Rush is truly the gift that keeps on giving. Yale’s Pi Beta Phi and Kappa Alpha Theta chapters have finally uploaded their 2010 Rush Videos to YouTube, and boy, are they uplifting. Before the creepy commenters get to them, IvyGate is pleased to present these masterpieces to the discerning Ivy League audience; and of course, to declare a winner.

We’ll start with Pi Phi’s, a heady docudrama entitled “Pi Phi Girl,” which explores–through the lens of Gossip Girl, Mad-Libs, and mid-90’s pop hits–what it truly means to wear the Pi Phi crown. Feast your eyes:

“Right now… let’s see… I, gosh, I have a meeting with President Levin right now, he wants me to help him with this multi-billion dollar fundraising campaign. It’s superrr intense.”

Next we move onto Theta’s more overtly satirical “The T.A.” Some nerd/jock jokes… a bad Snooki impression… etc, yawn, etc… and OH SWEET MOTHER OF GOD THEY’RE CONJURING MAGIC ENERGY BALLS AND SHOOTING THEM AT AN EVIL COW! PLEASE SEE 4:21 IMMEDIATELY:

The time has come for you guys to make your energy balls. Take out your hands and place them in front of you, and think happy thoughts, and it will just come naturally. Don’t force it, Snooki, don’t force it! Think what you love!

After a few moments of speechlessness, we’re comfortable declaring a (totally objective) winner: Pi Phi all the way, baby. Not only have these young ladies provided us with great material in the past (“Heels. PRETTY HEELS.”), but their Rush video hits all the right notes: Snarky Rumpus editors, child brainwashing, Southern accents, sophomores I’ve been in section with, fur, sequins, an awkward unintentional flashing at 5:04, and of course, a “hey guys I heard you were stressed so I bought some cake and Diet Coke!!!!”? Check!

The cute slideshow at the end definitely seals the deal. At the risk of incineration at the hands of Theta’s energy balls, we’re confident in declaring: PPL 4eva guyz!

Minor YouTube celebrity and shameless self-promoter Aleksey Vayner went to Yale. Georgetown Law student – (really?) – and plagiarist Kaavya Viswanathan went to Harvard. Resident at New York Presbyterian/ Columbia Hospital Matt McCarthy went to Yale and then Harvard Medical School, so he certainly edges out his infamous Ivy peers for prestige, and with the release of “Odd Man Out”, his error-ridden memoir about his year pitching for a minor league baseball team, he may top – or at least match – both Viswanathan and Vayner for deception.

A few days ago, The New York Times reported that “Odd Man Out” – which delves into the particulars of “playing with racist, steroids-taking teammates, pitching for a profane, unbalanced manager and observing obscene behavior and speech” – contains evidence of “wide-ranging errors and misquotations”:

Several times in the book, which he devotes mostly to the antics of libidinous teammates and his manic manager, Tom Kotchman, McCarthy directly quotes people stating incorrect facts about their own lives and tells detailed (and mostly unflattering) stories about teammates who were in fact not on his team at the time. The book’s more outrageous scenes could not be independently corroborated or disproved; several teammates who were present said in interviews that they were exaggerated or simply untrue.

Is there a listing for “selective hearing” in the DSM-IV? More after the jump.

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Aleksey Vayner, Yale ’07, clearly has nefarious plans.  I mean, this is the man who circulated an eleven-page CV around Wall Street, made a video resume of himself ballroom dancing and lifting weights (crotch-eye view!), “wrote” and “published” a book from the perspective of female Holocaust survivors, declared himself CEO of a suspiciously hard to track down company, and tragically lost his shot at a pro tennis career when his partner suffered a sprained wrist only moments before their first match at the US Open.

Aleksey Vayner is not, for example, the sort of guy you would expect to update his blog with pathetic little posts entitled “Best Way to Fight Fat!”  Well, maybe.  Like, if the best way to fight fat was to buy his nonexistent book, Millionaire’s Blueprint To Success.

But this?

Basically, if you are successful at losing weight, you’ll burn fewer calories per day then [sic.] someone of the same weight but who was not overweight and did not diet to shed pounds. This is one of many reasons you find it easier to gain weight (and then some) after you have just lost some weight.

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When we last left Yale alum and crazy liar Aleksey Vayner, he had a poorly designed website and was writing a book called Millionaire’s Blueprint to Success. Of course, cursory examination revealed the website and book likely products of plagiarism. Idea theft, grand plans and a website: it was business as usual for Mr. Vayner. But today Ivygate brings you Vayner news that does not involve plagiarism or crackpot schemes: Aleksey may be married. According to an anonymous tipster:

I heard from a friend who knew him before his stupendous rise to tool-dome [sic] via video that he’s married. No details except the waif like…blonde in is [sic] facebook picture is apparently the lucky lady.

