “a melting pot for all of Southern Connecticut,” Amanda Poppei ’01 found that Saturday night parties ten years later were “essentially populated by Yalies.” Gardner remembers a similar scene during her time at Yale. “It was all just Yale students and Q-Packers.”

Phelps speaks to the notion that, as Toad’s became increasingly popular with students, it also began to forge ties with the Yale administration. When asked how he emails the entire student body on Wednesdays SEE TOADS PAGE 8

*** The situation in which Toad’s finds itself today is the result of legal disputes intertwined in a storied— and controversial—cultural history.

Michael Spoerndle and his two co-managers opened Toad’s Place in January 1975, replacing the short-lived Caleb’s Tavern with a family-friendly establishment— a restaurant. As touted on a 1975 advertisement, Toad’s offered “the finest continental cuisine” with dishes like Beef a la Wellington and Veal Cordon Bleu.

Spoerndle was a Cleveland chef with big dreams, and when the restaurant proved financially unsuccessful, he added music to the mix.

Local Bluegrass bands began performing at lunch, afternoon entertainment became “evening entertainment.” By the late seventies, Spoerndle had renovated, expanded and eliminated all meal service.

Toad’s was officially a music hall. And given its proximity to the New Haven Coliseum—a nationally renowned entertainment arena— big-name artists, like Billy Joel, would stop by the dance club after their performances.

“We were young, and the world // TOAD’S

A 1975 advertisement featuring Toad’s (the restaurant’s) culinary offerings.

F R I D AY

MOVIE NIGHT AT THE PLANETARIUM

F E B RUA RY 7

They’re screening “Deep Impact,” in case you needed to have apocalyptic nightmares for the rest of the week.

Leitner Observatory // 7:00–10:00 p.m.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: The Powerpuff Girls

Blossom is the clear favorite.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND ARTS

CREDIT FOR AN INCOMPLETE // BY THERESA STEINMEYER For never having completed his novel, Stephen Tennant did all right, landing himself an exhibit in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library this spring.

The display is aptly named “Works in Progress” and features pages from Tennant’s uncompleted novel, “Lascar,” as well as samplings of Tennant’s artwork, notes and correspondence. Much of Tennant’s work was auctioned off after his death in 1987, and the Beinecke has massed an impressive hodgepodge of his unfinished legacy. Until May 24, you can scout out these pieces on the library’s second floor and spend a few minutes trying to navigate Tennant’s head.

The exhibit’s presentation is slightly haphazard: “Works in Progress” is contained in two sets of display cases on opposite sides of the library, with little explanation or obvious organization.

The available information booklets are filled with blank pages to make an artistic statement,

which I struggled to fully appreciate while I was trying to orient myself. With a second exhibit, “Under the Covers,” sandwiched between the two parts of Tennant’s work, it’s hard to glean a sense of continuity. The display would benefit from consolidation and additional commentary.

Still, it’s worth taking a few minutes to get a general impression of Tennant’s work. Make sure to look for his handwritten correspondence — Tennant swapped ideas with his friends throughout his career, and even befriended and kept in touch with contemporary author Willa Cather. Seek out Tennant’s exchanges with photographer and designer Sir Cecil Beaton. “Cecil my Treasure Trove,” one letter begins in large, curly blue script before it erupts into a page of overlapping blue and green handwriting complete with hearts doodled up the right margin. A determined visitor could attempt to parse through it, but I recommend instead tak-

ing three steps back and appreciating the letter as a piece of art in itself: evidence of Tennant’s free and zany thought process, exploding beyond the bounds of his medium.

I’m less sure what to make of Lascar. The world may not have gotten the chance to know him in print, but Tennant seems to treat his character like an old friend. On his draft pages, Tennant’s handwriting wraps around meticulous and fond sketches of the unpublished hero. Although the Beinecke provides no information about the novel’s content, a visitor can attempt to piece together a bit of his story from the illustrations of a buff sailor with a serious face, mysterious and pitiful. Two of Tennant’s outlines for the novel are on display, and when you observe the drink stains and cross-outs, it’s not difficult to picture Tennant poring anxiously over his plans.

For the art fiend seeking a

My Time and Place // BY AUDREY LUO // WA LIU

thorough and instructive detour, “Works in Progress” isn’t it.

But for those feeling a bit overwhelmed four weeks into the semester, the exhibit is a worthy study break that might even help keep things in perspective.

Stephen Tennant’s work reminds us that there is beauty even in the incomplete. Sometimes, it’s not about the finished product behind the display case, but the human being who made it happen, who planned and stressed and second-guessed. “Works in Progress” respects Tennant not only for the quality of his creation, but also for the force of his fantasy. Although Lascar never made it into circulation, he has found safe harbor on the Beinecke’s shelves.

And who knows — maybe there’s hope for our half-finished projects and quiet dreams, too.

// ANNELISA LEINBACH

Contact THERESA STEINMEYER at theresa.steinmeyer@yale.edu .

Judging by More Than its Cover // BY YI-LING LIU

9 a.m. sunlight floods into the empty Rabinowitz Gallery in the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life where surreal paintings by Max Missner Budovitch (CC ’13) hang. The exhibit is called “Time is a Place.” In it, Budovitch explores how time freezes in a place one leaves behind and how one can recreate a city in one’s own mind. Based in Tel Aviv but originally from Chicago, Budovitch bridges distance — in both time and space — throughout his paintings.

The colors of all his paintings are saturated and bright, a signature of acrylic paints. But acrylics are not known for creating smooth textures. They dry quickly and require several layers of application to create a gradient. Despite this, Budovitch is able to evoke an unearthly feeling of smoothness and flatness in his oceans, beaches and skies. His landscapes are vivid but also dreamlike and calm.

In almost every piece, there is an allusion to cities in both Israel and Illinois, often painted on opposite corners of the canvas. The source of light seems to come from the same sun in each piece, implying that although an enormous distance separates each pair of cities, they remain close together, both basking in the same light.

In “Jaffa Port,” Budovitch depicts the famous Jaffa Clock Tower, built by the Ottomans in Tel Aviv over a century ago. It sits at the center of the piece, dividing ancient Jaffa (where the biblical Jonah set sail) and the modern-day capital of Israel. The tower, marking the intersection between present and past, is built on triangles and sharp, diagonal lines. There is almost a sense of nostalgia in seeing the divide between the two cities. One is only able to get from Jaffa to Tel Aviv (and back) through one’s imagination — or through bending time.

One piece stands out from the rest due to its uncharacteristic use of black and red. It is titled “Snow in Jerusalem,” depicting the winter storm that hit the Middle East in December 2013. A gargantuan, dark purple fish lies in center of the canvas, submerged in the Mediterranean Sea. Its eyes are open, and a clock is embedded in its stomach. The fish is an allusion to the apocalyptic monsters of the Hebrew Bible, which were inspired by violent storms. In

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the upper right corner of the canvas, a grayish white snowstorm shrouds Jerusalem. As one’s eye travels down the canvas from this city, it encounters a shocking band of red, then the giant, ominous fish and then the city of Chicago, depicted in blue upon a black hill in the lower left. The distance between snow-covered Israel and Chicago is unconquerable. A cat sits in the lower right corner, draped in red with numbers etched onto its back, like a guardian of the two worlds.

A poster board titled “My Time and Place…” hangs on the wall of the exhibit. On it, visitors can write a personal statement. Messages include “Home—always,” “Here&Now,” and “On the wings of the soul—wind.” There are less serious messages like “The church mouse was here,” graced by a sketch of a mouse.

Another person wrote a formula reminiscent of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, in which position in space and momentum cannot be measured simultaneously. For some visitors, “My Time and Place” is where they feel happiest; for others, where they presently stand or where they yearn to be.

I remember the distance between Yale and my home in central New Jersey. In comparison to California’s endless sunshine or Thailand’s humidity — which some of my friends return to — New Jersey’s climate is more similar to New Haven’s. The train ride home is only two hours, but the two worlds are separated by something more profound than simply the miles between them. Budovitch’s paintings remind me of the first waves of homesickness I experienced my fall semester of freshman year. Before then, I had never been away from home for more than three weeks. Going home for fall break, I realized how I had become so used to the rhythms of college life, even as they felt distant back at home. Every time I hop on the train at Union Station, it’s almost like passing by the Jaffa Clock Tower and monstrous fish, traveling through a metaphoric ocean to get to a different realm, with more familiar faces, trees and sleep.

Inserted discreetly between a book’s binding and its text, endpapers are easy to overlook.

“Under the Covers” — an exhibit at the Beinecke Library dedicated purely to the visual history of these small slips of parchment, textile and silk — felt like a muchneeded homage to the neglected underdog of the world of books and book arts.

The exhibit traces the development of endpapers from their utilitarian beginnings through to the 21st century. Samples from the medieval codex of 1450, for example, are rough and pale, made mostly from manuscript waste and serve simply to protect the elaborate illustrations within the book. Moving through the displays to the 18th century, you begin to see endpapers assume an aesthetic role, such as in the intricately wrought veins of more decorative pieces. The marbled endpapers of a volume of letters from John Keats to Fanny Brawne, with their pastel blues and pale pinks, were added in the late 19th century. They serve no other purpose but to complement the beauty of Keats’s naïve and ephemeral love affair.

There is a jarring shift to the 20th century. Pages of Dutch gilt and French marble are replaced with advertisements for everything from medicinal remedies to foodstuffs to legal services. Moving through the displays, it’s easy to feel a progression, not only of the history of endpapers, but of our artistic culture as a whole — from pragmatic to aesthetic to commercial. Finally, we arrive at the nostalgia that defines the art

world today. One display shows a collection from Persephone Books — a shop in Bloomsbury, London that has built its entire brand around the art of endpapers. The endpaper of one book, “A Writer’s Diary” by Virginia Woolf, imitates the white of the dust jacket that Vanessa Bell designed for its first edition.

We are reminded from this display that endpapers are making a resurgence, attempting to restate the significance of physical, tangible books in the midst of the eBook revolution of the 21st century.

What intrigued me most about the exhibit, however, were the areas of intersection between the physical world of endpapers and the intangible world of ideas and narratives. Walter Crane, a British artist whose works are displayed in the exhibition, championed the marriage of aesthetics and text. He took part in the arts and crafts movement — a reaction against industrialization and the uniformity of machinemade goods — and stated that a book should function like “an architecturally interesting house or museum, in which the author and illustrator work together to take readers by the hand and lead them from ‘room to room’ of the unfolding narrative.” E.H Sheppard’s map of the “100 Aker Wood,” displayed at the end of the exhibit, for example, was integral to A.A. Milne’s narrative. According to Elizabeth Frengel, research services librarian at the Beinecke who put together this exhibition, it was the play between Milne’s story and this

illustration that inspired her to explore endpapers in more detail.

