Author Archives: William Alden

Authentic World War II recruitment posters hung on the walls. An ice sculpture of Alfred Eisenstadt’s “V-J Day in Times Square” photograph sat on the floor. Women in period costume offered trays full of chocolate. Clad in black tie, Yale undergraduates, graduate students and alumni gathered with their professors for a night of old-fashioned revelry. »

In recent years, as Bob Dylan has been awarded hall-of-fame inductions and most-influential-artist proclamations, he has entered the national imagination as something of a legendary resistance fighter, in the tradition of George Washington and Pancho Villa, an aging general who liberated an entire nation and whose exploits have taken on mythic and poetic dimensions. He »

There are few people who, when pressed, won’t admit to a childhood passion for drawing. The urge to draw comes from the same place as the urge to speak. As toddlers become aware of the world, their excitement necessarily leads to a need for expression, which can help make sense of the hamster that got »

One week in fourth grade, I remember watching enviously the group of cool kids in my art class who spent every day constructing Advent calendars in anticipation of Radiohead’s third album, “OK Computer.” For them, counting down the days until the album’s release was better than waiting for Christmas, for their excitement affirmed their membership »

Devendra Banhart’s brain is probably one of the strangest places on earth. It’s populated by dancing crabs, pedophiles, really hairy mountaineers, peace pipes, sleeping butterflies and teeth. Its landscapes and climate zones include rainforest, desert, frosty woods, Venezuelan slum and China. He sings about all these things with a warbling voice, a guitar and, more »

I’ve always been a little jealous of Chamillionaire for thinking of that name before I did. These two words, so rarely associated, and yet so closely linked in sound, has a subtle and enduring brilliance. He’s a chameleon, which means that he changes color — color, which could be a metaphor for all sorts of »

Following an announcement from 50 Cent that he would stop creating solo albums if Kanye West’s “Graduation” outsold his latest album “Curtis” (both released Sept. 11), the competition between the two rappers has begun to bear an uncanny resemblance to the increasingly bankrupt American political system — right down to a pointless, over-hyped and morally »

Dave Eggers, the popular writer, editor and publisher, does good — and he does it well. Students packed Sudler Hall on Tuesday night to see Dave Eggers and Valentino Achak Deng talk about Eggers’ new book, “What is the What.” The book tells the life story of Deng, one of the Sudanese refugees known as »

At a study break for the LGBT Co-op in mid-December, a person with short blonde hair poured generous cups of eggnog and helped decorate the Queer Resource Center for the season. The QRC is small — really just one room — but it feels cozy and intimate. There are comfortable couches and chairs, a painting »

There’s an old saying in the hood that goes, “Once you’re making bank, sir, you can never again be gangster.” Like all tired axioms, this one does not always hold true. But for Snoop Dogg, a man struggling to reconnect with his gangster roots, it certainly does. Before the release of his newest album, “Tha »

Guys, there’s this band, and they’re from Brazil, and they talk in funny accents, and they wear really cool clothes and they’re so awesome, and I love them. I mean, check out their new EP. It’s so good. It, like, has this one song and then this other song and then these remixes and stuff. »

I once heard this joke in which Diddy walks into a bar, sits down, and orders a drink. “Aren’t you P. Diddy?” the bartender asks. “No,” Diddy says, “It’s just Diddy now. And this bar, I own it. And those shoes you’re wearing, I designed them. And this music on the radio, it’s from my »