The Blogging Team is taking a hiatus to focus on Bulldog Days. Those of you who are on campus: huzzah! I hope you have fun and explore lots of what Yale has to offer. For those unable to join us, we're still happy to answer any questions you have about the Yale experience- contact us through the boards or private message and we're happy to help with anything.
Hope to meet a bunch of you in person over the next couple of days!
The range of guest speakers and special events I've had the privilege to see while at Yale are astounding, anywhere from children's songwriter Raffi (BANANAPHONE!!!!!) to a sociologist discussing why the popularity of zombie films has increased exponentially since the terror attacks of September 11th. But last night was something that again redefined my expectations: Memefactory, a lecture-parading-as-show about Internet Memes.
Advice Dog gives (sometimes dubious) life advice.
They describe themselves as "Internet Scientists, but only if the word scientist is in quotes, underlined, and with a couple of exclamation points with a 1 on the end." Three guys with five computers spread across three monitors give a rapid-paced show that takes the audience through 3 hours of famous memes and youtube footage crammed into a 90 minute session.
Biologist Richard Dawkins defines as meme as a unit of cultural transmission – in the general sense a meme can be any piece of information which travels between members of culture – the way the internet has co-opted it, however, memes involve funny pictures of cats and people doing silly dances.
This squirrel made national news for how it had invaded a couple's vacation photo. In something almost akin to social commentary about how something so trivial received such media attention, the internets proceeded to find more inappropriate places for the squirrel to pop up. But moreso than social commentary, they lol'd a lot. Crasher squirrel shows up at...
politically auspicious meetings,
great moments in history,
personal interviews,
and classical artworks of the western canon.
Half of it was pure entertainment- they keep you bouncing between screens with all the absurd mind candy the internet possibly has to offer, narrating it all with a razor-sharp wit juggled between the three performers. But then they also innocuously insert some social commentary in there, discussing how something as anonymous as the website 4chan has created so many broadly recognizable cultural constructs with absolute no traceability to an original creator, how businesses are increasingly capitalizing on this kind of viral trend to advertise themselves cheaply on the internet, and the real social consequences of anonymous and vicious heckling ("trolling") on the internet.
Check out a full-recording of one their live performances at NYU!
But at the same time, they don't take their work as self-proclaimed INTERNET "SCIENTISTS"!!1! too seriously, acknowledging that their job is to spend a lot of time perusing meaningless gibberish on the internet. I especially appreciated this kind of guest speaker as a break from the weightiness of academics- still learning cool stuff, but all for the lulz.
The Yale Men's Hockey team had an incredible season, and I got the chance to follow them every step of the way as Drum Major of the Yale Precision Marching Band. Though as a marching band our primary focus is on football season in the fall, we keep playing Pep Band style at sporting events throughout the spring, with Hockey as one of the favorites.
Yale Hockey is poetry. Brutal, violent poetry that slams people into glass walls.
So clearly, the only appropriate way to conduct a band at such an event is with an enormous battle axe.
But the whole experience of a home game with the hockey team and YPMB becomes so much more than that. We pump up the crowds to a fever pitch with our music, anything from Lady Gaga's Bad Romance to an amplified electric guitar solo backed up by an enormous brass band in our version of Smells Like Teen Spirit. Between songs, we keep the crowd going by leading enormous cheers ("You have knives on your feet... USE THEM!!") Words can't convey the level of adrenaline at these events.
Bangin', blowin', generally rocking out.
The band played at all the hockey home games this season and got funded by the Athletics Department to travel with the team to Worcester, Mass, to cheer on the team as they attempted to make history in the NCAA Playoffs. The team spent most of the season ranked around #5 nationally, and came out on top of the East Coast Athletic Conference Hockey League, scoring them a spot in the NCAA Playoffs.
We were a single game off from making the Frozen Four, but even going that far was an incredible experience. Sports aside for one moment, there's nothing quite like conducting your band in an arena nearly filling its 15,000 seat capacity, broadcast live over ESPN. My phone wouldn't stop buzzing with texts from friends on campus, relatives, people from home, gushing about how loud and powerful the band sounded on national TV.
Our hockey team had a particular penchant for extraordinary comebacks in the last second- my favorite example was the Senior Day game against Clarkson. After spending most of the game down 1-4, the Bulldogs had an unbelievable surge by scoring 3 goals in 51 seconds to force overtime and ultimately win 5-4. This video by Yale Athletics captures some of the absurdity of that game-- especially look out for the clip around 2:32-2:39, where Broc Little gets gleefully crushed in celebratory hugs by his entire team after his third goal in less than a minute tied it up. (Although, musicians may notice that they edited the footage a bit; what I'm conducting doesn't match up with the band's sound at all.)
Look out for the YPMB over Bulldog Days- we'll be playing at a ton of events, so you'll actually have a hard time not seeing us. I'll be out there in front conducting the band as we fill your lives with musical awesomeness.
Sometimes I like to pretend I know what I'm doing. This year I'm enrolled at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Yokohama, Japan, while supported by a Richard U. Light Fellowship from Yale.
Hope to meet a bunch of you in person over the next couple of days!