But endpapers can do more than just complement the narrative, they can elevate it and transcend it. In the “Imaginary Landscapes” display, the endpapers of a miniature-book edition of William Wordsworth’s poems, covered in soft watercolors reminiscent of a sylvan landscape, perfectly capture the spirit, tranquility, and pastoral elegance of his ballads. A 1969 edition of Rachel Carson’s 1951 Marine study, “The Sea Around Us,” achieved a similar pairing of content and form. Its endpapers, painted seascapes, wrap around the text in a way such that the reader seems perched on the edge of the cliff upon as they open the book. Carson’s work is scientific and yet, thanks to these endpapers, it is imbued with poetry.

When talking to Frengel about the exhibit, she mentioned in passing that endpapers, hidden inside the bindings of books have little direct influence on their sales. When you buy a book, you examine its exterior and the quality of its material, but rarely consider craftsmanship past that.

So it’s all the more intriguing to witness that, throughout history, bookbinders and bookmakers have spent meticulous attention and effort on the endpaper’s creation and perfection. The end result is a subtlety pleasant surprise to encounter upon opening the pages of a book; a wink from the craftsman.

Contact YI-LING LIU at yi-ling.liu@yale.edu .

// WA LIU

Contact AUDREY LUO at audrey.luo@yale.edu .

JV FEB CLUB

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

Viva’s // 10 p.m.

Just because you never made varsity doesn’t mean you can’t drink magaritas with the best of them.

Yu-Gi-Oh!

Remember that episode when the kid throws his cards in the ocean?

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND CRITICISM?

BOOLA BOOLA? // BY WESLEY YIIN

The “Yale College Class of 2018” Facebook page launched on Dec. 16, 2013, the same day that admissions decisions were delivered to the University’s early action applicants. Within minutes, the site’s membership swelled with excited prefrosh, who peppered the “timeline” with exclamation marks, congratulations, caps-locked comments and other expressions of sheer elation.

Just a few years ago, I stood in their shoes. I posted overeager comments and questions in the group, made new Facebook friends and planned out the next four years in my head, considering all the interesting people I was sure to meet and the enlightening courses that I would take.

“So excited to bond with you guys over Taylor Swift’s new album!”

“Any other people here who are interested in both pre-med and the humanities?”

“What is everyone’s favorite movie?

But this winter break, I was the one congratulating students and offering some answers. As an undergraduate recruitment coordinator for the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, I engaged with admitted high school students whose attitudes ranged from relieved to overwhelmed, extroverted to insecure.

One sentiment, however, was common among the new admits: They were all happy with their acceptance. They all appeared to be unmistakably in love with the University.

When I arrived outside of Lanman-Wright Hall in 2012, suitcases in tow, I shared in this idealism. It took just a few weeks for me to realize that Yale was not the fairytale fortress that I had envisioned. There were people I didn’t like, classes that were at once boring and incredibly stressful, and a social culture that I wasn’t used to.

But I was still happy — and am still happy — with my time here at Yale. For a while, I assumed that we all were. Even if I can never seem to muster the level of school spirit that pervades Harvard-Yale Games, or if I sometimes wonder whether I would have been “a better fit” at Harvard or Princeton, I am content with where I am.

Recently, however, I have been getting a far different impression.

If my Twitter feed and the string of national headlines are any indication, Yale has been faltering under the limelight.

In a Jan. 21 New York Times piece, the University was described as having “gotten a schooling” from the founders of Yale Bluebook Plus, an online course catalog that was conspic-

F R I D AY F E B RUA RY 7

uously shut down by the administration on the first day of the semester’s shopping period.

Students and onlookers alike denounced Yale for practicing censorship, and for its opaque handling of the situation.

This incident, along with a slew of others including negative reactions to Title IX reports and criticism of the search for the new Yale College Dean, pointed to a striking dissonance between our professed pride for our school and our willingness to condemn it.

When I revisited the Class of 2018 Facebook group in early January, I saw that the Times story had been posted by an admitted student. The bad news had reached the incoming class — a group of students just recently inundated with reasons for why Yale was the ideal place to spend the next four years — and I wondered what I would have thought if the controversy had surfaced two years ago. I wondered if I would still have chosen to be a bulldog. *** Suzanne Ingram ’86 gets the Yale Daily News delivered to her door each morning in Wilton, Conn. At the end of the week, after she’s done with the papers, she walks over to the house of her neighbor, Adrian Offinger ’42. They look at the papers again together, and oftentimes, they talk about some of the pieces for a few minutes.

While she generally supports student initiatives, she said she sometimes feels out of place for not agreeing wholeheartedly with some of the arguments made against the University. As a prestigious brand, Yale has to protect itself, she said, which may mean restricting student voices — the University’s power to do so is one Gonzales does not always support, but ultimately accepts.

It’s possible that this more sympathetic view toward administrative control is something that comes with age. All three Freshman Counselors interviewed acknowledged that there exists, to some extent, a “culture of controversy” — or more crassly, complaining — within the student body.

Yale students enjoy the attention that accompanies having their opinion heard, Gonzales observed.

This social impulse is rooted in psychology. According to Professor John Bargh, people generally pay more attention to negative events because they challenge our survival and are unusual occurrences in our otherwise consistent lives. When compounded with the human instinct to focus on the local, this negativity bias causes students to focus their attention on even minor incidents. *** Prospective students don’t appear to be fazed by this year’s

ALL THREE FRESHMAN COUNSELORS INTERVIEWED ACKNOWLEDGED THAT THERE EXISTS, TO SOME EXTENT, A “CULTURE OF CONTROVERSY” — OR MORE CRASSLY, COMPLAINING — WITHIN THE STUDENT BODY. Lately, Offinger has been dismayed by the paper’s opinion section. Every piece seems to argue against something or advocate for some sort of change, he told Ingram.

If everyone wants to change the University so badly, why do they even choose to attend Yale? he asked her one day.

Offinger attended Yale during a completely different era — a time in which, for instance, there were still no female students on campus. But his concerns about criticism of the University are shared by some students today.

“There are a lot of things that we can’t understand because we’re not on the administration side,” Hannah Gonzales ’16 said, adding that she often wonders if students are too forceful in their demands for change.

controversies. This winter, Yale College received more applications for admission than ever before in its history.

Stephen Hall ’14, a Jonathan Edwards College freshman counselor, isn’t surprised by this development. To him, the national headlines don’t signify scandal. Rather, they are manifestations of the student body’s culture of activism and innovation — traits for which Yale recruits.

Moreover, Hall said the current student body forgets that these controversies are often preceded by prior instances of cooperation between students and the administration. He recalled entering an app competition in which Yale Bluebook was a contender.

Although Yale Bluebook was not selected as the contest winner, the then-newly designed website

was eventually acquired by the University.

“It’s not like they’re quelling all the innovation,” Hall said, adding that the University’s move to buy a student-developed application was “just as revolutionary” as its recent blocking of Yale Bluebook Plus.

If we really looked, Hall said, we would be able to find examples of the University paying attention to student voices everywhere.

Newer developments include the implementation of fall break and the extension of dining hall hours after Commons was closed for dinner in 2011. Hall said even his job as FroCo could be viewed as teamwork between the administration and students. Few other universities have such a position that juggles being an employee of the residential college administration with being a student and representing that voice.

Michael Protacio ’14 added that he believes we pay insufficient attention to the positive happenings around us. Even the claim that there are no positive voices in campus publications, he said, is ignoring writing venues such as Vita Bella, the student magazine celebrating all forms of beauty in life. Still, he conceded that Vita’s small campus presence is perhaps another indication of our fixation on the negative.

“This is an environment where everyone has been successful by meticulous self-improvement,” he observed. “It’s logical when you see something that you think could be improved to take action.”

All students interviewed came to a similar conclusion — that the criticisms against Yale only persist because the students behind them love the institution and are driven to improve it.

For activists such as Sophie Nethercut ’14, a former member of Students Unite Now, vocalizations of student opinion are the only way to propel the University’s progress. She noted that many of the University’s most triumphant policy changes have come about as a result of persistent activism, citing principally the movement to bring coeducation to campus decades ago.

“Without student voices, you fall behind the times,” Nethercut said. “I think some people are afraid to speak up because they are so thankful to be here, but you can still voice your demands in a way that is respectful.”

Hall viewed the desire to take action as generally positive. Students may be perceived to be complaining, but they’re largely making things better, he said.

And it’s this process and act of fighting for change, Hall said, that might actually make Yalies happy — not just the ultimate change

THE WINTER OLYMPICS

Contact WESLEY YIIN at wesley.yiin@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

Sochi, Russia // all day

In Russia, figure skating judges you.

itself.

“If they’re seeing themselves as making a difference and growing here,” Hall noted, “then in some sense they’re achieving their goals and being happy.” *** Dec. 15, 2011 It was 5:09 p.m. when I received my decision. In my excitement, I had clicked past the singing bulldog — my sound was off — and arrived immediately at the welcome letter, so it took me a while to realize what the verdict was.

No one else was home except for my Bichon puppy Lily, who wagged her tail and shared in my happiness.

My parents had already each called me twice in the nine minutes between the expected decision time and when the news arrived. My mother later confessed to me that she had gone to church every day that week and kept a Bible in her purse, praying for good news. My father, ever the solemn and quiet type, did nothing of the sort. Instead, he offered words of support over the phone.

I called my mother first. She cried and yelled the announcement to her colleagues in the bank where she works. I called my father, who said, “Good job, son.”

I understood then that this was his way of freaking out.

My mother and I went out for sushi. I had been too nervous to eat during the day, but even at dinner, I could only bring myself to pick at a few pieces. I was still in disbelief.

Later that night, my father arrived home and we replayed the opening greeting a few times, to make sure it wasn’t all a mistake.

We would do so every day for the next week, just in case.

I like this story because it reminds me of the good that Yale tries to do. The University’s decision to grant me admission, as unlikely a candidate as I saw myself to be, brought my family together for a moment that has never left me.

I’ve had my doubts about my place inside Yale’s gothic walls.

My idealistic notions have been replaced with sentiments much more muted and complex. And maybe that makes my school spirit more real than the image that first attracted me as a prospective student commenting excitedly on the Class of 2016’s Facebook group.

I’ve realized, much like the students interviewed, that my dissatisfactions with Yale are rooted in a deep gratitude: for me, everything changed on December 15, 2011, at 5:09 p.m.

Spirited Away.

Real talk: the scene on the train is the most beautiful ever.

PAGE B6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B7

WEEKEND SCHEDULING

WEEKEND LOOKS FOR LOVE Starting today, you have exactly one week to find your soul mate, to ensure that you won’t spend Valentine’s Day on an intimate, candlelit dinner with your Netflix (WKND personally thinks that sounds pretty nice but we digress). Here, a slew of insightful reporters have uncovered the most foolproof paths toward securing your lover, just in time for Friday.

Notes Desired soulmate: An unsuspecting lover. Not just any old valentine, but my literal soulfuckingmate. One who knows how to satisfy every one of my cravings.

MONDAY

TUESDAY

2/10

2/11

Ask my crush if she’d like to get dinner tomorrow night at 5:30. Ask my girlfriend if she’d like to get dinner tomorrow night at 6:15.

As the crush meal ends, my girlfriend sits down at our table. Girlfriend and crush meet for the first time. The two girls are equally cute, which sparks a mutual feeling of rivalry. My crush sees that I have a girlfriend, and becomes attracted to my sexy unavailability, or so I assume. My girlfriend becomes suspicious. My second dinner is consumed in stony silence.

