...and we're back from spring break, a little sad to have missed the big news on Eliot Spitzer (P'81, HLS'84), if only so I could use that "Princeton in the Nation's Cervix" headline I've been sitting on for months. Since Spitzer's scandal and resignation have been very small stories, completely overlooked by the media, and we'll thus never have cause to revisit it, here's Eliot and Silda's 02138 cover now. The subheadline reads "See What Happens When Harvard Meets Harvard."

Other cute items worth noting:

• Whining about JuicyCampus is officially so over now that old people are writing about it and the gay Yale porn therein. How long until the ironic "we heart JC" backlash begins?
• Columbia's most well-known transman got some press, too.
• Remember when some random guy on a laptop took down the Harvard Grad School website for three days? Turns out he also stole about 10,000 people's personal data, including about 6600 SSNs. Harvard's response: "sorry for the inconvenience."
• If Jesus went to Cornell and wore a pocket protector, he'd be the newest Beauty & the Geek Ivy Leaguer, Jim.
• If Gawker : NYT :: Bwog : the Spec, then Nick Denton used to write our Ragtimes. Just call us "starmaker."
• Tony Blair is going to teach at Yale, which prompts us to wonder: Has Skull & Bones ever inducted a faculty member?

Whew. Keep the tips coming, people. We'll be here all week.

Last week Penn '06 Will Frank proved his geek-chic chops when Three 6 Mafia named him winner of the Beauty & the Geek rap battle challenge. This week Will hangs on to the lead, sidestepping his jealous, light-saber-wielding geek housemates, all of them working feverishly to learn the Art of Cool and to unseat our rotund, squeaky-voiced hero. But before I get to the gory details, allow me to set the scene.

The show opens with a champagne party, celebrating Natalie and John's narrow escape from the jaws of defeat. Froth bubbles over, strawberries materialize, the beauties nibble their succulent red fruits seductively. It's like a bad ad for Dove chocolate. Amidst the schmoozing, Hollie reveals that, much like Will and every other geek on the planet, she loves anime. I knew it! Hollie is a plant! She's "downright geeky," testifies Will. LARPer Dave goes misty-eyed and marvels "We have... so much in common."

After the jump: B&G Truth-or-Dare!

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Sighted: Beauty & the Geek star Joshua Green at Princeton University's D-Bar ("Debasement Bar," in de basement of de graduate college here, remember? B&G brought their camera crew there to recruit last year). The 5'5" Joshua wore yellow shirt unbuttoned at the neck, damp black chest hair mussed across his pallid chest. His dance-move of choice is a lateral jumping movement paired with upraised arms and pumping fists.

I cornered Joshua and demanded an impromptu photo shoot (more pictures after jump). Sadly, the CW keeps its reality slaves on a strict gag order; I failed to get any details juicier than those his stock-quote-chocked Daily Princetonian profile. Penn '06 Will Frank got some press, too, in the Daily Pennsylvanian. Where is he these days, anyway? Anybody have sightings?

But enough rumormill foreplay. Let's get down and dirty with this week's episode, after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

The Beauty & the Geek premiere opens with a little hot girl-on-girl action, and geeks in a rocket ship of their own invention, hurtling through outerspace, pointy Spock ears glued to every orifice!  Okay, you got me, I missed the beginning because I was busy breaking into the co-op down the hall to make popcorn.  But given the Ashton Kutcher-invented show's schtick - nine hot bimbos paired with nine brainy geeks for a crash lesson at how the other half lives and a shot at a $250,000 cash prize - I can't be that far off.

Cut to host Mike Richards introducing the contestants to their first challenge: A get-to-know-you talent show, ostensibly to help the Bs and Gs picks partners for the show.  The geeks are nervous because they will be forced to make eye contact with hot chicks. The hot chicks pretend to be nervous, but since they're all aspiring actress/model/soft-core-porn-stars, they're actually pretty jazzed.

After the jump: an obsessive recap of a television show merely because two of its stars happen to be Ivy Leaguers? Welcome to IvyGate.

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"Beauty and the Geek," the CW's most reliable source for social schadenfreude and the only place on television where you can ogle fake titties and test your knowledge of Star Wars allusions, features two Ivy dweeblets this season: Penn '06 Will Frank and Princeton astrophysics grad student Joshua Green.

Though Will's comp sci geek-cred is nothing to sneer at, neither he nor any of the other geeks hold a candle to the unadultered nerditude of Joshua, a stoop-shouldered fan of type 2 quasars whose physical presence is that of a pale, curled fetus.

"He's not even real," muses beauty queen Shalandra during a talent segment in which Joshua's talent consisted of calling his mother and getting her to talk her baby up on speaker phone. While I have suspicions about some of the contestants' genuineness (example: Josh's bio features a reasonably shapely bicep, clear evidence that his loserhood is contrived, or--even worse--ironic), Joshua appears to be the real deal. Then again, it's hard to get an accurate read through the shade of his transitions lenses. With a penchant for squinting romantically into middle distances and folding his knobby limbs into pretzel-like contortions, Joshua alternates between baffling obliviousness and aww-worthy moments of dopey clarity, like when he speculates that the beauties' attention is "because they think I'm pathetic and need help... And I do."

Our covert GS operatives say Joshua, a fan of "jumping around to random beats," is available for public viewing most Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday nights at Princeton's D-Bar. That's "Debasement Bar" to the uninitiated. And yes, it is literally in de basement of de graduate college here.

Novices to celebrity, Will and Joshua's Facebook profiles contained their phone numbers and home addresses at press time. Ladies, get your speed dials ready! Joshua's profile contains links to his personal website, LiveJournal (where we learn that Mr. Green recently traded his calculator watch for a radio-calibrated Casio), and MySpace, which includes the following riddle:

I can think of four distinct letters with the property that, of their 24 permutations, six are normal English words.  Can you do the same?

GEEK!  NERD!  LOVE! I'm officially on Team Joshua.

This is the first entry of my Beauty & the Geek series, which will last as long as Will and Joshua stay on the show.