There you have it. Vayner has not yet reponded to Ivygate’s request for comment. Could it be that the attractive blonde in the above facebook picture is Mrs. Vayner? If true, this is easily Vayner’s greatest accomplishment.

Aleksey Vayner — batshit megalomaniac, irrepressible fabulist, and mighty douchebag of legend — is baaaack. And he’s learned nothing. If you visit his website directly (www.alekseyvayner.com), there’s nothing to see, but click the directory “test,” and you’re granted access to the innermost scheming of Vayner’s non-existent soul. It appears to be a terrible rough draft of something possibly even more terrible.

What do you do after you become an internet phenom, subject to interweb-wide flogging and public humiliation? If you’re Vayner, you proceed as though basically nothing has happened. You insist on the genius of the “Impossible is Nothing” video by disregarding the “mockery” from the “the kids in the bloggosphere [sic]” and claiming the just fruits of “international publicity” for having “created a marketing peace [yes, that's another sic] of himself.” 

The website’s main point is ostensibly to promote Vayner’s (theoretically) forthcoming book Millionaires’ Blueprint to Success (remember his previously forthcoming book? His Holocaust memoir?). Suspiciously, the cover is almost an exact copy of the similarly titled Secrets of the Millionaire’s Mind by T. Harv Eker. I’m sure the contents are totally different though. Is this kid retarded?

Also, a tipster notes certain design similarities between Vayner’s website and Tim Ferriss’s website, mutual douchebaggery aside (check out the buttons). Of course much of the website is unfinished — “Comming soon [sic]” is plastered all over the place. Is this website fake? It could be, but we don’t think so. The site’s frequent and amusing deficiencies of language are consistent with Vayner’s poor grasp of English. It’s just over-the-top enough to be Vayner and just restrained enough to hint at lessons still unlearned. It’s also registered in his name.

After the jump — choice excerpts from Vayner’s totally modest and not-obviously-made-up life-story (“Aleksey Vayner’s story is one of discipline and perseverance thought the hardships of immigration”), a damning cover comparison between Millionaires’ Blueprint to Success and Secrets of the Millionaire’s Mind, and a few screen-shots for good measure.

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Gawker and Dealbreaker are reporting on the re-emergence of the greatest thing to ever happen to this website — the man, the myth, the video-resume-superstar — Mr. Aleksey Vayner.

He’s been shopping his new resume (take a look) around to various NYC-funds, and has even gone to a couple interviews. According to Dealbreaker, he came off as “personable, chatty, and laid back.” Of course he also claimed to have been about to go pro in tennis…at the US Open…until his doubles-partner broke his wrist two hours before his first match. Drat! Those preternatural coincidences can be a real bitch. (You know, it’s not even funny any more; it’s just sad.)

Looking at his resume, we can see what Aleksey has been doing with his time off from Yale. He completed some certs — RIA, CFA (help! what are these?) — from online shop Boston Institute of Finance, and is living currently in Kips Bay, an area of Manhattan about which we know literally nothing.

He also claims to have authored a book, Millionaires’ Blueprint to Success, whose anticipated publication date is Summer ‘08, which means some yet unknown guest-editor will be reviewing it probably

Know something about this?

Prime your Google Readers:

For this Sunday’s Washington Post, IvyGate founders/editors emeriti/slavedrivers Nick Summers and Chris Beam have penned an op-ed both wistful and erotic. As the screen grab shows, we’ve got a title confirmed, “Going Home Alone,” but the tracklist has yet to leak. It will appear in the Post’s Outlook section — the poor man’s Week In Review — awkwardly near George Will’s weekly socio-political history lesson. Then they’ll discuss the article in a washingtonpost.com session Monday at noon ET. All this is to say that by Monday around 1 p.m., we’ll know Nick and Chris’ sexual histories very well.

Check into IvyGate Sunday for the official op-ed reception. This means we’ll sloppily post the op-ed, and Nick and Chris probably won’t answer your questions. Instead they’ll sit back and watch as commenters somehow start debating whether Barnard is part of Columbia within half an hour. “Well tut tut and fiddle-dee-fum,” they’ll muse, a bittersweet raspiness cloaking their aged voices. “How we do miss the commenters at IvyGate.”

And if that’s not enough, we’ll try to post more hot pictures of Casper (by popular demand) with Nick and Chris’ op-ed. Nothing has ever been as important as this upcoming blockbuster post. Eh, maybe this.

Penn grad Zachary Michaelson lands on the cover of Trader Monthly’s “Top 30 Under 30” edition this month (link goes to companion website, Trader Daily).  Which is cool for Zach, but pretty sucky for Trader Monthly, seeing how their cover boy was already out of his job at Fortress Investment by the issue’s debut.