I leave the dining hall uncomfortably full of beef curry, but confident in the brilliance of my plan.

Notes

MONDAY

TUESDAY

2/10

2/11

Wear short skirt. Wait in Alpha Delta.

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

2/13

2/14

2/12 Wear shorter skirt.

WAIT IN ALPHA DELTA.

Wear plunging top. Wait in Alpha Delta.

Wear turtleneck — he likes mystery, WAIT IN ALPHA DELTA!

Desired soulmate: That one girl, in that one class of mine.

Strategy: Leverage my current girlfriend to help me find a date.

Tube top. You know where I’m at.

Contact LEAH MOTZKIN at leah.motzkin@yale.edu .

MONDAY

TUESDAY

2/10

2/11

Easy start: Peruse the bowels of the Yale Rumpus website for past issues of 50 Most, pertaining to the years you have attended Yale College. Just browse and pick your target. (Looking to catch a fresh winner from this year? You’ll have to get biblically acquainted with someone on the Rumpus staff for all the sordid secrets.)

50 Most-ers tend to frequent certain places with admirable regularity.

First spend some quality time inside Payne Whitney Gymnasium. Beautiful People do not work out in their college basement gyms because they don’t contain nearly as many admirers machines as the fourth floor of Payne Whitney. Put on your Lulus or Nikes and take the first step on the road to love.

Notes Desired soulmate: A 2014 Rumpus 50 Most-er

Desired soulmate: Love isn’t just going to reach out and grab you! You have to look for it! If you’re open to it, there are lots of great people out there, like, say, Colin from Booktrader, for example.

MONDAY

TUESDAY

2/10

2/11

Time for some beauty prep and a second stakeout: Head to one of New Haven’s premier hair salon and spas for a nice blowout. Think you’ll only find chicks? While your favorite hot biddie will most definitely be there getting a root touch-up or wax, many male 50 Most-ers have been known to frequent the spa for a full-body massage or two. Save the man some money and offer your soothing services next time.

WEDNESDAY Write Colin a Threatening Letter: If he loves his family, he’ll have to love you, too! #IKnowWhereYourMomWorks

Contact RYAN BOWERS at ryan.bowers@yale.edu .

Notes Desired soulmate: Does your bleeding heart beat a little faster for that cute guy in section with the summer internship on Capitol Hill?

Of course it does, so what follows is a week of up-worthy tricks to feed that boy’s buzz. Here’s hoping you end up in the sweet embrace of his welfare state.

MONDAY

TUESDAY

2/10

2/11

Start small: Send a flirtatious email using the stock template from the Democratic National Committee.

“Are you as fired up about this as I am?” you could write.

“Chip in $3 or more and win the chance to join Barack for dinner — if you know what I mean.” And yes, he’ll know what you mean. Finish off with a coy and clever subject, like “Join me” — perhaps “I’m asking you,” Michelle Obama’s heading of choice.

Cute married couples breakfast in bed. At Yale, just waking up for breakfast is impressive, which means one morning meeting is sure to put you on the fast track to his Keystone Pipeline. Meet in Trumbull to scroll through Mike Allen’s latest on your iPhones. After coffee, head back to his place for a little nature’s finest before your Tuesday morning Global Affairs seminar. Talk about the perfect first date, or at least the perfect replacement for “Adventure Time.” Paul Krugman is off today.

Contact MARISSA MEDANSKY at marissa.medansky@yale.edu .

Notes Desired soulmate: Aretha Franklin, whose soaring soulful voice has gotten me through the ugliest first week of February in my life. Some say the difference is big. I say age is just a number.

Others may say she’s out of my league. I say I’m out of my mind in love.

WEDNESDAY Wednesday is a time not just for capturing his attention but also everyone else’s. Go viral — and might I recommend a whiteboard campaign to take you there? Nothing says, “Let’s make this a year of action” like taking lots of little pictures of your friends holding signs referencing their political beliefs in light of various immutable characteristics and then posting them on Facebook. It’s very Spartacus but also very Cher in Clueless — hey, solidarity is weird sometimes. Grab a sharpie and strike a pose, then pin all five Polaroids in his locker.

TUESDAY

2/10

2/11

Knock on her door, knock on her door. Tap on her windowpane. Say, “Can I come in?”

Buy the Queen of Soul a chain of fool’s gold. Demand a little respect — that’s all I’m askin’.

2/13

2/14

Beautiful People don’t wait for Friday night to start their weekends — fuglies stay home on Thursdays so BPs (and now you!) will take advantage of the hotter pool on Thirsty Thursdays. Hit up Box and nurse your drink — love heals all wounds, especially hangovers.

You’ve done your research, worked out, dropped some beauty bucks, and demonstrated your ability to have fun: Your chosen one should be hanging off your arm and that troll who turned you down last month has fainted from jealousy. Hmm, what’s that? You just ended up cuddling with a restraining order? Wait, so you staged four stakeouts all across campus without ever actually introducing yourself?

Love is great and love is kind but love will not represent you in court.

FRIDAY

2/13

2/14

Tie Colin Up: Explain to him that you two are meant to be.

What does he mean he has a girlfriend? Doesn’t he understand what you two have together? How could he do this to you? Shut up, Colin.

I don’t want to hear another lie come out of your dirty mouth. Mother always said I shouldn’t trust men. SHUT UP, COLIN! What to do?

What to do? What to do? He’s a damned liar. That’s what he is. Liars need to be taught a lesson.

2/13

2/14

By this point in the week, you will be one of the few people in the world to grace the middle section of the Venn diagram between “professional pickup artist” and “liberal young professional.” Embrace it (Bill Clinton did and now he has his own foundation). Now is the time for the “Say Anything” of left-leaning romantic gestures: the protest. Pick up a few slices of poster board and station yourself outside his entryway. Scrap typical chants for “What do you want?” instead; you’re all about that enthusiastic consent.

It’s time to make Valentine’s Day his election night. Spend all day rehashing Anthony Weiner’s finest as your own: “hey sexy baby.” “with me behind can’t we both watch daily show?” “when am i gonna get some Lisa pics?”

Wait for the pics. Don’t call him Lisa. Lean in. Then let him join your Barack for dinner.

Say a little prayer for her. Take time through all my coffeebreak time, and say (another) little prayer for her.

FRIDAY

2/13

2/14

Make her feel like a natural woman. Jump Jack Flash (her ex-bf).

F E B RUA RY 8

MONDAY

TUESDAY

2/10

2/11

Throw an off-campus party and emphatically register it with the Dean’s office. To show that we care.

DVORÁK’S “RUSALKA”

This broadcast of Dvorák’s soulful opera will evoke everybody’s inner Little Mermaid.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: As Told By Ginger

The grass is much greener in the meadow.

WEDNESDAY Throw and off-campus party and don’t register it; we’re playing hard to get.

Go to Woads and dance with other administrators.

2/13

2/14

I cry alone in my room.

Desired soulmate: Priscilla, Crest 3D White™ of my life, fire of my gums. My sin, my soul. I fell in love with her the first time she cleaned my teeth.

She was looking like a total babe with her new bob cut and her chili-pepper-patterned scrubs, and she was going to town on my plaque buildup.

I’m determined to make her my Valentine.

MONDAY

TUESDAY

2/10

2/11

Call up Olga, the receptionist, and schedule an appointment for Wednesday. Get to chatting. (This may be hard; Olga barely speaks English.) Casually let slip that I’m dating Jennifer Lawrence. Olga will tell Priscilla; Priscilla will get jealous. The catch? I’m not actually dating Jennifer Lawrence.

I’ve never even spoken to her.

It’s a trick.

FRIDAY

2/13

2/14

Cool-off period. Don’t text, don’t call, no matter how hard it is to resist. “But I just want to ask for help on my ‘Ancient American Art’ reading response!” No. Selfcontrol.

WEDNESDAY 2/12

Call Olga again. Cancel Wednesday appointment, citing an important benefit for panda conservation (this is cute and sort of sexual).

Reschedule for Friday. By now I’ll definitely be the main topic of water-cooler conversation in the dentist’s office.

The big day is here. Finally respond to the iMessages that have been marinating, unread, on our phone since Wednesday. Say that we were “going through some stuff” but that you now want to “talk.” This is, of course, utter bullshit. The only thing we went through was a full fifth of Jack Daniels. But a certain Dean of Yale College (hint: it’s Mary Miller) doesn’t need to know this. When we meet for sandwiches at Atticus (we pay, even though each sandwich costs $25.95), get down on one knee and pop the question: “Can I have an extension on my paper?”

She’ll know what we mean.

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

2/13

2/14

Call Olga. Ask to speak to Priscilla directly. If Olga refuses, threaten her. Fucking Olga.

Once Priscilla is on the line, tell her that I’m sorry, but I have to cancel again: I stupidly forgot that a) I have a hot date with Jennifer on Friday, and b) I live 150 miles away, at YALE UNIVERSITY. Priscilla and I will have a good laugh over my absent-mindedness.

Lay low.

I go out clubbing as a bachelor for the first time in a year. I have no friends with me, because I kind of forgot to hang out with them back when I had a girlfriend.

But after a few shots, who needs friends? I dance like there isn’t a huge bandage on my nose, and the part where I spend three minutes doing the Worm in a puddle of spilled beer really turns the ladies on.

I wake up the next morning with a new girlfriend asleep on my couch. Three Valentine’s Days in a row!

THURSDAY

2/12

Adopt a shelter cat and name it Rainbow the Second. Take some truly adorable pictures and post them on Instagram.

Hope that a certain Dean of Yale College (hint: rhymes with “dairy spiller”) follows us, which he or she almost certainly does.

Punch self in face. Collect teeth from floor and call for a heli-vac. Helicopter will whisk me away the dentist’s. Priscilla will fix my teeth, and we’ll reminisce. By the end of the procedure she’ll have decided that fate brought us together on Valentine’s day. We’ll marry in the fall.

Contact OLIVER PRESTON at oliver.preston@yale.edu .

Notes

MONDAY

TUESDAY

2/10

2/11

She’s probably gonna want to see a resumé. I’d recommend hitting up UCS for some pointers, though generally all I milk out of career counselors is a few LinkedIn friends and that post-ashram euphoria when they empower my whole starving artist shtick.

Remember, on the resumé, to center your name and put it in bold. It’s pretty crucial to leave out the dates of your accomplishments. “Of course, yes, where it says ‘Editor-inChief, Shady Side News,’ it refers to the post-Rhodes gap year I spent rallying prison inmates to exercise their freedom of speech. No, of course it doesn’t refer to my time as the spineless overlord of my high school news rag!”

Rewind, actually. You can’t just court a law student. You gotta have what my friends over at SCOTUS Blog like to call standing. And, who knows, maybe she doesn’t have jurisdiction over you (that’s what they all say).

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

Sprague Memorial Hall // 12:55 p.m.

