Who cares about blockbuster Harry Potter flicks and the cover of British Vogue? All Emma Watson wants is to be a normal Brown student — so much so, in fact, that she’ll burst into epic Hollywood tears if you ask her for an autograph.

This isn’t the first time she’s alerted the media about her urgent, newsworthy quest to live like the rest of us. Someone should really tell Emma that being “normal” at a place like Brown is a bit like being the Mr. Goodbar in a bag of Hershey’s Minis. Sure, you kind of fit in, but nobody really likes you that much.

But more importantly, we feel for this lost soul, awash in misery and Burberry, so desperate to lead that magical life where you have to hold your own umbrella and wash your beer-stained pants with Woolite in a dingy dorm bathroom. So in the spirit of helping Emma Watson lead a normal life, we’d like to send out a special message to her:

Dear Emma Watson,

First of all, your pleas for a typical teenage wasteland will fall on deaf ears when you invite 100 people to your birthday party and forbid them from posting anything on Facebook. As though Facebook weren’t the second-most-important lifeblood of the normal college student (PBR is #1).

If you keep this up, the only people who will want to hang out with you are:

(A) Artsy weirdos who’d prefer to draw their subjects using Cray-Pas made out of repurposed organic coffee grounds. (Actually, you’ll probably find plenty of these at Brown);

(B) Equally camera-shy upper-crusties who look offensively good in skinny jeans but have never seen or read Harry Potter or Elle Girl, and therefore will have little to say to you;

(C) James Miller, the dean of admissions at Brown; and

(D) a cinderblock, because it doesn’t give two shits about being on Facebook either.

(On the flipside, if your dorm’s really normal, you could always use your new friend Cindy Block to prop up your three-legged cot, or hide that hole in the wall where you once saw a mouse.)

Another bit of advice: if you want to be a normal college student, stop dating Spanish rock stars and wearing your hair like Mia Farrow from Rosemary’s Baby. Looking clean and well-rested doesn’t help your case either.

Finally, it seems safe to say that normal students don’t typically pose like matronly angels on the cover of British Vogue and then gab to the interviewers about how badly they just want to be like regular folks. Whining to a world-renowned publication about how much you want to be normal only makes you abnormal.

Meanwhile, whining to a snarky blog about how annoying Ivy League people are could potentially make you awesome. (Hey Emma, maybe you should write for us!)

Seriously. We only want what’s best for you.

Your Biggest Fans,
The IvyGate Team

Helicopter parenting of the Black Hawk variety and classic kiddie exploitation have converged to produce the Ivy League’s next scary superstar: Fatima Ptacek. She’s a nine-year-old supermodel, raking in $250,000 a year, while appearing in national ad campaigns and chilling with Michelle Obama; on the side, she’s an award-winning gymnast, horseback rider, chess wiz, and Spanish/Mandarin Chinese speaker. Oh, she’s also starred on Saturday Night Life, and is appearing in a Catherine Zeta-Jones movie in a few months. So, Ivy League masses, prepare to feel more overwhelmed by your classmates than ever before, because, in Fatima’s words:

My dad said I’m allowed to go to Harvard, Yale or Columbia.

Why is herr father so adamant?

Barack Obama studied at Harvard, and I really like him. I want to be a lawyer. I was thinking of maybe going to the Olympics, but you know what? That’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I want to be in the court and fight for people saying, ‘My client is innocent!’

Such high sell-out ambitions at such an early age? Sounds like Ivy League material to us…  Get a load of the supposed secret to her success, according to her manager:

She’s ethnically ambiguous.

Regardless, something tells us Fatima won’t need the affirmative action bump come admissions season. Especially considering her Common-App ready childhood (or lack thereof):

Fatima is up every day at 6 a.m., preparing for school at PS 150Q, where she is in the Academy for Intellectually Gifted Children. At least twice a week, she cuts out of class early with her mom to ham it up at auditions and casting calls in Manhattan. She finishes her homework in the car on the way back to Flushing — for a three-hour workout at a Russian gym, Lana’s Gymnastics Club, three or four nights a week. Fatima finally hits the hay at around 10 p.m. Weekends are eaten up by horseback riding and five hours of Mandarin class on Saturdays.

We predict that this talented young woman will have several things to look forward to in her future, or combinations thereof: peaking early, burning out, world-domination, soulless careerism, the Presidency of the United States. Or maybe just following in Emma Watson’s footsteps and dating this guy:

Following up on news that Tyra Banks is dating the father of Emma Watson’s new roommate, here’s some more proof that “the Ivy of celebrities” is as clubby and insidery as you might expect. Below is an exclusive picture of Madison Utendahl, Brown ’13 and Emma’s future roommate, chilling with Scout Willis, daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore. They both look apathetic and well-coiffed. Also, PETA-fans, get a load of that coat!

And below, here’s Madison father, John Utendahl — financial services guru — stepping out with everyone’s favorite insane talk-show host, Tyra Banks.

Some well-connected folk indeed. Also, here’s a video of Tyra “pretending” to have rabies.

We hear that Tyra Banks was spotted walking with Emma Watson, Brown’s most important freshman ever, on the main green; the former model / current lunatic is dating Watson’s future roommate’s father (oho!). First: How do you get to be Emma Watson’s future roommate? I guess by having a parent connected enough to date a woman who screams like Medea on TV daily.

