Memories of the Record
/March 25, 2024
I think it was my junior year, when on one serendipitous morning, the management of Cutler Records decided to offload their stock of unsellable 78 records onto the Broadway sidewalk. Also serendipitously, we had just unearthed a beautiful crank-up 78 record player. It was lost among the effluvia of our Hendrie digs. We actually thought it was a lost desk. En masse, we laid finders-keepers claim to as much of the 78s stash as we could muster.
The next year, on Princeton football Sunday, we decided to challenge our Princeton Tiger magazine counterparts to a game of Giant Monopoly. Without going into sordid detail, the giant game was pulled off successfully. We won handily, thanks to the valiant efforts of our Giant Dice rollers.
What to do next with the Giant Game? I was writing some musical arrangements for the V8s, a Mount Hoyoke singing group. Why not challenge the ladies to a friendly Giant contest?
And so we did, dragging our Giant Monopoly paraphernalia up to North Hadley. To boot, we dragged up the 78 player along with, as is said today, a curated selection of the choicest unsellable 78s. Our intrepid team did essential warmup calisthenics to the likes of The Little Black Duck, Thereʻs A Tear In My Beer ["...so Iʻll wail in my ale..."], and Iʻm No Communist ["... and Iʻll tell ya that right now! / I believe a man should own his own home and car and cow!"].
The Game ineluctably devolved into chaos after a short while, but it was oddly consequential to my life. I played the Token in the Game, while representing the Mount Holyokers was a comely senior hailing from Honolulu. Later on, I dated her. Though that didnʻt last too long, she held the first hint of the charms of the city where I would happily spend the rest of my life.
Kit Ebersbach ʻ67, writing from Hawaii
March 3, 2024
In each newsletter, we will be highlighting a memory from the Yale Record history. Please send your Record memories to robert@schlaff.com and I’ll add them here. We’ll also be collecting them into a history of the Yale Record.
I’ll kick it off with my story. On April 1, 1999, The Yale Record published a parody of the New York Times called The New York Tomes. At the time, the world hadn't started caring about misspelled domains so we were able to publish it at nytomes.com. The Times was ready to cover it and give us a whole lot of publicity. Unfortunately, on April 1, 1999, instead of covering the Parody, they decided to cover the NATO invasion of Serbia. See what one of the first internet parodies looked like!
Notes from Campus
Each year the students do a 24-hour issue. Most students describe it as the best event of the year. Why is putting together this issue so much fun? This year we find out. The students filmed a mockumentary of the event!
Watch Behind the Scenes: The Yale Record 24 Hour Issue
They could do this due to the immense organization they have on campus. The Yale Record now has so many staffers that the students had to ask the alums, “What do you do when your masthead starts getting too big to fit on a page.”
Great Work From Our Alums
Here's a section highlighting work from our alums. If you have something to share, email me at robert@schlaff.com.
Ian Dallas '00 is the creative director of Giant Sparrow Video Games. You can get his games The Unfinished Swan and What Remains of Edith Finch on pretty much any platform including iOS. Don’t worry if you don’t play games. Ian says, “Most games that people play are about challenges. My games are more about an experience. Like what it feels like to walk through a garden or what it feels like to read a collection of scary stories and try to extrapolate from that.” Rob Schlaff wrote about Ian’s games on his blog in a post called How My Friend Built the Best Video Game in the World. You can find out more about Ian's games, and purchase, them here.
Don Watson '59, Yale Record Art Editor and Yale Record Corporation Hysterical Archivist, has published OUT of LINE, a 108-page “Catalogue Irraisonne”, including cartoons and covers from the Record 1956-59 and current American Bystander pages in a full color deluxe edition. Buy OUT of LINE at the American Bystander store.