Author Archives: Erin Vanderhoof

In my days of post-senior essay reverie, I’ve become the sort of TV-consuming monster I only dreamed of being back when I had real responsibility. I’d worked my way through countless current sitcoms when one day, I walked in on a housemate watching “Sex and the City” on his laptop, and walked out six hours later with the entire first season under my belt.

I give advice all of the time and never ever ever practice what I preach. It’s not that I think the rules don’t apply to me, I just genuinely feel like no one can see me break them.

I made a lot of mistakes when I was 16. I wrote some very bad short stories, made plenty of poor sartorial decisions, and was a terrible girlfriend. But in honor of this Harvard-Yale weekend, I’m revisiting one of the worst mistakes I made at 16: I spent a summer at Harvard.

I recently realized that all of my close friends are attractive. Really, really attractive. They all have haircuts that really suit their well-proportioned faces, dress well (but not too well, they don’t try too hard), have beautiful eyes and lovely smiles. At first I found this to be a little troubling. Do I hold my »

Dearest readers, After three semesters, 44(ish) print issues and a lot of blood/sweat/gchats, WEEKEND is lifting off its papered legs and reaching with fledgling wings to new heights: the Internet. Have you heard of it? Well, now we inhabit it. You might think you can only enjoy supa fresh WEEKEND content on the weekends, but »

I walked up to a boy in dark clothes sitting on a bench on Cross Campus, right outside of Calhoun. It was 11:03 p.m., and I was a few minutes late for our meeting. “You’re J. right?” I inquired, and he nodded and asked me where I wanted to go. “I’m pretty new to this,” »

This week, Jens Lekman’s long-awaited new EP, “An Argument with Myself,” was finally released, and it’s been playing constantly in my house ever since. It reminded me that despite my obsession with music blogs and always finding the best new thing, there are always a few artists that will have my heart. Jens is a »

When I was 14 or so, I discovered this band called Umbrellas, probably through the emo rag Alternative Press or some mopecore blog. They quickly became one of my favorite bands, not because they made the best music, but because they made the saddest. Almost every song they’ve ever written is about either: a) breakups »

Theater, a cappella, classical music, folk rock, dance, slam poetry, improv comedy: it seems as though every art form under the sun is included under the aegis of Yale College. And they all have to be housed somewhere. Yale advertises its extensive performing arts facilities proudly. There are 33 spaces available to undergraduates interested in »

At some moment during “Jumper,” I realized just how painfully ironic Third Eye Blind’s appearance at Spring Fling was. “You can put the past away,” the song cries at its climax. And on Tuesday, all of the Yale students in the crowd were screaming along because everyone can put his or her past away. Everyone, »

If you can believe it, Paul Simon’s “Graceland” was controversial when it was first released in 1986, 25 years ago. “Graceland” was innovative. “Graceland” was inspired by collaboration with — or, as some claimed, cribbed from — South African musicians. Was it cultural colonialism? This whole debate is very foreign to me, because when I »

Today is your eighth birthday. You just received the best present ever: one of those see-through GameBoy COLORs with a Sonic the Hedgehog game cartridge. You cannot put the damn thing down; you are obsessed. Your grandmother is babysitting you, but she needs to pick up her prescriptions at the drive-through down the road called »