After two weeks of too-much pizza and too-long nights in a hot boardroom, antecedent to the 30-hour-long saga of YDN elections (read: YaleDailyWaterworks), we emerge to you: your four servants in the duty of WEEKEND, your quartet of mischief, your foremen in the factory of Arts and Living at Yale.

We come to you fresh —but not too fresh— in the history of WEEKEND.

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If you’ve been here a year or two, you might remember the days when your weekly Arts and Living section was filled with things strange and mystical, things that pushed onto the boundaries of the unreal. There were dragons and sea monsters and brains stowed away in underground closets; slightly awkward editorials written “for those of you unsure of how to style the hair down there.”

But it eventually came time to bring things back to earth. Which is why, in September 2010, WEEKEND was born.

Our three editors and mentors were handed this tiny WEEKEND baby hardly past its gestation period. Or, as they put it, “We like to think that we took this piece of Play-Doh and filled our nostrils with its lemony scent and molded it into something really great, like a Godzilla-type thing, or an astronaut.”

Lauren, Austin and Gabriel molded and remolded this Doh-baby every week. We have to give them props for that. Because, they won’t be the last to say it, but they won’t be the first ones either: this job ain’t easy.

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You might have noticed an appreciable change in the atmosphere of these hallowed pages. Our three musketeers (aka the tilty triangle) did a few things differently. Theirs wasn’t the brandy-filled lounge of scene’s bygone days, in which the merits of Akkadian were discussed to a Dubstep bassline into the wee hours of Friday morning (final edits: pending). The tilty triangle was too busy building a new B-section to live up to the traditions of the Oldest College Daily.

You might have been there when the times got tough. Maybe Lauren asked you to pick up a Skinny Vanilla Latte from Starbucks some night; maybe you bowed in terror at yet another menacing message from Gabriel (“WHERE IS YOUR ARTICLE? WHERE IS IT.”). And Austin got a new edgy haircut this year.

But, if you were there through the tough times, then you were also there to witness the glory. You were there for the craft; the vision. And, with the help of Production & Design artisan extraordinaire Rachel, they crafted one damn sexy product.

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Together they gave us —Brenna, Nikita, Chase & Erin— one heck of an oven, and now it’s time we bake our cake. (Disclaimer: we intend to eat it too.)

This year, we want to fill our noses with the arts and the living of you, the students of Yale. We want to reaffirm this as a space for everyone. A WEEKEND reverberating with your melodic (or atonal) musings about what’s really happening out there in the world. We’re in this together, so you better speak up about what you’d like to be seeing, hearing and doing around here. Because the most important part of this whole shindig is enjoying the living. Live, enjoy, make art but gosh golly once and for all start enjoying the living!

We’re here to make it happen.