I’m so full that I oversleep, and miss the morning class I share with my crush. I’ve ordered her a singing valentine, which my girlfriend delivers. (It’s easy to forget she does a capella, because I never go to her concerts.) My girlfriend breaks up with me by text.

My crush sends her boyfriend to break my nose by hand.

FRIDAY

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

Think (think!) about what she’s trying to do to me. Buy plane tickets to the Bahamas for two; help her conquer her fear of heights.

Contact ANDREW KOENIG at andrew.koenig@yale.edu .

S AT U R D AY

Desired soulmate: A certain Dean of Yale College (hint: not Pollard) who announced his or her (hint: her) intention to step down at the end of the academic year. It will be our last chance to possess the heart of our one true love (it’s an Aztec thing). Time for a little grand strategizing.

Desired soulmate: A Yale Law School Student

THURSDAY

2/12

Notes

Notes

FRIDAY

WEDNESDAY

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

2/12

THURSDAY

Bury Colin Quietly. And then, flowers: You can never go wrong with roses!

THURSDAY

2/12

MONDAY

FRIDAY

THURSDAY

2/12

Break Into Colin’s Room: He has to go to work sometime, right? It’s a perfect time to try on all his clothes and blow kisses to yourself in the mirror!

Put Your Best Foot Forward: It might sound cliché, but you really do have to love yourself before anyone else can be in love with you, so don’t be afraid to spend some time on you!

Get that new blouse you’ve been thinking about, because Colin will totally think it’s cool, and he’ll probably want to go out

THURSDAY

2/12

Contact ANDREA VILLENA at andrea.villena@yale.edu .

Notes

WEDNESDAY

WEDNESDAY

S AT U R D AY F E B RUA RY 8

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

2/13

2/14

2/12 Leave a love memo in the pages of her Con Law textbook. Rhapsodize on “Loving v. Virginia.”

(Yes, let’s call our gal Virginia.)

Love may be the universal language, but law is the language of power.

Ok, no luck yesterday, huh? Virginia thought your love letter was a submission to the Law Review, so now she’s handing it back all covered in red ink. Maybe it’s time for oral arguments. “Your Honor,” you say — standing up at Blue State, where she’s slumped across from you, slurping on her fourth iced chai — “I feel about you the way Justice Stewart felt about pornography: I know it when I see it.”

“Define your terms, buster. What is the ‘it’ here?” she attacks.

You get cold feet, so it’s time to look to a great YLS alum for inspiration. (Who knew the Clinton Global Initiative had a Romance project?)

“It depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is,” you counter. Oh, if only your philosophy TA could hear you now!

Virginia graduated summa cum laude from Princeton. She doesn’t have patience for this bullshit. Plus, she’s taking a human rights seminar, so she’s feeling a lot of empathy at the moment.

“You’re into me, eh?”

YOU LIGHT UP MY LIFE: A SEMINAR ON LIGHTING DESIGN

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

“TBA” // 2 p.m.

Baby like nobody else?

You have an 8 o’clock reservation at Ibiza. My guess is, she’s paying.

Hey Arnold!

We’re rooting for Helga Pataki.

PAGE B8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COVER

CAN WE WEDNESDAY WITHOUT IT? Yale and Toad's Legal History Timeline 1978 Toad's and Yale sign the Revocable License Agreement

1975 Toad's Place opens as a restaurant

1979 Bruce Springsteen

1985 Toad’s purchases the 300 York St. location

1980 Billy Joel

2013 Yale files most recent lawsuit

2004 Kanye West

1992 Johnny Cash

1989 The Rolling Stones

2010 Yale files first complaint for trespassing

1995 Phelps becomes owner of Toad’s

1997 Joan Jett

1990 Bob Dylan

Notable Acts at Toad’s four years at Yale.

“I went to every Woad’s last semester,” Lin admitted.

According to Gilbert, “people just fall into this sort of loyalty” to the institution. Berenson added that “Toad’s is important to the culture of New Haven … it’s a Yale staple.”

The three seniors know the concert scene has dwindled. They know that the place gets pretty rowdy. Still, they don’t care — “We go there to dance.”

With the outcome of the lawsuit — and Toad’s continued presence on York Street — still up in the air, some students find it hard to entertain the notion of a Toad’s-less New Haven.

For Thomas Aviles ’16, the possibility of Toad’s’ absence seems unfathomable. “It’s iconic,” he said.

“You can love it, hate it or not really care, but you can’t deny it’s a formidable presence on campus.”

Phelps plans to enlist the help of students like Aviles in ensuring that his club remains on York Street.

Arvind Mohan ’14, who has served as the Toad’s’ campus ambassador since his sophomore year, controls the nightclub’s social media presence and reaches out to campus groups about renting the space. He is currently working with Phelps to organize a student letter writing campaign for Toad’s to present to the administration.

“The goal,” Mohan said, “would be to raise awareness that students do in fact support Toad’s’ place on campus.”

TOADS FROM PAGE 3 and Saturdays, Phelps shook his head. “It’s a secret,” he said. “I can’t tell you.” He’d been chatting and laughing just a few minutes before, but then he grew terse and said, “if I do the wrong thing at the wrong time, they would shut me down in a heartbeat.” It’s a comment that suggests a long-standing relationship of sorts between Toad’s and Yale. But even in spite of this apparent “partnership,” Yale and Toad’s have been engaged in multiple disputes, even apart from the current lawsuit, for decades.

Yale and Toad’s first went head to head in 1985. Spoerndle and Phelps had leased the 300 York St. location from the Kligerman family, and when “Old Man Kligerman” died, Toad’s was put on the market. Both the University and Spoerndle made competing bids on the building, appraised at a value of $1 million. Although Toad’s offered well under the appraisal at $800,000, Yale offered $1.3 million.

Nevertheless, due to a rights of first refusal clause in the lease, the family gave Spoerndle and Phelps 30 days to come up with the difference. They did.

Today’s lawsuit, almost thirty years since this episode, signals what Phelps believes is Yale’s desire to “control” real estate in downtown New Haven. Suing Toad’s, he said, is just another part of this “grandiose scheme.”

But according to Douglas Rae, a professor at the Yale School of Management, Toad’s is just one of several business properties that Yale’s Vice President for New Haven and State Affairs and Campus Development Bruce Alexander ’65 has been “assertive” with in his tenure.

He added that Alexander, a senior executive at the Rouse Company for 25 years, has been more vigilant in assessing the loss of property value and rights than those before him.

“My impression is that he’s guarding the University’s legal interests,” Rae said. “I certainly don’t think he’s behaved in any way badly — he may be a little tougher and sharper than his predecessors, but I don’t think that he’s been out of line at all.”

Since the 1980s, Yale has sought to reform nightlife culture in the areas surrounding campus. Following the real estate crisis of the late ’80s, the University bought storefronts along Chapel Street and Broadway — two of the most trafficked streets in New Haven. When Richard Levin became president of Yale in 1993, the administration tried to revamp the Shops at Yale, the retail district near campus.

The University sought to eliminate so-called “bottom-end establishments,” Rae said. Yale gained nearly complete control of the real estate along Chapel and Broadway by the mid-1990s and, according to Rae, was largely successful in “changing the culture” in these areas. Indeed, whereas 1 Broadway used to be a “horrendous bar where people would be thrown out the windows every once in a while,” the street is now home to the likes of J. Crew and Jack Wills.

And while changes like this have been viewed, on the whole, as positive, Phelps has no interest in seeing his institution reformed along similar lines. According to Phelps, Toad’s occupies arguably the most secure nightlife space for Yalies. Unlike spots

S AT U R D AY F E B RUA RY 8

***

like Box 63 and Elevate, Phelps believes that his institution caters to Yale students of all ages and keeps them safe while doing so.

“They can have a couple of drinks and be sloppy, but they don’t have to worry about being hurt,” Phelps said.

“People feel good about this place — we watch over Yale students, and I think that’s really important.” *** For Alex Fisher ’14, Phelps’s belief that Yale students “feel good about this place” is a stretch. With the increasing influx of Quinnipiac students on Yale’s campus each Saturday, Fisher believes Toad’s has left Yale in a less-than-desirable state.

In a Yale Daily News op-ed on Nov. 16, 2011, Fisher accused Quinnipiac students of “creating scenes of squalor.” “Perhaps we ought to send a garbage truck filled with trash, vomit and urine and deposit it outside a Quinnipiac dormitory; this would serve only as minor recompense for what is done to our campus several times a week,” he wrote. Ultimately, for these reasons and the culture of Toad’s overall, he believes the club is “simply an unsafe environment to have in the middle of our University.”

Emma Poole ’17 expressed similar sentiments, noting that Toad’s caters to a warped sense of personal fulfillment. “It’s validation of the most primal kind — like, is the back of my body attractive to a random, heterosexual male?”

A belief that Toad’s is “a citadel of vulgarity,” as Fisher put it, reflects a similar doubt in the venue’s musical relevance. Many students today have trouble reconciling the bar’s illustrious past — The Rolling Stones in 1989, Bob Dylan in 1990, Dave Matthews Band in 1994 — with its current offerings, such as Aaron Carter and Snoop Lion. Of course, booking costs have skyrocketed, and Phelps admitted many big name bands “won’t even look at this place. You’ve got to catch them on the rise.”

Even Poppei, a 2001 graduate, remembered Toad’s as “definitely a place to see great artists, though it had been more so before.” She attended a Dar Williams show as an undergraduate and found the concert incredibly intimate. “I was only 10 or 15 feet away from the stage.” And Cooke, a Connecticut native who missed the legendary 1989 Rolling Stones concert by a matter of minutes, described a Johnny Cash performance three years later as “the best concert I’ve ever

seen. The acoustics were phenomenal, you know? It was a night I’ll never forget.”

Today, Toad’s caters to a different set of concertgoers. Many recent Rap and Hip-Hop Grammy nominees have passed through the New Haven venue, including Drake in 2009 and Kanye West in 2004. But while Sophie Dillon ’17, a New Haven native, has attended numerous rap and hip-hop concerts at Toad’s, she still laments the paucity of quality acts.

“People who have never played an instrument before are playing on the same stage as The Rolling Stones,” she marveled.

According to Fisher, this perceived decline in Toad’s’ safety and musical offerings indicates that it’s time for Yale to step in more aggressively.

“Toad’s has demonstrated an unwillingness to acknowledge [Yale’s] basic right [to private property], which shows there is no basis for a productive relationship between the two,” he said.

“I think it’s very clearly time to move away from having a place like Toad’s in the heart of Yale’s campus.”

But Yalies like Lin, Berenson and Keilor Gilbert ’14 contend that views like Fisher’s are, for the most part, anomalous. All three cherish their memories of Toad’s, spanning almost

TRACKING SPECIFICITY: THE FLUCTUATIONS OF CINEMA

Contact JANE BALKOSKI and J.R. REED at jane.balkoski@yale.edu, jonathan.t.reed@ yale.edu .

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Ultimately, Phelps is confident in his nightclub’s chances in court.

From his office above the dance floor, he recalls the 2010 conflict between Yale and Bespoke, a restaurant on College Street. The two fought over a small slice of property in the alleyway, owned by Yale but used as a second entrance by the restauranteurs, Arturo Camacho and Suzette FrancoCamacho.