Our anonymous source is backed up by a Facebook group stating Banks and Watson were seen together… but the group’s founders go to University of South Dakota. Are they insider-y enough to know the scoop? More info as this unfolds!

Emma Watson has been un-surprisingly quiet her first semester at Brown, but she just burst back into action with this Vanity Fair article: “One Bewitching Coed”. In it, Emma finally reveals “everything” about her first year in college….  We’d like to play a little game called “Emma Speaks”

Emma speaks about growing up as a famous little witch:

“If I’m honest, I was her[mione]… I was very keen. I was super-eager to please and be good. And I was always kind of bossy.”

Emma speaks about her first week of school:

“It was just awful, I was like, I must be mad. Why am I doing this?”

Emma speaks about fraternity parties.  Apparently in England they only drink out of glass.  In ‘merica we call that another way to die from beer pong.

“I felt like I’d walked into an American teen movie. I picked up the red cups. I was like, Wow, they really do drink from these.“

Emma speaks about her alleged boyfriend (sorry guys):

Rafael Cebrián, “a rock musician and actor in his native Spain.”

Emma speaks (oh so humbly!) about her acting class: (srsly tho Emma, where’s the Oscar?)

“I think actually I’m the worst person in the class.“

Emma speaks about the hard-knock life of being a celebrity freshman:

“[I was afraid they'd think], You’re famous. You’re given free handbags. Why should you deserve to be normal?“

If this wasn’t enough Hermione-hits-the-ivies for you, there’s even a bewitching video at the end.  Look out for Emma reading a book while getting her make-up done!  Stars: they’re just like us, but with better lighting!

Boldly we Ivy Leaguers stride forth into the 2010s, leaving in our dust the dregs of this lame, lame year. Pause, though, to recall all those things that befell the Ivy League that we’re hopefully leaving in 2009 — and some good things, too! But when the fact that Amy Gutmann hasn’t found any time for impromptu photoshoots for the third year running is a good thing, we know we’re in trouble.

Yalies were told to repent for their (sexual, mainly!) sins, but it was the staffers of the Crimson who seemed naughtier to us. Cornell’s fiendish ticklers were the naughtiest of all! Hopefully they learn what “off-the-record GChat” means in 2k10. The raunchy Princetonians—now, you know, having nightly orgies in their dirty mixed-gender rooms—are the Cornelians’ spiritual heirs. Worst of all, their coed rooms are unaffiliated with eating clubs.

After the jump, big celebrity scoops of 2009, whose very “bigness” depends on how much you love Harry Potter films or voting Democratic.

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Emma Watson has arrived in Providence with the paparazzi in tow. A few hours ago, the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper published the first photos of a very un-Hermione-looking girl lounging in the grass at Brown and performing what appears to be a variation on the tolasana yoga pose.

According to a statement from Brown’s director of communications, Watson will receive the same rights and protections as any other student on campus. (Seriously, we want this confirmed in party photos.) Emma is following suit, explaining that she’s just a regular limey:

But I do hope that it will be only a short time before I am known as “Emma Watson, the student from the UK” rather than “Emma Watson who starred in those Harry Potter films”.

Good luck in college, Emma.  And remember: No Glove, No Love.

More photos after the jump.

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We’ve got the station wagon packed and Igloo full of beers. Meanwhile, those lucky freshman moving into the lauded zip codes (02138, 06520, 08540, etc etc), have their own road trip to sort out. And the Senate Finance Committee is doing whatever they’re going to be doing to make sure the American health care system stops killing people’s dads.

So IvyGate’s taking a little vacay. I’ll be working on my Member’s Only jacket collection—not a joke—and recruiting new writers. (Email me directly with discount codes for eBay Top Sellers.) We’ll be back on September 1st with a cache of embarrassing move-in mix-ups and pictures of Emma Watson’s underwear drawer.

Please send tips to: tips@ivygateblog.com

After the jump, more Clark Griswold clips.

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Here’s the important bit from Emma Watson’s interview in Paste Magazine.

Paste: You are off to University in the autumn.

Watson: I am—to Brown, which is an Ivy League establishment in the U.S.A. I’ve got a place there to read literature.

Nailed it! Take that Daily Mail and NY Daily News! We laugh at your claims of her attending Columbia. She’ll attend Columbia when we get tired of writing about her: Never!

Back in October, the world’s favorite young hot witch was seen touring the top Ivy League schools. But in April, Emma shocked the Ivy nation by opting to attend Brown over Harvard and Yale. Naturally this sparked a great reaction, mostly from IvyGate commenters who could not believe that someone actually chose Brown instead of settling for it–much less someone as internationally famous as Emma Watson. The three questions being tossed around were:

     1. She’s not actually going to Brown, right?

     2. Harvard and/or Yale must have rejected her, correct?

     3. Holy fuck, why is she going to Brown?

Three months later, these questions can be finally put to rest. With Half-Blood Prince coming out this month, the Harry Potter kids are on the interview circuit. Daniel Radcliffe took a break from being nude to say this to The Guardian about his co-star:

[Emma Watson's] very clever. Do you know her GCSE results?” His eyes boggle: “I was thrilled with mine – seven Bs, two As and an A*. I think Emma got three As and seven A*s – she’s incredibly academic, it’s frightening. Me and Rupert [Grint] to all intents and purposes dropped out of school. And she’s going to Brown.”

Not much reading between the lines needed there. Although Watson may have used the Imperius Curse on Radcliffe to keep him from revealing that she’s going to Tufts. Read the rest of this entry »