PHOTO: JAKOB

ALICIA HARKNESS YALE '04

Hey Prospective Y Annex Yalies! I’m Patricia, and I’m a JE’er (JE SUX!). I graduated ’04 with a degree in Economics. I did a variety of activities..most of them I wish I had never joined. Throughout my four years at Yale I tried practically everything from tae kwon do to ballroom dance to cheerleading and, of course, quit them all. Thus, I think I’m better off defined by the classes I loved at Yale which include (but are not limited to) Love in the Western World, Sexuality and Pop Culture, Television Situation Comedy, Pop Culture, Media, & Identity, Business of Film and Natural Resource Economics (thought I should throw in an Econ class).

I believe that one of the best teachers on love is Marcel Proust. His work Swann in Love exposes the true elusive nature of love no matter how Catch-22ish it might seem. I also believe that the early works of Ovid serve as warnings for women and give us females the true low down on what men are really thinking. However, Ovid’s words are probably the ideal guidebook for men. Other works on love I feel all should read are The Art of Courtly Love and the Troubadours. When it comes to sex, I tend to agree with my Southern Baptist roots (for me, celibacy has been a beautiful thing and, for some reason, seems to be some form of fetish/fantasy for the guys I’ve come across), but I believe that for those engaging in sex that sexual education is key and necessary. If someone is consenting and responsible/mature enough for sex then by all means go ahead.

Being a Y Annex intern with The Dr. Susan Block Show has been great. I've been the on-air producer for the show. During live broadcasts, I would take calls from our viewing audience and decide which ones were worthy of going on the air. I also was a guest and event coordinator and researched and implemented online initiatives. The people here are great, and it is a great place to gain exposure to television production.

My future goal is to take over Hollywood or a small country, which ever happens first. J

PHOTO: JON CARLO BRUTTOMESSO

WILL TAUXE YALE '05

Hey there. My name's Will Tauxe. I grew up in Atlanta and I'm a bio major, class of 2005, in Ezra Stiles. I'm a managing editor for Rumpus Magazine as well as being on the epee squad on the fencing team and managing same. I also do far too much theater lighting and administer the Stiles woodshop.

Working on The Dr. Susan Block Show has pretty much just confimed my opinion that when it comes to controversial aspects of sexuality (either one's own or others') most people should just have a coke and a smile and calm down. People are people. Working on the show has also taught me a lot of other things that will prevent me from ever holding public office.

I share the same sexual fantasy that Hef has had fruitlessly for so long; and unlike him, I've been lucky enough to have had it fulfilled for the last two years or so. Apart from that, I'm a writer.

Recognizing the inherent eventual futility of this, I have backup plans as follows:
1) Harvard Divinity School
2) French Foreign Legion
3) teaching high school
4) Swiss Guard

So we'll see how that works out. I'm optimistic, especially with the Dr. Suzy Show on my resume.

PHOTO: WILL TAUXE

JON CARLO BRUTTOMESSO YALE '05

My name is Jon Carlo Bruttomesso, but mostly I'm known as "Sweetbutter JCB," "Bizzle" or, more frequently, "Mud" (when I'm not being referred to by gentler pet names). I was grown in the West Coast hipster lab/greenouse of Agoura California, where I attended one of those schools where they make you cut your hair, say prayers and "achieve." Then I upped and went off for a magic summer at the NYU School for Writing Cloyingly Silly Semi-Fictitious Biographies, where I was accepted for being in deep emotional distress, accelerated for not being very competent, and subjected to a cruelly brief experience of true happiness and free-floating bliss that changed my life forever. Now I just ain't satisfah' and don't know what's happening no more. I quickly learned that I would have to work hard to overcome my natural clumsiness in order to suceed in most activities that tickled my fancy, a task I still haven't gotten around to resolving and checkin' off the ol' self-improvement list, particularly because some of said activities are dangerous, illegal, and/or expensive.

After graduating from NYU in a single semester, which, for purposes of this biography, is loosely the cal arts governer's student summer arts program where I met my first girlfriend (whose eerie and tragic resemblance to redheaded Kirsten Dunst is the reason why I haven't seen Spiderman 2 yet...there...some naughty details for you) I found I had managed to remain surprisingly pure in spite of many concerted romps in the woods.