“After the trial, Bespoke was broke,” Phelps intones. While a state appeals court ruled in favor of Bespoke in their trial versus the University, the Camachos told the News in a January 2010 article that the high costs of structural adjustments and litigation forced the restaurant to close.

Phelps pauses for a moment, and pulls out photos of the legends that have sold out concerts on Toad’s’ stage. Joan Jett. Bon Jovi. The Barenaked Ladies. He rocks back and forth quietly in his chair, flipping through the thick albums. The fluorescent lights buzz. He holds a Dunkin Donuts styrofoam cup but doesn’t drink from it — after two hours of talking, the coffee has gone cold.

When asked if Toad’s could share the same fate as Bespoke, if the trial could leave him penniless, Phelps shakes his head. “No.” Behind him, Sterling Memorial Library looms ghostly and stately. It’s 10 p.m. on a quiet Tuesday night. The stacks shine bright. A student on the fourth floor peers down into the office.

“No,” Phelps repeats. “We see this as a fair fight.”

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND REELS

TRUTH-TELLING ISN’T ENOUGH // BY DAVID WHIPPLE

// ALLIE KRAUSE

David Fisher’s family reunions are unusual. Perhaps they’re even stranger than unusual – after all, how many people bond with their four siblings by taking them on a journey through Europe, searching for a sister rumored to have been separated at birth? Who, with their siblings in tow, retraces their father’s memoirs back to the camp where he labored during the Holocaust? And who, above all else, thinks it would be a good idea to bring along a camera?

But for David Fisher, everywhere is a good place for a camera. An Israeli documentary filmmaker, Fisher was brought on by Professors Charles Musser and John MacKay to teach the Yale Film Studies department’s documentary workshop this spring while Musser is on sabbatical. For students, this means class time with a respected, opinionated and experienced documentary filmmaker. *** A just-completed trio of films about his own family has won Fisher his most recent accolades. The final installment, “6 Million and One, ” was the occasion for the Fisher family’s most recent European adventure.

And while Fisher attests that making the film brought all involved closer together, the first moments of the trailer seem to call that into question.

“No one else would bring his siblings to this place,” complains Fisher’s sister Esti as they wander the tunnels their father dug in a camp at Gusen, Austria. “I can’t connect to this any more than I already have.”

Their brother Ronel lights a cigarette in the background. “I’m one big wound,” Esti continues, the whole group going silent as she fumes. But when Ronel jokes that Esti’s outburst will give the film’s viewers nightmares, Esti begins to laugh, and the tension evaporates.

Such revealing moments are no accident in Fisher’s filmmaking.

“As a psychologist, he’s very astute,” Andrey Tolstoy, a TA in Fisher’s documentary workshop, says.

Fisher sees things in footage and in people that others don’t: “He’ll start to point out [a subject’s] habits, they way they move their hands, the way they button their shirt: this is how a character is shaping the architecture of their world.”

Fisher, Tolstoy says, is always in control, a principle central to his filmmaking even when he’s with his family. To take on topics so delicate, and then to coax his subjects into addressing them for the camera, requires a rare grasp of what’s hap-

S AT U R D AY F E B RUA RY 8

pening in front of his lens. One has to wonder if Fisher was somehow ready for Esti’s outburst, maybe even before he even started filming.

“He’s both very sensitive and very persistent,” Musser says of Fisher’s ability to guide a documentary. “I find that in his teaching as well.” *** Fisher’s cameras have been rolling for a while now; his knack for finding powerful moments has been a lifetime in the making. “For as long as they can remember,” he says of his family, “I’ve been there with the camera.”

He often went to the movies with his grandmother as a young child, and recalls running up and down the aisles as a five-year-old, impatient for the film to start. In high school, Fisher’s love for the screen grew stronger, thanks in large part to his mother and grandmother letting him cut class on Fridays so he could make the hour-long trek to the nearest theater.

The son of two Holocaust survivors, Fisher grew to appreciate the power stories have to explain the struggles of one generation to the next, and he settled on film as his medium of choice. The urge to make documentaries, he says, came from his parents’ dedication to their communities, in particular his father’s loyalty to his fellow construction workers.

“The role of a documentary filmmaker is to bear civil responsibilities, starting with the neighborhood, or his family, or his city or town or his country— all of these were really important for me,” Fisher now says.

“I felt like I had a role,” one that combined his appreciation for the screen and for the power of stories with a sense of duty.

Fisher’s first film, “Mr. X,” was about Israeli secret agent Avrum Agam. Since then, the prolific director’s 13 films have arced from documentaries about the Israeli-Arab divide and Israeli history towards more personal material, including the three films about his family. Yet Fisher says the same drive underlies all his work: the desire “to research and investigate issues which others will not put their hands on, and really to shed light on hidden corners of our society.”

Perhaps the hinge of Fisher’s career was his film “Buried Alive.”

Coming on the heels of a series of historical and political films, “Buried Alive” inaugurated Fisher’s style of using a single subject to implicitly

take on a larger issue. In the film, an Israeli woman whose husband disappeared 20 years prior is prevented, under religious law, from seeking a divorce.

Fisher sets out after the truth of the man’s disappearance, and uncovers two contradictory stories: a court tells Fisher that the man has fled Israel after accusations of working for the anti-Israel Arab Front, but the missing husband’s friends and lawyers all claim that he was in fact working abroad for the Mossad, the Israeli special forces. Fisher couldn’t find an answer, and the film closes without resolution.

uations.

Tolstoy, his TA, points to Fisher’s meticulous attention to detail. “A lot of things are more intentional than you think they are,” he says. In other words, the image we get from Fisher has more fingerprints on it than we might think.

Those in his class say Fisher’s philosophy comes across in his teaching. He’s known to devote twenty or thirty minute chunks of his threehour seminar to a single student at a time, while the others look on.

Fisher “pushes you farther into your subject and makes you think about it on a deeper level,” says

MOST OF YOUR SUBMISSIONS WILL BE REJECTED. DAVID FISHER

After the final product was released, Fisher recalls, he got a call from an ex-Mossad agent who gave him a lead—where to go in Amsterdam to find information. That turned out to be all he needed to confirm that the woman’s missing husband had indeed been working for the Mossad.

Fisher returned to Israel, where his discovery helped the woman secure a divorce.

A story like that, Fisher believes, exemplifies the power of a documentary to reveal a problem and catalyze a solution – “to help even one single soul have a peaceful night.” *** But truth-telling alone isn’t enough: Fisher demands a certain artistry from documentaries. The director of a documentary, he says, bears as much responsibility as the director of a fiction.

“You have to have your fingerprints in whatever piece of art you’re making.” Fisher says. “[A documentary] has to do with filmmaking. It has to do with image, sound, and the richness of different ways to tell a story. It is another milestone in the history of art, not just a reflection of reality. But when it does them both, importance and artistic form, it is at its best.”

It’s Fisher’s ability to leave fingerprints on his work, to create scenes rather than simply observe them, that sets him apart. Much of the warm response to “6 Million and One” centers on Fisher’s ability to tell a story as he thinks it should be told, to inflect the on-screen happenings with levity even in dark sit-

Camille Chambers ’14, a senior in the class. “He makes you think harder than you would have on your own.”

Fisher asks questions that students wouldn’t know to ask, sometimes so relentlessly that his questioning verges on “interrogation,” according to Tolstoy, but in doing so he prods students to take new ownership of their films. The hope, Fisher says, is that his interrogations will help students understand the nature of a documentary director’s work.

“Bottom line, making a documentary is creating a world. It’s not there naturally for you to take, to pick,” he explains. “It’s for you to choose, to select, to work for and to promote out of your best understanding of the world. If you understand that it has to be directed, then you understand your role as a filmmaker.”

As Fisher encourages students to critique their own work, he offers his own advice picked up over years making documentaries. The more practical bent to the class stands out to those who come in contact with it: Fisher works with students on how to conduct interviews and how set up the opening minutes of a film.

Charles Musser, who usually teaches the class but is on sabbatical this semester, says the ability to give that kind of advice is why “it’s important that active filmmakers be teaching filmmaking,” especially in a class where “the overwhelming number” of students are working on documentaries as seniors projects and plan on going into film or a related field.

“The teacher of this class acts as

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A spiritual journey.

an executive producer” for students’ films, Musser elaborates, helping focus and foster creativity.

That role is one in which Fisher has experience. In 2008, Fisher concluded a nine-year tenure as head of the New Israeli Foundation for Cinema and Television, an organization promotes documentary and other filmmaking in Israel. As director of the foundation, Fisher was involved in the production of critically acclaimed films like “Waltz With Bashir,” an animated documentary about the 1982 Lebanon war.

He also helped establish the Greenhouse project, a then-controversial but now successful effort to bring together young Arab and Israeli filmmakers.

Fisher says it’s important for established figures like himself to help others break in to the imposing insider’s circle of the film industry.

It feels “like a closed club, something that you will not be able to penetrate,” Fisher explains. “I wanted to make sure when I was the head of the Foundation that every young filmmaker has an equal opportunity to take part.”

That drive to open up the “closed club” is another unique aspect of his class at Yale. He’s made students practice their pitches, and has spent time on how specifically to deal with the National Endowment for the Humanities, from whom he won a grant in 2012. Fisher has also leveraged his industry connections to his students’ benefit, bringing in notable filmmakers like Alan Berliner— “an artist in soul,” Fisher says—and Lois Vossen, the producer of PBS’s “Independent Lens,” a series featuring independent documentaries.

Vossen will guest teach a seminar on how to break into the industry on February 7th.

But no matter how many luminaries Fisher brings to class, and no matter how much guidance Fisher provides, he maintains that the fate of students’ films lies in their own hands.

“Most of your submissions will be rejected,” he says, “but you have to fight for your place. You have to have your own way to tell stories. One who doesn’t have long, white nights where he finds himself at four, five, or six AM finishing an edit shift, will not make films. It’s not for people who think, ‘it will be made anyhow.’

You must fight for your film.”

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

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COLUMNS

THE ROOT OF THE MATTER // BY ELEANOR MICHOTTE

Columns like this one usually have a format. They tend to go: funny anecdote; expand on anecdote; serious moral musings; bite-sized takeaway.

This week, let’s scrap all that and get right down to the bite-sized lessons, because I have two, and you should listen up.

Lesson number one: Karma exists.

Remember this, if you are ever tempted to put off planning something special for your two-year anniversary until the half hour before you meet up with your loved one.

Lesson number two: Make sure you have proper dental insurance. The Yale Health Plan does not cover you. This is not a drill. Do it right now.

Here is what will happen if you do not follow these lessons. First, you will scramble to find transportable food for the last minute picnic that you have half an hour to assemble in order to prove your significant other that you, too, are capable of romantic gestures.

Sushi! you will think triumphantly, as you send time-buying texts like “Could

ELEANOR MICHOTTE CRIT FROM THE BRIT you please look to see if I have lost an earring anywhere in your entryway?”

Next, you will tear down York Street flailing wildly. Meanwhile, deep in the shadows, Karma is starting to flex her muscles.