Actually, it’s not that cool for Zach, either.  (Did you really think he’d get off so easily?) Now he’s the laughingstock of Wall Street blog DealBreaker, where former co-workers are dishing on how “totally full of it” the alleged wunderkind was.  Some claim Michaelson never even held the position “portfolio manager.”  Then again, his CNBC interview billed him “global portfolio manager specializing correlation modeling seeking trades that are at once global, macro, and relative value,” so the two-word title is a sin of omission, if anything.  DealBreaker readers have already christened Zach the next Aleksey Vayner.  Impossible is nothing?  Or a ridiculously ill-timed job loss, paired with the modicum of tool-itude we have come to expect from basically everyone on Wall Street — especially the young hot ones?

We were inclined towards the latter and willing to give Zach a break.  But then one of his Kappa Sigma brothers from Penn wrote in:

He was… kicked out of the house for trying to start a fight with his roommate with a hammer because his roommate was smoking in the room.  When his roommate pushed him away, Michaelson called the police.  He also threatened to expose violations by the House if we didn’t let him live in the chapter house.

Silly boy — homoerotic frat fights are for paddles, not hammers!  Sources conflict as to whether Michaelson was kicked out, or quit as soon as he realized he could not secure the 5 (out of about 40) votes necessary to maintain house residency.  We’re still wondering how assault with a deadly weapon and the threat of blackmail amounted to the support of a single Kappa Sig (apparently there were three).

View Michaelson’s CNBC interview and more “Top 30 Under 30″ tidbits, after the jump.

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They say 80 percent of success is just showing up, but in the age of the hacker, it might be closer to 100. According to Yale officials in the Yale Daily News, the social security numbers for more than 10,000 current and former students, faculty and staff were compromised last month following the theft of two university computers.

In case you were wondering, the computers were stolen from the Yale College Dean’s Office — hey, did someone forget to lock the door? — on July 17. Apparently the ‘puters were password-protected, but we’re hedging our bets that the password is “h@rv@rd$uck$01” or something. Yale says the computers were probably stolen to be sold, as if the computers in university administrative offices are worth far more than the MacBook Pros and the Dell XPS laptops that students regularly leave lying around campus.

Um, yeah. Oh, and the kicker?

“The lost files had not been maintained for any purpose,” Yale spokesman Tom Conroy said in the Yale Daily News, “but were overlooked in the University’s efforts at reducing the amount of personal information it holds.”

Um, nice work, guys. Spring cleaning ended months ago. Of course, Yale sent out letters warning individuals to check bank and credit reports, but chances are whoever made off with the numbers — which probably includes Aleksey Vayner’s and suddenly justifies the theft — is already high-tailin’ it for the border…or Cambridge. (Or Princeton?) – ANDREW NUSCA

From the elevation-challenged lands of Topeka, Kansas comes this morning’s jolt of intolerance, thanks to the Westboro Baptist Church (homepage: godhatesfags.com). Seems the anti-everything bretheren are up in arms over the “perverts,” “fags” and “dykes” emerging from far-flung Cornell, and they’ve decided to head toward Ithaca to forgive transgressions, er, I mean spread the joyous Word in honor (persecution?) of Cornell’s LGBT Resource Center and general allowance of gay pride.

According to the release, the anti-religious group will be out in full force this Thursday at the ungodly (ha!) hour of 8:30 a.m. in an undisclosed location, all thanks to the First Amendment. The text, in all of it’s Samuel L. Jackson-as-Jules Winnfield-esque glory:

This is a seat of higher learning in America, an Ivy League no less, which is filled with perverts running things, and they are trying to make fags and dykes out of all of their students. They, like the rest of America, have taught and CONTINUE to teach full-blown rebellion, to teach their sons and daughters to be snakes just like they themselves are and their father the Devil. Matthew 23:33- Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? John 8:44- Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. Jesus Christ called them poisonous snakes! He is not a wimp, and He is going to continue to bereave you of your children until he finally executes the Judgment upon you as he did the Sodomites (Genesis 19) and countless other nations (the Canaanites, the Benjamites, the Philistines, Pompeii, Egypt). America is doomed! She shall be laid desolate! The siege is coming!

Confused yet? Yeah, I am too, and I actually tried to stay awake in Sunday School. To add fuel to the fire, the date on this tour of love comes after the previous day’s stop at a New York high school to picket the memorial of five deceased cheerleaders, or “raised-for-the-Devil, American whores.” All because the school was “promoting sodomy among students” through a diversity club. Talk about not catching a break.

With a history of making waves on Scarborough Country and Hannity & Colmes and protesting at services for killed Iraq vets and Virginia Tech students — oh, and reportedly saying the Holocaust was “miniscule” — it’s sure to be a tailgatin’ good time. Hell, when FOX News calls you “radical,” it’s gotta count for something. Word has it that a counter-protest among the Big Red ranks is in the works, so to any Cornellians with a nice view from the ivory tower, be sure to send along the visual goods at ivygate.guest@gmail.com.

Oh, and Aleksey Vayner has nothing to do with this. We just need to get our irrelevant potshots in early. – ANDREW NUSCA