I then entered Yale University, or as my over-achieving classmate Nick likes to call it when he takes a lot of Ecstasy so he can dance and fuck all night to drum and bass, "Pooniversity," where I am currently a senior and, appropriately, am suffering from serious cases of senioritis, post-adolescent crisis, severe enjoyment of marijuana, and what my summer housemate has informed me is called "Chinaman's Dilemma." My parents have informed me the last item is called "laziness and chemical apathy" and that I should be proud of my heritage and not use the word "Chinaman," not while quoting Steinbeck, or William James, or even by accident when trying to make up a superhero name by saying different possibile superhero sounding words that could go before "Man" out loud. I also have a persistant frog-in-the-throat, which makes imitating my voice for the purposes of mockery quite easy and which also means I have neither the face nor the voice for radio.

At Yale I'm a music major, though I'm still not quite sure how or why. However, I do enjoy cranking out (hopefully) tasty riffs just as fast as I can--mostly in the service of trying to finish a full-length musical and start a band that doesn't implode from the constant Ivy league pressure to overachieve. I'm a managing editor of Rumpus, a lesser member of the oft-<any synonym for "intoxicated"> comedy troupe Suite 13, and a brother in the Sigma Chi fraternity. The first Rumpus article I wrote this season "Thunderstruck," a satirical "analysis" and critique of music of the Yale Dining Hall Workers strike, was honored with a bottom ranking by a student body vote on Yaletoday.com. Every once in a while I also venture into the world of theater . One time I accidentally smoked crack.

Somehow, wild years were/are nothing to speak of, mostly stoned, sleepy, and full of ebbs and flows of creativity and productivity that would put the Pacific to shame. Blooming late, I mostly behaved myself until second semester sophomore year of college, at which time what could be considered, in my case, to be "hedonistic craziness" exploded after aeons of dormant menace.

My internship with The Dr. Susan Block Show has been another summer in that vicarious vein of wildness I usually wind up slipping into, another summer consisting mostly of passive observation of other people cutting loose and gettin' crazy. Most recently, I saw a 40-year old woman kick a porn star named Brother Love square in the nads in order to arouse him so he could fuck a German squirt-queen porn starlet on my boss's love bed. This is after the German girl had pissed onto Brother Love--and I'm playing paparazzi and procuring various refreshments for said guests in between bouts of propogating scopophilia. I saw Brother Love fail in his task, and then bet another porn star a hundred dollers to fuck that same woman. It was a lot like a bachelor party that had the strange effect of further cementing my already concerted fidelity to my special someone. Working on the show, I've learned to constantly talk and write sexy no matter the circumstances or the topic, baby, and I learned a lot about the revolution. Learned it sexily. I had my suspicions confirmed that, yes, normal is about the most relative term known to mankind--it's just a matter of what you can keep up with.

Ah yes, the revolution. David would often speak of the revolution, inevitably in glowing terms. Sometimes "us Yale boys and/or girls" were part of it, sometimes it was more of a hypothetical sort of affair, sometimes it involved sex, politics and/or political/sex oriented rock and roll, which for the purposes of this summer consisted of Slick Rick, the Johnny Cash "Murder Album," The Beach Boys Pet Sounds, Queen II, and Sgt Pepper, which was enjoyed on as many levels as physically and spiritually possible. Soundtrack considered, I think there's a hard and soft side to revolution, but that's no reason they can't exist in some kind of weird and wonderful syneergy. Alternately, it involved the mysterious phrase/item "erotic cake" as well, either in reference to the bevies of (sometimes) beautiful women wandering the halls of the show or vanilla birthday cake adulterated with a certain Jack of the Daniels variety. At any rate, the revolution was always underway, televised on radiosuzy1tv, and promising to "rub <expletive you didn't even know existed> in Bushy's little monkey face! This is beautiful, Georgy!"

But the point to all this talk of "the revolution" is a bit more obscure and a lot more important than you'd think, albeit in much slower motion and in a much more limited space than one might normally consider appropriate for a widescale revolt. It is difficult to argue that something is happening RIGHT NOW, to deliniate particular eras and specific turning points in the tide of whatever revolt this is. As chaotic and microscopic as the process might sometimes seem, however, it is the chaos and small-scale that transforms it into an operation that functions on a personal level, and which extends acceptance to whoever is interested and willing. David always lamented never being able to corrupt "us Yale boys," seeing how depraved we already were, lamented having to preach to the choir--but that's part of the point of acceptance, that what will make and keep people strong, make people willing to make a difference, is the affirmation of even your most ludicrous and ridiculous fantasies and facets, that is, as Dr. Suzy says, as long as it doesn't hurt anybody (Brother Love notwithstanding, of course).