An hour later, as you and your beau romantically feed each other wilted fish, you will suddenly have the daunting realization that Sushi on Chapel cuts its New York rolls into giant, fistsized pieces. To avoid dribbling rice down your shirt, you will try to eat these in one bite. Hubris! In so doing, you will inadvertently tear open the half-healed incision over what used to be your wisdom teeth. You will wake up the next day with a face the width of a basket-

A Glass of Cab to Keep Away the Cold

ball, gently oozing. Karma: 1; You: 0.

If you’ve already followed lesson two, at this point you can pass go and collect $200. If, however, you have foolishly assumed that the Yale Health Plan will pay to fix a gaping hole in your mouth, you are in trouble. At this point — because this is how Karma works — it will definitely be a Saturday. So, you will reluctantly drag yourself to Acute Care, where, after a four hour wait spent watching a documentary on the History Channel about toilets, a physician will literally Google your symptoms and then give you an antibiotic recommended by the internet. A week later, another doctor will tell you that the medication you have been given is actually intended for gastro-intestinal infections, and that you must pay out of pocket to see an oral surgeon immediately. Karma: 5; you: 0.

At this point, you may realize Karma has it in for you, and start doing good deeds to try to change her mind. Apparently working at the soup kitchen is not enough: your cheek will con-

tinue to fester. You might have job interviews; when you go to them, and smile at recruiters, they will ask if you need a second to finish your mouthful before you start the interview. A friend, alarmed by the radical asymmetry of your face, will force you to consult Yelp for an oral surgeon.

This is how, at 8 a.m. on a Friday morning, you will find yourself 20 minutes up Whalley Avenue, in a building between a car parts wholesaler and a desolate wasteland of broken paving stones. You will feel nervous. The waiting room you are sitting in may in fact go so far as to display a plaque saying “Voted New Haven’s 12th best oral surgeon in 2009.” Strangely enough, this will not make you feel much better. The oral surgeon will then pull a scalpel out of a drawer of what seems to be a desk purloined from a Vandy dorm room. His syringes wait in a pen pot. The radio is playing the Spice Girls. He will ask if you need to call your parents. He will ask, no joke, if you folks have phones in England. Karma: 10; you: -1.

You think I’m exaggerating. But this would be a good moment to go put all your loved one’s birthdays (and any anniversaries) into your iCal, because, believe it or not, every word of this has actually happened to me over the past two weeks. So be nice to people — and, if you don’t plan to — get full dental insurance. I’m serious. Otherwise, this really and truly will happen.

The story ends where all regrettable actions do: in the neon corridors of Yale New Haven. There, if you, like me, haven’t treated others quite as you might like to be treated, Karma will make sure you are given an X-ray by a doctor with unbelievably long finger hair. When you look at who’s next to you, you will, no joke, see a convict in beige scrubs handcuffed to the machine, flanked by two particularly no-nonsense members of the NHPD. The two of you will catch each other’s eyes. Karma, you’ll both think.

Contact ELEANOR MICHOTTE at eleanor.michotte@yale.edu .

A Wild Injustice // BY SCOTT STERN

// BY BRYCE WIATRAK There are few things I enjoy more during these winter months than sitting next to my nonfunctioning fireplace and savoring a big glass of robust red wine. And for me, no wine screams snowy weather more than Cabernet Sauvignon. The driving force behind Bordeaux’s best, the king of Napa Valley, Cab reigns supreme, producing arguably the most complex, expressive (and expensive) wines in the world.

Cabernet Sauvignon in particular has extraordinary aging potential: The greatest Bordeaux evolve beautifully in the bottle for decades and decades after the grapes are harvested. When drunk young, Cab has a reputation for tasting a bit “tight,” meaning its flavors seem compacted or closed-off. One easy way to combat this problem is through aeration, a process that exposes the wine to oxygen, also known as allowing the wine to “breathe.” Aerating is easy and literally begins the second you uncork (or unscrew) the bottle. I will often pour red wine into a decanter — a special vase for wine — to reveal more surface area and speed things up. Decanters come in all shapes and sizes — some are truly works of art — and can add extra flair to the table next time you host a wine night. But if you’re a chronic procrastinator, a nifty (albeit somewhat controversial) device called an aerator will get the job done on the spot. Since I only have one decanter and two Cabs, tonight I’m using my Soirée aerator, a round glass bulb with spiky indentations that attaches to the end of the bottle, softening the wine as you pour.

This evening, my friends and I are starting off with a bottle of Bordeaux before enjoying some Napa Cab. Situated on the southwestern French coast, Bordeaux is France’s largest wine region.

Its chateaux collectively produce more than 700 million bottles a year, ranging from historically and internationally celebrated first-growths to foodfriendly table wines. Whereas its rival region Burgundy creates single-varietal, hyper-terroir driven wines, Bordeaux firmly believes the greatest wines are created through blending a combination of five different grapes: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec. The Gironde River divides Bordeaux into the right and left banks. Traditionally, a left-bank Bordeaux will be primarily composed of Cabernet Sauvignon, while a right-bank will feature more Merlot. Although supplying a very similar flavor profile to Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot is often described as rounder and more velvety.

Nevertheless, even wine experts have difficulty differentiating between Cab and Merlot in blind tastings. Cab Franc, the third most important varietal, notably contributes violet and spice notes.

S U N D AY F E B RUA RY 9

BRYCE WIATRAK WINESDAY But, despite being from the leftbank, the Château Hanteillan 2010 I’m sampling has a pretty even split between Cab and Merlot. 2010 has been revered as one of the greatest vintages of all time for Bordeaux, and this bottle does not disappoint. A silky, luxurious Bordeaux, the Château Hanteillan exhibits a bouquet of blackberries and mocha, paving the way for an earthy experience on the palate. This wine will taste great today or after a few years in the cellar.

The saying goes that “Cab is King” in Napa Valley. The most widely planted red grape in California, Cabernet Sauvignon is responsible for bringing international acclaim to the American wine industry. Napa winemakers will often make Bordeaux-style blends with California grapes, sometimes titled “Meritage,” but are more likely to offer a single-varietal wine. That said, American law states that for a wine to be labeled as a varietal, only 75% of the wine must be that grape. So, a lot of California Cabs are secretly blends as well. The Aviary Vineyards “Cabernet Sauvignon” 2011 that I’m drinking tonight is indeed 88% Cab, with hint of Merlot and Petite Sirah. In the Napa fashion, this Cab is more succulent and masculine than the Bordeaux. The wine boasts aromas of plum, currant, tobacco and pepper on the nose, all of which carry to taste. A powerful and classic California Cabernet, the wine demonstrates a long, lush finish.

So when you buy your valentine a box of chocolates next Friday, consider picking up a bottle of Cab to go along. The traditional rule for pairing with dessert is never to have the food be sweeter than the wine. Doing so will cause the wine to taste unpleasantly bitter, even if that truly isn’t the case. Cab drinks beautifully alongside dark chocolate, and together they can provide all the right ingredients for a decadent and romantic Valentine’s Day for you and that special someone — or to warm you up during any chilly night in with your besties.

Both the Château Hanteillan 2010 (Haut-Médoc, Bordeaux) $21 and the Aviary Vineyards “Cabernet Sauvignon” 2011 (Napa Valley, California) $20 are available for purchase at The Wine Thief (181 Crown St., New Haven).

Contact BRYCE WIATRAK at bryce.wiatrak@yale.edu .

To many modern readers, the death penalty may seem permanent — in more ways than one.

Capital punishment is so ingrained in our national cowboy culture that it may be hard to imagine that just over four decades ago the Supreme Court announced that the death penalty, as practiced at the time, was unconstitutional. That epic decision, Furman v. Georgia, and the case overturning it just four years later, Gregg v. Georgia, are chronicled at great length in Evan Mandery’s new book, “A Wild Justice: The Death and Resurrection of Capital Punishment in America.” Mandery, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, smartly chronicles the legal battles over the death penalty from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s.

Mandery writes his tale with all the storytelling verve of a true crime journalist and all the fairness of a blind naked woman holding a scale.

The story begins with two unlikely heroes: a young Supreme Court justice and a younger law clerk. Justice Arthur Goldberg — now essentially forgotten by history — was brand new, and one day in 1962 he approached his new clerk, Alan Dershowitz (later a supremely influential Harvard law professor), with a daring proposal. Goldberg asked Dershowitz to research the possible justifications for eliminating the sentence of death. At the time, only the most radical academics, and strikingly few in the public at large, openly advocated the end of the death penalty. Nevertheless, Dershowitz got down to work.

SINCE 1976, MORE THAN 1,300 PEOPLE HAVE BEEN EXECUTED. Dershowitz and Goldberg’s eventual report focused on the supremely racist elements of the death penalty: At every stage, from arrest to arraignment to conviction to sentencing, defendants of color were more likely to face death than white defendants. Meanwhile, a case in which a rapist was challenging his sentence of death had worked its way to the Justices’ door. The Supreme Court decided not to hear the case, and Goldberg was furious. He was poised to issue a scathing dissent, criticizing the court for its refusal, but Chief

SCOTT STERN READING BETWEEN THE LINES Justice Earl Warren convinced him to release a far narrower dissent, merely criticizing the death penalty as excessive for rapists. Warren later regretted his lobbying.

Nevertheless, Dershowitz’s and Goldberg’s report found its way to the offices of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), and the civil rights organization launched a full-fledged attack on capital punishment. LDF, the nation’s “top law firm,” contracted the services of Anthony Amsterdam, America’s “top lawyer” (in Mandery’s eyes), who fought passionately against the death penalty for the next decade. As Mandery documents in sometimes painful detail, LDF decided to attack the death penalty in the nation’s highest court, in doing so, attempting to halt every single death sentence in the country.

In 1973, with more than 700 individuals on death row, the Supreme Court announced Furman v. Georgia, a doozy: By a vote of 5-4, the Court created a de facto moratorium on the death penalty.

This was a stunning victory for LDF and other death penalty abolitionists, but it was oddly stunted.

Chief Justice Warren Burger craftily defied any precedent and directed each of the nine justices to write his own opinion on the case (rather than just the customary single majority and minority opinions). Because of this tactical ploy, no distinct rationale emerged.

In order to win the case, LDF had decided to downplay the racial element of their argument and instead focus on the shaky assertion that the nation had an increasing distaste for the punishment of death.

The only consistency among the justices in the majority was that the death penalty was unconstitutional because it was inconsistently applied. Yet, as Chief Justice Burger mean-spiritedly suggested in his dissent, one way to more consistently apply it was to apply it more frequently and with less discrimination or sympathy.

In response, states began passing new, harsher death penalty laws in rapid succession. In 1976, the Supreme Court upheld Georgia’s new law in Gregg v. Geor-

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

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gia. This time, Amsterdam’s arguments didn’t work. Robert Bork, later a failed Supreme Court nominee, successfully painted Amsterdam as against the death penalty under all circumstances, and the justices appeared to dismiss such an extremist.

