This shot of James Franco snoozing through class has been making its way around the Interweb. While Columbia freshman have been losing sleep and getting giddy from the thrill of walking around Morningside Heights with Spiderman’s best friend, it looks like the MFA pursuit has been pretty breezy so far. After all, just a week ago, press releases announced that Franco’s first book, a collection of short stories, would be published by Schribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

In other Franco-Columbia news, further details from last year’s rumors of James starring as a young Allen Ginsberg in the biopic “Howl” have been confirmed. Last year, the New York Observer reported on the role and also Franco following in Ginsberg’s footsteps at Columbia:

According to Hollywood Reporter, the film will focus on the obscenity trial surrounding the 1957 American publication of Ginsberg’s most famous poem, “Howl.”

Hopefully Mr. Franco will not go overboard in his attempts to mimic Ginsberg: if he goes too far he might end up getting kicked out of Columbia, where he enrolled in an MFA program this fall.

Since Franco enrolled in classes at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and Columbia last fall, it’s been a waiting game for him to do something special. The book deal is OK, falling asleep is boring, but interacting with the freshman cats-in-heat would be downright grand. (Obscenity now!) Keep your cell phone cameras ready for his next move.