At any rate, I think it is a revolt of love--the sexual revolution proper might still be continuing, but in spite of the hang-ups that have been erased and tolerance that has evolved, the operative concept is love, and with it, acceptance of one another as human beings in a way that very much cuts to the quick. Love and fear are a turtle and hare race to, respectively, utopia and dystopia. Love, chaotic as it is and as complacent and delightfuly lazy as it might make us every once in a while, will eventually win by the slow burn. When I wonder "what revolution?" it's because the process of revolution at hand here is surprisingly subtle, something I've learned to take so much for granted as an attitude/life philosophy (at least some of te time), that you don't even know the revolution is happening. It will be televised, but maybe it will actually be surprisingly subtle given the subject matter and the behavior of many of the persons involved, myself included. Heaven, after all, is a place where nothing ever happens.

PHOTO: THERON MARKS

JAKOB KONSTANTIN YALE '05

The history of Jacob Konstantin is a strange history indeed. Born in Moscow to a student from Ghana working at Moscow State University's Physics Lab and a Kenyan mother studying to become a KGB operative, the stage was set for Jacob to have a very interesting life. With the fall of communism and the accompanying crumbling of the state apparatus, Jacob's family was compelled to move to the United States. Life, at first, was hard for young Jacob. Every child struggles to fit in with peers, yet imagine how difficult it must have been for a Russian speaking immigrant of African descent to fit into any community. Jacob recounts a story about an early excursion to Brighton Beach:

"I must have been 10 years old, when a friend and I decided to skip school and go to Brighton Beach. I was very excited, because, although I was rapidly attaining some level of comfort in English, I felt more comfortable reading and writing in Russian. My friend and I had never travelled in New York before and so we got lost, but after a few fortunate coincidences and a lot of guess work, we arrived. I can remember the feeling of relief that came over me as I saw the letters on advertising signs slowly metamorphose into the cyrillic alphabet I so loved. We got off the train, looked around a bit to get our bearings, and headed out onto the street. Everything was Russian, the people on the street, the signs, the cars, and yet, for some reason, I did not feel at home. I still cannot put into words the feelings I had at the time, but I felt out of place even here. We decided to go into a bookstore and have a look around. We must have been there for five minutes, when I noticed the store owner following me around. She said nothing in words, yet...well, let's just say that a stare of anger and suspicion is comprehensible in any language. Five more minutes passed. I picked up a book of poems by Lermontov, and all of a sudden she got angry and started yelling at me...IN ENGLISH! She called me a host of dirty names and accused me of stealing. I responded in Russian that I did not understand why she was so angry. She was shocked that I spoke to her in our language. I apologized for causing her trouble, called my friend, and left the store. We had gotten a block away when two things happened: (1) I realized that she assumed I wasn't Russian because I was black. (2) My friend pulled out two books and a video from his backpack--he had stolen these things while the attendant had been watching me."

These types of misunderstandings continued to occur. Russians assumed he was American, while African Americans made fun of him for not speaking perfect English. He continuously struggled to capture an identity that eluded him.

Ironically, his salvation came in the form of the art of concealing identity: drama. In High School, while auditioning for a role in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, Jacob was noticed by the director and chosen for the role of Vanya immediately. His success in drama continued, and through his dedicated study of drama, his English improved to the point where he lost his original Moscovite accent. Disadvantage became advantage. Instead of being stuck between two worlds he could now merge easilly as a citizen of both of them.

Jacob now works at the Dr. Susan Block Institute as a Y Annex intern, with his his main tasks being recruiting models for the show, and working as a liason between Dr. Block and other interns. On air dates, Jacob works to ensure guest comfort and affability. When asked why he decided to work on the show, Jacob replied:

"I have long been a fan of love stories. Love is at once the most powerful emotion and the most powerful tool of rationalism anyone can possess. It is a blend of the carnavelsque, wild, absurd, uncontrollable, destructive and the focused, calm, creative and ordered aspects of humanity. It is love's complexity, and my attempt to gain a foothold of understanding upon it, that led me to work here. There are some things that cannot be learned from books, things that have to be learned from communicating with people. I have learned so much from working with such a wide variety of people, and I hope that the understanding that I've gained will reflect itself in my work."

Jacob's learning continues. And as a graduating senior from Yale, Jacob aspires to enter into an MFA program and begin writing and translating texts. His chief ambition is to write a book that, in his words, "will meet my standards for a great romantic novel." Currently, Jacob is working on a collection of short stories to be published sometime in the near future.