The central tension of the 1976 case came down to a question of discrimination. It was nearly indisputable that the death penalty was racist, but many, including Bork and the justices, pointed out that so many facets of the criminal justice system were racist (i.e., who is arrested, who is charged, who is convicted) that by this logic, the entire system would have to be dismantled. Amsterdam replied that death, as opposed to any other form of punishment, was simply different — “irremediable,” as he powerfully put it. The justices didn’t buy it.

Since 1976, more than 1,300 people have been executed.

Sadly, Mandery’s book does not continue past 1976. The death penalty has admittedly been whittled down since then — rapists, the mentally retarded and minors can no longer be executed. Yet the U.S. remains virtually alone in its maintenance of capital punishment, and the public still supports it. Mandery’s book is somewhat limited in its narrow temporal scope. Nonetheless, at 534 pages, and with some admittedly tedious chapters — such as the one on the conflicting statistics regarding whether the death penalty serves as a deterrent (inconclusive) — the book may be long enough. It will surely remain the definitive account of death penalty litigation of the 1960s and 1970s.

Following Mandery’s conclusion, he includes an epilogue exploring what could have been.

With tragic thoroughness, Mandery demonstrates how different so many things could have been: So many justices later changed their minds and repudiated the “machinery of death” — perhaps they could have done so earlier; a different, less national strategy could have served LDF better; an earlier case could have been heard by a more liberal court. Mandery’s opposition to the death penalty leaks out, yet he remains fair.

Regardless of your opinion, “A Wild Justice” is a pulse-quickening and heartbreaking read.

Sailor Moon

Fighting evil by moonlight, winning love by daylight. Let’s be real: Serena was our real role model growing up.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND THEATER

STAGING NEUROSIS // BY ANDREW KOENIG

// T. CHARLES ERICKSON

The Yale School of Drama has undertaken an ambitious project: a production of Henrik Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler.”

Directed by Katherine McGerr, the play may not seem ambitious at first. An uncontested cornerstone of the repertory, “Hedda Gabler” has been interpreted and reinterpreted so many times that it comes to us seemingly ready-made, as if there were a right way to put it on. However, the play has influenced so much subsequent theater that many of its motifs feel well worn, its movements familiar.

“Hedda Gabler” tells the tale of a bored housewife whose husband channels his sexual energy into the annals of scholarship, leaving the titular character dissatisfied. (By a kind stroke of comic fate the production has been put on at the University Theater.) Alcoholism, mortgages, petty professional ambitions, marital discontent, boredom — these are the issues at the heart of Ibsen’s play.

“Hedda Gabler”’s canonical status and familiarity, then, bur-

den the director with two duties: He must neither mar the classic of realist drama with fussy staging, nor fall into the trap of staleness. The production takes some clever steps toward countering the latter tendency, starting with a translation by School of Drama faculty member Paul Walsh, which preserves the memorable astringency of Ibsen’s dialogue.

The nervous energy is sharpened by the inclusion of restless and discordant piano pieces that put the audience on edge. Lighting, too, is used to particularly good effect — in the first half, Hedda, an emotionally-starved, high-class neurasthenic, asks, “Can you close the curtains?

That’ll give us a softer light.”

We sit in the softened evening light of Valium and neuroses, of harsh words and recriminations.

Later Hedda lights a match and waits for it to burn her finger until she suddenly puts it out.

Afraid to singe herself, she opts instead to burn others. Clasping her rival, Thea, in her arms, she laughs and says, “I think I must burn your hair off, after all.” The words stand out with a harsh

clarity, and in its best moments the production does not obscure that light.

Much of the time, however, it treads too lightly. The director delivers Ibsen to us with great caution: inconspicuous set design, period costumes, conventional mise-en-scène. The actors too seem as if they are dusting off a text rather than living and breathing it. Other than Ashton Heyl DRA ’14, who plays Hedda, the actors don’t dare fully humanize the bourgeois wrecks of men and women they play — they give us expansive gestures, prepared chortles and knowing looks, but they do not give us life. This might not be entirely their fault. Hedda outshines the others partly because Heyl inhabits her role more fully, and partly because Ibsen’s heroine consumed his play, burning up everything in her path.

Nor is the conservative bent of the production without its merits. It forces us to use our ears far more than we are used to doing.

The direction does not flail its arms but rather leaves one with nothing to do but overhear long,

drawn-out conversations and quarrels. The relations between the characters slowly take shape, so that the minor disturbances in the domestic order that come in the second half provoke strong audience reactions. A fired pistol, a swilled flask of gin, a raised voice assume awful power after an hour and a half of subdued conversation in rooms full of leather sofas and oak bureaus.

The production is finest when it rides these subtle ripples of disturbance — Heyl’s eyes flashing as Hedda burns something up; her occasional dissociation into another self as she speaks, one identity dissolving, another suddenly flaring up and flaming out; the moment Loveborg says those terrible lines: “On the fjord there is cool sea-water at any rate — let them drift upon it — drift with the current and the wind. And then presently they will sink — deeper and deeper — as shall I.” In these finer moments, the audience sinks along with him.

Contact ANDREW KOENIG at andrew.koenig@yale.edu .

On Belonging and the Dust Bowl

Back in Russia

// BY ISABELLE TAFT

// BY CAROLINE WRAY

According to Leo Tolstoy, all great literature is one of two stories: a stranger comes to town or a man goes on a journey. “Dust Can’t Kill Me,” an original musical production with book written

by Abigail Carney ’15 and folk-country score by Elliah Heifetz ’15, is both. It even includes a third type of story: people trying and failing to be happy with stasis. Like any good musical, the show is laden with great songs and fun choreography, but the play is dark and a bit spooky. And although firmly rooted in a specific moment in America’s past, the Dust Bowl, it delivers commentary on the human experience that feels relevant to our own time.

“Dust Can’t Kill Me” begins with the seven-person cast frozen in dim light on the stage, familiar black-and-white photos of Depression-era suffering flashing in the background.

The set is spare and evocative of lean times: A wooden windmill stands tall against a crinkly white backdrop, wooden crates are scattered across the stage and an elegant mahogany dining chair reminds us that before the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, Americans were living large. Dust has covered those days, but the memory of better times lingers.

A spotlight shines on Paul Hinkes ’15, playing Jack Omaha, a drifter who serves as the play’s narrator, travelling the region performing folk songs. “These were Biblical times,” Omaha says, priming the audience for the show’s supernatural elements before introducing the main characters: sisters Angelina (Lily Shoretz ’16) and Lily (Alyssa Miller ’16), twin brothers Abraham (Chris Camp ’16) and Birch (Nathan Kohrman ’15), an outlaw named

Wesley (Jamie Bogyo ’15) and himself, going by the name of Montgomery for most of the play. Angelina is husbandless, pregnant and fearful for the future, while Lily is a hardworking dreamer who loves her sister but longs to leave the farm.

Birch and Abraham fought in World War I, worked in a steel factory, owned a peanut farm that eventually failed, rode the rails and opened another farm, which also failed. Now they mostly sit around singing about the virtues of bachelorhood.

And then the stranger comes to town.

Kendrick Kirk ’16 is fantastically creepy as The Prophet, a Mansonesque character dressed in dirty white pants, an orange jacket and shiny loafers. With greasy hair and a leering grin, he resembles a particularly unwholesome Bible salesman — but instead of little orange New Testaments, The Prophet bears the promise of “a place with no hunger and no pain.” The characters all so down on their luck and eager to escape from their dusty surroundings that they agree to follow his instructions to arrive at paradise through the desert.

But inside the desert, The Prophet is nowhere to be found. Traveling in pairs, the explorers are sweaty, lost and doubtful of the existence of the paradise. After meeting as instructed at “the Larkspur,” which turns out to be a brothel and honky-tonk bar, they give up on finding the promised land and decide to have a round of drinks. No one seems too torn up about another crushed dream, an excuse to take a shot. Then Wesley arrives, insisting that they ought to continue. In one of the most show-stopping numbers of the play, “Oh, Raphael,” the entire cast calls on the Catholic saint known for helping travelers through dangerous

journeys, and the group decides to continue the journey. Every actor but Kendrick, who doesn’t have a singing part, is in an a cappella group, and each voice is distinctly beautiful. Heifetz’s lyrics are poetic and atmospheric, with touches of humor to lighten the mood. The music itself, performed live by two violinists, a cellist, a guitarist, a keyboardist and a bassist, is impressively diverse. “Adeline,” sung by Angelina to her unborn child, is soft and haunting, while “Talkin’ Twin Bachelor Blues,” performed by Montgomery, Abraham and Birch, is bouncy, energetic and fun. The unity of plot and musical numbers stems from the fully collaborative nature of the project; while Carney was writing the book last summer, she’d email pages to Heifetz so that he could write the songs.

We find the play’s third story in the second act. Here, there are no strangers, no journeys — only confusion and doubt about whether life itself is even worth fighting for. It is this story that is the most relatable and, given our tendency to romanticize this era and mentally distance ourselves from it, the most surprising. “Dust Can’t Kill Me” is a ghost story, an atmospheric folk tale, a magic realist reimagining of the past. But the characters and their psychological struggles feel literally true. We won’t all go on epic journeys or be visited by mysterious strangers. But sooner or later, we’ll all wonder whether we are where we belong. “Dust Can’t Kill Me” proves that this story, so universal that it often goes unconsidered, is as dramatic and moving as any other.

Contact ISABELLE TAFT at isabelle.taft@yale.edu .

// KAMARIA GREENFIELD

S U N D AY F E B RUA RY 9

“Zhili byli.” This phrase, the traditional opening of a Russian fairytale, opens “The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls” by Meg Miroshnik. And, like the oftengruesome myths that follow, it promises no happy ending, no enchantment: “They lived, they were.”

Yet the show, for all its harsh, reality-striking sagas — including an “apartment whore” and three murders — is truly nothing short of magical.

As the play opens, a woman in what appeared to be a Russian dominatrix outfit reminds audience members to turn off their cell phones. She holds a cigarette, whose smoke drifts above the crowd.

Clad in over-the-knee boots and the tightest of crop tops, Masha (Sofia Akilova) appears onstage recounting the “fairytale” of her childhood. She lived alone in a one-bedroom shack with her single mother before escaping to wander in the “forest,” where “everything good — meaning everything bad — happened.” She recounts losing her virginity in a rough outdoor escapade, then encountering a threatening bear who agrees to keep her in his home as a girlfriend.

This opening begins the persistent thread of traditional Russian fairytales catered to the lives of Moscow women in 2005, and they all smack with the same dark humor. The content is startling at best and upsetting at worst, and ultimately accompanied by a twisted charm.

Annie (Emily Walton) is a 20-year-old American who is returning to the former Soviet Union (which she and her family left when she was a child) to improve her Russian, and finds a country where her guise as a “mature adult” is put to the test.

She stays with Auntie Yaroslava (Felicity Jones), a seemingly frail, old woman who simultaneously takes on the role of Baba Yaga, the traditional witch in Russian fairytales. Jones undoubtedly steals the show; each of the dozens of times that a question is asked and she audibly “ages a year,” she elicits laughter from the audience. Her semblance to a latter-day Baba Yaga is an intentional archetype, but Jones takes the archetype far off the page with masterful facial expressions and vocal undertones.

While coping with Yaroslava’s attempts to fatten her up (perhaps in order to later cook and consume her), Annie meets Masha and her friend, Katya

VIBRANT: A LOOK AT CONTEMPORARY LYRICISM

Gallery at Whitney Humanities Center // 4–7 p.m.

Maybe Rap Genius co-founder Mahbod Moghadam will be there.

(Celeste Arias, DRA ’16), a stunningly beautiful and intelligent, conniving woman who aims to both marry and become the daughter of a “tsar” — here manifested in her 50-year-old, designer handbag-purchasing CEO boyfriend. Later, she will meet their friend Nastya (Stéphanie Hayes), a jaded and tough prostitute who has already earned enough to purchase her own apartment. Each of these characters shares their dark fairytales with us, effectively portraying a complicated amalgam of humor, gravity, youth and harshness with apparent ease.

WE CAN’T HELP BUT ROOT FOR THEM THROUGH EVERY MISTAKE, EVERY FUNNY, TOUCHING AND OFTEN DISTURBRING TURN. The stage band, comprised of cast members who chant and bang on drums along with multicolored flashing lights, is a bold and creative choice. If nothing else, it is a wonderful showcase of lighting designer Bradley King’s talent. The memory of the shadow of the tassels swinging around Masha’s knees, projected onto the back of the set as she first meets Annie, is a subtle and beautiful choice which long outlasts the final bows.

The set, a masterpiece designed by Christopher Ash, provides an ideal complement to the apt lighting choices. From the artful trees and streetlamps to the intricacies of Yaroslava’s illuminated living room, it is an undeniably beautiful space.

The transitions are impressively undertaken, as the characters travel seamlessly from a living room to a hallway to a raging nightclub while each set maintains its unique intricacies.

As the young women begin to overcome their inner demons — dressed as bears and witches and princes — while navigating some impressive stilettos, the audience follows. We can’t help but root for them through every mistake, every funny, touching and often disturbing turn.

Contact CAROLINE WRAY at caroline.wray@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Cardcaptors

CARDCAPTORS OF THE CLOW EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED NOW!

PAGE B12

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BACKSTAGE

MAHBOD MOGHADAM: Yale’s Rap Genius // BY LARRY MILSTEIN

Q: How did you come up with the idea for Rap Genius?

A: I had recently lost my job [in 2009], and my friend Tom would build websites all the time. We were listening to Cam’ron and I was teaching him what the lines meant, and then he built the first version of the site. At first when it started it was us and six or seven of our friends, and it was just our favorite rap songs we were talking about. It was basically an art project. When we first asked what we could do with this idea, we said this could get a Master’s Tea with Naz or JayZ. Q: At what point did you think this was going to become big?

A: The main thing we didn’t know when we started was that “lyrics” is the most searched word in Google — there is literally no word that people are searching more on Google. (You’d think it would be sex or something, but there you go.)

And so we started to get traffic off of random stuff, like we put a remix of a new song that came out, and this song started to get more traffic than the whole rest of the site. And now we are coming to dominate all of lyric search. The only lyric search we don’t consistently win yet is for pop lyrics, and that’s fucking chill because we have a pop genius community that is burgeoning and they do dope explanations. If we can win all of the lyric searches of every genre, then we will be the biggest website of the world. And that’s only one fourth of what we want to accomplish.

Q: You are known to use some strong rhetoric when discussing Rap Genius, whether calling the site “the Talmud” or the “definitive pocket guide” for the Internet. Do you think these are accurate or are they just delusions of grandeur?

A: I haven’t seen this great of a format before. Any format for sharing human knowledge is going to be very successful. Wikipedia is the 7th biggest website in the world.

This is the reason Rap Genius is way better than Wikipedia. One thing is that you get fuller recognition; you get a profile that becomes part of your resume one day. If you are applying for a job, for a fashion job, they will ask what your fashion IQ is on Fashion Genius. If some day you want to become a priest,

the church you are trying to join is going to ask what your Bible IQ is.

With Wikipedia, you get no credit.

We’ve got every young, hot rapper having an account. Kendrick Lamar, Chance the Rapper, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, a lot of authors too.

Sheryl Sandberg wrote down one chapter of her book, Junot Diaz has one and Farhad Manjoo from the New York Times has an account.

Every writer will someday think that they need to be composing it on this genius platform; this is the new publication, the new way to turn a text into something visual.

The rapper Kendrick Lamar, he actually told me, “every line I was writing for this album, I asked myself, ‘What will Rap Genius have to say about this?’”

Q: When did you move onto other formats beyond rap songs?

A: We started putting rock lyrics and poems very early. Emily Dickinson’s “I’m Nobody, Who are You,” was the first poem on the site. And we started to put up a lot of Bible passages because they are alluded to in a lot of rap songs. But we always knew this was going to be the platform for everything.

The difficult challenge now is how to frame it and create separate communities.

Q: How has each of the different communities, whether music, publishing or fashion responded to your site?

A: Rap, we got a ton of support. One of our first investors and one of our first verified accounts to annotate his own lyrics was Naz. Odd Future was on board very early. In rock, we had Duran Duran and also Capital Cities. And in publishing, we wondered how we were going to do it and then decided to do the sample chapter through Amazon.

Surely, we thought, it was better to have the sample chapter annotated on Poetry Genius than it was on Amazon. And Sheryl Sandberg did.

She did an amazing job and her annotations are bomb.

Q: How does the act of annotating add value to the text being annotated?

A: The annotation makes sure that it is focused on a select number of words in the text. It is inherent in the medium that you are doing a close reading, a close reading is very important because it is

a lot easier to encounter someone bullshitting about a text globally. It’s a perfect marriage of close reading with the ADD generation’s craving for multimedia.

Q: How does Rap Genius curate annotations for quality?

A: Hundreds of thousands of people have written something on rap genius, but 20 percent of the users write 80 percent of the content. It is a small focused pool, and that is the only place we hire from. Thousands of volunteers put it as their job on Facebook. Editors are hand selected and they are way more powerful than the average user. And a super power editor is a moderator, which also has subsets.

And then there are the verified artists themselves.

Q: So Google and your site seem to have some “beef,” tell us about it.

A: It was more press than the site ever gotten, it’s insane. I can’t believe people were so into it. But it’s all good and the coolest thing that has happened recently is the launch of the app. If you think about it, this was the launch of Rap Genius. It was always meant to be an app. Sixty percent of tour traffic is mobile and eventually it will be 100 percent — computers will go the way of the dinosaur. Version 2.0 will allow celebrities to do annotations on mobile and allow celebrities only to do vine-style annotations from their phone.

Q: Has the app been successful?

A: In the week that it has been out, the numbers have exploded. The app is going to be pretty soon how people know Rap Genius. When aliens come down in a thousand years from now and they are using Rap Genius to analyze the extinct human race, they are going to think of it as that dope app, not a website. This is the real launch of Rap Genius.

Q: Did Yale help you achieve the success of Rap Genius in any way?

A: Yale Rap Genius nexus is critical.

The main ingredient that Yale and Rap Genius share is close reading.

I think of Harvard as a university where you learn to be very, very powerful and Princeton to be where you learn to wear boat shoes. But at Yale they teach you how to do

close reading. The person who is worshipped on campus is Harold Bloom, who is the father of close reading, so that’s why we came up with the integral feature. All the comments are close reading to the text and this is what makes this the “most Yaled-out website” out there.

Q: Do you have any memories from your time at Yale?

A: Vanderbilt had this attic before they renovated Old Campus, and Vanderbilt had this attic that was just like hotbox central. And it was a rave in there at all times. And when they renovated Old Campus, they built it without an attic, which was depressing but we had a huge party before they tore it down. All the art majors were up there and they had a party with black lights, highlighters and were doing the coolest fucking graffiti, trippy mushrooms all over the walls. I wrote about it in a poem, which is annotated on the site.

Q: You have had some very public falling outs with notable people such as Mark Zuckerberg and Warren Buffet. What happened?

A: I got this thing that I think is the greatest tool in all of human knowledge, like the Guttenberg 2.0.

I am just trying to bang on a pot in a kitchen, and I’m impatient that it’s not the biggest website in the world. I used to be of the mindset that I would do anything for attention, like rappers start beef, and everyone would see it as a joke.

But a lot of people took it seriously and it turned out that maybe it was correct to do at the time, but it is certainly not correct to do anymore. So I have renounced beef.

I alienated Mark Zuckerberg, who is one of my favorite people. He had been a huge supporter of the site, and before I messed around, he told us Rap Genius would be the next Facebook. I was obviously acting stupid, but that isn’t an excuse and I should’ve known better. I hope people could forgive.

Q: You recently had brain surgery, is your health all right now?

A: Yeah, I still got to be monitored, but it was an amazing learning experience and overall, you think getting brain surgery is the worst thing that could happen. But if I could snap my fingers right now, if I could have any job, I would trade being co-founder of Rap Genius for being a brain surgeon.

Surgery is the coolest fucking thing. It made me even hungrier for there to be a Medical Genius.

I had a benign brain tumor that was removed that I had since child birth. They say these things have a tendency make you more hyper and aggressive, and maybe having the brain tumor when I had it allowed me to be hyper and aggressive in a way that got attention for Rap Genius. But it was the ideal time in the history of Rap Genius to get this removed, it was time for me to button down and grow up.

Q: What’s next for Rap Genius?

A: One of our biggest plans is to have the capability for other websites to be Genius-powered.

So you will have the capability to go to New York Times, not on our website, but on NYTimes.com and there will be Genius annotations on their site. So the Times and WSJ will be Genius-powered.

It is definitely in the works and around 6 months away. The offsite annotation is the biggest thing of all, especially for News genius. In Europe, at least they admit that journalism is intertwined with Op-Ed. In the U.S., we have the myth of scientific journalism. And it has created a big, big problem.

We need to have an annotation platform so journalists can call out other journalists on their bullshit.

It is going to finally build that system that American journalism has always needed.

Contact LARRY MILSTEIN at larry.milstein@yale.edu .

“

THE MAIN INGREDIENT THAT YALE AND RAP GENIUS SHARE IS CLOSE READING.

“

W

hether he is claiming to invent “the Guttenberg 2.0” or telling Mark Zuckerberg to “suck his dick,” Rap Genius co-founder and Yale grad Mahbod Moghadam ’04 has a personality that is hard to miss. Rap Genius started as a hip-hop music site to explain rap lyrics, but after receiving 15 million dollars in venture capital, it has grown to be much more. Moghadam, along with Tom Lehman ’06 and Ilan Zechory ’06, came up with the website thinking it would not amount to much more than a coffee table book, but now have set their sights on becoming “the fabric of the Internet.” This December, Rap Genius catapulted into mainstream limelight after a very public falling out with Google, which led to Google deliberately burying Rap Genius search results. WEEKEND sat down with Moghadam to speak to him about the burgeoning Genius “empire,” his experience hotboxing in the Vanderbilt attic and his thoughts on aliens using apps.